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THE
PRACTICAL WORKS
REV. RICHARD BAXTER.
y
THE
PRACTICAL WORKS
OF
THE REV. RICHARD BAXTER:
WITH
A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR,
AND
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF HIS WRITINGS,
BY THE
REV. WILLIAM ORME,
AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF JOHN OWEN, D.D. J " " BIBLIOTHECA BIBLICA," ETC
IN TWENTY-THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. XVII.
LONDON:
JAMES DUNCAN, 37, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCXXX.
LONDON :
PRINTED BY MILLS, JOWLTT, AND MILLS,
BOLT-COURT, FLEET-STREET.
THE
PRACTICAL WORKS
OF THE
REV. RICHARD BAXTER.
VOLUME XVII.
CONTAINING
SERMONS.
LONDON
PRINTED RY MILLS, JOWETT, AND MILLS.
Bolt-court, Fleet-street.
CONTENTS
OF
THE SEVENTEENTH VOLUME.
THE VAIN RELIGION OF THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE.
PAGE
To the Reader iv
The Introduction ▼*
Doct. There is a seeming religiousness which is but self-de-
ceiving, and will prove in vain 9
Ten particulars that constitute the hypocrite's vain religion. . ibid.
Ten things that are yet wanting to the hypocrite, that prove
his religion vain . . J 2
By what means and method the hypocrite makes shift to de-
ceive himself by his religion 17
What moveth the hypocrite to this self-deceit, and what are the
reasons and uses of his vain religion 22
In what respects the hypocrite's religion is not vain 32
In what respects his religion is vain 35
Use 1. Why a seeming, outside, hypocritical religion is so
common in comparison of serious faith and godliness. . 36
Why popery hath so many followers 38
Use 2. To awaken the self-deceiving hypocrite 40
Ten infallible marks of grace, which are in all that are sound
believers, and set together, describe his state; premised
to prevent the misapplication of what followeth, and
groundless trouble of the sincere 41
Terror to the self-deceiver. 1. His religion being vain, his
hopes and comforts are all vain 44
2. It will deceive him in his extremity 47
The detection of the hypocrite, by his contradicting all the
parts of his christian profession : showing that all the
ungodly among us, that profess to be true Christians,
are hypocrites 5
The hypocrite's unbridled tongue 62
Sins of the tongue ibid .
What the text means , 63
Three sorts especially reproved ibid.
1 . The deriders, scorners, revilers, or opposers of serious godli-
ness ; their terror in the aggravation of their sin ... . 64
2. Those that uncharitably reproach each other, for lesser dif-
ferences in religion 69
Of the common malicious Use of the nicknames — puritans, pre-
cisians, zealots, Sec, , , , , , 72
iv CONTENTS.
PAGE
Bishop Downame's testimony of the use of the word puritan in
his time 73
The testimony of Dr. Robert Abbot, regius professor of divi-
nity in Oxford, and Bishop of Salisbury ibid.
Mr. Robert Bolton's testimony at large ibid.
His further description of the formal hypocrite 74
Bishop Hall's character of a hypocrite 78
3. The sinfulness of passionate reproachful speeches against
superiors, when we suffer by them for religion's sake ;
proposed to the consideration of suffering tempted
Christians, how sincere soever 80
How far we may mention such sins of others 85
Two causes of men's frowardness of speech 86
Who is indeed the hypocrite. The impudency of our common
hypocrites that take serious godliness for hypocrisy. If
we will be Christians indeed, we must be content to be
so, though we are not thought to be so ; and to be ac-
counted hypocrites, when we have done most to approve
our hearts and ways to God 87
Eight directions to the hypocrite, to save him from a vain
religion 91
THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY.— Proverbs i. 32,33 96
REPENTANCE.— Ezekiel xxxvi. 31 122
RIGHT REJOICING.— Luke x. 20 155
WHAT LIGHT MUST SHINE IN OUR WORKS.—
Matthew v. 16 190
THE CURE OF MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH
SORROW, BY FAITH AND PHYSIC— 2 Corin-
thians ii. 7 236
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY; OR THE PUBLIC
GOOD IS THE CHRISTIAN'S LIFE.— Galatians
vi. 10 291
THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION OF GOD-REDEEMER;
AND THE NECESSITY OF BEING DEVOTED
AND LIVING TO HIM.— 1 Corinthians vi. 19,20. 341
THE ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST; AND
THE NECESSITY OF MAN'S SUBJECTION,
DEPENDENCE, AND CHIEFEST LOVE TO
HIM.— Psalm ii. 10—12 381
JUDGMENT.— 2 Corinthians v. 10, 11.. 422
DEATH, THE LAST ENEMY TO BE DESTROYED.—
1 Corinthians xx. 26 527
some imitable passages of the life of
Elizabeth, late wife of mr. Joseph
BAKER ... 596
THE
VAIN RELIGION
OF THE
FORMAL HYPOCRITE,
AND
THE MISCHIEF OF AN UNBRIDLED TONGUE,
AS AGAINST RELIGION, RULERS, OR DISSENTERS,
DESCRIBED IN
SEVERAL SERMONS
PREACHED AT THE ABBEY IN WESTMINSTER,
BEFORE
MANY MEMBERS OF THE HONOURABLE HOUSE OF COMMONS,
MDCLX. :
AND
THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY
THE OCCASION OF HIS DESTRUCTION
A SERMON
PREACHED AT COVENT GARDEN.
BOTH PUBLISHED TO HEAL THE EFFECTS OF SOME HEARERS'
MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND M1SREPORTS.
VOL. XVII. B
TO THE READER.
Though God be not the author of sin, he knows why he per-
mitteth it in the world. He will be no loser, and Satan shall
be no gainer by it in the end. The malice of the devil and
wicked men is, ordinarily, the destruction of the cause which
they most desire to promote; and an advantage by accident to
the cause and persons which they would root out from the
earth. Were there no more to prove this than the instances of
Joseph's brethren, of Pharaoh, and the murderers of our Lord,
it were enough. We usually lose more by the flatteries of
Satan and the World, than by their violence. If these hasty,
coarse, unpolished sermons, shall prove beneficial to the souls
of any, this also may come in among the lower rank of in-
stances. If the devil had let me alone, they might have been
cast aside, and no further molested him or his kingdom, for
aught I know, than they did upon the preaching of them. But
seeing he will needs, by malicious misreports, and slanders,
kindle suspicion, and raise offence, against them and the author,
let him take what he gets by it. He hath never yet got much
from me, by violence, or by his foul-mouthed slanderous instru-
ments : no, not when the impudence or multitude of their slan-
ders have forced me to be silent; lest I trouble the reader, or
misspend my time.
The first of these discourses, being intended to undeceive the
formal hypocrite, and to call men from a vain, to a saving, seri-
ous religion, and to acquaint them that cry out against hypo-
crisy, where the hypocrite is to be found, it seems, provoked
the ignorant or the guilty ; in so much that the cry went, that
I preached down all forms of prayer, and all government and
order in the church : when there is not a syllable that hath any
such sense ; but it seems what I spoke against the carcass, was
interpreted to be spoken against the body of religion.
The words of Mr. Bolton, and other divines, which I have
b2
4 TO THE READER.
cited against the reproachers of serious piety, are added since
the preaching of the rest, as heing more fit to be presented here
to the eye, than in the pulpit to the ear.
The petulancy of men on both extremes constrained me to
add, " The Bridle for their Tongues/'
The second discourse, I understand, offended some few of the
gallants, that thought they were too roughly handled ; let them
here peruse it, and better concoct it, if they please.
I only add this observation to the heirs of heaven, that are
above this world, and live by faith.
Few rich men are truly religious ; it is as hard for them to
be saved, as for a camel to go through a needle's eye. Yet
rich men will every where be the rulers of the world, and so (as
to outward protection or opposition) the judges in matters of
religion. Judge, therefore, whether dominion and earthly reign
be the portion of the saints (as Jewishly some of late imagine) ;
and what usage we must ordinarily expect on earth ! and what
condition the church of Christ is like to be in to the end. As his
kingdom, so ours, is not of this world. A low, despised, suffer-
ing state, is it that believers must ordinarily expect, and prepare
for, and study to be serviceable in. If better (may I call it bet-
ter) come, take it as a feast, and grudge not when the table is
withdrawn ; and look not it should be our every day's fare.
But yet, value the more highly those few of the rich, and great,
and rulers, that are above this world, and devote their power and
riches to the Lord, and are holy and heavenly in the midst of
so great temptations and impediments.
The Lord teach us to use this transitory world as not over-
using it, that we may never hear, "Remember that thou in thy
lifetime receivedst thy good things. (Luke xvi. 25.) How
shortly will they find themselves everlastingly undone, that made
not sure of a more enduring portion ! Reader, that thou mayest
savingly remember these common but necessary, though much
neglected, truths, is the end of these endeavours, and shall be
the matter of my heart's desire and prayers, while the Lord
eontinueth me
His servant for the promoting the increase
and edification of his church,
November 15, 1660. R. BAXTER.
Postscript. Readers, meeting, in his consideration of the
Liturgy, with these following words of the Rev. D. Gauden, " I
TO THE READER. O
cannot but commend the candour, justice, and integrity of Mr.
Baxter, who lately professed to me, that he saw nothing in the
Liturgy, which might not well bear a good construction, if men
looked upon it as became Christians, with eyes of charity," I was
sensible of the great respects of this learned and Reverend man;
but, lest you misunderstand both him and me, I think it best to
tell you more fully what were my words. Speaking for refor-
mation of the Common Prayer Book, and an addition of other
forms in scripture phrase, with liberty of choice, &c. I said,
"That for the doctrine of the Common Prayer Book, though I
had read exceptions against divers passages, I remembered not
anything that might not receive a good construction, if it were
read with the same candour and allowance, as we read the writ-
ings of other men." So that it was only the truth of the doctrine
that I spoke of; against which I hate to be peevishly quarrel-
some, when God hath blest this church so wonderfully, with a
moderate and cautelous, yet effectual, reformation in matter of
doctrine : the more pity is it that the very modes of worship and
discipline should be the matter of such sharp and uncharitable
discords, which must one day prove the grief of those that are
found to have been the causes of it, and of the sufferings of the
church on that occasion.
THE VAIN RELIGION OF THE FORMAL
HYPOCRITE, &c.
JAMES i. 26.
Jf any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his
tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.
Beloved hearers, I may suppose that we are all come hither
to-day for the great end of our lives ; and to labour in that
work for which we are created, preserved, instructed, and fur-
nished with the helps and means of grace ; even to prepare for
death that is coming to arrest us, and for the presence of our
Judge, who stands at the door ; and to make our calling and
election sure, that the glory of the saints may be our lot, when
the world of the ungodly are cast into endless misery and des-
pair. And I hope I may suppose that, in order to this end,
you would gladly be acquainted with the, causes of damna-
tion, that you may avoid them ; with your greatest clangers, that
you may escape them ; and with the hinderances of your salva-
tion, that you may overcome them. When we read in the Gos-
pel, that salvation is to be offered unto all, and no man is ex-
cepted or shut out, but such as shut out and except themselves ;
and yet read that there are but few that find the " strait gate,"
and the " narrow way," and that the " flock is little" that shall
have the "kingdom," and that "many shall seek to enter that
shall not be able," (Matt. vii. 13, 14; Luke xii. 32, and xiii. 24.)
we must needs conclude that some powerful enemy standeth in
the way, that can cause the ruin of so many millions of souls ;
but when we go further and find what rich preparations God
hath made, and what means he hath used, and what abundant
helps he offereth and affordeth to bring men to this blessed
state of life, it force th us to admire that any enemy can be so
strong, as to frustrate so many, and such excellent means. But
when we yet go further, and find that salvation is freely offered,
and that the purchase is made by a Saviour to our hands, and
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 7
that hearty consent is the condition of our title, and nothing but
our wilful refusal can undo us ; when we find that salvation is
brought down to men's wills, and also what motives and convinc-
ing helps, and earnest persuasions, are appointed and used to
make men willing ; we are then surprised with yet greater admira-
tion, that any deceiver can be so subtle, or the heart of man can
be so foolish, as to be drawn (in despite of all these means) to
cast away the immortal crown that else no enemy could have
taken from him. And now we discern the quality of our enemy,
of our snares, of our danger, and of our duty ; it is not mere
violence, but deceit, that can undo us ; not force, but fraud, that
we have to resist. And were not the mind of a carnal man ex-
ceeding brutish, (while he seemeth wise for carnal things,) it
were a thing incredible that so many men could, by all the sub-
tlety of hell be drawn, in the day-light of the gospel, deliberately
and obstinately to refuse their happiness, and to choose the
open way of their damnation, and leave their friends lamenting
their calamity, that might have mercy, and cannot be persuaded
to consent.
That Satan is the great deceiver, and layeth the snare, and
manageth the bait, we are all convinced ; that the world, and
all our fleshly accommodations are the instrumental deceivers ;
the snare, the bait which Satan useth, is also a thing that
we all confess. But that beside the devil and the world, a
reasonable creature should be his own deceiver, and that in
a business of unspeakable, everlasting consequence ; and that
religion itself, (a seeming religiousness that indeed is vain,)
should be made by himself the means of his deceit, this is a
mystery that is opened to you in my text, and requireth our
most careful search and consideration.
When Satan and the World have wounded us by their
deceits, religion is it that helpeth us to a cure. He that is
deceived by pleasures and profits, and the vain glory of the
world, must be undeceived and recovered by religion, or he
must perish. But that religion itself should become his deceit,
and the remedy prove his greatest misery, is the most stu-
pendous effect of Satan's subtlety, and a sinner's fraudulency,
and the saddest aggravation of his deplorable calamity. And
yet, alas, this is so common a case, that where the gospel is
preached, it seems to be Satan's principal game, and the
highway to hell. There is no other name by which we can
be saved, but by Jesus Christ, the only mediator between
S THE VAIN RELIGION OF
sinful man and the offended Majesty; and yet, what is therein
all the world that is more ahused to the deceiving of men's
souls, than the name and grace ©f Jesus Christ? Men that
may he saved by an effectual faith, are cheated and destroyed
by false faith and presumption. The merciful nature of God
is the ground-work of all the comforts of the godly ; and
yet there is nothing that is more abused to the deceiving of
men's souls ; that will profess that they trust in the mercies
of God, while they are labouring to be miserable by the re-
fusing and resisting the mercy that would save them. The
free promises of the gospel do support true believers, but are
abused to the deceiving of the presumptuous world. And so
the Apostle telleth us that many do by their religion ; they
will have a religion to deceive themselves, but not to save
them.
It is the hypocrite that is the subject in my text, who is de-
scribed by his double property. 1. That he seemeth to be religi-
ous. 2. That his obedience answereth not this seeming or profes-
sion ; the instance is given in the bridling of his tongue, because
that was the point that the Apostle had some special reason to in-
sist on, with those to whom he immediately directed his epistle.
Though it is plain, in verses 22, 23, &c, that it is the whole
work of obedience that he implieth, where he instanceth in this
particular. The sin of the tongue which he specially intendeth
to reprove, was the bitter reproaching of their brethren, upon the
account of their differences in matters of religion, and the vilify-
ing of others, and uncharitable passionate contendings and cen-
sures, upon pretence of knowing more than others; as appeareth
in the third chapter throughout.
The predicate is double; one by way of supposition, viz., that
this hypocrite doth but deceive his own heart ; the other by way
of assertion, viz., that his religion is vain.
Whether 6pvjpcry.o; and 0pjoWa be fetched as far as from
Orpheus, the Thracian, as Erasmus and many others imagine,
is of no great moment to our understanding of the text, it being
evident that it is the worshipping of God that is here meant by
religion; and it is men addicted to his worship that are called
religious. The seeming, here spoken of, refers both to himself and
others ; he that seemeth to himself to be religious, or is judged
so by other men. By bridling the tongue, is meant, restraining
it from evil speech. By deceiving himself, is meant the mistake
of his judgment concerning the sincerity and acceptableness
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 9
and reward of his religion, and the frustrating of his own expect-
ations hereupon ; his religion is said to be in vain, in that it shall
not attain the ends of an unfeigned, true, religion, of which more
anon. The sense of the text, then, is contained in these two
propositions :
1. There is a seeming religiousness which is but self-deceiv-
ing, and will prove in vain.
2. Where sincere obedience doth not accompany the profes-
sion of religion, and, in particular, when such men bridle not
their tongues, their religion is but vain, and self-deceiving.
These two being contained in the text, the former comprised
in the latter, I shall handle them together, and show you,
I. What this seeming religion is, and how it differeth from true
religion. II. Wherein this self- deceiving by a seeming religion
doth consist. III. Whence it is that men are so prone to this
self-deceit. IV. In what respects this religion is vain, and
why. V. And then we shall consider how to improve these
truths by a due application.
I. Concerning the first I must show you, 1. W r hat this seem-
ing religion is made up of. 2. And what it wants, which maketh
it delusory and vain.
In general, this vain religion is made up sometimes of all
that, 1 . A laudable nature or temperature of body ; 2. And good
education, and excellent means ; 3. Assisted by the common
workings of the spirit, can produce.
More particularly, 1. A vain religiousness may have a great
deal of superficial opinionative knowledge, and so may have the
truest religion for its object : the true doctrines of faith may be
believed by a faith that is not true ; the hypocrite, as to the ma-
terials of his creed, may be orthodox ; when ignorance abound-
eth, he may be a knowing man, and pity the ignorance of
others ; when errors abound, he may be of the right opinion in
religion, and speak much against the errors of the times, as one
that is wiser than the giddy, heretical, sort of people ; he may
" know the will of God, and approve the things that are more
excellent, being instructed out of the la v w, and be confident that
he himself is a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in
darkness, an instructer of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which
hath the form of knowledge, and of the truth in the law. (Rom.
ii. 18 — 20.) He may know as much materially as the upright
may, and be able to convince gainsayers, and be a notable
champion for the defending of the truth against the many adver-
10 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
saries that oppose it ; and so may be eminently useful in his
generation.
2. He that is but religious in vain, may be frequent in the
worshipping of God ; and may " seek him daily, and delight to
know his ways, and to approach him, and ask of him the ordi-
nances of justice," as if he were one of the people that "did
righteousness," and " forsook not the ordinances of their God."
(Isaiah lviii. 1, 2.) He may be oft in fasting, and punctual in
keeping holy days and ceremonies, (as verse 3, Isaiah i. 1 2 — 15 ;
Luke xviii. 11 — 13.) and exercise much severity on himself,
" after the commandments and doctrines of men, in things that
have a show of wisdom, in will-worship, and humility, and
neglecting of the body, not in any honour to the satisfying of
the flesh." (Col. ii. 20—22, 13.) Though he be slow-paced in
the right way, he is swift in his mistaken paths. Though he
liketh not preciseness, zeal, and forwardness, in the spiritual
works that God prescribeth, yet, when it comes to his own, or
other men's inventions, he will be religious and " righteous over-
much," (Eccles. vii. 16.) and forward, to offer the sacrifice of a
fool, that considereth not that he is but doing evil, while he
thinks to please God with the sacrifice of his services, though
he turn away his ear from an obedient hearing the word that
should direct him. (Eccles. v. 1, 2; Prov. xxviii. 9.)
3. He that is but religious in vain, may see the evil of discord
and divisions, and inveigh much against schismatics, and see
the excellencies of unity and peace; and therefore may join
himself with the visible catholic church, and with the christians
and congregations that are most for unity. There have always
been hypocrites in the most orderly peaceable societies of
believers, and still will be.
4. The self-deceiving hypocrite is oft-times very sensible of
the evil of vertiginous mutability in religion; and, therefore, he
may be much resolved to continue what he is, and may cast
many a jeer at the weather-cocks of the times, and the uncon-
stancy and levity of ignorant or temporising men; and may
stand to his party and profession, against much opposition, as
glorying in his constancy, and being ashamed to be thought a
changeling, or such a turn-coat as others whom he merrily
derideth.
5. An hypocrite that hath no other religion but delusory
and vain, may observe the weaknesses of persons that are of
lower education and parts ; and may loath their indiscretion in
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 11
conference and behaviour, and their unhandsome expressions
in prayer and other duties, and shake the head at them, as
silly, contemptible, self-conceited fellows ; and his heart may
rise against their disorder, tautologies, and affectations : and it
is like enough that hereupon he will jest at conceived prayer,
or extemporate (as they call it), and bless himself as safe in his
parrot-like devotions, because the same Spirit teacheth not fine
words and rhetorical language to all that it teacheth to pray
with unutterable sighs and groans, (Rom. viii. 26, 27 ;) though
the Searcher of hearts (who is not delighted with compliments
and set speeches) doth well understand the meaning of the Spirit.
5. The self-deceiving hypocrite doth frequently pretend to
be a man of moderation in matters of religion, as distasting
the hair-brained zealots, as he counteth them, that cannot be
conteiit to have their faith and religion to themselves before
God, and to live and talk as others do, but must be singular,
and make a stir with their religion, and turn the world upside
down. The true zeal of the godly is usually distasteful to
him, and the corrupt zeal of schismatical persons doth cause
him to bless himself in his lukewarmness, and to take his most
odious indifferency, and want of fervent love to God and his
holy ways, to be his virtue.
6. This self-deceiving hypocrite doth frequently pretend
to an exceeding great reverence in the managing of the out-
ward part of worship ; and to an extraordinary zeal about the
circumstantials of religion. He accounts them all schismatical
and profane that place not as much of their religion as he doth
in gestures and forms and other accidents of worship, acquaint-
ing us that the pharisaical temper in religion is natural, and
will continue in the world.
7. If the temptation of the hypocrite lie on the other
side, he can withdraw himself into some small or separating
society, and place his religion in the singularity of his
opinions, or in the strictness of the way and party that he
owneth, and in his conceited ability in his conceived or ready
expressions in prayer ; and can cry out as much upon the for-
malist, as the formal hypocrite upon him, and glory in his
zeal, as the other in his moderation. It is in the heart that
hypocrisy hath its throne, from whence it can command the
outward acts into any shapes that are agreeable to its ends ;
and can use materials of divers natures, as the fuel and
nutriment of its malignity. And whatever party such are
12 THE VAIN RKUGION OF
joined to, and whatever way they have been trained up \o,
whetlier formality, or schism, or more regular, sober, equal,
ways, in all of them their religion is but vain, and they do
but deceive themselves bv all.
8. The religion that is but delusory and vain, may be
accompanied with much alms, and works of seeming justice,
and charity. (Matt. vi. 1, 2; Luke xviii. 11, J 2.) He may
have many virtues called moral ; and be a man of much
esteem with others, even with the best and wisest, for his
seeming wisdom, and piety, and justice. He may be no
extortioner, unjust, adulterer, but as to gross sins seem blame-
less, (Luke xviii. 11, 12; Phil. iii. 6,) and be much in
reproaching the scandalous lives of others, and thank God
that he is none such. (Luke xviii. 1 1 .)
9. He that hath but a vain religion, may, in his judgment,
approve of saving grace, and like the more zealous, upright,
self-denying, heavenly lives of others ; and wish that he might
die their death, and wish himself as happy as they, so it might
be had on his own terms ; and he may have some counterfeit
of every grace, and think that it is true. (Numb, xxiii. 10;
Jam. ii. 14, &c; 1 Cor. xiii. 1—3 ; Mark v. 20.)
10. None will be more forward to call another hypocrite, than
the hypocrite ; nor to extol sincerity and uprightness of heart
and life. And thus you see what this vain religion is madeupwith.
2. If you marvel what the hypocrite yet wants, that, makes
his religion delusory and vain, I shall now tell you, I hope, to
your conviction and satisfaction.
1. For all his fore-mentioned religion, he wants the Spirit of
Christ, to dwell as his sanctifier within him; and "if any man
have not the Spirit of Christ, the same is none of his." (Rom.
viii. 9.) But because this is known by the effects, I add,
2. He wants that spiritual new birth, by which he should
be made spiritual, as his first birth made him carnal. (John
iii. 5, 6 ; Rom. viii. 6< — 8.) He is born of the will of the
-flesh, and of man, but not of God. (John i. 13.) From the
first man Adam he is become a living soul, but by the second
man Christ, the Lord from heaven, he is not yet quickened
in the spirit. (1 Cor. xv. 45, 46.) He is not born again of
the incorruptible, seed, the word of God, that liveth and
abideth for ever. (1 Pet. i. 23.) He is not yet saved by the
washing of regeneration (save only as to the outward baptism)
and by renewing of the Holy Ghost, which is shed by Christ
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 13
on all his members, that, being justified by his grace, they
should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
(Tit. iii. 5, 6.) They are not new creatures, old things being
not past away, and all things with them become new : and
therefore it is certain they are not in Christ. (2 Cor. v. 17.)
They have not put off the old man with his deceitful lusts, and
deeds, nor have they put on the new man, which after God is
created til righteousness, and true holiness. (Eph. iii. 22 — 24 ;
Col. iii. 9, 10.) They have but patched up the old unsancti-
fied hearts, and smoothed over their carnal conversations with
civility and plausible deportment, and so much religion as may
cheat themselves, as well as blind the eyes of others : but
they are strangers to the life of God, (Eph. iv. 18,) and never
were made partakers of the divine nature, which all the chil-
dren of God partake of, (2 Pet. i. 4,) nor of that holiness,
without which none shall see the Lord. (Heb. xii. 14.)
3. Though he make a slight and customary confession of
his sins, unworthiness, and misery, yet he is not kindly hum-
bled at the heart, nor made truly vile in his own eyes, nor
contrite and broken-hearted, nor emptied of himself, as seeing
himself undone by his own iniquities, crying out unclean, and
loathing himself for all his abominations, weary of his sin,
and heavy-laden, as all must be that are fit for Christ. Read
Isa. lvii. 15, andlxvi.2; Psalm li. 17? and xxxiv. 18 ; Lev. xiii.
44, 45; Ezek. xxxvi. 31, and xx. 43, and vi. 9 ; Matt. xi. 28 ;
Rom. vii. 24.
4. This man's religion must needs be vain, for he wanteth
the life of faith itself, and heartily believeth not in Christ. He
hath but an opinion of the truth of Christianity, through the
advantage of his education and company ; and thereupon doth
call him selfa Christian, and heartlessly talk of the mystery of
redemption as a common thing : but he doth not with a
humble, broken heart, betake himself to Christ as his only
refuge from the wrath of God, and everlasting misery, as he
would lay hold on the hand of his friend, if he were drowning.
The sense of the odiousness of sin, and of the damnation
threatened by the righteous God, hath not yet taught him to
value Christ, as he must be valued by such as will be saved by
him. These hypocrites do but talk of Christ, and turn his
name as they do their prayers, into the matter of a dry and
customary form. They fly not to him as the only physician of
their souls, in the feeling of their festering wounds : they cry
14 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
not to him as the disciples in the tempest, "Save, Master, we
perish." They value him not practically, (though notionally
they do,) as the pearl for which they must sell all/ (Matt. xiii.
44 — 46.) Christ doth not dwell in his heart by faith, nor
doth he long with all the saints to comprehend what is the
breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the
love of Christ which passeth knowledge. (Eph. iii. 17 — 19.)
He counteth not all things loss for Christ, and the excellency
of his knowledge; nor doth he count them as dung, that he
may win Christ, and be found in him, not having his own
righteousness, but that which is through the faith of Christ ;
(Phil. iii. 8 — 10;) nor can he truly say, that he desireth to
know nothing but a crucified Christ, (1 Cor. ii. 2,) and that
" the life that he now liveth in the flesh, he liveth by the faith
of the Son of God, that loved him, and gave himself for him."
(Gal. ii. 20.) He is not taken up with that admiration of the
love of God in Christ, as beseems a soul that is saved by him
from the flames of hell, and that is reconciled to God, and
made an heir of life everlasting. He hath not understand-
ingly, deliberately, seriously, and unreservedly, given up himself
and all that he hath to Christ ; and thankfully accepted Christ
and life, as given on the gospel terms to him. This living effec-
tual faith is wanting to the hypocrite, whose religion is vain.
5. This vain religion doth never practically show the soul the
amiableness and attractive goodness of God, so far as to win the
heart to a practical observation of him, and adhering to him,
above all ; nor so far as to advance him, above all the creatures,
in the practical judgment, will, and conversation ; nor doth he
cause the soul to take him for its portion, and prefer his favour
before all the world, and devote itself and all unto his interest
and will, and give him the superlative and sovereign honour,
both in heart and life. (Psalm lxiii. 3, and xxx. 5, and iv. 6, 7,
and xvi. 5, and xvii. 4 ; Matt. x. 37.)
6. This vain religion is always without that serious belief of
the life to come, which causeth the soul to take it for its happi-
ness and treasure, and there to set its desires and its hopes, and
to make it his principal care and business to attain it, and to
make all the pleasures and profits and honours of the world to
stoop to it, as preferring it before them all. (Matt. vi. 20, 21,
and ver. 33 ; Luke xviii. 22, 23, and xiv. 33 ; Col. iii. 1 — 5 ;
Phil. iii. 18— »20.) The hypocrite taketh heaven but for a re-
serve, and as a lesser evil than hell, and seeks it but in the
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 15
second place, while his fleshly pleasures and interest have the
pre-eminence, and God hath no more but the leavings of the
world ; and he serveth him but with so much as his flesh can
spare.
7. This vain religion consisteth principally in external ob-
servances. If he be a formalist that hath it, his religion lieth
in his beads and prayer-books, in going so oft to church,
and keeping holy days and fasting days, and saying over such
and such words, and using such and such gestures and cere-
monies, and submitting to church orders, and crying down
sectaries and preciseness, and jeering at the simplicity
of plain-hearted Christians that never learned the art of
dissimulation. Their religion is but a pack of compliments,
a flattering of God, as if they would mock him with cap and
knee who will not be mocked; (Gal. vi. 7 ;) while they draw
near to him with their lips, their hearts are far from him.
(Matt. xv. 7 — 9.) They wash the outside, and pay tithe of all,
and give some alms, and forbear disgraceful sins, which would
make them be esteemed ungodly among men. (Matt. xv. 2, 3;
Mark vii. 4, 8; Matt, xxiii. 25, 26, &c, vi. 1, 4, 6, &c;
Isa. i. 1 1 — 14, lviii. 1, 2.) But these self-deceivers are strangers
to the inward spiritual work of holiness : their hearts are not
busy in the worship of God, by fervent desire and exercise of
other graces, while their tongues are put into an artificial pace,
and they are acting the part of men that seem to be religious.
If they be cast into the sectarian mould, they place their
religion in the strictness of their principles and parties, and in
contending for them, and in their affected fervour, and ability
to speak and pray extempore : but the humble, holy, inward
workings of the soul toward God, and its breathings after him,
and the watch that it sets over the heart, this hypocrite is much
a stranger to.
If he be brought up among the orthodox in well-ordered
churches, he placeth his religion in the holding of the truth,
and taking the right side, and submitting to right order, and
using God's ordinances : but the most of an upright man's em-
ployment is at home, within him ; to order his soul, and exer-
cise grace, and keep down sin, and keep out of the world, and
keep under the flesh and carnal self, and do the inward part of
duty ; and he is as truly solicitous about this as about the out-
ward works, and contenteth not himself to have said his prayers,
unless, indeed, his heart have prayed ; nor to have heard, unless
]6 THE VAIN llliMGION OF
he have profited, or heard with obediential attention : and he
makes conscience of secret duties, as well as of those that are
done in the sight of men ; but this the hypocrite comes not up
to, to trade in the internal spiritual part.
8. The religion that is vain is without an universal hatred of
known sin, and an actual conquering of it, so far as to live out
of gross sin, which some call mortal, and to be weary of infir-
mities, and to be truly desirous to be rid of all ; and to be wil-
ling to use God's means against it. Thus it is with the sincerely
religious, but not with these hypocrites that deceive themselves.
(John iii. 19, 20; Rom. vii. 24; Luke xiii. 3, 5; Rom. viii.
t* — 14 ; Gal. vi. 7, 8.) The hypocrite hath not only some parti-
cular sin, which all his religion makes him not willing to see
to be a sin, or to forsake ; but his very state is sinful in the
main, by the predominancy of a selfish carnal interest and prin-
ciple ; and he is not willing of close plain dealing, much less of
the diligent use of means himself to overcome that sin, because
he loveth it.
9. This vain religion is not accompanied by an unfeigned
love to a life of holiness, which every true believer hath; delight-
ing to meditate in the law of God, with a practical intention to
obey it, and delighting in the inward exercise of grace, and
outward ordinances as advantages hereunto; desiring still more
of the grace which he hath tasted, and grieving that he know-
eth, and trusteth, and loveth, and feareth, and obeyeth God so
little, and loving to reach higher, to know, and love, and fear
him more. (Psalm i. 2, and cxix. 1 — 5, 9, 10, &c; Heb. xii. 14 ;
2 Peter iii. 11 ; Matt. vii. 13, 14.) But the self-deceiver either
hath a secret dislike of this serious diligence for salvation, and
loving God with all the soul and might, (because he is conscious
that he reacheth it not himself,) or, at least, he will not be brought
to entertain a*ny more than will stand with his carnal ends.
10. A vain religion doth not so far reveal the excellency of
Christ's image in his servants, as to cause an entire love to them
as such ; and to delight in them above the most splendid and
accomplished persons that are strangers to the life of grace, and
so far to love them as, when Christ requireth it, to part with our
substance, and hazard ourselves for their relief. Thus do the
truly religious. (Psalm xvi. 2. and xv. 4; 1 John iii. 14 ;
Matt. x. 40 ; xi. 42 ; and xxv. 34, 35, 40, 42, 45, 46.) But the
hypocrite either secretly hateth a heavenly, holy life, and, con-
sequently the people that are such, (because they seem to con-
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 17
demn him by overgoing him, and differing from him ; or, at
least, he only superficially approveth of them, but will forsake
both Christ and them in trial, rather than forsake his earthen
god. I have now showed you what the self-deceiver wants,
in which you may see sufficient reason why his religion is but
vain.
II. We are next to show you how these hypocrites do deceive
themselves, and wherein their self-deceit consisteth. It may
seem strange that a man of reason should do such a thing as
this, when we consider that truth is naturally the object of the
understanding, and that all men necessarily love themselves,
and therefore love what they know to be simply good for them.
How then can any man that hath the use of reason be willing
to be deceived, yea, and be his own deceiver, and that in mat-
ters of unspeakable consequence ! But it is not as falsehood,
nor as deceit, that they desire it, but as it appeareth necessary to
the carnal ease and pleasure which they desire.
The way by which they deceive their own hearts consisteth
in these following degrees : —
1. The hypocrite resisteth the spirit of grace, and rejecteth
the mercies offered in the gospel ; and so, by his refusal, is de-
prived of a part in Christ, and of the life of grace, and the
hopes of glory which were tendered to him.
2. But withal, he is willing of so much of this mercy as con-
sisteth with his sinful disposition and carnal interest : he is wil-
ling enough to be happy in general, and to be saved from hell-
fire, and to be pardoned, and to have such a heaven as he hath
framed a pleasing imagination of.
3. And therefore he maketh him up a religion of so much of
Christianity as will stand with his pleasures, profits, and repu-
tation in the world, that so he may not be left in despair of
being saved, when he must leave the world that he most loved.
The cheap and the easy parts of Christianity, and those that are
most in credit in the world, and that flesh and blood have least
against, these he will cull out from among the rest, and make
him a religion of, passing by the dearer and more difficult and
spiritual parts.
4. Having gone thus far, he persuadeth his own heart that
this kind of religion which he hath patched up and framed to
himself is the true religion, the faith, the hope, the charity, the
repentance, the obedience, to which salvation is promised ; and
that he is a true Christian, notwithstanding his defects ; and
VOL. XVII. c
18 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
that his spots arc but such as are consistent with grace ; and
that his sins are but pardoned infirmities ; and that he hath
part in Christ, and the promises of life, and shall be saved,
though he be not of the preciser strain. When he committeth
any sin, he confidently imagineth that his confession and his
wishing it were undone again, when he hath had all the plea-
sure that sin can give him, is true repentance; and that, as a
penitent, he shall be forgiven : and thus, while he thinketh him-
self something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. (Gal.
vi. 3.) He hath a counterfeit of every grace of God; a
counterfeit faith, and hope, and love, and repentance, and zeal,
and humility, and patience, and perseverance : and these he
will needs take to be the very life and image of Christ, and the
graces themselves that accompany salvation.
5. Having got this carcass of religion without the soul, he
makes use of all those things to confirm him in his deceit,
which are appointed to confirm true Christians in their faith
and hope. When he reads or thinks of the infinite goodness,
love, and mercy of God, he thinks God could not be so good and
merciful, if he should refuse to save all such as he. When he
readeth of the undertaking and sacrifice of Christ, and how he
is a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, he confidently,
hence, concludeth that a Saviour so gracious, that hath done
and suffered so much for sinners, cannot condemn all such as
he. When he readeth of the extent and freeness of grace in
the promises of the gospel, he concludeth that these promises
belong to him, and that grace could not be so free and so ex-
tensive, if it did shut out all such as he. When he observeth
the mercies of God upon his body, in his friends, and health,
and credit and prosperity, he concludeth that surely God loveth
him as a child, in that he dealeth so fatherly with him. If he
suffer adversity, he thinks that it is fatherly chastisement of God,
and therefore proveth him to be his son, and that he shall have
his good things in the world to come, because he hath his evils
here. If he suffer any thing for a good cause, or a cause that
he taketh to be good, he taketh himself to be a confessor, and
marked out for life eternal. If he give any considerable alms,
he applieth all the promises to himself that are made to those
that are truly charitable, though he giveth but the leavings of
the flesh, and giveth but on common compassions, or for ap-
plause, or for some common end, and not as to Christ whom he
honoureth in his members, as one that hath resigned all unto
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 19
hint. If he pray, from the lips only, or only for pardon, and
such other mercies as flesh itself would be glad to have, without
the inexpressible groans of the spirit for spiritual mercies,
(Rom. viii. 2(5,) he presently applieth all the promises to him-
self that are made to the upright that call upon God : and
thus love, mercy, and Christ himself, are abused by him, to this
damning work of self-deceit.
6. Moreover, he makes use of all the ordinances of God, to
the deceiving of his own heart. The outward part of baptism
persuades him that he is inwardly regenerate. He receiveth the
Lord's supper that he may confirm his presumption, and in-
crease his self-deceit, as the godly receive it to confirm and
increase their saving faith. He joineth with the chureh in
those prayers and praises that are fitted to the true believer's state
that he may thence more confidently deceive his own heart,
with the conceit that he is a true believer. And thus he turneth
the bread of life, and all the helps and means of grace, to the
strengthening of his sin, and the furthering of his perdition.
7. Moreover, this miserable self-deceiver does usually get
into such company as may further his self-deceit, and maketh
use of them to that end. If he get into any holy, well-ordered
church of Christians, it is that, by his outward communion with
the saints, he may seem to himself to have inward communion
with them. If he get among able godly ministers, and other
judicious Christians, and finds that he is well esteemed of by
them, he is confirmed hereby in his presumption and self-
deceit : when, alas ! we must, in charity, judge of men as they
profess and seem, and leave the infallible judgment of the
heart to God. Usually, this self-deceiving hypocrite doth asso-
ciate with some carnal or factious men, with whom he makes
himself a party : and such will smooth him up, and make a
saint of him, either because they are as bad themselves, and
dare not condemn him, lest they condemn themselves, or be-
cause they are flatterers and daubers, or men that were never
themselves acquainted with those saving operations of the spirit
which he wants, or because they are partial to one of their own
faction. And thus a formal hypocrite may be stroked by
formalists, and a schismatical hypocrite may be soothed up by
those of his own sect (as lamentable experience telleth us that
such do) to the increase of their pernicious self-deceit.
Yet more than so; if these hypocrites fall in company with
the notoriously profane, from them they will fetch some con-
c 2
20 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
firmation of their self-deceit : when they hear them swear and
curse, and rant, and see them drunk, they secretly with the
Pharisee rejoice and say, " I thank thee, Lord, that I am not as
this publican." And this is one reason why such hypocrites
are well content to have some servants in their families, or some
neighbours or company about them that are notoriously pro-
fane, that their deluded consciences, considering that they
are more civil and religious themselves, may hence gather com-
fort, that they are the servants of God, and in a state of grace.
Hence also it is, that those of them that go on the schismati-
cal side, do purposely go into separated societies, that, by with-
drawing from so many, and (as they speak) coming out from
among them, they may seem to themselves to be fellow-citizens
with the saints, and to be of the little flock that shall have the
kingdom. This is the use that self-deceivers make of their
companions.
8. Moreover, the hypocrite confirmeth his self-deceit, by
observing the great numbers of ungodly persons, worse than he,
that are in the world : this makes him think that God should
be unmerciful, and heaven be empty, if all such as he should
be shut out : the damnation of so many seemeth so incredible
to him, that it much increaseth his confidence and self-deceit.
9. And he deceiveth himself also by a mis-observing and
mis- applying the faults and infirmities of the servants of the
Lord, and the scandalous lives of many hypocrites like himself.
When he readeth of Noah's drunkenness and incest, and David's
adultery and murder, and Peter's denial of his Master, with curs-
ing and swearing, he considered! not how much these singular
actions were contrary to the scope of their lives, nor by what
serious repentance they did rise, and do so no more ; but he
hence coneludeth that sure he is in a state of grace, that hath
no such heinous sins as these : though indeed he hath more
heinous continually within him, (even a love of the world and
pleasure above God, a secret root of unbelief, a servitude to
the flesh, &c.) when he seeth any about him that profess the
fear of God, prove hypocrites or apostates, or fall into any
scandalous sin, he strengtheneth his presumption by it, and con-
eludeth that this profession of greater holiness than he himself
hath, is but hypocrisy ; and that he is as good as those that
seem more devout, though he make not so much ado with his
religion : or at least that he shall be saved, when those are so
bad that are accounted better : if there be but a Ham in the
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 21
Ark and family of Noah, an Ishmael in Abraham's house, an
Esau in Jacob's, an Absalom in David's, a Judas among the dis-
ciples of Christ, these self- deceivers will thence fetch matter
for their own delusion and perdition, as if the rest were all t as
bad, or sanctification were not necessary to salvation.
10. The self- deceiver also is confirmed in his presumption,
by taking to himself the comforts that ministers hold forth, for
truly humbled, upright souls, that are apt to be too much dis-
quieted and cast down. Our congregations are mixed of godly
and ungodly, and broken-hearted and hard-hearted, dejected
and self-confident sinners (besides all those that are well
settled in their spiritual peace). And as we cannot tell how
to tell the wicked of their misery, nor open the hypocrite's self-
deceit, but the self-suspecting humbled soul, will mis-apply it
to themselves, and be more dejected by it, and say, it is thus
with me ; so we cannot tell how to comfort the distressed,
and clear up the evidences of a drooping soul, but the pre-
sumptuous hypocrite will lay hold upon it, and think that it
belongs to him. Every comfortable book or scripture that he
readeth, and every comfortable sermon or discourse which he
heareth, is abused to increase his self-deceit.
11. It increaseth the hypocrite's self-deceit, when he findeth
some partial reformation in himself, and that he hath mended
many things that were amiss ; this he takes for a true conver-
sion, and thinks that the civilizing and smoothing of his life,
the change of his opinion, and the taking up a form of godli-
ness, are true sanctification ; and that he is not the man that
once he was, and therefore is in a safe condition. Though, alas!
he hath never yet known by experience the new heart, the new
ends, the new resolutions, affections, and conversation of a saint.
12. Lastly, he deceiveth himself by misunderstanding the
nature of hypocrisy. Because he perceiveth not that he is a gross
dissembler, but meaneth as he speaks, so far as he goes, there-
fore, he thinks that he is no hypocrite ; whereas, besides the
gross hypocrite that knoweth that he doth dissemble, and only
deceiveth others, there are also close hypocrites, that know
not they are hypocrites, but deceive themselves. And these
are they that my text here speaks of, when it saith, i{ He de-
ceiveth his own heart." It is hypocrisy (to seem better than
one is, and to profess to be a sincere Christian when he is
none,) though he confidently think that he is what he profess-
eth himself to be.
22 THE VAIN RELIGION OK
III. But what is it that can move a reasonable creature to be
wilfully guilty of such self-deceit in the day-light of the gos-
pel, when he hath so much help to see his way ?
Answer. 1. They are first deceived by the vanities of the
world, and the pleasures of sin, before they deceive themselves
by their religion. Their religious self-deceiving is but subservient
to their fleshly servitude, and the world's deceit. They are
carnal from the birth, (for that which is born of the flesh
only, is but flesh, John iii. 6,) and custom in sinning fixeth
and increaseth their sinful disposition. Their hearts are en-
gaged to their worldly accommodations, and to their vain
glory, and the things that please the flesh ; they are willing
slaves to their concupiscence. And therefore they cannot ad-
mit of that religion which would deprive them of that which
they most dearly love. Christ speaks too late to them. They
tell him they are promised already. Their affections are pre-
engaged : sin hath taken up the chiefest rooms : and the heart
that loveth sensuality and prosperity best, cannot love God best
too : for it can have but one best. The nature of true sancti-
fication is to take down the darling of a carnal heart, and to
cross it in its dearest loves, and to lay that at our feet that
before was our treasure, and to tame the body, and to bring it
into subjection, which before was in the throne. The motions
of such a change will not be acceptable, till they are made so
effectual as to cause that change : the command will be unplea-
sant, till the heart be suited to the nature of the command.
He that seeth what care and labour there is to gather a worldly
treasure, and what a stir is made in the world about it, can
never expect that all this should be vilified and despised at a
word, and that any doctrine (how true and heavenly soever)
can be welcome to these worldly men, that would debase their
glory, and imbitter their delights, and make their idol seem but
dung. The doctrine of Christ would take the old heart out of
their bodies : and they will not easily leave their hearts. It
doth not only command the drunkard to live soberly, and the
glutton temperately, and the lascivious filthy sinner chastely, and
the proud person humbly, and the covetous to live contentedly
and liberally ; but it commandeth the hearty forsaking of all
for the sake of Christ, (Luke xiv. 33,) and the accounting them
but as loss and dung that we may win him, (Phil. iii. 7 — 9.) and
mortifying of that flesh which before we daily studied to please,
(Col. iii. 4 — 5,) and the crucifying of its affections and lusts,
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 23
(Gal. v. 24,) and the denial even of ourselves. (Luke ix. 23,
24.) And for a carnal mind to love and yield to such com-
mands, were no other than to cease to be a carnal mind. All
this is largely expressed by the Apostle, (Rom. viii. 1, &c,)
They that are in Christ Jesus, " walk not after the flesh, but
after the spirit — For they that are after the flesh, do mind the
things of the flesh ; but they that are after the Spirit, the
things of the Spirit, For to be carnally minded is death, but to
be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal
mind is enmity against God ; for it is not subject to the law
of God, neither indeed can be. So they that are in the flesh
cannot please God — For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die :
but if ye then through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the
body, ye shall live."
You see here why it is that the self-deceiver will not enter-
tain the power of godliness, nor be religious seriously according
to the true intent of the gospel, and the nature of Christianity,
even because he is engaged to a contrary object, and hath
another game in chase, which he will not leave, and which
true religion requireth him to leave, and will not give him
leave to follow. And therefore he parteth with the religion
which would have parted him from that which he will not part
with.
2. But withal, he is all this while under the threatenings of
the law of God, and conscience is ready to bear witness against
him ; and betwixt law and conscience, the poor wretch is as
the corn between two mill-stones ; he would be ground to
powder, and tortured with terrors before his time, if he had
not some opiate, or intoxicating medicine, to ease him by de-
ceiving him, and to abate his fears, and to quiet his conscience
as long as a palliate cure will serve turn. So that here are two
things for which the self-deceiving hypocrite is fain to fall
into his vain religion : the one is, that it may be a cloak to the
sin which he will needs keep : the other is, that it may save
him from the terrors and disquietments that for this sin his
conscience would else afflict him with. A belief that he may
be saved, for all his sin, is the relief that he hath against the
terrors of the law of God. He therefore chooseth out such
parcels of religion as may serve him for this use, and yet will
not separate him from the sin that he delighteth in. The
power of godliness will not consist with his covetous, proud, or
fleshly life 5 but the form and outside will. And therefore this
24 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
regeneration, and mortification, and self-denial, and subjection
to the whole will of God, and this heavenly-mindedness and
watching the heart, and walking with God, and living above
the trifles of this world, and making it the chief business to
prepare for another ; this kind of religion, which is religion
indeed, he cannot (because he will not) entertain. This is the
strait gate and narrow way, that few men find. Here he must
be excused. God is no God for him upon these terms ; (and
he can not and will not be his God upon any other terms;) Christ
is no Christ for him unless he will excuse him from this trou-
ble, and bear with him in his carnal course ; that is, unless he
will be indeed no Christ to him. Heaven is no heaven for him,
unless he may pass to it through prosperity and sin ; and un-
less he may have it without the trouble of a holy life ; that is,
unless God will be unjust or false, and heaven cease to be hea-
ven, and God cease to be God.
But yet these men are convinced that God is their rightful
governor, and that, indeed, they should love him, and serve
him with all their heart and might, and that without true reli-
gion and godliness there is no salvation. To be irreligious and
profane, they know is a state that can afford no comfort, or
shelter from the wrath of God ; and therefore some religion
they must have : they are not able to endure the thoughts of
lying under the curse of God. To conclude themselves to be
utterly graceless, and the children of the devil, and in a state
of condemnation, is so terrible, that they are not able to
endure it : then every sermon they hear would torment them,
and every chapter they read would torment them ; and their
pleasures would all be imbittered to them, and nothing that
they enjoy in all the world would quiet and content them.
(No, nor shall do long.) And therefore they must needs take
up some religion, to quiet them for a little while, and to make
them hope, that for all their sins, they are not so bad, nor in
so dangerous a case as preachers tell them ; some religion they
must needs have for fear of being damned : a sound and
serious religion they will not have, because they love the world
and sin, which it would deprive them of; and therefore they
patch up a vain religion, composed of so much truth and duty
as will stand with their prosperitv and pleasures : which will
not save them, but sufficeth to deceive them.
Two parts make up this self-deceiving frame, as consistent
with their sins : the one is the formal, outward, easy, cheap
"the formal hypocrite. 25
part of duty to God and man in their practice ; leaving out the
spiritual, inward, difficult, dear, self-denying part. The other
is, the strictest parts of religion in bare opinion and notion,
while they shut it out of their hearts and lives. For both these
may stand with a sensual, worldly, selfish life. He may read
or say his prayers, and be a worldling still : he may come to
church, and, with the greatest ceremony and seeming reverence,
receive the sacrament, and bow before the Lord his Maker, and
yet be sensual or a worldling still. And he may be of the
strictest party or opinion, and notionally condemn all sin, and
justify the most holy life, and yet be sensual and worldly still.
And therefore this much he may be persuaded to take up, to
save himself from the lashes of his conscience. And so the
use of the hypocrite's religion is to be a screen betwixt him and
the flames of wrath, that would scorch him too soon, if he
were of no religion : and to be to him as a tent or penthouse to
keep off the storms that would fall upon him, while he is
trading for the world, and working for the flesh. His religion
is but the sheath of his guilty conscience, to keep it from wound-
ing him, and cutting his fingers, while they are busy in the
brutish service of his lusts. It is but a glove to save his skin,
when he hath to do with the nettles and thorns of the threaten-
ings of God, and the thoughts of vengeance, that else would
rack his guilty soul. It is but as his upper garment, to save
him from a storm, and then to be laid by as an unnecessary
burden, when he is at home. The hypocrite's religion is but
as his shoe : he can tread it in the dirt, so it will but save his
foot from galling. As a man that hath an unquiet scolding wife,
is fain to speak her fair by flatteries, lest he should have no
rest at home ; or as a thief is fain to cast a crust to the dog
that barketh at him, to stop his mouth ; so is an ungodly, sen-
sual person fain to flatter his conscience with some kind of
religiousness, and to stop his mouth with some kind of devo-
tion and seeming righteousness, that may deceive him into a
belief that he is a child of God. Religion is the sovereign in
a gracious soul, and the master in an upright conscience, and
ruleth above all worldly interests. But with the unregenerate, it
is but an underling and servant, that must do no more than the
flesh and the world will give consent to ; and is regarded no
further than for mere necessity; and when it hath done the work
which the hypocrite appointed it, it is dismissed and turned
out of doors. God is acknowledged and confessed by the hypo-
26 THE VAIN RELIGION OK
crite, but not as God. Christ is believed in and accepted, but
not as Christ, but as an underling to the world, and a journey-
man to do some job of work for a distressed, wrangling, con-
science ; or as an unwelcome physician to give them a vomit
when they have taken some extraordinary surfeit of sensual
delight. When they have fallen into great affliction, or into any
foul, disgraceful sin, then, perhaps, they take up their prayer-
books, or call upon Christ, and seem devout and very penitent.
But their piety is blown over with the storm. The effect ceaseth
with the cause. It was not the love of God, or of his holy
ways and service, that set them upon their devotions, but some
tempest of adversity, or shipwreck of their estates, or friends,
or consciences ; and when the winds are laid, and the waves
are still, their devotion ceaseth with their danger.
3. Add hereunto (to show you. the reason of the hypocrite's
self-deceit) that he is one that never practically saw the amia-
bleness of holiness in itself; and never had a heart that was
touched with the love of it by the spirit of holiness ; and there-
fore he taketh it but for mere necessity; and therefore he taketh
up no more than he thinks is of necessity to save him from
damnation, when he can live in the pleasures of the world no
longer. God never had his heart. He had rather be about his
sports or worldly business, if he durst, and thought he could be
so excused. He loveth a pair (pack) of cards, or dice, or a harlot,
or his ambitious designs and honours, better than he loveth the
Holy Scriptures, and the heavenly discourse or contemplation
of the life to come. And therefore he will have no more reli-
gion than needs he must, because he taketh it not for love, but
need. The matters of the world and the flesh are his diet, and
his extraordinary successes and prosperity are his feast; and
therefore he will take as much of them as he can and dare :
but religion is but his physic, and therefore he will take it as
little and seldom as he dare. Had he but seen the face of
God by faith, and had he but the heart of a true believer, that
is suited by holiness to the holy works that God commandeth,
as the heart of a true friend is suited to the will of him whom
he loveth, he would then be no longer religious against his will,
and consequently in vain ; but he would think the most pure
and heavenly mind, and life, and the highest degree of love
and holiness, to be the best and most desirable state for his
soul, as every true believer doth. Had this hypocrite any true
love to God, as he deceitfully pretends to have, he would love
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 27
his image, and word, and ways; and then he would love best
that kernel and marrow of religion, that life and soul of wor-
ship and obedience, which now he favoureth not, but shifteth
off as a needless, or tedious, or unattainable thing.
The nature and use of these hypocrites' religion, is to save
them from religion : they carry an empty gilded scabbard,
accusing the sword of a dangerous keenness, as a thing more
perilous than necessary to their use. When they seem most
zealous, they are but serving God that they may be excused
from serving him ; and they worship him on purpose to shift
off his worship. They offer him the lips, that the heart may
be excused ; and compliment him with cap and knee, that they
may excuse themselves from real holiness : they offer him the
empty purse for payment, and tender him a sacrifice of husks
and shells, and lifeless carcasses: they will abound in the shadow
and ceremony, that they may be excused from the spiritual life
and substance. Alas ! that dead-hearted hypocrite that sits
there, and heareth all this, is so great a stranger to the opening
of the heart, and the deep entertainment of saving truth, and
to the savoury relish of the searching, healing, quickening pas-
sages of holy doctrine, and to the thankful welcoming of an offered
Christ, and to the lookings and longings of the soul after God, and
to the serious desires, and hopes, and labours of a gracious soul
for life eternal, that he is idle, asleep, and dead as to all this
spiritual work, and if he had not some customary service to
perform, and some ceremonies or external task to do, and some
bodily worship to be employed in, he would find little or no-
thing to do in the assemblies, but might sit here as a brute,
or as one of a strange language, that comes but to see and to
be seen. And therefore if there be not somewhat more suit-
able to him than power and spirituality, it seemeth as no
worship to the formal hypocrite. It is the pretty jingles and
knacks of wit, and the merry jeers at the preciser sort, or some
scraps of Greek and Latin authors, or shreds of fathers and
philosophy, or at best an accurate, well-set speech, that makes
the sermon acceptable to this hypocrite's ears. It is not spirit
and life within him that brought him hither, nor is it spirit and
life that he favoureth, and that he came for. And therefore it
is that this sort of hypocrites are usually most impatient of a
misplaced word, or of a worship performed in the primitive
simplicity. If a man deliver the Lord's supper but as Christ
did, and receive it but as the Apostles did, or serve God but
28 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
as the churches in their days, he will seem unreverent, and slo-
venly, and sordid to these self- deceiving formalists. They are
set upon excess of ceremonies, because they are defective in the
vital parts, and should have no religion if they had not this.
All sober Christians are friends to outward decency and order ;
but it is the empty self-deceiver that is most for the unwarrant-
able inventions of men, and sticketh in the bark of God's own
ordinances, that taketh the garments for the man, and useth
the worship of God, but as a masque or puppet-play, where
there is great doings, with little life, and to little purpose. The
chastest woman will wash her face ; but it is the harlot, or
wanton, or deformed, that will paint it. The soberest and the
comeliest will avoid a nasty or ridiculous habit, which may
make them seem uncomely, where they are not ; but a curious
dress, and excessive care, doth signify a crooked or deformed
body, or a filthy skin, or, which is worst, an empty soul, that
hath need of such a covering. Consciousness of such greater
want, doth cause them to seek these poor supplies. The
gaudiness of men's religion is not the best sign that it is sincere.
Simplicity is the ordinary attendant of sincerity. It hath long
been a proverb, " the more ceremony, the less substance \ and
the more compliment, the more craft."
And yet if it were only for want of inward true religion
that the hypocrite setteth up his shows, it were bad enough,
but not so bad as with most of them, or all, it is. For it is an
enmity to religion that accompanieth .their religion. As in
lapsed man, the body, that was before the soul's obedient at-
tendant, is become its master, and the enemy of its perfection
and felicity ; so, in the carnal religion of the hypocrite, the
outside, which should be the ornament and attendant of the
inward spiritual part, hath got the mastery, and is used in an
enmity against the more noble part which it should serve 5
and much more are his humane inventions and mixtures thus
destructively employed. His bellows do but blow out the
candle, under pretence of kindling the fire. He sets the body
against the soul, and sometime the cloathing against both.
He useth forms to the destruction of knowledge, and quench-
ing of all seriousness and fervour of affection. By preaching,
he destroyeth preaching, and prayeth till prayer is become no
prayer, but the image or carcass of prayer at the best. And useth
his words to the destruction of the due principle, sense, and ends.
Having still his carnal self for his end, he preacheth, and
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 29
prayeth, and serveth God in a manner that seems most suitable
to his end ; so that it is not God's means that he useth, when
he useth them, but his own ; nor doth he indeed worship God,
while he seems to worship ; nor is indeed religious, but seems
religious. It is materially, perhaps, God's work that he doth,
and his means he useth, but formally they are his own, and
not God's at all ; when we meet with abundance of our people
that are most nimble in their accustomed forms, that know
not what religion or Christianity is, nor who Christ is, nor
almost any of the substance of the gospel, it assures us that it
is easy to be infidels with christian expressions in their mouths,
and that it is easier to teach a parrot to speak, than to be a
man. As their bodies are but the prisons, or dungeons of
their souls, so their formal words and ceremonies are used to
be the prison and dungeon, or rather the grave, of true devo-
tion. Their religion is excessively laced, but so scant of
cloth, that it covereth not their nakedness, nor keeps them
warm. It is always winter with the hypocrite in his formal
lifeless services, and yet sometime his leaf doth never fall. He
is like the box-tree that knows no fruit, and yet its leaves
are always green. Wherever his heart is, the formalist's
prayers are always ready, for his prayer-book or memory is still
the same ; he can say them between sleeping and waking in his
bed, and as he is dressing or washing him, and the interpo-
sition of a friend, or some intervenient word or business, is
so small a rub, that it seldom puts him out of his way. Though
he cannot make spiritual his common business, he can make
his spiritual business common. Though he have not the
art, the heart, to manage his trade or worldly business with
a holy and heavenly mind, yet he can manage his holiest bu-
sinesses with such a mind as he doth his trade. If you would
know whether he be praying or playing, preaching or prating,
serving God, or himself and the flesh, you must not search
deep for an internal difference, but must discern it by the show
and sound of words. He is not one of them that are above
ordinances, as turning every day into a sabbath, and every
thought into a prayer, and every morsel into a sacrament ; but
he cannot turn every sabbath into a common day, and every
prayer into common thoughts, and every sacrament into
common food ; and therefore that which is holy to others, is
to him unclean. Hypocrisy is a natural popery ; it filleth the
places of worship with images. Instead of prayer, there is
30 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
the image of prayer; and instead of preaching, hearing, prais-
ing God, and other parts of worship, there is the image of
worship ; and instead of Christians, believers, saints, (and I
was going to say, of men,) there are so many images of these.
Church images are usually handsomely adorned, and placed ill
a posture of reverence and devotion, and so are they. But
life they have none, but merely natural. They are seeing,
hearing, speaking images, but images they are. They have
eyes, but see not; ears, but hear not; hearts, but understand not.
And they are enemies to the life and power of religion, in
others as well as in themselves. The publicans were not so
bitter persecutors of Christ, as the Scribes and Pharisees were.
He can hate and reproach the faithful by the Spirit, though
he cannot, or will not, pray by the Spirit ; for he hath the
spirit of malignity, though not the spirit of supplication. He
can rail without book, though he cannot pray without book.
Were it as natural and easy to be a saint, as to scorn a saint,
and to worship God in spirit and in truth, as to hate such
worship, the man might become a saint yet before he dies. But
his vain religion changeth not his nature, and therefore de-
stroyeth not his serpentine enmity against the holy nature
and practice of believers, though perhaps the times may stop
his hissing, or hinder him from putting forth his sting. These
spiritual worshippers and heavenly, diligent sort of Christians,
that make it the main business of their lives to honour God,
and save their souls, are usually the greatest eyesore of the
formalist. Many a disdainful thought he hath of them, and
many a bitter gird he gives them : forgetting that their Re-
deemer heareth all, who is coming " with ten thousand of his
saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that
are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they
have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which
ungodly sinners have spoken against him. " (Jude, 14, 15.) The
humble, spiritual, heavenly believers, are they that condemn
the hypocrite by their lives ; were it not for them, he could
easily believe that he is a saint himself, and should undoubt-
edly be saved. He looketh on the openly ungodly but as the
beauty-spots of the assemblies that serve to set out the piety
of such as he. If he saw no better than himself, he could ea-
sily take himself for one of the best. Every dotted post and
glow-worm would be more resplendent and observable in the
absence of all greater lights. They hate the sun for making
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 31
their candle to be but a scarce- discerned flame. The life of
a holy, heavenly person doth as much gall the conscience of
the hypocrite, and proclaim his misery, and bear a terrible
witness against him, as a searching, powerful sermon doth. And
therefore, as it is a vexation to him to live under such a search-
ing minister as is always rubbing on the galled place, and
causing conscience to torment him before his time ; so is it
a trouble to him to live among these heavenly believers, and
to be daily condemned by their lives, and galled by their re-
proving practices.
By this time you may see the reason and use of the hypo-
crite's religion; the self-denying part of religion he cannot
abide ; the life and power of it is above him, and seems against
him; the fears of hell and gripes of conscience he cannot
abide ; some hopes of heaven he must have awhile to keep him
from despair, and therefore he must have some religion to
deceive his heart, and maintain his hopes. And therefore he
fitteth his religion to these uses, and takes up with so much
as will not much trouble him, or undo him in the world, or
absolutely forbid his sinful pleasures. And though sometime
he be afraid lest the power and life of godliness will prove ne-
cessary to his salvation, yet he revives his fainting hopes by
running for comfort to his lifeless form. The rest he hath no
mind to, and therefore will hope to be saved without it, till
his deceit have brought him to the place of desperation, where
is no hope. As a merchant in a storm is loth to cast his goods
into the sea, and therefore hopes he may save himself and
them, till he and they are drowned together ; or as a patient
that abhors his physic, or loves some forbidden thing too well,
is hoping still that he may escape, though he use the thing
he loves, and forbear the medicine which he loathes till he be
past remedy, and he consents too late ; so is it often with
the self-deceiving hypocrite : he loves not this strict, and holy,
and heavenly, and self-denying life, and therefore he will hope
that God will save him without it, as long as he is religious
in a way that he accounts more wise, and safe, and moderate,
and comely, and suited to the nature and infirmity of man.
These are his hopes, and to deceive his heart, by maintaining
these, it is that he is religious, till either grace convert, or
justice apprehend him, and his hopes and he are swallowed up
by convincing flames and utter desperation.
32 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
IV. We are next to show you in what respect it is that this
religion is called vain. And first, negatively, it is not vain to
his own carnal ends, but to the true ends of religion.
1. He intendeth by it the quieting of his own accusing
conscience, and the keeping up his hopes of salvation, and
keeping off the terrors of the Lord, and so consequentially the
deceiving of his own heart \ and to these ends it is not in vain.
Here he sitteth as quietly as if all were well between God and
him, and heareth the threatenings as securely as if they con-
cerned not him at all, and applieth the promises as boldly
as if he were one of the heirs of promise ; you would little
think that this man must shortly be cast into utter darkness,
from the presence of the Lord, and have " his portion with the
hypocrites." (Matt. xxiv. 51.) His everlasting horrors appear not
now to himself upon his heart, nor to others in his face ; what
sign can you see of the curse of the law, or the wrath of God
in that man's countenance ? what sign of his spiritual capti-
vity and slavery, and of the load of sin that lieth upon his
soul, unless it be that he feels it not ? what sign of a man in
so great danger of eternal torment, unless it be that he little
feareth it ? Doth he sit there like a man that is within a step
of hell, and shall shortly be there with the devil and his angels
as sure as he is here, unless he be saved by that grace and
holiness which he now resists ? No ; he is as confident to be
saved as the precisest of you all ; he is as little troubled with
the fears of hell or the wrath of God as those that are dis-
charged from it by justification, and perhaps much less. For
all this he is beholden to his vain religion, that in the point of
self-deceiving is not vain. As solid evidences promote the
comforts of true believers, so this superficial kind of religion
promoteth the present peace of the presumptuous.
2. This religion is not vain as to the frustration of all the
means of grace, and hindering the conversion and salvation of
the hypocrite. This is his armour of defence against the sword
of the Spirit, that would pierce his heart, and let out his close
corruption, and separate him from his beloved sin. What
tell you him of repentance and conversion ? He thinks he
needeth no conversion, or is converted long ago ! What ! is
he not a Christian, a Protestant, a religious man ? Tell swear-
ers, and cursers, and drunkards, and extortioners, and cruel
landlords, and fornicators, of conversion \ tell these that they
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 33
are slaves of Satan, and under the wrath and curse of God, that
are indeed so, past all controversy ? but tell not him of it
that makes no doubt but he is a member of Christ, a child of
God, and an heir of heaven. He loveth to hear a minister
rouse up the profane and grossly sensual offenders, and seems
in pity to wish for their conversion, and perhaps will exhort
them to turn and mend their lives himself. But he little thinks
that he is faster in the prison of Satan than they, and that he
is himself in the same condemnation.
Do you go about to tell him of the necessity of the fear of
God, and of loving him above all, and of trusting him, and
serving him as our only Lord ? Why, all this he will confess,
and perhaps is as forward to say as you, and verily thinks that
he is one that doth it ; you may as soon make him believe
that he is not an Englishman, as that he is not a Christian, and
that he loveth not himself, as that he loveth not God ; even
while he loveth not to think of him, to speak of him, to call
upon him, to obey him ; while he loveth not his word, his ways,
or servants, or while he loveth the world and the pleasures of
sin more heartily, and seeketh them more eagerly, and cleaveth
to them more tenaciously, yet if you would persuade him that
he hath not a heart as true to God as any of you all, you will
lose your labour.
Do you tell him of hypocrisy ? he will tell you that it is the
thing he hateth : who speaks against it more than he ? And
because the world shall see he is no hypocrite, he will call them
all hypocrites that are faithful to God and to their souls, and will
not sit down in his truly hypocritical vain religion, but will be
more holy and diligent than he. What can you say to such a
man in order to his conversion, which his self-deceiving religion
will not frustrate ? Do you tell him of hell-fire, and of the wrath
of God against the ungodly ? All this he can hear as calmly as
another man ; for he thinks that he is none of the ungodly, he
hath scaped the danger; let them be afraid of it whom it doth
concern. If you tell him of his sins, he can tell you that all men
are sinners ; we are imperfect ; and you shall never persuade
him that his reigning, deadly sins are any other than such human
frailties and infirmities as may stand with grace. Do you put
him upon the inward practice of religion, and the fuller devoting
of his soul to God, and the life of faith, and a heavenly mind ?
He will tell you, that in his measure, he doth all this already ;
though none of us are so good as we should be; and his heart
being unseen to you, he thinks you must believe him. Do you
D ,
34 THE VAIN RELIGION OK
blame him for his slightness and formality in religion, and put
him upon a more serious, diligent eourse, and to live as one that
seeketh heaven with all his heart, and soul, and might ? Why, he
thinks you do but persuade him to some self-eonceited over-
zealous party, and draw him from his moderation to be righte-
ous over mueh, and to make too much ado with his religion.
Unless he be an hypocrite that falleth into the schismatical
strain, and then he will make a greater bustle with his opinions
and his outside services then you can desire. So that one with
his mere book-prayers, forms, and ceremonies, and the other
with his mere extemporate words, and affected outside seeming
fervour, and both of them by a mere opinionative, lifeless, carnal
kind of religion, subject to their fleshly ends and interests^ do so
effectually cheat their souls that they are armed against all that
you can say or do, and you know not how to get within them,
or fasten any saving truths upon their hearts.
3. This vain religion is not vain as to the preserving of his
reputation in the world. It saveth him from being numbered with
the filthy rabble, and from being pointed at as notoriously vici-
ous, or branded with the disgraceful characters of the scandal-
ous. Men say not of him, ( There goeth a drunkard, a swearer,
a curser, a fornicator, or a profane ungodly wretch/ He may
be esteemed civil, ingenuous, discreet, and perhaps religious,
and be much honoured by wise, religious men ; though most
commonly his formal, or opinionative, heartless kind of religion
is discerned or much suspected by experienced, judicious Chris-
tians, by his sapless, unexperienced, common and carnal kind of
discourse and duty, sticking most in opinions, parties, or some
outside things, and by his temporizing, and reserve, and uneven
kind of conversation ; yet it is not always so ; but sometime he is
as far unsuspected as the best ; perhaps he may be esteemed a
reverend preacher, or a discreet, religious, well-accomplished
gentleman, and may be set in the head of church or common-
wealth, as a leader of the saints on earth, that shall be thrust
into the place of hypocrites, and not come near the meanest of
the saints in heaven.
4. Lastly, (but better than all this,) his religion is not vain
as to the good of others. He may, by the perfume and odour
of his gifts, be kept from stinking to the annoyance of others,
while he is dead in sin. He may be very serviceable in the
church of God ; a judicious, earnest expounder of the Scripture,
and preacher and defender of the truth ; in his place as a
magistrate, or master of a family, he may be a severe corrector
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 35
of profaneness, and promoter of godliness ; it being much
easier to drive others from their sin, than to forsake their own,
and to drive on others to a godly life, than to practise it them-
selves : and by their owning godliness, and disowning sin, they
persuade themselves the more effectually that they are truly
godly. The Church cannot well spare the gifts and services of
hypocrites, and many ungodly men. As bad or sick physicians
may be God's instruments to cure our bodies, and a wicked
carpenter may make a good house ; so a wicked minister may
well expound and apply the Scriptures ; and he that refuseth
the grace of Christ, may prevail with others to accept it ; the
sign-post that stands out of door itself, may invite others into
the house ; and the hand upon a post that goes not one step of
the way, may point it out to others. There is more self-denial
required to the forsaking of their own sins, than to persuade
others to forsake theirs ; a covetous man cares not how liberal
others be ; nor a glutton, drunkard, or fornicator, how tempe-
rate and chaste his neighbours be. And hence it is that many
of these that refuse a holy life themselves, are willing their child-
ren or servants should embrace it. The end of the balance that
goeth down itself, doth cause the other to go up. Other men's
souls are more beholden to hypocrites than their own. They
are like the common mariners, that enrich the merchant by
'fetching home his treasure, when they have nothing but a poor
maintenance themselves ; or like tailors, who make ornaments
for others, which they never wear themselves ; or like carpen-
ters, that build fair houses which they never dwell in; or like
the cook, that dresseth meat which he eateth not. God giveth
hypocrites their usual gifts, for the service of the Church more
than for themselves. He sometimes maketh those to be nur-
sing fathers to his Church that are butchers of their own souls,
and makes those his instruments to undeceive others, that
deceive themselves. And thus far their religion is not vain.
But 1. It is vain as to God's special acceptation. True religion
pleaseth God ; but the self-deceiver's opinion he abhorreth. He
hath no pleasure in fools. (Eccl. v. 4.) He asketh such, To
what purpose is the multitude of their sacrifices? (Isaiah i. 11,)
and saith, he is full of their burnt offerings, and delights not in
them. When they come to appear before him he asketh them,
Who required this at their hands, to tread in his courts ? and
bids them, bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomi-
nation to him ; the calling of their assemblies he cannot away
with, and their solemn meetings are iniquity ; (ver. 12, 13 j) their
"d2
36 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
appointed feasts his soul hateth, they are a trouble to him, he is
weary to bear them. When they spread forth their hands, he
will hide his eyes; when they make many prayers, he will not
hear ; because they do not forsake their sins, (ver. 14,) because
they turn away their ear from hearing his law, their prayer is
abomination to him. (Pro. xxviii. 9. and xv. S. and xxi. 27.)
When they have sinned, instead of repenting and forsaking it,
they think to please God by their religion, and stop the mouth
of justice with their services ; whereas they do but provoke him
more, by adding hypocrisy to iniquity. Were they truly willing
to let go their sins, and to please God by universal obedience, he
would willingly accept them, and be pleased with their services.
But when men's religion, their prayers and other duties, are not
used against their sins, but for them, not to kill them, but to
cover them, not to overcome them, but as it were to bribe God
to give them leave to sin, because they are not willing to forsake
it, this is the self-deceiving religion of hypocrites, that is in
vain.
2. And this religion is in vain, as to any promoting of a work
of sanctification upon his soul. It weaneth him not from the
world ; it crucifieth not the flesh, with its affections and lusts ;
it doth not further his self-denial, nor driveth him to Christ, by
a faith unfeigned ; it never raiseth him to a heavenly life, nor
kindleth the love of God within him; it is dead and ineffectual,
and cannot produce these high effects. Yea, on the contrary,
it hardeneth him in sin and self-deceit; it hindereth his repen-
tance ; it emboldeneth him in his fleshly, worldly life, and quiet-
eth him in the neglect of Christ and heaven.
3. Moreover this kind of religion is vain as to any solid peace
of conscience. It affordeth him none, of the well-grounded,
durable comforts of the saints; but, on the contrary, keep sout
solid comfort by feeding him with airy, delusory conceits ; and
making him to be but his own comforter, upon fancies and con-
fidence of his own, when the Spirit of Christ is not his com-
forter ; nor doth the word of God speak any peace at all unto him.
4. Lastly, his religion is in vain, as to his salvation. As he
had but an image of true religion, so he shall have but an image
of heaven. Some dreams and self-created hopes of happiness
may accompany him to the door of eternity, but there they will
leave him to everlasting horror.
V. Use. 1. From what hath been said, you may see the reason
why an outside, formal, seeming religiousness, is a thing so com-
mon in the world, in comparison of the life and power of godliness.
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 37
It is an easier thing to bring men to the strictest opinion, than to
bring them to the affectionate and deep reception and practice of
the truth. A strict opinion may be held without any great cost and
trouble to the flesh. It is the practice that bereaveth a sinner of
the pleasure of his sin. It is the common trick by which most
hypocrites cheat their souls, to turn to the side and opinion, and
assemblies and company, which they think to be the best; that so
they may persuade themselves the more easily, that they are as
good as those opinions and that company doth import, and
that they are truly such as those they join with. As men are
taken by others for such as those they correspond with; so
hypocrites take themselves for such. As if it would prove that a
man is sound, because he dwelleth with them that are so ? Or as
it would prove a man rich or honourable, that he converseth with
such ? As God will not save any nations on earth, because they
are such nations ; nor will he save men because they are of such
or such a trade, or because they are skilled in this or that art or
science ; no more will he save men for being of this or that party
or sect, in matters of religion. One thinks when he hath lived
a fleshly life, he shall be saved for hearing or saying the common
prayer, or because he is for prelacy and ceremonies ; another
thinks he shall be saved, because he can pray without a book,
or form of words, or because he frequenteth the private meet-
ings of those that more diligently redeem their time for spirit-
ual advantages than others do ; another thinks he shall be saved
because he is mocked as a Puritan or as too strict, as others are
that are serious believers, and diligent in the things of God ;
and another thinks that he shall be saved because he is re-bap-
tized, or because he joineth with some separate congregation,
which pretendeth to be more strict than others. But none shall
be saved, on any such account as these. Cain could not be
saved, for being the first born in the family of Adam ; Ham
could not be saved for being in the ark and family of Noah •
nor Esau for being in the house of Isaac ; nor Absalom for be-
ing the son of David ; nor Judas for being a disciple in the
family of Christ. Even Mary that brought him forth, could not
have been saved by him, if she had not had a better title ; and
had not borne him in her heart. (Mark iii. 34, 35.) When they
talk to him of his mother and his brethren, Christ looked upon
those that sat about him, and told them that, whosoever shall do
the will of God, the same is his brother, his sister, and his mother.
It is no outward badge and livery, but a heart-title, that must
38 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
prove you the heirs of heaven. You may be snatched out of
the purest Church on earth, and from the purest ordinances,
and out of the arms of the most upright Christians, and cast
into hell, if you have no better evidences than such, to show for
your salvation. If ever you be saved, it must not be because
you are Papists, or Protestants, Lutherans, or Calvinists, Armi-
nians, Antinomians, Anabaptists, Independents, Presbyterian,
or Prelatical ; formally and merely as such ; but because you
are true Christians, that have the Spirit of Christ, (Rom. viii. 9,)
and are conformed to him, in his sufferings, death, and resurrec-
tion, and live in sincere obedience to his will. But hypocrites
that want the inward life and power of religion, and are consci-
ous of their wilful sins, would fain borrow something from the
parties which they join with, or the opinions which they take up,
or the formal outward worship which they perform, or the alms
which they give, to make up the want, and cheat their souls
with a self-created confidence, that they shall be saved.
But more specially you may hence observe the reason that
popery hath so many followers, and that it is so easy a thing
to make an infidel, whoremonger, or drunkard, to turn a
papist, when yet it is not easy to bring them to faith, and
chastity, and temperance, much less to the unfeigned love of
God, and to a holy, heavenly life. Though I doubt not but
there are many sincere-hearted Christians among the papists,
yet popery itself is of an hypocritical strain, and is notably
suited to the hypocrite's disposition. It is revived Pharisaism :
I marvel that they tremble not when they read themselves so
lively characterized by Christ, with the addition of so many
terrible woes, as in Matt, xxiii., and other places, frequently
they are : " Woe to the scribes, pharisees, hypocrites." They
bind heavy burdens of external observances, to lay upon the
consciences of their proselytes : they make broad their phylac-
teries ; and in variety of holy vestures, they make ostentation
of such a religion, as a peacock may have when he spreads
his tail. They contend for superiority and titles to be called
rabbi, pope, cardinal, patriarch, primate, metropolitan, arch-
bishop, diocesan, abbot, prior, father, &c, to the great disturb-
ance of all the nations of the christian world. Thev must needs
be the fathers and masters of our faith : they shut the kingdom
of heaven against the people, forbidding all to read the scrip-
tures in their vulgar tongue, without a special license from
their ordinary : and commanding them to worship God in a
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 39
strange tongue which they do not understand : by the numbers
of their masses and prayers for the dead, they delude the souls,
and devour the patrimony of the living. In temples, and
altars, and images, and ornaments consisteth no small part of
their religion : they make more of tithing mint, anise and
cummin, than of judgment, mercy, and faith, the weightier
matters of the law. The outside they make clean, and appear
as beautiful to men, as ceremonies and outward pomp can
make them. They make it a part of their religion to murder
the living saints, and keep holy days for the dead : they build
the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the
righteous, and say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers,
we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of
the prophets. Thus, Matt, xxiii., is their description. They
have their touch not, taste not, handle not, after the com-
mandments and doctrines of men, their voluntary humility,
and worshipping of angels, and other rudiments of the world,
and things that have a show of wisdom in will-worship and
humility, and neglecting of the body, not in any honour to
the satisfying of the flesh. (Col. ii. 19 — 23.) How easy a
thing is it to bring an ungodly man to be of a religion that
consisteth in such things as these ! in eating fish on certain
days instead of flesh ; and saying over so many Pater Nosters,
and Ave Marias, and naming so oft the name of Jesus; in
worshipping a piece of consecrated bread with divine worship ;
in bowing and praying before an image ; in praying to the souls
of such as the pope tells them are saints in heaven; in crossing
themselves, and being sprinkled with holy water, and using Agnus
Deis, and consecrated grains and annulets; in dropping of beads;
in saying such words as a prayer at such a canonical hour, and such
words the next canonical hour ; in hearing a mass in Latin, and
saving a Latin prayer ; in being anointed with hallowed oil, and
burning hallowed candles on the altars by day-light ; in going so
many miles to the chapel of a saint in pilgrimage; in carrying
about them a bone, or some other supposed relic of a supposed
saint; in confessing their sins so often to a priest, and doing-
penance, if he impose it on them. And so while they live in
whoredom, or drunkenness, or swearing, or lying, or all these,
and many other such, it is but confessing and doing penance,
and to it again ; on which account (whatever some of them
say for the necessity of contrition) it is usual with them, to
venture upon the sins of whoredom, drunkenness, and the rest,
40 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
because they have so easy and cheap a remedy at hand. And
therefore I wonder not that among infidels (who, after baptism,
apostatize to deny the holy scriptures, and the immortality of
the soul, and the life to come,) and among common swearers,
and cursers, and whoremongers, and drunkards, the papists
find their labours most successful, and that no fish will so easily
take their bait : nor do I wonder that it is a point of the
popish faith that none but the children of the devil, that are
void of the love of God, and are unjustified, can possibly turn
papists. (For they tell us that all are such till they are papists;
saving that they are many of them for the salvation of heathens.)
A poor wretch that is captivated to his odious lusts, and goes
under a galled accusing conscience, will be content to take a
popish cure, and quiet his soul with a few compliments, and
formalities. But to bring one of these men to a thorough con-
version, to a true humiliation, to a deep hatred of all sin, and
a love of holiness, to close with Christ as his only refuge from
the wrath of God, and to give up himself without any reser-
vation, and all that he hath to the will and service of the Lord,
to love God as his portion, and the infinite transcendent good;
to take all the honour and riches of the world as loss and dung,
and use all in due subserviency to everlasting happiness; to
crucify the flesh, and mortify all his earthly inclinations, and
live a life of self-denial, and to walk with God, and serve him
as a Spirit, in spirit and in truth, and to keep a watch over
thoughts, affections, words, and deeds, to live by faith upon a
world and happiness that is to us unseen ; and to live in prepa-
ration for their death, and wait in hope to live with Christ ;
this is Christianity and true religion ; and this is it that they
will not so easily be brought to. It is easier to make an hun-
dred papists than one true regenerate Christian. Children can
make them a baby of clouts; and the statuary can make a man
of alabaster or stone : but none can give life, which is essential
to a man indeed, but God. There needeth the Spirit of the
living God, by a supernatural operation, and a kind of new
creation to make a man a real holy christian. But to bring a
man to make such a congee, or wear such a vesture, or sav
such and such words, and make to himself a mimical religion,
this may be done, without any such supernatural work. O there-
fore take heed of cheating your souls by hypocritical formali-
ties, instead of the life and power of religion.
Use 2> And now, O that the Lord of life would help you so
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 41
to apply this truth, and help you so to apply it to yourselves,
that it might be as a light set up in the assembly and in all
your consciences, to undeceive the miserable self- deceivers, and
to bring poor hypocrites into some better acquaintance with
themselves, and to turn their seeming, vain religion into that
which is real, serious, and saving 1
And now I am to search and convince the hypocrite, I
could almost wish that all the upright, tender souls that are
causelessly in doubt of their own sincerity, were out of the
congregation, lest they should misapply the hypocrite's portion
to themselves,, and think it is their case that I am describing :
as it is usual with ignorant patients, especially if they be a lit-
tle melancholy, when they hear or read the description of many
dangerous diseases, to think that all or some of them are theirs,
because they have some symptoms very like to some of those
which they hear or read of. Or lest their fearful souls should
be too much terrified, by hearing of the misery of the hypocrite;
as a fearful child, that is innocent, will cry when he sees another
whipped that is faulty. But if thou wilt stay and hear the hypo-
crite's examination, I charge thee, poor humbled, drooping soul,
that thou do not misunderstand me, nor think that I am speak-
ing those things to thee, that are meant to the false-hearted ene-
mies of the Lord ! and do not imagine that thou art condemned
in his condemnation ; nor put thyself under the strokes that are
given him ; but rejoice that thou art saved from this state of
self-deceit and misery. And that thou mayest have some shel-
ter for thy conscience against the storm that must fall on others,
look back on the foregoing description of the hypocrite, and
thou mayest find that thou hast the saving graces, which thou
discovered him to want. Let these at present be before thine
eyes, and tell thee, thou art not the person that I mean.
1. Thou art humbled to a loathing of thyself for thy trans-
gressions.
2. Thou art willing to give up thyself to Christ, without
reserve, that, as thy 'Saviour, he may cure thy miserable soul,
upon his own terms.
3. The favour of God is dearer to thee than the favour of
the world, or the pleasures and prosperity of sinners : and thou
longest more to love him better, and to feel his love, than for
any of the honours and advancements that flesh and blood desire.
4. It is the life to come that thou takest for thy portion, and
preferrest before the matters of this transitory life.
42 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
5. Thy religion employeth thee about thy heart, as much as
about the outside and appearing part ; it is heart sins that thou
observest and lamentest, and a better heart that thou daily
longest, and prayest, and labourest for.
6. Thou livest not in any gross and deadly sin ; and thou
hast no infirmity but what thou longest and labourest to be rid
of; and goest on in the use of Christ's holy means and reme-
dies for a cure.
7. Thou dislikest not the highest degree of holiness, but
lovest it and longest after it, and hadst rather be more holy
than be more honourable or more rich.
8. Thou unfeignedly lovest the image of Christ on the souls
of all his servants where thou canst discern it ; and seest a
special excellency in a poor, humble, heavenly Christian, though
never so low or despicable in the world, above all the pomp and
splendour of the earth ; and thou lovest them with a special
love ; and the holier they are, the better dost thou love them.
9. Thou lovest the most convincing, searching sermons, and
wouldest fain have help to know the worst that is in thy heart ;
and comest unto the light that thy heart and deeds may be
made manifest.
10. All this is the bent and bias of thy soul ; thy habitu-
ated, ordinary case : though there be not alway the same oppor-
tunity for the acts, nor the same degree of life in acting. It is
not only a good mood that thou art frightened into by some
affliction, and then returnest to thy carnal course of life again ;
but thou heartily continuest thy consent to the covenant which
thou hast made with Christ, and wouldest not turn back to a
worldly, carnal, or formal life, nor change thy Master, nor
forsake the holy course which thou art engaged in for all the
world.
This is the truth of thy case, poor, doubting, troubled Chris-
tian ! thou canst not deny it without much injury to thyself
and God. And therefore be not now troubled at that which I
shall say to the self-deceivers.
And now I am to speak to the self-deceiver, I perceive my
task to be exceeding difficult : to get within him that is so
guarded ; and to pierce his heart that is so armed ; and to
open his eyes that is willing to be blind ; and to undeceive him
that hath so long deceived, and that studieth to deceive him-
self, and is engaged in that unhappy work, by such subtle ene-
mies that further his deceit, and by so many allurements, and
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 43
such strong corruptions, and by a seeming necessity for the
quieting of his conscience ; all this is not an easy work. But
we must attempt it, and leave the success to grace. And, first,
let me solemnly profess before you all, (for the removing of
your prejudice, and the calming of your resisting hearts,)
that it is none of my desire, by the discovery of your
hypocrisy, to shame you before others, or to make you
seem more miserable than you are, or to disturb and grieve
you any more than is necessary to the escaping of your
exceeding danger, and than your own salvation and comforts
do require. But when we know that religion is your business
in the world ; and that an endless world shall presently receive
you ; and that Christ is coming ; and your souls are ready to
quit their residence, and take their leave of your flesh till the
resurrection ; and when we know that hypocrisy and self-deceit
is the thing that you are most in danger of, and that you must be
saved from it, or be in hell for ever ; and that the enemies of
your souls will do all they can to keep their possession in
peace, and to continue your deceit till you are past remedy ;
what would you have us do in such a case ? would vou wish
us to be silent, and betray your souls, and damn our own for
fear of disquieting and displeasing you ? How hard are your
hearts, if you would wish us to do thus !
Be awakened, therefore, O all ye self-deceivers 1 and know
that hypocrisy, as the harlot's paint, is but a base and bor-
rowed beauty ; that will vanish away when you draw near the
fire ; and that self-deceit will quiet you so short a time, that it
is as good let go your delusory peace, and comfortable dream to
day as to-morrow; and it is better now to begin and examine
yourselves, than stay till the dreadful judge examine you, who
is even at the door ! The discovery of your case is the one half
of your cure : and as you have been your own deceivers, let us
in justice find you so equitable to yourselves, as to be willing of
the light that must undeceive you ; and to go along with us
into your consciences, and help us in the search, and impartially
pass a preventing judgment, that Christ may not pass a con-
demning judgment.
And in order to your conviction and recovery, I shall first
acquaint you with your misery, that so it may awaken you to
look about you, while there is time and hope. If it were God's
way to work by ocular demonstrations, and the christian life
were a life of sense, and you had heaven and hell this hour
open to your sight, how little need should 1 have to plead
44 THE VArN RELIGION OF
this cause with you any further ? you would then see and hear
that vengeance that would awake you ; and make you pre-
sently fly into your hearts, and charge conscience to deal im-
partially with you, lest self-deceit should bring you to those
flames. But it is a life of faith that we are to call you to, and
a word of faith that we have to preach ; but of things that are as
sure as if you saw them.
And 1. If thy religion be vain, thy hopes and comforts, that
are built upon it, are all but vain. How vain is that hope that
will vanish when the enjoyment is expected, and will end in
endless desperation ! What though thou sit here with so great
hopes and confidence of salvation as maketh thee even scorn
the man that questions it, art thou ever the better when death
awakeneth thee, and thy confident dream is at an end ? When
thou art dying wilt thou hope? Perhaps thou mayest: but
when thou art burning wilt thou hope ? When thou art
tormented wilt thou hope ? Desperation will then be essen-
tial to thy misery. The devils that now> feed thy hope by
their deceits, will then as readily keep awake thy conscience,
and exasperate thy despairing soul. If now thou wilt hope
under the threatenings of God (that thou mayest be saved in thy
present state) wilt thou then hope under his execution ? Thy
flatterers and prosperity may cherish thy deceitful hopes for a
time, but who will maintain them, when God commandeth des-
peration to torment thee ? (Job xxvii. 8, 9.) " For what is the
hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained, when God taketh
away his soul ? Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh
upon him ?" As Sands turneth it : —
What hope hath the prevailing hypocrite,
When God shall chase his soul to endless night ?
Will God relieve him in his agonies ?
Or from the depth of sorrows hear his cries ?
His worldly glory will then desert him, and leave him to the
fiuit of his deserts: his fruition will perish with his hopes.
(Job xxvii. 22, 23.) u For God shall cast upon him and not
spare : he would fain flee out of his hand. Men shall clap
their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place." Or
as Sands turneth it :
God shall transfix him with his winged dart;
Though he avoid him like a flying hart.
Men shall pursue with merited disgrace ;
Hiss, clap their hands, and from his country chase.
Hopes that are built by self-deceit have no foundation but
sand and water, and in trial they will fall, and their fall will be
THE FORMAL HYPOCRTTE. 45
great and terrible. (Matt. vii. 23, 24; Job viii. 11 — 15.) "Can
the rush grow up without mire ? Can the flag grow without
water ? Whilst it is yet in his greenness, and not cut down, it
withereth before any other herb : so are the paths of all that
forget God ; and the hypocrite's hope shall perish : whose hope
shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider's web. He
shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand : he shall hold
it fast, but it shall not endure." Or —
Can bull-rushes but by the rivers grow ?
Can flags there flourish where no waters flow ?
Yet they, when green, when yet untouch'd of all
That clothe the spring, first hang their heads, and fall.
So double-hearted hypocrites ; so they
Who God forget, shall in their prime decay.
Their airy hopes, as brittle as the thin
And subtle webs which toiling spiders spin :
Their houses full of wealth and riot, shall
Deceive their trust, and crush them in their fall, &c.
Job. xxxvi. 13. " The hypocrites in their heart heap up
wrath : they cry not when he bindeth them." Or as the para-
phrase : —
For the deluder hastens his own fall,
Nor will in trouble on th' Almighty call.
Who on the beds of sin supinely lie,
They in the summer of their age shall die.
And what we say of the hypocrite's hope, we may say also of
all his pleasures and delights. He may now be as*merry as the
most righteous of his neighbours, and seem the most happy,
because the most jocund ; and abound with medicines against
melancholy, and all wise and sober consideration : even his
business, his cups, his wantonness and uncleanness, or, at least,
his less disgraceful pleasures and recreations, which fortify his
mind against the fears of death and judgment, and all the
threatenings of God —
As sleepy opium fortifies the brain,
Against the sense of sicknesses and pain.
And if this mirth could always last, how happy a man were
the self-deceiver ! But, saith Solomon, (Eccles. vii. 6.) " As the
crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool."
As thorns beneath a cauldron catch the tire,
Blaze with a noise, and suddenly expire ;
Such is the causeless laughter of vain fools j
This vanity in their distemper rules.
And as Job xx. 4 — 9. " Knowest thou not this of old, since
man was placed upon earth that the triumphing of the wicked
is short, and the joy of the hypocrite for a moment ? Though
his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reacheth
46 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
to the clouds; yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung;
they which have seen him shall say, Where is he ? He shall
flee away as a dream, and shall not be found ; yea, he shall be
chased away as a vision of the night. The eye also which saw
him shall see him no more ; neither shall his place any more
behold him." Or, as the aforesaid Paraphrase —
This is a truth with which the world began,
Since earth was first inhabited by maw;
Sin's triumph in swift misery concludes,
And flattering joy the hypocrite deludes.
Although his excellence to heaven aspire ;
Though radiant beams his shining brows attire;
He as his dung shall perish on the ground ;
Nor shall th' impression of his steps be found ;
But like a troubled dream shall take his flight ;
And vanish as a vision of the night;
No mortal eye shall see his face again,
Nor sumptuous roofs their builder entertain.
Thus as the hypocrite's religion is vain, so all his hopes and
joys will be vain, and will deceive him, as he deceived him-
self. As Zophar concludeth of him : (Job xi. 20 :) " But the
eyes of the wicked shali fail, and they shall not escape,
and their hope shall be as the giving up of the ghost." Poor
soul ! thy religion also is so vain, that it giveth thee no solid
satisfaction or delight : thou art fain to go to thy lands, or
friends, or pleasures, or carnal accommodations for delight:
thy religion, which should let thee into heaven, and there refresh
thee with the foretastes of everlasting pleasures, and should
daily fetch thee fresh delights from the face of God, alas ! is an
impotent lifeless thing ; acquainted with shadows, but strange
to the invisible substance ; acquainted with formal shows and
ceremonies, but unacquainted with God ; acquainted with the
letter, but not with the spirit; familiar with the orders of the
church, but strange to the foretastes of heaven. If thou
hadst no other comfort but what thy dead religion brings thee
from the face of God, thy pensive heart would be better dis-
posed to consideration and recovery than it is. If thou hadst
a faith that brought thee in any solid, stablishing content,
what needest thou be hunting abroad the world among thy
crowd of vanities and deceits, to beg or borrow some short
delight, which thou must return with griping usury? and what
needest thou so many pitiful shifts to muzzle thy conscience,
and to keep that peace a little longer, which will end in sorrow,
and will part with thee as the devil went out of the possessed
person (Mark ix. 26) that rent him, and left him as a dead
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 47
man ? That religion is certainly vain, that is not sufficient to
acquaint the soul with matter of solid comfort and content,
but leaves that felicitating work to worldly transitory things,
while itself is used only as a screen, to keep hell-fire from
scorching the conscience, or as children's rackets, to quiet them
when they are aot to crv.
2. But the vanity of a superficial religion will most appear in
the hour of extremity ; when their help, as well as their hope and
comfort, will to them prove vain. Prosperity will not always last :
as sure as winter followeth summer, and as the darksome night
succeeds the day, so sure will adversity take its turn : sickness will
follow the longest health, and death succeed the longest life; and
your house of darkness in the dust will hold you longer than
your present habitations, And when thou seest all things fail, O
what wouldest thou give for a hope and help that will not fail,
that thou mightest be received into the everlasting habitations !
The conscience that is now asleep, will be shortly awakened in
such a manner, that it will be utterly past the skill and power
of thyself, and all the friends thou hast, to cast it asleep, or
quiet it again. And then, what wouldest thou not give for a
lenitive to pacify it! no wonder if thou sit here as senseless as
if no harm were near thee : it is now in thy power not to
believe that there is a hell for hypocrites, or that it is thy own
inheritance : but the day is near, (if a supernatural change
prevent it not,) when it shall no more be in thy power, but
sight and feeling shall convince thee whether thou wilt or
no. Now we must entreat thy own consideration, and solicit
thee for thy own consent, to know thy grievous sin and misery,
and yet leave thee unconvinced, because thou art unwilling
to know the truth, and because we cannot show thee heaven
and hell while we are speaking of them : but then God will not
crave, but force thy consideration : nor will he ask thy consent
to feel thy misery : but the less thou art willing, the more thou
hast to feel. And which way then wilt thou look for help ?
which way ever it be, it will be all in vain, because thy religion
was but vain; wilt thou look to thy duties and supposed honesty,
whose sincerity now thou art so confident of? alas, this is the
vain religion that could deceive thee, bnt cannot save thee.
Thou art like a man in a falling house, that hath nothing to
lay hold on, but that which is falling, and it is that will break
him unto death. Or like a drowning man that hath nothing
but a handful of water to lay hold upon j which is it that will
48 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
choke him, but is vain to save him. It is thy superficial}
hypocritical, complimental services that will fall with thee,
and fall upon thee, that will thus both deceive thee, and choke
thee in the time of thy distress. To be told now that thy religion
is vain, is a thing that thy dead, unbelieving heart can too
easily bear ; but to find then, when thou lookest for the benefit
of it, that it is vain, is that which is not borne so easily, but
will overturn the stoutest heart with terrors. If thou wert a
man of no religion, and so hadst none to deceive and quiet
thee, thou couldst scarcely keep off thy terrors now : if thou
hadst not thy hollow-hearted prayers, thy affected zeal, or
forms, and shows, and tasks of duty, thy profession, with its
secret exceptions and reserves, thy smoothed outside, with the
good conceit thou hast of thyself, and the good esteem that
other men have of thee ; if thou hadst not these to flatter thy
conscience, and cloak thee from the storms of threatened
wrath, thou wouldest perhaps walk about like another Cain,
and be afraid of every man thou seest, and tremble at the
shaking of a leaf, and still look behind thee as afraid of a
pursuit. But, alas ! it will be ten thousand times more terrible
to find thy confidence prove deceit ; and thy religion vain,
when God is judging thee, when hell is before thee, and thou
art come to the last of thine expectations! nay, then to find not
only that thy superficial religion was vanity, and lighter than
vanity, nothing, and less than nothing ; but that it was thy
sin, and that which will now torment thee, and the remem-
brance of it be to thee as the remembrance of drunkenness to
the drunkard, and of fornication to the unclean, and of cove-
tousness to the worldling, the rust of whose money will eat
his flesh, and burn like fire. O what a doleful plight is this !
when the sentence is ready to pass upon thee, and hell is gaping
to devour thee, and thou lookest for help to thy vain religion,
and criest out, ' O now, or never help ! help me, or I am a
firebrand of unquenchable wrath : help me, or I must be tor-
mented in those flames : help me now, or it will be too late,
and I shall never, never more have help ! ' Then to have thy
self-deceit discovered, and thy seeming religion condemn thee,
and torment thee, instead of helping thee, what anguish and
confusion will this cast thy hopeless soul into, such as no heart
can here conceive ! Thy guilty soul will be like a hare among
a company of dogs : whichsoever of thy duties thou fliest for
help to, that will make first to tear thee, and devour thee.
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 49
Like a naked man in the midst of an army of his deadly ene-
mies : whichsoever he flieth to for pity and relief, is like to be
one of the first to wound him. Poor self-deceiver ! what wilt
thou then do, or whither wilt thou betake thy soul for help ?
The reason why thou canst now make shift with a lifeless shadow
of religion, is, because thou hast thy sports or pleasures, thy
friends and flatterers, thy worldly business to divert thy thoughts,
and take thee up, and rock the cradle of thy security ; and thy
piety is not yet brought unto the fire, nor thy heart and duties
searched by the all-discovering light : but when the light comes
in, and when all thy fleshly contents are gone, and when thou
comest to have use for thy religion, and seest that, if it prove
unsound, thou art lost for ever, O then it is not shadows, and
shows, and compliments, that will quiet thee. That will not
serve turn then, that serves turn now. Thou wilt find then that
it was easier deceiving thyself than God. (Gal. vi. 3 — 5, 7.) "For
if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing,
he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his own work :
For every man shall bear his own burden. Be not deceived ;
God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall
he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh
reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the
Spirit reap life everlasting."
But perhaps thou wilt say, it is not any duties, but Christ
that I must trust to : he will be my help, and he is sufficient,
and will not deceive the soul that trusteth in him.
Answer. Undoubtedly he is sufficient, and will not deceive
thee. But doth he deceive thee, if he give thee not the salvation
which he never promised thee? he never promised salvation to
an hypocrite (without conversion). It is the upright soul devoted
to him, that takes him for the absolute master of his life, and
for his only portion and felicity, to whom Christ hath promised
salvation: and his promise shall be made good, and the sincere
shall find that Christ deceives them not. But where did he
ever promise salvation to a superficial pharisee ? to such a seem-
ing Christian as thou ? show such a promise from him if thou
canst ; and then trust it and spare not. But thou dost not trust
him, but thy own deceit, if he have given thee no such promise
to trust on. Nay, rather, should he not deceive all the world,
if he should save such superficial hypocrites, when he hath pro-
fessed in his word that he will not save them ? and if he should
not condemn such heartless formalists, when he hath so often
VOL. XVII, E
50 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
told us that he will condemn them ? surely he that breaks his
word is liker to he a deceiver, than lie that keepeth it. Be it
known to thee therefore (and O that thou wouldest know it while
there is a remedy at hand) that if thou trust that Christ should
save an unsanctified false-hearted person, whose soul was never
renewed and revived by the Holy Ghost, and absolutely given
up to God, and that setteth not up God and his service above
all the interest of the flesh, and the commodities and content-
ments of the world, thou dost not then trust Christ, but thy
own deceits and lies ; and it is not Christ that is the deceiver,
but thou art a deceiver of thyself, that makest thyself a false
promise, and trustest to it ; and when thou hast done, sayest,
thou wilt trust to Christ : yea, trustest thyself against Christ,
and trustets that he will break his word, and not that he will
make it good. See whether he resolve not to condemn all such.
Matt. x. 37, 38; Luke xiv. 27, 33; Matt. vii. 26, 27; James
ii. 14 ; Heb. xii. 14 ; Rom, viii. 9. with the texts before cited,
and abundance such. Christ will be a Saviour ; but he is the
Saviour of the body, and not of the affixed hypocrites. (Eph. v.
23.) And his body is the church which is subject to him.
(Verse 24.) " He will save to the utmost :" but whom? "even
all that come to God by him," (Heb. vii. 2, 5,) but not those
that make the world their God, and would put God off with a
few running heartless words and duties. It is the living fruitful
branches that he will save : but the withered branches he cast-
eth forth, to be burned in the fire. (John xv. 2 — 7-) " No
man can serve God and Mammon : " nor live both to the Spirit
and the flesh : he that hath two hearts, hath none that is accept-
able unto God : he that hath two faces (a face of devotion in
his formal customary services, and a face that smiles on the
world and fleshly pleasures when he hath done) hath none that
God will ever smile upon. The leaves of the barren fig-tree
saved it not from the curse of Christ. (Matt. xxi. IS, 19.)
" Hew it down and cast it into the fire," shall be the sentence
of the most flourishing tree that is fruitless. (Luke xiii. 7.)
"The earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it,
and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed,
receiveth blessing from God : but that which beareth thorns and
briars is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing ; whose end is to be
burned." (Heb. vi. 7, 8.) So that if thy religion be vain, the
blood of Christ, and all the treasures of his grace will be vain
to thee ; that are saving unto others. An infidel may then as
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 51
well expect to be saved by the Christ whom he rejected, as thou.
Nay it is Christ himself that will condemn thee : it is his own
mouth that will say to such as thee, " Depart from me, ye that
work iniquity." And though thou couldest say, "Lord, Lord,
I have prophesied, or cast out devils, or done many wonderful
works in thy name," he " will profess to thee that he never knew
thee," or owned thee. (Matt. vii. 22, 23.) If crying would
then serve, I know thou wouldest not spare thy cries. But he
must so pray as to be accepted and heard on earth, that looks
to be accepted and regarded then ; when the miserable soul,
with endless horrors in its eye, is looking round about for help,
and findeth none; when all the creatures say, we cannot, and
he that can shall say, T will not; who can apprehend the calamity
of such a soul ? what soul so sleepy and regardless now, that
will not then cry, " Lord, Lord, open to us," when the door
is shut, and it is too late ? (Matt. xxv. 10 — 12.) Then if thou
roar in the anguish of thy soul, and cry out to him that saveth
others ( Condemn me not, O Lord, but save me also ! now Lord
have mercy on a miserable sinner ! save me, or 1 am lost for
ever : save me, or I must burn in yonder flame : turn not thy
heart against an undone perishing soul ; if thou cast me off, I
have no hope !' a thousand such cries would be in vain, because
thou hadst but a vain religion. (Prov. i. 24, &c.) " Because I
have called and ye refused, I have stretched out my hand and
no man regarded, but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and
would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity ;
I will mock when your fear cometh ; when your fear cometh as
desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind ; when
distress and anguish cometh upon you ; then shall they call
upon me, but I will not answer ; they shall seek me early, but
they shall not find me : Therefore they shall eat of their
own way, and be filled with their own devices," saith the Lord.
And when hell hath once taken thee into its possession, if
thou cry and roar there ten thousand millions of ages it will be
all in vain. Thy strongest and thy longest cries cannot procure
thee a drop of water to cool thy tongue, tormented in those
flames. (Luke xvi. 24 — 26.)
In a word, if thy religion be vain, all is vain to thee ; thy life
itself is vain. (Eccles. vi. 12.) Thou walkest in a vain show.
(Psalm xxxix. 6.) Thou disquietest thyself in vain, in all thy
labours; (Psalm xxxix. 6, and cxxvii, 1,2;) and vanity and
vexation is all that thou shalt possess. (Eccles. i. 2, 14 ; Prov.
E 2
52 THE VAIN RELIGION OP
xxii. 8.) And if conscience, when thy day of grace is past,
shall force thee upon the review to say, c My piety was but
seeming and self-deceit, and all my religion was vain ;' it will
be the voice of utter desperation, and will stab the heart of all
thy hopes. This, and no better, being the self-deceiver's case,
is not conscience now at work within you, and asking, as each
of the disciples did, (Matt. xxvi. 24, 25,) " Is it I?" If thou
have a heart within thee, beseeming a reasonable creature, by
this time thou art afraid of self-deceit, and willing to be
searched, and to know thy hypocrisy while it may be cured.
For my part, I shall pronounce no one of you personally to be
an hypocrite, as knowing that hypocrisy is a sin of the heart,
which, in itself, is seen by none but God and him that hath it.
But my business is only to help such to know and judge them-
selves. Could I name the man to you in the congregation that
had none but a seeming, vain religion, I am persuaded you
would all look upon him as a most unhappy, deplorable wretch.
Alas ! sirs, hypocrites are not so rare among us, as some imagine.
There are few, or none, but saints and hypocrites in this assem-
bly, or in most of the assemblies in the land. I think here are
none that make not a profession of the christian faith, and of
love to God. All, therefore, that have not this faith and love,
must needs be hypocrites, as professing to be what they are not.
In your baptism you engaged and professed yourselves the disci-
ples of Christ, and gave up yourselves in solemn covenant to God
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This covenant, you will say,
you stand to yet ; and none of you will be known to have re-
nounced your Christianity. As Christians, you use to come to
these assemblies, and here to attend God in the use of his or-
dinances, and some of you to renew your covenant with him
in the sacrament of the Lord's supper. I meet with none that
will say, 6 J am no Christian, nor a servant of the God of heaven;
I am an infidel, and rebel against the Lord/ I think there is
none of you but would take it ill if I should call you such, or
should deny you to be Christians and men fearing God. If,
therefore, you are not such, indeed, you must needs be hypo-
crites. What say you ? Is there any of you that profess your-
selves to be ungodly, unbelievers, and servants of the devil; and
will take this as your current title, disclaiming the love and
service of the Lord ? I think you will not. If you are such
as you profess, you are all saints, and shall be saved. If any of
you be not such, they can be nothing else but hypocrites.
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 53
Seeing, therefore, that you are all either saints or hypocrites,
come now to the bar, and refuse not a trial that may prevent
the terrors of another kind of trial that you cannot refuse.
And here let me set before you your profession, and then
try yourselves whether you are such as you profess yourselves
to be or not. And I think I may take it for granted that the
Articles of the Creed and the Baptismal Covenant is the least
that every one of you do profess ; and that the desires, implied in
the petitions of the Lord's Prayer, you all profess to be your
own desires, and that you take the Ten Commandments for
part of the rule of your obedience. Let us peruse them briefly
in the several parts.
1 . Do you not all say that you " believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," and that you will " have
no other Gods but him ?" and are you not accordingly engaged
in covenant with him ? You will not deny it. And what is the
meaning of this much of your profession ? It is no less than to
take God for the only infinite good, to be loved with the chiefest
love, and to take him for your absolute Lord and Governor,
the owner of you and all you have, to whom you owe universal,
absolute obedience ; and that you are truly willing to love him
above all, and fear him, and trust him, and obey him accord-
ingly, though your flesh and all the world should be against it.
He that meaneth not all this, doth dissemble or lie, when he
saith he taketh God to be his God : for to be God, is to be this
much to us.
And really is it thus with you as you profess ? Speak but as
men that dare not lie before the Lord that knows your hearts.
Do you indeed love God as God, with your superlative love ?
Are your hearts set upon him ? Do you make it your principal
care to please him ? Is it your delight to do his will ? Is it
sweeter to you to think and speak of him than of the world ?
Doth it grieve you most to offend him ? In a word, you are
not such strangers to nature but you know what love is : and
you are not such strangers to your own hearts, but you know
what it is to love your pleasure, your profit, your honour, and
your friend. Can conscience say before the Lord that you love
him better than all these? If not more passionately, yet more
deeply, effectually, and resolvedly — with a love that will cause
you to deny and part with all for him. If you thus truly love
him as God, and above all, how comes it to pass that you seek
the world more carefully and eagerly than him ; and that you
54 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
are more pleased with worldly thoughts, and speeches, and em-
ployments, than with divine ? Were not the hypocrite justly
blinded, and a wilful stranger to himself, he could not but
know that he loveth not God as God, and above all. And to
love him> in subordination to your flesh and its contents, is not
at all to love him as God; as it is no degree of conjugal love
to love a wife but as a servant, nor no degree of the love due
to your sovereign to love him as an equal or as a slave.
And if really you take God for your absolute Lord and Go-
vernor, why is it then that you take no pleasure in his laws, but
count them too strict, and had rather be at your own dispose ?
Why is it that you obey your fleshly desires, before and against
the God whom you acknowledge ? Why will you not be per-
suaded to that holiness, justice, and charity, which you know his
law commandeth you ? W T hy do you wilfully continue in those
sins which conscience tells you God forbids ? Will you live in
wilful disobedience, and love your sins, and loath your duty, and
obstinately continue thus, and yet profess that you take God
for your God, and, consequently, for your Lord and Governor ?
and yet will you not confess that you are dissembling hypo-
crites ?
2. Do you not all profess that you "believe in Jesus Christ ;"
and have you not, in covenant, taken him for your Saviour
and Lord ? and do you so, indeed, or do you not, play the hypo*
elites ? If you believe in Christ, and take him for your Saviour,
you then take your sins for the disease and misery of your souls,
and you are so grieved for them, and weary of them, and hum-
bled in the apprehension of your lost estate, that you fly to
Christ as your only refuge from the wrath and curse of the
offended Majesty, and value his justifying and healing grace
before all the riches of the world ; and you are willing to take
his bitterest medicines, and use the means appointed by him for
the destruction of your sin and the perfecting of his graces.
And is it thus with you that have unhumbled hearts, that never
felt the need of Christ, as condemned miserable men must do ;
and that love the sin that he would cure, and are unwilling to be
mortified and sanctified by his grace? Unless a carcass be a
man, such hypocrites as these are no true Christians, and have
but a seeming, self-deceiving faith.
3. Do you not all profess " to believe in the Holy Ghost ;"
and are you not engaged to him in covenant as your Sanctifier;
and do you not grossly play the hypocrites here ? If not, how
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 55
comes it to pass that you stick in your natural state, as if you had
no need of sanctification 5 and live as quietly without any ac-
quaintance with true regeneration, and the Spirit to dwell and
rule within you, as if you needed no such change ? Or else,
that you take up with a formal, an affected, or a forced kind of
religion, instead of sanctification and spiritual devotion ? And
how comes it to pass that you distaste the highest degrees of
holiness ; and that you will not be brought to the mortification,
self-denial, and unreserved obedience, which are the essence of
sanctification ? As for the more debauched, profane sort of
hypocrites that can make a common mock of godliness, and
scorn at the very name of holiness and sanctification, and deride
at all that pretend to have the Spirit, I had rather tremble at the
thought of their misery than now stand to reprove that noto-
rious hypocrisy, which professeth to believe in the Holy Spirit
which they deride, and covenanteth with the Sanctifier, while they
hate and mock, or, at least, do obstinately refuse, sanctification,
When God himself tells us, (Rom. viii. 9,) "That if any man
have not the Spirit of Christ, the same is none of his i" and
therefore to deride a man for professing that he hath the Spirit,
is to deride him for professing to be a Christian.
4. Do you not all profess to " believe the holy Catholic
Church ;" that is, that Christ hath a people dispersed through
the world, that are sanctified by his Spirit, and made a holy
peculiar people, whom he loveth as his spouse and as his own
body, of which number you must be if you will be saved ? And
yet, at the same time, the members of this church you contemn,
the holiness of it you secretly hate, and the faithful pastors in it
you despise and disobey. Is not this hypocrisy ?
5. You all profess to " believe the communion of saints ;" that
is, that the true members of the Catholic Church are all saints,
that have one and the same Spirit, and walk by the same holy
law or rule, and in holiness must converse together, and join to-
gether for the public worshipping of God, according to his own
institution ; and must purely and fervently love each other with
such a charity as shall make one as ready to relieve another,
when God calls for it, as if our riches did belong, in common,
to the saints. This is the meaning of this article of your
creed. And do I then need to ask you whether those that pro-
fess this are hypocrites, if they hate the saints and their inward
spiritual communion ; and if they love them but with that life-
less charity that James describeth ? (James ii. 14, 15, &c,) or
56 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
if they despise or hate the discipline, ordinances, and holy com-
munion of the church ; and if they live in communion with
drunkards, with harlots, with worldlings, or sensual, vain, or
ambitious men, and fly from the " communion of saints?" What
dost thou when thou sayest, t€ I believe the communion of
saints," but say, ' I am a dissembling hypocrite/ if it be thus
with thee ?
6. You all profess to " believe the forgiveness of sins ;" that
is, that through the blood of Christ all true repenting and be-
lieving sinners shall be forgiven, and are not shut up under re-
mediless despair"; and also I think you all profess that you do
repent yourselves, that forgiveness may be yours ; and yet you
love your sin ; you love not to be told of it ; you will not believe
it to be sin, as long as you can strive against conviction ; and
when you must needs confess it, you will not forsake it ; but
while you seem to reform by parting with so much as you can
spare, your dearer sins, which pleasure and honour and profit
are much engaged in, you will not forsake ; though repentance
do consist in turning from sin to God, and Christ hath assured
you that " except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.'* (Luke
xiii. 3, 5.) Is not this, therefore, palpable hypocrisy, to pro-
fess repentance for remission of sin, and still keep the sin which
you say you repent of, as if you thought to mock God with
names and shows ?
7. You all profess to " believe the resurrection of the body,
and that Christ shall come again to judge the quick and the
dead $" but do you live as men that believe it indeed, that they
are passing unto such a judgment ? If you seriously expected
to be judged for your lives, for the words you speak, the deeds
you do, the time you spend, the means of grace which you
neglect or use, and for all that you receive and do, is it possi-
ble you could so waste your time, and neglect the means of
your salvation, and sin so boldly and obstinately as you do ?
8. You all profess that you (e believe the life everlasting,"
that the righteous shall go into their Master's joy, and the rest
into everlasting punishment in hell. (Matt. xxv. 13.) But
do you not play the hypocrites ? Can you heartily believe that
you stand so near to heaven or hell, to everlasting joy or
torments, and make no greater a matter of it, nor make no
better preparation for it, nor bestir yourselves no more in a case
of such unspeakable weight ? If you believe sincerely the glory
of Heaven, you set your hearts on it more than upon Earth,
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 57
and take it for your portion, and most desirable felicity. But
do I need to tell the worldly, fleshly hypocrite how far he is
from this.
9. You profess, as the sum of the ten commandments, that
you love God above all, and your neighbours as yourselves.
But doth not your selfishness, and quarrelling with your neigh-
bours, when they do but stand in the way of your honour or
commodity, convince you of hypocrisy in this profession ?
10. In the use of the Lord's Prayer, what word do you speak
that is not in hypocrisy ? Do you first and principally desire
the hallowing of God's name, the coming of his kingdom, and
the doing of his will ? when you are far more tender of your
own names than of God's, and more regardful of your own
honour ? And when you care more for your own prosperity
than for the prosperity of the church and gospel, and do your-
selves become the hinderers of his kingdom and government
in the church and in the souls of men ? And when you cannot
abide to do his will, when it crosseth the interest of your
flesh, but dislike it as too strict, and had rather the word and
will of God were agreeable to yours, than you will conform
your own to his ?
Do you only desire your daily bread, and that in subordina-
tion to the honour, and kingdom, and will of God. Or rather
do you not play the hypocrites in saying so, when it is not daily
bread that will content you; but plenty and prosperity is
sweeter to you than holiness ?
When you pray for " the forgiveness of your sins, as you
forgive others," you intimate that you are weary of your sins,
and hate them, and would forsake them ; and that you forgive
all that have wronged you, out of the sense of your own trans-
gressions, and of the love of Christ. But is all this so, or is
it mere dissembling, when you forsake not your sin, nor are
willing to forsake it, and when your consciences know that
there be some that you forgive not ?
You pray against " being led into temptation," and yet you
love it, and cast yourselves into it. Into tempting company,
and tempting talk, and tempting employments. And for re-
creation, meat, drink, apparel, houses, attendants, estate, re-
putation, and almost all things else, you love and choose that
which is most tempting.
You pray to be " delivered from evil," when the evil of your
pride, flesh-pleasing, and worldliness, you so love, that indeed
58 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
you would not be delivered from them. What can you say
to excuse all this from palpable hypocrisy.
To conclude, you pretend to all that is necessary to salva-
tion, but have you that in reality which you pretend to ?
1. You think yourselves wise enough to be saved. But is it
not folly that goes under the name of wisdom ? When you
should be converted, and lead a holy life, you are wise enough
to give reasons for the contrary, and wise enough to confute
the preacher, and prove him a fool, instead of obeving the call
of God. You are wise enough to prove the physician to be
ignorant, and to cast away the medicine that should heal you.
And what if nobody could deal with you in subtletv of argu-
ment, but you could say that against the necessary means of
your own salvation, that none can answer ? When you die by
your wisdom, and have disputed yourselves out of the reach
of mercy, will you not bewail it then as folly ? Is he wiser,
that, being" hungry, eats his meat, or he that gives such reasons
for his refusing it, and pleadeth so learnedly against eating and
drinking, that none can answer him ? Is the condemned man
wiser that makes friends for a pardon, or he that with unan-
swerable subtlety reasoneth against it, till the ladder be turned ?
Such is your vain and seeming wisdom. You are not wise
enough to be cured, but to give reasons why you should con-
tinue sick. In the issue, it will prove that you were not wise
enough to be saved, but notably wise to resist salvation, and
plead yourselves into hell.
2. You pretend that you have a saving Faith, when your
hearts refuse that salvation from sin, and that rule of Christ
which is the object of faith, and when you will not believe the
doctrines, precepts, or threatenings that cross your own con-
ceits ; and when your belief of heaven will not carry your hearts
from earth, nor work you to a holy, heavenly life.
3. You pretend to repentance, as I said before, while you
hold fast the sin, and give not up yourselves to God ; when as
if your neighbour, or master, or husband, should but beat one
of you, and tell you when he hath done that he repenteth, and
do this as often as you commit your wilful sins, and say you
repent, I am confident you would not take it for true repen-
tance. You repent, but will not confess when it is to your
disgrace, as long as you can hide your sin. You repent, but
will not make restitution or reparation of injuries to your
power. You repent, but your heart riseth against him that
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 59
reproveth you* You repent, but you had rather keep your sins
than leave them. What is this but to deceive your own hearts,
and to mock yourselves with a seeming, vain, and mock re-
pentance ?
4. You pretend to love God above all, (as was before said,)
when you love not his image, ways, or communion, but love
that which he hateth, and still prefer the world before him.
5. You pretend that you have true desires to be godly, and
what God would have you be ; but they are such desires as the
sluggard hath to rise, and as the slothful hath to Work : that
is, if it could be done with ease, and without labour ; you lie
still, and use not the means with diligence for all your desires.
When you can sit and have your work done with wishes, and
your families maintained, and your necessities all supplied with
wishes, you may think to come to heaven with wishes. The
good desires that the poor may be warmed, and clothed, that
James speaks of, (Jam. ii. 15,) did neither relieve the poor, nor
save the wisher. "The desire of the slothful killeth him;
for his hands refuse to labour." (Prov. xxi. 25.) Up and
be doing according to thy desires, or else confess that thy
wishes are hypocritical* and that thou deceivest thy own heart
by vain desires*
6. You also pretend to be sincere worshippers of God. You
pray, and you read the Scripture, and good books, and you hear
the word, and receive the Lord's supper. But I have before
shown you your hypocrisy in these; you pray against the sin
that you love and would not leave ; you pray for holiness, when
you hate it, or desire it not in any degree to cross your flesh ;
you serve God, with mere words (whether of your own conceiv-
ing or of others' prescribing) with some forced acknowledgment
of that God that hath not your hearts or lives. Let Christ pass
the sentence on you, and not me : (Matt. xv. 7 — 9.) " Ye hypo-
crites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, 'This people
draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me
with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they
do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments oi
men/ ' You like that teaching that sooths you in your own
opinions, and galleth not your consciences in the guilty place.
A minister you would have, that should stand like an adorned
idol that hurts nobody, and toucheth not your sores; or that
is but like a piir of organs, or a tinkling cymbal, to tickle your
fancy, and make church worship to be as a kind of religious stage-
60 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
play to you. But a true minister of Christ, to open to you the
doctrine of the kingdom, and roundly to awaken you from secu-
rity in sin, and to call you up to the most serious, holy, heavenly
life, and follow you, and let you take no rest, till you yield and
practise it ; and to call you to open confession of your open scan-
dalous sins, that you may make such reparation to the wronged
honour of God and souls of men, as you are capable of; and
accordingly to absolve you, or to bind you over to answer it at
the bar of God, and charge the Church to avoid communion
with you, if you are impenitent and incorrigible ; such a minis-
ter as this (which is the minister of Christ's appointment) you
abhor ; at least, when he comes to touch your sores. Then you
are too proud to be taught and ruled by such as these, though
you hypocritically profess to be ruled by Christ, who ruleth his
Church by his Spirit, word, and ministers, conjunct. Then you
say, ( Who gave you authority to do thus and thus by me }' As if
you knew not that Christ in Scripture hath described, confirmed,
and limited the ministerial office. Like condemned traitors,
that should say to him that bringeth them a pardon, ( Who
gave you authority to make so bold with me?' or like a man
that hath the plague or leprosy, that asketh the physician,
6 Who gave you authority to tell me that I am sick, and put
me to such medicines as these?' or as the Israelite to Moses,
(Exod. ii. 14,) " Who made thee a prince and a judge over us ?"
" not understanding that God by his hand would deliver them,"
saith Stephen ; (Act. vii. 25 ;) or as the Jews to Christ, when he
was teaching men the way to heaven, (Matt. xxi. 23,) " By what
authority doest thou these things ? and who gave thee this autho-
rity ?" So because you hate the way of your recovery, you will
not be saved without authority, nor be satisfied of their autho-
rity that would save you, but are like a beggar that should proudly
refuse a piece of gold, and ask, c By what authority do you give
it me V A minister that agreeth with God's description you
cannot abide. (Acts xx. 18 — 36; Heb. xxiii. 7 3 17; 1 Cor. iv.
1 ; 1 Thes. v. 12, 13 ; 1 Tim. v. 17, 20, and 2 Tim. iv. 1.) So
that, indeed, it is but a mock-minister, a mock-sacrament, a
mock-praver, and so a seeming, vain religion which you desire.
7. Lastly, you pretend also to sincere obedience. If we ask
you, whether you are willing to obey God ? you will say, God
forbid that any should deny it. But when it comes to the par-
ticulars, and you find that he commandeth you that which flesh
and blood is against, and would cost you the loss of worldly
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 61
prosperity, then you will be excused ; and yet, that you may
cheat your souls, you will not professedly disobey ; but you will
persuade yourselves that it is no duty, and that God would not
have you do that which you will not do. Like a countryman's
servant, that promiseth to do all his master bids him ; but when
he cometh to particulars, thrashing is too hard work, and mow-
ing and reaping are beyond his strength, and ploughing is too
toilsome ; and in conclusion, it is only an idle life with some
easy chars, that he will be brought to. This is the hypocrite's
obedience. He will obey God in all things, as far as he is
able, in the general : but when it comes to particulars, to deny
himself, and forsake his worldly prosperity for Christ, and to
contemn the world, and live by faith, and converse in heaven,
and walk with God, and worship him in spirit and truth, to love
an enemy, to forgive all wrongs, to humble himself to the
meanest persons, and to the lowest works ; to confess his faults
with shame and sorrow, and ask forgiveness of those he has
injured ; these and other such works as these he will not be-
lieve to be parts of obedience, or at least, will not be brought to
do them.
Poor souls, I have stood here a great while to hold you the
glass, in which, if you were willing, you might see yourselves.
But if you will yet wink, and hate the light, and perish in your
self-deceiving, who can help it ?
Briefly and plainly, be it known to thee again, whoever thou
art that hearest this, that if thou have not these five characters
following, thy religion is all but vain and self-deceiving.
1. If God's authority, as he speaketh by his Spirit, word, and
ministers, be not highest with thy soul, and cannot do more
with thee than Kings and Parliaments and than the world and
flesh. (Matt.xxiii. 8—10.)
2. If the unseen everlasting glory be not practically more
esteemed by thee, and chosen, and sought, than any thing, or all
things in the world. (Matt. vi. 21 ; Col. iii. 2; John vi. 27 ;
2 Tim. iv. 8, 9 ; Matt. xxii. 5 ; Luke xviii. 22, 23 ; Phil. iii. 20.)
3. If thou see not such a loveliness in holiness, as being the
image of God, as that thou unfeignedly desirest the highest
degree of it. (Matt, v, 20; Psalm cxix. 1 — 3, &c. ; Phil. iii.
12— 14.)
4. If any sin be so sweet arid clear to you, or seem so neces-
sary, that you consent not and desire not to let it go. (Matt.
six". 22; Phil. iii. 8; Psalm lxvi. 18.)
62 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
5. If any known duty seem so costly, dangerous, troublesome,
and unpleasant, that ordinarily you will not do it. (Matt. xvi.
24—26 j Psalm cxix. 6.)
In a word, God must be loved and obeyed as God ; Christ
must be entertained as Christ 5 Heaven must be valued and
sought as Heaven ; and holiness loved and practised as holi-
ness ; though not to the height of their proper worth (which
none on earth is able to reach,) yet so, as that nothing be
preferred before them.
But yet there is one more discovery, which, if I pass by, you
will think J baulk a chief part of my text.
An unbridled tongue in a professor of religion is enough to
prove his religion vain.
By an unbridled tongue is not meant all the sins of our speech.
" If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and
able also to bridle the whole body. For in many things we
offend all." (Jam. iii. 2.) Every unwarrantable jest, or angry
word, or hasty, rash expression, is not enough to prove a man's
religion to be in vain. Though Christ says that we shall
" answer for every idle word/' he doth not say, " we shall be
condemned for every idle word." But when the tongue is un-
bridled, and is not kept under a holy law, but suffered to be the
ordinary instrument of wilful known sin, or of gross sin, which
men might know and will not ; this proves the person void of
holiness, and, consequently, his religion vain.
It is true, every hypocrite hath not an unbridled tongue :
some of them have the bridle of moral precepts, and some of
religious education, and some of the presence and awe of per-
sons whom they esteem ; common knowledge, with natural
mansuetude and moderation doth bridle the tongues of many
an hypocrite ; but as every wicked man is not a drunkard, or
fornicator, and yet every drunkard or fornicator (that liveth in
it) is a wicked man ; so every hypocrite hath not an unbridled
tongue, (his vice may be some other way ;) but every man that
hath an unbridled tongue is an hypocrite, if withal he profess
himself a Christian.
The sins of the tongue are of three sorts. 1. Such as are
against piety. 2. Such as are against justice. 3. Such as are
against charity.
1, Against piety, that is, directly against God, are blasphemy,
perjury, rash swearing, swearing by creatures, light and unreve-
rent using of God's name and attributes, and words and works 1
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 63
pleading for false doctrine, or false worship, disputing' against
truth and duty ; scorning at godliness, or reasoning against it.
These and such impieties of the tongue, are the evidences of pro-
faneness in the speaker's heart; though some of them much more
than others; and if the tongue is not here bridled, all is in vain.
2. Sinful speeches against justice and charity are these :—
reproaching parents, or governors, or neighbours ; railing and
reviling, cursing, provoking others to do mischief, or commit
any sin, disputing against and dissuading men from truth and
duty; and hindering them by your speeches from a holy life,
and the means of their salvation ; calling good, evil, and evil,
good ; lying, slandering, false-witness bearing, backbiting ;
extenuating men's virtues, and aggravating their faults beyond
the certain apparent truth ; receiving, and reciting, and carrying
on evil reports, which you know not to be true ; endeavouring
to cool men's love to others, by making them seem bad, when
we cannot prove it , mentioning men's faults and failings with-
out a call and just occasion ; unchaste, immodest, ribald speeches ;
cheating and deceitful words to wrong others in their estates ;
with other such like.
But undoubtedly that sin of the tongue which the Apostle
here had particular respect to, was the reproaching of fellow-
Christians, especially upon the occasion of some differences of
judgment and practice in the smaller matters of religion ; the
Judaizing Christians gave liberty to their tongues to reproach
those that refused the use of those ceremonies which they used
themselves, and placed much of their religion in ; the quarrel
was the same that was decided by the Apostles, Acts xv., and
by Paul, Romans xiv. and xv., and throughout the Epistle to the
Galatians. And this is the religion that James calls vain here,
which was much placed in ceremonies, with a pretence of
highest knowledge, and a censorious vilifying of all that would
not do as they.
There are especially three sorts that use to reproach each
other about the matters of religion.
1. Those that are hardened to that height of impiety, as to
make a mock at seriousness and diligence in the practice of
Christianity itself, hating and reproaching them that dare not
sell their souls at as base a price as they.
2. Those that have so far extinguished charity by faction and
self-conceit, as to confine their love and honour to their party,
and to speak evil of those that are not of their own opinions.
64 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
3. Those that give liberty to their tongues unseasonably, un-
measurabiy, or unwarrantably to speak hardly of those that they
suffer by upon religious accounts ; though, perhaps, they are
their superiors whom they are bound to honour.
1. The first sort are arrived at such a measure of malicious-
ness and misery, that they are as mad men, the objects of com-
passion to all men save themselves. Their sin and misery is so
notorious, that I need not say anything to discover it to others
that have anything of reason and true religion ; and for them-
selves, being so far forsaken of God, as to hate and reproach the
means of their salvation, no wonder if withal they are given over
to that blindness as not to understand the words that should
convince them, and neither to see their shame, nor the light
that would discover it ; and to such impenitency, as not to feel
or fear the wrath and threatenings of the Almighty ; but boldly
to rage on, till hell hath brought them to their wits. (Prov.
xiv. 16.) "A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil, but
the fool rageth, and is confident." Yet this much, briefly, I
shall say to these, if any of them be this day my auditors,
that I may not leave them as utterly past hope.
1. Thou art one of the most self-condemned, stigmatized,
slaves of Satan, in the world. Thou bearest openly so un-
doubted a brand of wickedness, that there is no room for any
rational hope in thy self, or any of thy friends, that ever thou
shouldest be saved, if thou die in such a state ; some hope is left
that yet thou mayest be converted, but none that thou shouldest
be saved without conversion. It is possible with God that can
do all things, that yet thy wilful blindness may be cured, and
thy tongue may unsay all that thou hast said ; and thou mayest
cry out of thy folly, and cry shame against thyself, for that
which now thou gloriest in. It is possible for God of such a
stone to make a child of Abraham ! and to melt that hardened
heart of thine, and lay it bleeding at the feet of Christ, and
to make thee wish with tears or groans, that such thoughts
had never entered into thy heart, nor such words of malice pro-
ceeded from thy mouth. And happy art thou, if God will have
so much mercy on thee, that hast derided mercy, as to vouch-
safe thee such a change. And pray for it, and pray hard, and
pray again, if thou love thy soul ; for this is thy hope, and thou
hast no other. For that ever such a wretch as thou shouldest be
saved, in the state that now thou art in, is as impossible as for
God to lie, and as impossible as for the devils to be saved. I
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 65
wonder (but that such a forsaken soul is a senseless block, and
as a lifeless carcass,) that thou dost not quake with the fears
of hell, which way ever thou goest ; and that thou art not still
thinking whither thou art going, and how the devils are ready to
take thy soul as soon as death hath opened the door and let it
out into Eternity ? As carelessly or scornfully as thou sittest
here, I wonder that thou dost not tremble to consider, where it
is that thou must shortly be, and where thou must abide for
ever. It is one of the most notable discoveries of the power-
ful craft of Satan, that he is able to keep such a garrison as thy
heart in so much peace, and to quiet a poor wretch that is un-
certain to be one hour out of hell ! that thy sleep is not broken
with terrible dreams, and that thou dost not eat thy meat in
terrors, and that ever a smile should be seen in thy face ! that
thy business, or company, or sports, or pleasures, should once
put out of thy mind thy endless misery. While I am speaking,
and thou art hearing, hell-fire is burning, and the devils are
waiting, and, thy blinded soul is posting on, and, for aught thou
knowest, may be there this night. Poor sinner ! for my part, I
know thee not! and, therefore, cannot justly be suspected to
bear thee any ill will, or to speak these words with a desire of
thy hurt. I know this is language that the guilty do not love
to hear. But I must tell thee, who reproachest and deridest a
serious, holy life, that, except the blasphemers of the Holy Ghost,
there are few in the world in more certain misery than thou.
Other sinners, though miserable, may have some cloak to hide
their misery. Though the drunkard shall not enter into heaven,
he may flatter himself with the remembrance that Noah was
once overtaken with that sin. Though the fornicator or adul-
terer shall not enter into the kingdom of God, (Eph. v. 5,) he
mav cheat himself awhile with the remembrance of David's guilt.
Though the false-hearted, temporizing, self-saving hypocrite
shall not be saved, he may deceive himself, by the instance of
Peter's denying his master, and his dissimulation, (Gal. ii.,) but
what cloak hast thou to hide thy misery ? Did ever any true
disciple of Christ either hate or reproach his servants and his
ways ? What godly man hath made a mock at godliness (unless
it were when he was ungodly ?) If any should think that an act of
drunkenness or fornication might consist with grace, no man
that understands himself can think that a scorner at an holy
life, hath himself the holiness which he scorneth ! I would not
for a world be in the case of that wretch, that speaks well of
vol, XVH, F
G6 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
holiness in others, while he lives in fornication, luxury, or world-
liness himself, though he think that he cuts scores hy daily cry-
ing to God for mercy. But 1 would much less for a thousand
worlds be in the case of him that neither is godly, nor can speak
well of it; that is not only void of the Spirit of Christ, but
speaks against it; that is not only void of the holy image of
God, but hateth it, and reproacheth it in others. O rather let
me have no tongue to speak, no soul to think, than ever 1 should
speak or think thus maliciously of the image, and ways, and ser-
vants of the Lord ! 1 had rather be a dog, or a toad, than one of
those men that use to mock at serious, diligent serving of the
Lord, or that maliciously reproach his servants, and bend
their wits and tongues against them ; so legibly is the mark of
the devil upon them, that I must needs tell you that are true
believers, you are much to be blamed that you look not on them
with more compassion, and weep not for them, as for men that
are within a step of hell, when you hear them rail at the laws
or servants of the Lord. J mean those of whom the Apostle
saith, " For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and
now tell you, even weeping, that they are the enemies of the
cross of Christ, (that is, to the self-denying mortified state of
Christians, and following him even 'throu//{i sufferings,) whose
end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is
their shame, who mind earthly things." (Phil. iii. 18, 19.) "That
not only do wickedly, but teach men so to do;" (Matt. v. 19.)
"and have pleasure in them that do it;" (Rom. i. 32;) "and think
it strange that we run not with them to the same excess of riot,
speaking evil of us, who shall give account to him that is ready
to judge the quick and the dead." (I Pet. iv. 4, 5.)
2. Thou bearest most eminently the image of the devil, and
most expressly speakest his mind, and art most openly employed
in his works. What is the devil but an apostate spirit, filled
with enmity against God and his servants, and hating holiness;
the malicious accuser of the brethren, slandering and reproach-
ing them, and seeking their destruction ! And shall a malicious,
lying sinner live, that imitateth Satan in his enmity to God ?
O that thou knewest whom thou servest ! And that thou knew-
est whom thou speakest against ! Woe be to him that striveth
with his Maker. (Isa. xlv. 2.) It is hard for thee to kick against
the pricks. (Acts ix. 5.) Whoever hardened himself against him,
and hath prospered ? (Job ix. 4.) If Satan were to speak with
open face, what would he say, but as the tongues of the malici-
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 67
ous enemies of holiness ; even to speak evil of the ways and
servants of the Lord ? Might he appear and speak himself in
the assemblies and councils of the great ones of the earth, he
would speak against the same men, and to the same purpose, as
those that I have described. Your tongues are his instruments.
You speak what he secretly suggesteth, as verily as if he had
written you your instructions, and you had read it in his words:
he hateth holiness, and, therefore, he tempteth you to hate it.
He would bring it into hatred in the world, and, therefore, he
speaks disgracefully of it by your tongues. His will is your will;
and your words are his words ; and the pleasantest music that
vou could make him. O how it pleaseth him to make a reason-
able creature reproach the word and ways of the Creator ! How
eager was he to have got Job to have spoken evil of God !
3. Be it known to thee, thou reviler, that if ever thou be
saved thyself, it must be in that way that thou revilest. Thy
hope lieth in it. As sure as thou livest, there is no other way
to life eternal. Without holiness none shall see God. (Heb.
xii. 14.) Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
(Matt. v. 8.) When thou hast done all, thou must come back,
and go that way thyself, or burn for ever. Either thou must be
such as those that thou dost speak against, or thou art everlast-
ingly undone. And if thou think to be such a one thyself, and
to come to heaven by the very way that now thou dost revile,
canst thou yet revile it ? And if thou perish in hell for want
of holiness, thou shalt then have enough of thy rebellion. Then
thou shalt cry out against thy own malicious reproaches a
thousand times more than ever thou didst against the servants
of the Lord. Though the very distinction between the godly
and ungodly be now thy scorn, yet I shall be bold to tell thee,
in the words of Enoch, yea of God, (Jud. xiv. 16,) " Behold the
Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judg-
ment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among
them, of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly
committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly
sinners have spoken against him. " Now you have your day,
and judgment must begin at the house of God. And if it
first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not
the gospel of God ! And if the righteous scarcely be saved,
where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear ? (1 Pet. iv. 17,
IS.) u Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the
ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the
f2
68 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
seat of the scornful ! But his delight is in the law of the Lord ;
and in his law doth he meditate day and night." " The ungodly
are not so : but like the chaff which the wind driveth away :
therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor
sinners in the congregation of the righteous : for the Lord
knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly
shall perish." (Psal. i.) This is scripture distinction, which
God will make good.
I make no question, but the worst of you will put by all this
in your self-deceit, and say, it is not holiness that we speak
against, but it is hypocrisy, or schism, or some such accusation
that malice shall suggest, will be your mask. But will you
answer me these few questions.
Quest. 1 . Why then do you not imitate them so far as they
do well ? Why are you not as much in works of holiness as
they ? In reading, and meditating on the word of God, in holy
conference, and secret prayer, and instructing your families, &c.
And then leave them, and spare not where they do amiss.
Quest, 2. Why do you not hate the sins of the notoriously
ungodly, who show them without shame ? Nay, why do you
make such men your companions ?
Quest. 3. Why go you to the heart, that is unseen, and ar-
rogate the prerogative of God, to censure men of hypocrisy,
and such secret sins that are out of your discerning? If you
know your heart by outward actions, insist upon your proofs.
Quest. 4. Why speak you not of their good as well as of the
supposed evil ? Why are you not more in speaking well of
what is well, than in speaking ill of what is ill ?
Quest. 5. Why is it that you speak of men that you know
not ? And of others that are innocent, for the sake of those
you imagine to be guilty ? And why do you so greedily snatch
at any matter of reproach, and take it by hearsay from the most
ignorant, rash, or malicious mouths.
Quest. 6. If it be hypocrisy, or other vice, that you so hate, why
do you not hate them in yourselves ? Why live you so viciously
while you profess obedience to the Lord ? And why do you
take on you to believe a heaven and hell hereafter, and to give
up yourselves in covenant to God, and live so contrary to that
professed belief and covenant ?
Quest. /. Do you not feel that it is partly malice, and partly
the recrimination of a guilty galled conscience, that fain would
steal a little peace by thinking others to be as bad as you ?
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 69
I shall dismiss this unhappy sort of men with these two re-
quests : 1. You are the men that of all others have the most
notable advantage from your conviction, of the misery of your
present state : and therefore, I beseech you, take that advan-
tage. One would think it should be the easiest matter in the
world, for such as you to know that you are ungodly, that hate
godliness and oppose it. You have no plausible pretence for
self-flattery or self-deceit. And therefore confess your misery,
and look out to Christ, for help and pardon, while there is hope
and time.
2. For the time to come, will you but try a serious, holy life
before you speak against it any more ? For shame, speak not
evil of the things you know not, as those brutes described,
Jud. x. And holiness was never well known but by experi-
ence. O that you would be entreated but to yield to this most
equal motion ! Away with your worldly, fleshly lives ; and live
in faith and holiness, a just, a spiritual, and a heavenly life, but
one year, or one quarter, or one month, and then if, by experi-
ence, you find just cause for it, reproach a holy life, and spare
not.
II. To the second sort, (that speak evil of men upon differ-
ences of opinion, especially while they profess the same religion,
in all the essential, necessary parts,) I shall propose these ag-
gravations of their sin, for their humiliation.
1. Consider, can you think it agreeable to the law of Christ,
to reproach men behind their backs, and unheard, for that which
you never soberly and christianly told them to their faces'?
Did you lovingly first admonish them, and impartially hear
what they can say for themselves ? What is your end in speak-
ing against your brother ? Is it to do him hurt, or good ? If
hurt, be sure you do him justice ; and backbiting is not the
way of justice. If good, you cross your own intention. For
what good can it do him, that another hears him evil spoken of?
2. If you are Christ's disciples, it must be known to all men
by your special love to one another. (John xiii. 25.) And is
reproach and evil speaking the fruit or evidence of such love ?
Can you talk so of the friends that are most dear to you, or that
you love indeed ? How do our hearts rise against that man,
that speaks reproachfully of our clearest friends ! Love would
scarce suffer you to endure such abuse of Christians in another,
without a serious reprehension : much less to be the abuser of
them vourselves.
70 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
3. Your evil speaking of your brethren dcstroyeth love in
others, as it proves the. want of it in yourselves. And to destroy
their love is to destroy their souls. You do your worst to quench
the love, both of him that you speak evil of, and of them to
whom you speak it. Good is the object of love; and therefore to
speak [well] of men, and manifest them to be lovely, is the only
way to make them loved. Evil is the object of hatred : and
therefore to speak evil of them, is to make them seem hateful,
and draw men to the guilt of hating them. To praise a man
will do more to make him loved, than if you only entreat ano-
ther to love him ; and to dispraise a man will do more to make
him hated, than if you directly persuade another to hate him.
And what service you do the devil, and what disservice unto
Christ, by destroying love, and sowing hatred among his ser-
vants, were you impartial you might easily discern.
4. Is it not shame and pity, that the followers of Christ
should imitate the devil, and ungodly men, as by detraction and
reviling w^ords they do ? You aggravate your brethren's faults ;
and find faults where there are none ; and so do Satan and un-
godly men. You have a secret desire to make them seem con-
temptible and vile ; and so have Satan and ungodly men. And
hereby you seem to justify the wicked, and encourage them in their
reproaching. They think they may boldly speak such a language
of you all, as they hear you speak of one another. O what
pity is it to hear the professed children of the Lord, to use
the hell-bred language of his enemies, as if they had gone to
school to Satan !
4. Are there not tongues enough sharpened against us in
the world, but we must wound each other with our own ? Is it
not enough, if we are the seed of Christ, that every where the
serpent's seed do hate us ; and that all manner of evil is falsely
spoken of us, and that we are not made as the scorn and the
offspring of all things, but we must also hate and reproach each
other ? Have you not load enough from the world ? Have you
not enemies enough to do the work of enemies, but friends
must do it ? And hath not Satan instruments and tongues
enough of his own, but we must use those that are Christ's
against himself ?
6. If thou hate thy brother, yet sure thou dost not hate thy-
self. Why then dost thou hurt and shame thyself? His hurt
is but to be defamed, which is little, if any thing at all (for it
is much in himself whether it shall hurt him.) But thy hurt
THE FORMAL HYPOCR1IE. J\
that doeth it, is to provoke God against thee, and incur his wrath?
and wound thy soul hy the guilt of sin. And if another hurt thee
in the heel, wilt thou therefore stab thyself to the heart ? If
another be bad, wilt thou become so by unjust defaming him ?
And how dost thou cross thine own intentions ? The stone
that thou castest at him, flies back in thy face. Thou pro-
claimest thy own transgression and shame, when thou art un-
charitably proclaiming his. Is not a backbiter, a reviler, is not
a malicious calumniator, a worse name (which thou takest to
thvself) than that which thou canst fasten on him whom thou
dost reproach ?
7. Thy uncharitable speeches are a dangerous sign of an
unhumbled and unpardoned soul. If thou canst not forgive,
thou art not forgiven. Did you know yourselves, it would
teach you to deal more compassionately with others. You
would have the act of oblivion as extensive as you could, if
you knew what danger you are in yourselves. Do you not
know as much by yourselves as you have to reproach your bro-
ther with ? Do you not then invite both God and man to take
you at the worst, and use you as you use your brother ? Me-
thinks you should rather be desirous of a more tender and in-
dulgent way, as knowing what need yourselves have of it.
If you say, O but he hath done thus and thus against me.
Let conscience say what you have done yourselves against God
and others. If you say, he is a schismatic, an hypocrite, or
this or that ; remember that malice is blind, and never wants
matter of accusation or reproach, and innocency is no defence
against it : else Christ and his prophets and apostles had been
better used by the world. And ask conscience whether more
than you can truly say of him, may not be said against your-
selves. If all such must be defamed, how infamous will
you be ?
8. If you will speak ill, you must hear ill. You teach men
how to use you. " Si mihi pergit qua? vnlt dicere, quae non
vult audiet."
" Benedictis si certasset, audisset bene," saith the comedian.
And God usually in justice suffereth it to be. And as those
that by violence trample down others, when they feel them-
selves; on the higher ground, do oft live to be trampled on
themselves ; so those that take their advantages to insult and
defame others, do usually live to be defamed. " For with wh&l
7*2 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again. Judge
not therefore, that ye be not judged." (Matt. vii. 1, 2.)
To which of these two former ranks you should refer the
common names of scorn that religious persons have been most
loaded with among us, you must judge by the particular occa-
sion and person. It is not my intention or desire to plead for
any faction, disobedience, irregularity, or hypocrisy ; much
less to palliate heresies or odious crimes that are cloaked with
the name or profession of religion. Jt is the hypocrite that I
am all this while detecting. But 1 must say that it hath been the
highest brand or character of hypocrisy and impudent profaneness
conjunct ; and one of the most crying transgressions of this land,
that men, baptized into the name of Christ, have made a scorn at
the diligent serving of him, and lived in the hatred of that re-
ligion in the life and practice, which themselves profess. And
that if upon some small circumstantial differences, any of their
superiors have encouraged them to use any nickname of re^-
proach against their most conscientious brethren, they have
been glad of the occasion, and used those reproaches against the
serious practice of religion, which others pretend to use only
against men's different opinions, which they account their ex-
orbitances or mistakes. How the names of zealots, precisians,
puritans, and such like, have been used in this land ; and what
sort of people have been made thereby (and by the discounte-
nance of those that should have cherished a diligent, holy life)
to be the common scorn ; and how great a hinderance this hath
proved to the salvation of many thousand souls, is a thing that
is much more sad to mention, than difficult to prove. And
when one nickname is grown out of use, the serpentine enmity
watcheth for the opportunity that is afforded by differences and
discountenance of the times, to take up another that may have
a sharper sting. The dead form of religion, and as much as
you will of words and shows, they can reverence or endure:
but life, and seriousness, and practice, is the thing they hate.
Just like a bear, or other ravenous creature, that will let their
prey alone while it seem dead and stirs not ; but if it stir,
they leap upon it, and tear it into pieces. And therefore it
is that the diligent zealous exercise of religion among the Pa-
pists, by images, and tautologies, and lifeless ceremonies and
forms, is not half so much hated or reproached by the vulgar,
as the serious exercise of unquestionable duties, that all are
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. *Jo
in words agreed in, is here with us. To pray in our families ;
to instruct our children or servants in the necessary points of
faith and duty ; to exhort a drunkard, a swearer, a covetous
person, or other ungodly ones to repent, and to give up them-
selves to a holy life ; to take up any serious speech of death
and judgment, and the life to come, and the necessary prepa-
rations thereto ; these and such like are the odious marks of a
zealot, a precisian, or puritan, with the ungodly rabble : so
that serving the great and glorious God is with them become a
matter of scorn ; while serving the devil is taken for their glory,
if they can but do it in the plausible less, disgraceful mode.
But because some of the chief accusers of the brethren would
needs persuade men, that the ordinary usage of the foremen-
tioned nicknames hath been less impious and more justifiable,
against a sort of people only whom they feign to be unfit for
human society, I shall only appeal now to the godly bishops,
and conformable ministers, that mention it.
Bishop G. Downame (who, though he had written so much
for bishops, hath written as much to prove the Pope to be the
Antichrist) in his sermon called Abraham's Trial, p. 72, saith :
"And even in these times, the godly live among such a gene-
ration of men, as that if a man do but labour to keep a good
conscience in any measure, though he meddle not with matters
of state, or discipline, or ceremonies ; (as for example, if a
minister diligently preach, or in his preaching seek to profit,
rather than to please, &c. — Or if a private Christian makes
conscience of swearing, sanctifying the sabbath, frequenting
sermons, or abstaining from the common corruptions of the
time) he shall straightway be condemned for a puritan, and
consequently be less favoured, than either a carnal gospeller,
or a close papist/ 5 &c. Such were the times then. '
Dr. Robert Abbot, public professor of divinity in Oxford,
and after bishop of Salisbury, in a sermon on Easter-day, 1615,
saith : " That men, under pretence of truth, and preaching
against the puritans, strike at the heart and root of faith and
religion, now established among us : that this preaching against
the puritans was but the practice of Parson's and Campian's
counsel, when they came into England to seduce young stu-
dents ; and when many of them were afraid to lose their places
if they should professedly be thus, the counsel they then gave
them was, that they should speak freely against the puritans,
and that should suffice/' &c. So he.
74 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
Of Archbishop Laud's tract of Doctrinal Puritanism, drawn
up for, and presented to, the Duke of Buckingham, see Pryne,
in his Tryal, p. 156. Divers bishops have affirmed the Jesuits
were the masters of this nickname here in England, and the
promoters of it.
But of the common sense of this word, and the use of it,
I shall now call in no more witnesses but Mr. Robert Bolton, a
man that frequently published his judgment for conformity to
prelacy and ceremonies; in his Discourse of Happiness, p. 163,
he thus speaketh :
" I am persuaded there was never poor persecuted word,
since malice against God first seized on the damned angels, and
the graces of heaven dwelt in the heart of man, that passed
the mouths of all sorts of unregenerate men, with more distaste-
fulness and gnashing of teeth than the name of puritan doth
at this day ; which notwithstanding as it is now commonly meant
(N. B.) and ordinarily proceeds from the spleen and spirit of
profaneness, and good fellowship, as an honourable nickname,
that I may so speak, of Christianity and grace. And yet for
all this I dare say, that there is none of them all, but when
they shall come unto their beds of death, and are to grapple
immediately with the painful terrors of the king of fears, and
to stand or fall to the dreadful tribunal of the living God, —
then (except the Lord suffer them to fall into the fiery lake with
senseless hearts and seared consciences) would give ten thousand
worlds, were they all turned into gold, pleasures, and impe-
rial crowns, to change their former courses of vanity, &c, into
a life of holy preciseness, strictness, sincerity, and salvation.
Oh ! when the heavens shall shrivel together like a scroll, and
the whole frame of nature flame about their ears ; when the
great and mighty hills shall start out of their places like frighted
men ; and the fearful reprobate cry and call upon this moun-
tain, and that rock, to fall upon him; when as no dromedary
of Egypt, nor wings of the morning, shall be able to carry
them out of the reach of thy revenging hand ; no top of Car-
mel, no depth of sea, or bottom of hell, to hide them from
the presence of him that sits upon the throne, and from the
wrath of the Lamb ; no rock, nor mountain, nor the great
bodv of the whole earth, to cover them from the unresistable
power that laid the foundations of them ; no arm of flesh, or
armies of angels, to protect them from those infinite rivers of
brimstone which shall be kept in everlasting flames by the anger
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. /5
of God, when their poor and vvoful souls shall infinitely desire,
rather to return into the loathed darkness of not being, and to
be hid for ever in the most abhorred state of annihilation, than
now to become the everlasting objects of that unquenchable
wrath, which they shall never be able to avoid or to abide, and
to be chained up by the Omnipotent hand of God among the
damned spirits, in a place of flames and perpetual darkness,
where is torment without end, and past imagination : I say, at
that dreadful day (and that day will come) what do you think
would thev give for part in that purity which now they perse-
cute ? and for the comforts of true-hearted holiness that now
they hate ? and yet without which (as it will clearly appear,
when matters are brought before that high and everlasting
Judge) none shall ever see the Lord, or dwell in the joys of
eternity. Nay, I verily think there are no desperate despisers
of godliness, or formal opposites to grace, which do now hold
holiness to be hypocrisy, sanctification singularity, practice of
sincerity too much preciseness, — but when the pit of destruc-
tion hath once shut its mouth upon them, and they are sunk
irrecoverably into that dungeon of fire, would be content, with
all their hearts, to live a million of years as precisely as ever
saint did upon earth — to redeem but one moment of that tor-
ment.'* So p. 159. "The common conceit of these men is, that
civil, honest men are in the state of grace, and that formal
professors are very forward, and without exception, but true
Christians indeed, are puritans, irregularists, exorbitants, tran-
scendants to that ordinary pitch of formal piety, which in their
carnal comprehensions they hold high enough for heaven : they
either conceit them to be hypocrites, and so the only objects
for the exercise of their ministerial severity, and the terrors of
God ; or else, though the Lord may at last pardon perhaps their
singularities and excesses of zeal, yet, in the mean time, they
dissweeten and vex the comforts and glorv of this life, with
much unnecessary strictness and abridgment.
"Now, of all others, such prophets as these are the only
men with the formal hypocrite ; exactly fitted and suitable to
his humour ; for however they may sometimes declaim boiste-
rously (N. B.) against gross and visible abominations, (and that
is well) yet they are no searchers into, nor censurers of, the
state of formality ; and therefore do rather secretly encou-
rage him to sit faster upon that sandy foundation, than help to
draw him forward to more forwardness," &c.
76 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
See also his Description of a puritan, p. 132.
So, in his Direction for Walking with God, p. 172,
"Good fellow-meetings and ale-house revellings, are the
drunkard's delight : hut all the while he sits at it, he is perhaps
in a hodily fear of the puritan constable/'
Many such passages tell you how the word puritan was com-
monly interpreted in Oxford, Northamptonshire, and where-
ever learned and holy Mr. Bolton was acquainted.
And having mentioned his testimony of the use of the word, I
shall add somewhat of his discovery of this spirit of malignity
and detraction that worketh in the anti-puritans. In his Dis-
course of Happiness, p. 190, he saith:—
(C The reverence and respectful carriage to godly ministers,
which may sometimes be found in the formal hypocrite, doth
grow towards distaste and disaffection, when they press them
by the powerful sense, and piercing application of some quick-
ening scriptures, to a fervency in spirit, purity of heart, pre-
ciseness in their walking, supernatural singularity above ordinary
and moral perfections, excellency of zeal, and a sacred vio-
lence in pursuit of the crown of life : to an holy strictness,
extraordinary striving to enter in at the strait gate, and tran-
scendant eminency over the formal righteousness of the Scribes
and Pharisees, to a nearer familiarity with God by prayer, daily
examination of conscience, private humiliations, meditation
upon the endless duration in a second life ; to a narrow watch
over the stirrings and imaginations of the heart, and expression
of holiness in all the passages of both their callings, &c. —
Points and ponderations of which nature are ordinarily to him
as so many secret seeds of indignation, and many times breed
in his formal heart, cold affections, exasperation, and es-
trangement, if not meditation of persecution and revenge.
Sanctification, preciseness, purity, holiness, zeal, strictness,
power of godliness, spiritual men, holy brethren, saints in Christ,
communion of Christians, godly conferences, conceived prayers,
sanctifying the sabbath, family exercises, exercise of fasting,
and mortifying humiliations, and such like; are commonly to
men of this temporising temper, and hike- warm constitution,
terms of secret terror, and open taunting. — And sometimes
they villanously sport themselves with them, and make them
the matter of their hateful and accursed jests, that so they
may keep under as much as they can, in disestimation and
contempt, the faithful professors and practisers thereof, whom
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 77
naturally they heartily hate, and also seem thereby to bear out
the heartless flourishes of their own formality with greater
bravery. Hereupon it is, that if they take a child of God but
tripping in the least infirmity, (against which too, perhaps, he
strives and prays with many tears, &c.) slipping only in some
unadvised precipitant passage of his negociations, &c, — O then
they take on unmeasurabiy ! they cry out, these are your men
of the Spirit ; these are the holy brethren ; these are your pre-
cise fellows ; these are they which make such show of purity
and forwardness! you see now what they are, when matters
come out, and their dealings are discovered, when it comes to
the trial indeed, or to a matter of commodity, &c. Are they
not proud ? are they not malicious ? are they not hard-hearted
and covetous as well as others, &c. When by the mercies of
God (in their sense) they are neither so nor so ; but such cen-
sures as these are very often the mere evaporations of pure
malice, and the bitter ebullitions and overflowings of their
gall," &c.
And p. 164. "The ordinary conceit which unregenerate men
entertain of these (experimental ministers) is — that they are
troublers of Israel, preachers of terror, transgressors of policy,
unfit to prophesy at Court, or in the King's Chapel, pestilent
fellows, seditioners, factionists, born only to disquiet the world,
and vex men's consciences. — In these days of ours especially,
which are strangely profane, and desperately nought, in what
man soever the power of grace, undaunted zeal, resolute since-
rity, are more working, eminent, and remarkable, ordinarily the
more and more implacable, outrageous, and inflamed opposites
shall that man find, wheresoever he lives. "
And p. 10. " The formal hypocrite is moved to think his state
good, and the way of his life to be right, from a prejudice which
he conceives from the imputations which the world layeth upon
the children of God ; such as are pride, hypocrisy, singularity,
melancholy, simplicity," &c.
Page 38. " His form of godliness in his conceit is the only
true state of salvation : whatsoever is short of him is profane-
ness ; whatsoever is above him is preciseness. But, when upon
his death-bed, he awaketh."
And Direct, for Walk. p. 131. "The more forward he is in
the narrow way, the more furiously is he persecuted by the spite
of tongues : the most resolute for God's glory, and in good
causes, is ordinarily railed against, and reviled. The foul spirit
78 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
of good fellowship, as they call it, is still foaming out against
God's chiefest favourites the foulest censures : that they are
hypocrites, humorists, factionists, traitors, pestilent fellows,
and all that is nought. — There is no creature that ever God
made, not Satan himself excepted, which is more maliciously
set against and censured than good men. Neither should any
have so bad a name as they, could the hellish mists of virulent
tongues obscure and stain the glory of their reputation."
And p. 43. "At this day, professors of the gracious way be
in greatest disgrace with the most ; and a drunkard, and swag-
gering good fellow, an usurer, a son or daughter of Belial, shall
find more favour, applause, and approbation with the world,
than a man which makes conscience of his ways, &c."
Page 350. "They cry, these forward professors will all turn
fantastical, familists, anabaptists, arians, any thing ; which
cry awakes the eye of state jealousy, and so, by an unworthy
consequent, draws upon those who are true of heart, even
God's best servants, and the king's best subjects, discounte-
nance, suspicions, if not molestations, unnecessarily, cause-
lessly."
And p. 351, 352, out of Austin's Epistles, p. 137, he shows,
that it was so in his time. " They everv way, and infinitely
labour, that when some professors of holiness have foully fallen
indeed, or be only so slandered, the world would believe that
they are all such ; do you not think in his time the world did
thus exult and exclaim, or in the like manner, upon Lot's fall ?
6 Here now you see puritan Lot, who could not endure the good
fellowship of the Sodomites, he is now himself seized on by
incest '. they are all such, I warrant you:'" citing Du Barta's
translation by Silvester, p. 412.
Base, busy stranger ! com'st thou hither thus
Controller-like, to prate and preach to us?
No puritan, thou shalt not here do so, &c.
Thus you hear, from a conformable divine, how men calling
themselves Christians, and being (some of them) formally reli-
gious, do prove themselves self-deceiving hypocrites, by their
unbridled tongues, in reviling at those as Puritans, and too
precise, that will not be self-deceiving formalists as well as
they. I shall only add some of Bishop Hall's characters of an
hypocrite, that you may see what formality is in the judgment
of knowing men.
Page 169. "Walking early up into the city, he turns into
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. /9
the great church, and salutes one of the pillars on one knee ;
worshipping that God which at home he cares not for, while
his eye is fixed on some window, or some passenger, and his
heart knows not whither his lips go. He rises, and looking
about with admiration, complains on our frozen charity, com-
mends the ancient — with the superfluity of his usury, he builds
an hospital, and harbours them whom his extortion hath spoiled:
so while he makes many beggars, he keeps some. He turneth
all gnats into camels, and cares not to undo the world for a
circumstance. Flesh on a Friday is more abomination to him
than his neighbour's bed. He abhors more not to uncover at
the name of Jesus, than to swear by the name of God," &c.
So Bishop Hall.
But perhaps you will say, these persons whom you describe,
that will make a mock of godliness itself, are not to be num-
bered with hypocrites, but with the openly profane.
To which I answer, 1. Even these profess themselves to be
Christians, and therefore are hypocrites when they are not
what they do profess. 2. They persuade themselves that they
are as truly godly as those that they reproach, and do not
think that it is godliness, indeed, for which they do reproach
them, but for engrossing the name or reputation of godliness
to themselves, and for some differing manner or way of worship.
For this is one of the most notable cheats by which the
devil undoes the empty, formal hypocrite \ finding that this
man doth own Christianity in his opinion, but is void of the
true spirit, and power, and life of Christian religion ; he raiseth
some controversies between the serious Christian and the hy-
pocrite, about some controvertible points of doctrine, or about
some modes or circumstances of discipline and external wor-
ship, and when they fall into two sides, the hypocrite thinks
that it is but in these controversies that the difference lies.
The question, thinks he, is not whether men should be regene-
rate, godly, and religious, but whether my way of religion or
the puritan's and precisian's be better ! And presently he
hence concludes, that indeed it is he that is the more truly
religious. For, saith he, my judgment is sound, and the Pu-
ritan's is erroneous ; I am of the judgment of the church,
which he is against ; the reverend prelates or doctors are more
of my side than on his ; I am for order, and he is for coufu-
sion and irreverence, and followeth the humours and fancies
of his own brain. And thus the devil turneth his eye from the
80 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
main difference, and makes him believe that it is these con-
troversies that are all that sets them at a distance. But alas !
man, thou overlookest the point that thy life and soul lieth
on. Agree first in the serious hearty entertainment and practice
of the substance of that holy truth which you are both in point
of opinion agreed in, and do not condemn thyself in the
things which thou allowest ; contradict not thy creed and pro-
fession by thy fleshly, worldly, negligent, careless, and ungodly
life, but love God with all thy heart and might, and first seek
his kingdom and his righteousness, which thou confessest
thou shouldest do, and then the principal difference is healed,
and thou hast escaped the principal danger of thy soul, and
then it is not a few circumstantial differences that will divide
your hearts, or divide you from each other in the life to come.
Men that differ about bishops, and ceremonies, and forms of
prayer, may be all true Christians, and dear to one another,
and to Christ, if they be practically agreed in the life of god-
liness, and join in a holy, heavenly conversation. But if you
agree in all your opinions and formalities, and yet were never
sanctified by the truth, you do but agree to delude your souls,
and neither of you will be saved for all your agreement.
III. The third sort to be spoken to, is those that let out
their passion in hard speeches against superiors or others, that
they think do wrong or persecute them on a religious account.
At this time I will suppose the injury be real, and the complaint
be just, it yet beseems not Christians to revile.
1. Consider how contrary this is to the example of our
Lord ; and that he left us his example in this particular, with
a special recommendation for our imitation. When he was
falsely accused, and the High Priest urged him to answer for
himself, (Matt. xxvi. 62, 63,) he was silent, to show that he
could bear a false accusation, without so much as vindicating
his innocency by a just defence. O learn both the lesson and
motives recommended to you, 1 Pet. ii. 18, to the end. " Ser-
vants be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the
good and gentle, but also to the forward. For this is thank-
worthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief,
suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it if, when ye are buf-
fetted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently ? But if, when
ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is ac-
ceptable with God, For even hereunto were ye called, because
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 81
Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should
follow his steps who did no sin, neither was guile found in
his mouth ; who, when he was reviled, reviled not again ;
when he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to
him that judgeth righteously." Here is the description of
your duty, and your example. Are you used worse than Christ
was used ? (Isa. liii. 7, 8.) He was oppressed, and he was af-
flicted, yet he opened not his mouth ; he is brought as a lamb
to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb,
so he openeth not his mouth. And if you will come to him,
and be his disciples, you must learn of him to be meek and
lowly in heart, that you may find rest unto your souls. (Matt.
xi. 28, 19.)
2. Consider, as our kingdom is not of this world, so we are
not to strive for worldly pre-eminence, nor with carnal wea-
pons, but must know that our greatness here is in being the
least, and our dignity in being the servants of all ; and our gain
is by our loss, and our honour by evil reports, and by disgrace,
and our advancement by our debasement, and our prefer-
ment by being kept from worldly honour, and our joy by sorrow,
and our exaltation by humiliation. And therefore it is con-
trary to our state of faith to murmur at them that deprive us
of the pleasures of sense, or the ease and privileges of the
flesh. Mark the description of Christianity in the gospel, and
see how much of it consisteth in contempt of the esteem and
honours of the world, and of all the accommodations and
pleasures of the flesh, because of the expectation of the unseen
eternal pleasures ; and in the forsaking all, and taking up our
cross, and following a crucified Christ ; and in patience, and
meekness, and forbearing arid forgiving ; and rather than seek
either verbal or actual revenge, to give the cloak also to him
that takes away our coat, and turn the other cheek to him that
smiteth us. Unmortified passion, and untamed nature, will
not give some men leave to understand these passages of Christ,
but they search for some such figure so to expound them by
as shall annihilate the plain and proper sense. Self-love so
blindeth men, that when they read these gospel precepts, they
feel not their consciences touched and bound by them, but
they read them as if they read them not, and retain no more
than if it were nonsense which they read. Had the commands
aforesaid (of patience, forbearing, and forgiving,) but as much
force and efficacy upon the souls of most professors as the com-
VOL. XVII. g
82 THK VAIN RELIGION OF
mandments have that arc against swearing, and cursing, and
drunkenness, and fornication ; we should have much better
maintained our imiocency and our peace, and have more
honoured our profession by showing the world Christianity
exemplified in its proper, genuine nature and effects.
3. Consider, it is not oppression, persecution, or hard usage
that will exempt us from the obligation of the fifth command-
ment, which requireth us to honour our superiors, our natural,
and civil, and ecclesiastical fathers. It is the evil and froward,
and not only the good and the gentle, that we must honour
and obey. And the reason is plain from their original end.
It is not as our trustees, or agents, or friends only, that our
rulers must be honoured, but as the officers of the God of
heaven ; nor is it only as they do good to us, but as they preserve
order and justice in the world, and are the pillars of the Com-
monwealth. If magistrates should deal ever so hardly with
you and me, yet still their office is of necessity to the common
good. And if their office be necessary, their honour is neces-
sary, for when they are dishonoured and despised, they are dis-
abled. And therefore, for the common good, we must be
careful to keep up the honour of our governors, even when we
suffer by them ourselves. Princes were none of the best when
the apostles commanded the churches to honour them, and
obey them, and this not only for fear of their penalties, but for
conscience' sake. (Rom, xiii. 5.) Of old it was they that walked
after the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness, that were presump-
tuous and self-willed, and despised government, and were not
afraid to speak evil of dignities ; whereas the angels that are
greater in power and might, bring not railing accusations
against them before the Lord. (2 Pet. ii. 10, 11 ; Jude 8,9.)
4. Consider, that reviling is a tongue-revenge, and revenge
is God's, and he is engaged to repay, and hath commanded
us not to avenge ourselves. As we must not step into the judge's
tribunal whenever we think he is negligent in his adminis-
trations, so much less must we accuse God of negligence or in-
justice, by stepping into his throne. And though the railers of
these times excuse their sin with the name of justice, they must
show their commissions for the executing of that justice, before
it will pass in heaven for an excuse. Is not God severe enough ?
will not his judgment be terrible enough? would you wish
men to suffer more than he will inflict on the impenitent ?
what ! more than hell ? and will it not be soon enough ? are
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 83
vou so hasty for so dreadful a revenge ? can you not stay when
the Judge is at the door ? Mark both the usage and remedy
of believers, in James v. 5 — 8. To the rich and great ones of
the world he saith, " Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and
been wanton ; ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of
slaughter 1 Ye have condemned and killed the just, and he
doth not resist you." There is your usage. " Be patient, there-
fore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord." There is the
remedy. But must we stay so long ? He thus repeateth his
advice : ie Be ye also patient : stablish your hearts ; for the
coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Let your moderation be
known to all men ; the Lord is at hand." (Phil. iv. 5.) " Shall
not God avenge his own elect, that cry night and day unto
him, though he bear long with them ? I tell you that he will
avenge them speedily." (Luke xviii. 7> 8.) There is no contra-
diction between crying long and avenging speedily.
5. Consider what compassion, rather than reproach, you owe
to those by whom you suffer. They do themselves much more
hurt than they do you. Are they great ? They have the more
to answer for, and their fall will be the greater. (James v. 1 — 3.)
If you are yourselves believers, go into the sanctuary, and ask
the Scriptures what will be their end ; and then deny them
compassion if you can. Alas ! consider they are, at the worst,
but such as you were formerly yourselves as to the main, Paul
makes a sad confession of his own persecution of the church,
when he was before Agrippa, and cloth not complain that he was
himself so hardly used. "I verily thought," saith he, "with
myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of
Jesus, Many of the saints I shut up in prison (little thinking
that they were saints) ; I gave my voice against them, I pu-
nished them oft in every synagogue ; and being exceedingly
mad against them, I persecuted them." (Acts xxvi, 9 — 12.) He
would not tell Agrippa that he was mad, but he might speak
more freely of himself. Oh ! Sirs, pity poor men who have
the temptations of worldly greatness and prosperity, and must
go through a camel's eye if they will come to heaven ; who
stand so high that sun and wind have the greatest force upon
them ; who see so much vanity, and little serious exemplary
piety ; who hear so much flattery and falsehood, and so little
necessary truth, saith Seneca, " Divites cum omnia habeant,
unum illis deest; scilicet, qui verum dicat : si enini in cliente-r
g2
84 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
lam fyelicis hominis potentumquc perveneris, aut Veritas, aut
amicitia perdenda est/' If you were in their places, you know not
how far you might be prevailed upon against yourselves. If little
temptations can make you miscarry in your places so oft and
foully as you do, what would you do if you had the strongest
baits of the world, and allurements of the flesh, and the most
dangerous temptations that Satan could assault you with ?
Have you not seen of late before your eyes, how low some have
fallen from high professions, and how shamefully the most pro-
mising persons have miscarried, that were lifted up and put to
the trial of such temptations of prosperity as they had never
been used to before ? Oh ! pity those that have such dangerous
trials to pass through, and be thankful that you stand on safer
ground ; and do not cruelly envy them their perils, nor reproach
them for their falls, but pray, and daily pray, for their recovery.
6. Consider this speaking evil of those by whom you suffer,
hath too much of selfishness and corrupted nature in it to be
good. If another suffered as you do, and you were ad-
vanced as another is, would not you speak more mildly then ?
Or, if not so, yet the proneness of nature to break out into re-
viling words, though .it were for religion and for God, doth
intimate to you that it hath a suspicious root. Do you find it
as easy to be meek and patient, and forgive a wrong, and love
an enemy ? Take heed lest you serve Satan in vindicating the
cause of God. It is an unfit way of serving God, to do it by
breaking his commands. Read seriously the description of a
contentious, hurtful, foul-tongued zeal, in James iii., and then
tell me what thanks Christ will give you for it. The two great
disciples, James and John, thought it would have notably
honoured Christ, and curbed the raging spirit of the ungodly,
if he would have let them call for fire from heaven, to consume
a town that refused to receive him. But doth Christ encourage
their destroying zeal ? No ; but he tells them, " Ye know not
what spirit ye are of." They little knew how unlike to the
tender, merciful, healing spirit of Christ that fiery hurting spirit
was, that provoked them to that desire, nor how unpleasing
their temper was to Christ. This is the very case of many
thousand Christians that are yet young, and green, and harsh,
and have not attained to that mellowness, and sweetness, and
measure of charity, that is in grown, experienced Christians.
They think their passions and desires of some plagues on the
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 85
contemners of the gospel, are acceptable to God, and blame
the charitable as too cold, when they little know what spirit it
is that raiseth that storm in them, and how unlike, and unac-
ceptable it is to Christ. Were you as zealous to serve all others
in love, and to stoop to their feet for their salvation, and to
become all things lawful to all men, that you may win some,
this saving zeal would be pleasing to your Lord, who comes to
do the work of a physician, and not of the soldier, to save, and
not to destroy, and therefore most approves of those that serve
him most diligently in his saving work.
7. Lastly, consider, your passions and evil speakings will but
increase your suffering, and make it seem just, if otherwise it
were unjust. If you are not meek, you have not the promise
of inheriting the earth. (Matt. v. 5.) If you honour not your
parents or superiors, you have not the promise that your " days
shall be long in the land." And your evil speaking will make
men conclude that you would do evil if you could and durst; as
it is said to be Zoilus's answer, when he was asked why he spoke
evil of Plato, and such worthy men, " Quoniam malum facere
cum velim non possum— ^Because I would do them hurt and
cannot." Give not occasion for such a charge.
Finally, " Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of
another : love as brethren : be pitiful : be courteous : not ren-
dering evil for evil, or railing for railing; but, contrariwise,
blessing, knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should
inherit a blessing ; for he that will love life, and see good days,
let him refrain his tongue from evil." (1 Peter iii. 8 — 11.) "But
if ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye : and be not
afraid of their terror, nor be troubled." (ver. 14.)
But I suppose you will here say, f Is it not lawful to call a
spade a spade ? Is not a wo against them that call evil good ?
May not a man speak of the hurtful crimes of others ?' I an-
swer, first, Yes, when, as a magistrate, a minister, or a brother,
you have just cause to tell them of it lovingly, though plainly,
to their faces, in order to their recovery: secondly, and when
you have a just call to speak of it to others, either in seeking
justice, or in charity and mercy, for the preservation of those that
else will be more hurt by the silencing of men's faults, than you
do hurt by mentioning them.
But, 1. You may not slander men as guilty of what indeed
they are not.
2. You may not make men's faults seem worse than they are.
8() THE VAIN RELIGION OF
3i You must endeavour the good of the person as much as
you can, while you blame the sin.
4. You must not mention men's faults without a call ; unless
the good of himself or others do require it.
5. You must not do it with a revengeful mind) for personal
injuries.
6. You must manifest love and compassion in all.
7. You must difference between reigning sins, and human
frailties ; and between a course of sin and an unusual fall ; and
between a sin repented of, and not repented of ; and must
censure but as you find God censure in his word.
8. You must be more ready to speak of the good that is in
the same men as you have a call, than of the evil ; and not
maliciously stick only in the galled place.
9. Let it be as far as may be to his face.
10. Let it be according to the common rule of equity. Do
as you would be done by. Not measuring your duty to
others, by a corrupt impatience of bearing such yourselves ;
but speaking nothing for matter or manner to another, which
you would think unmeet to be spoken to you, if you were in his
case.
11. And especially be tender of the honour of superiors, yea,
though they were evil, and do you wrong.
12. And foresee the consequence, whether your words are
not like to do more hurt than good.
And if still you think that sufferings will justify reviling, con-
tumelious complaints, consider these two causes of your
mistake.
1. You make a great matter of a little one. As there is not
so great good in the prosperity of the flesh, as worldlings think;
so neither is there so great evil in the loss of it ; what great
harm is poverty, imprisonment, reproach, or death ? Nay, you
have a promise that all shall work together for your good.
(Rom. viii. 28.)
2. You make a strange matter of that which is the ordinary
condition of believers, to be hated of all men ; to have all man-
ner of evil spoken falsely of you ; to be persecuted from one
city to another ; to be killed all the day long, and counted as
sheep to the slaughter. Do these seem strange matters to you ?
Did you never read or hear the Gospel ? nor know the terms
of Christ till now ? Did you never read of forsaking all for
Christ, if indeed you would be his disciples ? Did you never
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 87
count what it must cost you to be saved ? Did you not renounce
the world and the flesh in your baptismal, oft-renewed covenant,
(1 Peter iv. 12, 13.) "Beloved, think it not strange concerning
the fiery trial, as if some strange thing happened to you ; but
rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufTerings.' ,
And will you think so strange of smaller matters, as to think
they excuse your impatience, and evil speeches ?
By this time you may see, if you are willing to see, that all
among us that are not real saints, are hypocrites, if they profess
themselves Christians and the servants of God \ and that mise-
rable, ungodly souls, that call such hypocrites, as are more dili-
gent than themselves for their salvation, do but discover their
ignorance and malignity, and condemn themselves in betraying
their hypocrisy, while they reproach the practice of the same
christian religion which themselves profess ; and the obedience
to that Scripture which they confess, themselves, to be the word
of God. All the profane, and unsanctified among us, that call
themselves Christians, are certainly hypocrites. And for the
godly it is the very same religion, that is professed by them and
you ; it is the same engagement and vow that you all made to
God in baptism ; and suffer but reason impartially to tell you,
when two men have entered the same covenant, and one never
mindeth it so as to keep it ; and the other makes it his chiefest
care ; which of these is like to be the dissembler in his cove^
n ant ? When two men profess themselves the servants of God,
and as such place their hopes in heaven, and one of them makes
a jest of sin, and serveth the flesh and world which he hath re-
nounced, and hates those that diligently serve the Lord ; and
the other maketh it the principal care and business of his life to
serve and please him, insomuch as he is reproached for it, as
making more ado about it than he needs ; which Of these are
hypocrites, and which are serious, in the performing of their
covenants, and living according to their profession ? If two
servants promise to do your work, and one labour as hard as he
can, and the other sit down and deride him for making so much
ado, which was it that played the hypocrite in his promise ? If
diligence in God's service be a sign of hypocrisy, then promise-
keeping is hypocrisy, and promise-breaking is sincerity ; and
then you may transfer the case to God, who will be the rewarder
of them only that diligently seek him. (Heb. xi. 6\) And say that
it is his faithfulness to break his promises, and his unfaithfulness
to keep them. But who will spend words on such impious
88 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
absurdities ? so gross, that the devil would [have showed him-
self a fool to vent them, if he had not made his followers such
fools as to believe them. But for the faithful servants of the
Lord, let them know, that they must serve him on such terms ;
they must live above the judgment and reputation of this world;
and be content that God, the searcher of hearts, shall be their
judge, who knoweth both sincerity and hypocrisy ; and will
bring forth their righteousness as the light. Christians, you
must not only be sincere, but also patiently expect to be ac-
counted hypocrites, and pointed at as the only dissemblers of
the world ; you must not only be honest, but patiently expect
to be accounted dishonest. You must not only be wise and
sober, but patiently expect to be accounted fools and madmen.
You must not be liberal, charitable, and contemners of the
world, but patiently expect to be called covetous, even though
you give away all that you have. You must not only be chaste
and temperate ; but also patiently expect to be defamed as in-
continent and licentious, and as Christ was called, a wine-bibber,
a friend of publicans and sinners. A minister must not only lay
out himself wholly for the saving of men's souls, and spend him-
self and all that he hath on his Master's work; but also patiently
expect to be accounted unfaithful, covetous, and negligent, and
murmured at by almost all whose unreasonable desires he doth
not answer, and be censured by almost all whose wills and
humours he doth not fulfil 5 and that is, most, that have a self
that ruleth at home, and, therefore, they think should be the
idol of others, as it is their own ; and that are but unacquainted
with the reasons of those things that do displease them. It is
little comfort to us to do good, if we cannot bear the estimation
of doing evil, and cannot lose all the observation, acknowledg-
ment and applause of man, as if we had never done the good at
all. It is far from christian perfection to be honest, and godly,
and sincere, if we must needs be accounted to be as we are,
and cannot patiently be esteemed dishonest, ungodly, and
hypocritical ; and be judged worst when we are best ; what
have the servants of Christ lost their lives for in flames, and by
other sorts of torments, but for the best of their service, and
greatest of their piety and fidelity? When dogs bark at pas-
sengers, commonly it signifieth but two things, namely, that they
are persons they know not, or that they hate ; but it is no sign
that the persons are bad, or poor, or sick; for be they never so
bad and miserable, if they know them, and love them, the dogs
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 89
will not bark at them. See that thou be not an hypocrite,
and then it must be accounted a small matter by thee, to be
called an hypocrite; yea, if persons that fear God themselves
shall so esteem thee, it is no other affliction but what thou must
be armed for, and patiently undergo. Even from the godly,
through mistake, we often suffer most for our greatest duties,
and are censured most for that which God and conscience most
approve us for ; and lose our reputations for that which God
would be greatly offended with us if we did otherwise. As ever
then you would not prove yourselves hypocrites, see that you
look not for the hypocrite's reward, as Christ calls it, Matt. vi.
2, which is, to be approved of men ; be they good or bad men,
their overvalued applause may be but the hypocrite's reward. To
be content and patient in doing well, and being judged to do ill,
and being good, and being judged to be bad, is the property of
him that is sincere indeed; therefore, to be unthankfully re-
quited and reviled, and spit upon, and buffeted, and shamefully
used and put to death, even by those whose lives and souls he
had, with greatest care and condescension, pitied, this was the
pattern of love and self-denial that was set us by our Lord.
And though we cannot reach his measure, and distempered
Christians find much struggling before they can bring themselves
to patience, under such ingratitude and unworthy usage from
the world, especially from their mistaken froward brethren, yet,
in some prevailing measure, it must be done. For he that can-
not serve God without the hypocrite's reward, is but an hypo-
crite. If he will not be a Christian, obedient, charitable, dili-
gent, faithful, for heaven and the pleasing of God alone, he is
not a Christian indeed. And, alas, what a pitiful reward is it,
to be thought well of, and applauded by the tongues of mortal
men ! How few were ever the more holy by applause ! But
thousands have been hurt, if not undone, by it. Thou givest all
thou hast to the poor : thou spendest thyself wholly, and all
that thou hast, for the service of God, and the good of others ;
it is well ; it must be so. But, after all, thou art censured, slan-
dered, vilified, and unthankfully and unmannerly used. And what
of that ? what harm dost thou fear by it ? What advantage thy
pride and selfishness might have taken, even by due applause
and thankfulness, it is easy to perceive. But now the temptation
is taken out of thy way ; thou art secluded from all creature-com-
forts ; and so art directed, and almost forced, to look up to the
love of God alone ; now thou hast no other reward before thee, it
90 THE VAIN RELIGION OF
is easier to look singly on the saints' reward. When God hath
no competitor, to whom else canst thou turn thy thoughts ?
when all others abuse thee, it is easier to have recourse to him.
When earth will scarce afford thee any quiet habitation, thou
wilt surely look to heaven for rest.
Thus much I thought meet to interpose here for the confir-
mation of the sincere, on occasion of the world's unjust accusa-
tions ; and so to persuade them to be satisfied in the portion of
the sincere. I now return again to the self-deceiver.
And here I shall conclude all with these two requests to you,
which, as one that foreseeth the approaching misery of self-
deceivers, I earnestly entreat you, for the sake of your immortal
souls, that you will not deny me. The first \s, that you will be
now but as willing to try yourselves, as I have been to help you ;
and as diligent and faithful when you are alone, in calling your
own hearts to a close examination, as I have been to hold the
light here to you. O refuse not, delay not, to withdraw your-
selves sometimes from the world, and set yourselves as before
the eye of God, and there bethink yourselves whether you have
been what you have vowed and professed to be ! And whether that
God hath been dearest to your hearts, and obeyed in your lives,
and desired as your happiness, who hath been confessed and
honoured with your lips ? Consider therefore, that God judgeth
not as man ; nor will he think ever the better of you, for think-
ing well of yourselves. And that there must go more to prove
your approbation with God, than commonly goes to keep up your
reputation in the world. The religion that serveth to honour
you before men, and to deceive yourselves, will never serve to
please the Lord and save your souls. And the day is at hand
when nothing but God can give you comfort, and when self-
deceivers will become, everlastingly, self-tormentors. O there-
fore go willingly and presently to the word, to your lives, and
hearts, and consciences, and try yourselves, and try again, and
that with moderate suspicion, that in so great a business you
may not be deceived, and be self-deceivers.
2. My second request is, that if you do discover, or but
justly suspect yourselves of hypocrisy and self-deceit, you would
stick there no longer, but presently change your vain religion,
your seemings and formalities, for the power of godliness and
sincerity of heart.
But I suppose that some of you will say, there lies the diffi-
culty. O that we could do it ! But how should it be done ?
THE FORMAL HYPOCR1TK. 91
I answer : if thou really be willing to be above hypocrisy,
and a vain religion, the cure is half wrought, at least ; and I
will not tire thee now with many, but help and try thee by these
few, directions.
In general, be what thou hast promised and vowed to be, in
thy baptism, and what thou still dost profess to be, a Chris-
tian, and it will serve thy turn : what that is, I have told you
before.
More particularly. Direct. 1. Deliberately renew thy cove-
nant with God : and wish a grieved heart, bewailing that thou
hast been a covenant-breaker, give up thyself presently to God
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; as thy Creator, Redeemer,
and Sanctifier, thy Owner, thy Ruler, and thy Father.
2. Renounce sincerely the devil, the world, and the flesh, and
be at a point with all below ; and quit all conceits and hopes
of felicity, or rest, on earth t and absolutely devote and resign thy-
self, and all thou hast, to the will and service of thy Lord, without
any secret exceptions or reserves. This is the property and plague
of hypocrites, that secretly they have exceptions and reserves in
giving up themselves to God. They will follow him, except it
would disgrace them, or undo them, in the world ; he shall have
all, provided the flesh may not be too much pinched* That is,
in plain English, they take him not for God, but for a second
to themselves and the world, and will give him but what the
flesh can spare.
3. Fix the eye of lively faith of God upon the everlasting
joys, and there take up thy whole reward, and look for no
other. Quit all expectations of a reward from men. Let it
seem a small thing to thee, what any mortal man shall think
or speak of thee ; unless as God's honour or interest is con-
cerned in thine. I have told you before, he is an hypocrite that
will not be godly without the hypocrite's reward; and that can
sail no further than he is moved by the wind of man's applause,
or some other worldly end.
4. Stick not in any externals of religion, nor in notions and
barren, ineffectual opinions. So far art thou religious, as
thy soul is engaged unto God, and thy life employed for him ;
and so far thou dost truly worship him as thy heart is drawn up
to him in love, and as thou dost fear him, admire him, trust him,
and take thy pleasure in him. Think not, that it is a saving
religiousness, to be of such or such an opinion, or such a party,
or such a church, or to say over so many words or prayers, or
92 THE VAIN KELTGION OF
to keep a task of outward duties, or to be of a ready, voluble
tongue, in preaching, prayer, or discourse, religion lieth in the
heart and life.
5. Indulge not thyself in one known sin. Retain no gross
or wilful sin. Plead for no infirmity, but make it the business
of thy life to extirpate the relics of the body of death. Be
willing of the most searching word, and of the plainest reproof,
and of the help thou canst get against so dangerous an enemy.
6. Stint not thyself in any low degree of holiness ; but love,
and long, and strive, after the highest. If thou bear a secret
core of distaste against those that outgo thee, it is a mortal sign.
Thou must be perfect in desire, or thou art not sincere.
7. Walk always as in the presence of the holy, dreadful,
heart-searching God : remember that he seeth thy ends, thine
affections, and all thy thoughts. Be the same, therefore, in secret
as thou art in public ; sincerely search the word of God, and
know what it is that he would have, and that resolve on, if all
the world should be against it. Unresolvedness is hypocrisy ; and
temporizing, or "following the greater side, for the security of the
flesh, is no better. Never think that thou canst be too holy or
too obedient. But make it thy study to do God all the service
that thou canst, whatever suffering or cost it put thee to. Be
not ashamed openly to own the cause of Christ. In the pre-
sence of the greatest, remember that thy Master is so much the
greater, that they are worms and vanity to him. Take heed
of culling out the easy and cheap part of religion, and laying
by the difficult and dear. Thy religion must be as the heart
in thy breast, which is always working, and by which thou livest;
which cannot stop long, but thou wilt die. But the hypocrite's
religion is like the hat upon his head, for ornament and shelter
from the weather, and not for life : in the night when none
seeth him he can lie without it ; and in the day he can put it
off for the sake of a friend, and perhaps stand bare in the pre-
sence of a greater person that expecteth it. So can the hypo-
crite too often dispense with his religion.
8. Be hearty and serious in all thou doest. Hear, and read,
and pray, as for thy life. Sincerity consisteth much in serious-
ness. Remember that thou art almost at another world ! While
I am speaking, and thou art hearing, we are both hastening to
our endless state. O how should men live on earth, that must
live here for so short a time, and must live for ever in heaven
or hell ! these things are true, and past all question : and there-
THE FORMAL HYPOCRITE. 93
fore, for your souls' sake, lose not heaven by trifling. Pray not
in jest, and resist not sin in jest, lest you be damned in good sad-
ness. When you are at work for eternity, it is time to do it
with all your might. O what inconceivable mercies are now
offered to you ! O what an excellent price is in your hands !
And nothing is so likely to deprive you of the benefit, as dream-
ing and dallying, when you should be up and doing ; as if
this were not your business, but your play ; and salvation and
damnation were matters of sport ! O do but set yourselves to
the pleasing of God, and the saving of your souls with all your
might, and ply it with diligence as your chiefest work, and then
you are out of the danger of the hypocrite ! But if still you
will give the world the pre-eminence, and your flesh must be
pleased, and your prosperity secured, and God must have but
compliments, or the leavings, your misery is at hand, and
vengeance shall undeceive those hearts that would not be unde-
ceived by the word. And you shall remember, to the increase
of your anguish, that you were told this day, that your seeming,
trifling religion would prove vain. But I beseech you, as you
are men, as you love your souls, dismiss us with some better
hopes; and now resolve to be downright Christians. Which,
as I have begged of you, I shall now beg of God.
THE
FOOL'S PROSPERITY;
A SERMON
PREACHED AT COVENT GARDEN:
PUBLISHED UPON OCCASION OF SOME OFFENCE AND
MISREPORTS.
THE
FOOL'S PROSPERITY.
PROV. i. 32, 33.
For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the
prosperity of fools shall destroy them. But whoso hearken-
eth unto me, shall be quiet from fear of evil.
The bounteous offers and vehement exhortations of Christy here
in this chapter, were accompanied with a foresight and predic-
tion of their rejection, by many : yet doth not that prevent the
offers and exhortations; but occasion the prediction of the
calamity of the refusers. God will not go out of his way, be-
cause the ungodly will not walk with him. He will do the part
of a righteous Governor, though he foresee that men will not do
the part of obedient subjects. But his primary end shall be
attained upon the righteous, in the successes of his grace, as
his secondary end shall be upon the disobedient, in the honour
of his vindictive justice. This is the sense of the words which
I have now read to you. Which, 1. Describe the ungodly.
1. By their present way of sin. 2. And by their future state
of misery. Their sin is described by: 1. The occasion. 2.
The act. 3. The habit. Prosperity and ease is the occasion :
turning away from God, and rejecting his counsel, is the act ;
and folly, or simplicity, is part of the habit. Simplicity is here
taken for sinful foolishness, and not, as it is often, for com-
mendable sincerity. Whether you read it, the turning away,
or the ease, of the simple, it is all one as to the scope and use
that I shall now make of it, both being included as to the sense
in the other words. Folly is mentioned both as the cause of
their abuse of prosperity, and as the effect of prosperity so
abused. Because they are fools, they turn God's mercies to
their own destruction: and because they prosper, they are
confirmed in their folly.
2. The words describe the godly. 1 . By their obedience ;
THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY. 97
they " hearken unto Christ." 2. By their privilege or reward ;
they u shall dwell safely, and be quiet from fear of evil."
We shall begin with the first, and show you, 1. That it is
so, that " the prosperity of fools destroyeth them." 2. How folly
and prosperity concur to their destruction ; or how prosperity
befooleth and destroyeth them. 3. How we should all improve
this truth to our best advantage.
I. Scripture and experience concur in proving the truth of
the conclusion.
1. Though God tell us in his word of a difficulty that all
must conquer that will be saved, yet it is a greater, extraordi-
nary difficulty that he tells us of, as to the rich and prosperous
in the world ; such a difficulty as is pathetically expressed by
this interrogation, (Luke xviii. 24;) " How hardly shall they that
have riches enter into the kingdom of God ! " Such a difficulty
as is expressed by his proverbial comparison ; (v. 25 ;) " For
it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a
rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. " Such a difficulty
as cast the hearers into admiration, and made them ask, (v. 26,)
" Who then can be saved? " Such a difficulty as is to man an
impossibility, (v. 27,) and leaves only this hope that, " Things
are possible to God, that are impossible to man."
2. And though it is said of men indefinitely that it is but
few that shall be saved ; yet is it noted of the rich and prosper-
ous that it is few of them among those few, or few in compari-
son of other sorts of men, that shall be saved ; (Job vii. 48 ;)
u Have any of the Rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him }"
(1 Cor. i. 26 ;) " For ye see your calling, brethren, how th?*t not
many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many
noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of
the world to confound the wise ; and God hath chosen the
weak things of the world to confound the things which are
mighty ; and base things of the world, and things which
are despised, hath God chosen; yea, and things that are
not, to bring to nought things that are, that no flesh should
glory in his presence.'"' And therefore Scripture speaketh
in such general language, as if salvation had been almost
appropriated to the poor, and the rich had been excluded, be-
cause of the rarity of their salvation ; (Luke vi. 24, 25 ;) " But
wo unto vou that are rich ! for ye have received your consola-
tion : wo unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger: wo
unto you that laugh now ! for ye shall mourn and weep," (Jam.
VOL. xvn. u
98 THE FOOr/s PROSPERITY.
ii. 5, (5.) " Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen
the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom
which he hath promised to them that love him ? But ye have
despised the poor, Do not rich men oppress you, and draw
you before the judgment seats ? Do they not blaspheme that
worthy name by the which ye are called ?" And therefore when
Christ would describe a wicked, miserable man, he doeth it in
these words, (Luke xvi. 19,) " There was a certain rich man
which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sump-
tuously everyday." And, (Luke xii. 16, 19;) " The ground
of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully," &c. And when
he would describe a godlv, happy man, he doeth it under the
name of Lazarus. (Luke xvi. 20.) Judge now by the success,
as it is discovered in the Scripture, what good prosperity doth
to fools.
I might turn you to David's observations in Psalm xxxvii. and
lxxiii. | and mind you why it is that Christ himself went before
us in a state of chosen poverty ; (2 Cor. viii. 9 ;) and why his
disciples followed him in this tract ; and why he called them
so much to deny and forsake the riches of the world, and tried
them so oft by selling all, and following him in hopes of a hea-
venly reward. But the point is evident in what is said in my
text, and these annexed testimonies.
2. But yet to make you more apprehensive of it, I shall
adjoin the testimony of experience : and tell me whether pro-
sperity be not the. destruction of fools, when vou have noted the
fruits of it, in these few observations.
1. Where do you find less serious care and labour for salva-
tion than among the prosperous great ones of the world ? What
abundance of them are dead-hearted, senseless, disregarders of
everlasting things ! What abundance of them are of no reli-
gion, but the custom of their country and the will of their
superiors, which are their Bible, their law and gospel, and their
creed ! What abundance of them are addicted to that wor-
ship which Christ pronounceth vain, which is measured by the
traditions of men, and consisteth merely in ceremonious shows !
How few of them are acquainted with the spiritual worship of
that God who, being a Spirit, can accept no worship but what
is spiritual. Alas ! poor souls, they drown their reason in sen-
suality, and are fed as for the slaughter, and think not seriously
whither they are going till prosperity hath ceased to deceive
them, and Satan is content to let them see that they have lost
the fool's prosperity. 99
and he hath won the game. They are of the religion described
by the apostle, (1 Tim. vi. 5,) that taketh gain for godliness;
but if godliness must go for gain, they will have none. To op-
press their tenants, and devour widows' houses, and cloak it
with a long pharisaical lip-service, or wipe their mouths with
some customary complimentary prayers, and offer God to be a
sharer in the prey, this is the commonest religion of the rich.
But they cannot endure to be so pure as to devote themselves
to God in that pure and undefiled religion which visiteth the
fatherless and widows in their affliction, and keepeth men un-
spotted from the world. (James i. 27.) What houses or com-
pany can you go into, where religion is more bitterly derided,
more proudly vilified, more slanderously reproached, or more
ingeniously abused and opposed, than among the rich and full-
fed worldlings ?
And if there be here and there a person fearing God among
them, he passeth for a rarity or wonder. And a little religion
goes a great way, and is applauded and admired as eminent
sanctity, in persons of the higher rank. If a poor man or
woman dwell, as it were, in heaven, and walk with God, and
think, and speak, and live by rule, it is scarce regarded; po-
verty, or want of a voluble tongue, or the mixtures of unavoid-
able frailties, or some imprudent passages that come from the
want of a more polishing culture and education, doth make
their piety but matter of jesting and reproach to the Dives of
the world ; but if a lord, or knight, or lady, have but half their
piety, humility, and obedience to God, how excellent are they
in their orb ! Nay, if they do but countenance religion, and
befriend the servants of the Lord, and observe a course of cold
performances, with the mixture of such sins for which a poor
man should be almost excommunicate, what excellent religious
persons are they esteemed ?
2. What families are worse ordered, and have less of serious
piety, than the rich? If our splendid gallants should be desired
to call their families constantly to prayer ; to instruct them all
in the matters of salvation; to teach them the word of God
with that diligence as is commanded, Deut. vi. 11, and to help
them all in their preparations for death and judgment; to cate-
chise them, and take an account of their proficiency, to curb
profaneness and excess; and to say, with Joshua, (xxiv. 15,)
"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord;" how
strange and precise a course would it seem to them ! Should
h 2
100 THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY.
they purge their families of ungodly servants, and imitate
David, (Psalm ci,) that would not let the wicked dwell in his
sight; should they spend the Lord's days in as serious endeavours
for the spiritual benefit of their families and themselves, as poor
men do that fear the Lord, what wonders of piety would they seem !
3. In their entertainments, visitations, and converse, how rare
is serious, holy conference among them ! How seldom do you
hear them remembering their guests and companions of the
presence of the Holy God, of the necessity of renewing, con-
firming, and assisting grace ; of the riches of Christ revealed in
the gospel ; of the endless life of joy or misery which is at
hand. How seldom do you hear them seriously assisting each
other in the examining of their hearts, and making their calling
and election sure, and preparing for the day of death and judg-
ment ! A word or two in private with some zealous minister
or friend, is almost all the pious conference that shall be heard
from some of the better sort of them. Should they discourse
as seriously of the life to come, and the preparation necessary
thereto, as they do about the matters of this life, they would mar
the mirth and damp the pleasure of the company, and be taken
for self-conceited hypocrites, or men of an unnecessary strictness
and austerity, inconsistent with the jocund lepidity and sensual
kind of delight wherewith they expect to be entertained. The
honest, heart-warming, heavenly discourse that is usual among
poor serious Christians, would seem, at the tables of most of our
great ones, but an unseasonable interruption of their more na-
tural and acceptable kind of converse.
4. What men do more carelessly cast away their precious
time than these Dives do ? They think they have a license to
be idle and unprofitable, because they are rich ; that is, to
abuse or hide their talents, because they have more than other
men; forgetting that, to whom much is given, of them shall
much be required. Because they have no poverty or family
necessities to constrain them to a laborious life, they think they
may lawfully take their ease, and live as drones on other men's
labours, as if they owed nothing to God or the commonwealth,
but all to their own flesh. Their morning hours, which are most
seasonable for meditation, and holy addresses unto God, and the
works of their calling, are, perhaps, consumed in excess of sleep :
the next are wasted in long attiring and curious adorning of
their flesh ; from thence they pass to vain discourse, to needless
recreations, to eating and drinking, and so to their vain talk and
THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY. 101
recreations again, and thence to the replenishing of their bellies,
and so to sleep : and thus the words of the fool, that Christ de-
scribeth in Luke xii. 19, are turned by them into deeds, and it
is the language of their sensual lives; "Soul, thou hast much
goods laid up for many years \ take thine ease, eat, drink, and
be merry." Sleeping and sporting, and jesting, and idle talk-
ing, and eating and drinking, and dressing and undressing, with
worldly cares and passions intermixed, are the very business
and employment of their lives. Thus contemptuously do they
waste their precious hours, while God stands by, and time makes
haste, and death draws near, and their miserable souls are un-
prepared, and heaven or hell are hard at hand ; and this is all
the time of preparation that ever shall be allowed them. O do
but look on these distracted, piteous souls that have but a
short, uncertain life to provide for a life that hath no end, and
see how they forget or senselessly remember the matters of
infinite concernment ! See how they trifle away that time that
never will return ! How they sport and prate away those hours
which shortly they would recal, were it possible, with the loud-
est cries, or recover with the dearest price ! When they know
not but, in a laughter, or a merry jest, their breath may be stop-
ped by an arrest from heaven ; or justice may surprise their
miserable, unready souls with the cards in their hands, or the
cup at their mouths, when they have not the least assurance of
being out of hell an hour, and yet can sell this time for no-
thing, and basely cast it away on toys, which is all that ever
they shall have to prevent everlasting misery, or to procure
everlasting joy. Stand by a while, and hearken to the discourse
of sensual gallants, and mark how days and weeks are spent,
and then tell whether the prosperity of such fools be not made
the occasion of befooling and destroying them ?
5. What men in the world do live so sensual a life as rich
and prosperous worldlings live ? the difference between the
sanctified and the unsanctified, the children of God and of the
devil, is, that one of them liveth after the Spirit, and the other
liveth after the flesh, as in Romans viii. to ver. 14, you may
read at large. And how few of these Dives do think the damn-
ing sin of flesh-pleasing to be any sin in them at all ? If they
do not eat till they are sick, or drink till they are drunk, their
consciences scarce control them in their voluptuousness : they
never well understood the meaning of such passages as these ;
(Rom. xiii. 14 ;) "Make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil the
(desires or) lusts thereof." (Rom. viii. 13.) "If ye live after the
102 THE FOOl/s I'KOSPKMTY.
flesh ye shall die." (1 Cor. ix. 27.) "I keep under my body and
bring it into subjection," &c. They understand not how far the
flesh is their enemy; or else (as they have verbally renounced
it) they would use it as an enemy.
6. In their prosperity these fools have not the wit to love or
bear the means of their preservation or recovery. They have
the sorest maladies, and are most impatient of the remedies.
They are in the stream of temptations, and have greater need
of help than others ; and yet there is none that reject it with
more contempt and pride. Plain-dealing preachers, which honest
humble souls delight in, do seem intolerable saucy fellows to
these sons of pride. If we tell them but of the sin that God
hath most plainly condemned in his word, or of the judgment
which he hath there denounced, aud make the most prudent
and modest application of it unto them, we seem to wrong
them, and stir up their pride and enmity against us, and pro-
voke them to slanderous recriminations, or revenge. It troubles
them not to commit it, or to keep it, but to hear of it ; and they
take us to be more faulty for admonishing them of it, than them-
selves for being guilty of it. Though we are by office the mes-
sengers of Christ, that will tell them of it shortly to their faces,
and fear not the proudest son of Belial, yet are they too
stout to be admonished by such as we, but reject our message
with hatred and disdain. And, indeed, it is a wonder of mercy
that the prevalency of this impatient guilt and malice hath not,
ere this, turned plain and faithful preaching into some toothless
formalities, or homilies, and silenced the preachers for the
security of the offenders ; and expelled the physicians lest they
displease the sick. The Lord still prevent it. If we tell them
with the greatest caution but of the necessary truths, without
which a sinful soul is never like to be humbled or saved, we are
taken to be turbulent, and injurious to the ease or honour of
these auditors. They must hear of the necessity of regenera-
tion and holiness, and of the weight and worth of things eternal,
and yet they cannot bear to hear it. They must have heart-
searching and heart-breaking truths, in a searching, awakening
manner, brought home to them, if ever they will be saved by
them ; but they cannot endure it. The surgeon is intolerable
that would search their sores ; and yet there is no other way to
heal them. Alas ! the heart of man is so hard, that all the skill
and industry of the preacher can scarce sufficiently sharpen and
set home the truth that it may enter ; but nothing that is sharp
can be endured bv these tender «ouK Such language as Christ
the fool's PROSPERITY. 10t3
and his prophets and apostles used, doth seem too rough for
silken ears. Their honour must not be blotted with the men-
tion of their odious sins, and deplorable misery. To be a glut-
ton, or a drunkard, or a wanton, or a filthy fornicator, or a
malicious Cain, they can endure \ but to be told, " Thou art
the man," though it be in secret, and with love and tenderness,
they cannot bear. The minister is thought to wrong them that
shall secretly and faithfully admonish them, and tell them truly
what will be the end : but Christ will execute all his threaten-
ings, and make them feel what now they hear, and yet con-
strain them to confess that he doth not wrong them. We
wrong them now, if we tell a gentleman of his impiety, and
sensuality, and pride, and of his vilifying precious time, and
casting it away on cards, and idleness, and unprofitable talk;
yea, though he be so far forsaken of common grace and reason,
as to hate and deride the serious practice of his own profession,
and the way that the God of heaven hath prescribed as flatly
necessary to salvation, yet cannot he endure to hear of his
enmity against the Lord, nor to be told that he beareth the
image of the devil, while he is against the image and laws of
Christ. Should we but privately read a text to them that con-
demneth them, they are as angry with us as if we made the
Scripture which we read ; and it were not the word of God, but
ours. If we tell them that " Without holiness none shall see
God," (Heb. xii. 14,) and that " Except they be regenerated,
converted, and become as little children (in humility beginning
the world anew) they cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven/'
(Matt, xviii. 3 ; John iii. 3. 5, 6,) that " If any man have not
the Spirit of Christ, the same is none of his," (Rom. viii. 6,) or
that " Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge," (Heb.
xiii. 4,) and that "The unrighteous, the fornicators, effeminate,
covetous, extortioners, drunkards, or revilers, shall not inherit
the kingdom of God," (1 Cor. vi. 9—11 ; Eph. v. 3—6,) they
think we talk too precisely or presumptuously to them. You
would think by their proud contempt of his threatenings, and
their boldness and carelessness in sin, that these silk-worms did
imagine that they had conquered heaven, and the Righteous
God were afraid to meddle with them ; or that he would reverse
his laws, and pervert his judgment for fear of dishonouring or
offending them. Little do they think how many Dives are now
in hell. But methinks they might easily believe, that their
honourable flesh is rotten, and turned to common earth ; and
104 the fool's prosperity.
death will make bold to tell them, also, when their turn is come,
that they have been pampering but a piece of clay ; and that it
was not worth the loss of heaven, not the suffering of hell, to
spend so much time, and care, and cost, to feed up a carcass for
the worms. We must now submissively ask their leave, to tell
them what God hath said against them. But God will not ask
them leave to make it good upon the highest, the proudest, and
most secure of them all; "For God shall wound the head of his
enemies, and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in
his trespasses." (Psalm lxviii. 21.) "He is not a God that hath
pleasure in wickedness ; neither shall evil dwell with him. The
foolish shall not stand in his sight ; he hateth all the workers
of iniquity." (Psalm v. 3, 4.) The ungodly (that delight not in
the law of the Lord) are like the chaff that the wind driveth
away; they shall sit not in judgment, nor sinners in the assem-
bly of the righteous." (Psalm i.) " The wicked shall be turned
into hell, and all the nations that forget God/' (Psalm ix. 17.)
Cannot you endure to hear and consider of these things ? How
then will you endure to feel them ? God will not flatter you.
If all your greatness enable you not to repulse the assaults of
death, nor to chide away the gout or stone ; and all your honour
and wealth will not cure a fever, or ease you of the toothach;
how little will it do to save you from the everlasting wrath of
God ! or to avert his sentence which must shortly pass on all
that are impenitent ! And yet prosperity so befooleth sensual
men, that they must hear of none of this; at least not with any
close and personal application. If you speak as Christ did to
the Pharisees, (Matt. xxi. 45,) that they perceived that he spake
of them, they take you for their enemy for telling them the
truth, (Gal. iv. 16,) and meet our doctrine as Ahab did Elijah
(2 Kings xxi. 20,) " Hast thou found me, O mine enemy !" and,
(1 Kings xviii. 17,) " Art thou he that troubleth Israel ?" or as
the same Ahab of Micaiah, (1 Kings xxii. S,) "There is one
man (Micaiah) of whom we may inquire of the Lord ; But I
hate him ; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but
evil." Or as Amaziah the priest said of Amos to King Jero-
boam, " He hath'conspired against thee ; the land is not able to
bear all his words." (Amos vii. 10, 13.) "Prophesy not again
any more at Bethel ; for it is the king's chapel, and it is the
king's court." They behave themselves to faithful ministers
as if it were a part of their inviolable honour and privilege, to
be mortally sick without the trouble of a physician, and to have
the fool's prosperity. 105
nobody tell them that they are out of their way, till it be too late
or that they are in misery till there be no remedy ; and that
none should remember them of heaven till they have lost it ;
nor trouble them in the way to hell, and seek to save them, lest
he should but torment them before the time. And thus pro-
sperity makes them willingly deaf and blind, and " turn away
their ears from the hearing of the law," and then their prayers
for mercy in their distress are rejected as abominable by the
Lord. (Prov. i. 24—33 ; xxviii. 9.)
7. Yea, if there be any persecution raised against the church
of Christ, who are the chief actors in it, but the prosperous,
blinded, sensual great ones of the world ? The princes make it
their petition against Jeremiah to the king ; " We beseech thee
let this man be put to death : for thus he weakeneth the hands
of the men of war — and the hands of all the people in speaking
such words unto them : for this man seeketh not the welfare of
his people but the hurt." (Jer. xxxviii. 4.) It was the presidents
and princes that said of Daniel, "We shall not find any occa-
sion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning
the law of his God." (Dan. vi. 5.) Were it not lest some mali-
cious hearer should misapply it, and think I sought to diminish
the reputation of magistrates, while I show the effects of the
prosperity of fools, I should give you abundance of such lamenta-
ble instances, and tell you how commonly the great ones of the
world have in all ages set themselves, and taken counsel, against
the Lord and against Christ. (Psal. ii.) And stumbled upon the
corner-stone, and taken no warning by those that have been
thus broken in pieces before them. How ready is Herod to
gratify a wanton dancer with a prophet's head ! In a word,
as Satan is called the prince of this world, no wonder if he rule
the men of the world, that have their portion in this life. (Psal.
xvii. 14.) " And to command his armies, and engage them
against the servants of the Most High that run not with them
to the same excess of riot. (1 Pet. iv, 4.) And as James saith (as
before cited) " Do not the rich oppress you, and draw you
before the judgment seats ? Do they not blaspheme that worthy
Name by which you are called ? " (Jam. ii. b', 7.)
S. And in all this sin and misery how senseless and secure
are the prosperous fools ! As merry within a year, or month, or
week of hell, as if no harm were near. How wonderful hard it
is to convince them of their misery ! The most learned, wise,
or godly man, or the dearest friend they have in the world, shall
106 the fool's prosperity.
not persuade them that their case is such as to need a conver-
sion and supernatural change. They cannot ahide to take off
their minds from their sensual delights and vanities, and to
trouble themselves about the things of life eternal, come on it
what will ; they are resolved to venture, and please their flesh, and
enjoy what the world will afford them while they may, till sud-
denly God surpriseth them with his dreadful call, " Thou fool !
this night shall thy soul be required of thee ; then whose shall
those things be which thou hast provided ? " (Luke xii. 20.)
" So is he that layeth up riches for himself, and is not rich
towards God." (v. 21.)
II. I shall next show you how it is that prosperity thus de-
stroyeth fools. Briefly, 1. By the pleasing of their sensitive
appetite and fancy, and so overcoming the power of reason.
" Perit omne judicium cum res transit in affectum." Violent
affections hearken not to reason. The beast is made too head-
strong for the rider. (Deut. xxxii. 15.) " Jerusalem waxed fat,
and kicked — then he forsook God that made him, and lightly
esteemed the rock of his salvation."
2. " The friendship of the world is enmity to God : and if
any man love the world, the love of the father is not in him."
(Jam. iv. 4 ; 1 John ii. 15.) And undoubtedly, the more amiable
the world appears, the more strongly it doth allure the soul to
love it. And to the prosperous it appeareth in the most enticing
dress.
«'3. And hereby it taketh off the soul from God. We cannot
love and serve God and Mammon. The heart is gone another
wav when God should have it. It is so full of love, and desire,
and care, and pleasure about the creatures, that there is no room
for God. How can they love him with all their hearts who
have let out those hearts to vanity before?
4. And the very noise and bustle of these worldly things
diverts their mind, and hindereth them from being serious }
and from that sober consideration that requireth some retire-
ment and vacancy from distracting objects.
5. And the sense of present ease and sweetness doth make
them forget the change that is near. Little do they think what
is necessary to comfort a departing soul, when they are in the
heat of pride and lust, or taken up with their business and de-
lights. In the midst of bravery and plenty, feasting and sport-
ing, and such other entertainments of the senses, it is hard to
hold communion with God, and study the life to come in such
THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY. 107
a college or library as this. Prosperity and pleasure make men
drunk ; and the tickled fancy sports itself in abusing the cap-
tivated mind. And these frisking lambs, and fattened beasts
forget the slaughter; they think in summer there will be no
winter; and their May will continue all the year. Little do
do they feel the piercing, griping, tearing thoughts, that at
death or judgment must succeed their security and mirth. O
how hard do the best men find it, in the midst of health and
all prosperity, to have such serious thoughts of heaven, and of
the change that death will shortly make, as they have in sick-
ness and adversity, when death seems near, and deluding things
are vanished and gone ! The words of God have not that force
on a sleepy soul in the hour of prosperity, as they have when
distress hath opened their ears. The same truths that now
seem common, lifeless, inconsiderable things, will then pierce
deep, and divide between the joints and marrow, and work as
if they were not the same that once were laughed at and dis-
regarded. (Eccles.vii. 2, 3, 4.) ie It is better to go to the house
of mourning than to the house of feasting ; " (do you believe
this ?) "For that is the end of all men, and the living will lay
it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter ; for by the sadness
of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the
wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the
house of mirth." I beseech you take patiently your character
and name here from the word of God.
6. Moreover these fools are by prosperity so lifted up with
pride, that God abhors them, and is as it were engaged to abase
them. For " The Lord will destroy the house of the proud.
(Prov. xv. 25.) Every one that is proud in heart is an abomi-
nation to the Lord ; though hand join in hand, he shall not be
unpunished." (Prov. xvi. 5.) " He scattereth the proud in the
imagination of their hearts : He hath put down the mighty
from their seats, and exalted them of low degree : He hath
filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent
empty away." (Luke i. 51, 52, 53.) " In the things wherein
they deal proudly, he is above them." (Exod.xviii. 11.) " For
every one that exalteth himself shall be abased : and he that
humbleth himself shall be exalted." (Luke xviii. 14.) " For God
resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble." (1 Pet. v. 5.)
7. But no way doth their prosperity so desperately precipi-
tate them, and make them the scorn of heaven, and the foot-
ball of divine contempt, as by engaging them in opposition to
the word, and ways, and servants of the Lord. When it hath
108 the fool's prosperity.
drawn them to those sins which God condemned), and his mi-
nisters must reprove, and hath puffed them up with pride, which
makes them impatient of his reproofs, and hath increased their
worldly interest and treasure, and fleshly provision, which he
commandeth them to deny, this presently involveth them in a
controversy with Christ before they are aware, and casteth them
into the temptation of Herod when he was contradicted in his
lust ; and they think they are necessitated to stop the mouths
that dare reprove them, and to keep under the people, and doc-
trine, and discipline of Christ, that are so contrary to them, and
cross them, and dishonour them in their sin ; and to pluck
away this thorn out of their foot, and cast it from them. And
thus their prosperity and carnal wisdom that is employed to
secure it, engageth the earth-worms in a war with Christ ; and
then you may conjecture how long they can endure to kick
against the pricks, and irritate the justice and jealousy of the
Almighty, and presu me to abuse the apple of his eye ; and who
will have the better in the end ? The stubble is more able to
resist the flames, and a fly to conquer all the world, than these
daring lumps of walking clay to conquer God, or escape his
vengeance. (Isa. xxvii. 4.) " Who would set the briers and
thorns against me in battle ? I would go through them ; I would
burn them together/' (Isa. xlv. 9.) " Wo to him that striveth
with his Maker ! let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of
the earth." (Job ix. 4.) " Who hath hardened himself against
him and hath prospered ? " " They all imagine a vain thing,
that set themselves and take counsel together against the Lord,
and his anointed, to break his bonds, and cast away his cords
from them. He that sitteth in heaven will laugh ; the Lord will
hold them in derision : then shall he speak to them in his wrath,
and vex them in his sore displeasure. — He shall break them
with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings ! be instructed, ye judges of
the earth : serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with tremblihg:
kiss the son lest he be angry, and ye perish in the way, when
his wrath is kindled but a little ; blessed are all they that put
their trust in him." (Psal. ii.) " They think it is but a few con-
temptible or hateful men that they set themselves against ; for-
getting Acts ix. 4,5; Luke x. 16; 1 Thes. iv. 8, that tell
them all is done to Christ : and Matt, xviii. 6 ; " Whoso
shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were
better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck,
and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." (Matt. xxi.
THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY". 109
44.) " And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken ;
but on whomsoever this stone shall fall, it will grind him to
powder." I will conclude this with Amaziah's case, (2 Chron.
xxv. 16.) "Art thou made of the king's counsel? For-
bear ; why shouldest thou be smitten ? Then the prophet for-
bare, and said, I know that God hath determined to destroy
thee, because thou hast done this, and hast not hearkened," &c.
III. Before I tell you what use to make of the doctrine of
this text, I shall first tell you, by way of caution, what use you
should not make of it.
1. Though the prosperity of fools destroy them, do not hence
accuse God that giveth them prosperity. 2. Nor do not think
to excuse yourselves. 3. Nor do not think that riches are
evil : for the things are good, and the mercies in themselves,
and being rightly used, may further their felicity. But it is the
folly and corruption of their hearts that thus abuse them,
and make good an occasion of evil. I may allude to Paul's
words concerning the law, (Rom. vii. 7, 13,) Are they sin?
or is that which is good made death to them ? " God forbid.
But sin, that it might appear sin, working death by that which is
good." Because they are carnally sold under sin.
4. Nor must you cast away your riches, or refuse them when
offered by God. But take them as a faithful steward doth his
master's stock, not desiring to be overburdened or endangered
with the charge, but bearing what is imposed on you, resolving
to improve it all for God. Not loving nor desiring wealth, au-
thority, or honour, nor yet so lazy, timorous, or distrustful as not
to accept the burden and charge, when God may be served by
it. To cast away or hide your talents, is the part of an unpro-
fitable servant.
5. Take heed lest, under pretence of contemning riches and
prosperity, you be tempted to contemn your governors, or to
speak evil of dignities, or diminish the honour of those that are
set over us, whose honour is necessary to the ends of govern-
ment, and therefore to the people's good. Though James re-
proves the church for partiality in over-honouring a man for a
gold ring, or gay apparel, yet doth he not go about to abate the
honour of authority. Magistracy and riches must be here dis-
tinguished.
6. Take heed lest, while you declaim of the misery of the
rich, you think to be saved merely for being poor; for, poor
or rich, if you be ungodly, you must turn, or die. God doth
] 10 THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY.
not condemn men for their riches, but their sin ; nor save any
for their poverty, bufc their faith and piety, through Christ.
But the uses you should make of the text are these: — »
1 . Grudge not at the prosperitv of ungodly men, but com-
passionate them in their danger and misery.
2. Be not afraid of the prosperity of the wicked. (Psalm
xlix. 16 — 19.) It is they that should be afraid that have so
low to fall.
3. Take heed that you desire not riches or prosperity, unless
you desire that the way to heaven should be made harder to
you, that is so hard already. Be contented with food and rai-
ment. Desire but your daily bread, unless as it is needful for
your Master's service, and the relief of others.
4. Honour those ever, with a double honour, that are great
and godly, that are rich and religious ; not because they are
rich, but because they are so strong and excellent in grace as to
overcome such great temptations ; and to be heavenly in the
midst of earthly plenty, and to be faithful stewards of so much.
Religious, faithful princes, and magistrates, cannot easily be
valued and honoured too much. What wonders are they
in the most part of the earth ! What a blessing to the peo-
ple that are ruled by them ! Were they not strong in faith,
they could not stand fast in such a stormy place. Where is
there in the world a more lively resemblance of God than a
holy prince or governor, that liveth no more to the flesh than
the poorest, for all his abundance of fleshly accommodations,
and that devoteth and improveth all his power, and honour, and
interest, to the promoting of holiness, love, and concord ?
5. Let great men have a double interest in your prayers.
They have a double need of grace and help ; and we have a
double need that they should be gracious. Oh ! think how
hard it is to save their faith, their innocency, and their souls,
and to save the gospel and the public peace in the midst of so
many and great temptations ; and, therefore, pray hard where
prayer is so needful.
And, O that I were now able to speak such enlightening
and awakening words to you, as might show you at once your
worldly prosperity and the heavenly glory in their proper value !
and that God would now open your eyes and hearts accordinglv,
to esteem and seek them. Gentlemen, will you give this once
an impartial hearing, to one that envieth not your wealth, but
foreseeth the end of it ; and how it will forsake you, and in
THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY. Ill
how deplorable a case you will then be found, if you have not
laid up a treasure in heaven, and secured the everlasting riches.
I grudge you not your prosperity, for God doth not grudge it
you: yea, the devil* himself can afford it you for a time, while
you serve him by it, and are captivated to his will in these
golden fetters. And say not that it is I that call such fools :
you see here it is God, that knoweth what he saith, and feareth
not to speak it. But let me, with due submission, propound to
your sober consideration these questions which your consci-
ences are concerned to resolve.
Quest. 1. Can any thing prove him truly wise that directly
contradicteth the wisdom of the Lord, and valueth most the
things that are most vilified by the doctrine and example of
Christ and his apostles, and vilifieth that which Christ ex-
tolleth ?
Quest. 2. Can any thing prove that man to be wise that is
not wise enough to be saved ? Surely it altereth the case but
little, whether Satan be served in English, or in Latin, Greek,
or Hebrew, in Spanish, Italian, or French : or whether you go
towards everlasting wo in leather or in silk; and a miserable
unsanctified soul do dwell in a comely or deformed body; and
in a stately building or a smoky cottage; and be titled a
lord, a knight, or a ploughman; and whether he feed on the
most delightful or the coarsest food. Alas ! all this will soon
be nothing. " The belly for meats, and meats for the belly ; but
God will destroy both it and them." (1 Cor. vi. 13.) It is the
endless life that puts the estimate upon all things here.
Quest. 3. Is he wise that preferreth a feather to a kingdom;
an hour to eternity ; earth to heaven ? If you say you do not so,
let your thoughts, your desires, your delights, your cares, and
vour labour and diligence, be the witnesses, and conscience and
God shall finally judge. A man of reason should never make
such a matter of nothing, as if there were so great a difference
between riches and poverty, honour and dishonour, and a man's
life or happiness consisted in his abundance. As it is usually
the badge of empty, childich, brain-sick women, to value a curi-
osity of attire, and to have mind and time for so many toys,
and to make ostentation of their pride and folly, by their
curled, spotted, gaudy vanity, as if they were afraid lest they
should be unacquainted with it, and should think them wise ; so
is it but a more plausible deliration in those that are more taken
up with names, and titles, and commands, with houses and
112 THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY.
lands, and pompous attendance ; and yet more brutish, where
lust, and sports, and meats, and drinks, are taken for felicity,
while God and heaven stand by neglected, and men forget that
they are called Christians, and that they are men.
Quest. 4. Is it wisdom to esteem men by their prosperity and
pomp, and to admire a gilded post or an ignorant, adorned wan-
ton ; and yet to overlook the divine and heavenly nature of the
sanctified, and the beauty of holiness, and the image of God
upon an humble, gracious soul, when that which is highly
esteemed among men, is abomination in the sight of God ?
(Luke xvi. 15.)
Quest. 5. Is it wisdom to be feasting, and playing, and
dancing, while the soul is under the wrath of God, and in the
gall of bitterness, and bonds of its iniquity ? and by the noise,
and business, and pleasures of the world, to be diverted and
hindered from the speedy settling and securing your everlasting
state ? Should not a man of reason, without delay, the first
thing he doeth, make sure of his title to eternal happiness, when
he is not sure of another hour; and if he miscarry in this, he
is undone for ever ? Should that time be laughed and played
away that hasteth so fast, and is all so short for so great a work
as the securing our salvation ? Should men and women be
courting, and complimenting, and fooling away their precious
time, when the work is undone for which they were born into
the world, and for which they have their lives, and all their mer-
cies ?
Quest. 6. Should all this be done by those that sin against
their knowledge, and confess all this while that the world is
vanity, and know it will leave them, and that all this is true ?
Oh ! Sirs, it must needs be the grief of a foreseeing man to
think, when you forget it, what a change is coming, and what a
sad preparation you are making, and how little a while the
music, the feast, the cards and dice, the filthy lusts and wanton
dalliance, will continue ! and what a lump of self-tormenting
desperation' will seize upon those careless scornful hearts that
now will not be awakened and warmed, nor understand any
further than they see or feel ! In compassion to those that
are passing hence to another world, I beseech you, sometime
withdraw yourselves from sensual divertisements, and soberly
bethink you whether this be the place and company that you
must be with for ever ; how long this merry life will last ; and
whether this be the work that the God of heaven did send you
THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY. 113
about into the world ; and whether it would be more comfort-
able to your review when time is gone, to think of your days of
sensual delight, or of a holy, and humble, and heavenly conver-
sation ; and to hear with Dives, (Luke xvi. 25,) " Son, remem-
ber that thou, in thy lifetime, receivedst thy good things, and
Lazarus evil things ; but now he is comforted and thou art tor-
mented." O then you would wish that you had never heard
those airy titles, and never possessed those sumptuous houses,
nor never tasted those delicious feasts, nor never worn that gay
attire, nor never known thpt'deceiving company, nor been pol-
luted and brutified with those beastly lusts ! Then conscience
will force the now befooled Dives to cry out, ( O that I had
been the most despised man on earth while honour did befool
me ! O that I had lain in medicinal poverty and rags when
I took this mortal surfeit of prosperity ! O that I had lain in
tears and sorrow, when I was infatuated by fleshly mirth and
pleasure, and that I had been among the saints that foresaw
and provided for this day 3 when I drowned the voice of Christ
and conscience with the laughter of a fool and the noise of
worldly business and delights ! O then, how revengefully will
you befool yourselves, that you had time and knew no better
how to use it ! and how sensibly will you justify the wisdom of
believers who bent their care for things eternal ! I am ashamed
of my heart that melts not in compassion in the foresight of
your wo ; and that I beg not of you with tears and importu-
nity to prevent it, and to have mercy on yourselves. Paul had
a better heart than I, that ceased not to warn every one, day and
night, with tears, (Acts xx. 31,) and speaketh thus of such as
you; (Phil. hi. 18, 19;) " For many walk, of whom I have told
you often, and now tell you even weeping, the enemies of the
cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their
belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly
things." When the conversation of believers is in heaven, from
whence they look for the Lord their Saviour.
I suppose you are afraid of the austerities of religion ; and
the devil would persuade you that it is but a self-tormenting or
hypocritical life that we commend to you under the name of
godliness, especially when you see the sadness of some honest
souls that are abused by Satan through the advantages of me-
lancholy : but I must profess it is sorrow that I call you from,
and would prevent : it is no unnecessary grief that I would per-
suade you to, but to a life of heavenly peace and joy. If Satan
VOL. XVII. i
114 THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY.
have abused any servants of Christ, by darkening, and troubling,
and discomforting their minds, which is his ordinary endeavour
when he can no longer keep men quiet, and careless, and presump-
tuous in their misery. This is clean contrary to the nature of
religion and the commands of Christ, that chargeth them always
to rejoice. Do you think that I cannot have more solid joy
with my daily bread, in the apprehensions of the love of God,
and the belief of his promises of eternal life, than foolish
mirth comes to, that is likened to the crackling of thorns in the
fire? (Eccles. vii. 6.) You are for l.jrth, and we are for mirth;
but it is a hearty, solid, spiritual, grounded, lasting mirth that
we invite you to ; and it is a beastly, sensual pleasure that un-
godly men desire. For my part, it is almost half my work to
promote the joys of true believers, and to dissuade them from
such causeless despondencies and troubles as would rob them of
their comforts, and God of their love, and thanks, and praise.
Had you but tasted once the difference between this inward
feast and yours, I should need no more words with you to per-
suade you that godliness is a life of joy. Dare any of you say,
and stand to it, that there is not greater matter for joy in the
love of Christ than in the love of a harlot ? in the assurance of
salvation than in lands and lordships ? in the foresight of hea-
ven than in the company of light-headed, voluptuous people,
that have not wit enough to be serious, nor faith enough to
foresee that which will so sadly and speedily spoil the sport ?
To be foolishly merry in the midst of misery, doth but make
you the objects of greater compassion. Be as merry as you
can, so it be grounded, and durable, and caused by that
which God, and faith, and solid reason will approve, and doth
not tend to greater sorrows. Bethink you well whether Christ
and his apostles lived not a more comfortable life than you :
and imitate them in their way of mirth ana spare not.
But if you are unsanctified, sensual, worldly men, lay by your
mirth till you are fitter for it, and take your portion from the
apostle James, (v. 1 — 3, 5,) "Go to now ye rich men; weep
and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your
riches are corrupted, and your garments moth-eaten ; your
gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a wit-
ness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye
have heaped treasure together for the last days. Ye have lived
in pleasure on earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished
your hearts as in a day of slaughter."
THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY. 115
What pity is it to see men destroy themselves with the
mercies of the Lord ! What pity is it to see them so eager for
prosperity, and so regardless of the proper use and benefit of it?
be not like the bee that is drowned in her own honey ! And
do not so greedily desire a greater burden than you can bear ;
and to have more to answer for, when you have been so unfaith-
ful in a little. And if you believe Christ, who tells you how
hardlv rich men come to heaven, and how few of them are
saved, long not for your danger, and grudge not if you have not
these exceeding difficulties to overcome. You would be afraid
to dwell in that air where few men escape infection ; or to feed
on that diet that most are killed by. It is evident by the effects
that prosperity befooleth and undoeth the most ; we find you on
your sick beds in a more tractable frame.
1. Then a man may speak to you about the case of your im-
mortal souls, with less contempt than now we meet with. You
look not then for laced speeches, but will more patiently hear
our plain discourses of eternal life. 2. Then you will seem
serious yourselves, and speak almost like those that you called
precisians and puritans, for remembering you of these things in
your prosperity. 3. Then you have some better relish of truth
and duty ; and judge better of the matter and manner of ex-
hortation and prayer than you do now. 4. Then you have
more charity and moderation to others ; and are not enraged to
the destroying of those that are not of your opinions in all your
formalities. 5. You would then shake the head at him that
should offer you cards, or dice, or fleshly vanities ; and you
would tell ethers that it is wiser to be delighted in the law of
God, and meditate in it day and night. 6. Then you will speak
as contemptuously of the honour, and pleasures, and profits of
the world, and of pleasing men before the Lord, as we do now.
7. And then you will confess the preciousness of time; the folly
of misspending it ; and that one thing is necessary, for which we
can never (regularly) do too much. And why are you not now
of the mind that you will be at death or judgment, but that
your folly doth turn your prosperity to your bane ? Once more
1 beseech you, for the Lord's sake, retire from the deceiving
world to God ; and if you care where you live to all eternity,
choose your abode ; and now set your heart upon it, and seek
it as your happiness. If all these warnings are refused, con-
science shall tell you when you would not hear it, that vou were
warned.
i 2
1 16 THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY.
Had time allowed it, I should next have delivered my mes-
sage to the humble, upright souls. All you " that hearken to
the Lord, shall dwell in safety, and be quiet from the fear of
evil." (Isaiah iii. 10.) " Say to the righteous, it shall be well with
him. — Wo to the wicked ; it shall be ill with him." (Eccles.
viii. 12.) " Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his
days be prolonged, yet surely I know it shall be well with them
that fear God." (Psalm lxxiii. 1.) "Truly God is good to Israel;
even to such as are of a clean heart." (Psalm xxxvii. 5, 28, 34,
37.) " Commit thy way unto the Lord ; trust in him and he
shall bring it to pass. For the Lord loveth judgment, and for-
saketh not his saints : they are preserved for ever wait on
the Lord and keep his way and when the wicked are cut
off, thou shalt see it. Mark the perfect man, and behold the
upright : for the end of that man is peace."
If you say, ' How are they safe that are so tossed by suffer-
ings ?' I answer, 1. Is he not safe that hath the promise of God
for his security, and is related to him as his child, and hath
Christ for his head and Saviour ? 2. Is he not safe that is de-
livered from the wrath of God and the flames of hell, and dare
look before him to eternity with hope and comfort ? And shall
live with Christ in joy for ever ? 3. Is he not safe that hath no
enemy, but what is in his Father's power. 4. And that hath no
hurt but what shall certainly procure his good ? 5. Nor any
but what we may rejoice in ; and is sure shall be the matter of
his thanks when it is past ? That shall lose nothing but what
he hath already forsaken, and esteemeth but as dross and dung?
How often have we told God in our prayers, that we had rather
have the light of his countenance in adversity, than be strange
to him in prosperity ? And that he would not refuse that state
of suffering, that should be blest to the destruction of our sins,
and the furthering our communion with God, and our assurance
of salvation, and in which we might most serve and honour him
in the world. Did we live by sense, we should misjudge of our
estate : but seeing we live by faith, and in the way can see the
end, we can say that we are safe in the thickest of our enemies,
and will not fear what man can do, while the Almighty is our
rock and fortress : well ma# we be quiet from that fear of evil,
when we are saved from the great everlasting evil ! No evil
shall follow us into heaven : no malice shall there defame us ;
nor virulent tongue blaspheme our holy profession or our
Lord j for the mists of hellish blasphemies shall never ascend to
THE FOOL'S PROSPERITY. 117
blot the glory of Christ or of his saints. Who then shall take us
out of his hands ? Who shall condemn us ? It is he that justi-
fieth us ; not only against the calumnies of malice, but also
against the accusations of Satan for our sin. How safe and
quiet are those millions of souls, that are now with Christ ?
How little are they annoyed, or their joy or melody interrupted,
by all the rage of earth or hell ! The glory of the sun may
sooner be darkened or blemished by obloquy, than their celestial
glory ; for they are glorified with the glory of their Lord ; and
rejoice with his joy, and live because he liveth. Be of good
cheer, Christians ! the haven is within the sight of faith ; we
are almost there \ adversity is our speediest and surest passage :
and then let sin, and rage, and malice, do their worst.
SERMON OF REPENTANCE,
PREACHED BEFORE THE
HONOURABLE HOUSE OF COMMONS,
ASSEMBLED IN PARLIAMENT
AT WESTMINSTER,
AT THEIR LATE SOLEMN FAST FOR THE SETTLING
OF THESE NATIONS,
APRIL 30, 1660.
Tuesday, May 1, 1660.
Ordered,
That the Thanks of this House be given to Mr. Baxter,
for his great pains in carrying on the work of preaching and
prayer, before the House, at Saint Margaret's, Westminster,
yesterday, being set apart by this House for a day of fasting
and humiliation ; and that he be desired to print his sermon,
and is to have the same privilege in printing the same that
others have had in the like kind, and that Mr. Swinfin do give
him notice thereof.
W. JESSOP,
Clerk of the Commons' House of Parliament,
TO THF,
HONOURABLE THE HOUSE OF COMMONS,
ASSEMBLED IN PARLIAMENT.
As your order for my preaching persuadeth me you meant
attentively to hear, so your order for my publishing this sermon
persuadeth me that you will vouchsafe considerately to read it;
(for you would not command me to publish only for others
that which was prepared for and suited to yourselves ;) which
second favour if I may obtain, especially of those that need
most to hear the doctrine of repentance, I shall hope that the
authority of the heavenly Majesty, the great concernment of
the subject, and the evidence of reason, and piercing beams of
sacred verity, may yet make a deeper impression on your souls,
and promote that necessary work of holiness, the fruits whereof
would be effectual remedies to the diseased nations, and would
conduce to your own everlasting joy. Shall I think it were
presumption for me to hope for so high a reward for so short a
labour ? Or shall I think it were uncharitableness not to hope
for it ? That here is nothing but plain English, without any of
those ornaments that are by many thought necessary to make
such discourses grateful to ingenious, curious auditors, proceeded
not only from my present want of advantages for study, (hav-
ing and using no book but a Bible and a Concordance,) but
also from the humbling and serious nature of the work of the
day and from my own inclination, less affecting such ornaments
in sacred discourses than formerly I have done. It is a very
great honour that God and you have put upon me, to conclude
so solemn a day of prayer, which was answered the next morn-
ing by your speedy, and cheerful, and unanimous acknow-
ledgment of His Majesty's authority. May I have but the se-
cond part, to promote your salvation, and the happiness of
this land, by your considering and obeying these necessary
truths, what greater honour could I expect on earth ? Or how
could you more oblige me to remain
A daily petitioner to heaven for these mercies,
on vour own and the nation's behalf,
RICHARD BAXTER.
SERMON OF REPENTANCE.
EZEK. xxxvi. 31.
Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings
that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own
sight, for your iniquities, and for your abominations.
The words are a part of God's prognostics of the Jews' res-
toration, whose dejection he had before described. Their disease
began within, and there God promiseth to work the cure. Their
captivity was but the fruit of their voluntary captivity to sin,
and their grief of heart was but the fruit of their hardness of
heart, and their sharpest suffering of their foul pollutions, and
therefore God promiseth a methodical cure, even to take away
their old and stony heart, and cleanse them from their filthi-
ness, and so to ease them by the removing of the cause. How
far, and when, this promise was to be made good to the Jews,
as nationally considered, is a matter that requires a longer dis-
position than my limited hour will allow, and the decision of
that case is needless, as to my present end and work. That
this is part of the gospel covenant, and applicable to us believ-
ers now, the Holy Ghost, in the epistle to the Hebrews, hath
assured us.
The text is the description of the repentance of the people,
in which the beginning of their recovery doth consist, and by
which the rest must be attained. The evil which they repent
of is, in general, all their iniquities, but especially their ido-
latry, called their abominations. Their repentance is foretold,
as it is in the understanding and thoughts, and as in the will
and affections. In the former, it is called " remembering their
own evil ways." In the latter, it is called " loathing themselves
in their own sight, for their iniquities and abominations/'
Montanus translates it^reprebabitis in vos; but in c. 20, v. 43,
fastidietis vos. The same sense is intended by the other ver-
sions. When the Septuagint translates it by displeasure, and
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 123
the Chaldee by groaning, and the Syriac by the wrinkling of
the face, and the Sept., in c. xx. 43, by smiting on the face ;
the Arabic here perverts the sense by turning all to negatives,
ye shall not, &c, yet in c. xx. 43, he turns it by the tearing of
the face. I have purposely chosen a text that needs no long
explication, that in obedience to the foreseen straits of time
I may be excused from that part, and be more on the more ne-
cessary. This observation contains the meaning of the text,
which, by God's assistance, I shall now insist on, viz. :
The remembering of their own ihiquities, and loathing them-
selves for them, is the sign of a repenting people, and the
prognostic of their restoration, so far as deliverance may be
here expected.
For the opening of which, observe these things following.
2. ft is not all kind of remembering that will prove you
penitent. The impenitent remember their sin that they may
commit it; they remember it with love, desire, and delight ; the
heart of the worldling goeth after his airy or earthern idol.
The heart of the ambitious feedeth on his vain glory, and the
people's breath, and the filthy fornicator is delighted in the
thoughts of the object and exercise of his lust. But it is a
remembering, 1. From a deep conviction of the evil and odi-
ousness of sin. 2. And with abhorrence and self-loathing.
5. That leadeth to a resolved and vigilant forsaking, that is
the proof of true repentance, and the prognostic of a people's
restoration.
3. And it is not all self-loathing that will signify true re-
penting, for there is a self-loathing of the desperate and the
damned soul that abhorreth itself, and teareth and tormenteth
itself, and cannot be restrained from self-revenge, when it finds
that it hath wilfully, foolishly, and obstinately been its own
destroyer. But the self-loathing of the truly penitent hath
these following properties :
1. It proceedeth from the predominant love of God, whom
we have abused and offended. The more we love him, the
more we loathe what is contrary to him.
2. It is much excited by the observation and sense of his
exceeding mercies, and is conjunct with gratitude.
3. It continueth and increaseth under the greatest assurance
of forgiveness, and sense of love, and dieth not when we think
we are out of danger.
4. It containeth a loathing of sin as sin, and a love of ho-
121 A SEKMON OF REPENTANCE.
liness as such, and not only a love of ease and peace, and a
loathing of sin, as the cause of suffering.
5. It resolveth the soul against returning to its former course,
and resolveth it for an entire devotedness to God for the time
to come.
6. It deeply engageth the penitent in a conflict against the
flesh, and maketh him victorious, and setteth him to work in
a life of holiness, as his trade and principal business in the
world.
7. It bringeth him to a delight in God and holiness, and a
delight in himself, so far as he findeth God, and heaven, and
holiness within him. He can, with some comfort and content,
own himself and his conversation so far as God (victorious
against his carnal self) appeareth in him. For as he loveth
Christ in the rest of his members, so must he in himself.
And this is it that self-loathing doth prepare for.
This must be the self-loathing that must afford you comfort,
as a penitent people in the way to restoration.
Where you see it is implied, that materially it containeth
these common acts. 1. Accusing and condemning thoughts
against ourselves. It is a judging of ourselves, and makes us call
ourselves, with Paul, foolish, disobedient, deceived ; yea, mad ;
(as Acts xxvi. 11;) and with David to say, I have done foolishly.
(2 Sam. xxiv. 10.) 2. It containeth a deep distaste and dis-
pleasure with ourselves, and a heart-rising against ourselves.
3. As also an holy indignation against ourselves, as appre-
hending that we have played the enemies to ourselves and God.
4. And it possesseth us with grief and trouble at our miscar-
riages. So that a soul in this condition is sick of itself, and
vexed with its self-procured wo.
2. Note also, that when self-loathing proceedeth from mere
conviction, and is without the love of God and holiness, it is
but the tormentor of the soul, and runs it deeper into sin,
provoking men here to destroy their lives ; and in hell it is the
never-dying worm.
3. Note also, that it is themselves that they are said to loathe,
because it is ourselves that conscience hath to do with, as wit-
ness, and as judge ; it is ourselves that are naturally nearest
to ourselves, and our own affairs that we are most concerned in.
It is ourselves that must have the joy or torment, and therefore
it is our own actions and estate that we have first to mind.
Though yet, as magistrates, ministers, and neighbours, we must
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 125
next mind others, and must loathe iniquity wherever we meet it,
and a vile person must be condemned in our eyes, while we
honour them that fear the Lord. (Psalm xv. 4.)
And as by nature, so in the commandment, God hath given
to everv man the first and principal care and charge of himself,
and his own salvation, and consequently of his own ways, so
that we may with less suspicion loathe ourselves than others,
and are more obliged to do it.
4. Note also, that it is not for our troubles, or our disgrace,
or our bodily deformities, or infirmities, or for our poverty and
want, that penitents are said to loathe themselves, but for their
iniquities and abominations. For, 1. This loathing is a kind
of justice done upon ourselves, and therefore is exercised, not
for mere infelicities, but for crimes. Conscience keepeth in its
own court, and meddleth but with moral evils, which we are
conscious of. 2. And also it is sin that is loathed by God, and
makes the creature loathsome in his eyes ; and repentance
conformeth the soul to God, and therefore causeth us to loathe
as he doth, and on his grounds. And, 3. There is no evil but
sin, and that which sin procureth, and therefore it is for sin
that the penitent loathes himself.
5. Note also, that it is here implied, that, till repentance, there
was none of this remembering of sin, and loathing of themselves.
They begin with our conversion, and, as before described, are
proper to the truly penitent. For, to consider them distinctly,
1. The deluded soul that is bewitched by its own concupis-
cence, is so taken up with remembering of his fleshly pleasures,
and his alluring objects, and his honours, and his earthly busi-
nesses and store, that he hath no mind or room for the remem-
bering of his foolish, odious sin, and the wrong that he is doing
to God, and to himself. Death is oblivious, and sleep hath
but a distracted ineffectual memory, that stirreth not the busy
dreamer from his pillow, nor despatcheth any of the work he
dreams of. And the unconverted are asleep, and dead in sin.
The crowd of cares and worldly businesses, and the tumultuous
noise of foolish sports, and other sensual passions and delights,
do take up the minds of the unconverted, and turn them from
the observation of the things of greatest everlasting conse-
quence. They have a memory for sin and the flesh, to which
they are alive, but not for things spiritual and eternal, to which
they are dead. They remember not God himself as God, with
any effectual remembrance. God is not in all their thoughts.
126 A SERMON OF REPENTANCE.
(Psal. x. 4.) They live as without him in the world. (Eph. ii.
12.) And if they remember not God, they cannot remember
sin as sin, whose malignity lieth in its opposition to the will
and holiness of God. They forget themselves, and therefore
must needs forget their sinfulness. Alas ! they remember not
effectually and savingly, what they are, and why they were
made, and what they are daily nourished and preserved for, and
what business they have to do here in the world. They forget
that they have souls to save or lose, that must live in endless
joy or torment. You may see by their careless and ungodly
lives that they forget it. You may hear by their carnal frothy
speech that they forget it. And he that remembereth not
himself, remembereth not his own concernments. They
forget the end to which they tend. The life which they
must live for ever. The matters everlasting, whose great-
ness and duration, one would think, should so command
the mind of man, and take up all his thoughts and cares
in despite of all the little trifling matters that would avert
them, that we should think almost of nothing else; yet
these, even these, that nothing but deadness or madness should
make a reasonable creature to forget, are daily forgotten by the
unconverted soul, or ineffectually remembered. Many a time
have I admired that men of reason are here to-day, and in endless
joy or misery to-morrow, should be able to forget such inex-
pressible concernments ! Methinks they should easier forget
to rise, or dress themselves, or to eat, or drink, or any thing,
than to forget an endless life, which is so undoubtedly certain,
and so near. A man that hath a cause to be heard to-morrow,
in which his life or honour is concerned, cannot forget it ; a
wretch that is condemned to die to-morrow-, cannot forget it.
And yet poor sinners, that are continually uncertain to live an
hour, and certain speedily to see the majesty of the Lord, to
their unconceivable joy or terror, as sure as now they live on
earth, can forget these things for which they have their me-
mory ; and which one would think should drown the matters of
this world, as the report of a cannon doth a whisper, or as the
sun obscureth the poorest glow-worm. O wonderful stupidity of
an unrenewed soul ! O wonderful folly and distractedness of
the ungodly ! That ever men can forget, I say again, that they
can forget, eternal joy, eternal wo, and the Eternal God, and
the place^of their eternal, unchangeable abode, when they stand
even at the door, and are passing in, and there is but the thin
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 127
veil of flesh between them and that amazing sight, that eternal
gulf; and they are daily dying, and even stepping in. O could
vou keep your honours here for ever ; could you ever wear that
gay attire, and gratify your flesh with meats, and drinks, and
sports, and lusts ; could you ever keep your rule and dignity,
or vour earthly life in any state, you had some little poor excuse
for not remembering the eternal things, (as a man hath, that
preferreth his candle before the sun,) but when death is near
and inexorable, and you are sure to die as you are sure to live;
when every man of you that sitteth in these seats to day can
say, ( I must shortly be in another world, where all the pomp
and pleasure of this world will be forgotten, or remembered but
as my sin and folly,' one would think it were impossible for any
of you to be ungodly, and to remember the trifles and nothings
of the world, while you forget that everlasting all, whose reality,
necessity, magnitude, excellency, concernment, and duration
are such, as should take up all the powers of your souls, and
continually command the service and attendance of your
thoughts against all seekers, and contemptible competitors
whatsoever. But alas, though you have the greatest helps, (in
subservience to these commanding objects,) yet will you not re-
member the matters which alone deserve remembrance ; some-
times the preachers of the gospel do call on you to remember;
to remember your God, your souls, your Saviour, your ends, and
everlasting state, and to remember your misdoings, that you
may loathe yourselves, and in returning may find life ; but some
either scorn them, or quarrel with them, or sleep under their
most serious and importunate solicitations, or carelessly and
stupidly give them the hearing, as if they spoke but words of
course, or treated about uncertain things, and spoke not to them
from the God of heaven, and about the things that every man
of you shall very shortly see or feel. Sometimes you are called
on by the voice of conscience within, to remember the unrea-
sonableness and evil of your ways; but conscience is silenced,
because it will not be conformable to your lusts. But little do
you think what a part your too late awakened conscience hath
yet to play, if you give it not a more sober hearing in time.
Sometimes the voice of common calamities, and national or
local judgments, call on you to remember the evil of your ways;
but that which is spoken to all, or many, doth seem to most of
them as spoken unto none. Sometimes the voice of particular
judgments, seizing upon your families, persons or estates, doth
128 A SERMON OF REPENTANCE.
call on you to remember the evil of your ways ; and one would
think the rod should make you hear. And yet you most disre-
gardfully go on, or are only frightened into a few good pur-
poses and promises, that die when health and prosperity revive.
Sometimes God joineth all these together, and pleadeth both by
word and rod, and addeth also the inward pleadings of his Spirit;
he sets your sins in order before you, (Psalm 1. 21,) and expos-
tulated! with you the cause of his abused love, despised sove-
reignty, and provoked justice ; and asketh the poor sinner,
' Hast thou done well to waste thy life in vanity, to serve thy
flesh, to forget thy God, thy soul, thy happiness ; and to thrust
his services into corners, and give him but the odious leavings
of the flesh ?' But these pleas of God cannot be heard. O
horrible impiety! By his own creatures; by reasonable creatures
(that would scorn to be called fools or madmen) the God of
heaven cannot be heard ! The brutish, passionate, furious sin-
ners will not remember. They will not remember what they
have done, and with whom it is that they have to do, and what
God thinks and saith of men in their condition ; and whither it
is that the flesh will lead them ; and what will be the fruit and
end of all their lusts and vanities ; and how they will look
back on all at last ; and whether an holy or a sensual life will
be sweetest to a dying man ; and what judgment it is that
they will all be of, in the controversy between the flesh and
Spirit, at the latter end. Though they have life, and time, and
reason for their uses, we cannot entreat them to consider of
these things in time. If our lives lay on it, as their salvation,
which is more, lieth on it, we cannot entreat them. If we should
kneel to them, and with tears beseech them^ but once a day,
or once a week, to bestow one hour in serious consideration of
their latter end, and the everlasting state of saints and sinners,
and of the equity of the holy ways of God, and the iniquity of
their own, we cannot prevail with them. Till the God of heaven
doth overrule them we cannot prevail. The witness that we
are forced to bear is sad ; it is sad to us ; but it will be sadder
to these rebels that shall one day know that God will not be
outfaced ; and that they may sooner shake the stable earth, and
darken the sun bv their reproaches, than outbrave the Judge of
all the world, or by all their cavils, wranglings, or scorns, escape
the hands of his revenging justice.
But if ever the Lord will save these souls, he will bring their
misdoings to their remembrance. He will make them think of
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 129
that which they were so loath to think on. You cannot now
abide these troubling and severe meditations ; the thoughts of
God, and heaven, and hell ; the thoughts of your sins, and of
your duties, are melancholy, unwelcome thoughts to you ; but
O that you could foreknow the thoughts that you shall have of
all these things ! even the proudest, scornful, hardened sinner,
that heareth me this day, shall shortly have such a remem-
V ranee, as will make him wonder at his present blockishness. O
when the irresistible power of heaven shall open all your sins
before you, and command you to remember them, and to re-
member the time, and place, and persons, and all the circum-
stances of them, what a change will it make upon the most
stout or stubborn of the sons of men ; what a difference will there
then be between that trembling, self-tormenting soul, and the
same that now in his gallantry can make light of all these
things, and call the messenger of Christ who warneth him, a
puritan, or a doating fool ! Your memories now are somewhat
subject to your wills ; and if you will not think of your own,
your chief, your everlasting concernments, you may choose. If
you will choose rather to employ your noble souls on beastly lusts,
and waste your thoughts on things of nought, you may take your
course, and chase a feather with a childish world, till, overtaking
it, you see you have lost your labour. But when justice takes
the work in hand, your thoughts shall be no more subject to
your wills ; you shall then remember that which you are full
loath to remember, and would give a world that you could forget.
O then one cup of the waters of oblivion would be of inestima-
ble value to the damned ! O what would they not give that they
could but forget the time they lost, the mercy they abused, the
grace which they refused, the holy servants of Christ whom they
despised, the wilful sins which they committed, and the many
duties which they wilfully omitted ! I have often thought of their
case when I have dealt with melancholy or despairing persons.
If I advised them to cast away such thoughts, and turn their
minds to other things, they tell me they cannot ; it is not in
their power ; and I have long found that I may almost as well
persuade a broken head to give over aching. But when the
holy God shall purposely pour out the vials of his wrath on the
consciences of the ungodly, and open the books, and show them
all that ever they have done, with all the aggravations, how
then shall these worms be able to resist ?
And now I beseech you all, consider, is it not better to re-
VOL. XVII. K
130 A SERMON OF REPENTANCE.
member your sins on earth, than in hell ? Before your physician,
than before your Judge ? For your cure, than for your torment ?
Give me leave, then, before I go any further, to address myself
to you as the messenger of the Lord, with this importunate re-
quest, both as you stand here in your private, and in your pub-
lic capacities. In the name of the God of heaven, I charge you,
remember the lives that you have led ! remember what you have
been doing in the world ! remember how you have spent your
time ! and whether, indeed, it is God that you have been serving,
and heaven that you have been seeking, and holiness and righte-
ousness that you have been practising in the world till now !
Are your sins so small, so venial, so few, that you can find no
employment on them for your memories? or is the offending of
the Eternal God so slight and safe a thing as not to need your
consideration ? God forbid you should have such atheistical
conceits ! Surely God made not his laws for nought ; nor doth
he make such a stir by his word, and messengers, and provi-
dences, against an harmless thing ; nor doth he threaten hell to
men for small, indifferent matters ; nor did Christ need to
have died, and done all that he hath done, to cure a small and
safe disease. Surely that which the God of heaven is pleased
to threaten with everlasting punishment, the greatest of you all
should vouchsafe to think on, and with greatest fear and sober-
ness to remember.
It is a pitiful thing, that with men, with gentlemen, with pro-
fessed Christians, God's matters, and their own matters, their
greatest matters, should seem unworthy to be thought on; when
they have thoughts for their honours, and their lands, and
friends ; and thoughts for their children, their servants, and pro-
vision ; and thoughts for their horses, and their dogs, and sports.
Is God and heaven less worthy than these ? are death and
judgment matters of less moment ? Gentlemen, you would
take it ill to have your wisdom undervalued, and your reason
questioned ; for your honour's sake do not make it contemptible
yourselves in the eyes of all that are truly wise. It is the noble-
ness of objects that most ennobles your faculties, and the base-
ness of objects doth debase them. If brutish objects be your
employment and delight, do I need to tell you what you make
yourselves ? If you would be noble indeed, let God and ever-
lasting glory be the object of your faculties ; if you would be
great, then dwell on greatest things; if you would be high, then
seek the things that are above, and not the sordid things of
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 131
earth, (Col. iii. 1 — 3,) and if you would be safe, look after the
enemies of your peace ; and as you had thoughts of sin that led
you to commit it, entertain the thoughts that would lead you to
abhor it. O that I might have but the grant of this reasonable
request from you, that among all your thoughts you would be-
stow now and then an hour in the serious thoughts of your
misdoings, and soberly in your retirement between God and
your souls remember the paths that you have trod ; and whether
you have lived for the work for which you were created! One
sober hour of such employment might be the happiest hour that
ever you spent, and give you more comfort at your final hour,
than all the former hours of your life ; and might lead you into
that new and holy life, which you may review with everlasting
comfort.
Truly, gentlemen, I have long observed that Satan's advan-
tage lieth so much on the brutish side, and that the work of
man's conversion is so much carried on by God's exciting of
our reason ; and that the misery of the ungodly is, that they
have reason in faculty, and not in use, in the greatest things,
that I persuade you to this duty with the greater hopes : if the
Lord will but persuade you to retire from vanity, and soberly
exercise your reason, and consider your ways, and say, what
have we done ? And what is it that God would have us do ?
And what shall we wish we had done at last ? I say, could
you now be but prevailed with to bestow as many hours on this
work, as you have cast away in idleness, or worse, I should
not doubt but I should shortly see the faces of many of you in
heaven that have been recovered by the use of this advice. It
is a thousand pities, that men that are thought wise enough to
be entrusted with the public safety, and to be the physicians of
a broken state, should have any among them that are untrusty
to their God, and have not the reason to remember their mis-
doings, and prevent the danger of their immortal souls. Will
you sit all day here to find out the remedy of a diseased land ;
and will you not be entreated by God or man to sit down one
hour, and find out the disease of, and remedy for, your own
souls ? Are those men likely to take care of the happiness of so
many thousands, that will still be so careless of themselves ? Once
more therefore, I entreat you, remember your misdoings, lest
God remember them : and bless the Lord that called you this
day, by the voice of mercy, to remember them upon terms of
faith and hope. Remembered they must be, first or last. And
k2
132 A SERMON OF REPENTANCE.
believe it, this is far unlike the sad remembrance at judgment,
and in the place of wo and desperation.
And I beseech you observe here, that it is your own mis-
doings that you must remember. Had it been only the sins of
other men, especially those that differ from you, or have wronged
you, or stand against your interest, how easily would the duty
have been performed ? How little need should I have had to
press it with all this importunity ? How confident should I be
that I could convert the most, if this were the conversion ?
It grieves my soul to hear how quick and constant, high and
low, learned and unlearned, are at this uncharitable, contume-
lious remembering of the faults of others : how cunningly they
can bring in their insinuated accusations : how odiously they
can aggravate the smallest faults, where difference causeth
them to distaste the person : how ordinarily they judge of actions
by the persons, as if any thing were a crime that is done by
such as they dislike, and all were virtue that is done by those
that fit their humours : how commonly brethren have made it a
part of their service of God to speak or write uncharitably of
his servants, labouring to destroy the hearer's charity, which
had more need, in this unhappy time, of the bellows than the
water ! How useful it is with the ignorant that cannot reach
the truth, and the impious that cannot bear it, to call such here-
tics that know more than themselves, and to call such precisians,
puritans, (or some such name which hell invents as there is
occasion,) who dare not be so ,bad as they ! How odious, men
pretending to much gravity, learning, and moderation, do labour
to make those that are dearer to God ; and what an heart they
have to widen differences, and make a sea of every lake ; and
that, perhaps, under pretence of blaming the uncharitable-
ness of others ! How far the very sermons and discourses of
some learned men are from the common rule of doing as we
would be done by : and how loudly they proclaim that such
men love not their neighbours as themselves ; the most uncha-
ritable words seeming moderate, which they give ; and all
called intemperate that savoureth not of flattery, which they
receive ! Were I calling the several exasperated factions now
in England to remember the misdoings of their supposed adver-
saries, what full-mouthed and debasing confessions would they
make ! What monsters of heresy, and schism, of impiety,
treason, and rebellion, of perjury and perfidiousness, would too
many make of the faults of others, while they extenuate their
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 133
own to almost nothing ! It is a wonder to observe how the case
doth alter with the most, when that which was their adversary's
case becomes their own. The very prayers of the godly, and
their care of their salvation, and the fear of sinning, doth seem
their crime in the eyes of some that easily bear the guilt of
swearing, drunkenness, sensuality, filthiness, and neglect of
duty in themselves, as a tolerable burden.
But if ever God indeed convert you, (though you will pity
others, yet) he will teach you to begin at home, and take the
beam out of your own eyes, and to cry out, 6 I am the misera-
ble sinner.'
And lest these generals seem insufficient for us to confess on
such a day as this, and lest yet your memories should need more
help, is it not my duty to remind you of some particulars ?
which yet I shall not do by way of accusation, but of inquiry.
Far be it from me to judge so hardly of you, that when you
come hither to lament your sins you cannot with patience en-
dure to be told of them.
1. Inquire, then, whether there be none among you that live
a sensual, careless life, clothed with the best, and faring deli-
ciously every day ? In rioting and drunkenness, chambering
and wantonness, strife and envying, not putting on Christ, nor
walking in the Spirit, but making provision for the flesh, to
satisfy the lusts thereof. (Rom. xiii. 13, 14.) Is there none
among you that spend your precious time in vanities, that is
allowed you to prepare for life eternal ? That have time to
w r aste in compliments, and fruitless talk, and visits, in gaming,
and unnecessary recreations, in excessive feasting and enter-
tainments, while God is neglected, and your souls forgotten, and
vou can never find an hour in a day to make ready for the life
which y° u must live for ever ! Is there none among you that
would take the man for a puritan or fanatic that should em-
ploy but half so much time for his soul, and in the services of
the Lord, as you do in unnecessary sports and pleasures, and
pampering your flesh? Gentlemen, if there be any such among
vou as you, love your souls, remember your misdoings, and be-
wail these abominations before the Lord, in this day of your
professed humiliation !
2. Inquire whether there be none among you, that, being stran-
gers to the new birth, and to the inward workings of the Spirit
of Christ upon the soul, do also distaste a holy life, and make it
a matter of your reproach, and pacify your accusing consciences
134 A SERMON OF REPENTANCE.
with a religion made up of mere words, and heartless outside,
and so much obedience as your fleshly pleasures will admit,
accounting those that go beyond you, especially if they differ
from you in your modes and circumstances, to be but a com-
pany of proud, pharisaical, self-conceited hypocrites, and those
whom you desire to suppress. If there be one such person here,
I would entreat him to remember that it is the solemn assevera-
tion of our Judge, that " except a man be converted, and be
born again, of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into
the kingdom of heaven ; (John iii. 3 — 5 ; Matt, xviii. 3 ;) that
"if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his;"
(Rom. viii. 9 ;) that " if any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature ; old things are passed away, and all things are become
new;" (2 Cor. v. 17;) that " without holiness none shall see
God;" (Heb. xii. 14 ;) that " the wisdom that is from above
is first pure, and then peaceable;" (Jam. iii. 17;) that " God
is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in
spirit, and in truth;" (John iv. 23, 24^;) that " they worship
in vain that teach for doctrines the commandments of men ;"
(Matt. xv. 8, 9 ;) and that " except your righteousness shall ex-
ceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall in no wise enter
into the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. v. 20.) And I desire you
to remember that it is hard to kick against the pricks, and to
prosper in rage against the Lord : and that it is better for that
man that offendeth one of his little ones to have a millstone
fastened to his neck, and to have been cast into the bottom of
the sea. (Matt, xviii. 6.) It is a sure and grievous condemna-
tion that waiteth for all that are themselves unholv : but to the
haters or despisers of the holy laws and servants of the Lord
how much more grievous a punishment is reserved !
3. Inquire also whether there be none among you that let
loose your passions on your inferiors, and oppress your poor
tenants, and make them groan under the task, or at least do
little to relieve the needy, nor study not to serve the Lord with
your estates, but sacrifice all to the pleasing of your flesh, unless
it be some inconsiderable pittance, or fruitless drops, that are
unproportionable to your receivings. If there be any such, let
them remember their iniquities, and cry for mercy before the
cry of the poor to heaven do bring down vengeance from him
that hath promised to hear their cry, and speedily to avenge
them. (Luke xviii. 7, 8.)
4. Inquire whether there be none that live the life of Sodom,
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 135
in pride, fulness of bread, and idleness ; (Ezek. xvi, 49 ;) and
that are not puffed up with their estates and dignities, and are
strangers to the humility, meekness, patience, and self-denial of
the saints : that ruffle in bravery, and contend more zealously
for their honour and pre-eminence, than for the honour and in-
terest of the Lord. For pride of apparel, it was wont to be
taken for a childish or a womanish kind of vice, below a mun ;
but it is now observed among the gallants, that (excep in
spots) the notes of vanity are more legibly written on the hair
and dress of a multitude of effeminate males, than on the fe-
males ; proclaiming to the world that pride, which one would
think even pride itself should have concealed ; and calling by
these signs to the beholders to observe the emptiness of their
minds, and how void they are of that inward worth, which is
the honour of a Christian, and of a man. It being a marvel to
see a man of learning, gravity, wisdom, and the fear of God,
appear in such an antic dress.
I have done with the first part, (C the remembering of your
own evil ways and doings." I beseech you practically go along
with me to the next ; " The loathing of yourselves in your own
eyes, for all your iniquities and abominations."
Every true convert doth thus loathe himself for his iniquities :
and when God will restore a punished people upon their repent-
ance he bringeth them to this loathing of themselves.
1. A converted soul hath a new and heavenly light to help
him to see those matters of humbling use, which others see not.
2. More particularly, he hath the knowledge of sin, and of
himself. He seeth the odious face of sin, and seeth how much
his heart and life in his sinful days abounded with it, and how
great a measure yet remains.
3. He hath seen by faith the Lord himself; the majesty, the
holiness, the jealousy, the goodness of the eternal God whom
he hath offended, and therefore must needs abhor himself. (Job
xlii. 6.)
4. He hath tasted of God's displeasure against him for his
sin already. God himself hath set it home, and awakened his
conscience, and held it on, till he hath made him understand
that the consuming fire is not to be jested with.
5. He hath seen Christ crucified, and mourned over him. This
is the glass that doth most clearly show the ugliness of sin, and
here he hath learned to abhor himself.
6. He hath foreseen, by faith, the end of sin, and the doleful
136 A SEKM0N OF REPENTANCE.
recompense of the ungodly ; his faith beholdeth the misery of
damned souls, and the glory which sinners cast away. He
heareth them beforehand repenting, and lamenting, and crying
out of their former folly, and wishing in vain that all this were
to do again, and that they might once more be tried with
another life, and resolving then how holily, how self-denyingly
they would live ! He knows that if sin had had its way he had
been plunged into this hellish misery himself; and therefore he
must needs loathe himself for his iniquities.
7. Moreover, the true convert hath had the liveliest taste of
mercy, of the blood of Christ, of the offers and covenant of
grace, of reprieving mercy, of pardoning mercy, of healing and
preserving mercy, and of the unspeakable mercy contained in
the promise of everlasting life ; and to find that he hath sinned
against all this mercy doth constrain him to abhor himself.
8. And it is only the true convert that hath a new and holy
nature, contrary to sin ; and, therefore, as a man that hath the
leprosy doth loathe himself because his nature is contrary tohis
disease, so is it (though operating in a freer way) with a con-
verted soul as to the leprosy of sin. Oh ! how he loathes the rem-
nants of his pride and passion ; his excessive cares, desires, and
fears ; the backwardness of his soul to God and heaven ! Sin is
to the new nature of every true believer, as the food of a swine
to the stomach of a man ; if he have eaten it, he hath no rest
until he hath vomited it up ; and then when he looketh on his
vomit, he loatheth himself to think how long he kept such filth
within him ; and that yet in the bottom there is some remains.
9. The true convert is one that is much at home, his heart is
the vineyard which he is daily dressing, his work is ordinarily
about it, and, therefore, he is acquainted with those secret sins,
and daily failings, which ungodly men that are strangers to them-
selves do not observe, though they have them in dominion.
10. Lastly, a serious Christian is a workman of the Lord's,
and daily busy at the exercise of his graces, and, therefore, hath
occasion to observe his weaknesses, and failings, and from sad
experience is forced to abhor himself.
But with careless unrenewed souls it is not so ; some of them
may have a mild, ingenuous disposition, and the knowledge of
their unworthiness ; and customarily they will confess such sins
as are small disgrace to them, or cannot be hid ; or under the
terrible gripes of conscience, in the hour of distress, and at the
"approach of death, they will do more ; and abhor themselves,
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 137
perhaps, as Judas did; or make a constrained confession through
the power of fear ; but so far are they from this loathing of
themselves for all their iniquities, that sin is to them as their
element, their food, their nature, and their friend.
And now, honourable, worthy, and beloved auditors, it is my
duty to inquire, and to provoke you to inquire, whether the re-
presentative body of the Commons of England, and each man of
you in particular, be thus affected to yourselves or not. It con-
cerns you to inquire of it, as you love your souls, and love not to
see the death marks of impenitency on them. It concerneth us
to inquire of it, as we love you and the nation, and would fain
see the marks of God's return in mercy to us, in your self-loath-
ing and return to God. Let conscience speak as before the
Lord that sees your hearts, and will shortly judge you, have you
had such a sight of your natural and actual sin and misery, of
your neglect of God, your contempt of heaven, your loss of
precious, hasty time, your worldly, fleshly, sensual lives, and your
omission of the great and holy works which you were made for?
Have you had such a sight and sense of these as hath filled your
souls with shame and sorrow ? and caused you in tears, or hearty
grief, to lament your sinful, careless lives, before the Lord. Do
you loathe yourselves for all this, as being vile in your own eyes,
and each man say, ' What a wretch was I ! what an unreason-
able, self-hating wretch, to do all this against myself ! what an
unnatural wretch ! what a monster of rebellion and ingratitude,
to do all this against the Lord of love and mercy ! what a de-
ceived, foolish wretch, to prefer the pleasing of my lusts and
senses, a pleasure that perisheth in the fruition, and is past as
soon as it is received, before the manly pleasures of the saints,
and before the soul's delight in God, and before the unspeakable
everlasting pleasures ! Was there any comparison between the
brutish pleasures of the flesh, and the spiritual delights of a
believing soul, in looking to the endless pleasure which we shall
have with all the saints and angels in the glorious presence of
the Lord ? Was God and glory worth no more, than to be cast
aside for satiating of an unsatisfiable flesh and fancy, and to be
sold for a harlot, for a forbidden cup, for a little air of popular
applause, or for a burdensome load of wealth and power, for so
short a time ? Where is now the gain and pleasure of all my for-
mer sins ? What have they left but a sting behind them ? How
near is the time when my departing soul must look back on all
the pleasures and profits that ever I enjoyed, as a dream when
138 A SEBMON OF REPENTANCE.
one awaketh ; a6 delusory vanities, that have done all for me
that ever they will do, and all is but to bring* my flesh unto cor-
ruption, (Gal. vi. 8,) and my soul to this distressing grief and
fear ? and then I must sing and laugh no more ! I must brave it
out in pride no more ! I must know the pleasures of the flesh no
more ! but be levelled with the poorest, and my body laid in
loathsome darkness, and my soul appear before that God whom
I so wilfully refused to obey and honour. O wretch that I am !
where was my understanding, when I played so boldly with the
flames of hell, the wrath of God, the poison of sin ! when God
stood by and yet I sinned 1 when conscience did rebuke me, and
yet I sinned ! when heaven or hell were hard at hand, and yet I
sinned ! when, to please my God, and save my soul, I would not
forbear a filthy lust, or forbidden vanity of no worth S when I
would not be persuaded to a holy, heavenly, watchful life, though
all my hopes of heaven lay on it ! I am ashamed of myself; I
am confounded in the remembrance of my wilful, self-destroying
folly ! I loathe myself for all my abominations ; O that I had
lived In beggary and rags when I lived in sin ! And O that I
had lived with God in a prison, or in a wilderness, when I re-
fused a holy, heavenly life, for the love of a deceitful world !
Will the Lord pardon what is past, I am resolved through his
grace to do so no more, but to loathe that filth that 1 took for
pleasure, and to abhor that sin that I made my sport, and to die
to the glory and riches of the world, which I made my idol ;
and to live entirely to that God that I did so long ago and so un-
worthily neglect ; and to seek that treasure, that kingdom, that
delight, that will fully satisfy my expectation, and answer all my
care and labour, with such infinite advantage. Holiness or
nothing shall be my work and life, and heaven or nothing shall
be my portion and felicity.
These are the thoughts, the affections, the breathing of every
regenerate, gracious soul. For your souls' sake inquire now, is
it thus with you ? Or have you thus returned with self-loath-
ing to the Lord, and firmly engaged your souls to him at your
entrance into a holy life ? I must be plain with you, gentle-
men, or I shall be unfaithful ; and I must deal closely with you,
or I cannot deal honestly and truly with you. As sure as you
live, yea, as sure as the word of God is true, you must all be
such converted men, and loathe yourselves for your iniquities, or
be condemned as impenitent to everlasting fire. To hide this
from you is but to deceive you, and that in a matter of a thou-
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 139
sand times greater moment than your lives. Perhaps I could
have made shift, instead of such serious admonitions, to have
wasted this hour in flashy oratory, and neat expressions, and
ornaments of reading, and other things that are the too common
matters of ostentation with men that preach God's word in
jest, and believe not what they are persuading others to believe.
Or if you think I could not, I am indifferent, as not much
affecting the honour of being able to offend the Lord, and
wrong your souls, by dallying with holy things. Flattery in
these things of soul concernment is a selfish villany, that hath
but a very short reward, and those that are pleased with it to-
day, may curse the flatterer for ever. Again, therefore, let me
tell you that which I think you will confess, that it is not your
greatness, not your high looks, not the gallantry of your spirits
that scorns to be thus humbled, that will serve your turn when
God shall deal with you, or save your carcasses from rottenness
and dust, or your guilty souls from the wrath of the Al-
mighty. Nor is it your contempt of the threatenings of the
Lord, and your stupid neglect, or scorning at the message,
that will endure when the sudden, irresistible light shall
come in upon you, and convince you, or you shall see
and feel what now you refuse to believe! Nor is it your
outside, hypocritical religion, made up of mere words, or cere-
monies, and giving your souls but the leavings of the flesh,
and making God an underling to the world, that will do any
more to save your souls than the picture of a feast to feed your
bodies. Nor is it the stiffest conceits that you shall be saved
in an unconverted state, or that you are sanctified when you
are not, that will do any more to keep you from damnation
than a conceit that you shall never die will do to keep you here
for ever. Gentlemen, though you are all here in health and
dignity, and honour, to day, how little a while is it, alas ! how
little, until you shall be every man in heaven or hell ! Unless
you are infidels you dare not deny it. And it is only Christ and
a holy life that is your way to heaven ; and only sin, and the
neglect of Christ and holiness, that can undo you. Look, there-
fore, upon sin as you should look on that which would cast you
into hell, and is daily undermining all your hopes. O that this
honourable assembly could know it in some measure as it shall
be shortly known ! and judge of it as men do, when time is past,
and delusions vanished, and all men are awakened from their
fleshly dreams, and their naked souls have seen the Lord ! O
140 A SERMON OF REPENTANCE.
then what laws would you make against sin ! How speedily
would you join your strength against it as against the only
enemy of your peace, and as against a fire in your houses, or a
plague that were broken out upon the city where you are 1 O
then how zealously would you all concur to promote the interest
of holiness in the land, and studiously encourage the servants
of the Lord ! How severely would you deal with those, that by
making a mock of godliness, do hinder the salvation of the peo-
ple's souls ? How carefully would you help the labourers that
are sent to guide men in the holy path ! and yourselves
would go before the nation as an example of penitent self loath-
ing for your sins, and hearty conversion to the Lord ! Is this
your duty now ? or is it not ? If you cannot deny it, I warn you
from the Lord do not neglect it ; and do not by your diso-
bedience to a convinced conscience prepare for a tormenting
conscience. If you know your Master's will, and do it not, you
shall be beaten with many stripes.
And your public capacity and work doth make your repent-
ance and holiness needful to others as well as to yourselves.
Had we none to govern us, but such as entirely subject them-
selves to the government of Christ ; and none to make us laws,
but such as have his law transcribed upon their hearts, O what
a happy people should we be ! Men are unlikely to make strict
laws against the vices which they love and live in; or if they
make them, they are more unlikely to execute them. We can
expect no great help against drunkenness, swearing, gaming,
filthiness, and profaneness, from men that love these abomina-
tions so well, as that they will rather part with God and their
salvation than they will let them go. All men are born with a
serpentine malice and enmity against the seed of Christ, which
is rooted in their very natures. Custom in sin increaseth this to
malignity 5 and it is only renewed grace that doth overcome it.
If, therefore, there should be any among our rulers that are not
cured of this mortal malady, what friendship can be expected
from them to the cause and servants of the Lord ? If you are
all the children of God yourselves, and heaven be your end, and
holiness your delight and business, it will then be your principal
care to encourage it, and help the people to the happiness that
you have found yourselves. But if in any the original (increased)
enmity to God and godliness prevail, we can expect no better
(ordinarily) from such, than that they oppose the holiness which
they hate, and do their worst to make us miserable. But wo
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 141
to him that strive th against his Maker v Shall the thorns and
hriars be set in battle against the consuming fire and prevail ?
(Isaiah xxvii. 4, 5.) Oh ! therefore, for the nation's sake, begin
at home, and cast away the sins which you would have the
nation cast away ! All men can say, that ministers must teach
by their lives, as well as by their doctrines ; (and wo to them
that do not !) and must not magistrates as well govern by their
lives, as by their laws ? Will you make laws which you would
not have men obey ? Or would you have the people to be better
than yourselves ? Or can you expect to be obeyed by others,
when you will not obey the God of heaven and earth your-
selves ? We beseech you, therefore, for the sake of a poor dis-
tressed land, let our recovery begin with you. God looks so
much at the rulers of a nation in his dealings with them, that
ordinarily it goes with the people as their rulers are. Until
David had numbered the people, God would not let out his
wrath upon them, though it was they that were the great
offenders. Jf we see our representative body begin in loathing
themselves for all their iniquities, and turning to the Lord with
all their hearts, we should yet believe that he is returning to us,
and will do us good after all our provocations. Truly, gentle-
men, it is much from you that we must fetch our comfortable or
sad prognostics of the life or death of this diseased land.
Whatever you do, I know that it shall go well with the righte-
ous ; but for the happiness or misery of the nation in general it
is you that are our best prognostication. If you repent your-
selves, and become a holy people to the Lord, it promiseth us
deliverance ; but if you harden your hearts, and prove despisers
of God and holiness, it is like to be our temporal, and sure to be
your eternal undoing, if saving grace do not prevent it.
And I must needs tell you, that if you be not brought to loathe
yourselves, it is not because there is no loathsome matter in
you. Did you see your inside you could not forbear it. As I
think it would somewhat abate the pride of the most curious
gallants, if they did but see what a heap of phlegm, and filth,
and dung, (and perhaps crawling worms,) there is within them ;
much more should it make you loathe yourselves if you saw
those sins that are a thousand times more odious. And to
instigate you hereunto, let me further reason with you.
1 . You can easily loathe an enemy ; and who hath been a
greater enemy to any of you than yourselves ? Another may
injure you ; but no man can everlastingly undo you, but your-
selves.
142 A SERMON OF REPENTANCE.
2. You abhor him that kills your dearest friends ; and it is
you by your sins that have put to death the Lord of life.
3. Who is it but yourselves that hath robbed you of so much
precious time, and so much precious fruit of ordinances, and of
all the mercies of the Lord ?
4. Who is it but yourselves that hath brought you under
God's displeasure ? Poverty could not have made him loathe
you, nor anything besides your sins.
5. Who wounded conscience, and hath raised all your doubts
and fears ? Was it not your sinful selves ?
6. Who is it but yourselves that hath brought you so neat
the gulf of misery, and endangered your eternal peace ?
7. Consider the loathsome nature of your sins, and how then
can you choose but loathe yourselves ?
1. It is the creature's rebellion or disobedience against the
Absolute Universal Sovereign.
2. It is the deformity of God's noblest creature here on earth,
and the abusing of the most noble faculties.
3. It is a stain so deep that nothing can wash out but the
blood of Christ. The flood that drowned a world of sinners
did not wash away their sins. The fire that consumed the Sodom-
ites did not consume their sins. Hell itself can never end it,
and, therefore, shall have no end itself. It dieth not with you
when you die ; though churchyards are the guiltiest spots of
ground, they do not bury and hide our sin.
4. The church must loathe it, and must cast out the sinner as
loathsome, if he remain impenitent ; and none of the servants
of the Lord must have any friendship with the unfruitful works
of darkness.
5. God himself doth loathe the creature for sin, and for no-
thing else but sin, "My soul loathed them;" (Zech. xi. 8;)
" When the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the pro-
voking of his sons and daughters;" (Dent, xxxii. 19;) " My
soul shall abhor you;" (Lev. xxvi. 30;) "When God heard this,
he was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel ;" (Psalm lxxviii. 59;)
" He abhorred his very sanctuary ;" (Lam. ii. 7 ;) " For he is of
purer eyes than to behold iniquity." (Hab. i. 13.) In a word,
it is the sentence of God himself, that a " wicked man is loath-
some and cometh to shame," (Prov. xiii. 5,) so that you see
what abundant cause of self-abhorrence is among us.
But we are much afraid of God's departure, when we see
how common self-love is in the world, and how rare this peni-
tent self-loathing is.
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. J 43
1. Do they loathe themselves that on every occasion are con-
tending for their honour, and exalting themselves, and venturing
their very souls, to be highest in the world for a little while ?
2. Do they loathe themselves that are readier to justify all
their sins, or at least to extenuate them, than humbly confess
them ?
3. Do they loathe themselves for all their sins that cannot
endure to be reproved, but loathe their friends and the ministers
of Christ that tell them of their loathsomeness ?
4. Do they loathe themselves that take their pride itself for
manhood, and christian humility for baseness, and brokenness of
heart for whining hypocrisy or folly, and call them a company
of priest-ridden fools that lament their sin, and ease their souls
by free confession? Is the ruffling bravery of this city, and the
strange attire, the haughty carriage, the feasting, idleness, and
pomp, the marks of such as loathe themselves for all their
abominations ? Why then was fasting, and sackcloth, and
ashes, the badge of such in ancient times ?
5. Do they loathe themselves for all their sins, who loathe those
that will not do as they, and speak reproachfully of such as run
not with them to the same excess of riot, (1 Peter iv. 4,) and
count them precisians that dare not spit in the face of Christ,
by wilful sinning as venturously and madly as themselves ?
6. Or do they loathe themselves for all their sins, that love
their sins even better than their God, and will not by all the
obtestations, and commands, and entreaties of the Lord, be per-
suaded to forsake them ? How far all these are from this self-
loathing, and how far that nation is from happiness, where the
rulers or inhabitants are such, is easy to conjecture.
I should have minded you what sins of the land must be re-
membered, and loathed, if we would have peace and healing.
But as the glass forbids me, so alas, as the sins of Sodom, they
declare themselves. Though through the great mercy of the
Lord, the body of this nation, and the sober part, have not
been guilty of that covenant-breaking, perfidiousness, treason,
sedition, disobedience, self- exalting, and turbulency, as some
have been, and as ignorant foreigners through the calumnies of
malicious adversaries may possibly believe ; yet must it be for
a lamentation through all generations, that any of those who
went out from us have contracted the guilt of such abomina-
tions, and occasioned the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme;
and that any in the pride or simplicity of their hearts have
144 A SERMON OF REPENTANCE.
followed the conduct of Jesuitical seducers, they know not
whither or to what.
That profaneness aboundeth on the other side, and drunken-
ness, swearing, fornication, lasciviousness, idleness, pride, and
covetousness, doth still survive the ministers that have wasted
themselves against them, and the labours of faithful magistrates
to this day ! And that the two extremes of heresy and profane-
ness do increase each other ; and while they talk against each
other, they harden one another, and both afflict the church of
Christ. But especially wo to England for that crying sin, the
scorning of a holy life, if a wonder of mercy do not save us.
That people, professing the christian religion, should scorn the
diligent practice of that religion which themselves profess !
That obedience to the God of heaven, that imitation of the
example of our Saviour, who came from heaven to teach us holi-
ness, should not only be neglected, unreasonably and impiously
neglected, but also by a transcendent impious madness should be
made a matter of reproach ! That the Holy Ghost, into whose
name, as the Sanctifier, these men were themselves baptised,
should not only be resisted, but his sanctifying work be made a
scorn ! That it should be made a matter of derision for a man
to prefer his soul before his body, and heaven before earth, and
God before a transitory world, and to use his reason in that for
which it was principally given him, and not to be wilfully mad
in a case where madness will undo him unto all eternity! Judge,
as you are men, whether hell itself is like much to exceed such
horrid wickedness ! And whether it be not an astonishing won-
der that ever a reasonable soul should be brought to such a
height of abomination ! That they that profess to believe the
holy catholic Church, and the communion of saints, should de-
ride the holiness of the church, and the saints, and their com-
munion ! That they that pray for the hallowing of God's name,
the coming of his kingdom, and the doing of his will, even as it
is done in heaven, should make a mock at all this that they
pray for ! How much further, think you, is it possible for wicked
souls to go on sinning ? Is it not the God of heaven himself
that they make a scorn of? Is not holiness his image ? Did
not he make the law that doth command it ; professing that
none shall see his face without it? (Heb. xii. 14.) O sinful
nation ! O people laden with iniquity ! Repent, repent speedily,
and with self-loathing, repent of this inhuman crime, lest God
should take away your glory, and enter himself into judgment
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 145
with you,' 1 ' d plead against you the scorn that you have cast
upon the Ct ator, the Saviour, the Sanctiner, to whom you were
engaged in g »ur baptismal vows ! Lest when he plagueth and con-
demned yu% he "* \y, " Why persecuted you me?" (Acts ix. 4.)
" Inasmuch as *"L .1 it to one of the least of these mv brethren,
ye did it unto e ^- ~ lP Read Prov. i. 20, to the end. When Israel
mocked the mt u ^ lia Vers of the Lord, and despised his words, and
misused his prc lce 01 , his wrath arose against his people till there
was no remedy , \2 Chrorr. xxvi. 16 ;) and O that you who are
the physicians of this diseased lanu 1 tmsaM .specially call them to
repentance for this, and help them against it for the time to
come ! • ' *,, r
Having called you first to remember your misdoings, anal, se-
condly, to loathe yourselves in your own eyes for them, I must
add a third, that you stop not here, but proceed to reforma-
tion, or else all the rest is but hypocrisy. And here it is that
1 most earnestly entreat this honourable assembly for their
best assistance. O make not the forementioned sins your own,
lest your hear from God, "quod minus crimine, quam absolu-
tione peccatum est." Though England hath been used to cry
loud for liberty, let them not have liberty to abuse their Maker,
and to damn their souls, if you can hinder it. " Optimus est
reipublicae status, ubi nulla libertas deest, nisi licentia pereundi,"
as Nero was once told by his unsuccessful tutor. Use not
men to a liberty of scorning the laws of God, lest you teach them
to scorn yours ; for can you expect to be better used than
God. And " cui plus licet quam par est, plus vult quam licet."
(Gell. i. 17., c. 14.) We have all seen the evils of liberty to
be wanton in religion. Is it not worse to have liberty to deride
religion? If men shall have leave to go quietly to hell them-
selves, let them not have leave to mock poor souls from heaven.
The suffering to the sound in faith is as nothing ; for what is
the foaming rage of madmen to be regarded ? But that in
England God should be so provoked, and souls so hindered
from the paths of life, that whoever will be converted and saved
must be made a laughing stock, which carnal minds cannot
endure ; this is the mischief which we deprecate.
The eyes of the nation, and of the christian world, are much
upon you, some high in hopes, some deep in fears, some
waiting in dubious expectations for the issue of your counsels.
Great expectations, in deep necessities, should awake you to
the greatest care and diligence. Though I would not, by omit-
VOL, XVII. L
146 A SERMON OF REPENTANCE.
ting any necessary directions or admonitions to yj ,invite the
world to think that I speak to such as cannot eni e to hear >
and that so honourable an assembly doth call the> flinisters of
Christ to do those works of their proper of dle -, w ,ich y et the y
will be offended if they do, yet had I rath tna) m the defec_
tive part than by excess, and therefore sl/ aitnf3t P resume to
be too particular. Only in general, in the P eres , °*" Christ, anc *
on the behalf of a trembling, yet honing iv tali, I most ear-
nestly beseech and warn you * JU - M / ou own &nd promote the
power and practice < >r Godliness in the land, and that as God,
whose ministers ytftt are, (Rom. xiii. 4,) is a rewarder of them
that diligently seek him, (Heb. xi. 6,) and hath made this
a principal article of our faith, so you would imitate your ab-
solute Lord, and honour them that fear the Lord, and encourage
them that diligently seek him. And may I not freely tell you
that God should have the precedency ? And that you must
first seek his kingdom, and the righteousness thereof, and he
will facilitate all the rest of your work. Surely no powers on
earth should be offended, that the God from whom, and for
whom, and through whom, they have what they have, is pre-
ferred before them, when they should own no interest but his,
and what is subservient to it. I have long thought that pre-
tences of a necessity of beginning with our own affairs, hath
frustrated our hopes from many parliaments already ; and I
am sure that by delays, the enemies of our peace have got
advantage to cross our ends and attain their own. Our cala-
mities begun in differences about religion, and still that is the
wound that most needs closing. And if that were done, how
easily, I dare confidently speak it, would the generality of
sober, godly people, be agreed in things civil, and become the
strength and glory of the sovereign, under God. And though,
with grief and shame, we see this work so long undone, (may
we hope that God hath reserved it to this season,) yet I have
the confidence to profess, that, as the exalting of one party, by
the ejection and persecuting of the rest, is the sinful way
to your dishonour and our ruin, so the terms on which the
differing parties most considerable among us may safely, easily,
and suddenly unite, are very obvious, and our concord a very
easy thing, if the prudent and moderate might be the guides,
and selfish interests and passion did not set us at a further
distance than our principles have done. And to show you the
facility of such an agreement, were it not that such personal
matters ar
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 14/
much liable to misinterpretations, I should tell
yo"u"tl7at"tl t late reverend Primate of Ireland consented, in less
than half I i hour's debate, to five or six propositions which
I offered h\fn, as sufficient for the concord of the moderate
Episcopal arid Presbyterians, without forsaking the principles
of their parties. O &£ the Lord would yet show so much
mercy to a sinful nation, as ft put it into your hearts to promote
but the practice of those cnr^n principles which we are
all agreed in 1 I hope there is no cont/ overs y amon 6 US whet ; ier
God should be obeyed, and hell avoided and h ** v ™ ™&
sought, and Scripture be the rule and test o. oul l ° ' .
' ft ^r±her the
sin abhorred and cast out. O that you would but iu. t
practice of this with all your might ! We crave not of j,. v
any lordship or dominion, nor riches, nor interest in your tem-
poral affairs ; we had rather see a law to exclude all ecclesi-
astics from all power of force. The God of heaven that will
judge you and us will be a righteous judge betwixt us ? whether
we crave any thing unreasonable at your hands. These are
the sum of our requests : 1. That holiness may be encouraged,
and the overspreading profaneness of this nation effectually
kept down. 2. That an able, diligent ministry may be en-
couraged, and not corrupted by temporal power. 3. That
discipline may be seriously promoted, and ministers no more
hindered by magistrates in the exercise of their office than phy-
sicians and schoolmasters are in theirs, seeing it is but a go-
vernment like theirs, consisting in the liberty of conscionably
managing the works of our own office that we expect. Give
us but leave to labour in Christ's vineyard with such encourage-
ment as the necessity of obstinate souls requireth, and we will
ask no more. You have less cause to restrain us from dis-
cipline than from preaching. For it is a more flesh-displeas-
ing work that we are hardlier brought to. I foretel you that
you shut out me, and all that are of my mind, if you would
force us to administer sacraments without discipline, and
without the conduct of our own discretion, to whom the ma-
gistrate appoints it, as if a physician must give no physic but
by your prescript. The antidisciplinarian magistrate I could
as resolutely suffer under as the superstitious, it being w T orse
to cast out discipline, than to err in the circumstances of it.
The question is not, whether bishops or no, but whether dis-
cipline or none ? And whether enough to use it ? 4. We ear-
nestly request that scripture sufficiency, as the test of our re-
l 2
148
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE.
ligion, and only universal law of Christ, may be laintained,
and that nothing unnecessary may be imposed as n« essary, nor
the church's unity laid on that which will not beaitct, nor ever
did. O that we might but have leave to serve liod only as
Christ hath commanded us, and to go to b^averi in the same
way as the apostles did ! These are our desires, and whether
they are reasonable, God will jud^e.
Give first to God the things that are God's, and then give
Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Let your wisdom be first
pure, and then peac 2a ble. Not but that we are resolved to be
loyal to sovereign though you deny us all these. Whatever
inalic;j Lls men p re tend, that is not, nor shall not, be our dif-
.^rence. I have proved more publicly, when it was more dan-
gerous to publish it, that the generality of the orthodox, sober
ministers, and godly people of this nation, did never consent
to king-killing, and resisting sovereign power, nor to the change
of the ancient government of this land, but abhorred the
pride and ambition that attempted it. I again repeat it, the
blood of some, the imprisonment and displacing of others, the
banishment or flight of others, and the detestations and public
protestations of more ; the oft-declared sense of England,
and the wars and sad estate of Scotland, have all declared
before the world, to the shame of calumniators, that the ge-
nerality of the orthodox, sober protestants of these nations,
have been true to their allegiance, and detesters of unfaithful-
ness and ambition in subjects, and resisters of heresy and
schism in the church, and of anarchv and democratical confu-
sions in the commonwealth. And though the land hath ringed
with complaints and threatenings against myself, for publishing
a little of the mixture of Jesuitical and familistical contrivances,
for taking down together our government and religion, and
setting up new ones for the introduction of popery, infidelity,
and heresv, yet I am assured that there is much more of this
confederacy for the all-seeing God to discover in time, to the
shame of papists, that cannot be content to write themselves
for the killing of kings when the pope hath once excommuni-
cated them, and by the decrees of a general council at the
Lateran, to depose princes that will extirpate such as the pope
calls heretics, and absolve all their subjects from their fidelity and
allegiance, but they must also creep into the councils and
armies of protestants, and taking the advantage of successes
nnd ambition, withdraw men at once from their religion and
A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. J 49
allegiance, iat they may cheat the world into a belief that
treasons art he fruits of the protestant profession, when these
masked jug ers have come by night, and sown and cherished
these Romis. tares. As a papist must cease to be a papist
if he will be truly and fully loyal to his sovereign, (as I am ready
to prove against any adversary,) so a protestant must so far
cease to be a protestant, before he can be disloyal. For Rom.
13. is part of the rule of his religion Unhappily there hath
been a difference among us which is &£ higher power, when
those that have their shares in the sovereignty are divided, but
whether we should be subject to the higher pow'w r , 1S no question
with us.
Gentlemen, I have nothing to ask of you for myself, nor any
of my brethren, as for themselves, but that you will be friends
to serious preaching and holy living, and will not ensnare our
consciences with any unscriptural inventions of men. This I
would beg of you as on my knees : 1. As for the sake of Christ,
whose cause and people it is that I am pleading for. 2. For
the sake of thousands of poor souls in this land, whose salva-
tion or damnation will be much promoted by you. 3. For the
sake of thousands of the dear servants of the Lord, whose
eyes are waiting to see what God will do by your hands.
4. For your own sakes, who are undone if you dash yourselves
on the rock you should build on, and set against the holy God,
and turn the cries of his servants to heaven for deliverance
from you. (Luke xviiL 8.) If you stumble on Christ, he will
break you in pieces ; but if he fall upon you, he will grind you
to powder. 5. For the sake of your posterity, that they may not
be bred up in ignorance or ungodliness. 6. For the honour
of the nation and yourselves, that you turn by all the suspi-
cions and fears that are raised in the land. 7- For the honour
of sound doctrine and church-government, that you may not
bring schism into greater credit than now you have brought it
to deserved shame. For if you frown on godliness under
pretence of uniformity in unnecessary things, and make times
worse than when libertinism and schism so prevailed, the people
will look back with groans, and say, ' What happy times did
we once see !' And so will honour schism, and libertinism,
and usurpation, through your oppression. S. Lastly, I beg this
of you, for the honour of sovereignty, and the nation's peace.
A prince of a holy people is most honourable. The interest
of holiness is Christ's own. Happy is that prince that espous-
150 A SERMON OF REPENTANCE.
eth this, and suhjecteth all his own unto it. (Sel Psalm i. 1,
2, and ci., and xv. 4.) It is the conscionable, yNjdent, godly
people of the land, that must be the glory and strLigth of their
lawful sovereign. Their prayers will serve him better than the
hideous oaths and curses of the profan:. Wo to the rulers
that set themselves against the interest of Christ and holiness !
(Read Psalm ii. ;) or that make snares for their consciences, that
they may persecute them as disobedients, who are desirous to
obey their rulers in subordination to the Lord. (See Dan. iii.,
and vi. 5, 10, 13.) I have dealt plainly with you, and told you
the very Vfuto. If God have now a blessing for you and us,
you 'will obey it, but if you refuse, then look to yourselves, and
answer it if you can. I am sure, in spite of earth and hell, it
shall go well with them that live by faith.
RIGHT REJOICING:
OR, THE
NATURE AND ORDER
OF
RATIONAL AND WARRANTABLE JOY;
DISCOVERED IN A
SERMON PREACHED AT ST. PAUL'S
BEFORE THE
LORD MAYOR AND ALDERMEN,
AND THE SEVERAL COMPANIES OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
On May 10th. 1660,
APPOINTED BY BOTH HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT TO BE A DAY OF SOLEMN
THANKSGIVING FOR GOD'S RAISING UP AND SUCCEEDING HIS
EXCELLENCY, AND OTHER INSTRUMENTS,
IN OBDER TO
HIS MAJESTY'S RESTORATION,
AND THE SETTLEMENT OF THESE NATIONS.
TO THE
RIGHT HONOURABLE THOMAS ALLEYNE,
LORD MAYOR OF THE CITY OF LONDON,
WITH THE
RIGHT WORSHIPFUL ALDERMEN,
HIS BRETHREN.
As, in obedience to your favourable invitation, this Sermon
was first preached ; and the Author, conscious of his great un-
worthiness, employed in so honourable a work ; so is it your
pleasure, against which my judgment must not here contest,
that hath thus exposed it to the public view; which yet I must
confess doth not engage you in the patronage of any of the
crudities and imperfections of this hasty work, it being the
matter, which is of God, that so far prevailed for your accept-
ance as to procure your pardon of the manner, which is too
much my own. Rejoicing is so highly valued, even by nature,
that I thought it a matter of great necessity to help to rectify
and elevate your joys. The corruption of a thing so excellent
must needs be very bad j and it being the great and durable
good that must feed all great and durable joy ; and seeing these
little transitory things can cause but little and transitory delight,
I thought it my duty to insist most on the greatest on
which, in your meditations, you must most insist; which I
repent not of, especially now you have given my doctrine a
more loud and lasting voice, because it is only our heavenly
interest that may be the matter of universal continued de-
light : and so the subject may make the sermon to be of
154 TO THE RIGHT HON. THOMAS ALLEYNE.
the more universal and continued use, when a subject of
less excellency and duration than heaven would have de-
pressed and limited the discourse, as to its usefulness. And
also I was forced in this, as in all these sublunary things, to
estimate the mercy in which we did all so solemnly rejoice but
as a means, which is so far to be valued as it conduceth to its
end; and is something or nothing as it relateth to eternity.
Since I placed my hopes above, and learned to live a life of
faith, I never desire to know any mercy in any other form or
name, nor value it on any other account, as not affecting to
make such reckonings which I daily see obliterated in grief and
shame by those that make them ; and remembering who said,
that if we had known Christ himself after the flesh, henceforth
we know him so no more. As it was my compassion to the
frantic merry world, and also to the self-troubling melancholy
Christian, and my desire methodically to help you in your re-
joicings about the great occasions of the day, which formed
this exhortation to what you heard, and chose the subject which,
to some, might seem less suitable to the day; so, if the publi-
cation may print so great and necessary a point on the hearts of
any that had not the opportunity to hear, as God shall have the
praise, and they the joy, so you shall have, under God, the
thanks, and I the attainment of my end, which is my reward :
I rest,
Your servant in the work of Christ,
RICHARD BAXTER.
RIGHT REJOICING.
LUKE x. 20.
Notivithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject
to you ; but rather rejoice because your names are written
in heaven.
Right Honourable, Worshipful, and Beloved Auditors,
If any of you shall say, upon the hearing of my text, that I
have chosen a subject unsuitable to the occasion, and that a
" rejoice not" is out of season on a day of such rejoicing, they
may, I hope, be well satisfied by that time they have considered
the reason of these words, as used by Christ to his disciples,
and the greater joy that is here commanded, and so the reason
of my choice.
When Christ had sent forth his seventy disciples to preach
the gospel through the cities of Judea, and to confirm it by
miraculous cures, for which he endued them with power from
above, upon their return they triumph especially in this, that
" the devils themselves were subject to them through the name
of Christ." (Ver. 17.) A mercy which Christ is so far from
extenuating that, 1. He sets it forth more fully than they,
(ver. 18,) " I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven/'
2. He promised them yet more of it, " giving them power to
tread on serpents, and on scorpions, and over all the power of
the enemy, and that nothing should by any means hurt them."
3. He rejoiceth in spirit, and thankfully acknowledged it to the
father himself. (Ver. 21.) And yet he seems here to forbid them
to rejoice in it, commanding them another joy. What ! was
it not a mercy to be rejoiced in ? Or is there any contradiction
in the words of Christ ? Neither: he doth not absolutely forbid
them to rejoice in it ; but he saw that their corruption took an
advantage by it, to puff them up with pride and vain glory, and
that they savoured it too carnally, and were much taken with it,
as it was a visible triumph and honour to themselves the instru-
ments, and too much overlooked the end and use of it. Christ
156 RIGHT REJOICING.
therefore aggravateth the mercy in its proper notion, as it was
to the honouring of the father and himself, and the advancement
of his kingdom, and the saving of men's souls, by the confirma-
tion of the gospel, and the fall of Satan. But the shell or
grosser substance of the mercy applied to a wrong end, and by
corruption made another thing, being deprived of its proper
soul, this Christ admonisheth them to keep out of their esti-
mation and affection. He meeteth his returning messengers
rejoicing too much in themselves: and this proud, inordinate,
selfish joy is it that he would take from them by his cau-
tion or prohibition, " In this rejoice not." But that they may
see that he doth not envy them their comforts, he showeth them
cause of a greater joy, which he alloweth and commandeth them,
as more suitable to his ends and their felicity : ic But rather re-
joice that your names are written in heaven."
For better understanding of this you may observe ; 1. What
matter of joy the subjection of the devils might afford them.
2. What manner of joy they were affected with, which Christ
forbad them. 3. What manner of joy it is that Christ alloweth
them, when he seemeth to restrain it wholly to their heavenly
interest.
1. No doubt, to have the devils subject to them was a great
mercy, in which they might rejoice. For, 1. It was the gift of
Christ : and all is perfumed that hath touched his hand. Nothing
but good can come from him that is so good, by way of gift.
2. It was a gift foretold by the prophets, as reserved for the
gospel time, that is eminently called the kingdom of God : and
an extraordinary gift in respect to the precedent and subsequent
generations. It was no usual thing for men to exercise such
authority over the very devils, as to command them to come
forth, and to heal the bodies that they had long afflicted.
3. It was a victory over the strongest enemy, that can make
more effectual resistance than the most numerous armies of poor
mortals, and would laugh at your horse and arms, your fire and
sword, your greatest cannons : and cannot be expugned but by
the power of the Almighty. A stronger than he must come
upon him, and bind him, and cast him out of his possession,
before he will surrender the garrison, goods, and prisoners,
which he hath held in peace, (Luke xi. 31, 22.)
4. It was a victory over the most subtle enemy, that is not
conquerable by any stratagems of human wit.
5. It was a victory over the most malicious enemy ; that
RIGHT REJOICING. 157
sought more than the subversion of men's temporal peace, and
by afflicting the body intended the hurting of the soul.
6. It was a conquest of him that had long possession, and
one way or othe f r kept in bondage the prisoners that justice had
subjected to his rage.
7. It was a victory exceeding honourable to Christ, whose
very messengers, by his name alone, could make the powers of
hell submit. He that refused to be made a king, as having not
a kingdom of this world, (John xviii. 36,) and that had not a
place to lay his head on ; (Matt. viii. 22 ;) commanded him
that had presumed to tempt him with all the kingdoms and
the glory of the world ! (Matt. iv. 8, 9 ;) and that not only by
the bare word of his mouth, but by the word of his meanest,
most despised messengers ; which made the people stand
amazed, saying, what manner of man is this ?
8. It was a victory tending to the successes of the gospel, to
convince the unbelieving world, and so to enlarge the kingdom
of Christ, and to save the people's souls.
9. And also from so great a work it was no small honour that
accrued to the instruments: an honour which, in its proper
place, they might lawfully regard.
10. And all this was aggravated by the congruency of the
mercy to the low, despised condition of the instruments, (and of
Christ himself,) when they were destitute of all common advan-
tages and means, for the carrying on of so great and necessary
a work, surpassing all the strength of flesh : how seasonable
was it that the Omnipotency of heaven should then appear for
them, and thus engage itself for their success. So that in all
this you may easily see that here was abundant matter for a
rational, warrantable joy to the disciples.
11. But where then was their fault ? And what was that joy
which Christ forbad them ? Answer. Having already told you in
general, I shall tell you more particularly. 1 . They looked too
much at the matter of dominion over the subjected and ejected
devils and relished most delightfully the external part. As the
Jews looked for a Messiah that should come in grandeur, and
bring the nations under his dominion ; so the disciples that
had yet too much of these conceits began to be lifted up with
the expectation of some earthly glory, when they saw the powers
of hell submit, and Christ thus begin with the manifestation of
his omnipotency. But the great end of these miracles they too
much overlooked : they too much left out of the rejoicings the
158 RIGHT REJOICING.
appearances of God, the advantages of faith, the promotion
of the spiritual kingdom of Christ, and the greater mercies of
the gospel, as to themselves and others.
2. They took too great a share of the honour to themselves,
being more affected to see what great things they were made
the instruments to accomplish, than what honour did thereby
accrue to God and benefit to man ; and thus, while they arro-
gate too much to themselves, and withal too much overlook those
higher, greater mercies, to which all their miracles were but
means, they deservedly fall under Christ's reproof; and he is
employed in the cure of their diseased joys, by amputation of
the superfluities, and rectifying the irregularities, and supplying
the defects, lest Satan should take possession of their souls,
by carnality, selfishness, and pride, when they thought they had
conquered him, by dispossessing him of men's bodies.
III. By this you may understand what joy it is that Christ al-
loweth and commandeth them.
1 . As to themselves, to kill their pride, and to increase their
kindly joy and thankfulness, and to advance their estimation of
the riches of the gospel, and rectify their judgment of the work
and kingdom of their Lord, he calls them to mind that higher
mercy, which is worthy of their greatest joy. An interest in
heaven is another kind of mercy than healing the sick, or cast-
ing out devils here on earth.
2. In reference to his honour, he would have them first look
at the greatest of his gifts, and not forget the glory which he
finally intends them, while they are taken up with these wonders
in the way ; for his greatest honour ariseth from his greatest
mercies.
3. As to the degrees of their rejoicing, he would not have
them give the greater share to the lesser mercy, but to rejoice so
much more in their heavenly interest, as that all other joy should
be as none in comparison of it: so that this "Rejoice not in
this," &c. is as much as if he had said, ' Let your rejoicing in
this power over the devils be as nothing in comparison of your
rejoicing that your names are written in heaven.' Just as he
forbiddeth care and labour for these earthly things, when he
saith, " Care not what ye shall eat," &c. ; (Matt. vi. 25 ;) "La-
bour not for the meat that perisheth, but for that which endur-
eth to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you/'
(John vi. 27.) Our care and labour for earthly things must be
nothing, in comparison of the care and labour we are at for hea-
RIGHT REJOICING. 159
ven : and so our joy, in the greatest of these outward mercies,
should be as nothing, in comparison of our joy in higher things.
4. As to the nature and order of the thing, he alloweth them
no joy in this, or any temporal or created thing whatsoever,
but as it proceedeth from God, and tendeth to him as our ulti-
mate end. We must not rejoice in our victories over Satan, or
any other enemy, for itself, and as our end, but as it is a means
to the glory of God and men's salvation. In all which, it is
evident that Christ doth but regulate and advance their joy,
and calleth them first to rejoice in that which is their end and
all, and animateth all their lower mercies; he then alloweth and
requireth them to rejoice, even in this, which he seemed to for-
bid them to rejoice in, viz., that the devils were subject to them,
so they do it in due subordination to its end.
The only difficulty in the preceptive part of the text is, what
is meant here by the " Writing of their names in heaven/' In a
word, the meaning is, that they are " fellow citizens of the
saints, and of the household of God;" and having a room among
the saints on earth, have a title to the celestial glory. As in
some well-ordered cities there were rolls kept of the names of
all the citizens, or freemen, as distinct from all the inferior,
more servile, sort of subjects ; and as muster-rolls are kept of
the listed soldiers of the army, so all that are saints are en-
rolled citizens of heaven, that is, are the heirs of the heavenly
felicitv.
We are decreed to this state before the foundations of the
world ; we are redeemed to it by the death of Christ ; but we
are not actually entered into it till we are sanctified by the Holy
Ghost, and heartily engaged to God the Father, Son, and Spirit,
in the holy covenant.
The doctrine of the text is contained in this proposition —
To have our names written in heaven is the greatest mercy,
and first, and chiefly, and only for itself to be rejoiced in ; which
so puts the estimate on all inferior mercies, that further than
they refer to this they are not to be the matter of our joy.
Though we had seen the devils subjected to our ministration,
departing from the possessed when we command them in the
name of Christ, and the bodies of the afflicted miraculously re-
lieved ; yet all this were not, comparatively, to be rejoiced in,
not as separated from our title to the heavenly glory.
When I have, first, given you the reasons of the prohibition
— " Rejoice not in this/' and then of the command—" But ra-
160 RIGHT REJOrCING.
ther rejoice," &c. you may, by fuller satisfaction about the sense
and truth of the proposition, be better prepared for the further
application.
I. " Rejoice not," though the devils themselves were subject
to you, further than as this refers to heaven; 1. Because all
these common mercies may possibly consist with the present
misery of the persons that receive them. A man may be the
slave of the devil, as to his soul, when he is casting him out of
another man's body. He may be conquered by his own concu-
piscence, that hath triumphed over many an enemy. These times
have showed it, to our grief, that heresy, and pride, and ambi-
tion, and self-conceit, may conquer those that have been famous
for their conquests. He may be a slave to himself that is the
master of another.
And what I say of the instance in my text, you may, upon a
parity or superiority of reason, all along give me leave to ap-
ply to the great occasion of the day, it being a matter of much
greater glory to conquer infernal powers than mortal enemies,
and to have the devils subject to us than men. To be such a
conqueror of men or devils is no sure proof of the pardon of
sin, the favour of God, and saving of your souls. Alas ! how
many, called valiant, are the basest cowards in the warfare that
their everlasting life dependeth on ? How many that are re-
nowned for their victories by men, are wretches despised and
abhorred by the Lord ? What Christian so poor and despica-
ble in the world that would change his state with a Catiline
or Sejanus, yea, with a Caesar or Alexander, if he might ?
Could you see the inside of a glittering gallant, or an adored
prince, that is a stranger to the life of faith, what a sad dis-
parity would you see ? The vermin of the most filthy lusts con-
tinually crawling in the soul, while the body is set out by the
most exquisite ornaments that pride can invent, and their purses
can procure, for the increasing of their esteem in the eyes of
such as judge of souls by the colour and cover of the bodies.
To see the same man sumptuously feasted, attended, honoured,
magnified by men, and at the same time dead in sin, unac-
quainted with the life and comforts of believers, and under the
curse and condemnation of the law of God, would tell you that
such a wretch is far from the state in which a reasonable man
is allowed to rejoice. There are not more naked leprous souls
in the world, than some that are covered with a silken, laced,
painted case : nor any more poor and sordid, than such as
RIGHT REJOICING. 161
abound with earthly riches. And for such a one to rejoice is as
unseemly as for a man to glory that his gangrened foot hath a
handsome shoe ; or that his diseased, pained flesh doth suffer
in the fashion; or that his wounds and ulcers are searched with
a silver instrument. God seeth the rottenness and filth that is
within these painted sepulchres, and therefore judgeth not of
them as the ignorant spectator, that seeth no further than the
smoothed, polished, gilded outside. And therefore we find his
language of such to differ so much from the language of the
world. He calls those poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked,
and foolish, and mad, and dead, and cursed, that perhaps hear
nothing lower from the world than honourable, worshipful,
rich, and wise ; and men are admiring them, while God is loath-
ing them : and men are applauding them, while God con-
demneth them. And hence it is that the servants of the Lord
do lament the case of those that worldlings count most happy.
What Paul speaks of those " whose God is their belly, whose
glory is their shame, and who mind earthly things," he doth it
weeping; (Phil. iii. IS, 19;) when a frantic sensualist would
have derided his compassionate tears, and bid him keep them
for himself.
2. Rejoice not in these outward common things compara-
tively, or for themsevles, because they are not only consistent
with most deplorable misery, but also are the strong and
ordinary means of making men miserable, and fixing them in
it, and increasing it. Many that have seemed humble, fruitful,
flourishing, and steadfast, while they dwelt in the vallies of a
mean, a low, afflicted state, have proved sun- burnt, weather-
beaten sinners, apostates, proud, vain glorious and barren, when
they have removed their habitations to the mountains of pros-
perity. Alas ! we find it hard enough to be serious, faithful
Christians, under the less and ordinary temptations of a poor,
or mean, or suffering condition. And I should rejoice if I were
but to pass to heaven as a camel must pass through a nee-
dle's eye. We have difficulties enough already, unless our
wisdom, strength, and courage, were greater to encounter them ;
and shall we rejoice if these difficulties be increased to impos-
sibilities, (as with men,) leaving us no hope but that human
impossibilities are conquerable by Divine Omnipotency. (Luke
xvui. 27.) Ts it not hard enough to have a lowly mind in a low
condition ; but much more in a high. To despise the world
when the world despiseth us. To walk in heaven when faith is
not interrupted by the noise or shows of the distracted actors
VOL. XVII. M
162 RIGHT REJOICING.
of these bedlam tragedies. And to converse with our everlasting
company, when we are freest from these crowds and tumults.
And shall we rejoice that we, who already stumble at straw,
have rocks of offence and mountains of difficulty cast before us ?
How few are advanced to higher measures of faith and holiness
by their advancements in the world ? For the most part, if they
seemed to have something of plain honesty and fidelity before,
when they come to be advanced, it is drowned in carnal poli-
cies, self-love, and hypocritical dissimulation. And if they
seemed before to be humble and heavenly, and to live to God,
and to his interest and service, how strangely doth prosperity
and dignity transform them, and make them forget their former
apprehensions, their convictions, purposes, and vows, yea, their
God, their happiness, and themselves. And should we not be
very cautelous how we rejoice in an air that few men have their
health in ? and in a diet how sweet soever, that corrupts and
kills the most that use it ? in the tables that prove snares,
and the sumptuous houses that are traps to the inhabitants ?
3. Rejoice not in these common things, for they are but such
as are often made the devil's tools to do his work by, and are
used against the Lord that gave them, to the hinderance of the
gospel, and injury of the church of Christ. While men are low,
and live by faith, they do good with the little which they have ;
and have the blessing of the will, (when they are unable for the
deed,) and of hearts disposed to do good if they had opportu-
nity ; when usually those that are lifted up, having more of
power, and less of will, do less when they might and should do
more ; and use their talents to aggravate their sin and condem-
nation ; to further piety, or charity, they have power without
will ; but to hinder it, they have both power and will. And
while the poor of the world, that are rich only in faith, would
help on the work of God, and cannot, (by the great assist-
ances which the great might give.) and the rich and honourable
can and will not, but can and will promote the interest of the
flesh, you may easily see the case of the church, how sure it is
to know the adversity, and how much of our expectation must
be from God, and how little from any of the sons of men. Is it
as common for one that is very rich to part wtth all to follow
Christ for the hopes of heaven, as it is for one that hath not
much in the world, to part with ? Is it as common for one that
hath many thousands a year, to cast all his substance into the
treasury, as for a widow to do it that hath but two mites ?
(Luke xxi, 2.)
RIGHT REJOICING. 163
4. O how much easier were it like to go with the church of
God if greatness and ungodliness were not so commonly con-
junct ! But usually, as riches, and dignities, and honours, do
much increase their carnal interest, so do they increase their
carnal mindedness, and their engagements against that life of
faith and holiness which is contrary to their interests ; so that
none are such malignant adversaries to godliness, and none
have such advantage to execute their malice. Seeing, then, that
all such honours and advancements are made hy corruption too
ordinary instruments of the vilest works of serving Satan, and
opposing Christ, and oppressing piety, honesty, and innocence,
rejoice not in them as for themselves, nor any way but in sub-
servience to your heavenly rejoicings.
5. And it should much abate our carnal joy to consider that
all these things are such as may end in misery, and leave the
owner in everlasting wo. He that is feasting in purple and
fine linen to-day, may be to-morrow in remediless torments,
and want a drop of water to cool his tongue. (Luke xvi.) He
that is to-day triumphing over mortal enemies, may to-morrow
be led in triumph to hell fire, and lie in chains of darkness till
the judgment of the great day. He that is now prophesying
in the name of Christ, and casting out devils, and doing many
great and wonderful works, may shortly be condemned at his
bar with a " depart from me ye workers of iniquity, I never knew
you." (Matt. vii. 22, 23.) And who would be merry at a feast that
he must cast up again, in griping pain, or mortal sickness ? You
see now where the great ones of the world do take their places,
and how they are admired and honoured by men ; but you see
not where the tide will leave them, and how they shall be used
by infernal spirits, if they have not a better preventive and secu-
rity than all the renown and dignities of the world. Be cau-
telous, therefore, in your rejoicing for that which may end in
everlasting sorrows.
Yea, more than so, these outward honours and successes may
plunge men deeper in perdition than ever they hau «, — without
them. And thousands shall wish that they had never known them 5
and that they had rather been the lowest and obscurest persons,
than by the temptations of prosperity to have been led into that
misery. And should you not be very cautelous in your rejoicing
in that which you may possibly wish you had never known ?
You see then the reasons for the prohibition, " Rejoice not."
II. But, on the contrary, that the precept " Rejoice that your
M 2
164 RIGHT REJOICING.
names are written in heaven," is backed with such reasons
from the nature of the thing, as should much excite us to the
practice, is a truth so manifest, that a tedious demonstration of
it might seem at best unnecessary, and so an error, in these
straits of time. 1. What should be rejoiced in, if not the
Lord of life himself, who is the everlasting joy and glory of the
saints ? If felicity itself cannot make us happy, and life itself
is insufficient to quicken us, and the sun itself cannot illuminate
us, it is in vain to expect this light, this life, this happiness and
joy from any other. From others we may have joy derivatively
at the second hand, but only from God as the original and first
cause. Other things may be means of the conveyance, but
God is the matter of our joy. A creature may be his medicine,
but he is our life and health itself, Comfort may be offered by
others, but it is he that gives it. Others may direct us to it,
but he effecteth it. If God be not to be rejoiced in, the affection
of joy is made in vain; for he is goodness itself, and there is
nothing lovely or delectable but what is in him. And what
is heaven but the fruition of God ?
2. It is congruous that we now rejoice in that which we must
everlastingly rejoice in. Heaven is the state of everlasting joy,
and, therefore, the foresight of it by faith is the only way to
rational, solid comfort here. If you knew the place in which
you should live but an hundred years in earthly pleasures, or
the friend in whom you should as long have sweet delight,
the foreknowledge of it would make that place and friend more
delightful to you than any other. Mutable joys are the shame
of man, and show his levity, or his folly in choosing these things
to comfort him that are, insufficient to perform it. But if your
heavenly interest be the matter of your joy, you may rejoice to-
morrow as well as to-day, and the next day as Well as to-
morrow, and the next year as well as this. If prosperity be
your joy, your joy must be short, for your worldly prosperity
will be so. If victory and dignity, and overtopping others, be
your joy, it will be short ; for death is ready to leave the con-
queror, the honourable, the prince, with the conquered, and
the meanest subject. If the solemnity and feasting of such a
day as this should be the greatest matter of your joy, the day
will have a night, and the feast an end, and so will your joy.
But if heaven be the matter of your joy, you may go on in your
rejoicing, and every day may be your festival : for God is the
same both yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. You only have
EIGHT REJOICING. 165
the day that hath no night, and the feast that hath no end, or
intermission, unless as it is caused by your errors and misappre-
hensions. There can nothing fall out of so hurtful a nature as
to turn your feast into gall and wormwood, for God will be still
God, and Christ still your head, and heaven will be heaven, and
nothing is of any considerable moment to put into the scales
against your happiness. Jf once you have a God, a Christ, a
heaven to rejoice in, you may rationally indulge a constant joy,
and may rationally rejoice in poverty, reproach, contempt, and
calumny, in imprisonment, banishment, sickness, or in death, as
in a prosperous state : and you transgress the laws of reason if
you do not.
3. Rejoice if your names are written in heaven ; for this is a
divine, a pure, a profitable, and a warrantable joy. When God
and his ministers rebuke your mirth, it is not this holy mirth
that they rebuke, but your dreaming mirth, or waking folly. As
we beat down your presumption, but to set up your faith ; and
beat down men's deceitful hopes, to prepare them for the hopes
that will not fail them, and not to bring them to despair ; so do
we call you from your frothy, foolish, childish mirth, that we may
lead you to the highest joys. Here is joy that you need not be
ashamed of ; of which you can scarcely take too much; of which
you need not to repent. Be as joyful and merry as you will, if
this may but be the matter of your joy. The more you are thus
joyful, the more acceptable to God. It is Satan, and not God,
that is the enemy of this joy ; that pleads against it, and fills a
Christian's mind with groundless scruples, and doubts, and
objections against it. O that our souls and our assemblies did
more abound with this holy joy ! And O that Christians under-
stood the excellency and usefulness of it, and would set them-
selves more constantly to the promoting and maintaining of it
in themselves ! Whoever of you that is most joyful in the
Lord, I dare persuade you to be more joyful yet; and so far
should you be from checking yourselves for this holy joy, that
the rest of your duties should intend it, and you should make it
your work by the help of all God's ordinances and mercies to
increase it. He is the best Christian that hath most love, and
joy, and gratitude ; and he that is best at this, is like to be best
in the performance of his other duties, and in the conquest of
remaining sins. But more of this in the application.
And now 1 am approaching to a closer application, I hope I
may suppose that 1 have removed the objection that met me in
166 RIGHT RKJOKING.
the beginning, and that by this time you see that I am not un-
seasonably suppressing your warrantable joy ; but, 1. Prevent-
ing that which is unwarrantable; and, 2. Showing you the
higher joys, which must animate these, or they will be but dead,
corrupted things ; it is only the regulation and the exaltation
of your joys that I am endeavouring : and, for the first, my
text afTordeth me so full instruction, that you may see this
observation meeting you in the first perusal of the words.
That when the Lord hath vouchsafed us matter of rejoicing
in his wonders of mercy, and our great successes, the best of us
are too prone to take up a selfish, carnal joy, and have need of
Christ's prohibition or caution, " rejoice not in this."
The soul is active, and will be doing ; and there is nothing
that it is more naturally inclined to than delight. Something
or other, which may be suitable to it, and sufficient to answer
its desires, it fain would be rejoicing in. And the spiritual part
of all our mercies is pure and refined, and too subtle for the dis-
cerning of our carnal minds, and, therefore, is invisible to the
dark, ungodly world ; and, also, it is contrary to the interest of
the flesh, and to the present bent of man's concupiscence : and
therefore it is that spiritual mercies are not perceived, nor
relished by the flesh ; yea, that they are refused, as food by a
sick stomach, with enmity and loathing, as if they were judg-
ments or plagues, and not mercies ; and hence it is that a car-
nal mind doth as unwillingly accept of any mercies of this sort,
as if it were some heavy service that made God almost beholden
to him to accept them. But the objects of sense, the matters
of commodity, or honour, or sensual pleasure, are such as the
worst of men are more eager after tjian any other ; they are
things that flesh itself doth savour, and can judge of, and is
naturally, now, too much in love with. And, therefore, there
being too much of this concupiscence yet within us, the best
have need, as to be excited to the spiritual part of their rejoic-
ing, so to be warned and called off from the carnal part. Our
successes, and our other common mercies, have all of them both a
carnal and a spiritual part ; somewhat that is suited to our
bodies, and somewhat to our souls. And as we are all too
prone to be sensible and regardful of our bodily affairs and in-
terests, and too insensible and neglectful of the matters of our
souls ; so we can easily pick out so much of providences and
mercies as gratify and accomodate our flesh; and there we
would stop and know no more ; as if we had no spiritual part to
RIGHT REJOICING. 167
mind, nor the mercy of any spiritual part to be improved. To
rejoice in mere prosperity and success may be done without
grace, by pride, and sensuality, as easily as a drunkard can be
merry with his cups, or any other sinner in his sin. Think it
not needless, then, to hear this admonition, take heed that you
rejoice not carnally in the carcass, or outside only of your
mercies ; as such an outside religion, consisting in the shell of
duty, without God, who is the life and kernel, is not religion
indeed, but an hypocritical, self-deceiving show; so you may
turn a day of thanksgiving into a clay of fleshly mirth, more
sinful than a morris-dance or may-game, because of the aggra-
vation of conjunct hypocrisy, if you set not a faithful guard upon
your hearts.
For the rectifying, therefore, and elevating of your joys, I am
first to tell you, that there is matter of far greater joy before you
than all the successes or prosperity of the world : and if it be
not, yet being freely offered you, your acceptance may quickly
make it such. Eternal joy and glory is at hand, the door is
open, the promise is sure, the way made plain, the helps are
many, and safe, and powerful ; you may have the conduct of
Christ, and the company of thousands, (though the smaller
number,) if you will go this way : there are passengers every
day going on, and entering in ; many that were here the last
year, are this year in heaven ; yea, many that were yesterday on
earth, are in heaven to day. It is another kind of assembly and
solemnity than this that they are now beholding, and you may
behold. One strain of that celestial melody doth afford more
ravishing sweetness and delight than all that ever earth could
yield. If a day in God's courts here, be better than a thousand
in common employments or delights, then, sure, a day in heaven
is better than ten thousand. That is the court ; and (except
the church, which is a garden that hath some celestial plants,
and is a seminary or nursery for heaven) this world is the dung-
hill. There all is spiritual, pure, and perfect ; the soul, the
service, and the joy ; but here they are all so mixed with flesh,
and, therefore, so imperfect and impure, that we are afraid of
our very comforts, and are fain, upon the review, to sorrow over
many of our joys. We come now from cares and troubles to
our feasts ; and our wedding garments smell of the smoke ; and
a secret disquietness in the midst of our delights doth tell us,
that the root of our troubles doth remain, and that yet we are
not where we should be, and that this is not our resting place.
168 RIGHT REJOICING.
We lay by our cares and sorrows on these days with our old
clothes, to take them up again to morrow, and alas ! they are
our ordinary week-day habits : and it were well if it were
only so ; but even in laughter the heart is sorrowful ; and in
our sweetest joys we feel sueh imperfections as threateneth a
relapse into our former troubles. But the face of God admitteth
no such imperfections in the joy of the beholders ; there we
shall have joy without either feeling or fear of sorrow ; and
praises without any mixtures of complaint. Our sweetest love
to the Lord of love will feel no bounds, and fear no end. O
what unspeakable delights will fill that soul that now walks
mournfully, and feedeth upon complaints and tears ! How the
glory of God will make that face to shine for ever, that now
looks too dejectedly, and is darkened with griefs, and worn with
fears, and daily wears a mourning visage ! No trouble can
enter into the heavenly Jerusalem : nor is there a mournful
countenance in the presence of our King ! Self-troubling was
the fruit of sin and weakness, of ignorance, mistakes, and pas-
sion, and, therefore, is unknown in heaven, being pardoned and
laid by with our flesh among the rest of our childish weaknesses
and diseases. That poor, afflicted, wounded soul, that breathes
in trouble as its daily air, and thinks it is made up of grief and
fear, r shall be turned into love and joy, and be unspeakably
higher in those heavenly delights than ever it was low in sorrow.
O blessed face of the most glorious God ! O happy presence of
our glorified head ! O blessed beams of the eternal love, that
will continually shine upon us ! O blessed work ! to behold, to
love, to delight, and praise ! O blessed company of holy
angels, and perfect saints, so perfectly united, so exactly suited,
to concord in those felicitating works ! Where all these are
what sorrow can there be ? what relics of distress, or smallest
scars of our ancient wounds ! Had I but one such friend as the
meanest angel in heaven to converse with, how easily could I
spare the courts of princes, the popular concourse, the learned
academies, and all that the world accounteth pleasure, to live in
the sweet and secret converse of such a friend ! How delight-
fully should I hear him discourse of the ravishing love of God,
of the glory of his face, the person of our Redeemer, the con-
tinued union of the glorified human nature with the divine, and
of the head, with all the glorified members, and his influences
on his imperfect ones below ! Of the dignity, quality, and work
of saints and angels, and of the manner of their mutual con-
RIGHT REJOICING. 169
verse. How gladly would I retire from the noise of laughter,
the compliments of comic gallants, the clutter and vain-glory of
a distracted world, or any of the more mainly inferior delights,
to walk with one such heavenly companion ! O how the beams
of his illuminated intellect would promote my desired illumina-
tion ! And the flames of his love to the most glorious God
would reach my heart ; what life and heavenly sweetness there
would be in all his speeches ! That little of heaven that I have
perceived on some of the servants of the Lord, that are conver-
sant above in the life of faith, doth make them more amiable,
and their converse much more delectable to me, than all the
feastings, music, or merriments in the world. O then what a
world of joy and glory will that be, where we shall not only con-
verse with them that have seen the Lord, and are perfected in
the beatifical vision and fruition, but also shall ourselves ever-
lastingly behold him, and enjoy him in perfection ! That world
all true believers see ; they see it by faith in the holy glass which
the Spirit in the apostles and prophets hath set up : and they
have the earnest and first-fruits of it themselves, even that Spirit
by which they are sealed hereunto ; that world we are ready to
take possession of ; we are almost there ; we are but taking our
leave of the inhabitants and affairs of earth, and better putting
on our heavenly robes, and we are presently there. A few nights
more to stay on earth, a few words more to speak to the sons of
men, a few more duties to perform, and a few more trouble-
some steps to pass, will be a small inconsiderable delay. This
room will hold you now but an hour longer, and this world but
a few hours more, but heaven will be the dwelling-place of
saints to all eternity. These faces of flesh that we see to day,
we shall see but a few times more, if any; but the face of God
we shall see for ever. That glory no dismal times shall darken,
that joy no sorrow shall interrupt, no sin shall forfeit, no enemy
shall endanger or take from us, no changes shall ever dispossess
us of. And should not a believer then rejoice that his name is
written in heaven ? and that every providence wheels him on,
and whether the way be fair or foul it is thither that he is
travelling ? O sirs ! if heaven be better than vanity and vexation;
if endless joy be better than the laughter of a child that ends in
crying ; and if God be better than a delusory world, you have
then greater matters set before you to be the matter of your joy
than prosperity and success, or any thing that flesh and blood
delights in.
170 RIGHT REJOICING.
And this being so, I am next, in faithfulness to your souls?
Obliged to call you to inquire, whether the rejoicing of this day,
and the rejoicing of your lives, do here begin ? Is God the begin-
ning and the end of all ? O that the Lord would awaken you
to perceive, in all your mirth, how nearly it concerneth you to
know first whether your names are written in heaven ; and
whether your chiefest joy be fetched from thence.
Alas ! sirs, it is a most pitiful sight to see men frisk about in
jollity, with the marks of death and wrath upon them ; and to
see men so franticly merry in their sin, as to forget the
misery that will so quickly mar their mirth ; and to see men
live as quietly and pleasantly as if all were well with them, when
they have taken no successful care for their precious souls, nor
made any considerable sure provision for their endless life !
Poor sinner ! the Lord who sent me on this message to thee,
knows that I envy thee not thy mirth or pleasure, but only would
have it better for thee, or have thee set thy mind on better. But
let me so far interrupt thee in thy mirth, as to ask thee whether
thou art sure of heaven ? Or, at least, whether thou hast given
diligence to make it sure ? (2 Peter i. 10.) If this night thy soul
be called away, canst thou truly say that thou art an heir of
life, and hast laid up thy treasure there beforehand ? If thou
say that thou hopest well, and no man can do more, and thus
dost desperately cast thy everlasting life upon a careless venture,
I must tell thee first that assurance may be bad. Would God
bid us rejoice that our names are written in heaven, if it were
a thing that could not by any means be known ? Would he
bid us give diligence to make our calling and election sure, if
it were a thing that could not by any diligence be tatained ?
And I must add, that presumption is no sign of a safe condi-
tion. It shall not go well with you because you imagine it
shall go welL A man in a dropsy or consumption will not live
by saying that he hopes he shall not die. Yea, more, I must
add, that a careless venturousness is a mark of misery. For a
man that valueth God and his salvation, cannot put off a matter
of such eternal consequence so slightly and disregardfully.
And a fear and care about your salvation would be a far better
sign. For the most part they are safest that fear their danger,
and they are in the saddest case that are never sad at the con-
sideration of their case. It is not your bold and confident
conceits that will open heaven to you, and therefore, I beseech
you, presently look out for surer grounds of peace than these.
RIGHT REJOICING. 171
Jf you say, How can it be known to me whether my name
be written in heaven or not ? I shall briefly, but satisfactorily,
answer it.
In general, if thou know that thou art one that God hath
promised heaven to, thou mayest know thy title, which is
meant by the writing of thy name in heaven, and thou mayest
know that this promise shall be made good.
More particularly, 1. If thou hast had such an effectual
sight of the vanity of earth, and of the heavenly felicity, that
heaven hath the pre-eminence in thy practical estimation and
choice, and thou hast resolved that heaven or nothing shall be
thy happiness, and art so far at a point with all things under
the sun, as that thou art resolved to stick closer to Christ than
unto them, and whatever it cost thee to take the fruition of
God for ever as thy portion -, if, upon consideration of the dif-
ference between heaven and earth, God and the creatures,
eternity and time, thou hast heartily devoted thyself to God,
aud art willing to be his servant upon the terms that he invit-
eth thee on, thou mayest be assured that thy name is written in
heaven. (Matt. vi. 19, 21, and xvi. 24 — 26, and xiii. 45,46;
Luke xviii. 33.)
But if earth be the place of thy highest estimation and choice,
where thou placest thy chief affections, and which thou adhe-
rest to more resolutely than to God, and which thou wilt not
leave whatever thou lose by it, then, as earth hath thy heart,
so earth is thy treasure, and thy name is not written in heaven,
but in the dust.
2. If the obtaining of heaven be the principal part of thy
care and business, the principal work which thou mindest in
the work, it is certain that thy name is written in heaven :
(Col. iii. 1 — 4:) otherwise not.
3. If, finding thyself lost and filthy in thy sin, thou see the
necessity and sufficiency of Christ, and, being desirous of his
graco and righteousness, dost unfeignedly take him for thy Sa-
viour and Lord, and give up thyself to be healed, and justified,
and saved by him, as the only physician of souls, thou art then
his member, and thy name is written in heaven. (Job. i. 12,
and iii. 16, 18.)
4. If the heavenly nature be most amiable in thine eyes, and
the heavenly life be it that thou most desirest ; if thou hadst
rather be holy than be unholy, and hadst rather perfectly
obey the Lord, than live in sin, and longest to be better, and
172 RIGHT REJOICING.
studiest to live in obedience to the Lord, thy name is in heaven,
and thither thou art passing, and it will be thy reward. But
if thou love not holiness, but hadst rather be excused from it,
and live in thy sins, thou art as yet no heir of heaven. (Job
iii. 19 ; and xii. 26 ; Psalm i. and cxix.)
5, If thy name be written in heaven, thou hast a special love
to the heirs of heaven. And the more of heaven thou findest
in their hearts and lives, the more amiable they are unto thee,
and the sweeter is their converse. (Job iii. 14 ; Psalm xv. 4.)
I shall name no more. These evidences are sure. By these
you may know, while you sit here in these seats, yea, if you
lay in the darkest dungeon, that you are the heirs of heaven,
and vour names are there.
But where there is no such work, no high estimation of heaven,
and resolution for it, no mortification or conquest of the world,
no prevalent care and diligence for heaven, no resignation of
the soul to Christ, that by faith and holiness we might follow
him to that glory, no love to holiness, and no delight in the
heirs of heaven, such persons are yet aliens to the heavenly
nature and inheritance, and cannot rejoice that their names are
written in heaven.
And now I have set the glass before you, I earnestly entreat
you that you will here seriously view the complexion of your
souls. It more nearly concerneth you to know whether vour
names are written in heaven, and where it is that you must
dwell for ever, than to know how to manage your trades and
business, or to know whether you shall stir from this place
alive, or ever see another day. O sirs, take heed of living
in self-deceit till your trying and recovering time is past ! This
is it that your enemy aims at ; he will do all that malice and
subtlety can do to keep such matters from your sober thoughts,
or to make you groundlessly presume that you are safe, or
securely to cast your souls upon a desperate venture, under
pretence of trusting in Christ, till he hath you where he would
have you, and then he will himself take off the veil, and let
you know that you had time and light to have acquainted you
with your disease and misery, while you might have had a free,
and sure, and full remedy. Then you shall know that it was
along of your self-deceit if you would not understand and
believe in time, that if you lived after the flesh, you should die,
(Rom. viii. 13,) and that it is the pure in heart that shall see
God. (Matt. v. S.) Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not
RIGHT REJOICING. 173
inherit the kingdom of God ? Be not deceived ; neither for-
nicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor
thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extor-
tioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. vi. 9, 10.)
For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person,
nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in
the kingdom of Christ, and of God. Let no man deceive you
with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath
of God on the children of disobedience. (Ephes. v. 5, 6.) And
can any thing justify the rejoicing of men in so sad a state ?
Give me leave, therefore, to make a little closer application
of the several parts of my text to the several sorts of persons
whom they do concern. And first to all that yet are not
become the heirs of heaven : Rejoice not though devils were
subject to you, till your souls are subject to him that bought
them. Rejoice not though you had conquered all the world,
and had your wills of all your adversaries, as long as you are
conquered by your fleshly lusts, and Satan leads you captive at
his will. (2 Tim. ii. 25, 26.) Rejoice not though you had all
the riches of the earth, as long as you are void of the riches
of grace, and have nothing to do with the riches of glory.
Rejoice not though all men should honour you, and bow to you,
and proclaim your fame, as long as you are the drudges of the
devil and the flesh, and the God of heaven proclaimeth you
his enemies, and resolveth on your destruction, if you do not
• soundly and seasonably repent. (Luke xix. 27, and xiii. 3, 5.)
Be not offended with me, that, on a day of thanksgiving, I
thus far forbid you to rejoice, for it is not you that are qualified
for it, or have any part or fellowship in this business, being in
the gall of bitterness, and bonds of your iniquity, your hearts
being not right in the sight of God. Though the invitation
be general, it supposeth that you come prepared, and therefore
even he that calls men to his joys, will find out him that hath
not on the wedding garment, " and will bind him, and cast him
into outer darkness, where shall be weeping, and gnashing
of teeth." (Matt. xxii. 12, 13.) 1. Alas! sirs, if God would
allow you to rejoice, how willingly could I allow it you. But
hear whether he approve it. (Jam. v. 1, 3.) " Go to now ye
rich men, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming on
you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments moth-
eaten ; your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them
shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it
174 RIGHT REJOICING.
were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days/
(Luke vi. 24 — 26.) " Wo unto you that are rich, (if you have
no better riches,) for ye have received your consolation. Wo
unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger. Wo unto you
that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep. Wo unto you
when all men shall speak well of you/' &c. ; you may find your
lesson, Joel. ii. 12, 13, "Therefore also now, saith the Lord,
turn ye even to me with all your heart, with fasting, and with
weeping, and with mourning ; and rend vour heart/' You see
what God calls such men to. And if he allow you not to rejoice
till you are converted, if I or any man should flatter or cheat
you into joy, it would be but a curse to you, and not a benefit.
2. Were your joy but reasonable, I would not discourage it.
But a madman's laughter is no very lovely spectacle to your-
selves. And I appeal to all the reason in the world, whether
it be reasonable for a man to live in mirth that is yet unrege-
nerate, and under the curse and wrath of God, and can never
say, in the midst of his greatest pomp or pleasure, that he is
sure to be an hour out of hell, and may be sure he shall be
there for ever, if he die before he have a new, a holy, and a
heavenly nature, though he should die with laughter in his
face, or with a jest in his mouth, or in the boldest presumption
that he shall be saved, yet, as sure as the word of God is true,
he will find himself everlastingly undone, as soon as ever his
soul is departed from his body, and he sees the things that
he would not believe. Sirs, is it rational to dance in Satan's
fetters, at the brink of hell, when so many hundred diseases
are all ready to mar the mirth, and snatch away the guilty soul,
and cast it into endless desperation ? I exceedingly pity the
godly in their unwarrantable, melancholy griefs; and much
more an ungodly man that is. bleeding under his wounds of
conscience. But a man that is merry in the depth of miserv,
is more to be pitied than he. Methinks it is one of the most
pitiful sights in all the world to see a man ruffle it out in bra-
verv, and spend his precious time in pleasures, and melt into
sensual, foolish mirth, that is a stranger to God, and within a
step of endless wo ! When I see their pomp, and feasting,
and attendance, and hear their laughter, and insipid jests, and
the fiddlers at their doors or tables, and all things carried as
if they had made sure of heaven, it saddeneth my heart to think,
alas ! how little do these sinners know the state that they are
in, the God that now beholdeth them, the change that they
RIGHT REJOICING. 17&
are^near ! How little do they think of the flames that they are
hastening to, and the outcries and lamentations that will next
ensue.
3. Your mirth is disingenuous and dishonest as long as you
are without a title to heaven. You slight the Lord that can
find such matters of rejoicing, when you have uot his favour to
rejoice in, and are under his displeasure. While you are re-
fusing Christ, abusing grace, resisting the Spirit, serving the
flesh, and undoing your own souls, it cannot be an honest or
ingenuous thing for such as you to live in joy.
4. If your mirth were truly honourable to you, it were the
more excusable. But to laugh in sin and misery, and make
merry so near the endless wo, is a greater shame to your un-
derstandings, than to make sport to set your house on fire.
This is the laughter of which Solomon might well say, " Thou
art mad/' and the mirth of which he saith, " What doth it."
(Eccl. ii.2.)
5. Would thy mirth do thee any good, we would not dis-
courage it, yea, if it did not do thee harm. But O how many
are now in sonow by the means of their unseasonable, sinful
mirth ! They are too jocund to hear the preacher, or their
consciences, or to observe the checks and motions of God's
Spirit, or to spend now and then an hour in retired, sober
thoughts of their everlasting state. Should we but presume to
call them to exercise their reason, and mind them of these most
needful things, and tell them, " O poor distracted mortals,
your time is given you for greater things than to fiddle, and
dance, and drink, and jest, and prate, and compliment it away !"
should we not be thought morose, or melancholy, or fanatics ?
And should we not have some such answer as their ancestors
in Sodom gave to Lot ? (Gen. xix. 9.) " Stand back. This one
fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now
will we deal worse with thee than with them ;" we will take a
course with these controllers. Alas ! it is this foolish mirth that
casteth men's reason and conscience asleep, and drowns the
voice of sober words, so that God himself cannot be heard.
Could we but get men to retired soberness and seriousness, we
should hope that we might find a friend within them, and that
we speak to men, and that reason would take part with the
most reasonable motions that are made to them from the
Lord.
6. Lastly, Would your groundless mirth endure, we would
1/6 RIGHT REJOICING.
not say so much against it. But, alas ! to be merry for a day,
and then to lie in misery for ever, is a thing deserving no encou-
ragement. We see it is a merry world with many that have
least cause of mirth ; hut how long will they continue it ? To
see a man laugh, and play, and feast in a chariot, that drives on
so fast to death, in a vessel that is on so swift a stream that ends
in the gulf of endless horror, is a doleful sight. O how quickly
will that merry countenance turn sad ! those proud looks be
turned to an earthy paleness ; and those wanton eyes be moul-
dered to dust, and leave the empty holes to warn the next
spectators to use his eyes more wisely while he hath them ?
How quickly will these same sensual persons exchange their
mirth for sighs, and groans, and endless torments, and fruitless
lamentations, when they shall have everlasting leisure to peruse
their lives, and to consider their ways, which now there is no per-
suading them to consider of? Who can encourage such hurt-
ful and unseasonable mirth as this ? " Rejoice not, O Israel, for
joy, as other people, for thou hast gone a whoring from thy
God." (Hos. ix. 1.) "Rejoice not in a thing of nought,"
(Amos vi. 13,) much less in the sufferings of your brethren;
(Obad. 12,) and, least of all, in any hurt that befals the church.
If enmity to holiness, and exalted impiety, should take occa-
sion to triumph, we answer, as Micah, vii. 8, 9, " Rejoice not
against me, O mine enemy, when I fall I shall arise : when I
sit in darkness the Lord shall be a light unto me : I will bear
the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him,
until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me : he will
bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness."
If you think I have stood too long on the first part of my
text, it is not to rebuke your holy joy, but only to promote it,
and repress that carnal joy which is more destructive to it than
sorrow itself. As you must " seek first the kingdom of God and
its righteousness, and then other things shall be added to you,"
(Matt. vi. 33 ;) so must you rejoice first in the kingdom of hea-
ven, and the righteousness that is the way thereto, and then
you may add a moderate rejoicing in the things below in a due
subordination thereunto. You have the sum in the words of the
Holy Ghost, "Thus saith the Lord, let not the wise man glory
in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might;
let not the rich man glory in his riches ; but let him that gio-
rieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that
I am the Lord," &c. (Jer. ix. 23, 24.)
RIGHT REJOICING. 177
2. My next address must be to them whose names are written
in heaven, and that with a twofold exhortation.
I. u Rejoice that your names are written in heaven." It is
you, Christians, that joy of right belongs to. Little know the
lovers of pleasure more than God that they lose a thousand fold
more pleasure than they win : and that by running from a holy
life for pleasure, they run from the fire into the water for heat, and
from the sun into a dungeon for light. O show the unbelieving-
world, by your rejoicing, how they are mistaken in their choice !
Be ashamed that an empty sot, and one that must be for ever a
firebrand in hell, should live a more joyful life than you ! O do
not so wrong your Lord, your faith, your endless joys, as to
walk in heaviness, and cast away the joy of the Lord which is
your strength, and to be still complaining, when those that are
prepared for the slaughter are as frolic as if the bitterness of
death were past. It is well that you have so much life as to
feel your sicknesses ; but it is not well, that because you are yet
diseased, the life of grace and of glory should be so ineffectual
to your comfort. And yet, alas ! how common is it to see the
most miserable frisk and fleer, while the heirs of life are sinfully
vexing themselves with the inordinate fears of death. Lift up
thy head, Christian, and remember whence came thy graces,
even thy least desires, and whither do they tend. Where is thy
Father and thy Head, and the most dear of thy companions ?
Where is it that thou must live to all eternity ? Doth it be-
seem a companion of angels, a member of Christ, a child of
God, an heir of heaven, to be grieved at every petty cross, and
to lay by all the sense of his felicity, because some trifle of the
world falls cross to his desires and commodity ? Is it seemly
for one that must be everlastingly as full of joy as the sun is full
of light, to live in such a self-troubling, drooping state, as to
disgrace religion, and frighten away the ungodly from the doors
of grace, that, by your joyful lives, might be provoked to enter?
I know, as to your happiness, the matter is not comparatively
great ; because if mistakes and the devil's malice should keep
you sad here a hundred years, yet heaven will wipe away all
tears, and those joys will be long enough when they come; and
as the joy of the ungodly, so the sorrows of the humble, up-
right soul will be but for a moment ; and though you weep and
lament when the world rejoiceth, as their joy shall be turned
into sorrow, so your sorrow shall be turned into joy, and your
joy shall no man take from you. But, in the mean time, is it
VOL. XVII. N
178 RIGHT REJOICING.
not shame and pity that you should live so unanswerable to the
mercies of the Lord ? that you should sinfully grieve the com-
forting Spirit by the wilful grieving of yourselves, and that you
should peevishly cast away your precious mercies, when you so
much need them, by reason of the troubles of a vexatious
world, which you cannot avoid ? That you, even you, that are
saved by the Lord, should still be questioning it, or unthankfully
denying his great salvation, and so much hinder the salvation of
others 'M For the Lord's sake, Christians, and for your soul's
sake, and in pity to the ungodly, yield not to the tempter, that
would trouble you when he cannot damn you ? Is God your
Father, and Christ your Saviour, and the Spirit your Sanctifier,
and heaven your home ? And will you make all, for the pre-
sent, as nothing to you, by a causeless, obstinate denial ? If
you are in doubt, let not mere passionate fears be heard; and
let not the devil, the enemy of your peace, be heard : but peruse
your evidences, and still remember, as the sum of all, that the
will is the man, and what you would be that you are before the
Lord. If you cannot see the sincerity of your hearts, go to
your faithful, able guides, and open the case to them, and let
not passion prevail against the Scripture and reason which they
bring. Yea, if in your trouble you cannot by all their helps
perceive the uprightness of your hearts, I must tell you, you
may stay yourselves much upon their judgment of your state.
Though it cannot give you full assurance, it may justly help to
silence much of your self-accusations, and give you the comfort
of probability. If a physician that feels not what you feel,
shall yet, upon your speeches and other evidences, tell you that
he is confident your disease is not mortal, nor containeth any
cause of fear, you may rationally be much encouraged by his
judgment, though it give you no certainty of life. As wicked
men through contempt, so many godly people through melan-
choly, do lose much of the fruit of the office of the ministry,
which lieth much in this assisting men to judge of the life or
death of their souls. 'Alas!' say they, i he feels not what I
feel : he used to judge charitably, and he knoweth not me so
well as I know myself.' But when you have told him faithfully,
as you do your physician, what it is that you know by yourself,
he is able to pass a far sounder judgment of your life or death
than yourselves can do, for all your feeling : for he knows better
what those symptoms signify, and what is used to be the issue of
such a case as yours. Be not then so proud or wilful as to re-
RIGHT REJOICING. 17$
fuse the judgment of your faithful pastors, about the state of
your souls, in a confidence on your own.
And look not for more, as necessary to your comforts, than
God hath made necessary. Is it nothing to have a title to eter-
nal life, unless you be also as holy as you desire ? Yea, is it no-
thing to have a desire to be more holy? Will you have no
comfort, as long as you have distractions, or dulness, or such
like imperfection in duty ; and till you have no disease of soul
to trouble you, that is, till you have laid by flesh, and arrived at
your perfect joy ? Dare not to disobey the voice of God : u Be
glad in the Lord, and rejoice ye righteous; and shout for joy
all ye that are upright in heart." (Psalm xxxii. 11.) " Rejoice
evermore." (1 Thess. v. 16.) Let it be something that heaven
cannot weigh down that shall suppress thy joy. Art thou in
poverty, and is not heaven sufficient riches ? Art thou in dis-
grace, and shalt thou not have honour enough in heaven ? Art
thou in danger from the injustice or the wrath of man, and is he
not Almighty that hath undertaken to justify thee ? (Rom.
viii. 33, 34.) Dost thou languish under pining sicknesses, and is
there not everlasting health in heaven ? Art thou weak in
knowledge, in memory, in grace, in duty ; troubled with uncom-
manded thoughts and passions; and was it not so on earth with
all who are now in heaven ? O Christians ! make conscience of
obeying this command ; " Rejoice that your names are written
in heaven." Did you but know how God approveth such re-
joicing, and how much it pleaseth him above your pining sor-
rows ; and how it strengthened! the soul, and sweeteneth duty,
and easeth suffering, and honoureth religion, and encourageth
others, and how suitable it is to gospel grace, and to your high
relations and ends, and how much better it serves to subdue the
very sins that trouble you, than your fruitless, self-weakening
complainings do. I say, did you well consider all these things,
it would sure revive your drooping spirits.
And do not say now, c I would rejoice if I were sure that my
name were written in heaven ; but I am not sure.' For, 1 . Who
is it long of that you are not sure ? You may be sure that he that
valueth and seeketh heaven as better than earth, and that loveth
the holy way to heaven, and the most heavenly people, is indeed
an heir of heaven ; and you may be sure, if you will, that this
is your own case : and yet you say you are not sure that your
names are written in heaven. If God give you his grace, and
n 2
180 RIGHT REJOICING.
you deny it, will you therefore deny your right to glory, and
make one sin the excuse for another ?
2. And if you are not sure, is it nothing to have your proba-
bilities, and hopes, and the judgment of your able, faithful pas-
tors, that your souls are in a safe condition ? We dare not say
so to the careless world, nor to the most of men, as we do to you.
Especially take heed lest melancholy habituate you to fears
and griefs ; and then religion must bear the blame, and you
undergo a calamitous life, though you are the heirs of heaven.
To this end, 1 . Use not musing, serious thoughts beyond the
strength of your brain and intellect. 2. Place not too much of
your religion in the perusals and study of your hearts ; but (for
such as are inclined to melancholy) it is the fruitfulest way to
be much in expending duties abroad, and labouring to do good
to others, Such duties have less of self, and have much of God,
and divert the troubling, melancholy thoughts, and bring in
more comfort by way of reward, than is usually got by more
direct inquiring after comfort. 3. Use not too much solita-
riness and retiredness : man is a sociable creature; and as his
duty lieth much with others, so his comfort lieth in the same
way as his duty. 4. Take heed of worldly sorrows, and there-
fore of overvaluing worldly things. 5. Take heed of idleness,
or of thinking that the duties of holiness are all that you
have to mind ; but make conscience of being diligent in a par-
ticular calling, which diverts the hurtful^ troubling thoughts,
and is pleasing unto God. 6. Take not every sickness of your
souls for death, but rejoice in that life which enableth you to be
troubled at your diseases. Keep under melancholy by these
means, (and the advice of the physician,) and you will escape a
very great hinderance to this high and holy duty of heavenly
rejoicing.
II. But you think, perhaps, that I have all this while forgotten
the duty proper to the day : No ; but I was not fit to speak for
it, nor you fit to hear and practise it, till the impediment of
carnal rejoicing was removed, and till we had begun with hea-
venly joy. It is heaven that must animate all our comforts.
They are so far sweet as heaven is in them, and no further. Now,
therefore, if you first rejoice for your heavenly interest 1 , I dare
safely then persuade you to rejoice in the mercies which we are
to be thankful for this day. And though some of them are but
yet in the birth, if not in the womb, and we are yet uncertain
RIGHT REJOICING, 181
what they will prove, that will not excuse us for any unthank-
fulness for the first conception or infancy of our mercies. And
though Satan seek to get advantage hy them, that will not ex-
cuse us for our overlooking the mercy in itself. And though
there are yet ahundance of fears and troubles on the hearts of
many of Christ's servants through the land, we cannot by any
such accidents be excused from the thankful observation of the
workings of the Lord. All mercies on earth, even spiritual mer-
cies, have their mixtures of trouble, and their imperfections ; but
must not therefore be denied or extenuated. And though many
that are dear to us, smarting by the change, will be offended
and grieved at our most moderate thanksgiving, we must not
therefore offend the Lord by our disregardfulness of his works.
There are these things to be commemorated by us this day,
which I dare not overlook. 1. That God hath so honoured his
justice and impartiality, as to show how he hateth sin in whom-
soever. And indeed the justice of God itself would seem more
amiable to us, were we not so selfish as to think hardly of all
that is hurtful unto us. Justice demonstrated the holiness of
God, and all the appearances of his holiness are lovely in
themselves.
2. That the holy God hath disowned heresy and divisions on
the one side, as well as impiety and profaneness on the other ;
and that his wisdom thought meet to acquaint us experimentally
with the hurtfulness of both, and our danger of both, as he did in
former ages of the church. We first found the serpentine malice
of the ungodly, and God delivered us when they would have
swallowed us up. But while we only heard and read of heresy
and schism, and that too often abusively applied to many of the
• most peaceable servants of the Lord, we understood not the
mischief of those evils, but were ready to take the very names
to be but the reproaches of piety itself. But God saw meet to
let out a flood of this sort of calamities, and to suffer heresy to
disgrace itself by its unrighteous fruits, that by those fruits we
might the better know it. We never knew before how much
we are beholden to him for saving us from this sort of evils ;
and should never have sufficiently hated them, if we had not
smarted by them.
3. It is a mercy to be thankful for, that thus the church is
notably fortified against ever relapsing into heresy or schism for
the time to come.
4. And that the frailties of men professing godliness having
182 RIGHT REJOICING.
so lamentably appeared, they are taught to take heed of spiri-
tual pride, and to know and distrust themselves, and not to be
high-minded, but to fear.
5. It is a very great mercy, for which I must profess I was
thankful from the first appearance of it,* that so many that I hope
are dear to God, have the advantage of his frowns to further their
conviction, and repentance, and salvation. As prosperity was
the temptation by which ambition got advantage, and Provi-
dence misunderstood was pleaded against the holy rule, what a
mercy it is that Providence also should undeceive them, and
vindicate itself, and teach men hereafter by the example of this
age to stay till the end before they take the sense of Providence,
or rather to adhere to the holy word because the longest liver
shall be too short-lived to see the end, so far as to furnish him
for such an interpretation. And therefore that word that is
the glass in which we can foresee the end must be our guide.
I had rather have my friend poor and penitent, than wealthy
and impenitent ; and rather in a prison, than in the chains of
pride. And am glad that God hath taken away the snare that
brought so many souls to so sad a pass ; and hath undeceived
them in part, that had carnal thoughts of the happiness of
saints, and looked for temporal reign and dignity; forgetting
that rich men must pass through a needle's eye to heaven, and
that lowliness, meekness, humility, patience, forbearing, forgiv-
ing, self-denial, contempt of this world, and living all upon
things unseen, is the life that Christ by his doctrine and exam-
ple taught us, and how ill prosperity befriendeth these. I am
in far more hope to see many Peters go out and weep bitterly,
than I was when they prospered in a sinful way. And if yet
any be so far unhumbled, as to deny it to have been a sinful
way, I am in far greater hope of their conviction now than
heretofore. In their greatness few durst tell them of their
crimes ; and those of us that did it were voluminously reproached,
threatened, calumniated, and represented as turbulent to the
world. (It being usual with base-spirited men to take the
judgment of the greatest for their rule, and to think all suffering
to be just and honourable that is inflicted by such as few dare
to contradict.) But now, I hope, plain dealing may recover
many that before lived under flatteries, and were above reproof
* We kept this thanksgiving voluntarily in Worcestershire, by agreement
among the associated ministers, as we do here this day. See the agreement
published by The IVeehly Mercury.
RIGHT REJOICING. 183
I must profess that my hopes of the saving of many that are
dear to me, by the furtherance of this providence, is matter of
so much thankfulness tome, that were I sure to suffer with
them I would yet give thanks.
6. It is matter of thanksgiving to me that God hath so far
owned an unanimous, painful, faithful ministry, (for all their
many sad infirmities,) as first to break the profane opposers of
them, and then to scatter the adversaries on the other side.
Ever since I heard it so familiar among them to call Christ's
faithful servants by so many reproachful names, as priests, (in
scorn,) presbyters, drivines, jack presbyters, black-coats, pul-
piteers, &c.j and their friends priest-ridden ; to suffer quake rs
openly in the streets to revile them as deceivers, dogs, wolves,
hirelings, false prophets, liars, and all the names that hell could
teach them, I waited in fear for the judgments of the Lord ;
which he hath executed in our sight, and caused us to know,
that his delays are no desertions of his servants, nor justifica-
tion of our revilers. And let it stand as a warning to you that
have seen it, and you that have executed the punishments of
God upon the reproachers, that you take heed of falling into the
same crime, an** ^ouing on the rock on which they have been
broken ; but let all England hear and fear, and do no more so
malignantly or presumptuously.
And O that the unworthy ministers of Christ may remember
that we are not vindicated and delivered to contend, or to imi-
tate our afflicters, in seeking greatness to ourselves, nor to live
in idleness, and neglect the souls committed to our care.
7. It is very great cause of thankfulness in my eyes, that
firom first to last God hath been so tender of the honour of his
unanimous sober people, and his cause, of the innocency and
consciences of his servants ; as to execute his afflictions mostly
by the hands of erring men ; and to keep the rest by impri-
sonments, seclusions, and other means, so far from all appear-
ance of consent or irregularities : and that at last he hath put
an opportunity into their hands to declare to the world their
innocency in things with which they were reproached ; and
that while profane opposers of religion did boast and vapour,
and swear and curse, and drink healths for His Majesty's res-
titution, it is those whom they reproached that have silently
and effectually accomplished it, and that with speed, as soon as
they had power.
8. It is some matter of thankfulness to me, that whereas, to
184 RIGHT REJOICING.
our perpetual shame we could not in so many years compose
the disagreements in church affairs among us, we are not alto-
gether without hope that agreement may be now more effectually
procured; not only because those carnal advantages that hin-
dered it with some are taken from them, and suffering will dis-
pose some more to peace ; but because we are persuaded the
disposition, and we are sure the interest, of His Majesty stand-
eth for our reconciliation and unity. And verily we are the
most inexcusable people in the world, if our own long and
sad experience do not resolve us to do the utmost in that
work ourselves, which, if we are not horridly proud and wilful,
is easy to accomplish.
9. And it is matter of thanksgiving that God hath been all
along so wonderfully seen in the work ; which makes us hope
that the issue will yet be for our good. The first sparks that
set fire on the last foundation are yet much unknown, but
were so little as makes it the more strange. The wonderful
whirlwind that suddenly finished the subversion was marvel-
lous, though sad, because of the wickedness of men. The in-
troducing of the remnant of the members ; the stop that was
given them, when they had voted in a committee a liberty in
religion, that excepted not popery ; the casting them out by
those that set them up ; the discoveries of the fallaciousness of
some of their chiefs, who were then tempted into a compliance
with the army, and were fabricating a new form of a Common-
wealth ', the breaking of them and of the army, in part by the
returning members ; the unexpected stop that was given first to
their, proceedings by His Excellency in the North ; the expedi-
tiousness, the constancy, the unanimity and strange successful-
ness of that attempt, that an army who thought themselves only
fit to be the nation's security for liberty and religion, and were
thought necessary to be entailed upon us to that end ; that
were so heightened in their own and other men's esteem, by
their many and wonderful successes, should in a moment (we
scarce know how) fly all into pieces as a grenado that is fired ;
that Ireland at the same time should be so strangely and easily
reduced, and that by sober, faithful hands, and by so few, and
with such speed ; that this famous city should be so unani-
mously excited to concur so eminently, and contribute very much
to the success ; that His Excellency should conquer without any
blows ; and that all be despatched that since is done with no
considerable resistance ; all this, and much more, do make us
RIGHT REJOICING. 185
wonder at the hand of God. And seldom is there so wonderful
an appearance of the Lord, but it holds forth matter that is
amiable as well as admirable to his church.
Lastly. That all this is done with little or no effusion at all of
blood, when so much blood was shed in the foregoing changes,
advanceth the wonder to a greater height : and I hope His Ma-
jesty and the two Houses of Parliament will take notice how
God hath gone before them in a tender and unbloody change, and
will not hearken to them that protest against revenge, while
they would use it under the name of justice. When the wheel
of Providence turneth so fast, if all that have the advantage of
executing their wills under the name of justice should take their
advantage, you know what names and sufferings multitudes of the
most useful members in such nations, in the several vicissitudes,
must incur to the detriment of the commonwealth and gover-
nors.
III. You see what cause we have of thankfulness ; but I must
tell you that these, as all inferior mercies, are imperfect things,
and being but means to greater matters, the heavenly interest
first treated on, they are no further significant or valuable than
they have some tendency to their end : and I must further tell
you, that it is much committed into the hands of man, under
God, whether such beginnings shall have a happy or unhappy
end. If Christ become to many a stumbling-stone, and be set
for the fall of many in Israel, (Luke ii. 34,) and if the gospel
itself prove the savour of death to some, no wonder if it be
yet possible and too easy for a sinful land to turn these fore-
mentioned mercies and successes into most heavy judgments,
and to rob themselves of all the honour and the benefit. And
therefore, above all, for the Lord's sake, and for a poor, tired,
yet hoping nation's sake, and for the sake of the cause of
Christ through the world, I beseech you all, from the highest
to the lowest, that you will be awakened to an holy vigilancy,
and look about you in your several places, lest the enemy of
Christ and you should play his aftergame more successfully than
now you can foresee : and lest the return of a sinful nation to
their vomit should make the end yet worse than the beginning.
It s is not enough to have begun ; the fruit of all is yet behind.
I must here deal plainly with you, however it be taken, lest I
be charged with unfaithfulness at the dreadful tribunal, to which
both you and I are hastening. If these beginnings, through
your neglects, or any others that have been the instruments,
186 RIGHT REJOICING.
should now be turned to the reviving and strengthening of pro-
faneness, and malignity against the holy ways of God ; to the
introduction of mere formality in religion; to the casting out, or
weakening the hands of the faithful ministers in the land ; to
the destruction of order and discipline in the churches; to the
suppression of orderly and edifying meetings for mutual assist-
ance in the matters of salvation ; or to the cherishing of igno-
rance or popery in the people, it will blast the glory of all that
you have done, and turn the mercy into gall. Believe it, the
interest of Christ and holiness will be found at last the surest
ground for any prince to build his interest upon ; and the own-
ing of corrupt and contrary interests that engage men in quar-
rels with the interest of Christ, is it that hath undone so many
princes and states already, that it should make the greatest
learn at last, to account it their highest honour to be the servants
of the King of Saints, and to devote their power to the ac-
complishment of his will. I need not tell you that it is the
sober, godly, conscionable sort of men that know what they do,
and why, that will be the honour of their governors, and the
most useful of their subjects, and not the barbarous, malignant
rabble, that understand not what belongs to the pleasing of
God, the happiness of themselves, the good of the Common-
wealth, or the honour of their king. And do you not think that
remissness, to say no worse, of magistrates, who should re-
strain the insolencies of such, is not a great dishonour to our
nation, and a great temptation to many in the country, that
stand at a distance from the fountain of affairs, to continue
their fears lest we have changed for the worst ? Put yourselves
in their cases, and tell me whether you could, with equal cheer-
fulness, keep this day, if you were used, as many able, faithful
ministers and people are in the cities and countries of the land,
who have their persons assaulted, their windows battered, their
ministrations openly reviled, and that go in danger of their
lives from the brutish rabble that were formerly exasperated by
the magistrates punishing them, or the minister's reproof, or
crossing them in their sins. As physicians are judged of, not
so much by the excellency of their remedies, as by their suc-
cess, and the people think of them as they see the patients live
or die, so will they do by your great performances which you
mention before the Lord this day. Should they prove to the
suppression of serious godliness, and the setting up of the wicked
of the land, I need not tell you what a name it will leave unto
RIGHT REJOICING. 187
the actors to all generations. But if you vigilantly improve
them, as you have given us abundant reason to expect, then the
issue shall be the healing concord of the churches, the curbing
of profaneness, the promoting of a plain and serious ministry,
and of the diligent service of the Lord. This is it that will
make your names immortal, that have been the happy instru-
ments of so blessed a work. How joyfully, then, will the sub-
jects commemorate the happy introduction of their sovereign!
With what love and honour will they hear his name ! How
readily will they obey him ! How heartily will they pray for
him 1 How precious will your memory be ! And this will be
numbered among the wonderful deliverances of England. If
godliness be persecuted, or made a common scorn in the land,
the Holy God will vindicate his honour, and make their names a
scorn and curse that shall procure it; but if you exalt him, he
will exalt you. Protect his lambs, and he will be your Protec-
tor. He is with you while you are with him. (2 Chron. xv. 2.)
" Those that honour him, he will honour ; and those that
despise him shall be lightly esteemed." (1 Sam. ii. 30.)
WHAT LIGHT MUST SHINE
IN OUR WORKS.
WHAT LIGHT MUST SHINE IN OUR
WORKS.
MATTHEW v. 16.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your
good works y and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
The work designed for this time is to resolve this practical
case, ( What is that light which must shine before men in the
works of Christ's disciples for the glorifying of God ?'
But the explication of the text is therein included.
The Son of Righteousness, Jesus Christ, who " giveth light to
every one that cometh into the world/' or, coming into the
world, giveth light to all, from his fulness hath bespangled the
inferior heavens, his church, with many refulgent stars, appointed
freely to communicate the heavenly light which they had freely
received. In his corporeal presence he prepared them; and his
Spirit having moved on the darkened world, he irresistibly said,
at the descent of the Holy Ghost, " Let there be light, and there
was light, beginning at Jerusalem, but not fixed to any deter-
minate place ; but what he gave them necessarily and antece-
dently they were to exercise as free agents, by a command more
resistible, which he here gives them. Having told them their
office, and given them their names, ver. 14., "Ye are the lights of
the world," he next tells them how they must be useful. They
must be conspicuous, 1. Because the church where they are
placed " is like a city on a hill which cannot be hid." 2. Because
it is the end of him that lighteth them, and sets them up, not
to put them under a bushel, but on a candlestick, to give light
to all his house. And therefore no men's silencing or prohibi-
tions, no difficulties or sufferings, will excuse them from their
duty : lights they are, and shine they must ; but lest they
should think that it is preaching only which he meaneth, he
here, commanding them their duty, lets them know that the
splendour of Christianity is in works as well as words ; and
WHAT LIGHT MUST SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 191
thereby giveth us cause to think that it is all his disciples, or
Christians, that he speaketh to, though first and eminently to
the apostles and teachers of the world.
1. By " light" he meaneth both the illuminating knowledge,
which must be uttered by words, and the splendour or glory of
holiness which must be refulgent in their lives.
2. He calls it " your" light, as being their own in his graces,
as the subjects, and their own in exercise, as the actors, though
both under him.
3. It must " shine," that is, appear in its splendour, for the
illumination and conviction of the world.
4. It must " so" shine as is fittest to attain these ends : it is
not every twinkling that will answer their great obligations.
5. It must be "before men;" that is, both those within, and
especially those without the church, that are but men.
6. It must be a light shining in "good works," and their own
works : for that is the grand difference between the disciples of
Christ and others. He teacheth them not only to know and
talk well, but to do well ; and he maketh men such as he teach-
eth them to be : " Non magna loquimur, sed vivimus," said Ter-
tullian.
7. "That men may see," doth signify both the necessary re-
fulgent quality of their works, and also the end of God and
them.
8. But it is not hypocritical ostentation of what they are not,
nor of what they are and have, as for their own glory, to be
honoured and praised of men, but for the glorifying of God.
Who is called " their Father," to show their obligation to
him, and to encourage them by the honour and comfort of their
relation, and to show why their works will tend to the glorifying
of God, even because they are so nearly related to him.
And he is said to be " in heaven," because there he appeareth
operatively in his glory to the beautifying [beatifying] of holy
spirits. As the soul is said to be in the head, and we look a man
in the face when we talk to him, as if there principally we saw
the man ; because it is in the head that it operateth by reason.
So much of the meaning of the words.
Many doctrines the text affordeth us : as,
1. Christ's disciples are the lights of the world, both in the
splendour of wisdom and holiness.
2. Their most eminent and convincing splendour is in their
good works.
192 WHAT LIGHT MUST
3. Their light and good works are their own, though by #re
grace of Christ ; and it is no injury to Christ, or his righteous-
ness, or grace, to say, that they are their own.
4. The splendour of Christians in their good works must be
such as may be seen of men.
5. The glorifying of God must be the end of our good works,
and of their appearance unto men.
6. As bad as corrupted nature is, there is yet something in
mankind which tendeth to the approving of the good works of
Christians, and to their glorifying God thereupon.
7. God is glorified even by common men, when they approve
of the glory of holiness in believers ; it is not only by saints that
God is glorified.
8. As contrary as holiness is to corrupted nature, there is such
resplendent goodness in true Christians' works, which common
men may glorify God for : and so somewhat in them, and in.
Christianity, which hath such agreeableness as may tend to
further good.
9. The excellency and splendour of the good works of Chris-
tians, especially teachers, is a grand means, ordained by God
himself for the conviction of the world, and the glorifying of
God.
But the resolving the question, What the splendour of these
works must be, is my present undertaken task.
God is not glorified by our adding to him, but by our receiv-
ing from him ; not by our making him greater, or better, or
happier than he is, but by owning him, loving him, and declaring
him as he is, that we and others may thereby be wise, and good,
and happy.
He is his own glory, and ours; and by his own light only we
must know both him and all things. We are not called to
bring our candle to show the world that there is a sun, but to
persuade them into its light, to open the windows and curtains,
to disperse the clouds, and to open the eyes of blinded sinners.
I. The way of doing this, and glorifying God, is in the
order following.
1. The first thing that our works must show is their own
goodness ; they can never prove the cause good until it is clear
that they are good themselves ; therefore, doubtless, Christ here
intendeth that we must abound especially in those good works
which the world is capable of knowing to be good, and not only
in those which none but Christians themselves approve. If
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 193
believers and unbelievers agreed in no common principles, we
were not capable of preaching to unbelievers, nor convincing
them, nor of conversing with them. There are many excellent
things which nature doth approve, and which both parties are
agreed to be good; by the advantage of these, as granted
principles, we must convince them of the conclusions which
they yet deny ; and not as the scandalous Christian, so absurdly
affect singularity, as to make light of all good which is taken
for good by unbelievers, and to seek for eminency in nothing
but what the world thinks evil. There is a glory in some good
works, which all do honour, and which manifesteth itself.
2. And then the goodness of the work doth manifest the
goodness of the doer. Every man's work is so far his own, that
he is related to it, and by it, either as laudable, or as culpable ; as
it is Gal. vi. 4, 5 ; " Let every man prove his own work, and then
shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another ; for
every man shall bear his own burthen." God himself will judge
men according to their works ; and so will men ; and so must we
(much) do by ourselves ; for it is the rightest judging which is
likest God's.
This subordinate honour God grants to his servants :
Jf their works were not an honour to them, as the next agents,
they could be none to him in their morality, as man's acts ;
though they might, as acts in general, be ordered tofgood by his
own goodness. If God's natural works of creation (sun, and
moon, and earth, &c.) were not praiseworthy in themselves,
God would not be praised for them as their Maker. * There
are works that God is said to be dishonoured by ; (Rom. ii. 23,
24 ;) and what are they but such as" are really bad, and a dis-
honour to the authors ? It is so far from being true, that no
praise, or honour, or comfort from good works, is to be given to
man ; that God himself is not like else to be honoured by them
as morally good, if the actors be not honoured by them ; the
world must first be convinced that Christians are far better
than other men, and the righteous more excellent than his
neighbour, before they will glorify God as the author of their
goodness. In God's own judgment, "Well done/' is the first
word, and " Good and faithful servant," is the second, and
" Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord," is the third.
Two sorts of scandalous persons rob God of his honour in
his saints.
1 . Those that professing Christianity live wickedly, or, at least,
vol. xvn. o
194 WHAT LIGHT MUST
no better than other men ; whose lives tell the world that Chris-
tians are but such as they.
2. Those that slander and belie true believers, and would
hide their goodness, and make them odious to the world.
As for them that say only that we have nc righteousness in
ourselves by which we can be justified, I shall not differ with
them, if they do but grant that all shall be judged according to
their works ; and that he that is accused as an infidel, impeni-
tent, an hypocrite, or an unregenerate, ungodly person, must
against that accusation be justified by his own faith, repentance,
sincerity, and holiness, or be unjustified for ever.
3. The next thing to the work, and the person that is hereby
honoured, is the christian religion itself, with the Spirit's opera-
tions on the souls of Christians ; the outward doctrine and exam-
ple of Christ, who teacheth his servants to be better than the
world ; and the inward sanctification of the Spirit, which maketh
them better. The air and food are commended which make
men healthy, and the medicines are praised which cure the dis-
ease ; that is accounted good, as a means and cause which doth
good, and which maketh men good ; if Christians were more
commonly and notoriously much better than all other men, the
world would believe that the gospel and the christian religion
were the best.
But when scandalous Christians appear as bad, or worse than
infidels, the world thinks that their religion is as bad, or worse,
than theirs.
4. The next ascent of honour is to the Maker or Author of
our religion ; the world will see that he is good that maketh so
good a law and gospel, and that maketh all his true disciples so
much to excel all other men. And here the first honour will be to
the Holy Spirit, which reneweth souls, and maketh them holy ;
and the next will be to the Son, our Saviour, who giveth us both
the word and Spirit ; and the highest or ultimate glory will be to
God the Father, who giveth us both his Son and his Spirit.
And thus honour ascendeth to the highest by these steps, and
the world beginneth at that which is nearest to them, and rea-
son will proceed by these degrees ; 1. The excellent holy lives of
Christians are better than those of other men. 2. Therefore Chris-
tians are better than other men. 3. Therefore their religion is
the best, or the word and work which make them such. 4.
Therefore the Spirit is good which makes them good ; the
Saviour is good who giveth them the word and Spirit, and God,
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 195
the Fountain of all, even the Father of mercies, is the Fountain
of all good, and consequently the end of all. And thus God is
known and glorified by our works.
II. The works which thus glorify him are first to be described
in general, and then enumerated in special.
1. In general, 1. They must be such as make or show men
to be in their places like to God ; they must be such as repre-
sent the particular perfections of God, which are called his
communicable attributes ; and such as declare his relations to us;
and such as declare his attributes, as so related, and his works.
As, 1 . We must so live that men may see that indeed we take
not ourselves to be our own, but God to be our absolute
owner ; and that it is not ourselves, but he, that must of right
dispose both of us and ours , and that we willingly stand to his
disposal. (1 Cor. vi. 19.) " Ye are not your own."
2. We must so live as may declare that we are not lawless,
nor the mere servants of men, but the resolved subjects of God,
the sovereign King of all ; and that really we are ruled by his
laws and will, and not by our own lusts or wills, nor by the wills
of any, but as under him ; and that we fear not any hurt to the
flesh, or them that can but kill the body, in comparison of that
one Lawgiver and Judge, who is able to save or destroy for ever ;
(Luke xii. 4 ; James iv. 12 ; 1 Cor. vii. 23 ;) and that we are
moved more by his promises, than by all that mortal men can
give us ; and trust wholly to the heavenly reward of glory, and
not to the transitory prosperity of this world, believing that God
is true and just, and none of his word shall never fail. (1 Peter
i. 3.) " We are begotten again unto a lively hope, through the
resurrection of Christ to an inheritance incorruptible," &c.
3. We must so live as may declare that God is our grand bene-
factor, from whom we have all the good that ever we received,
and from whom we hope for all that ever we shall possess ; and
that he is infinitely good, the original and end of all created
good : we must live as those that believe that we are made for
God, even to glorify him, and please his blessed will ; not by
making him beholden to us, but by a willing receiving of his
mercies, and a willing improvement of them to our own felicity;
and as those that believe that his love is better than life itself,
and that to know him, and love him, and glorify him for ever, is
the ultimate end and happiness of man. (Psalm iv. 7, 8, and
lxiii. 3, and lxxiii. 25, 26, 28; Phil. iii. 7, 8; Matt. vi. 33;
1 Peter i. 5, 6, 8, 9 ; 2 Cor. v. 1.)
2, And we must so live in relation to Christ, and to his Spirit,
o 2
]96 WHAT LIGHT MUST
as may declare to the world that the mercy of the Father is con-
veyed to us by the Son, and the grace of the Father and the Son
by the Spirit ; and what wonders of wisdom, goodness and
power, truth and justice, holiness and mercy, are manifest in
Christ, and his mediation to mankind. (Gal. ii. 20; Eph. iii.
16, 17; Phil.i. 20, 21 ; John xvii. 10.)
3. In some the works that glorify God must have these three
parts of his likeness upon them.
1. They must be works of light, like the light which from the
Father of lights doth illuminate us. Christians must be much
wiser than the men of the world, in holy, though not in worldly
things. (Col. i. 9, 28, and iii. 16.) Darkness is the state of
Satan's kingdom, and ignorant Christians are scandalous, and a
dishonour to Christ ; not those that are ignorant of unnecessary,
unprofitable, or unrevealed things but those that are ignorant of
revealed, necessary, saving truths. (1 Cor. iii. 2; Heb. v. 11, 12.)
2. They must be works of holy love to God and man, which
show that God and goodness have our hearts, and that we would
imitate God in doing good to all, according to our places and
power. (Gal. vi. 10; Rom. xiii. 10 — 12.)
3. They must be works of life and power, where serious dili-
gence expresseth zeal ; and that we set ourselves no lower
bounds, than with all our heart, and mind, and might. (2 Tim. i.
7; Rom. xii. 11.) Thus much for the general description of them.
II. The description of a Christian, whose works glorify God,
according to scripture and experience, may be given you in the
following particulars.
I. He is one that placeth his saving religion in the practical
knowledge of the only true God, and Jesus Christ the Saviour,
whom he hath sent. (John xvii. 3.) He puts no limits to his en-
deavours after useful knowledge, but what God hath put by his
word or providence ; he would abound in holy wisdom, and
thinks it worth his greatest diligence, and is still upon the in-
creasing hand; he hath so much knowledge of the lesser
matters of religion, as to keep him from scandalous miscarriages
about them ; but it is the knowledge of God, and of a crucified
and glorified Christ, in which he taketh wisdom to consist. (John
xvii. 3 ; 1 Cor. ii. 2.) This is the light in which he hath his
daily conversation, the light which governeth his will and
practice, which feedeth his meditations, his prayers, and
his discourse ; which repelleth his temptations, which maintain-
ed! his hope, and is his daily work of recreation, his food, and
feast.
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 197
For they will now perceive. 1. That his religion is not a
matter of names and words, and trifling controversies, but hath
the greatest and most excellent subject in the world; and as
nature teacheth all to reverence God, so it will tell them that
they must reverence that religion, that conversation, and that per-
son, who is most divine, and where the most of God appeareth.
2. And they will see that his religion consisteth not in un-
certainties, which no man can be sure of when he hath done his
best ; but in things so sure as none should doubt of; which will
easily bring men over to consent, and shame or silence con-
tradicters.
3. And then they will see that it is a religion which all sober
persons are united in, and doth not lose its authority or reve-
rence, by the divisions, wranglings, and digladiations of sects of
different minds ; for God is denied by no sober man, nor the
essentials of Christianity by any true Christian.
4. And men will see that our religion is no matter of indiffe-
rency, which one may do well enough without, but of absolute
necessity to salvation, and that which man was made and re-
deemed for ; and a religion of the greatest subject, the greatest
certainty, the greatest consent, and the greatest necessity, will
honour itself and its author in the world, if it be rightly repre-
sented in the lives of them that do profess it.
But when men's overdoing shall pretend that all this is too
little, and shall seek to raise it, as to more perfection, by their
own inventions, or uncertain opinions in doctrine, worship,
church-discipline, or practice, they presently cast it as a foot-
ball before the boys in the streets, and make it a matter of
doubtful, endless disputations, of multiplied sects, of pernicious
contentions, and cruel persecutions ; and then the reverence and
glory of it is gone, and every philosopher will vie with it in sub-
tilty, and every stranger will presume to censure it, if not to
blaspheme it, and deride it. And thus overdoers are the
scandals of the world.
II. The Christian that will glorify God, and his profession,
must be conscionable in the smallest matters, but he must ever
describe and open the nature of his religion, as consisting in
great and certain things, and not talk too much of smaller mat-
ters, as if it were those that men were to be saved by. Tell men
of the necessity of believing, fearing, obeying, trusting and lov-
ing God, and of coming to him by Jesus Christ, the great Medi-
ator between God and man ; tell them of the intrinsic evil of
198 WHAT LIGHT MUST
sin, and of God's justice, and of man's corruption, and of the
nature and excellency of holiness, and of the necessity of being-
new-born of the Holy Spirit, and of mortifying the desires and
deeds of the flesh ; and tell them of judgment, heaven, and hell,
especially the certainty and excellency of the everlasting pro-
mised glory 5 persuade them to believe all this, to think much
of all this, and to be true to what they know, and to make it
the work of life to be always prepared for death. Let this be
your discourse with sinners, (as I told you in the first character
it must be your own religion,) and then men will perceive that
religion is a matter that doth indeed concern them, and that
they are indeed great and necessary things in which you differ
from ungodly men • but the scandalous Christian talketh most
of external church orders, and forms, and opinions, and parties,
and thereby maketh the ignorant believe that the difference is
but that one will sit when the other kneeleth ; and one will
pray by the book, and the other without book ; and one is for
this church government, and another for that; and one for pray-
ing in white, and the other in black. And talking too much of
such things as these deceiveth the hearers ; some it maketh
formal hypocrites, who take up this for their religion, and- the
rest it hardeneth, and maketh them think that such people are
only more humourous, and self-conceited, and giddy, and
factious than others, but no whit better.
I[[. The genuine Christian hath an humble and cautelous un-
derstanding ; sensible when he knoweth most how little he
knoweth, and how much he is still unacquainted with, in the
great mysterious matters of God. His ignorance is his daily
grief and burden, and he is still longing and looking for some
clearer light. Not a new word of revelation from God, but a
clearer understanding of his word. He knoweth how weak and
slippery man's understanding is, and he is humbly conscious of
the darkness of his own. Therefore he is not conceitedly wise,
nor a boaster of his knowledge ; but saith, as Paul, (1 Cor.
viii. 2,) " If any man think that he knoweth any thing (that is,
is proudly conceited of his own knowledge,) he knoweth nothing-
yet as he ought to know."
And hence it is that though he daily grow in the firmer ap-
prehension of necessary truths, yet he is never confident and
peremptory about uncertain, doubtful things ; and therefore he
is not apt to be quarrelsome and contentious, nor yet censorious
against those that differ from him in matters of no greater
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 199
moment. And hence it is that he runneth not into sects, nor
burnetii with the feverish dividing zeal, nor yet is scandal-
ously mutable in his opinions ; because, as one that is conscious
of his ignorance, he doth not rashly receive things which he un-
derstands not, but suspendeth his judgment till evidence make
him fit to judge ; and joineth with neither of the contending
parties, till he is sure to know, indeed, which of them is right :
and thus he avoideth that dishonouring of religion which the
scandalous Christian is wofully guilty of ; who, with an unburn-
bled understanding, groweth confident upon quick and insufficient
information, and judgeth before he understandeth the case, and
before he hath heard or read, and considered, what on both sides
may be said, and what is necessary to a true understanding.
And thus, either by audacious prating of what he never under-
stood, or reviling and censuring men wiser than himself, or by
making himself a judge where he hath need to be many years
a learner, or making a religion of his own mistakes, and setting
up dividing sects to propagate them, or else by shameful muta-
bility and unsettledness he becometh a scandal to harden un-
believers, and a disease to the church, and a shame to his pro-
fession ; read James iii. 15 — 17. Conceited wisdom kindleth
a contentious zeal, and is not of God, but from beneath.
IV. The Christian who glorifieth God by his religion is one
that so liveth that men may perceive that his carnal interest is
not the end and ruler of his life; but that God is his end, and
to please him is his work and his reward, in which he is com-
forted, though the flesh and the world be never so much dis-
pleased ; and that- the perfect light and love of God in the un-
seen glory of another life is the sanctifying sum of all his hopes,
for which all the world must be forsaken. To talk much of
heaven, and to be as much and eager for the world as others,
is the way by which the scandalous hypocrite doth bring reli-
gion into contempt. It is no high, nor very honourable work,
to talk of the vanity of the world; but to live above it, and to
be out of the power of it : nor is it any great matter to speak
honourably of heaven ; but to live as believing seekers of it, and
as those that have there their treasure and their hearts, (Matt,
vi. 20, 21,) and are comforted more by the hopes of the life to
come, than by all their possessions or pleasures in the world. If
we will glorify God, our lives must persuade men that he will
certainly be our everlasting portion, and the sure and plentiful
rewarder of them that diligently seek him. (Heb. xi. 6.) It is
200 WHAT LIGHT MUST
much of the use of a true Christian's life to convince unbelievers
that there is a heaven for saints ; and the scandalous worldling
persuadeth them that there is none. (Matt. v. 5, 11, 12; Phil,
iii. 26, 21; Col. iii. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.)
V, Therefore it glorifieth God and our religion when Chris-
tians live in greater joy, or at least in greater contentedness and
peace than other men. When they can answer all the crosses
in the world sufficiently with this, that " God is their God, and
his love shall be their endless joy ;" (Psalm lxxiii. 1, and lxxxiii.
25, 26 ;) and when they can live by faith, and not by sight ;
(2 Cor. v. 7;) and can rejoice in hope of the glory of God;
(Rom. v. 3, 5 ;) and can comfort themselves and one another
with this, that they shall for ever be with the Lord ; (1 Thes. iv.
17, 18;) and can trust him to the death, who hath said, I
will never fail thee, nor forsake thee. (Heb. xiii. 5.) If you
would have other men honour your God and your religion, and
desire to be such as you, you must really show them that you
are on safer grounds, and in a happier state than they ; and
that you will hardly do, if you be not more comfortable than
they, or at least settled in more peace and contentedness of mind,
as those that have a certain cure for the fears of death, and the
danger that ungodly men are in of the revenging justice of the
final Judge.
I confess it is possible for trembling, troubled, and distressed
Christians to be saved. But O that they knew what a scandal
they are to unbelievers, and what a dishonour to God, whom
their lives should glorify ! What man will fall in love with
terrors and unquietness of mind ? If you would glorify God by
your fears and tears, they must be such as are accompanied with
faith and hope ; and you must not only show men what would
make you happy, if you could obtain it, but also that it is at-
tainable. Happiness is every man's desire, and none will come
to Christ unless they believe that it tendeth to their happiness ;
they take up with the present pleasures of the flesh, because
they have no satisfying apprehensions of any better. And if
no man show the first fruits of any better here, they will hardly
believe that they may have better hereafter ; it is too hard a talk
to put a poor drunkard, fornicator, or a poor, covetous worldling
on, to believe that a poor, complaining, comfortless Christian is
happier than he ; and that so sad and unquiet a life must be
preferred before all his temporal contentments and delights.
You must show him better, or the signs and fruits of better,
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 201
before he will part with what he hath : you must show him the
bunch of grapes, if you will have him go for the land of pro-
mise, when he is told of giants that must be overcome : and O
what a blessing is reserved for every Caleb and Joshua, that en-
courage souls, and glorify the promise ! And how much do
dejected discouragers of sinners dishonour God, and displease
him ! I have known some ungodly men, when they have seen
believers rejoicing in God, and triumphantly passing through
sufferings in the joyful hopes of glory, to sigh and say, 6 would
I were such a one, or in his case ;' but I have seldom heard any
say so of a person that is still sad, or crying, or troubling them-
selves and others with their scruples, crosses, or discontents ;
unless it be in respect to their blameless living, perhaps con-
doling them, they may say, e would I had no more sin to trouble
me than you have/ I confess that some excellent Christians do
show no great mirth in the way of their conversation ; either
because they are of a grave and silent temper, or taken up with
severe studies and contemplations, or hindered by bodily pains
or weakness. But yet their grave and sober comforts, their
peace of conscience, and settled hopes, and trust in God, deli-
vering them from the terrors of death and hell, may convince
an unbeliever that this is a far better state than the mirth
and laughter of fools in the house of feasting, and in the
vanities of a short prosperity. The grave and solid peace and
comfort of those that have made their calling and election sure
is more convincing than a lighter kind of mirth. (John,
xvi. 22.)
VI. The dominion of love in the hearts of Christians, appear-
ing in all the course of their lives, doth much glorify God and
their religion ; I mean a common hearty love to all men, and
a special love to holy men, according to their various degrees of
loveliness. Love is a thing so agreeable to right reason, and to
social nature, and to the common interest of all mankind, that
all men commend it; and they that have it not for others, would
have it from others : who is it that loveth not to be lovecl ? and
who is it that loveth not the man that he is convinced loveth him,
better than him that hateth him, or regardeth him not ? And do
vou think that the same course, which maketh men hate your-
selves, is like to make them love your religion ? Love is the
powerful conqueror of the world ; by it God conquereth the en-
mity of man, and reconcileth to himself even malignant sinners ;
and by it he hath taught us to conquer all the tribulations and per-
202 WHAT LIGHT MUST
secutions by which the world would separate us from his love ;
yea, and to be more than conquerors through him that loved us,
and thereby did kindle in us our reflecting love, (Rom. viii. 34 —
36 f ) and by it he hath instructed us to go on to conquer both his
enemies and our own; yea, to conquer the enmity rather than the
enemy, in imitation of himself, who saveth the sinner, and kills
the sin ; and this is the most noble kind of victory. Every
soldier can end a fever, or other disease, by cutting a man's
throat, and ending his life ; but it is the work of the physician
to kill the disease, and save the man The scandalous pastor is
for curing heresy in the Roman way, by silencing sound preach-
ers, and tormenting and burning the supposed heretics ; or, at
least, to trust for the acceptance and success of his labours to the
sword ; and if that which will restrain men from crossing the
pastor, would restrain them from resisting the spirit of God,
and constrain them to the love of holiness, it were well ; then
the glory of conversion should be more ascribed to the magis-
trate and soldier thail to the preacher. But the true pastor is
armed with a special measure of life, light, and love, that he
may be a meet instrument for the regenerating of souls, who by
holy life, and light, and love, must be renewed to their father's
image. Every thing naturally generateth its like, which hath a
generative power. And it is the love of God which the preacher
Is to bring all men to that must be saved ; this is his office,
this is his work, and this must be his study ; he doth little or
nothing if he doth not this. Souls are not sanctified till they
are wrought up to the love of God and holiness. And, there-
fore, the furniture and arms which Christ hath left us in his
word are all suited to this work of love. We have the love of
God himself to preach to them ; and the love of an humbled,
dying, and glorified Redeemer; and all the amiable blessings of
heaven and earth to open to them ; and all the loving promises
and invitations of the gospel ; and must not our hearts, our
ministry, and our lives be answerable to all this ? Believe it, it
must be a preacher, whose matter and manner of preaching and
living doth show forth a hearty love to God, and love to godli-
ness, and love to all his people's souls, that is the fit instrument
to glorify God by convincing and converting sinners. God can
work bv what means he will : bv a scandalous, domineering-,
self-seeking preacher, but it is not his ordinary way. Foxes and
wolves are not nature's instruments to generate sheep. I never
knew much good done to souls by any pastors but such as
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 203
preached and lived in the power of love, working by clear con-
vincing light, and both managed by a holy, lively seriousness.
You must bring fire if you kindle fire. Trust not here to the
Cartesian philosophy, that mere motion will turn another element
into fire. Speak as loud as you will, and make as great a stir
as you will, it will be all in vain to win men's love to God and
goodness, till their hearts be touched with his love and amiable-
ness ; which usually must be done by the instrumentality of the
preacher's love. Let them hate me, so thev do but fear me and
obey me, is the saying of such as set up for themselves, (and
but foolishly for themselves,) and, like Satan, would rule men to
damnation. If love be the sum and fulfilling of the law, love
must be the sum and fulfilling of our ministrv. But yet by
love I mean not flattery ; parents do love as necessarily as any,
and yet must correct ; and God himself can love and yet cor-
rect ; yea, he chasteneth^every son that he receiveth ; (Heb. xii.
6, 7 ;) and his love consisteth with paternal justice, and with
hatred of sin, and plain and sharp reproof of sinners ; and so
must ours ; but all as the various operations of love, as the
objects vary.
And what I say of ministers, I say of every Christian in this
place. Love is the great and the new commandment, that is,
the last which Christ would leave, at his departure, to his disci-
ples. O could we learn of the Lord of love, and Him, who
calleth himself love itself, to love our enemies, to bless them that
curse us, and to do good to the evil, and pray for them that
hurt and persecute us, we should not only prove that we are
genuine Christians, the children of our heavenly father ; (Matt.
v. 44, 45 ;) but should heap coals of fire on our enemies' heads
and melt them into compassion and some remorse, if not into a
holy love. I tell you it is the Christian who doth truly love his
neighbour as himself; who loveth the godly as his co-heirs of
heaven, and loveth the ungodly with a desire to make them truly
godly ; who loveth a friend as a friend, and an enemy as a man
that is capable of holiness and salvation. It is he that liveth,
walketh, speaketh, converseth, yea, sufTereth, which is the
great difficulty in love, and is, as it were, turned, by the love of
God shed abroad upon his heart, into love itself ; who doth
glorify God in the world, and glorify his religion, and really re-
buke the blasphemer, that derideth the Spirit in believers, as if
it were but a fanatical dream.
And it is he that by tyranny, cruelty, contempt of others, and
204 WHAT LIGHT MUST
needless, proud singularities and separations, magisterially con-
demning and vilifying all that walk not in his fashion, and pray
not in his fashion, and are not of his opinion, where it is like
enough he is himself mistaken, that is the scandalous Christian,
who doth as much against God, and religion, and the church,
and men's souls, as he doth against love. And though it be
Satan's way, as an angel of light, and his ministers way, as min-
isters of righteousness, to destroy Christ's interest by dividing
it, and separating things that God will have conjoined, and so
to pretend the love of truth, and love of order, as the love of
godliness, or discipline, against the love of souls, and to use even
the name of love itself against love, to justify all their cruelties,
or censures, and alienations 3 yet God will keep up that sacred
fire in the hearts of the sound Christians which shall live and
conquer these temptations, and they will understand and regard
the warning of the Holy Ghost. (Rom. xvi. 17.) " I beseech you
mark them which cause divisions and offences, contrary to the
doctrine which you have learned, and avoid them," (in their sin-
ful, dividing, offensive ways,) " for they that are such serve not the
Lord Jesus," (though they may confidently think they do,) " but
their own bellies," or carnal interests, though, perhaps, they
will not see it in themselves ; " and by good words, and fair or
flattering speeches, deceive the hearts of the simple." The
word is TuV a*a>ca>v, hominum minim e malorum, no bad men, or
harmless, well-meaning men ; who in case it be not to mortal
errors, perhaps, may be in the main sincere, and may be saved
when their stubble is burnt ; but whether sincere or not, they
are scandals in the world, and great dishonourers of God, and
serve Satan when they little think so, in all that they do con-
trary to that universal love, by which God must be glorified,
and sinners overcome.
VII. A public mind that is set upon doing good, as the
work of his life, and that with sincere and evident self-denial
doth greatly glorify God in the world. As God maketh his
goodness known to us by doing good, so also must his children
do. Nothing is more communicative than goodness and love;
nothing will more certainly make itself known whenever there
is opportunity. That a worldly barren love, which doth not
help, and succour, and do good, is no true Christian love, St.
James hath told us fully in his detection of a dead and barren
faith. No man in reason can expect that others should take
him for a good man, for something that is known to no one
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 205
but himself, save only that public converse and communion
must be kept up by the charitable belief of professions, till they
are disproved. The tree is known by its fruits, and the fruits
best by the taste, though the sight may give some lower degree
of commendation. The character of Christ's purified, peculiar
people, is, that they are zealous of good works. (Tit. ii. 14.)
The scandalous Christian may be zealous against others, and
zealous to hurt them, to persecute them, to censure them, to
disparage them, and to avoid them, but the genuine Christian
is zealous in loving them, and doing them all the good he can.
To do a little good upon the by, and from a full table to send
an alms to Lazarus at the door, yea, to give to the needy as
much as the flesh can spare, without any suffering to itself,
or any abatement of its grandeur, pomp, and pleasure in the
world, will prove you to be men not utterly void of all com-
passion, but it will never prove you to be Christians, nor better
than infidels and heathens. Look not that men should think
you better than your fruits do manifest you to be, nor that
they take you to be good for saying that you are good, nor
judge you to excel others any further than your works are
better than others. And marvel not if the world ask,
c What do you more than others ?' when Christ himself doth
ask the same, (Matt. v. 47.) " If ye salute your brethren, and
those of your own opinion and way, and if ye love them that
love you, and say as ye say, do not even publicans and infidels
do the same?" (Matt. v. 46.) Marvel not if men judge you
according to your works, when God himself will do so, who
knoweth the heart. He that is all for himself, may love himself,
and think well of himself, but must not expect much love from
others. Selfishness is the bile or imposthume of societies,
where the blood and spirits have an inordinate afflux, till their
corruption torment or gangrene the part. While men are all
for themselves, and would draw all to themselves, instead of
loving their neighbour as themselves, and the public good above
themselves, they do but hurt and destroy themselves, for they
forfeit their communion with the body, and deserve that none
should care for them, who care for none but themselves. To
a genuine Christian, another's good rejoiceth him as if it were
his own, (and how much, then, hath such an one continually
to feed his joy,) and he is careful to supply another's wants
as if they were his own. But the scandalous, selfish hypocrite
doth live quietly, and sleep easily, if he be but well himself,
206 WHAT LIGHT MUST
and it go well with his party, however it go with all his neigh-
bours, or with the church, or with the world. To himself, he
is fallen, to himself he liveth, himself he loveth, himself he
seeketh, and himself, that is, his temporal prosperity, he will
advance and save, if he can, whatever his religion be, and yet
himself he dcstroyeth, and will lose. It is not well considered
in the world, how much of sin consisteth in the narrow con-
traction of men's love, and regard unto their natural selves,
and how much of goodness consisteth in a community of love,
and what a glory it is to the government and laws of God that
he maketh it so noble and necessary a part of every man's
duty, to love all men, and to do good to all, as he is able,
though with a difference. God could do us all good enough
bv himself alone, without one another. But what a mercv is
it to the world, that as many persons as there are, so many
there are obliged by God to love their neighbours as themselves,
and to do good to all about them ? And what a mercy is it
to the actor that God will thus make him the instrument and
messenger of his beneficence ?
Ministers and Christians all, would you be thought better
than others ? Are you angry with men that think otherwise of
\ou? What good do you more than others in your places?
What good do you that other men can see, and feel, and taste,
and judge of? Every man loveth himself, and can feel what
doeth him good in natural things ; and God, by giving you
food, and other mercies to your bodies, would have you therein
taste his love to your souls, would use you just so for your
brethren's good. Do you give them good words and counsel ?
It is well. But that is not it that they can yet taste and value.
You must do that sort of good for them which they can know
and relish ; not that this will save them, or is any great matter
of itself, no more than God's common bodily mercies to you,
but this is the best way to get down better. And he that seeth
his brother have need, and shutteth up the bowels of his com-
passion from him, how dwelleth the love of G.od in him?
(1 John iii. 17-) " Give to him that asketh, and from him
that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away." (Matt. v. 42.)
That is, let not want of charity hinder thee, at any time, from
giving, though want of ability may hinder thee, and prudence
may restrain thee, and must guide thee. If you say, alas ! we
have it not to give. I answer, 1. Do what you can. 2. Show
by your compassion, that you would, if you could, take care of
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 207
vour poor brethren. 3. Beg of others for them, and put on
those that can to do it.
Say not these carnal people value nothing but carnal things,
and cannot perceive a man's love by spiritual benefits, for it is
not grace, but the means and outside of things spiritual that
you can give them ; and for aught I see, the most of us all do
very hardly believe God's own love to us, if he deny us bodily
mercies. If you languish in poverty, crosses, and painful
sickness anything long, your murmuring showeth that you do
not sufficiently taste God's goodness without the help of bodily
sense. And can you expect that natural men believe you to
be good for your bare words, when you so hardly think well of
God himself, though he promise you life eternal, unless he also
give you bodily supplies ?
VIII. He that will glorify his religion, and God, before men,
must be strictly just in all his dealings ; just in governing, just
in trading and bargaining, just to superiors and to inferiors, to
friends and to enemies, just in performing all his promises,
and in giving every man his right. He that in love must part
with his own right for his neighbour's greater good, must not
deprive another of his right, for charity includeth justice, as a
lower virtue is included in a higher and more perfect. He must
not be unjust for himself, for riches, or any worldly ends; he
must not be unjust for friends or kindred; he must not be
drawn to it by fear or flattery ; no price must hire them to do
an unrighteous deed. But above all, he must never be unjust
as for religion, as if God either needed or countenanced a lie, or
any iniquity. No men are more scandalous dishonourers of
religion, and of God, than they that think it lawful to deceive,
or lie, or be perjured, or break covenants, or be rebellious, or
use any sinful means to secure or promote religion, as if God
were not able to accomplish his ends by righteous means. This
cometh from atheism and unbelief, when men think that God
will lose his cause, unless our wits and sinful shifts preserve it,
as if we, and not he, were the rulers of the world. The un-
righteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God, (1 Cor. vi. 9 ; )
and seldom escape the hatred or contempt of men.
IX. He that will glorify God, must know and observe the
order of commands and duties, and that God will have mercy,
and not sacrifice, and must prefer the end before the means
as such. He must not pretend a lesser duty against a greater,
nor take the lesser at that time for a duty, but for a sin, when
208 WHAT LIGHT MUST
the greater should take place. God hath made his laws, and
our duty, to be the means of our own good. It is no profane-
ness, but duty, to omit that which else would be a duty, when
a greater is to be preferred. God calls it the sacrifice of a fool,
who knoweth not that he doeth evil under the name of duty,
when sacrifice is preferred before an obedient hearing of God's
commands. (Eccles. v. 1 — 3.) It was no want of holy zeal in
Christ, which made him bid the unreconciled, " Leave thy gift
at the altar, and first go and be reconciled to thy brother, and
then come and offer thy gift." (Matt. v. 24.) Some zealous
persecutors, censurers, and dividers, now, would think I speak
like an ungodly person if I should say to them, ( Let your li-
turgy, and your prayers, and your worship stay till you have
confessed and lamented your injuries to your brethren, and
then come and offer your service to God, and lift up pure hands
to him, without wrath and doubting/ Yet is it no more than
God often calls for to the hypocritical Jews. (Isa. i. 11, &c.)
" To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices, when ye
come and appear before me ? Who hath required this at your
hands, to tread in my courts ? Bring no more vain oblations ;
incense is an abomination to me. When ye spread forth your
hands, I will hide mine eyes; when ye make many prayers,
I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash you,
make you clean, relieve the oppressed." (Isa. lviii. 2, 3, &c)
" They seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a
nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinances
of their God; they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they
take delight in approaching to God. Wherefore have we fasted,
and thou seest not ? Have we afflicted our soul, and thou
takest no knowledge ? Ye fast for strife and debate, and to
smite with the fist of wickedness. Ye shall not fast as this
day, to make your voice to be heard on high. Is it such a
fast that I have chosen ? a day for a man to afflict his soul ?
to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth
and ashes under him ? wilt thou call this a fast, and an accep-
table day to the Lord ? Is not this the fast that I have chosen?
to loose the bands of wickedness, and to let the oppressed go
free, and that ye break every yoke ? Is it not to deal thy
bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are
cast out, to thy house ? when thou seest the naked, that thou
cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thy own flesh ?
Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 209
health shall spring forth speedily, and thy righteousness shall go
before thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.
Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry,
and he shall say, here I am."
It is a point that our Lord Jesus layeth a great stress upon.
He purposely healeth on the Sabbath day, and tells the censo-
rious pharisees " the sabbath was made for man, and not man
for the sabbath ;" that is, the end, which is man's good, is to
be preferred before the means ; nay, it is no means, and so no
duty, which is against it. He defendeth his disciples for get-
ting themselves food as they passed in the corn-fields ; and he
teacheth them the lawfulness of the priest's labour on the Sab-
bath, and of David's eating the shew-bread ; and at two several
times doth tell them that God " will have mercy, and not sacri-
fice ;" and biddeth them " go learn what that meaneth." (Matt,
iv. 13, and xii. 7.)
And it is not only Pharisees, but many better men, who have
need to go learn the meaning of that sentence. The meaning
is this, that (ceteris paribus), the great duties of the law of na-
ture, are to take place before the positive institutions. God's
institutions are for man's good: whatever is a duty is also a
means to the happiness of man, and pleasing to God, which is
the end of all. Love to God and man are greater than all the
instituted means of them as such; therefore that is no duty which
is no means, or is against the instituter's end. Preaching and
prayer must be omitted for some works of love and human
good. Discipline is a duty when it is a means to the end for
which it is ordained; but when it would hinder or destroy that
end (the reputation of religion, and the glory of God's holiness,
and the church's good) it is no duty, but a sin. To omit a
sacrament, to break the rest of the Lord's day, to forbear the
sacred assemblies, may be a duty when the good of men re-
quireth them. Ordination is a duty when it is a means to its
proper end. But if it were pleaded against those ends, and
order set against the thing ordered, even the work of the minis-
try, the case would be altered.
When men mistake, and mistime and misplace God's insti-
tutions, to the excluding of the great moral duties, which are
their end, and persuade men to that as a part of religion, which
would certainly do more hurt than good, they scandalously
drive men away from their religion. Thus imprudent, scandalous
professors can backbite and reproach others, and make them
VOL. XVII. p
210 WHAT LIGHT MUST
odious and destroy christian love, and peace, and concord, on
pretence of zeal for order, government, ceremonies, forms, or
for this or that mode of discipline or worship. Not having
learned what this meaneth, " 1 will have mercy and not saeri-
fice f nor, that forms and external institutions were made for
man, and not man for them. And yet I know that this will
not justify the familist or hypocrite, who thinks he may do any
thing to save his flesh.
Do you think it is not a scandal to Turks, or other infidels,
tempting them to deride or hate Christianity, to find the papists
placing their merits in hurtful pilgrimages, which waste that
time which should be spent, and in a multitude of unprofitable
ceremonies, and in unwholesome food, and injuries to health,
under the names of abstinence and mortification ? By this rule
they may next persuade us, that it will please God if men famish
or hang themselves ; and consequently if they do so by others,
for we must love our neighbour but as ourselves. God himself
hath made all our religion so suitable to our good, that he ex-
pecteth not that we should take any thing for our duty, but
what he giveth us evidence in the thing, or security by his pro-
mise, shall be our gain. He that worketh upon self-love, and
winneth man by a Saviour, and a glorious reward, and proveth
the goodness of all his word and ways, as to our happiness, hath
instituted none of his ordinances to our hurt. The apostles had
their power only to edification, and not the destruction or hurt
of souls. (2 Cor. x. 8. and xiii. 10.) " Let all things be done to
edifying" (1 Cor. xiv. 26,) is a word of greater comprehension
and use than many do conceive. When it is against edification, it
is not acceptable to God. One would think Christ had broken
his own law of discipline when he did familiarly eat with publi-
cans and sinners : and yet that very act of his is one of those
which he justifieth by the aforesaid rule, " I will have mercy,
and not sacrifice." (Matt. ix. 11 — 13.) Learn this lesson of
preferring mercy before sacrifice, if ever you will glorify God.
The right manner of worshipping God is of great moment
to the honour of him and of our religion before the world:
that we give no false descriptions of God, or dishonourable at-
tributes : that we teach no dishonourable doctrine as his, espe-
cially of his own will and counsels, and of his government, laws,
and judgment : that we neither take down the glory of the gos-
pel mysteries, by reducing them to the rank of common Provi-
dence, nor yet be deceived by Satan or his ministers, as the
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 211
promoters of light and righteousness, (2 Cor. xi. 15,) to abuse
and dishonour them by over-doing : that we seek not to glorify
God by our lies, or by our own mistaken interpretations or in-
ventions. God must be worshipped as a Spirit, in spirit and
truth, and not with popish toys and fopperies, which make
others think that our religion is but like a poppet-play and ludi-
crous device, to keep the people in servitude to the priests by a
blind devotion. God must be worshipped rationally, and with
holy wisdom, and not with childish shadows and trifles, nor
with slovenly and imprudent words, which tend to breed in the
hearers derision or contempt. Neither the cantings or sceni-
cal actions, or affected repetitions of the Papists, nor the rude,
disorderly, incongruous expressions of unskilful men, are fit to
be offered to the glorious God. Prudence, and holiness, and
seriousness, and reverence, must appear in that worship which
must honour God. O with what holiness should we hear from
and speak to the holy, holy, holy God ! who will be sanctified
in all that draw near him, (Lev. x. 3,) and will not hold him
guiltless that taketh his name in vain ! They that will do it ac-
ceptably must serve him with reverence and godly fear, (Heb.
xii. 28,) as knowing that he is a " consuming fire ;'* and yet,
with alacrity, love, and delight, as knowing that in his favour is
life, and that he is the infinitely amiable good, the hope and
only portion of believers.
XI. The humility, meekness, and patience of Christians are
greatly necessary to their glorifying of God. I join all three
together for brevity's sake.
1. It is a thing very amiable in the eyes of all, when men
have not too high thoughts of themselves, and seek not to be
overvalued by others, either as great, or wise, or good. When
they seek not precedency, preferment, or honour, but take the
lowest place, and envy not the precedence or honour of others,
but take another's honour as their own, and take another to be
fitter (ccezeris paribus) for places of power, trust, or eminency,
than themselves. When they do, according to the measure of
their worth, honour all men, (1 Peter ii. 17,) "And are kindly
affectionecl one to another in brotherly love, in honour, prefer-
ring one another;" (Rom. xii. 10;) not disscmblingly and com-
plimentallv saying, 'Your servant, Sir,' while they would fain
have others below them, and to be obedient to their wills. But
really to think meanly of their own worth and wisdom. (Rom.
xii. o.) "For I say, through the grace given to me, to every
p 2
212 WHAT LIGHT MUST
man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly
than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God hath dealt
to every man the measure of faith. Not thinking himself
something when he is nothing;" (Gal. vi. 3;) nor to be
more learned, or wise, or pious than he is. We must be, in-
deed, his diseiples, who humbled himself, and made himself of
no reputation ;" (Phil. ii. 7, 8 ',) and wiped and washed the feet
of his disciples, to teach them what to be and do to one another;
who hath taught us the necessity of cross-bearing and self-denial,
and to humble ourselves as little children, if ever we will enter
into the kingdom of heaven; (Matt. xvi. 24, and xviii. 3, 4 ;) and
hath decreed and foretold us that whosoever shall exalt himself
shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted;
and therefore the greatness which his ministers must seek must
be to be he servants of the rest. (Matt, xxiii. 11 — 13.) "Hon-
our shall uphold the humble in spirit, but a man's pride shall
bring him low." (Prov. xxix. 23.) "Better is it to be of an
humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoils with the
proud.'' (Prov. xvi. 19.) He that will honour his religion must
" put on, as the elect of God, bowels of mercy, kindness, hum-
bleness of mind, (not of tongue only,) meekness, long-sufTering,
forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man
have a quarrel against any/' (Col. iii. 12, 13.) He must not
set out himself like the richest, and desire to seem high or nota-
ble to others, nor set up himself with his superiors, nor swell or
grudge, if he be not regarded or taken notice of : no, nor if he
be reproved or dishonoured : but must learn of an humbled
Christ to be meek and lowly ; (Matt. xi. 29 ;) and must not
mind or desire high things, but condescend to men of low
estate, and not be wise in his own conceit. (Rom. xii. 16.)
" I beseech you, therefore, that you walk worthy the vocation
wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with
long-suffering, forbearing one another in love." (Eph. iv. 1, 2.)
" Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in low-
liness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves."
(Phil. ii. 3.) What man loveth not such a spirit and conversa-
tion ? O that it were more common and eminent among us,
and then we should find that the disaffection of the ignorant
would be much abated, and that when a man's ways thus please
God, his enemies will be the more at peace with him. (Prov.
xvi. 70 But when they are proud, and we are proud, and we
cannot yield, nor bow, nor give place to the wrathful, but must
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 213
jostle and contend with them for our place and honour, we lose
our christian honour by seeking carnal honour, and appear to
be but like other men ; and even the proud themselves will dis-
dain the proud.
2. And though we may be angry and not sin, and must be
plain and zealous against sin, and for God; though guilty, galled
sinners be displeased by it, yet meekness must be our tempe-
rature; for a turbulent, rough, unquiet spirit, is displeasing
both to God and man; such persons have seldom peace with
others or themselves. " A meek and quiet spirit is in the sight
of God of great price. (1 Pet. iii. 4.) "Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth ; they shall speed better than
others, even in this world." (Matt. v. 5.) " The wisdom from
above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated,
full of mercy and good fruits." Paul tells us what the good
works are which we must be always ready to ; " To speak evil
of no man, to be no brawlers ; but gentle, showing all meekness
to all men. (Tit. iii. 1, 2.) The Scripture speaks more of this
than I have leisure to recite. (See, Gal. v. 23, and vi. 1 ;
1 Tim. vi. 11; 2 Tim. ii. 25; 1 Pet. iii. 15; Jam. iii. 13;
Zeph. ii. 3; Isa. xxix. 19 ; Psalm cxli. 4, and lxxvi. 9, and
cxlvii. t>, and xxxvii. 11.)
3. And patience both towards God and man is a necessary
companion of humility and meekness. This greatly differeth
from natural dulness, and an insensible temperature. When a
man's soul is partly so much awed by God's authority and pre-
sence, and partly so much taken up with the great matters of
his service, and partly so much contented with his favour and
grace, and the hopes of glory, as to make light of all the
interests of the flesh as such; and therefore to bear patiently
such losses and crosses, and wants, and sufferings, as touch
the flesh, as taking it for no great matter to lose all the world
if we save our souls, this is true patience by which God is
glorified. For by this men will see that Christians have in-
deed such great things in their hopes, as set them quite
above the transitory things of the flesh and the world ; but
when they are much troubled at every cross and loss, and
whine and complain as if they were undone, if they live in
poverty and reproach ; and are at their wit's end in every dan-
ger, and fret and storm at every ill word, or every one that
wrongeth them, thev are the shame of their profession, and
scandals to the world. It is not a sudden anger which is the
214 , WHAT LIGHT MUST
great sin of impatience ; but an impotent disability to suffer in
the flesh, in estate or name, and a repining under every want,
which showeth a fleshlv, worldly mind, and a want of true be-
lieving the heavenly felicity; though I confess that pity must
make some excuse for many poor women, whose natural tem-
per maketh their passions, troubles, and fears invincible. He
that said, " In vour patience possess your souls," doth inti-
mate, that we have lost ourselves, and the government, order,
and peace of our souls, when we have lost our patience.
(Luke xxi. 19; See Eccl. vii. 8 ; Jam. v. 7, 8 ; 1 Pet ii. 20 ;
1 Thes. v. 14.) " Be patient towards all men." (1 Tim. vi. 11;
Col. i. 11.) Whatever zeal you seem to have in prayer, in
preaching, and for purity of worship, if you can bear wants
and sickness and the loss of all the world no better than
others, you will appear no better in their* eyes ; for " if you
faint in the day of adversity, vour strength is small," (Prov.
xx. 10.)
XII. And as a special fruit of humility, an easy and thankful
bearing of reproof, and readiness to confess a fault upon due
conviction, is a necessary duty to the honouring of God. It
will show men that you are enemies to sin indeed, and that you
are not hypocrites who weed not only their neighbours' fields,
and see the mote in another's eye, and not the beam which is in
your own. " If the righteous smite us by reproofs, it must be
taken as a kindness, and as a precious balsam which doth not
break our head, but heal us. (Psalm cxli. 5.) Not that we are
bound to belie ourselves in compliance with every man's cen-
sorious humour that will accuse us ; but we must be readier to
censure ourselves than others, and readier to confess a fault, than
to expect a confession from others whom we reprove. Sincerity
and serious repentance will be honourable in that person who
is most careful to avoid sin, and most ready penitently to con-
fess it when he hath been overcome, and truly thankful to those
that call him to repentance ; as being more desirous that God,
and his laws and religion, have the glory of their holiness, than
that he himself should have the undue glory of innocency, and
escape the deserved shame of his sin.
It is one of the most dangerous diseases of professors, and
greatest scandals of this age, that persons taken for eminently
religious, are more impatient of plain (though just) reproof,
than many a drunkard, swearer, or fornicator : and when they
have spent hours or days in the seeming earnest confession of
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 215
their sin, and lament before God and man that they cannot do it
with more grief and tears, yet they take it for a heinous injury
in another that will say half so much against them, and take him
for a malignant enemy of the godly who will call them as they
call themselves. They look that the chief business of a preacher
should be to praise them, and set them above the rest, as the
only people of God ; and they take him for an enemy that will
tell them the truth. But the scandal is greatest in those preachers
themselves, who cannot endure to hear that they are sinners.
So tender and impatient of reproof are some, yea, some that for
their learning, and preaching, and piety, are ranked in the high-
est form, or expect to be so, that almost nothing but flattery or
praise can please them ; and they can hardly bear the gentlest
reproof, no, nor a contradiction of any of their opinions; but they
seem to tell men that it is their part and privilege to be the re-
provers of others, and to have no reprover, and to tell other
men of sin, and be themselves accounted innocent ; and to call
other men to repentance for particular sins, while they them-
selves must have no other repentance, than in general to say
that they are sinners ; and to proclaim to all that their public
confessions are formalities, and that it is a Christ to heal the
souls of others that they preach, while they acknowledge but
little work for his remedies on themselves. But he that " re-
fuseth reproof doth err, and he that hateth it is brutish," how-
ever learned, or reverend, or pious he would be accounted,
(Prov. xi. 17, and xii. 1.) l( He that regardeth reproof is pru-
dent, and he that hateth it shall die." (Prov. xv. 5 — 10.) As
ready humble penitent confession of sin doth tend to our par-
don from God, so doth it tend to our acceptation with man.
When God and man will condemn the pharisee, that justifies
himself till confession be extorted from him.
XIII. It is another very honourable fruit of humility to have
a learning disposition, and not to be magisterial ; and to be swift
to hear, and slow to speak. All Christ's disciples must be as lit-
tle children, (Matt, xviii. 3, 4;) especially in a learning teachable,
disposition, a child doth not use to set his wit against his mas-
ter's, or any other that will teach him, nor to rise up against
instruction, as a disputer that must have the better, and be ac-
counted the wisest, but his daily business is submissively to learn.
A genuine Christian is indeed communicative, and willing that
others should partake with him in the wisdom and happiness
which God hath revealed to him. But he is ready first to learn
216
WHAT LIGHT MUST
himself, and knovveth that he must receive before he can
communicate : and there is none so far below him but he
is willing to hear and learn of; but especially among his
equals he is readier to hear and learn than to teach, because he
is still conscious of his ignorance, and honoureth the gifts of
God in others, which the proud despise. (Jam. iii. 1, and i. 19.)
But the scandalous Christian is so wise in his own eyes, that
he is ever of a teaching humour, and those please him best that
will sit and hear, and reverence him as an oracle, and magnify
every word that drops from his lips. He is so full of himself,
that he hath scarce the patience to observe well what another
speaks or writeth ; and so valueth his own conceptions, that
he thinks they should be valued by the hearers : and so scan-
dalous is the teaching humour of some learned men, that they
have not the common good manners or civility to suffer another
to speak to the end, but they must needs interrupt him, that
they may speak, as being more worthy. They take other men's
speeches to be so tedious, that their patience cannot hold out
the length of them. I mean not that a wise man is bound to
lose his time in hearing every self-conceited person talk ; but
when men are engaged in conference, or disputes, for a man to
have such list to speak, that he cannot stay till another (though
long) come to the end, is a scandalous incivility ; yea, some
can scarce stay till two or three sentences be uttered, but their
haste must tell you that they take themselves to be much the
wiser, and to be fitter to teach than to hear and learn. And
they are so overladen with their own conceited wisdom, that
they can carry it no longer without some vent; and so full of
their own, that they have no room to receive any more from
others : and being all masters, they receive from God and man
the greater condemnation. (Jam. iii. 1 ; Prov. xii. 17? and i. 5,
and xviii. 13.)
XIV. The genuine Christian hateth backbiting, and dis-
graceful reports of others, and vet can bear it from others to
himself. He hath learned to love all, and to speak evil of no
man, nor to receive or vend ill reports of others. He knovveth that
this is the work of the devil, the mortal enemy of love. He
modestlv rebuketh the backbiting tongue, and, with an angry
countenance, driveth it away. (Psalm xv. 3 ; Tit. iii. 2; Prov. xxv.
2d.) Backbiters tell us that they are haters of men ; and the
Apostle joins them with haters of God ; (Rom. i. 30.) Debates,
backbi tings, whisperings, envyings, are the scandalous Christian's
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 217
work. (2 Cor. xii. 20.) He that heareth. them will either dis-
taste them, or catch the disease, and be as bad as they. And
he that heareth that he is calumniated or reproached by them
behind his back is tempted to abhor both them and their pro-
fession. But to deal with men as faithful friends, and in plain-
ness (but with prudence and love), to tell them secretly of their
defects and faults, this tendeth to good, and to reconcile the
minds of men, at last, and to the honour of the Christian way.
{Matt, xviii. 15, 16; Levit. xix. 17 ; Prov. ix. 8, and xxiv. 25,
and xxvii. 5 ; Eccl. vii. 5 ; Prov. xxviii. 23.)
But yet, when we are belied and reproached of ourselves,
though by Christians, or teachers, or superiors, it beseemeth us
not to make too great a matter of it, as being tender of our own
reputation, but only to be sorry for the slanderer's or backbiter's
sin and misery. For men's corruption will have vent ; th6
angry and malicious, and envious, will speak from the abun-
dance of their hearts ; and the guilty will be tender ; and chil-
dren will cry and quarrel ; and proud contenders will be impa-
patient. And how small a matter is it, as to us, to be judged of
man, who must all be shortly judged of the Lord I
XV, He is one that would keep open to the notice of all
the great difference between the godly and the wicked ; and
aspireth after the highest degrees of holiness, as knowing the
corruptions and calamities of the weak, and how much of
heaven is in holiness itself; and yet, he loveth, honoureth,
and cherisheth the least spark of grace in the weakest Chris-
tian"; and is none of them that censoriously despise such, nor
that tyranically tread them down, or cast them injuriously t>ut
of the church.
1. To make men believe that there is little difference be-
tween the holy and profane, is to bring all religion into con-
tempt, and is a wickedness which God's laws throughout con-
demn, and his judgment shall publicly confute. (Matt. iii. 18;
2 Thess. i. 6 — 11; Jude xv. ; Matt. xiii. 25, throughout.)
2. To take up with a little goodness, which consisteth with
scandalous corruptions, is to be a scandal in the church.
.'3. And yet to be supercilious, and to disdain the weak, or
shut out any as ungodly, whom Christ hath not warranted
us to shut out, and to make stricter rules of trial and Church
communion than he hath made, this is justly displeasing both
to God and man. It tempteth men to abhor that religion
which tendeth more to men's reproach than to their cure, and
218 , WHAT LIGHT MUST
causeth professors to set themselves higher above the weak, and
at a greater distance from their neighbours than God would
have them. Christ is tender of little ones, and would not
have them scandalised. His own apostles were very low in
knowledge all the time that he was with them on earth. It
is not mere want of words that will warrant us to take men
for ungodly ; even he that is " weak in faith must be received,
j3Ut not to doubtful disputations." (Rom. xiv. 15.) To cull out
a few that have learned to speak better than the rest, and shut
out with the dogs all the infant Christians, who must be fed
with milk, because they want expressions, is one of Satan's
ways of overdoing, by which he would banish religion out of the
world.
XVI. He that will glorify God by his good works must be
zealous and diligent in them, and make them the serious busi-
ness of his life ; he must live so that men may see that in-
deed he doth believe and hope for heaven. That which a
man coldly speaks of, and coldly seeketh, men will think
he coldly desireth ; and therefore that he doth but doubtingly
believe it. A cold slothful Christian proclaims his unbelief to
others, and so inviteth them to the like. When Christians
bestir themselves, as for their lives, and ply God's work with
greatest diligence, and redeem their lives, as knowing that all
is short enough to prepare for an endless life, this wakeneth
pthers to life and thoughtfulness, to inquire into the matter of
our hopes.
XVII. He that will glorify God must be wise and watchful,
tocsee and take the opportunities of good before they are passed
by, and to avoid temptations to error and iniquity, and especi-
ally temerity in matters of great and public consequences.
1. Good works have their season. You lose them if you
take them not in their time \ that may be done now, which if
you pass this time you can never do.
2. Temptations have their season, and must just then be re-
sisted, lest many a year repair not an hour's loss ; and they are
very many : and narrow-sighted careless persons, who avoid two,
and fall into the third, or avoid nineteen and are conquered by
the twentieth, are always scandalous.
3. And rash adventures on any opinions or actions, but espe-
cially of public consequence, are usually most scandalous and
pernicious to the church. As in military affairs, and in phy-
sic, ubi non licet bis err are, men's lives must pay for our teme-
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 219
•rity and 'error, and all the world cannot remedy the effects
of one mistake ; so in matters of religion, if we mistake by
our rash conceitedness, and take not time for necessary trial,
and proceed not as a man on the ice, or among quicksands,
with great care and deliberation, the shaking of kingdoms,
the ruin of churches, the silencing of ministers, the corrup-
tion of doctrine, worship, and discipline, and the sin and
damnation of many souls, may be the effect of our proud
presumption and temerity ; but the humble self-suspecting
man, that suspendeth his judgment and practice, till he hath
thoroughly proved all, doth preserve the honour of religion, and
avoid such late and dear repentance.
XVIII. The man whose works shall glorify God, must be
devoted to the unity and concord of believers, and be greatly
averse to dividing and love-killing opinions, words, and prac-
tices; and, as much as in him lies, he must live peaceably with
'all men. (1 Cor. i. 10; Phil. ii. 1—3 ; Eph. iv. 3, 4, 14, 15,16;
Rom. xvi. 17, and xii. 18; 1 Thes.v. 17; John xvii. 24.)
When Paul saith that " Dividers serve not the Lord Jesus,
but their own bellies," he intimateth to us, that though truth
and purity be in their mouths, and really intended by them, as
they take it, yet there is usually a secret self-interest that is car-
ried on that biaseth the judgment. And when he telleth
them, (Acts xx. 30,) that " of their ownselves should men arise,
speaking perverse things," which they called (and it is like be-*
lieved to be) the truth ; yet self-interest lay at the bottom, to
be somebody in drawing disciples after them; for it is so noto-
rious a truth, that unity and concord are indispensably neces-
sary to the church, as it is to our body, to families, to kingdoms,
that men could not do so destructive a thing as dividing is, if
some sin had not first caused the error of their minds. It
greatly honoureth Christ and religion in the world, when be-
lievers live in love and unity : and their discords and divisions
have in all ages been the scandal of the world, and the great re-
proach and dishonour of the Church. When Christ's disciples
are one in him, it is the way to the infidel world's conversion, that
• they may believe that the father sent him. (Job xvii. 24.)
And here the devil has two sorts of servants: 1. The true
schismatic, or heretic, who fearlessly and blindlv divideth the
churches. 2. The overdoing papist, and church- tyrant, who
will have a greater unity than Christ will here give us, that so
we may have none. And when Christ prays that we may be
220 WHAT LIGHT MUST
one in him, the pope saith that we shall also be one in him, or
we shall be accounted schismatics, and destroyed as such. And
when the ancient church, according to Christ's institution,
united all in the baptismal covenant, explained in the creed, and
Paul numbereth the necessary terms of unity, Eph. iv. 4 — 6.
1. One body (or church of Christ) into which we are baptized.
2. One spirit of holiness in all. 3. One hope of the glorious
reward. 4. One Lord by whom we do attain it. 5. One faith,
even christian verity. 6. One baptism, or covenant of Chris-
tianity. 7» -And one God and Father of all. And in these God
would have all his servants to be one ; then come in these over-
doers, and they must have us to be all one in all their papal
policy, and all the decrees of their Pope and Councils de Fide,
and in their multitude of corruptions, and ceremonious imposi-
tions : which is as much as to say, ' You shall have no unity ;'
for he that saith to all the city or kingdom, you shall be des-
troyed for discord, or reproached as dividers, if you are not all of
one complexion, or have not all the same appetite, age, or bodily
stature, doth pronounce reproach or destruction on them abso-
lutely : so is it with all others that put their self-devised terms on
their brethren as necessary to unity and peace, on how pious or fair
pretences soever; impossible conditions make the thing impossi-
ble. These are the church-tearing scandals. These are the snares
by which Satan hath made the church a scorn, and our religion a
stumbling-block to Turks and heathens ; but had the peace-
makers been heard, who learned of the Holy Ghost (Acts xv,)
to impose nothing on the brethren but necessary things, and
who have laboured to revive love, and shame emulations and
divisions, God had been more glorified by men, and the reproach
of the churches and solemn assemblies taken away. When all
sects and parties have bustled and raised a dust in the world to
foul the church, and to blind each other ; if ever the church's
glory be restored, and our shame taken away, it will be by men
of love and peace, by healing, uniting, reconciling principles and
means.
XIX. He that will glorify God, must live in and to the will
of God, and seek to reduce his own will wholly into God's, and
to destroy in himself all will that striveth against God's will.
1. The disposing will of God, our owner, must be absolutely
submitted to, and the bounteous will of God, our benefactor,
thankfully and joyfully acknowledged.
2. The ruling will of God our lawgiver must be with daily
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 221
study and care obeyed, and his punishing and rewarding justice
glorified.
3. The final felicitating will and love of God, our ultimate
end and object, that we may please him, and be everlastingly
pleased in him, love him, and be loved by him, must be totally
desired and sought, as the only and perfect rest of souls.
O ! that is the holy, the joyful, the honourable Christian, who
daily laboureth, and in some good measure doth prevail, to have
no will but the will of God, and that which wholly is resolved
into it ; who looketh no further to know what he should do,
but to know by his word what is the law or will of God : who
believeth that all that God willeth is good, and had rather have
his life, and health, and wealth, and friends, at God's will and
disposal, than his own ; who knoweth that God's will is love it-
self, and that to please him is the end of all the world, and the
only felicity of men and angels ; and resteth wholly in the pleas-
ing of that will. What can be more wise and j ust than to have
the same will (objectively) with him who is infinitely wise and
just ? What can be more honourable than to have the same
will as God himself, and (so far) as his children, to be like our
Father ? What can be more orderly and harmonious, than for
the will of the creature to move according to the Creator's will,
and to be duly subservient to it, and accurately compliant with
it ? What can be more holy, nay, what else is holiness, but a
will and life devoted and conformed to the will of God ? What
can be more safe, or what else can be safe at all, but to will the
same things which the most perfect wisdom doth direct to, and
infinite love itself doth choose ? And what can be more easy and
quieting to the soul, than to rest in that will which is always
good, which never was misguided, and never chose amiss, and
never was frustrated, or missed of its decreed ends ? If we have
no will but what is (objectively) the same with God's, that is, if
we wholly comply with, and follow his will as our guide, and
rest in his will as our ultimate end, our wills will never be dis-
ordered, sinful, misled, or frustrated. God hath all that he will-
eth (absolutely) and is never disappointed : and so should we if
we could will nothing but what he willeth. And would you
not take him unquestionably for a happy man, who hath what-
soever he would have ? Yea, and would have nothing but what
is more just and good ? There is no way to this happiness but
making the will of God our will, God will not mutably change
his will to bring it to ours ; should holiness itself be conformed
222. . WHAT LIGHT MUST
to sinners, and perfection to imperfection ? But we must, by
grace, bring over our wills to God's, and then they are in joint ;
and then only will they find content and rest. O what would I
beg more earnestly in the world, than a will conformed wholly
to God's will, and cast into that mould, and desiring nothing but
what God willeth !
But contrarily, what can be more foolish than for such infants
and ignorant souls as we, to will that which infinite wisdom is
against ? What more dishonourable than to be even at the very
heart so contrary or unlike to God ? What can be more irre-
gular and unjust than for a created worm to set his will against
his Maker's ? What else is sin but a will and life that is cross
to the regulating will of God ? What can be more perilous and
pernicious than to forsake a perfect, unerring guide, and to fol-
low such ignorant judgments as our own in matters of eternal
consequence ? What can that soul expect, but a restless state
in an uncomfortable wilderness, yea, perpetual self-vexation and
despair, who forsakes God's will to follow his own, and hath a
will that doth go cross to God's ? Poor self-tormenting sinners !
consider that your own wills are your idols, which you set up
against the will of God, and your own wills are the tyrants to
which you are in bondage ; your own wills are your prison, and
the executioners that torment you with fear, and grief and disap-
pointments. W T hat is it that you are afraid of, but lest you miss
of your own wills ? For sure you fear not lest God's will should
be overcome and frustrated ; what are your cares about but this ?
What are your sighs, and groans, and tears for ? And what is it
else that you complain of, but that your own wills are not ful-
filled ? It is not that God hath not his will. What is it that
you are so impatient of, but the crossing of your own wills ? This
person crosseth them, and that accident crosseth them, and
God crosseth them, and you cross them yourselves ; and crossed
they will be while they are cross to the will of God ; for all this
while they are as a bone out of joint ; there is no ease till it be
set right. In a word, a will that is contrary to God's will, and
striveth and struggleth against it, is the offspring of the
devil, the sum of all sin, and a foretaste of hell, even a restless
self -tormenter ; and to will nothing but what God willeth, and
to love his will, and study to please him, and rest therein, is the
rectitude and only rest of souls ; and he that cannot rest con-
tentedly in the will of God must be for ever restless.
And when such a holy will and contentment appeareth in
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 223
von, mankind will reverence it, and see that your natures are
divine ; and as they dare not reproach the will of God, so they
will fear to speak evil of yours : when they see that you choose
but what God first chooseth for you, and your wills do but fol-
low the will of God, men will be afraid of provoking God against
them as blasphemers, if they should scorn, deride, or vilify you.
And could we convince all men that our course is but the same
which God commandeth, it would do much to stop their reproach
and persecution. And if they see that we can joyfully suffer
reproach, or poverty, or pains, or death, and joyfully pass aW'ay
to God when he shall call us, and live and die in a contented
complacency in the will of God, they will see that you have
a beginning of heaven on earth, which no tyrant, no loss, or
cross, or suffering, can deprive ydu of, while you can joyfully
say, " The will of the Lord be done." (Acts xxi. 14.)
Object. But if it be God's will for sin to punish me, or for-
sake me, should I contentedly rest in that revenging will ?
Ans. 1. That sin of ours which maketh us incapable objects
of the complacent will of God is evil, and to be hated. But
that will of God which is terminated on such an object, accord-
ing to the nature of it, by just hatred, is good, and should be
loved. And punishment is hurtful to us; but God's will and
justice is good and amiable. 2. If you will close with God's
will you need not fear his will. If your will be unfeignedly to
obey his commanding will, and to be and do what he would have
you, his will is not to condemn or punish you. But if God's
will prescribe you a holy life, and your will rebel, and be against
it, no wonder if God's will be to punish you when your wills
would not be punished. (John i. 13; Heb. x. 10; John vii.
17 ; Luke xii. 47.)
XX. It glorifieth God and religion in the world when Chris-
tians are faithful in all their relations, and diligently endeavour
the sanctifying and happiness of all the societies which they are
members of.
I. Holy families, well ordered, do much glorify God, and keep
up religion in the world.
1. When husbands live with their wives in wisdom, holiness,
and love, and wives are pious, obedient, meek, and peaceable,
(Eph. v. 22, 25 ; Col. iii. 18, 19.) yea, unto such husbands as
" obey not the word, that without the word may be won by the
conversation of the wives." (1 Pet. iii. 1, 2.)
2. When parents make it their great and constant care and
224 WHAT LIGHT MUST
labour, with all holy skill, and love, and diligence, to educate
their children in the fear of God, and the love of goodness, and
the practice of a holy life, and to save them from sin, and the
temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil ; and have
more tender care of their souls than of their bodies, that so the
church may have a succession of saints ; and when children
love, honour, and obey their parents, and comfort them by their
forwardness to all that is good, and their avoiding the ways and
company of the ungodly. (Eph. vi. 1 ; Psalm i. 1, 2.)
3. When masters rule their servants as the servants of God,
and servants willingly obey their masters, and serve them with
cheerful diligence and trust, and are as careful and faithful
about all their good and business as if it were not their own.
(Eph. vi. 5, 9; Col. iii. 21, and iv. 1 ; 1 Pet. ii. 18.)
When the houses of Christians are societies of saints, and
churches of God, and live in love and concord together, and all
are laborious and faithful in their callings, abhorring idleness,
gluttony, drunkenness, pride, contention, and evil- speaking, and
dealing justly with all their neighbours, and denying their own
right for love and peace ; this is the way to glorify religion in
the world.
II. Well-ordered churches are the second sort of societies
which must glorify God and propagate religion in the world.
1. When the pastors are learned in the Holy Scriptures, and
skilful in their sacred work, and far excel all the people in the
light of faith and knowledge, and in love to goodness, and to
men's souls, and in lively, zealous diligence for God, and for
men's salvation, thinking no labour, cost, or suffering, too dear
a price for the people's good ; when no sufferings or reproaches
move them, nor account they their lives dear to them, that
they may but finish their course and ministry with joy. When
their public preaching hath convincing light and clearness, and
powerful, affectionate application ; and their private oversight is
performed with impartiality, humility, and unwearied diligence,
and they are able to resolve the people's cases of conscience
solidly, and to exhort them earnestly, with powerful reason, and
melting love ; this honoureth religion, and winneth souls.
When they envy not one another, nor strive who shall be
greatest or uppermost; but contrariwise, who shall be most
serviceable to his brethren, and to the people's souls. When
they oversee and feed the flock of God which is among them,
not by constraint, but willingly ; not for filthy lucre, but of a
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 225
ready mind ; neither as being lords over God's heritage, but
being ensamples to the flock ; and seeking not theirs, but
them; are willing to spend and be spent for their sakes ; yea,
though the mere they love them the less they are beloved; not
minding high things, but condescending to men of low estate ;
this is the way for ministers to glorify God. (1 Pet. v. 1 — 4 ;
Acts xx.; 2 Tim. i. 14, 15; 1 Tim. iv. 10; Heb. iv. 11—13;
Acts xx. 24; 1 Thes. ii. 8; 2. Tim. iv. 1—3; Luke xxii. 24
—26; 2 Cor, xii. 14, 15; Rom.xii. 16.)
When ministers are above all worldly interest, and so teach
and live that the people may see that they seek not the honour
which is of men, but only that which is of God, and lay not up
a treasure on earth, but in heaven ; and trade all for another
world, and are further from pride than the lowest of the flock;
when they have not only the clothing of sheep, but their harm-
less, profitable nature, and not the ravenousness or bloody
jaws of destroying wolves. When they use not carnal weapons
in their warfare, but by an eminency of light, and love, and
life, endeavour to work the same in others ; when they are of
more public spirit than the people, and more self-denying, and
above all private interests, and envyings and revenge, and are
more patient in suffering than the people, through the power
of stronger faith, and hope, and love. When they are wholly
addicted to holiness and peace, and are zealous for the love
and unity of believers, and become all things to all men to win
some; in meekness instructing opposers, abhorring contention,
doing nothing in strife or vain glory, but preferring others before
themselves ; not preaching Christ in pride or envy, nor seek-
ing their own praise, but thirsting after men's conversion, edifi-
cation, and salvation. Thus must Christ be honoured by his
jh. ^ters in the world.
When they speak the same things, being of one mind and judg-
ment, uniting in the common faith, and contending for that
against infidels and heretics, and, so far as they have attained,
walk by the same rule, and mind the same things ; and where
they are differently minded or opinioned, wait in meekness and
love till God reveal to them the reconciling truth. When they
study more to narrow controversies, than to widen them, and
are skilful in detecting those ambiguous words, and verbal and
notional differences, which to the unskilful seem material.
When they are as chirurgeons, and not as soldiers, as skilful to
heal differences, as the proud and ignorant are ready to make
them, and can plainly show the dark contenders, wherein they
vol XVH. Q
22G WHAT MGIIT MUST
agree, and do not know it. When they live in that sweet and
amicable concord, which may tell the world that they love
one another, and are of one faith and heart, being one in
Christ. This is the way for ministers to glorify God in
the world. And with thankfulness to God I acknowledge
that such, for many years, I had my conversation with, of
whom the world that now despiseth them is not worthy.
(Phil., ii. 21; Matt. vi. 19—21; John v. 44; 2 Cor. x. 4;
2 Tim. ii. 25, 26 ; 1 Cor. ix. 19, 20, 22, and x. 33 ; Phil. ii.
1—3; 1 Tim. vi. 3, 4 ; Jam. hi. 14—16; 2 Tim. ii. 14, 24 ;
Phil. iii. 15 — 17; John xvii. 24; Eph. iv. 3 — 5; 1 Cor. i.
10 ; James iii. 17, 18.)
And the maintaining of sound doctrine, spiritual, reasonable,
and reverent worship, without ludicrous and unreverent trifling,
or rudeness, or ignorance, or superstition, or needless singularity,
much honoureth God (as is aforesaid). And so doth the exercise
of holy discipline in the churches. Such discipline whereby the
precious may be separated from the vile, and the holy from the
profane, by authority and order ; and not by popular usurpa-
tion, disorder, or unjust presumptions. Where the cause is
fairly tried and judged before men are cast out, or denied the
privileges of the church. Where charity appears in embracing
the weakest, and turning away none that turn not away from
Christ, and condemning none without just proof ; and justice
and holiness appeareth in purging out the dangerous leaven,
and in trying and rejecting the obstinately impenitent heretic,
and gross sinner after the first and second admonition, and dis-
owning them that will not hear the church. (Matt, xviii. 15,
16; Tit. iii. 10; 1 Cor. v. 11.) When the neglect of disci-
pline doth leave the church as polluted a society as the infidel
world, and Christians that are owned in the public communion
are as vicious, sensual, and ungodly, as Heathens and Mahome-
tans, it is one of the greatest injuries to Christ and our religion
in the world. For it is by the purifying of a peculiar people,
zealous of good works, that Christ is known to be really the
Saviour of the world ; and by making his followers better than
others, that he, and his doctrine and religion are known to be
the best. Travellers tell me that nothing so much hindereth
the conversion of the Mahometans as their daily experience
that the lives of the Greek Christians, and others that live
among them, are too ordinarily worse than theirs. More drun-
kenness, and more falsehood, lying, deceit, it is said are among
those Christians than among the Turks. If that be true, those
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 227
are no true Christians ; but wo be to them by whom such
offence cometh. I have oft heard those soldiers justly cen-
sured as profane who turn churches into stables (without great
necessity). But how much more hurtfully profane are they
who, for carnal ends, confound the world and the church, and
keep the multitude, of the most sensual, ungodly persons in
their communion, without ever calling them personally to re-
pentance ! and use the church keys but to revenge themselves
on those that differ from them in some opinions, or that cross
their interest and wills, or that seem too smart and zealous in
the dislike of their carnality, sloth, and church pollutions ?
When the churches are as full of scandalous sinners as the assem-
blies of infidels and heathens, the world will hardly ever believe
that infidelity and heathenism is not as good as the christian
faith. It is more by persons than by precepts that the world will
judge of Christ and Christianity. And what men on earth do
more scandalise the world, more expose Christianity to reproach,
more harden infidels, more injure Christ, and serve the devil,
than they that fill the church with impious, carnal pastors, (as
in the church of Rome,) and then with impious, carnal peo-
ple, maintained constantly in her communion, without any
open disowning by a distinguishing, reforming discipline ?
When such pastors are no better than the soberer sort of hea-
thens, save only in their opinion and formal words, and when
their ordinary communicants are no better, it is no thanks to
them if all turn not infidels that know them, and if Christianity
be contemned, and decay out of the world ; and it is along of
such that disorderly separations attempt that discipline, and
distinguishing of the godly and notoriously wicked, which such
ungodly pastors will not attempt. (See Lev. xix. 17; Matt,
xviii. 15, 16; 1 Cor. v; Tit. iii. 10; Jer. xv. 19; Psalm xv. ;
2 Thes. iii ; Rom. xvi. 17; 2 Tim. iii. 4, 5.)
III. But O how great an honour is it to God and to religion,
when kings, princes, and states, do zealously devote their power
to God, from whom they do receive it, and labour to make their
kingdoms holy ! When truth, sobriety, and piety have the
countenance of human powers, and rulers wholly set them-
selves to further the faithful preaching and practising of the
holy faith, and to unite and strengthen the ministers and
churches, and to suppress iniquity, and to be a terror to evil
doers, it taketh Satan's great advantage out of his hand, and
worketh on carnal men by such means as they can feel and im«
q 2
228 WHAT LIGHT MUSI
derstand. Not that God needs the help of man, but that he
hath settled officers and a natural order, by which he usually
worketh in the world : and as it cannot be expected that an
unholy parent and master should have a holy family, or an un-
holy pastor a holy church, unless by extraordinary mercy ; no
more can we expect that ungodly magistrates should have a
godly kingdom or commonwealth, of which the sacred history
of the Jewish and Israelitish kings doth give you a full con-
firmation. But this I must now say no more of. And thus I
have told you, in twenty particulars, what are those good works
in which the light of Christians must shine before men to the
glorifying of God.
Object. Doth not Matt. v. 10 — 12, contradict all this?
" Blessed are ye when men revile you and persecute you, and
say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake/'
Ans. No. You must here distinguish, first, of men ; se-
condly, of righteousness and good works.
I. The men that we have to do with are, first, ordinary, na-
tural men, corrupted by original sin, but yet not hardened to
serpentine malignity, as some are : secondly, or they are men
that, by sinning against nature and common light, are forsaken
and given up to malignant minds.
II. The good works which natural light and human interest
can discern and commend, do differ from those which are merely
evangelical, of supernatural revelation.
1 . Malignant persons hardened in enmity, will scorn and per-
secute holiness itself, and even that good which reason justifies,
and therefore are called unreasonable wicked men. (2 Thess.
iii. 2.) Good works with these men make us odious, unless
they are such as gratify their lusts.
2. But there are natural men not yet so hardened and for-
saken, who are usually them that the gospel doth convert : and
these have not yet so blinded nature, nor lost all sense of good and
evil, but that they honour him that doth good in ail the twenty
particulars which I have named, and think ill of those that do
the contrary, though yet they relish not the christian righteous-
ness, and things of supernatural revelation, for want of faith.
Let us briefly now apply it.
Use 1. This informs us what an honourable state Christianity
and true godliness is. When God hath made us to be the lights
of the world, to shine before men to the glory of his holiness,
as the sun and stars do to the glory of his power, no wonder if
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 229
in glory we shall shine as stars in the firmament of our Father, if
we do so here. (Dan. xii. 3 ; Matt. xiii. 43 ; Phil. ii. 15.) This
must not make us proud, but thankful ; for our pride is our
shame, and our humility is our glory.
Use 2. And what wonder if all the powers of darkness do
bend their endeavours to obscure this sacred light ? The Prince
of Darkness is the enemy of the Father of Lights ; and this is
the great war between Christ and Satan in the world. Christ is
the light of the world, and setteth up ministerial lights for the
world and for his house. His work is to send them forth, to
teach them, and defend them, to send his spirit to work in and
by them, to bring men to the everlasting light. And Satan's
work is to stir up all that he can against them, high and low,
learned and unlearned, and to put Christ's lights, both ministers
and people, under a bushel ; and to make the world believe that
they are enemies, and come to hurt them, that they may be
hated as the scorn and off-scouring of the world, and to keep
up ignorance in ministers themselves, that the church's eyes
being dark, the darkness may be great.
But let us pray that God would " forgive our enemies, perse-
cutors, and slanderers, and turn their hearts;" and that he
would " open our lips, that our mouths may show forth his
praise :" and though his ministers and people have their faulty
weaknesses, that he would " be merciful to our infirmities, and
grant that those things which the craft and subtlety of the devil
or man worketh against us may be brought to nought, and by
the providence of his goodness may be dispersed ; that we, his
servants, being hindered by no persecution, may give thanks to
him in his holy church, and serve him in holiness and pure-
ness of life, to his glory," through Jesus Christ.
Use 3. You may see hence how much those men are mis-
taken, who talk of the good works or lives of Christians, as that
which must have no honour, lest it dishonour God; as if all the
honour were taken from Christ which is given to good works,
and the patient's health were the dishonour of the physician,
when we are redeemed and purified to be zealous of good works,
and created for them in Christ Jesus, as Titus ii. 14 ; Eph. ii.
10. Yea, and shall be judged according to our works.
Use 4. This informeth you that the good works or lives of
Christians is a great means ordained by Christ for the convincing
of sinners, and the glorifying of God in the world. Preaching
doth much, but it is not appointed to do all. The lives of
230 WHAT LIGHT MUST
preachers must also be a convincing light ; and all true Chris-
tians^ men and women, are called to preach to the world by
their good works : and a holy, righteous, and sober life, is the
great ordinance of God, appointed for the saving of yourselves
and others. O that the Lord would bring this close to all our
hearts ! Christians, if you abhor dumb teachers, because they
starve and betray souls, take heed lest you condemn yourselves :
you owe men the convincing helps of a holy, fruitful life, as well
as the preacher owes them his ministry. Preach by well doing,
shine out in good works, or else you are no lights of Christ, but
betrayers of men's souls : you rob all about you of a great ordi-
nance of God, a great means appointed by him for men's sal-
vation. The world will judge of the Scriptures by your lives,
and of religion by your lives, and of Christ himself by your
lives. If your lives are such as tend to persuade men that
Christians are but like other men, yea, that they are but self-
conceited sinners, as carnal, sensual, uncharitable, proud, self-
seeking, worldly, envious, as others, and so that Christianity is
but such, this is a horrid blaspheming of Christ, how highly
soever your tongues may speak of him, and how low soever your
knees may" bow to him. O that you knew how much of God's
great work of salvation in the world is to be done by Christians'
lives. Your lives must teach men to believe that there is a hea-
ven to be won, and a hell to be escaped : your lives must help
men to believe that Christ and his word are true: your lives
must tell men what holiness is, and convince them of the need
of regeneration ; and that the Spirit of sanctification is no
fancy, but the witness of Jesus Christ in the world : your lives
must tell men, by repentance and obedience, that sin is the
greatest evil ; and must show them the difference between the
righteous and the wicked : yea, the holiness of God must be
glorified by your lives. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Scrip-
ture, the church, and heaven itself, must be known much by our
lives. And may not I say, then, with the apostle, (2 Peter iii.
11,) " What manner of persons, then, ought we to be, in all holy
conversation and godliness, when the grace of God, which
bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men, teaching us to
deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righte-
ously, and godly, in this present world ?" (Tit. ii. 11, 12.)
Use 5. But alas! what suitable and plentiful matter doth
this offer us for our humiliation and lamentation on such a day
as this ? A flood of tears is not too much to lament the
SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 231
scandals of. the christian world. With what wounded hearts
should we think of the state of the churches in Armenia, Syria,
Egypt, Abascia, and all the oppressed Greeks, and all the poor
deceived and oppressed Papists, and all the ignorant, carnal
Protestants ? O ! how unlike are your lives to your christian
faith, and to the pattern left them by their Lord. Doth a
worldly, proud, and fleshly, and contentious clergy glorify God ?
Doth an ignorant ministry glorify him, who understand not
the message which they should deliver ? Will the world turn
Christians by seeing Christians seek the blood and ruin of
each other ? and hearing even preachers reproach each other ?
or seeing them silence or persecute each other ? or by seeing
the people run into many sects, and separate from one another,
as unworthy of christian communion ? Will proud, ignorant,
censorious, fleshly, worldly professors of religion ever draw
the world to love religion ? Or will peevish, self-willed, im-
patient, discontented souls, that are still wrangling, crying,
and repining, make men believe that their religion rejoiceth,
blesseth, and sanctifieth the soul, and maketh men far happier
than all others in the world ? Alas ! Avhat wonder that so
small a part of the world are Christians, and so few converted
to the love of holiness, when the great means is denied them
by you which God hath appointed for their conversion, and
the world hath not one helper for a hundred or thousand that
it should have ? You cry out at those that put out the church-
lights, under pretence of snuffing them, while yourselves are
darkness, or as a stinking snuff.
O, brethren and Christians all, I beseech you let us now,
and often, closely ask ourselves, what do we more than an
Antonine, a Seneca, or a Cicero, or a Socrates did, beyond
opinions, words, and formalities ? What do you which is like
to convert the world, to convince an infidel, or glorify God !
Nay, do not some among us think that it is the height, or
part of their religion, to live so contrary to the world, as to be
singular from others, even in lawful or indifferent things, and
to do little or nothing which the world thinks well of? As
if crossing and displeasing men needlessly were their winning
conversation. O, when once we go as far beyond them in love,
humility, meekness, patience, fruitfulness, mortification, self-
denial, and heavenliness, as we do in opinions, profession, and
self-esteem, then we shall win souls, and glorify God, and he
will also glorifv us.
232 WHAT LIGHT MUST
Use 6. And here we see the wonderful mercy of God to the
world, who hath appointed them so much means for their con-
viction and salvation. So many Christians as there be in the
world, so many practical preachers and helps to men's con-
version are there appointed by God, and let the blame and
shame lie on us, where it is due, and not on God, if yet the
world remain in darkness. It is God's will that every Christian
in the world should be as a star, to shine to sinners in their
darkness ; and O then how gloriously would the world be be-
spangled and enlightened ! If you say, ( why, then, doth not
God make Christians better ?' That is a question which cannot
be well answered, without a larger opening of the methods
of grace than we can now have leisure for, and therefore must
be done in its proper season.
Use 7. Those that honour God he will honour, and there-
fore let us also give them that honour which is their due. The
barren professors, who honour themselves by overvaluing their
poor knowledge, gifts, and grace, and affecting too great a
distance from their brethren, and censuring others as unworthy
of their communion without reproof, are not the men that
honour God, and can lay claim to no great honour from men.
But God hath among us a prudent, holy, humble, laborious,
patient ministry, that glorify him by their works and patience,
and he hath among us a meek and humble, a blameless, and a
loving and fruitful sort of Christians, who imitate the purity, cha-
rity, and simplicity, yea, and concord of the primitive church.
These tell the world, to their sight and experience, that religion
is better than ignorance and carnality. These tell the world,
that Christ and his holy word are true, while he doth that in
renewing and sanctifying souls, which none else in the world
can do. These show the world, that faith, and holiness, and
self-denial, and the hopes of immortality, are no deceits. These
glorify God, and are the great benefactors of the world. I
must solemnly profess, that did I not know such a people in
the world, who, notwithstanding their infirmities, do manifest
a holy and heavenly disposition in their lives, I should want
myself so great a help to my faith in Christ, and the promise of
lire eternal, that I fear, without it, my faith would fail. And
had I never known a holier ministry and people than those
that live but a common life, and excel heathens in nothing but
their belief or opinions, and church orders and formalities, I
should find mv faith assaulted with so great temptations as I
SHINE IN OUR WORKS.
233
doubt 1 should not well withstand. No talk will persuade men
that he is the best physician that healeth no more nor worse
diseases than others do. Nor would Christ be taken for the
Saviour of the world, if he did not save men. And he saveth
them not if he make them not holier and better than other
men.
O, then, how much do we owe to Christ for sending his
Spirit into his saints, and for exemplifying his holy word on
holy souls, and for giving us as many visible proofs of his ho-
liness, power, and truth, as there are holy Christians in the
world ! We must not flatter them, nor excuse their faults,
nor puff them up. But because the righteous is more excellent
than his neighbour, we must accordingly love and honour them,
and Christ in them. For Christ telleth us, that he is glorified
in them here, (John, xvii. 10,) and that what is done to them,
his brethren, even the least, is taken as done to him, (Matt, xxv.,)
and he will be glorified and admired in them when he cometh
in his glory at the last, (2 Thess. i. 8, 10,) and he will glorify
their very works before all the world, with a u Well done, good
and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."
THE
CURE OF MELANCHOLY
AND
OVERMUCH SORROW,
BY
FAITH AND PHYSIC.
THE
CURE OF MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH
SORROW, BY FAITH AND PHYSIC*
Question. — What are the best preservatives against melan-
choly and overmuch sorrow ?
2 COR. ii. 7.
Lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch
sorroiv ?
The brevity of a sermon not allowing me time for any unne-
cessary work, I shall not stay to open the context, nor to in-
quire whether the person here spoken of be the same that is
condemned for incest in 1 Cor. v., or some other, nor whether
Chrysostom had good tradition for it, that it was a doctor of
the church, or made such after his sin? Nor whether the late
expositor f be in the right, who thence gathers that he was one
of the bishops of Achaia ; and that it was a synod of bishops
that were to excommunicate him ; who yet held that very con-
gregation then had a bishop, and that he was to be excom-
municated in the congregation, and that the people should
not have followed or favoured such a teacher, it would have
been no schism, or sinful separation, to have forsaken him. All
that I now intend is, to open this last clause of the verse, which
gives the reason why the censured sinner, being penitent,
should be forgiven and comforted ; viz., Lest he should be swal-
lowed up with overmuch sorrow, as it includeth these three
doctrines, which I shall handle altogether, viz. :
* This sermon was written for the morning exercises at Cripplegate, but
not preached. The omissions in the folio edition of Baxter's works are insert-
ed from the original edition of the sermon in the " Continuation of Morning-
Exercise Questions, and cases of conscience, practically resolved by sundry
ministers, in October, 1682." T. R.
r Dr. Hammond.
THE CURE OF MELANCHOLY, &C. 237
1. That sorrow, even for sin, may be overmuch.
2. That overmuch sorrow swalloweth one up.
3. Therefore it must be resisted and assuaged by necessary
comfort, both by others, and by ourselves.
In handling these, I shall observe this order: 1. I shall
show you when sorrow is overmuch. 2. How overmuch sorrow
doth swallow a man up. 3. What are the causes of it. 4. What
is the cure.
I. It is too notorious that overmuch sorrow for sin is not the
ordinary case of the world. A stupid, blockish disposition is
the common cause of men's perdition. The plague of a hard
heart, and seared conscience, keeps most from ail due sense of
sin, or danger, or misery, and of all the great and everlast-
ing concerns of their guilty souls. A dead sleep in sin doth
deprive most of the use of sense and understanding ; they do
some of the outward acts of religion as in a dream ; they are
vowed to God in baptism by others, and they profess to stand
to it themselves ; they go to church, and say over the words
of the creed, and Lord's prayer, and commandments ; they
receive the Lord's Supper, and all as in a dream ! They take
on them to believe that sin is the most hateful thing to God,
and hurtful to man, and yet they live in it with delight and
obstinacy ; they dream that they repent of it, when no persua-
sion will draw them to forsake it, and while they hate them
that would cure them, and will not be as bad and mad as they
who feel [not] in them any effectual sorrow for what ispast, or
effectual sense of their present badness, or effectual resolution
for a new and holy life. They dream that there is a judgment,
a heaven, and a hell, but would they not be more affected with
things of such unspeakable consequence if they were awake ?
Would they be wholly taken up with the matters of the flesh
and world, and scarce have a serious thought or word of eter-
nity, if they were awake ? O how sleepily and senselessly do
they think, and talk, and hear of the great work of man's re-
demption by Christ, and of the need of justifying and sancti-
fying grace, and of the joys and miseries of the next life ; and
yet they say that they believe them ! When we preach or
talk to them of the greatest things, with the greatest evidence,
and plainness, and earnestness that we can, we speak as to the
dead, or to men asleep ; they have ears, and hear not, nothing
goeth to their hearts. One would think that a man that reads
in Scripture, and believes the everlasting glory offered, and the
238 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
dreadful punishment threatened, and the necessity of holiness
to salvation, and of a Saviour to deliver us from sin and hell,
and how sure and near such a passage into the unseen world is
to us all, should have much ado to moderate and bear the
sense of such overwhelming things. But most men so little
regard or feel them, that they have neither time nor heart to think
of them as their concern, but hear of them as of some foreign
land, where they have no interest, and which they never think to
see. Yea, one would think by their senseless neglect of pre-
paration, and their worldly minds and lives, that they were
asleep, or in jest, when they confess that they must die, and
that when they lay their friends in the grave, and see the sculls
and bones cast up, they were but all this while in a dream, or
did not believe that their turn is near. Could we tell how to
awaken sinners, they would come to themselves, and have other
thoughts of these great things, and show it quickly by another
kind of life. Awakened reason could never be so befooled
and besotted as we see the wicked world to be. But God hath
an awakening day for all, and he will make the most senseless
soul to feel, by grace or punishment.
And because a hardened heart is so great a part of the malady
and misery of the unregenerate, and a soft and tender heart is
much of the new nature promised by Christ, many awakened
souls under the work of conversion think they can never have
sorrow enough, and that their danger lies in hard-heartedness,
and they never fear overmuch sorrow till it hath swallowed them
up ; yea, though there be too much of other causes in it, yet if
any of it be for sin, they then cherish it as a necessary duty, or
at least perceive not the danger of excess : and some think those
to be the best Christians who are most in doubts, and fears, and
sorrows, and speak almost nothing but uncomfortable com-
plaints, but this is a great mistake.
1. Sorrow is overmuch when it is fed by a mistaken cause.
Ail is too much where none is due, and great sorrow is too much
when the cause requireth but less.
If a man thinketh that somewhat is a duty, which is no duty,
and then sorrow for omitting it, such sorrow is all too much,
because it is undue, and caused by error. Many I have know r n
who have. been greatly troubled, because they could not bring
themselves to that length or order of meditation, for which they
had neither ability nor time ; and many, because they could not
reprove sin in others, when prudent instruction and intimation
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 239
Was more suitable than reproof. And many are troubled, be-
cause in their shops and callings they think of any thing but
God, as if our outward business must have no thoughts.
Superstition always breeds such sorrows, when men make
themselves religious duties which God never made them, and
then come short in the performance of them. Many dark souls
are assaulted by the erroneous, and told that they are in a
wrong way ; and they must take up some error as a necessary
truth, and so are cast into perplexing difficulties, and perhaps
repent of the truth which they before owned. Many fearful
Christians are troubled about every meal that they eat, about
their clothes, their thoughts and words, thinking or fearing that
all is sinful which is lawful, and that Ainavoidable infirmities are
heinous sins. All such as these are troubles and sorrows without
cause, and therefore overmuch.
2. Sorrow is overmuch when it hurteth and overwhelmeth
nature itself, and destroyeth bodily health or understanding.
Grace is the due qualification of nature, and duty is the right
employment of it, but neither of them must destroy it. As
civil, and ecclesiastic, and domestic government are for edifica-
tion and not for destruction, so also is personal self-government.
God will have mercy and not sacrifice ; and he that would not
have us kill or hurt our neighbour on pretence of religion,
would not have us destroy or hurt ourselves, being bound to love
our neighbour but as ourselves. As fasting is a duty no further
than it tendeth to some good, as to express or exercise true
humiliation, or to mortify some fleshly lust, &c, so is it with
sorrow for sin : it is too much when it doth more hurt than
good. But of this next.
II. When sorrow swalloweth up the sinner, it is overmuch,
and to be restrained. As,
1. The passions of grief and trouble of mind do oft over-
throw the sober and sound use of reason, so that a man's judg-
ment is corrupted and perverted by it, and is not in that case
to be trusted. As a man in raging anger, so one in fear or
great trouble of mind thinks not of things as they are, but as
his passion represents them, about God and religion, and about
his own soul, and his actions, or about his friends or enemies,
his judgment is perverted, and usually false, and, like an in-
flamed eye, thinks all things of the colour which is* like itself.
When it perverteth reason it is overmuch.
2. Overmuch sorrow disableth man to govern his thoughts;
240 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
and ungoverned thoughts must needs be both sinful and very
troublesome : grief carrieth them away as in a torrent. You
may almost as easily keep the leaves of trees in quietness and
order in a blustering wind as the thoughts of one in troubling
passions. If reason would stop them from perplexing subjects,
or turn them to better and sweeter things, it cannot do it 5 it
hath no power against the stream of troubling passions.
3. Overmuch sorrow would swallow up faith itself, and
greatly hindereth its exercise. They are matters of unspeak-
able joy which the gospel calleth us to believe : and it is won-
derful hard for a grieved, troubled soul to believe any thing that
is matter of joy, much less of so great joy as pardon and sal-
vation are. Though it dare not flatly give God the lie, it hardly
believes his free and full promises, and the expressions of his
readiness to receive all penitent, returning sinners. Passionate
grief serveth to feel somewhat contrary to the grace and pro-
mises of the gospel, and that feeling hinders faith.
4. Overmuch sorrow yet more hindereth hope, when men
think that they do believe God's word, and that his promises are
all true to others, yet cannot they hope for the promised bless-
ings to themselves. Hope is that grace by which a soul that
believeth the gospel to be true, doth comfortably expect that the
benefits promised shall be its own ; it is an applying act. The
first act of faith saith the gospel is true, which promiseth grace
and glory through Christ. The next act of faith saith, ( I will
trust my soul and all upon it, and take Christ for my Saviour
and help :' and then Hope saith, C J hope for this salvation by
him:' but melancholy, overwhelming sorrow and trouble is as
great an adversary to this hope as water is to fire, or snow to
heat. Despair is its very pulse and breath. Fain such would
have hope, but they cannot. All their thoughts are suspicious
and misgiving, and they can see nothing but danger and misery,
and a helpless state. And when hope, which is the anchor of
the soul, is gone, what wonder if they be continually tossed
with storms.
5. Overmuch sorrow swalloweth up all comfortable sense of
the infinite goodness and love of God, and thereby hindereth
the soul from loving him ; and in this it is an adversary to the
very life of holiness. It is exceeding hard for such a troubled
soul to apprehend the goodness of God at all, but much harder
to judge that he is good and amiable to him : but as a man that
in the deserts of Lybia is scorched with the violent heats of the
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 241
sun, and is ready to die with drought and faintness, may confess
that the sun is the life of the earth and a blessing to mankind,
but it is misery and death to him. Even so, these souls, over-
whelmed with grief, may say that God is good to others, but he
seems an enemy to them, and to seek their destruction. They
think he hateth them, and hath forsaken them ; and how can
they love such a God who they think doth hate them, and re-
solve to damn them, and hath decreed them to it from eternity,
and brought them into the world for no other end ? They that
can hardly love an enemy that doth but defame them, or oppress
and wrong them, will more hardly love a God that they be-
lieve will damn them, and hath, remedilessly appointed them
thereto.
6. And then it must needs follow that this distemper is a
false and injurious judge of all the word and works of God, and
of all his mercies and corrections. Whatever such a one reads
or hears, he thinks it all makes against him : every sad word
and threatening in Scripture he thinks meaneth him, as if it
named him. But the promises and comforts he hath no part
in, as if he had been by name excepted. All God's mercies
are extenuated, and taken for no mercies, as if God intended
them all but to make his sin the greater, and to increase his
heavy reckoning and further his damnation. He thinks God
doth but sugar over poison to him, and give him all in hatred,
and not in any love, with a design to sink him the deeper in
hell : and if God correct him, he supposeth that it is but the
beginning of his misery, and God doth torment him before the
time.
7. And by this you see that it is an enemy to thankfulness;
It rather reproacheth God for his mercies, as if they were inju-
ries, than giveth him any hearty thanks.
8. And by this you may see that this distemper is quite con-
trary to the joy in the Holy Ghost, yea, and the peace in which
God's kingdom much consisteth : nothing seemeth joyful unto
such distressed souls. Delighting in God, and in his word and
ways, is the flower and life of true religion. But these that I
speak of can delight in nothing ; neither in God, nor in his word,
nor any duty. They do it as a sick man eateth his meat, for
mere necessity, and with some loathing and averseness.
9. And all this showeth us that this disease is much contrary
to the very tenour of the gospel. Christ came as a deliverer of
the captives, a Saviour to reconcile us to God, and bring us glad
VOL. XVII. R
242 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
tidings of pardon and everlasting joy : where the gospel was re-
ceived it was great rejoicing, and so proclaimed by angels and
by men. But all that Christ hath done, and purchased, and
offered, and promised, seems nothing but matter of doubt and
sadness to this disease.
10. Yea, it is a distemper which greatly advantageth Satan to
cast in blasphemous thoughts of God, as if he were bad, and a
hater and destroyer even of such as fain would please him. The
design of the devil is to describe God to us as like himself; who
is a malicious enemy, and delighteth to do hurt : and if all men
hate the devil for his hurtfulness, would he not draw men to
hate and blaspheme God, if he could make men believe that he
is more hurtful ? The worshipping: God, as represented by an
image, is odious to him, because it seems to make him like
such a creature as that image representeth. How much more
blasphemous is it to feign him to be like the malicious devils ?
Diminutive, low thoughts of his goodness, as well as of his
greatness, is a sin which greatly injurethGod : as if you should
think that he is no better or trustier than a father or a friend,
much more to think him such as distempered souls imagine
him. You would wrong his ministers if you should describe
them as Christ doth the false prophets, as hurtful thorns, and
thistles, and wolves. And is it not worse to think far worse than
this of God ?
1 1 . This overmuch sorrow doth unfit men for all profitable
meditation ; it confounds their thoughts, and turneth them to
hurtful distractions and temptations ; and the more they muse
the more they are overwhelmed.
And it turneth prayer into mere complaint, instead of child-
like-believing supplications.
It quite indisposeth the soul to God's masses, and especially
to a comfortable sacramental communion, and fetcheth greater
terror from it, lest unworthy receiving will but hasten and in-
crease their damnation.
And it rendereth preaching and counsel too oft unprofitable :
say what you will that is never so convincing, either it doth not
change them, or is presently lost.
12. And it is a distemper which maketh all sufferings more
heavy, as falling upon a poor diseased soul, and having no com-
fort to set against it ; and it maketh death exceeding terrible,
because they think it will be the gate of hell ; so that life seem-
eth burdensome to them, and death terrible $ they are weary of
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 243
living, and afraid of dying. Thus overmuch sorrow swallow-
eth up.
III. Quest. What are the causes and cure of it?
Ans. With very many there is a great part of the cause in
distemper, weakness, and disease of the hody, and by it the
soul is greatly disabled to any comfortable sense. But the
more it ariseth from such natural necessity, it is the less sinful,
and less dangerous to the soul, but never the less troublesome,
but the more.
Three diseases cause overmuch sorrow.
1 . Those that consist ill such violent pain as natural strength
is unable to bear ; but this being usually not very long is not
now to be chiefly spoken of.
2. A natural passionateness, and weakness of that reason that
should quiet passion. It is too frequent a case with aged per-
sons that are much debilitated to be very apt to offence and
passion ; and children cannot choose but cry when they are
hurt ; but it is most troublesome and hurtful to many women,
(and some men,) who are so easily troubled, and hardly quieted,
that they have very little power on themselves; even many who
fear God, and who have very sound understandings, and quick
wits, have almost no more power against troubling passions,
anger, and grief, but especially fear, than they have of any
other persons.
Their very natural temper is a strong disease of troubling,
sorrow, fear, and displeasedness. They that are not melancholy,
are yet of so childish, and sick, and impatient a temper, that
one thing or other is still either discontenting, grieving, or af-
frighting them. They are like an aspen-leaf, still shaking with
the least motion of the air. The wisest and most patient man
cannot please and justify such a one; a word, yea, or a look,
offendeth them ; every sad story, or news, or noise, affrighteth
them ; and as children must have all that they cry for before
they will be quiet, so is it with too many such. The case is
very sad to those about them, but much more to themselves.
To dwell with the sick in the house of mourning is less uncom-
fortable. But yet while reason is not overthrown, the case is
not remediless, nor wholly excusable.
3. But when the brain and imagination are crazed, and rea-
son partly overthrown by the disease called melancholy, this
maketh the cure yet more difficult ; for commonly it is the
aforesaid persons, whose natural temper is timorous and passion-
r 2
244 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
ate, and apt to discontent and grief, who fall into crazedness
and melancholy ; and the conjunction of both the natural tem-
per and the disease does increase the misery.
The signs of such diseasing melancholy I have often elsewhere
described. As,
1. The trouble and disquiet of the mind doth then become
a settled habit; they can see nothing but matter of fear and trou-
ble. All that they hear or do doth feed it ; danger is still before
their eyes ; all that they read and hear makes against them ;
they can delight in nothing ; fearful dreams trouble them when
they sleep, and distracted thoughts do keep them long waking; it
offends them to see another laugh, or be merry ; they think
that every beggar's case is happier than theirs ; they will hardly
believe that any one else is in their case, when some two or three
in a week, or a day, come to me in the same case so like, that you
would think it were the same person's case which they all ex-
press ; they have no pleasure in relations, friends, estate, or
any thing; they think that God hath forsaken them, and that
the day of grace is past, and there is no more hope ; they say
they cannot pray, but howl, and groan, and God will not hear
them ; they will not believe that they have any sincerity and
grace ; they say they cannot repent, they cannot believe, but
that their hearts are utterly hardened. Usually they are afraid
lest they have committed the unpardonable sin against the
Holy Ghost ; in a word, fears, and troubles, and almost despair,
are the constant temper of their minds.
2. If you convince them that they have some evidences of
sincerity, and that their fears are causeless and injurious to
themselves, and unto God, and they have nothing to say against
it, yet either it takes off none of their trouble, or else it return-
eth the next day ; for the cause remaineth in their bodily dis-
ease ; quiet them an hundred times, and their fears an hundred
times return.
3. Their misery is, that what they think they cannot choose
but think. You may almost as well persuade a man not to shake
in an ague, or not to feel when he is pained, as persuade them
to cast away their self-troubling thoughts, or not to think all
the enormous, confounding thoughts as they do, they cannot
get them out of their heads night or day. Tell them that they
must forbear long musings, which disturb them, and they cannot.
Tell them that they must cast out false imaginations out of their
minds, when Satan casts them in, and must turn their thoughts
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 245
to something else, and they cannot do it. Their thoughts and
troubles, and fears, are out of their power, and the more, by how
much the more melancholy and crazed they are.
4. And when they are grown to this, usually they seem to
feel something besides themselves, as it were, speak in them,
and saying this and that to them, and bidding them to do this
or that, and they will tell you now it saith this or that, and tell
you when and what it hath said to them, and they will hardly
believe how much of it is the disease of their own imagination.
5. In this case they are exceeding prone to think they have
revelations ; and whatever comes into their minds they think
some revelation brought it thither. They use to say, this text
of Scripture at such a time was set upon my mind, and that text
at another time was set on my mind ; when oft the sense that
they took them in was false, or a false application of it made
to themselves, and perhaps several texts applied to contrary
conclusions, as if one gave them hope, and another contra-
dicted it.
And some of them hereupon are very prone to prophecies,
and verily believe that God hath foretold them this or that, till
they see that it cometh not to pass, and then they are ashamed.
And many of them turn heretics, and take up errors in reli-
gion, believing verily that God believed them, and set such
things upon their minds : and some of them that were long
troubled, get quietness and joy by such changes of their opin-
ions, thinking now that they are in God's way, which they were
out of all this while, and therefore it was that they had no
comfort. Of these I have known divers persons comforted that
have fallen into the clean contrary opinions ; some have
turned papists, and superstitious, and some have run too far
from papists, and some have had comforts by turning anabap-
tists, some antinomians, some contrary called arminians, some
perfectionists, some quakers ; and some have turned from
Christianity itself to infidelity, and denied the life to come,
and have lived in licentious uncleanness. But these melancholy
heretics and apostates usually by this cast off their sadness,
and are not the sort that I have now to deal with.
6. But the sadder, better sort, feeling this talk and stir
within them, are often apt to be confident that they are pos-
sessed by the devil, or at least bewitched, of which I will say
more anon.
7. And most of them are violently haunted with blasphe-
-
246 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
mous injections, at which they tremble, and yet cannot keep
them out of their mind ; either they are tempted and haunted
to doubt of the Scripture, or Christianity, or the life to come,
or to think some ill of God ; and oftentimes they are strangely
urged, as by something in them, to speak some blasphemous
word of God, or to renounce him, and they tremble at the sug-
gestion, and yet it still followeth them, and some poor souls
yield to it, and say some bad word against God, and then, as
soon as it is spoken, somewhat within them saith, * Now, thy
damnation is sealed, thou hast sinned against the Holy Ghost,
there is no hope.'
8. When it is far gone, they are tempted to lay some law
upon themselves never to speak more, or not to eat, and some
of them have famished themselves to death.
9. And when it is far gone, they often think that they have
apparitions, and this and that likeness appeareth to them, espe-
cially lights in the night about their beds. And sometimes
they are confident that they hear voices, and feel something
touch or hurt them.
10. They fly from company, and can do nothing but sit
alone and muse.
1 1 . They cast off all business, and will not be brought to
any diligent labour in their callings.
12. And when it cometh to extremity, they are weary of
their lives, and strongly followed with temptations to make
away with themselves, as if something within them were urging
them either to drown themselves, or cut their own throats, or
hang themselves, or cast themselves headlong, which, alas 1
too many have done.
13. And if they escape this, when it is ripe, they become
quite distracted.
These are the doleful symptoms and effects of melancholy ;
and therefore how desirable is it to prevent them, or to be cured
while it is but beginning, before they fall into so sad a state.
And here it is necessary that I answer the doubt whether
such persons be possessed with the devil, or not ? And how
much of all this aforesaid is from him.
And I must tell the melancholy person that is sincere, that
the knowledge of the devil's agency in his case, may be more to
his comfort than to his despair.
And first, we must know what is meant by Satan's posses-
sion, either of the body or the soul. It is not merely his local
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 247
presence and abode in a man that is called his possession, for
we know little of that, how far he is more present with a bad
man than a good, but it is his exercising power on a man by
such a stated, effectual operation. As the Spirit of God is
present with the worst, and maketh many holy motions to the
souls of the impenitent, but he is a settled powerful agent in
the soul of a believer, and so is said to dwell in such, and to
possess them, by the habit of holiness and love ; even so Satan
maketh too frequent motions to the faithful, but he possesseth
only the souls of the ungodly by predominant habits of unbelief
and sensuality.
And so also he is permitted by God to inflict persecutions,
and crosses, and ordinary diseases, on the just ; but when he
is God's executioner of extraordinary plagues, especially on the
head, depriving men of sense and understanding, and working
above the bare nature of the disease, this is called his pos-
session.
And as most evil notions on the soul have Satan for their
father, and our own hearts as the mothers, so most or many
bodily diseases are by Satan, permitted by God, though there
be causes of them also in the body itself. And when our own
miscarriages, and humours, and the season, weather, and acci-
dents, may be causes, yet Satan may, by these, be a superior
cause.
And when his operations are such as we call a possession,
yet he may work by means and bodily dispositions, and some-
times he worketh quite above the power of the disease itself,
as when the unlearned speak in strange languages, and when be-
witched persons vomit iron, glass, &c. And sometimes he doth
only work by the disease itself, as in epilepsies, madness, &c.
From all this it is easy to gather, 1. That for Satan to possess,
the body is no certain sign of a graceless state, nor will this
condemn the soul of any, if the soul itself be not possessed.
Na\ r j there are few of God's children but it is like are sometime
afflicted by Satan, as the executioner of God's correcting them,
and sometime of God's trials, as in the case of Job ; whatsoever
some say to the contrary, it is likely that the prick in the flesh,
which was Satan's messenger to buffet Paul, was some such
pain as the stone which yet was not removed, that we find after
thrice praying, but only he had a promise of sufficient grace.
2. Satan's possession of an ungodly soul is the miserable case,
which is a thousand times worse than his possessing of the
248 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
body, but every corruption or sin is not such a possession, for
no man is perfect without sin.
3. No sin proveth Satan's damnable possession of a man but
that which he loveth more than he hateth it, and which he had
rather keep than leave, and wilfully keepeth.
4. And this is matter of great comfort to such melancholy,
honest souls, if they have but understanding to receive it, that
of all men none love their sin which they groan under so little
as thev ; vea, it is the heavy burden of their souls. Do you love
your unbelief, your fears, your distracted thoughts, your temp-
tations to blasphemy ? Had you rather keep them than be
delivered from them ? The proud man, the ambitious, the for-
nicator, the drunkard, the gamester, the time- wasting gallants
that sit out hours at cards, and plays, and idle chats, the glut-
tonous pleasures of the appetite, all these love their sins, and
would not leave them 5 as Esau sold his birthright for one
morsel, they will venture the loss of God, of Christ, and soul,
and heaven, rather than leave a swinish sin. But is this your
case ? Do you so love your sad condition ? You are weary of
it, and heavy laden, and therefore are called to come to Christ
for ease. (Matt. xi. 28, 29.)
5. And it is the devil's way, if he can, to haunt those with
troubling temptations whom he cannot overcome with alluring
and damning temptations. As he raiseth storms of persecu-
tion against them without, as soon as they are escaping from
his deceits, so doth he trouble them within, as far as God per-
mitteth him.
We deny not but Satan hath a great hand in the case of
such melancholy persons, for,
1. His temptations caused the sin which God corrects
them for.
2. His execution usually is a cause of the distemper of the
body.
3. And, as a tempter, he is the cause of the sinful and trou-
blesome thoughts, and doubts, and fears, and passions, which
the melancholy causeth. The devil cannot do what he will
with us, but what we give him advantage to do. He cannot
break open our doors, but he can enter if we leave them open.
He can easily tempt a heavy, phlegmatic body to sloth, a weak
and choleric person to anger, a strong and sanguine man to
lust, and one of a strong appetite to gluttony, or to drunken-
ness, and vain, sportful youth to idle plays, and gaming, and
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 249
voluptuousness, when, to others, such temptations would have
small strength. And so, if he can cast you into melancholy,
he can easily tempt you to overmuch sorrow and fear, and to
distracting doubts and thoughts, and to murmur against God,
and to despair, and still think that you are undone, undone ;
and even to blasphemous thoughts of God, or, if it take not
this way, then to fanatic conceits of revelation, and a prophe-
sying spirit.
6. But I add, that God will not impute his mere temptations
to you, but to himself, be they ever so bad, as long as you re-
ceive them not by the will, but hate them ; nor will he condemn
you for those ill effects which are unavoidable from the power
of a bodily disease, any more than he will condemn a man for
raving thoughts, or words in a fever, frenzy, or utter madness.
But so far as reason yet hath power, and the will can govern
passions, it is your fault if you use not the power, though the
difficulty make the fault the less.
II. But usually other causes go before this disease of me-
lancholy, (except in some bodies naturally prone to it,) and
therefore, before I speak of the cure of it, I will briefly touch
them.
And one of the most common causes is sinful impatience,
discontents, and cares, proceeding from a sinful love of some
bodily interest, and from a want of sufficient submission to the
will of God, and trust in him, and taking heaven for a satis-
fying portion.
I must necessarily use all these words to show the true
nature of this complicated disease of souls. The names tell you
that it is a conjunction of many sins, which in themselves are
of no small malignity, and were they the predominant bent
and habit of heart and life, they would be the signs of a grace-
less state, but while they are hated, and overcome not grace,
but our heavenly portion is more esteemed, and chosen, and
sought than earthly prosperity, the mercy of God, through
Christ, doth pardon it, and will at last deliver us from all.
But yet it beseemeth even a pardoned sinner to know the great-
ness of his sin, that he may not favour it, nor be unthankful for
forgiveness.
I will therefore distinctly open the parts of this sin which
bringeth many into dismal melancholy.
It is presupposed that God trieth his servants in this life
with manifold afflictions, and Christ will have us bear the cross,
250 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
and follow him in submissive patience. Some are tried with
painful diseases, and some with wrong by enemies, and some
with the unkindness of friends, and some with froward, provok-
ing relatives and company, and some with slanders, and some
with persecution, and many with losses, disappointments, and
poverty.
1. And here impatience is the beginning of the working of
the sinful malady. Our natures are all too regardful of the
interest of the flesh, and too weak in bearing heavy burdens ;
and poverty hath those trials which full and wealthy persons
that feel them not, too little pity, especially in two cases.
1. When men have not themselves onlv, but wives and
children in want, to quiet.
2. And when they are in debt to others, which is a heavy
burden to an ingenuous mind, though thievish borrowers make
too light of it. In these straits and trials, men are apt to be too
sensible and impatient. When they and their families want
food, and raiment, and fire, and other necessaries to the body,
and know not which way to get supply ; when landlords, and
butchers, and bakers, and other creditors, are calling for their
debts, and they have it not to pay them, it is hard to keep all
this from going too near the heart, and hard to bear it with
obedient, quiet submission to God, especially for women, whose
nature is weak, and liable to too much passion.
2. And this impatience turneth to a settled discontent and
unquietness of spirit, which affecteth the body itself, and lieth
all day as a load, or continual trouble at the heart.
3. And impatience and discontent do set the thoughts on
the rack with grief and continual cares how to be eased of the
troubling cause ; they can scarce think of anything else, and
these cares do even feed upon the heart, and are, to the mind,
as a consuming fever to the body.
4. And the secret root or cause of all this is the worst part of
the sin, which is, too much love to the body, and this world.
Were nothing over-loved, it would have no power to torment
us. If ease and health were not over-loved, pain and sickness
would be the more tolerable ; if children and friends were not
over-loved, the death of them would not overwhelm us with in-
ordinate sorrow ; if the body were not over-loved, and worldly
wealth and prosperity over-valued, it were easy to endure hard
fare, and labour, and want, not only of superfluities and con-
veniences, but even of that which is necessary to health, yea,
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 251
or life itself, if God will have it so, at least, to avoid vexations,
discontents, and cares, and inordinate grief and trouble of mind.
5. There is yet more sin in the root of all, and that is, it
showeth that our wills are yet too selfish, and not subdued to a
due submission to the will of God, but we would be as gods to
ourselves, and be at our own choosing, and must needs have
what the flesh desireth. We want a due resignation of ourselves
and all our concerns to God, and live not as children, in due
dependence on him for our daily bread, but must needs be the
keepers of our own provision.
6. And this showeth that we be not sufficiently humbled for
our sin, or else we should be thankful for the lowest state, as
being much better than that which we deserved.
7. And there is apparently much distrust of God and unbe-
lief in these troubling discontents and cares. Could we trust
God as well as ourselves, or as we could trust a faithful friend,
or as a child can trust his father, how quiet would our minds be
in the sense of his wisdom, all-sufficiency, and love?
8. And this unbelief yet hath a worse effect than worldly
trouble : it showeth that men take not the love of God and the
heavenly glory for their sufficient portion, unless they may have
what they want, or would have for the body in this world, unless
they may be free from poverty, and crosses, and provocations,
and injuries, and pains, all that God hath promised them here or
hereafter, even everlasting glory, will not satisfy them; and
when God, and Christ, and heaven, are not enough to quiet a
man's mind, he is in great want of faith, hope, and love, which
are far greater matters than food and raiment.
III. Another great cause of such trouble of mind is the guilt
of some great and wilful sin; when conscience is convinced, and
yet the soul is not converted, sin is beloved, and yet feared.
God's wrath doth terrify them, and yet not enough to overcome
their sin : some live in secret fraud and robbery, and manv in
drunkenness, in secret fleshly lusts, either self- pollution or for-
nication, and they know that for such things the wrath of God
cometh on the children of disobedience ; and yet the rage of
appetite and lust prevaileth, and they despair and sin 3 and
wMle the sparks of hell fall on their consciences, it changeth
neither heart nor life : there is some more hope of the recovery
of these than of dead-hearted or unbelieving sinners, who work
uncleanness with greediness, and being past feeling, and blinded
to defend their sins, and plead against holy obedience ta God.
252 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
Brutishness is not so bad as diabolism and malignity : but none
of these are the persons spoken of in my text ; their sorrow is
not overmuch, but too little, as long as it will not restrain them
from their sin.
But yet, if God convert these persons, the sins which they
now live in may possibly hereafter plunge their souls into such
depths of sorrow in the review, as may swallow them up.
And when men truly converted, yet dally with the bait, and
renew the wounds of their consciences by their lapses, it is no
wonder if their sorrow and terrors are renewed. Grievous sins
have fastened so on the conscience of many, as have cast them
into incurable melancholy and distraction.
IV. But, among people fearing God, there is yet another cause
of melancholy, and of sorrowing overmuch, and that is igno-
rance and mistakes in matters which their peace and comfort
are concerned in. I will name some particulars.
1. One is ignorance of the tenour of the gospel or covenant
of grace, as some libertines, called Antinomians, more danger-
ously mistake it, who tell men that Christ hath repented and
believed [for] them, and that they must no more question their
faith and repentance, than they must question the righteousness
of Christ ; so many better Christians understand not that the
gospel is tidings of unspeakable joy to all that will believe
it ; and that Christ and life are offered freely to them that will
accept him, and that no sins, however great or many, are
excepted from pardon, to the soul that unfeignedly turneth to
God by faith in Christ ; and that whoever will may freely take
the water of life, and all that are weary and athirst are invited to
come to him for ease and rest.
And they seem not to understand the conditions of forgive-
ness, which is but true consent to the pardoning, saving (bap-
tismal) covenant.
2. And many of them are mistaken about the use of sorrow
for sin, and about the nature of hardness of heart : they think
that if their sorrow be not so passionate as to bring forth tears,
and greatly to afflict them, they are not capable of pardon,
though they should consent to all the pardoning covenant ; and
they consider not that it is not our sorrow for itself that God 'Je-
lighteth in, but it is the taking down of pride, and that so much
humbling sense of sin, danger, and misery, as may make us feel
the need of Christ and mercy, and bring us unfeignedly to con-
sent to be his disciples, and to be saved upon his covenant terms
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 253
Be sorrow much or little, if it do this much the sinner shall be
saved.
And as to the length of God's sorrow, some think that the
pangs of the new birth must be a long-continued state ; whereas
we read in the Scripture, that, by the penitent sinners, the
gospel was still received speedily with joy, as being the gift of
Christ, and pardon, and everlasting life : humility and self-
loathing must continue and increase, but our first great sorrows
may be swallowed up with holy thankfulness and joy.
And as for hardness of heart, in Scripture, it is taken for such
a stiff rebellious obstinacy, as will not be moved from, their
sins to obedience by any of God's commands or threats, and is
called oft an iron sinew, a stiff neck, &c. ; but it is never taken
from the mere want of tears or passionate sorrow in a man that
is willing to obey : the hard-hearted are the rebellious. Sor-
row, even for sin, may be overmuch, and a passionate woman or
man may easily grieve and weep for the sin which they will not
leave, but obedience cannot be too much.
3. And abundance are cast down by ignorance of themselves,
not knowing the sincerity which God hath given them. Grace
is weak in the best of us here, and little and weak grace is not
very easily perceived, for it acteth weakly and inconstantly,
and it is known but by its acts ; and weak grace is always
joined with too strong corruption; and all sin in heart and life
is contrary to grace, and doth obscure it; and such persons
usually have too little knowledge, and are too strange at home,
and unskilful in examining and watching their hearts, and keep-
ing its accounts : and how can any, under all these hinderances,
yet keep any full assurance of their own sincerity. If, with
much ado, they get some assurances, neglect of duty, or cold-
ness in it, or yielding to temptation, or inconstancy in close
obedience, will make them question all again, and ready to say
it was all but hypocrisy. And a sad and melancholy frame of
mind is always apt to conclude the worst, and hardly brought
to see any thing that is good, and tends to comfort.
4. And in such a case there are too few that know how to
fetch comfort from bare probabilities, when they get not cer-
tainty, much less from the mere offers of grace and salvation,
even when they cannot deny but they are willing to accept them ;
and if none should have comfort but those that have assurance
of their sincerity and salvation, despair would swallow up the
souls of most, even of true believers.
254 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
5. And ignorance of other men increaseth the fears and sor-
rows of some. They think, by our preaching and writing, that
we are much better than we are : and then they think that they
are graceless, because they come short of our supposed mea-
sures, whereas if they dwelt with us, and saw our failings, or
knew us as well as we know ourselves, or saw all our sinful
thoughts and vicious dispositions written in our foreheads, they
would be cured of this error.
6. And unskilful teachers do cause the griefs and perplexities
of very many. Some cannot open to them clearly the tenour of
the covenant of grace : some are themselves unacquainted with
any spiritual, heavenly consolations ; and many have no expe-
rience of any inward holiness, and renewal by the Holy Ghost,
and know not what sincerity is, nor wherein a saint doth differ
from an ungodly sinner, as wicked deceivers make good and
bad to differ but a little, if not the best to be taken for the
worst ; so some unskilful men do place sincerity in such things
as are not so much as duty, as the papists in their manifold in-
ventions and superstition, and many sects in their unsound
opinions.
And some unskilfully and unsoundly describe the state of
grace, and tell you how far an hypocrite may go, so as unjustly
discourageth and confoundeth the weaker sort of Christians, and
cannot amend the mis- expression of their books or teachers;*
and too many teachers lay men's comforts, if not salvation, on
controversies which are past their reach, and pronounce heresy
and damnation against that which they themselves understand
not. Even the Christian world, these one thousand three hun-
dred, or one thousand two hundred, years, is divided into par-
ties by the teachers' unskilful quarrels about words which they
took in several senses. Is it any wonder if the hearers of such
are distracted ?
IV. I have told you the causes of distracted sorrows, I am
now to tell you what is the cure ; but, alas ! it is not so soon
done as told; and I shall begin where the disease beginneth,
and tell you both what the patient himself must do, and what
must be done by his friends and teachers.
I. Look not on the sinful part of your troubles, either as
better or worse than indeed it is.
1. Too many persons in their sufferings and sorrows think
* One of my hearers fell distracted with reading- some passages in Mr.
Shepherd's Sincere Believer, which were not justifiable or sound
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 255
they are only to be pitied, and take little notice of the sin.
that caused them, or they still continue to commit; and too
many unskilful friends and ministers do only comfort them,
when a round chiding and discovery of their sin should be the
better part of the cure ; and if they were more sensible how
much sin there is, in their overvaluing the world, and not trust-
ing God, and in their hard thoughts of him, and their poor, un-
holy thoughts of his goodness, and in their undervaluing the hea-
venly glory, which should satisfy them in the most afflicted state,
and in their daily impatiences, cares, and discontents, and in
denying the mercies or graces received, this would do more
to cure some than words of comfort, when they say as Jonah,
" I do well to be angry," and think that all their denials of grace,
and distracting sorrows and wrangling against God's love and
mercy, are their duties, it is time to make them know how
great sinners they are.
2. And yet when as foolishly they think that all these sins
are marks of a graceless state, and that God will take the
devil's temptations for their sins, and condemn them for that
which thev abhor, and take their very disease of melancholy
for a crime, this also needs confutation and reprehension, that
they may not by error cherish their passions or distress.
II. Particularly, give not way to a habit of peevish impa-
tience ! though it is carnal love to somewhat more than to God
and glory which is the damning sin, yet impatience must not
pass for ignorance. Did you not reckon upon sufferings, and
of bearing the cross, when you first gave up yourselves to Christ?
And do you think it strange ? Look for it, and make it your
daily study to prepare for any trial that God may bring you to,
and then it will not surprise you, and overwhelm you. Pre-
pare for the loss of children and friends, for the loss of goods,
and for poverty and want ; prepare for slanders, injuries, or poi-
sons, for sickness, pain, and death. It is your unpreparedness
that maketh it seem unsurYerable.
And remember that it is but a vile body that sufTereth, which
you always knew must suffer death, and rot to dust ; and who-
ever is the instrument of your sufferings, it is God that trieth
you by it, and when you think that you are only displeased
with men, you are not guiltless of murmuring against God, or
else his overruling hand would persuade you to submissive
patience.
Especially make conscience of a settled discontent of mind.
256 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
Have you not yet much better than you deserve ? And do you
forget how many years you have enjoyed undeserving mercy ?
Discontent is a continued resistance of God's disposing will,
that I say not some rebellion against it. Your own wills rise
up against the will of God. It is atheistical to think that your
sufferings are not by his providence ; and dare you repine
against God, and continue in such repining ? To whom else
doth it belong to dispose of you and all the world ?
And when you feel distracting cares for your deliverances,
remember that this is not trusting God. Care for your own
duty, and obey his command, but leave it to him what you shall
have ; tormenting cares do but add to your afflictions ; it is a
great mercy of God that he forbiddeth you these cares, and
promiseth to care for you. Your Saviour himself hath largely,
though gently, reprehended them, (Matt, vi.,) and told you how
sinful and unprofitable they are, and that your Father knoweth
what you need ; and if he deny it you, it is for just cause, and
if it be to correct you, it is yet to profit vou ; and if you sub-
mit to him, and accept his gift, he will give you much better
than that which he taketh from you, even Christ and ever-
lasting life.
III. Set yourselves more diligently than ever to overcome the
inordinate love of the world. It will be a happy use of all your
troubles if you can follow them up to the fountain, and find out
what it is that vou cannot bear the want or loss of, and conse-
quently what is it that you over- love. God is very jealous, even
when he loveth, against every idol that is loved too much, and
with any of that love which is due to him. And if he take them
all away, and tear them out of our hands and hearts, it is mer-
ciful as well as just, I speak not this to those that are troubled
only for want of more faith, and holiness, and communion with
God, and assurance of salvation. These troubles might give them
much comfort if they understood aright from whence they come,
and what they signify. For as impatient trouble under worldly
crosses doth prove that a man loveth the world too much, so
impatient trouble, for want of more holiness and communion
with God, doth show that such are lovers of holiness and of
God. Love goeth before desire and grief. That which men
love they delight in if they have it, and mourn for want of it,
and desire to obtain it. The will is the love ; and no man is
troubled for want of that which he would not have.
But the commonest cause of passionate melancholy is at first
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 257
some worldly discontent and care ; either wants or crosses, or
the fear of suffering, or the unsuitableness and provocation of
some related to them, or disgrace, or contempt, do cast them
into passionate discontent, and self-will cannot bear the denial
of something which they would have, and then when the dis-
content hath muddled and diseased a man's mind, temptations
about his soul do come in afterwards ; and that which begun
only with worldly crosses, doth after seem to be all about reli-
gion, conscience, or merely for sin and want of grace.
Why could you not patiently bear the words, the wrongs,
the losses, the crosses, that did befal you ? Why made you so
great a matter of these bodily, transitory things ? Is it not be-
cause you over-loved them ? Were you not in good earnest when
you called them vanity, and covenanted to leave them to the
will of God ? Would you have God let you alone in so great a
sin as the love of the world, or giving any of his due to crea-
tures. If God should not teach you what to love, and what to
set light by, and cure you of so dangerous a disease as a fleshly,
earthly mind, he should not sanctify you, and fit you for heaven.
Souls go not to heaven as an arrow is shot upward, against
their inclination ; but as fire naturally tendeth upward, and
earth downward, to their like, so when holy men are dead,
their souls have a natural inclination upward ; and it is their
love that is their inclination ; they love God and heaven, and
holy company, and their old godly friends, and holy works, even
mutual love, and the joyful praises of Jehovah. And this
spirit and love is as a fiery nature, which carrieth them heaven-
ward; and angels convey them not thither by force, but con-
duct them as a bride to her marriage, who is carried all the
way by love.
And on the other side, the souls of wicked men are of a
fleshly, worldly inclination, and love not heavenly works and
company, and have nothing in them to carry them to God; but
they love worldly trash, and sensual, bestial delights, though
they cannot enjoy them; and as poor men love riches, and
are vexed for want of what they love ; and therefore it is no
wonder if wicked souls do dwell with devils in the lower re-
gions, and that they make apparitions here when God permits
them, and if holy souls be liable to no such descent. Love is
the soul's poise and spring, and carrieth souls downward or
upward accordingly.
Away, then, with the earthly, fleshly love. How long will you
VOL. XVII. 5
258 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST ■
stay here ; and what will earth and flesh do for you ? So far
as it may be helpful to holiness and heaven, God will not deny
it to submissive children ; but to over-love is to turn from God,
and is the dangerous malady of souls, and the poise that sinks
them down from heaven. Had you learnt better to forsake all
for Christ, and to account all but as loss and dung, as Paul
did, (Phil. iii. 8,) you could more easily bear the want of it.
When did you see any live in discontent, and distracted with
melancholy, grief, and cares, for want of dung, or of a bubble, a
shadow, or a merry dream ? If you will not otherwise know
the world, God will otherwise make you know it to your
sorrow.
IV. If you are not satisfied that God alone, Christ alone,
heaven alone is enough for you, as matter of felicity and full
content, go, study the case better, and you may be convinced.
Go, learn better your catechism, and the principles of religion,
and then you will learn to lay up a treasure in heaven, and not
on earth, and to know that it is best to be with Christ ; and
that death, which blasteth all the glory of the world, and
equalleth rich and poor, is the common door to heaven or hell ;
and then conscience will not ask you whether you have lived
in pleasure, or in pain 5 in riches, or in want ; but whether
you have lived to God, or to the flesh ; for heaven or for earth ?
and what hath had the pre-eminence in your hearts and lives ?
If there be shame in heaven, you will be ashamed when you are
there, that you whined and murmured for want of any thing
that the flesh desired upon earth, and went thither grieving
because your bodies suffered here. Study more to live by faith
on hope, on the unseen promised glory with Christ, and you
will patiently endure any sufferings in the way.
V. And study better how great a sin it is to set our own wills
and desires in a discontented opposition to the wisdom, will, and
providence of God; and to make our wills instead of His, as
gods to ourselves. Does not a murmuring heart secretly accuse
God ? All accusation of God hath some degree of blasphemy in
it. For the accuser supposeth that somewhat of God is to be
blamed, and if you dare not open your mouths to accuse him,
let not the repinings of your hearts accuse him ; know how
much of religion and holiness consisteth in bringing this rebel-
lious self-will to a full resignation, submission, and conformity
to the will of God. Till you can rest in God's will you will
never have rest.
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 259
VI. And study well how great a duty it is wholly to trust
God, and our blessed Redeemer, both with soul and body, and
all we have. Is not infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, to
be trusted ? Is not a Saviour, who came from heaven into flesh,
to save sinners by such incomprehensible ways of love, to be
trusted with that which he hath so dearly bought ? To whom
else will you trust ? Is it to yourselves or your friends ? Who
is it that hath kept you all your lives, and done all for you
that is done ? Who is it that hath saved all the souls that are
now in heaven ? What is our Christianity but a life of faith ?
And is this your aith, to distract yourselves with care and
troubles, if God do not fit all his providences to your wills ?
Seek first his kingdom and righteousness, and he hath pro-
mised that all other things shall be added to you, and not a
hair of your head shall perish, for they are all, as it were, num-
bered. A sparrow falls not to the ground without his provi-
dence, and doth he set less by those that fain would please him ?
Believe God, and trust him, and your cares, and fears, and
griefs will vanish.
O that you knew what a mercy and comfort it is for God to /
make it your duty to trust him ! If he had made you no promise,
this is equal to a promise. If he do but bid you trust him,
you may be sure he will not deceive your trust. If a faithful
and confidential friend, that is able to relieve you, do but bid
you trust in him for your relief, you will not think that he
will deceive you. Alas! I have friends that. durst trust me
with their estates, and lives, and souls, if they were in my
power, and would not fear that I would destroy or hurt them,
that yet cannot trust the God of infinite goodness with them,
though he both commands them to trust him, and promises
that he will never fail them, nor forsake them. It is the refuge
of my soul that quieteth me in my fears, that God, my Father
and Redeemer, hath commanded me to trust him with my body,
my health, my liberty, my estate, and when eternity seemeth
strange and dreadful to me, that he bids me trust him with my
departing soul ! Heaven and earth are upheld and maintained
by him, and shall 1 distrust him ?
Objection. — But it is none but his children that he will save.
Answer. — True; and all are his children that are truly wil-
ling to obey and please him. If you are truly willing to be
holy, and to obey his commanding will, in a godly, righteous,
and sober life, vou may boldly rest in his disposing will, and
s 2
260 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
rejoice in his rewarding and accepting will, for he will pardon
all our infirmities through the merits and intercession of Christ.
VII. If you would not be swallowed up with sorrow, swallow
not the baits of sinful pleasure. Passions, and dulness, and
defective duties have their degrees of guilt, but it is pleasing
sin that is the dangerous and deep-wounding sin. O fly from
the baits of lust, and pride, and ambition, and covetousness,
and an unruly appetite to drink or meat, as you would fly from
guilt, and grief, and terror. The more pleasure you have in
sin, usually the more sorrow it will bring you ; and the more you
know it to be sin, and conscience tells you that God is against
it, and yet you will go on, and bear down conscience, the
sharper will conscience afterwards afflict you, and the morehard-
ly will it be quieted when it. is awakened to repentance. Yea,
when an humbled soul is pardoned by grace, and believeth that
he is pardoned, he will not easily forgive himself. The remem-
brance of the wilfulness of sinning, and how poor a bait pre-
vailed with us, and what mercies and motives we bore down,
will make us so displeased and angry with ourselves, and so to
loathe such naughty hearts as will not admit a speedy or easy
reconciliation. Yea, when we remember that we sinned against
knowledge, even when we remembered that God did see us,
and that we offended him, it will keep up long doubts of our
sinceritv in the soul, and make us afraid lest still we have the
same hearts, and should again do the same if we had the same
temptations. Never look for joy or peace as long as you live
in wilful and beloved sin. This thorn must be taken out of
your hearts before you will be eased of the pain, unless God
leave you to a senseless heart, and Satan give you a deceitful
peace, which doth but prepare for greater sorrow.
VIII. But if none of the forementioned sins cause your
sorrows, but they come from the mere perplexities of your mind
about religion, or the state of your souls, as fearing God's wrath
for your former sins, or doubting of your sincerity and salva-
tion, then these foregoing reproofs are not meant to such as
you, but I shall now lay you down your proper remedy, and
that is, the cure of that ignorance and those errors which cause
your troubles.
1. Many are perplexed about controversies in religion, while
every contending party is confident, and hath a great deal to
say, which to the ignorant seemeth like to truth, and which the
hearer cannot answer, and when each party tells them that
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 261
their way is the only way, and threateneth damnation to them
if they turn not to them. The papists say, ' There is no sal-
vation out of our church ;' that is, to none but the subjects of
the bishop of Rome. The Greeks condemn them, and extol
their church, and every party extols their own. Yea, some will
convert them with fire and sword, find say, ' Be of our church,
or lie in gaol ;' or make their church itself a prison, by driving
in the incapable and unwilling.
Among all these, how shall the ignorant know what to
choose ?
Answer. — The case is sad, and yet not so sad as the case
of the far greatest part of the world, who are quite in hea-
thenism, or infidelity, or never trouble themselves about reli-
gion, but follow the customs of their countries, and the prince's
laws, that they may not suffer. It is some sign of a regard
to God and your salvation, that you are troubled about religion,
and careful to know which is the right ; even controversy is
better than atheistical indifference, that will be on the upper
side, be it what it will. If you cast acorns or pulse among
them, swine will strive for it; or if it be carrion, dogs will fight
for it; but if it be gold or jewels, dogs and swine will never
strive for them, but tread them in the dirt. But cast them
before men, and they will be altogether by the ears for them.
Lawyers contend about law, and princes about dominion, which
others mind not, and religious persons strive about religion,
and what wonder is this ? It doth but show that thev value
their souls and religion, and that their understandings are
yet imperfect. But if you follow these plain directions, con-
troversies need not break your peace.
I. See that you be true to the light and law of nature, which
all mankind is obliged to observe. If you had no Scripture nor
Christianity, nature (that is, the works of God,) do tell you
that there is a God, and that he is the rewarder of them that
diligently seek him. It tells you that God is absolutely perfect
in power, knowledge, and goodness, and that man is a reason-
able, free agent made by him, and therefore is his own, and
at his will and government. It tells you that a man's actions
are not indifferent, but some things we ought to do, and some
things we ought not to do, and that virtue and vice, moral good
and evil, do greatly differ, and therefore that there is some
universal law which obligeth us to the good, and forbids the
evil, and that this can be none but the law of the universal go-
262 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
vernor, which is God. It tells all men that they owe this God
their absolute obedience, because he is their most wise and
absolute ruler, and that they owe him their chiefest love, because
he is not only the chief benefactor, but also most perfectly
amiable in himself. It tells us that he hath made us all soci-
able members of one world, and that we owe love and help
to one another. It tells us that all this obedience to God can
never be in vain, nor to our loss ; and it tells us that we must
all die, and that fleshly pleasures and this transitory world
will quickly leave us. There is no more cause to doubt of all,
or any of this, than whether man be man. Be true to this
much, and it will be a great help to all the rest.
II. And as to God's supernatural revelation, hold to God's
word, the sacred bible, written by the special inspiration of the
Holy Ghost, as the sufficient records of it.
It is not divine faith if it rest not on divine revelation, nor
is it divine obedience which is not given to divine government
or command. Man's word is to be believed but as it deserveth,
with a human faith, and man's law must be obeved according
to the measure of his authority, with a human obedience,
but these are far different from a divine. There is no universal
ruler of all the world or church but God ; no man is capable
of it, nor any council of men. God's law is only in nature, and
in the holy Scripture, and that being the law by which he will
judge us, it is the law which is the only divine rule of our faith
or judgment, our hearts and lives. Though all in the Scripture
is not of equal clearness or necessity, but a man may be saved
that understandeth not a thousand sentences therein, yet all
that is necessary to salvation is plainly there contained, and
God's law is perfect in its designed use, and needeth no sup-
plement of man's. Hold close to Scripture sufficiency, or you
will never know what to hold to. Councils and canons are far
more uncertain, and there is no agreement among their subjects
which of them are obligatory, and which not, nor any possible
way to come to an agreement.
III. Yet use with thankfulness the help of men, for the un-
derstanding and obeying the word of God.
Though lawyers, as such, have none of the legislative power,
you need their help to understand the use of the law aright.
And though no men have power to make laws for the church
universal, yet men must be our teachers to understand and use
the laws of God. We are not born with faith or knowledge ;
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 263
we know nothing but what is taught us, except what sense or
intuition perceiveth, or reason gathereth from thence.
If you ask, Who must we learn of? I answer, of those that
know, and have learned themselves. No name, or title, or re-
lation, or habit, will enable any man to teach you that which he
knoweth not himself.
1 . Children must learn of their parents and tutors.
2. People must learn of their able, faithful pastors and
Cateehisers.
3. All Christians must be teachers by charitable helps to one
another.
But teaching and law-making are two things. To teach
another is but to show him that same scientific evidence of
f ruth, by which the teacher knoweth it himself, that the learner
may know it as he doth. To say, c You shall believe that is
true which I say is true, and that this is the meaning of it/ is
not teaching, but law-giving, and to believe such an one, is
not to learn or know, though some human belief of our
teachers is necessary to learners.
IV. Take nothing as necessary to the being of Christianity and
to salvation, which is not recorded in Scripture, and hath not
been held necessary by all true Christians in every age and place.
Not that we must know men first to be true Christians, that
by them we may know what christian truth is, but the plain
Scripture tells all men what Christianity is, and by that we know
whom to take for Christians. But if anything be new, and
risen since the apostles' writing of the Scripture, that can be
no point essential to Christianity, else Christianity must be a
mutable thing, and not the same now as it was heretofore,
or else there were no Christians before this novelty in the
world. The church were not the church, nor were any man
Christian, if they wanted any essential part of faith or practice.
But here take heed of sophist's deceit ; though nothing is
necessary to salvation but all sound Christians have still believed,
yet it is not necessary, or true, or good, which all good Chris-
tians have believed or done ; much less all which the tempted
worse part have held : for though the essence of Christianity
has been ever and everywhere the same, yet the opinions of
Christians, and their mistakes and faults, have been none of
their imitable faith or practice. Human nature is essentially
the same in Adam, and in all men, but the diseases of nature
are another thing. If all men have sin and error, so have all
264 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
churches ; their Christianity is of God, but the corruptions and
maladies of Christians are not. You must hold nothing but
what Christians of old have held as received from God's word ;
but because they have all some faults and errors, you must not
hold and do all those.
V. Maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace
with all true christians as such, and live in love in the com-
munion of saints.
That is, with them that live in the belief, and in holy obedi-
ence to the christian faith and law. By their fruits you shall
know them. The societies of malignants, who suppress true
practical knowledge and piety, and hate the best men, and
cherish wickedness, and bloodily persecute those that in con-
science obey not their usurpations and inventions, are not the
communion of saints ; wolves, thorns, and thistles, are not the
sheep or vines of Christ.
VI. Prefer not any odd or singular sect before the universal
consent of the faithful in your learning or communion, so far as
the judgment of men is to be regarded.
Though we take not our faith from the number of believers,
and though the most be usually none of the best, and some few
are much wiser than the most, and in a controversy, a few men
of such knowledge are to be believed before the multitude of
less knowledge, yet Christ is the head of all true Christians, and
not of an odd sect or party only ; and he hath commanded
them all to live as brethren, in love and holy communion ; and
in all sciences, the greater number of agreeing men are liker to
be in the right, than some straggling persons, who show other-
wise no more ability than they : at least, which side soever you
like best in less necessary points, you must always be in unity
with all true Christians, and not unnecessarily differ from them.
VII. Never set a doubtful opinion against a certain truth or
duty ; reduce not things certain to things uncertain ; but con-
trarily, uncertain things to certain : for instance, it is certain that
you ought to live in love and peace with all that are true Chris-
tians, and to do good to all, and wrong to none ; let not any
doubtful difference make you violate this rule, and hate, and
slander, and backbite, and hurt them for a doubtful, indifferent,
or unnecessary thing ; set not your mint or cummin, tythes or
ceremonies, against love and justice, and the great and certain
things of the law ; it is an ill sect or opinion that is against the
nature and common duty of Christianity and humanity.
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 265
VIII. Faithfully serve Christ as far as you have attained, and
be true to all the truth that you know ; sin not by omission or
practice against the knowledge which you have, lest God in
justice give up your understanding to believe a lie.
IX. Remember that all men on earth are ignorant, and know
but as in a glass, and in part, and therefore the best have many
errors ; no man knoweth the smallest grass or worm with an
adequate perfect knowledge. And if God bear with multitudes
of errors in us all, we must bear with such as are tolerable in
each other ; it is well if men be humble, and teachable, and
willing to know. As we have seen few more imperfect than
the sects that have asserted sinless perfection, so we see few so
fallible and erroneous as the Roman sect, which pleadeth their
infallibility ; when they tell you that you must believe their popes
and councils, that you may come to an end of controversy, ask
them whether we may here hope for any end of ignorance, error,
and sin ; if not, what hope of ending all controversies before we
come to heaven, where ignorance is ended ? The controversies
against the essentials of Christianity were ended with us all
when we became true and adult Christians, and the rest will be
lessened as we grow in knowledge. Divinity is not less mysteri-
ous than law and physic, &c, where controversies abound.
X. Yet stint not yourselves in knowledge, nor say ' We have
learned enough,' but continue as Christ's scholars in learning
more and more to the death ; the wisest know little, and may still
increase. There is a great difference in excellency, usefulness,
and comfort, between men of clear, digested knowledge, and
confused undigested apprehensions.
These ten rules practised, will save you from being perplexed
with doubts and controversies of all pretenders in religion.
J I. But if your trouble be not about doctrinal controversies,
but about your sins, or want of grace, and spiritual state, digest
well these following truths and councils, and it will cure you.
I. God's goodness is equal to his greatness; even to that
power that ruleth heaven and earth. His attributes are
commensurate : and goodness will do good to capable receivers.
He loved us when we were enemies ; and he is, essentially, love
itself.
II. Christ hath freely taken human nature, and made satisfac-
tion for the sins of the world, as full as answereth his ends, and
so full that none shall perish for want of sufficiency in his sacri-
fice and merits.
266 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
III. Upon these merits Christ hath made a law, or covenant
of grace, forgiving all sin, and giving freely everlasting life to all
that will believingly accept it \ so that all men's sins are con-
ditionally pardoned by the tenour of this covenant.
IV. The condition of pardon and life is not that we sin no
more, or that by any price we purchase it of God, or by our own
works do benefit him, or buy his grace ; but only that we be-
lieve him, and willingly accept of the mercy which he freely
giveth us, according to the nature of the gift ; that is, that we
accept of Christ as Christ, to justify, sanctify, rule, and save us.
V. God hath commissioned his ministers to proclaim and
offer this covenant and grace to all, and earnestly entreat them
in his name to accept it, and be reconciled to him ; he hath ex-
cepted none.
VI. No man that hath this offer is damned, but only those
that obstinately refuse it to the last breath.
VJI. The day of grace is never so passed to any sinner but
still he may have Christ and pardon if he will ; and if he have
it not, it is because he will not. And the day of grace is so far
from being passed, that it is savingly come to all that are so
willing; and grace is still offered urgently to all.
VIII. The will is the man in God's account, and what a man
truly would be and have, he is, and shall have : consent to the
baptismal covenant is true grace and conversion, and such have
right to Christ and life.
IX. The number and greatness of former sins is no exception
against the pardon of any penitent, converted sinner : God par-
doneth great and small to such ; where sin aboundeth, grace
superaboundeth ? and much is forgiven, that men may be thank-
ful, and love much.
X. Repentance is true, though tears and passionate sorrow be
defective, when a man had rather leave his sin than keep it, and
sincerely, though imperfectly, endeavoureth fully to overcome
it ; no sin shall damn a man which he more hateth than
loveth, and had truly rather leave than keep, and showeth this
by true endeavour.
XI. The best man hath much evil, and the worst have some
good ; but it is that which is preferred, and predominant in the
will, which distiguisheth the godly and the wicked. He that in
estimation, choice, and life, prefereth God, and heaven, and holi-
ness, before the world, and the pleasure of sin, is a true godly
man, and shall be saved.
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 26/
XII. The best have daily need of pardon, even for the faultiness
of their holiest duties, and must daily live on Christ for pardon.
XIII. Even sin against knowledge and conscience are too oft
committed by regenerate men ; for they know more than others
do, and their consciences are more active ; happy were they in-
deed if they could be as good as they know they should be^
and love God as much as they know they should love him, and
were clear from all the relicts of passion and unbelief, which
conscience tells them are their sins.
XIV. God will nOt take Satan's temptations to be our sins,
but only our not resisting them. Christ himself was tempted to
the most heinous sin, even to fall down to the devil and worship
him ; God will charge Satan's blasphemous temptations on
himself alone.
XV. The thoughts, and fears, and troubles, which melancholy
and natural weakness and distemper irresistibly cause, hath
much more of bodily disease than of sin, and, therefore, is of
the least of sins ; and, indeed, no more sin than to burn or be
thirsty in a fever, further than as some sin did cause the dis-
ease that causeth it, or further than there is left some power in
reason to resist them.
XVI. Certainty of our faith and sincerity is not necessary to
salvation, but the sincerity of faith itself is necessary. He shall
be saved that giveth up himself to Christ, though he know not
that he is sincere in doing it. Christ knoweth his own grace,
when they that have it know not that it is sound. It is but few
true Christians that attain to certainty of salvation; for weak
grace clogged with much corruption is hardly known, and
usually joined with fear and doubting.
XVII. Probability of sincerity and trust in Christ may cause
a man, justly, to live and die in peace and comfort, without pro-
per certainty, else few Christians should live and die in peace ;
and yet we see by experience that many do so. The common
opinion of most church-writers for four hundred years after
Christ, was, that the uncontinued sort of Christians might fall
from a state of grace, in which, had they continued, they had
been saved, and, therefore, that none but strong confirmed
Christians, at most, could be certain of salvation ; and many
protestant churches still are of that mind, and yet they live not
in despair or terror. No man is certain that he shall not fall as
heinously as David and Peter did ; and yet while they have no
cause to think it likely, they need not live in terror for the un-
268 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
certainty. No wife or child is certain that the husband or
father will not murder them, and yet they may live comfortably,
and not fear it.
XVIII. Though faith be so weak, as to assault with doubts
whether the gospel be true, and there be any life to come ; and
though our trust in Christ be not strong enough to banish our
fears and troubles, yet if we see so much evidence of credibility
in the gospel, and probability of a better life hereafter, as causeth
us here to fix our hopes and choice, and to resolve for those
hopes to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and let go all the world rather than sell those hopes, and live a
holy life to obtain it, this faith will save us.
XIX. But God's love and promise through Christ is so sure
a ground for faith and comfort, that it is the great duty and in-
terest of all men, confidently and quietly, to trust him, and then
to live in the joy of holy trust and hope.
XX. If any man doubt of his salvation because of the great-
ness of his sins, the way to quietness is presently to be willing to
forsake them. Either he that complaineth is willing to be holy
and forsake his sins, or not ; if you be not willing to leave them,
but love them, and would keep them, why do you complain of
them, and mourn for that which you so much love ? If your child
should cry and roar because his apple is sour, and yet will not
be persuaded to forbear to eat it, you would not pity him, but
whip him, as perverse. But if you are truly willing to leave it,
you are already saved from its damning guilt.
XXI. If you are in doubt of the sincerity of your faith, and
other graces, and all your examination leaveth you uncertain,
the way is presently to end your doubt by actual giving up your-
self to Christ. Do you not know whether you have been
hitherto a true believer ? You may know that Christ is now
offered to you ; consent but to the covenant, and accept the
offer, and you may be sure that he is yours.
XXI I. Bare examining is not always to be done for assur-
ance, but labour to excite and exercise much the grace that you
would be assured of ; the way to be sure that you believe and
love God, is to study the promises and goodness of God, till
active faith assure you that you believe, and you love God and
glory, till you are assured that you love them.
XXIII. It is not by some extraordinary act, good or bad, that
we may be sure what state the soul is in, but by the predomi-
nant bent, and drift, and tenour of heart and life.
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 269
XXIV. Though we cry out that we cannot believe, and we
cannot love God, and we cannot pray aright, Christ can help us ;
without his grace we can do nothing; but his grace is sufficient
for us, and he denieth not his further help when once he hath
made us willing, but hath bid us ask and have ; and if any lack
wisdom let him ask it of God, who giveth to all liberally, and
upbraideth not with former folly, but gives his spirit to them
that ask him.
XXV. This sin, called the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost, is the
sin of no one that believeth Jesus to be the Christ, nor of any
that fear it, no, nor of every infidel, but only of some few obsti-
nate 3 unbelieving enemies, for it is only this : when men see
such miracles of Christ and his Spirit as should or could con-
vince them that he is of God, and when they have no other
shift, they will rather maintain that he is a conjurer, and
wrought them by the devil.
XXVI. Though sinful fear is very troublesome, and not to be
cherished, God often permitteth and useth it to good, to keep
us from being bold with sin, and from those sinful pleasures
and love of the world, and presumption, and security, which are
far more dangerous, and to take down pride, and keep us in a
sensible, watchful state ; for just fear is made to preserve us
from the hurt and danger feared.
XXVII. He that goeth fearing and trembling to heaven, will
there quickly be past all fear, and doubts, and heaviness, for ever.
XXVIII. When Christ for our sins was in his agony, and
when he cried out, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me ?" he was then nevertheless beloved of his father ; and he
was tempted that he might succour them that are tempted, and
suffered such derision that he might be a compassionate high
priest to sufferers.
XXIX. By how much the more the troubles, and blasphem-
ous temptations, and doubts, and fears, of a man are grievous,
displeasing, and hateful to him, by so much the more he may be
assured that they shall not condemn him, because they are not
beloved sins.
XXX. All our troubles are over-ruled by God ; and it is far
better for us to be at his choice and disposal than our own, or
our dearest friend's ; and he hath promised that all things shall
work together for our good. (Rom. viii. 28.)
XXXI. A delight in God and goodness, and a joyful, praising
frame of soul, from the belief of the love of God through
270 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
Christ, is far more to be desired than grief and tears, which do
but sweep away some dirt, that love, joy, and thankfulness may
enter, which are the true evangelical, christian temper, and
likest to the heavenly state.
Digest these truths, and they will cure vou.
III. But if melancholy have got head already, there must be,
besides what is said, some other and proper remedies used ; and
the difficulty is great, because the disease makes them self-con-
ceited, unreasonable, wilful, and unruly, and they will hardly be
persuaded that the disease is in their bodies, but only in the
souls, and will not believe but they have reason for all what
they think and do ; or, if they confess the contrary, they plead
disability, and say, ' We can think and do no otherwise than
we do.'
But supposing that there is some use of reason left, I will
give them yet some further counsel ; and what they cannot do,
their friends must help them to their power, which I shall add.
1. Consider that it should be easy for you in your confound-
ing, troubling thoughts, to perceive that your understandings
are not now so sound and Strang as other men's ; and there-
fore be not wilful and self-conceited, and think not that your
thoughts are righter than theirs, but believe wiser men, and be
ruled by them.
Answer me this question, Do you know any minister, or
friend, that is wiser than yourself? If you say no, how foolishly
proud are you ! If you say yea, then ask the minister, or friend,
what he thinketh of your condition, and believe him, and be
ruled by him rather than by your crazed self.
2. Do you find that your troubles do you more good or hurt ?
Do they make you fitter or unfitter to believe and love God, and
rejoice in him, and praise him ? If you feel that they are
against all that is good, you may be sure that they are so far
from the devil's temptations, and are pleasing to him ; and will
you cherish or plead for the work of Satan, which you find is
against yourselves and God ?
3. Avoid vour musings, and exercise not your thoughts now
too deeply, nor too much. Long meditation is a duty to some,
but not to you, no more than it is a man's duty to go to church
that hath his leg broken, or his foot out of joint : he must rest
and ease it till it be set again, and strengthened. You may live
in the faith and fear of God, without setting yourself to deep,
disturbing thoughts.
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 271
Those that will not obey this counsel, their friends must rouse
them from their melancholy musings, and call them off to
something else.
4. Therefore you must not be much alone, but always in
some pleasing, cheerful company : solitariness doth but cherish
musings.
Nor must such be long in secret prayer, but more in public
prayer with others.
5. Let those thoughts which you have be laid out on the most
excellent things : pore not all on yourselves, and on your dis-
tempered heaits ; the best may find there much matter of trou-
ble. As millstones wear themselves if they go when they have
no corn, so do the thoughts of such as think not of better
things than their own hearts. If you have any power of your
own thoughts, force them to think most of these four things :
1. The infinite goodness of God, who is fuller of love than
the sun is of light.
2. Of the unmeasurable love of Christ in man's redemption,
and of the sufficiency of his sacrifice and merits.
3. Of the free covenant and offer of grace, which giveth
pardon and life to all that do not prefer the pleasure of sin be-
fore it, and obstinately refuse it to the last.
4. Of the inconceivable glory and joy which all the blessed
have with Christ, and which God hath promised with his oath
and seahj to all that consent to the covenant of grace, and are
willing to be saved and ruled by Christ. These thoughts will
cure melancholy fears.
5. Use not yourselves to a complaining talk, but talk most of
the great mercies of God which you have received. Dare you
deny them ? If not, are they not more worthy of your discourse
than your present sufferings ? Let not all men know that you
are in your troubles : complaining doth but feed them, and it
discourageth others. Open them to none but your secret coun-
sellors and friends. Use much to speak of the love of God,
and the riches of grace, and it will divert and sweeten your
sourer thoughts.
6. Especially, when you pray, resolve to spend most of your
time in thanksgiving and praise to God. If you cannot do it with
the joy that you should, yet do it as you can. You have not
the power of your comforts ; but have you no power of your
tongues ? Say not that you are unfit for thanks and praises,
unless you had a praising heart, and were the children of God ;
272 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
for every man, good and bad, is bound to praise God, and to
be thankful for all that he hath received, and to do it, as well
as he can, rather than leave it undone : and most Christians
want assurance of their adoption; and must they, therefore,
forbear all praise and thanksgiving to God ? Doing it as you
can is the way to be able to do it better. Thanksgiving stirreth
up thankfulness in the heart, but by your objection you may
perceive what the devil driveth at, and gets by your melancholy.
He would turn you off from all thankfulness to God, and from
the very mention of his love and goodness in your praises.
7. When vexatious or blasphemous thoughts are thrust into
your mind by Satan, neither give them entertainment, nor yet
be overmuch troubled at them ; first, use that reason and power
that is left you resolutely to cast them out, and turn your thoughts
to somewhat else ; do not say, ( I cannot/ If you can no other-
wise command and turn away your thoughts, rise up and go into
some company or to some employment which will divert you,
and take them up. Tell me what you would do if you heard a
scold in the street reviling you, or heard an atheist there talk
against God, would you stand still to hear them, or would you
talk it out again with them, or rather go from them, and disdain
to hear them, or debate the case with such as they ? Do you,
in your case, when Satan casts in ugly, or despairing, or mur-
muring thoughts, go away from them to some other thoughts
or business.
If you cannot do this of yourself, tell your friend when the
temptation cometh ; and it is his duty who hath the care of
you to divert you with some other talk or works^ or force you
into diverting company.
Yet be not too much troubled at the temptation, for trouble
of mind doth keep the evil matter in your memory, and so in-
crease it, as pain of a sore draws the blood and spirits to the
place. And this is the design of Satan, to give you troubling
thoughts, and then to cause more by being troubled at those ;
and so, for one thought and trouble to cause another, and that
another, and so on, as waves in the sea do follow each other. To
be tempted is common to the best. I told you to what idolatry
Christ was tempted. When you feel such thoughts, thank God
that Satan cannot force you to love them, or consent.
8. Again, still remember what a comfortable evidence you
carry about with you that your sin is not damning, while you
feel that you love it not, but hate it, and are weary of it. Scarce
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 273
any sort of sinners have so little pleasure in their sin as the me-
lancholy, nor so little desire to keep thein ; and only beloved
sins undo men.
Be sure that you live not idly, but in some constant business
of a lawful calling, so far as you have bodily strength. Idleness
is a constant sin, and labour is a duty. Idleness is but the
devil's home for temptation, and for unprofitable, distracting
musings. Labour profiteth others, and ourselv es : both soul
and body need it. Six days must you labour, and must not eat
the bread of idleness. (Prov. xxxi.) God hath made it our
duty, and will bless us in his appointed way. I have known
grievous, despairing melancholy cured, and turned into a life of
godly cheerfulness, principally by setting upon constancy and
diligence in the business of families and callings. It turns the
thoughts from temptation, and leaveth the devil no opportunity :
it pleaseth God if done in obedience, and it purifieth the dis-
tempered blood. Though thousands of poor people that live
m want, and have wives and children that must also feel it, one
would think should be distracted with griefs and cares, yet few
of them fall into the disease of melancholy, because labour
keepeth the body sound, and leaveth them no leisure for melan-
choly musings : whereas, in London, and great towns, abun-
dance of women that never sweat with bodily work, but live in
idleness, especially when from fulness they fall into want, are
miserable objects, continually vexed, and near distraction with
discontent, and a restless mind.
If you will not be persuaded to business, your friends, if they
can, should force you to it.
And if the devil turn religious as an angel of light, and
tell you that this is but turning away vour thoughts from
God, and that worldly thoughts and business are unholy, and
fit for worldly men ; tell him that Adam was in innocency to
dress and keep his garden, and Noah that had all the world,
was to be husbandman, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob kept
sheep and cattle, and Paul was a tent- maker, and Christ him-
self is justly supposed to have worked at his supposed father's
trade, as he went on fishing with his disciples. And Paul saith,
idleness is disorderly walking, and he that will not work let him
not eat. God made soul and body, and hath commanded work
to both.
And if Satan would drive you unseasonably upon longer
secret prayer than you can bear, remember that even sickness
VOL. XVII, T
274 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
will excuse the sick from that sort of duty which they are
unable for, and so will your disease ; and the unutterable groans
of the spirit are accepted.
If you have privacy out of hearing, I would give you this
advice, that, instead of long meditation, or long secret prayer,
you will sing a psalm of praise to God, such as the twenty-
third, or the one hundred and thirty-third, &c. This will
excite your spirit to that sort of holy affection which is much
more acceptable to God, and suitable to the hopes of a believer,
than your repining troubles are.
IV. But yet I have not done with the duty of those that take
care of distressed, melancholy persons, especially husbands to
their wives, (for it is much more frequently the disease of women
than of men,) when the disease disableth them to help them-
selves, the most of their helps, under God, must be from others;
and this is of two sorts: 1. In prudent carriage to them.;
2. In medicine and diet; a little of both.
1. A great part of their cure lieth in pleasing them, and
avoiding all displeasing things, as far as lawfully can be done.
Displeasedness is much of the disease ; and a husband that
hath such a wife is obliged to do his best to cure her, both in
charity, and by his relative bond, and for his own peace. It is
a great weakness in some men, that if they have wives, who,
by natural passionate weakness, or by melancholy, or crazed-
ness, are wilful, and will not yield to reason, they show their
anger at them to their further provocation : you took her in mar-
riage for better ami for worse, Yor sickness and health., If you
have chosen one that, as a child, must have every thing that
she crieth for, and must be spoken fair, and as it was rocked in
the cradle, or else it will be worse, you must condescend to do
it, and so bear the burden which you have chosen, as may not
make it heavier to you. Your passion and sourness towards a
person that cannot cure her own unpleasing carriage, is a more
inexcusable fault and folly than hers, who hath not the power of
reason as you have.
If you know any lawful thing that will please them in speech,
in company, in apparel, in rooms, in attendance, give it them :
if you know at what they are displeased, remove it. I speak
not of the distracted, that must be mastered by force, but of
the sad and melancholy : could you devise how to put them in
a pleased condition you might cure them.
2. As much as you can, divert them from the thoughts which
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 275
arc their trouble ; keep them on some other talks and business ;
break in upon them, and interrupt their musings; rouse them
out of it, but with loving importunity; suffer them not to be
long alone ; get fit company to them, or them to it ; especially,
suffer them not to be idle, but drive or draw them to some
pleasing works which may stir the body, and employ the thoughts.
If they are addicted to reading, let it not be too long, nor any
books that are unfit for them ; and rather let another read to
them than themselves. Dr. Sibbes's books, and some useful,
pleasing history or chronicles, or news of great matters abroad
in the world, may do somewhat to divert them.
3. Often set before them the great truths of the gospel which
are fittest to comfort them 3 and read them informing, comfort"
ing books, and live in a loving, cheerful manner with them.
4. Choose for them a skilful, prudent minister of Christ, both
for their secret counsel and public audience ; one that is skilled
in such cases, and one that is peaceable, and not contentious,
erroneous, or fond of odd opinions ; one that is rather judicious
in his preaching and praying than passionate, except when he
urgeth the gospel doctrines of consolation, and then the more
fervently the better ; and one that they much esteem and reve-
rence, and will regardfully hear.
5. Labour to convince them frequently how great a wrong it
is to the God of infinite love and mercy, and to a Saviour who
hath so wonderfully expressed his love, to think hardlier of him
than they would do of a friend, yea, or of a moderate enemy;
and so hardly to be persuaded of that love which hath been
manifested by the most stupendous miracle. Had they but a
father, husband, or friend, that had ventured his life for them,
and given them all that ever they had, were it not a shameful
ingratitude and injury to suspect still that they intended all
against them, and designed mischief to them, and did not love
them ? How hath God and our Saviour deserved this : and
many that say it is not God that they suspect, but themselves,
do but hide their misery by this mistake, while they deny God's
greatest mercies; and though they would fain have Christ and
grace, will not believe that God who offereth it them will give
it them, but think he is .one that will remedilessly damn a poor
soul that desireth to please him, and had rather have his grace
than all the sinful pleasures of the world.
6. Carry them oft abroad into strange company. Usually
they reverence strangers, and strange faces do divert them,
t2
276 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
especially travelling into other parts, if they can bear the mo-
tion.
7. It is a useful way, if you can, to engage them in comfort-
ing others that are in deeper distresses than they \ for this will
tell them that their case is not singular, and they will speak to
themselves while they speak to others. One of the chief means
which cured my fears of my soul's condition, about forty-eight
years ago, was oft comforting others that had the same doubts,
whose lives persuaded me of their sincerity.
And it would be a pretty diversion to send to them some
person that is in some error, which they are most against, to
dispute it with them, that, while they whet their wits to con-
vince them, and confute them, it may turn their thoughts from
their own distress. Forester tells us that ajnelancholy patient
of his, who was a papist, was cured when the Reformation came
-into the country, by eager and oft disputing against it. A bet-
ter cause may better do it.
8. If other means will not do, neglect not physic, and though
they will be averse to it, as believing that the disease is only
in the mind, they must be persuaded or forced to it. I have
known the lady deep in melancholy, who a long time would
neither speak, nor take physic, nor endure her husband to go
out of the room, and with the restraint and grief he died, and
she was cured by physic put down her throat with a pipe, by
force.
If it were, as some of them fancy, a possession of the devil,
it is possible physic might cast him out, for if you cure the me-
lancholy, his bed is taken awav, and the advantage gone by
which he worketh. Cure the choler, and the choleric opera-
tions of the devil cease. It is bv means and humours in us
that he worketh.
But choose a physician who is specially skilled in this disease,
and hath cured many others. Meddle not with women, and
ignorant boasters, nor with young, inexperienced men, nor with
hasty, busy, over-doing, venturous men, who cannot have time
to study the patient's temper and disease, but choose experienc-
ed, cautelous men.
Medicinal remedies and theological used not to be given to-
gether by the same hand ; but in this case of perfect complica-
tion of the maladies of mind and body, I think it not unfit, if
I do it not unskilfully. My advice is, that they that can have
an ancient, skilful, experienced, honest, careful, cautelous phy-
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 277
sician, neglect not to use him, nor meddle with any of the
medicines which I hereafter mention, nor with any other receipts
whatever, but by their physician's advice ; for there is so great
diversity of bodily temperatures, age, and many accidents, and
of the roots and causes of the same symptoms, as that the same
medicine may cure one and hurt another, and may cure the
same man at one time, which at another time it may hurt.
Skill in managing of it doth much of the cure, and not the me-
dicine without it.
But yet because there are multitudes of persons so very poor
that they cannot give a shilling to a physician, and the dearness
of physicians and apothecaries so discourageth them who have
not money, that they do not seek to any for helps, but some
women, who tell them of their receipts. And as there are manv
in the country that are quite out of the reach of a skilful
physician, and because there are now so great a number of em-
pirics, and young inexperienced physicians, that will rashly
venture before they thoroughly understand the body or the
disease \ and because overdoing, and venturing rashly, kills so
many ; for these reasons, I will add a few safe and cheap me-
dicines, which the poor may make themselves, and which will
not cause much loathing to their stomachs ; though 1 venture
on the censure of some physicians. I am none myself, but I
see many score, much younger than I, venture much further,
when they have got a license, to the great cost of the purses
and bodies of their patients.
The disease called melancholy is formally in the spirits,
whose distemper unfits them for their office, in serving the ima-
gination, understanding, memory, and affections ; so, by their
distemper, the thinking faculty is diseased, and becomes like
an inflamed eye, or a foot that is sprained or out of joint, dis-
abled for its proper work.
The matter which is the root and foundation is usually a
depravation of the mass of blood, which is the vehicle of the
spirits, and that is usually accompanied with some diseases of
the stomach, spleen, liver, or other parts, which are for the due
concoction, motion, and purification of the blood, which dis-
eases are so various, that they are seldom the same in many
persons, and hardly known to the wisest physicians. The spleen
is most commonly accused, and often guilty, and the stomach,
pancreas, mesentery, omentum, liver, yea, and reins, not rarely
are the root, sometimes by obstructing humours, and that of
2/8 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
several qualities, and sometimes by stones, and sometimes by
various sorts of humours, and sometimes by vesicles, but ob-
structed, if not tumified spleens, are most suspected.
Such a black, distinct humour called melancholy, which hath
of old been accused, is rarely, if ever, found in any, unless you
will call either blood, or excrementitious humours by that
name, which are grown black by mortification, for want of mo-
tion and spirits. But the blood itself may be called melancholy
blood when it hath contracted that distemper and pravity by
feculencjr, sluggishness, or adustion, which disposeth it to the
melancholy effects.
But sometimes persons that are sound, are suddenly cast into
melancholy by a fright, or by the death of a friend, or by some
great loss or cross, or some sad tidings, even in an hour, which
shows that it cometh not always from any humour called me-
lancholy, nor for any foregoing disease at all.
But the very act of the mind doth suddenly disorder the
passions, and perturb the spirits, and the disturbed spirits, in
time, vitiate the blood which containeth them, and the vitiated
blood doth, in time, vitiate the viscera and parts which it
passeth through, and so the disease beginning in the senses
and soul, doth draw first the spirits, and then the humours, and
then the parts into the fellowship, and soul and body are sick
together.
And it is of great use to the physician to know where the
depravation did begin, whether in the mind or in the body, and
if in the body, whether in the blood, or in the viscera, for the
cure must be fitted accordingly.
And yet the melancholy brains may be eased, and the mental
depravation much kept under, though an obstructed, yea, a
scarified spleen, continue uncured many years.
And though the disease begin in the mind and spirits, and
the body be yet sound, yet physic, even purging, often cureth
it, though the patient say that physic cannot cure souls, for
the soul and body are wonderfully co-partners in their diseases
and cure, and if we know not how it doth it, yet when ex-
perience telleth us that it doth it, we have reason to use such
means.
I. Right usage and diet are a great part of the cure. Of the
first, I spake before. The patient must be pleased, delighted,
dealt with as capable, kept from solitude and from musing, and
from sad and troubling words and things, and their objections
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 2/0
wisely answered, and their judgments in religion kept from
troubling mistakes, by right information ■; especially they must
be kept in diverting business, and if it could be hard labour,
even to good transpiration and sweat, to actuate, contemporate,
and purify the blood, and excite the igneous spirits, (which
are the instruments of the motion and purification of the blood,
and of life itself,) it would greatly help the cure ; especially such
exercises twice a day, before dinner and supper, an hour or two
together, dissipate and concoct indigested matter, excite natural
heat, and expel excrements. As to diet, it must, as physic,
be fitted- to the case of the body.
This disease is sometimes in dry bodies, and sometimes in
those that are moist and fat. It is sometimes in overheated
blood, and sometimes in that which is too cold and sluggish,
and these must have quite different cures. You may thus
perceive the differences in the main : one sort of melancholy
persons are only sad, misgiving, fearful of troubled thoughts,
despairing, as undone, and solitary musing, and cannot be sa-
tisfied and comforted, much silent, and dull to action, and will
hardly stir, rather too cold than hot, troubled with wind and
ill digestion.
But there is another sort that have overheated blood that
are fierce, talkative, bold, boasting, laughing, that have seeming-
visions and raptures, unruly confident, and these must have
another manner of remedy, and are almost mad already. And
those that have dry lean bodies, must have a moister diet and
medicine than the cold, moist, and fat.
I. For the most part, all of them that are merely melancholy,
and not overheated near to madness, should eat but sparingly, so
as may not spoil digestion ; (though some of them have a greedy
appetite ;) they should forbear cheese and beef, and swine's
flesh and raw fruits, and for other things not to be too curious
in the quality.
But those that have hot and dry bodies, should avoid fasting,
and eat as much as they can well digest, but not more, and
should eat boiled borage and lettuce, and stewed prunes, stewed
or roasted apples, half an hour before mc at, and raw apples,
if experience of windiness or rheum forbid it not.
II. And for physic, though the overheated, talkative, con-
fident sort be near to bedlam, I shall briefly offer a little for a
preventive, if there be hope.
1. Be sure that they taste no brandy or hot waters, unless
280 WHAT AltE THE WEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
you would have them presently stark mad ; no, nor any hot
wines, strong liquors, or aromatic things, such as ginger, pepper,
cloves, or any of the like; nor mustard, horse radish, garlic,
onions, or any biting thing. 2. Let them purge much with
senna in whey. Take three gallons of clarified whey, put in
it two handfuls of halm, and as much fumitory, (if the time of
year serve,) and as much borage, boil it to two gallons, and
put it into a steam pot of earth, that hath a spigot at the
bottom, (or a small barrel,) and put into it, in a thin canvass bag,
two ounces of senna, an ounce of epithyme, an ounce of bruised
aniseed, and an handful of ground ivy, (called alehoof,) bruised,
and two gads of steel to sink it ; when it hath stood two days,
or less, drink a pint every morning in bed, and lie an hour
after it, and if it give not three stools, drink near a pint more
at five o'clock, continue this three weeks, at least, every day,
having another vessel ready when the first is done.
Or else boil all the same herbs in three pints of whey, to half
the quantity, strain it, and put in it three drams of senna, and
a dram of bruised aniseed ; let it stand cold an hour and
a half, and after warm it on gentle embers one hour, drink it
the next morning, and so on for three weeks.
3. Boil six sliced pippins or pearmains, in three pints of
whey to a quart, strain it, and drink a pint every morning in
bed, and, if ycu can, sleep an hour after it, and the other pint
at night, instead of either breakfast or supper. Do this many
weeks when you take not the purging whey. And if vou drink
the like instead of beer, at dinner, to a hot dry body, it is best.
4. But it is the ordinary colder, sad, despairing melancholy
that I intend in these prescripts, and for such use the following
means :
I. if it be in the heat of summer, and thev be not very cold,
the aforesaid purging whey is good for them, but otherwise,
instead of it, use this following diet drink, which- is not very
loathsome to the stomach :
1 . Take pretty strong wort, and boil it in five gallons till
it comes to three ; of the leaves of balm, borage, agrimony, sca-
bious, and wild marjoram, (or pot marjoram, where the other
cannot be got,) each two small handfuls ; of the roots of dan-
delion and polipody,^each two ounces ; use as you do other beer,
and when you turn [tun] it up, (casting out the herbs and roots
before you put barm to it,) put in it this following bag to
three gallons :
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 281
2. Take of senna three ounces and a half; of wild marjoram
and sweet marjoram, each a small handful ; of liquorice scraped
and aniseed bruised, each an ounce ; of chalk pund, a pound,
and three gads of steel ; put all in a thin canvass bag, and so
hang it by a thread, that the bottom only may touch the
bottom of the vessel ; when it hath stood two days, drink a pint
every morning till it is done. A full body that can bear more
purging, may take another draught at five o'clock, and one that
suspecteth a bilious liver and gall, may put but three ounces of
senna and one of rhubarb.
3. One that loveth the taste, of wormwood, to overcome the
senna taste, and is in haste, may take this following instead of
the former :
Take of good beer, ready to drink, three gallons, put it into
a wooden or earthen vessel, as aforesaid, and hang in it a bag
that hath of wormwood, agrimony, and wild marjoram each two
handfuls ; of centaury, one handful ; of senna, three ounces ;
of liquorice and aniseed, of each an ounce ; of steel, three
gads. At two days 5 end, drink it as before. If it be a weak
thin body, he may take it with intermission, as he is able, and
forbear every third and fourth day.
4. These diet drinks are not all so effectual as this that fol-
loweth, but easier to most stomachs ; but the deeper melancholy
persons had better take the next.
Take of senna, an ounce ; of liquorice scraped, two scruples ;
of cinnamon bruised, one scruple ; put all in forty-four spoonfuls
of water, let it stand in a pot stopped, one hour and a half
cold, and another hour and a half warm on the embers, but
not boiling, strain it, and let it stand still in a pot, well stopped,
two hours. Take of this twelve or fourteen spoonfuls ; of sirop
of vinegar an ounce ; of cremor tartary powder, a drachm ; dis -
solve it on the embers, and drink it warm in bed, and lie an hour
after, but do not sleep or sweat ; at four hours' end, drink a
draught of broth, made of veal, or cock, till it will jelly, which
had boiled ill it some epithyme, polypody, balm, and a little
rosemary, with a little nutmeg.
Take this portion in this manner three next days together ;
every week for a body that can bear it; in ordinary melancholy
for seven weeks together; in old, obstinate melancholy for twelve
or fourteen weeks ; but if it be a body not full and strong enough
to bear three days, take it the two next days every week : it
282 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
gripeth more than the ordinary ways of using senna, but that
need not be feared, for it never brings the bloody-flux, nor
useth to weaken; and the griping doth good, by drawing
down the troubling matter from the head, into the common
passages.
5. If it be a thin tender body, aged or weak, that hath sharp
humours, and can bear none of the aforesaid effectual purges,
such a one may, either in chicken broth, or in barley water, or
rather in whey, or posset drink, boiled strong with pippins, in-
fuse all night (or rather three hours) some senna, in a cloth,
and drink it in the morning as often as he can bear it, that is, two
drams for very weak persons, or three ordinarily, in near a
pint of the liquor, putting a little cinnamon into it.
6. If the aforesaid remedies do but begin the cure, use this
next to perfect it ; or this alone for tender and cold stomachs
that cannot bear the other, which may yet much better go before
this, and this come last.
Take, for a hot body, white wine, for a cold body sherry,
two quarts; put it into a great bottle, and put to it, of senna
one ounce ; of cinnamon bruised two drams ; of saffron one
dram ; of cremor tartary powdered, half an ounce, if it be
sherry, or two drachms if it be white wine. Let it stand, close
stopped, three days, (shaking it oft,) then put it out into
several bottles (to keep the better) ; take of this three spoon-
fuls fasting, every day ; two may serve when it is for prevention
in a weak body, or four when you would purge more. If
the taste seem the worse for the tartar to any, you may leave
it out, and put instead of it half an ounce of epithyme, and
take a dram of cremor tartary dissolved in a draught of good
broth, an hour or more after it.
This medicine is not loathsome or nauseous to the stomach,
and is magnified by former and later physicians, of the greatest
experience and success in this disease : but all such things
must be patiently long continued, and no violent medicines
used.
7. Chalybeate medicines, also, are usually profitable in this
disease ; but, because country people cannot themselves make
them, I am loath to insert them ; one I will prescribe for them
who have an apothecary to make it.
i Take of unprepared filings of steel six ounces, make it red hot
in an iron ladle, and quench it in five or six ounces of white
MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 283
wine ; do this thrice, then put to the wine, of wormwood water,
and of scurvy-grass water, each a pint ; of aqua mirabilis, two
ounces (or, instead of them all, a quart of compound radish-
water) ; of sugar, six ounces; of senna, an, ounce and half; of
cremor tartary, three drams ; of saffron, a dram ; of cinnamon, a
dram; let it stand in a warm place three days (oft shaking .it).
Take two ounces, (four or five spoonfuls,) fasting, many weeks
together, and walk or labour after it.
Or, after sufficient purging, fresh succory roots, made into a
conserve, and taken with a little prepared steel, for poor people
that have obstructions, may do well ; half an ounce of conserve
with half a scruple of steel.
8. If they be costive, so as to affect the head, the more ; else
let them do as followeth.
1. Fast not, especially in the mornings, but take some light
breakfast, and eat the less at dinner, either half a dish of
panado, with four or five spoonfuls of white wine in it, (when
they eat it,) or gruel, or broth made of veal or chicken, or an
old cock, with a sheep's head, boiled till it will jelly, and a little
white wine put in at the eating, and the same at supper, unless
the stomach be clogged with crudities, and then forbear supper
or dinner.
2. Some find a little saffron in broth cure costiveness, and it
is one of the truest cordials known in the world.
3. With some, a dram of cremor tartary in broth, will do
it, in the morning.
4. Sit not down nor walk as soon as you rise in the morning,
but stand still upright a quarter of an hour when you are
dressed, and as long after dinner ; it helpeth the excrements to
descend. And if you feel the least possibility, go to stool, and
make not too much haste away.
5. If you have no rheum or cold windiness of stomach, eat
sometimes ten or twelve stewed prunes, and sometimes four or
five roasted pippins, before dinner.
(). Take Chio turpentine of Venice, (or Venice turpentine if
that cannot be had,) wash it well, and make it into hard pills
with powder of epithyme, as much as you can get it to take up.
Let the pills be small, and take a dram, or more or less, as vou
are able to get them down at a swallow, covered in a spoonful
of sirop of apples, or of balm, or of mallows, a little before a
late supper, to work the next morning ; or turpentine with
284 WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST
liquorice powder, of itself, in an egg, or any way got down, may
serve.
7. If more be needful, make the same turpentine into pills
with rhubarb, powdered, or senna, powdered, or both to-
gether, and take it before supper. It goeth down easily in a
spoonful of any pleasant sirop. But use no more clysters,
nor purging things, when once the melancholy is over-
come, than you needs must, for it diseaseth nature as to its
proper office.
8. Their drink is of great moment, that unless in cold bodies,
they take no strong wines nor claret, but either ale or good beer,
with a little white wine, or posset drinks made with but little
milk, and some strong ale and white wine, or posset made drink
with cider, ale, and a little white wine.
Or take a quart of the juice of balm, with a little ground
ivy, and put it into a vessel of good ale or beer, of about three
or four gallons, and drink this at meat. Or, sometimes, some
wormwood 'ale, but not long.
But cold, dull bodies may drink good strong beer or ale, that
is not hard, and fat, cold persons may endure sack.
The devil hath another cure for the sad and melancholy than
such as I have here prescribed, which is to cast away all belief
of the immortality of the soul, and the life to come, or at
least not to think of it ; and for to take religion to" be a
superstitious, needless fancy ; and for to laugh at the threaten-
ings of the Scripture, and to go to play-houses, and cards,
and dice, and to drink and play away melancholy ; honest re-
creations are very good for melancholy persons, if we could get
them to use them ; but, alas ! this satanical cure is but like
the witches' bargain with the devil, who promiseth them much,
but payeth them with shame and utter misery. The end of
that mirth is incurable sorrow, if timely repentance cure not
the cause. The garrison of Satan in the hearts of sinners, is
strongly kept when they are in peace, but when they have fooled
away time, and mercy, and hope, die they must, there is no
remedy ; and to go merrily and unbelievingly to hell, after all
God's calls and warnings, will be no abatement of their torment;
to go out of the world in the guilt of sin, and to end life before
they would know the use of it, and to undergo God's justice
for the mad contempt of Christ and grace, will put a sad end
to all their mirth, for i( there is no peace to the wicked, saith
MEI ANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW. 285
my God." (Isa. xlviii. 22, and lvii. 21.) But Christ saith to
his mourners, (Matt. v. 4,) " Blessed are you that mourn, for
you shall be comforted ;" and, (John, xvi. 20,) " Ye shall weep
and lament, but the world shall rejoice ; and ye shall be sorrow-
ful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy." And Solomon
knew that the house of mourning was better than the house of
feasting; and that the heart of the wise is in the house of
mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth,
(Eccles. vii. 2, 3, 4,) but holy joy of faith and hope is best
of all.
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY:
OR,
THE PUBLIC GOOD
IS
THE CHRISTIANS LIFE.
DIRECTIONS AND MOTIVES TO IT.
INTENDED FOR AN AUDITORY OF LONDON CITIZENS;
PUBLISHED FOR THEM FOR WANT OF LEAVE TO PREACH THEM.
" Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and
purify to himself a people zealous of good works." — Titus ii. 14.
TO THE
TRULY CHRISTIAN MERCHANTS,
AND OTHER
CITIZENS OF LONDON.
As my disease, and the restraint of rulers, seem to tell me
that my pulpit-work is at an end, so also my abode among you,
or in this world, cannot be long. What work I have lived for I
have given the world more durable notice than transient words ; it
hath been such as men in power were against, and it seems, will
no longer endure. What doctrine it was that I last prepared
for you, I thought meet to desire the press thus to tell you ;
not to vindicate myself, nor to characterise them who think that
it deserves six months' imprisonment, but to be in your hands
a provocation and direction for that great work of a christian
life, sincerely done, will prepare you for that safety, joy, and
glory, which London, England, or earth, will not afford,
and which men or devils cannot take from you. When through
the meritorious righteousness of Christ, your holy love and
good works to him in his brethren shall make you the joyful
objects of that sentence, " Come ye blessed, inherit the king-
dom," &c. ; this is the life that need not be repented of, as spent
in vain.
Dear friends, in this farewell I return you my most hearty
thanks for your extraordinary love and kindness to myself,
much more for your love to Christ, and to his servants, who
have more needed your relief. God is not unjust to forget your
work and labour of love. You have visited those that others
imprisoned, and fed those that others brought into want;
vol. xvi r. u
290 TO THE CITIZENS OF LONDON.
and when some ceased not to preach for our affliction, it
quenched not your impartial charity. It has been an unspeak-
able mercy unto me almost all my days, (when I received
nothing from them,) to have known so great a number as I
have done, of serious, humble, holy, charitable Christians, in
whom I saw that Christ hath an elect, peculiar people, quite
different from the brutish, proud, hypocritical, malignant, un-
believing world ! O how sweet hath the familiarity of such
been to me, whom the ignorant world hath hated ! Most of
them are gone to Christ, 1 am following : we leave you here to
longer trial : it is like you have a bitter cup to drink, but be
faithful to the death, and Christ will give you the crown of
life. The word of God is not bound, and the Jerusalem above
is free, where is the general assembly of the first-born, an in-
numerable company of angels, the spirits of the just made per-
fect, with Christ their glorified head. The Lord guide, bless,
and preserve you.
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY ;
OR, THE
PUBLIC GOOD IS THE CHRISTIANS LIFE.
GAL. vi. 10.
As we have, therefore, opportunity, let us do good to all men,
especially unto them who are of the household of faith.
Good is an epithet of the highest signification of any in human
language. Some think the name of God is thence derived.
Greatness and wisdom are equally his attributes, but goodness
is the completion, and sweetest to the creature. Christ ap-
propriated it to God to be good, that is, essentially, primarily,
and perfectly, and universally communicative ; when it is said
that God is love, the sense is the same, that he is the infinite,
essential, and efficiently and finally amiable, perfect good.
But though no one of his attributes in propriety and perfec-
tion are communicable, (else he that hath one part of the Deity
must have all,) yet he imprinteth his similitude and image on
his works ; and the impress of his love and goodness is the
chief part of his image on his saints ; this is their very holiness ;
for this is the chief part of their likeness to God, and dedication
to him ; when the Spirit of sanctification is described in Scrip-
ture, as given upon believing, it signifieth, that our faithful per-
ception of the redeeming, saving love of God in Christ, is that
means which the Spirit of Christ will bless, to the operating of
the habit of holy love to God and man, which becomes a new
and divine nature to the soul, and is sanctification itself, and the
true principle of a holy, evangelical conversation. And as
it is said of God, that he is good, and doth good, so every thing
is inclined to work as it is 5 Christ tells us the good tree will
bring forth good fruits, &c. ; and we are God's workmanship
created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God hath ordained,
that we should walk in them. (Eph. ii. 10.)
Yet man doth not good as the sun shineth, by a full bent of
u2
292 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
natural necessitation, else the world would not be as it is ; but
as a free, undetermined agent, which hath need to be com-
manded by a law, and stirred up by manifold motives and ex-
hortations ; such as the Holy Ghost here useth in the text.
Where, 1. Doing good is the substance of the duty. 2. Men
are the objects. 3. To all men is the extent. 4. Especially to
them of the household of faith is the direction for precedency.
5. And while we have opportunity is the season, including a
motive to make haste. So large and excellent a theme would
require more than my allotted time to handle it fully, therefore,
I shall now confine myself to the duty extended, " Do good to
all men."
Doct. To do good to all men is all men's duty, to which
every Christian especially must apply himself.
All men should do it : true Christians can do it, through
grace, and must do it, and will do it. A good man is a common
good ; Christ's Spirit in them is not a dead or idle principle. It
makes them in their several measures the salt of the earth, and
the lights of the world ; they are fruitful branches of the true
vine. Every grace tendeth to well-doing, and to the good of
the whole body, for which each single member is made. Even
hypocrites, as wooden legs, are serviceable to the body, but every
living member much more, except some diseased ones, who may
be more troublesome and dangerous than the wooden leg. It is
a sign he is a branch cut off and withered who careth little for
any but himself. The malignant diabolist hateth the true and
spiritual good ; the ignorant know not good from evil • the er-
roneous take evil for good, and falsehood for truth ; the sloth-
ful hypocrite wisheth much good, but doth but little ; the formal,
ceremonious hypocrite extols the name and image of goodness;
the worldly hypocrite will do good if he can do it cheaply,
without any loss or suffering to his flesh; the libertine hypocrite
pleadeth Christ's merits against the necessity of doing good,
and looketh to be saved because Christ is good, though he be
barren and ungodly ; and some ignorant teachers have taught
them to say, when they can find no true faith, repentance, holi-
ness, or obedience in themselves, that it is enough to believe
that Christ believed and repented for them, and was holy and
obedient for them. He was, indeed, holy and obedient for
penitent believers; not to make holiness and obedience unneces-
sary to them, but to make them sincerely holy and obedient to
himself, and to excuse them from the necessity of that perfect
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 293
holiness and obedience here, which is necessary to those that
will be justified by the law of works or innocency. Thus all
sorts of bad men have their oppositions to doing good ; but to
the sincere Christian it is made as natural; his heart is set upon
it ; he is created, and redeemed, and sanctified for it, as the tree
is made for fruit. He studieth it as the chief trade and business
that he liveth for ; he waketh for it ; yea, he sleepeth, and eat-
eth, and drinketh for it ; even to enable his body to serve his
soul, in serving that Lord whose redeemed, peculiar people are
all zealous of good works. (Tit. ii. 14.) The measure of this zeal
of doing good is the utmost of their power, with all their talents
in desire and sincere endeavour ; the extent of the object is to all,
(though not to all alike,) that is to as many as they can.
But for order's sake we must here consider :
I. Who this all meaneth, and in what order.
IT. What is good ; and what is that good which we must do.
III. What qualifications he must have that will do good to
many.
IV. What rules he must observe in doing it.
V. What works are they that must be done by him that
would do good to many.
VI. What motives should quicken us to the practice.
VII. Some useful consectaries of the point.
1. It is God's prerogative to do good to all ; man's ability
will not reach it. But our all is, as many as we can do good to.
1. To men of all sorts, high and low, rich and poor, old and
young, kindred, neighbours, strangers, friends, enemies, good
and bad ; none excepted that are within our power.
2. Not to a few only, but to as many persons of all sorts as
we can ; as he that hath true grace would still have more for
himself; so he that doth good would fain do more good; and
he that doth good to some would fain do good to many more.
All good is progressive, and tendeth towards increase and per-
fection ; why are the faithful said to love and long for the day
of Christ's appearing, but because it is the great marriage day
of the Lamb, when all the elect shall be perfected in our heavenly
society ? And that makes it a much more desirable day than
that of our particular glorification at death. The perfection of
the whole body addeth to the perfection of every part, for it is
a state of felicity in perfect love ; and love maketh every man's
good whom we love to be as sweet to us as our own, yea, mak-
eth it our own; and then the perfection and glory of everv saint
294 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
will be our delight and glory ; and to see each single one's
love united in one perfect joy and glory, will add to each per-
son's joy and glory. And can you wonder if our little sparks of
grace do tend towards the same diffused multiplication ; and if
every member long for the completing of the body of Christ ?
O how much will this add to every faithful Christian's joy ! It
will not be then a little flock ; not despised for singularity, nor
hid in the crowd of impious sinners, nor dishonoured by infirmi-
ties, or paltry quarrels among ourselves, nor with the mixture of
hypocrites ; it will not be over-voted, or trod down, and perse-
cuted by the power or number of the ignorant enemies. O
Christians ! go on in doing good to all men with cheerfulness,
for it all tendeth to make up the body of Christ, and to prepare
for that glorious state and day ; every soul you convert, every
brick that you lay in the building, tendeth to make up the house
and city of God.
But as all motion and action is first upon the nearest object,
so must ours ; and doing good must be in order : first we must
begin at home with our own souls and lives ; and then to our
nearest relations, and friends, and acquaintance, and neighbours ;
and then to our societies, church, and kingdom, and all the
world. But mark that the order of execution, and the order of
estimation and intention, differ. Though God set up lights so
small as will serve but for one room, and though we must begin
at home, we must far more esteem and desire the good of multi-
tudes, of city, and church, and commonwealth ; and must set
no bounds to our endeavours, but what God and disability set.
II. But what is that good that we must do ? Good is an at-
tribute of being, and is its perfection, or well-being : God's
goodness is perfection itself; and as he is the fountain of being,
so also of goodness ; and, therefore, his goodness is called love,
whose highest act is his essential self-love, which is infinitely
above his love to the world ; but yet it is communicative love,
which made all things good, and rested in seeing them all good.
And as he is the fountain, so the same will or love is the measur-
ing rule, and the end of all derived good. The prime notion of
the creature's goodness is its conformity to the will of God ; but
the second is its own perfection as its own, which, indeed, is but
the same conformity.
Therefore, the true good which we must do men, is to make
them conformable to the regulating will of God, that they may
be happy in the pleased will of God ; and to help them to all
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 295
means for soul and body necessary hereunto ; and this for as
many as possibly we can.
III. The rules for judging and doing good are these. 1. That
is the greatest good which is God's greatest interest ; - and his
interest is his glory, and the complaisance of his fulfilled will.
2. Therefore, the good of the world, the church, of nations,
of multitudes, is greater than the good of few.
3. The good of the soul is greater than of the body.
4. The avoiding the greatest evil is better than avoiding less.
5. Everlasting good is better than short.
6. Universal good which leaveth no evil, is better than a par-
ticular good.
7. That is the best good, as to means, which most conduceth
to the end.
8. There is no earthly good that is not mixed with some evil,
nor any commodity that hath not some inconvenience, or dis-
commoditv.
9. No sin must be done for any good.
10. Some things may be done for good which would be sin,
were it not for the good which they are done for. It would be
sin to give a robber your money, were it not to save your life, or
some other commodity ; it would be sin to do some things on
the Lord's day, which necessity, or a greater good, may make a
duty : your own defence may make it a duty to strike another,
which else would be a sin.
11. In such cases there is need of great prudence and impar-
tiality to know whether the good or the evil do preponderate ;
and a great part of the actions of our lives must be managed by
that prudence, or else they will be sinful.
12. Therefore it is no small part of a minister's duty to
counsel men, as a wise, skilful, and faithful casuist.
IV. To do good to many requireth many excellent qualifica-
tions ; this is so far from being every one's performance, that
we should be glad if a great part of mankind did not do more
hurt than good.
1. He that will do his country good, must know what is
good, and what is bad ; a fool's love is hurtful ; he knoweth
not how to use it ; he will love you to death, as an unskilful
physician doth his most beloved patient ; or love you into cala-
mity, as amorous fondlings often do each other. This is the great
enemy of human peace, men know not good from evil ; like
him that killed his son, thinking he had been a thief ; or like
296 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
routed soldiers, that run by mistake into the army of the enemy.
Malignity and error make mad and doleful work in the world,
and worst in those that should be wisest, and the greatest instru-
ments of public good ; the Scripture mistaketh not, which tells
us of enemies, and haters of God ; and most of the world are
professed adversaries to Christ ; the Jews crucified him as an
enemy to Caesar, and to the safety of their law and country ;
and if we may judge by their enmity to holiness, the Spirit of
Christ is taken for an intolerable enemy by no small part of
nominal Christians ; the laws of Christ are judged too strict;
the hypocrites that bow to him, and hate his laws, do call them
hypocrites that are but serious in the practice of Christianity,
and hate them that have any more religion than compliments,
ceremony, and set words ; the image of a Christian and a minis-
ter is set up in militant opposition to them that are Christians
and ministers indeed ; if men that are called to the sacred office
would save souls in good earnest, and pull them out of the fire,
and go any further than pomp and stage-work, they pass for the
most insufferable men in the world : Elias is taken for the
troubler of Israel, and Paul for a pestilent, seditious fellow, and
the apostles as the off- scouring of all things. Many a martyr
hath died by fire, for seeking to save men from the fire of hell ;
and when the bedlam world is at this pass, what good is to be
expected from such men ? When men, called Christians, hate and
oppose the God, the Christ, the Holy Ghost, to whom they were
vowed in baptism ; when drunkenness, and whoredom, and per-
jury, and lying, and all debauchery, is taken to be more friendly
and tolerable than the most serious worship of God, and obedi-
ence to his laws, and avoiding sin ; in a word, when the greatest
good is taken for unsufferable evil, you may know what good to
expect from such.
They will all tell you that we must love God above all, and
our neighbous as ourselves ; but to fight against his word, and
worship, and servants, is but an ill expression of their love to
God 5 and seeking their destruction, because they will not sin,
is an ill expression of love to their neighbours. When men
judge of good and evil, as Satan teacheth them, and as selfish
pride and worldly interest incline them, what wonder if such
love have murdered thirty thousand, or forty thousand, at once,
in France, and two hundred thousand in Ireland, and have
filled the christian world with religious blood ? Read but the
doleful histories of church contentions for one thousand three
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 297
hundred years, the stories of their wars and mutual persecutions,
the streams of blood that have been shed in east and west, the
inquisition, and bloody laws still kept up, and all this as good
works, and done in love, and you would think that the sacred
Roman hierarchy did believe that Christ hath put down the legal
sacrificing of beasts, that he might, instead of it, have the blood
of men \ and that he who requireth his disciples to lay down
their lives for him, would have a priesthood kept up to sacri-
fice their lives to him, that will not wilfully break his laws.
And all this is but as Christ foretold us, that his servants should
be killed as a piece of service to God. No wonder if such men
offer God a ludicrous, mimical sort of service, and worship him
in vain, by heartless lip-labour, according to the traditions of
men, when they dare sacrifice saints to the Lord of saints, and
quiet their consciences by calling them such as they are them-
selves. But to the honour of goodness, and shame of sin, to
show that they sin against the light of nature itself, they put
the name of evil upon good before they dare openly oppose and
persecute it ; and they put the names of good upon evil before
they dare defend and justify it.
But, alas ! it is not only the ungodly that do mischief, think-
ing verily that it is good. How many doth the church suffer by,
while they prosecute their mistakes, who yet do much good in
promoting the common truth which Christians are agreed in ?
2. He that will do good to all or many, must have an un-
feigned love to them. Hatred is mischievous, and neglect is
unprofitable. Love is the natural fountain of beneficence.
Love earnestly longeth to do good, and delighteth in doing it :
it maketh many to be as one, and to be as ready to help others
as each member of the body is to help the rest. Love maketh
another's wants, sufferings, and sorrows, to be our own : and
who is not willing to help himself? Love is a principle
ready, active, ingenuous, and constant : it studieth to do good,
and would still do more : it is patient with the infirmities of
others, which men void of love do aggravate into odiousness,
and make them their excuse for all their neglects, and their
pretence for all their cruelties. Could you make all the slan-
derers, backbiters, revilers, despisers, persecutors, to love their
neighbours as themselves, you may easily judge what would be
the effect ; and whether they would revile, or prosecute, or im-
prison, or ruin themselves, or study how to make themselves
odious, or suborn perjured witnesses against themselves.
298 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
3. Yea, he that will do good to many, must love many better
than himself, and prefer the common good much before his own,
and seek his own in the common welfare. He that loveth good,
as good, will best love the best : and an honest old Roman would
have called him an unworthy beast that preferred his estate,
or life, before the common welfare. To be ready to do,
suffer, or die, for their country, was a virtue which all extolled.
A narrow-spirited, selfish man, will serve others no further than
it serveth himself, or, at least, will stand with his own safety or
prosperity. He will turn as the weathercock, and be for them
that are for his worldly interest. I confess that God oft useth
such for common good : but it is by raising such storms as would
sink them with the ship, and leaving them no great hope to
escape by being false, or by permitting such villanies as threaten
their own interest. A covetous father may be against gaming
and prodigality in his children : the men of this world are wise
in their generation : many that have abbey lands will be against
popery ; and even atheists, and licentious men, may be loth to
be slaves to politic priests, and to come under confession, and
perhaps the inquisition ; and those that have not sinned them-
selves into madness or gross delusions, will be loth to set up a
foreign jurisdiction, and become the subjects of an unknown
priest, if they can help it. God often useth vice against vice ;
and if no worldly, selfish men were the country's or the
church's helpers, it must suffer, or trust to miracles.
But yet there is no trust to be put in these men further than
their own interest must stand or fall with the common good. If
God, and heaven, and conscience, be not more powerful with a
man than worldly interest, trust him not against the stream
and tide, or when he thinks he can make a better bargain for
himself. He that will sell heaven and Christ for the world, will
sell you for it, and sell religion, truth, and honesty for it : and
if he escape here the end of Ahithophel and Judas, he will ven-
ture on all that is out of sight. Christ was the grand benefactor
to the world, and the most excellent teacher of love, and self-
denial, and contempt of the world, to all that will follow him
in doing good to many.
4. He that will do much good must be good himself. Make
the tree good if you have good fruit. Operari sequitur esse.
A bad man is an enemy to the greatest good that he should do.
Malignity abhorreth serious piety, and will such promote it ? If
Elias be a man of miracles, he shall hear, " Hast thou found me,
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 299
O my enemy !" And Micaiah shall hear, " J hate him, for he
prophesieth not good of me, but evil : feed him with the bread
and water of affliction."
And a bad man, if by accident he be engaged for a good
cause, is still suspected by those that know him. They cannot
trust him, as being a slave to lust, and to strong temptations,
and a secret enemy to the true interest of his country. Alas !
the best are hardly to be trusted far, as being liable to miscarry
by infirmity ; how little then is to be hoped for from the wicked?
5. He that will do much good in the world, must be furnished
with considerable abilities, especially prudence and skill in
knowing when, and to whom, and how to do it. Without this,
he will do more harm than good. Even good men, when they
have done much good, by some one miscarriage, tempted by the
remnants of selfishness and pride, and by unskilful rashness,
have undone all the good they did, and done as much hurt as
wicked enemies. There goeth so much to public good, and so
many snares are to be avoided, that rash, self-conceited, half-
witted men do seldom do much, unless under the conduct of
wiser men.
6. He that will be a public blessing to the world, must have
a very large prospect, and see the state of all the world, and
foresee what is like to come. He must not live as if his neigh-
bourhood were all the land, or his country or his party were all
the church, or all the world : he must know what relation all
our actions have to other nations, and to all the church of
Christ on earth. The want of this universal prospect involveth
many in censorious and dividing sects, who would abhor that
way if they knew the case of all the church and world.
And we must not look only to a present exigent or advan-
tage, but foresee how our actions will look hereafter, and what
changes may put them under other judgments, and what the
fruits may be to posterity. Many things cause death which
give the patient present ease.
7. He that will do good to many must have christian forti-
tude, and not be discouraged with difficulties and opposition.
He must serve God for the good of men with absolute resolu-
tion, and not with the hypocrite's reserves. He must be armed
with patience against not only the malice of enemies, but the
ingratitude of friends. The follies, and quarrels, and muti-
nies, and divisions, and often the abuses of those that he would
do good to, must not overcome him. He must imitate God,
300 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
and do good to the evil, and bless those that curse him, and
pray for them that despitefully use him. He must not promise
himself more success than God hath promised him, nor yet des-
pair and turn back discouraged ; but conscience must carry
him on to the end through all, whatever shall befal him.
8. Therefore he must look for his reward from God, and not
expect too much from man. Men are insufficient, mutable,
and uncertain : their interests and many accidents may change
them. The multitude are of many minds and tempers ; and
if you please some, you shall displease others, and it is hard to
please even one person long. Some great ones will not be
pleased, unless you will prefer their wills before the will of God,
your country's good, and your own salvation. The poor are so
many and so indigent, that no man can answer their desires. If
you give twenty pounds to twenty of the poor, forty, or an hun-
dred, that expected the like, will murmur at you, and be dis-
pleased. What man ever did so much good in the world as not
to be accused by some, as if he were a covetous or a hurtful
man?
Therefore, he that will do much good, must firmly believe the
life to come, and must do that he doth as the work of God, in
obedience to him, and look for his reward in heaven, and not as
the hypocrite, in the praise of men, much less as the worldling,
in the hope of temporal advantage. He must not wonder if he
be rewarded as Socrates was at Athens, and as Christ and his
apostles were in the world. Themistocles likened himself to a
great fruit tree, which men run for shelter under in a storm, and
when the storm is over, they throw stones and cudgels at it, to
beat down the fruit. Reckon not on a reward from men, but
from God. By what is said, you may perceive what are the
great impediments of doing good to many, which must be over-
come.
I. One, and the worst, is malignity, which is an enmity to
spiritual good; for who will promote that which he is against?
II. Another is unbelief of God's commands and promises,
when men take not themselves to be his subjects and stewards,
nor can take his promise for good security for their reward.
III. Another is the fore-mentioned sin of selfishness, which
makes a man's self to be his chiefest love and care, and more
to him than Christ's interest, or the church or kingdom.
IV. Another is a false conceit that a man is so obliged to
provide for his children and kindred, that all that he can get,
HOW TO DO GOOD 'IO MANY. * 301
how rich soever he be, must be left to make them rich, except
some inconsiderable pittance.
V. Another is a great neglect of parents to prepare their
children to be profitable to the commonwealth, but only to live
in prosperity to themselves. 1. Children should be taught as
much as may be to become persons of understanding, and such
wisdom as may make them useful. 2. And especially to be
truly religious ; for then they will be devoted to do good, in love
and obedience to God. 3. They should be taught what it is to be
members of societies, and what duty they owe to church and
state, and how great a part of their duty lieth in caring for the
common good, and how sinful and damnable it is to live only to
themselves, and how much this selfishness is the sum of all ini-
quity. 4. Those callings should be chosen for them which they
are fittest for, and in which they may do most public good.
VI. And a timorous, cowardly disposition is a great hin-
derance to public good ; for such will be still for the self-saving
way, and afraid of the dangers that attend the greatest duties.
If they are called to liberality, they will fear lest they should
want themselves. In all costly or hazardous duty there will
still be a lion in their way. They cannot trust God ; and no
wonder, then, if they are not to be trusted themselves.
VII. Lastly, sloth and idleness are constant enemies to well-
doing. There are two sorts especially guilty of this ; one, and
the better, is some religious people, who think that their busi-
ness is only with God and their own hearts, and that if they
could spend all their time in meditation, prayer, and such like
exercises, it would be the best kind of life on earth. Among
the papists, multitudes, by this conceit, turn friars and nuns.
Among us, such spend all their time in hearing sermons, and
in reading, and meditating, and prayer, and such like exercises
of religion towards God, if they are but rich enough to live
without bodily labour, and the example of Mary and Martha,
they think, will make this good.
I know that this is no common error. The wicked are of a
far different mind. And I know no man can do too much to save
his soul : but we may do one sort of our work too much to the
neglect of other parts. We have souls in flesh, and both parts
have their proper necessity and work. Mary did somewhat
else than hear, though she wisely preferred it in its season. And
no one is made for himself alone. You feel that religious ex-
ercises do you good, but what good is it that you do to others?
302 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
I confess a monk's prayers for others is a good work. But God
will have praying and endeavouring go together, both for your-
selves and others. Bare praying God to relieve the poor, and
to teach your children, and instruct the ignorant, will not ex-
cuse you from relieving, teaching, or instructing them. Yea,
and your own good will best come in by your fullest obedience
to God. Do what he bids you, and he will take care of your
salvation. Your own way may seem best, but will not prove
best : it will but cast you into melancholy and disability at last.
" Six days shalt thou labour," is more than a permission. It is
St. Paul's canon, " He that will not work, (if able,) let
him not eat :" and it was King Solomon's mother who taught
him the description of a virtuous woman, (Prov. xxxi. 27,)
" She eateth not the bread of idleness." God will have mercy
and obedience as better than sacrifice. The sentence in judg-
ment is upon doing good to Christ in his members. (Matt, xxv.)
When many that hear much, and prophesied, shall be cast out.
(Matt. vii. 21.) Doing good is the surest way of receiving
good. The duties of the first and second table must go toge-
ther. He that is not zealous to do good, as well as to get good,
hath not the peculiar nature of Christ's flock; (Titus ii. 14;)
and zeal will be diligent, and not for sloth.
2. The other sort of the idle are rich, ungodly, worldly per-
sons, who live as if God did give them plenty for nothing but to
pamper their own flesh, and feed their own and other's sensu-
ality. They think that persons of wealth and honour may law-
fully spend their time in idleness, that is, in Sodom's sin, (Ezek.
xvi. 49,) as if God expected least where he giveth most. How
little conscience do many lords and ladies make of an idle hour,
or life ! When poor men's labour is such as tendeth to the
common good, the rich, by luxury, sacrifice to the flesh the fruits
of other men's endeavours ; and instead of living in any profit-
able employment, devour that which thousands labour for.
It is not the toilsome drudgery of the vulgar which we take
to be all rich folks' duty ; but idleness and unprofitableness is a
sin in the richest. Any of them may find good work enough
that is fit for them if they be willing. Children, and servants,
and friends, and neighbours, and tenants, have souls and bodies
which need their help. None can say, c God found us no work
to do,' or that God gave them more time or wealth than they
had profitable use for. Little do they think what it will be,
ere long, to reckon for all their time and estates, and to be
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 303
judged according to their works : and their own flesh often
paveth dear for its ease and pleasure, by those pains and diseases
which God hath suited to their sins ; and which usually shorten
the lives which they no better use, or snatch them away from
that time and wealth which they spent in preparing fuel for
hell, and food for the worm that never dieth.
V. But what is it that a man should do that would do good
to all or many ? There are some good works which are of far
greater tendency than others, to the good of many ; some of
them I will name to you.
I. Do as much good as you are able to men's bodies, in
order to the greater good of souls. If nature be not supported,
men are not capable of other good. We pray for our daily
bread before pardon and spiritual blessings, not as if we were
better, but that nature is supposed before grace, and we cannot
be Christians if we be not men ; God hath so placed the soul in
the body, that good or evil shall make its entrance by the bodily
senses to the soul. This way God himself conveyeth many of
his blessings, and this way he inflicteth his corrections ; minis-
ters that are able and willing to be liberal, find by great ex-
perience that kindness and bounty to men's bodies openeth
the ear to counsel, and maketh them willing to hear instruction :
those in France, that are now trying men's religion in the
market, and are at work with money in one hand, and a sword
in the other, do understand this to be true. All men are sen-
sible of pain or pleasure, good or evil, to the flesh, before they
are sensible what is necessary for their souls. You must there-
fore speak on that side which can hear, and work upon the
feeling part, if you will do good.
Besides this, your charity may remove many great impedi-
ments and temptations. It is no easy thing to keep heavenly
thoughts upon your mind, and especially to delight in God, and
keep the relish of his law upon your hearts, while pinching
wants are calling away your mind, and disturbing it with
troublesome passions. To suffer some hunger, and go in vile
apparel, is not very difficult ; but when there is a family to
provide for, a discontented wife and children to satisfy, rents,
and debts, and demands unpaid, it must be an excellent Christian
that can live contentedly, and cast all his useless care on God,
and keep up the sense of his love, and a delight in all his service.
Do your best to save the poor from such temptations, as you
would yourselves be saved from them.
304 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
And when you give to the poor that are ignorant and un-
godly, give them after it some counsel for their souls, or some
good book which is suited to their cases.
II. If you would do good to many, set yourselves to pro-
mote the practical knowledge of the great truths necessary to
salvation.
1. Goodness will never be enjoyed or practised without
knowledge. Ignorance is darkness, the state of his kingdom,
who is the prince of darkness, who by the works of darkness
leadeth the blind world to utter darkness ; God is the Father
of lights, and giveth wisdom to them that ask and seek it ; he
sent his Son to be the light of the world ; his word and minis-
ters are subordinate light ; his servants are all the children of
light : ignorance is virtually error, and error the cause of sin
and misery. And men are not born wise, but must be made wise
by skilful, diligent teaching : parents should begin it, minis-
ters should second them ; but, alas ! how many millions are
neglected by both ! and how many neglect themselves, when
ministers have done their best ! Ignorance and error are the
common road to wickedness, misery, and hell.
2. But what can any others do for such ? Two things I will
remember you of, 1. Set up such schools as shall teach children
to read the Scriptures, and learn the catechism or principles of
religion. Our departed friend, Mr. Thomas Gouge, did set us
an excellent pattern for Wales. I think we have grammar
schools enough. It is not the knowledge of tongues, and arts,
and curious sciences, which the common people want, but the
right understanding of their baptismal covenant with God, and
of the Creed, Lord's Prayer, Decalogue, and Church Com-
munion. A poor honest man, or a good woman, will teach
children thus much for a small stipend, better than they are
taught it in most grammar schools ; and I would none went
to the Universities without the sound understanding of the
catechism ; yea, I would none came thence, or into the pulpit,
without it.
2. When you have got them to read, give them good books,
especially Bibles, and good catechisms, and small practical
books, which press the fundamentals on their consciences.
Such books are good catechisms ; many learn the words of the
Creed, Lord's Prayer, Commandments, and Catechism, by rote,
and never understand them, when a lively book that awakeneth
their consciences, bringeth them to sensible consideration, and
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 305
to a true understanding of the same things, which before they
could repeat without sense or savour. It is the catechetical
truths which most of our English sermons press ; and the
lively pressing them maketh them pierce deeper than a cate-
chism.
If men that in life, or at death, give a stated revenue for good
works, would settle the one half on a good English school, and
the other half on some suitable good books, it might prove a
very great means of public reformation. When a good book
is in the house, if some despise it, others may read it \ and when
one parish is provided, every year's rent may extend the charity
to other parishes, and it may spread over a whole country in
a little time. Most of the good that God hath done for me,
for knowledge or conscience, hath been by sound and pious
books.
III. A great means of public good is the right ordering of
families all the week, but especially on the Lord's Day : though
the ministry be the usual means of converting heathens and
infidels, christian education by parents is the first means
appointed by God for the holy principling of youth : parents
must teach them with unwearied diligence, lying down and
rising up. (Deut. vi. 11.) And they that will expect God's
blessings must use his appointed means. Nature teacheth men
and brutes to provide for their offspring with diligence and
patience : and as grace teacheth believers to expect far greater
things for themselves and their children than this world afford-
eth, so it obligeth them to be at so much greater diligence to
obtain it. An everlasting kingdom deserveth more labour than
a trade or full estate for the flesh. If all parents did their
parts to make their children sanctified believers, as well as they
expect the schoolmaster should do his part to make them
scholars, and the master do his part to teach them their trades,
we might hope that ministers would find them fitter for church
work, and that godliness would not be so rare, nor so many
wicked children break their parents' hearts. But of this I have
spoken lately in my 6 Counsel to Young Men.'
Religion is never like to prosper if it be not made a family
work. If it be there made the business of the house, and done with
reverent seriousness, and constancy, if magistracy and ministry
should fail, yet families would propagate and preserve it. Begin
with a reverent begging the help and blessing of God, then read
VOL. xvif. x
306 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
his word, and call upon his name ; speak serious words of coun-
sel to inferiors ; spend the Lord's Day as much as may he in
puhlic worship, and the rest in reading godly hooks, and in
singing God's praise, and calling on his name ; put suitahle
hooks into the hands of servants and children to read when they
have leisure; encourage them in it with love and rewards ; and
keep them out of the way of temptation ; and then God's bless-
ing will dwell in your families, and they will be as churches of
God. If any complain of negligent ministers, or persecuting
magistrates, and will not do their own family duties, which none
forbid, they condemn themselves.
IV. If you w r ould be public blessings, and do good to man)',
do your best to procure a skilful, faithful, ministry in the
church :
1. Send no son to the university who doth not first show
these three qualifications : a capable, natural wit and utterance;
a love to serious, practical religion ; a great desire to serve God
in the ministry, though it should be in suffering from men. If
they want any one of these, design them to some other calling ;
devote not an indisposed lad to the ministry, in hope that God
will make him better, but stay till he is better.
2. Seeing pastors are here obtruded upon the flock, it is a
work of great importance, for religious gentlemen to buy as
many advowsons or presentations as they can, that they may in-
troduce the best that they can get.
God hath hitherto made use of the qualifications of the
ministers as the special means for the welfare of his church.
The bare title and office is so far from sufficing, without the
skill and fidelity of the persons, that such have been the great
corrupters and disturbers of the church. When pious men have
heaped up riches and honours upon the clergy, these have been
baits for the worst men to become seekers, and make the sacred
ministry but a trade for wealth : and if carnal, worldly men be
ministers, alas ! what plagues may they be to the people and
themselves ! They will hate the spiritual practice of doctrine
which they preach ; when they have told men of a heaven and
hell, and the necessity of a holy heart and life, as if they had
been in jest; they will take those for hypocrites that believe
them, and live accordingly : they will take the best of the flock
for their enemies, because they are enemies to their hypocrisy
and vice. Instead of imitating St. Paul, (Acts xx,) who taught
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 307
them publicly, and from house to house, day and night, with
tears, they will turn the ministry into compliment and formality,
and think, by saying a cold, unskilful sermon, and by roteing
over a few heartless words, they have laudably performed their
part. They will take those for their best hearers who will most
honour them, and best pay them, though ever so ignorant and
ungodly; and their spleen will swell against the best and most
religious people, because they dislike their unfaithful lives and
ministration. If religion should be in public danger, these will
be the Judases that will sell it for gain. They will do any
thing rather than suffer much. They are ministers of the
world, and not of Christ : readier to make crosses for others
than to bear the cross of Christ ; for it is gain that is their
godliness ; and when their treachery is seen and hated, they will
hate the haters of it ; and the studies of malignant men will be
their laboratories, and the pulpits the place where the sublimate
and essence of malice must be vended. How effectually will
Satan's work be done when it is performed in the formalities of
the sacred ministry, and in the name of Christ ! O what hath
the Church suffered by a worldly, graceless ministry these thou-
sand years, and more ! and what doth it yet suffer by them in
the east and west !
But, on the other side, a skilful, faithful minister will preach
sound doctrine, and worship God with serious devotion, and
live to Christ, and the church's good. He will speak the word
of truth and life with truth and liveliness, as one that be-
lieveth what he saith, and feeleth the power of it on his heart.
Though he must have food and raiment as other men, it is
the saving and edifying of souls which is his work, to which
he bendeth all his studies, for which he prayeth and longeth,
and in which he rejoiceth, and to which all his worldly interest
not only giveth place, but is made to serve. He will think no
price, no pains or suffering too dear, so that the souls of men
be saved ; this is the riches and preferment which he desireth.
He hath nothing too good or too dear for Christ, or for the
meanest of his servants, when Christ requireth it. He is willing
to spend and be spent for their sakes. It is them, and not
theirs, that he desireth. He feareth the unbelief and hard-
heartedness of his hearers, and lest they should reject their own
salvation more than all the slanders or persecutions of their
enemies. In a word, his heart, his study, his life and business,
is to do all the good he can, and thev that under such a mi-
x 2
308 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
nistry remain impenitent, and hardened in sin, are the most
hopeless, miserable people in the world.
V. And it greatly conduceth to public good to keep up true
order and christian discipline in the particular churches. Though
popish church tyrants have turned the church keys into a mi-
litary, reigning, or revenging sword, yet Christ did not in vain
commit them into his ministers' hands. Religion seldom pros-
pereth well where the church is no enclosure, but a common,
where all sorts, undistinguished, meet; where, as the people
know not who shall be made their pastors, but must trust their
souls to the care of any that a patron chooseth, so the pastor
knoweth not who are his communicating flock until he see them
come to the Lord's table, no, nor when he seeth them. When
it goeth for a sufficient excuse to the pastors if the rabble of
wicked men communicate, or pass for his church members,
though they communicate not, if he can but say, I knew them
not to be wicked, (and how should he when he knew them not
at all ?) and that none accused them, when they are mere
strangers to each other. In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision
nor uncircumcision availeth anything, but a new creature, and
faith that worketh by love. And if Christ made his servants
no better than the world, who would believe that he is the
Saviour of the world ? There will be some tares in Christ's
field till his judgment cast them out for ever. But if it be not
a society professing holiness, and disowning unholiness, and
making a difference between the clean and the unclean, him
that sweareth, and him that feareth, an oath, him that serveth
God, and him that serveth him not ; Christ will disown them
as workers of iniquity, though they had ate and drank with him,
and done miracles in his name. (Matt, vii.) Much more if it be
a society where godliness is despised, and the most godly ex-
communicated, if they differ but in a formality of ceremony
from Diotrephes, and the wicked rabble tolerated and cherished
in reviling serious godliness, on pretence of opposing such
dissenters. Christ will not own that pastor nor society which
owneth not conscience and serious piety.
If the pastors set up their wills and traditions before the laws
and will of Christ, and call out, c Who is on our side,' instead
of ' Who is on Christ's side,' and fall out with the sheep, and
worry and scatter them, and cherish the goats, and tolerate the
wolves, wo to those shepherds, when Christ shall judge them !
I wonder not if such incline to infidelity, though they live by
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 309
the name and image of Christianity, and if they be loth to
believe that there will be such a day of judgment which they
have so much cause to fear.
But the prudent, loving guidance of faithful pastors is so
necessary to the church, that without it there will be envy and
strife, confusion, and every evil work, and a headless multitude,
though otherwise well-meaning, pious people, will be all wise,
and all teachers, till they have no wise teachers left, and will
crumble all into dissolution, or into shameful sects. St. Paul
told us of two games that Satan hath to play, (Acts xx.) one
by grievous wolves, that shall devour the flock, (though in
sheep's clothing, yet known by their bloody jaws,) the other
by men from among yourselves, who shall speak perverse things,
to draw disciples after them.
VI. If you would promote the good of all or many, promote
the love and concord of all that deserve to be called Christians.
To which end you must, 1 . Know who those are ; and,
2. Skilfully and faithfully endeavour it.
1. Far be it from any Christian to think that Christ hath
not so much as told us what Christianity is, and who they be
that we must take for Christians, when he hath commanded
them all so earnestly to love each other. Is not baptism our
christening ? Every one that hath entered into that covenant
with Christ, and understandingly and seriously professeth to
stand to it, and is not proved by inconsistent words or deeds to
nullify that profession, is to be taken for a Christian, and used
in love and communion as such.
Consider of these words, and consider whether all churches
have walked by this rule, and whether swerving from it have
not been the cause of corruption and confusion.
He is a Christian fit for our communion, who is baptized in
infancy, and owneth it solemnly at age ; and so is he that was
not baptized till he himself believed.
He is a Christian that believeth Christ to be true God and
true man in one person, and trusteth him as our only Re-
deemer, by his merits and passion, and our Mediator in the
heavens ; and obeyeth him as our sovereign Lord, for pardon,
for his Spirit, and for salvation. And as a Christian this man is
to be loved and used, though he have not so much skill in meta-
physics as to know whether it be a proper speech to call Mary
the mother of God, or that one of the Trinity was crucified; or
to know in what sense Christ's natures might be called one or
310 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
two; and in what sense he might he said to have one will or
two wills — one operation or two; and know not whether the
tria capitula were to be condemned : yea, though he could not
define, or clearly tell, what hypostasis persona, yea, or sub-
stantia, signifieth in God ; nor tell whether God of gods be a
proper speech.
This man is a Christian, though he know not whether patri-
archal, and metropolitical, and diocesan church forms, be ac-
cording to the will of Christ, or against it ; and whether sym-
bolical signs, in the worship of God, may lawfully be devised and
imposed by men; and whether some doubtful words, in oaths
and subscriptions of men's imposing, being unnecessary, be law-
ful ; and how far he may, by them, incur the guilt of perjury,
or deliberate lying : and though he think that a minister may
preach and pray in fit words of his own, though he read not a
sermon or prayer written for him by others, who think that no
words but theirs should be offered to God or man.
2. If Christ's description of a Christian be forsaken, and
mere Christianity seem not a sufficient qualification for our love
and concord, men will never know where to rest, nor ever agree
in any one's determination but Christ's. All men that can get
power will be making their own wills the rule and law, and
others will not think of them as they do; aud the variety of
fallible, mutable church laws, and terms of concord, will be the
engine of perpetual discord, as Ulpian told honest Alexander
Severus the laws would be, which he thought to have made for
sober concord, in fashions of apparel. Those that are united
to Christ by faith, and have his sanctifying Spirit, and are jus-
tified by him, and shall dwell with him in heaven, are certainly
Christians; and such as Christ hath commanded us to love as
ourselves. And seeing that it is his livery by which his disci-
ples must be known, by loving one another, and the false pro-
phets must be known by the fruits of their hurtfulness, as
wolves, thorns, and thistles, I must profess (though order and
government have been so amiable to me as to tempt me to fa-
vourable thoughts of some Roman power in the church) I am
utterly irreconcilable to it, when I see that the very complexion
of that hierarchy is malice and bloodiness against men most se-
riously and humbly pious, that dare not obey them in their sin-
ful usurpations, and that their cause is maintained by belying,
hating, and murdering true Christians.
And, on the other side, too many make laws of love and com-
HOW TO DO GOOi) TO MANY. 311
munion to themselves, and confine Christ's church within their
little various, and perhaps erroneous, sects ; and all others they
love with pity ; but only those of their cabin and singular
opinions they love with complacency and communion : those
that condemn such as Christ justifieth, and say that Christians
are not his, are near of kin to one another, though one sort
show it by persecution, and the other but by excommunication,
or schismatical separation. " We are all one in Christ Jesus."
(Gal. iv. 2S.) And, therefore, I advise all Christians to hate the
causes and ways of hatred, and love all the causes and means of
love. Frown on them that so extol their singular sentiments
as to backbite others, and speak evil of what they understand
not : especially such as pamphleteers of this age, whose design
is weekly and daily to fight against christian love, and to stir
up all men, to the utmost of their power, to think odiously of
one another, and plainly to stir up a thirst after blood : never
did Satan write by the hand of man if he do it not by such as
these : the Lord of love and mercy rebuke them !
And take heed of them that can find enough in the best that
are against their way to prove them dishonest, if not intolerable ;
and can see the mote of a ceremony, or nonconformity to a
ceremony, in their brother's eye, and not the beam of malice,
or cruelty, in their own. Take heed of those that are either for
confounding toleration of all, or for dissipating cruelty on pre-
tence of unity.
That land, or church, shall never truly prosper where these
three sorts are not well distinguished : 1. The approved, that
are to be encouraged. 2. The tolerable, that are to be pa-
tiently and lovingly endured. 3, The intolerable, that are to
be restrained. They may as well confound men and beasts,
wise men and mad men, adults and infants, as confound these
three sorts, in reference to religion.
I add this note to prevent objections, that though meekness
and gentleness promote peace; yet, to speak sharply and hate-
fully of hatred, unpeaceableness, and cruelty, and all that tends
to destrov love, is an act of love, and not of an uncharitable,
unpeaceable man.
VII. If you love the common good of England, do your best
to keep up sound and serious religion in the public parish
churches, and be not guilty of any thing that shall bring the
chief interest of religion into private assemblies of men only
tolerated, if you can avoid it.
3J2 HOW TO DO dOOD TO MANY,
Indeed, in a time of plagues, and epidemical infection, tolerated
churches may be the best preservatives of religion, as it was in
the first 300 vears, and in the arians' reign, and under popery ;
but where sound and serious religion is owned by the magistrate,
tolerated churches are but as hospitals for the sick, and must
not be the receptacle of all the healthful. And, doubtless, if
the papists can but get the protestant interest once into pro-
hibited or tolerated conventicles, (as they will call them,) they
have more than half overcome it, and will not doubt to use it
next as they do in France, and by one turn more to cast it out.
The countenance of authority will go far with the vulgar against
all the scruples that men of conscience stick at, and they will
mostly go to the allowed churches, whoever is there. Let us,
therefore, lose no possession that we can justly get, nor be guilty
of disgracing the honest conformists, but do all we can to keep
up their reputation for the good of souls : they see not matters
of difference through the same glass that we do ; they think us
unwarrantably scrupulous : we think the matter of their sin to
be very great ; but we know that before God the degree of guilt
is much according to the degree of men's negligence or unwil-
lingness to know the truth, or to obey it ; and prejudice, educa-
tion, and converse, maketh great difference on men's apprehen-
sions. Charity must not reconcile us to sin, but there is no end
of uncharitable censuring each other.
It hath made me admire to hear some men's words against
comprehension, as they call it ; that they would not have rulers
revoke that which they judge to be heinous sin in their imposi-
tions, unless they will revoke all that they think unlawful, lest it
should strengthen the parish churches, and weaken the tolerated
or suffering part ; I will not here open the sin of this policy as
it deserves ; but I wish them to read a small book called, 6 The
Whole Duty of Nations,' said to be Mr. Thomas Beverlev's.
VIII. If you love the common good, take heed lest any in-
juries tempt you into sedition or unlawful wars ; no man, that
never tried them, can easily believe what enemies wars and
tumults are to religion, and to common honesty and sobriety.
Men are there so serious about their lives and bodily safety that
they have no room or time for serious worshipping of God ; the
Lord's day is by necessity made a common day ; and all men's
goods are almost common to the will of soldiers; either power
seems to authorize them, or necessity to allow them, to use the
goods of others as their own j as if they were incapable of doing
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 313
wrong ; it is their honour that can kill most ; and how little
place there is for love it is easy to conceive.
I doubt not but it is lawful to fight for our king or country,
in a good cause. As nature giveth all private men a right of
private self-defence, and no more, so the same law of nature,
which is God's law, giveth all nations a right of public self-
defence against its public enemies ; that is, against any that by
his religion, or his own profession, bindeth himself to destroy
that nation if he can, or by open arms seeketh no less than their
destruction ; but as few calamities are worse to a land than war,
so much is to be endured to prevent it. It is like a red-hot iron
which fools lay hold on, thinking it is gold, till it fetch off skin
and flesh to the bones, and perhaps set the house on fire. If
your cause be bad, God will not be for you ; and he that so taketh
the sword shall perish with the sword ; and if you bite and de-
vour one another, you shall be devoured one of another. And,
alas ! thousands of the innocent usually perish, or are ruined, in
the flames that furious men do kindle ; no doubt as suffering in
prison, so venturing in war, is a duty, when God calls you to it ;
but in itself a prison is a far more desirable sort of suffering
than a war. Therefore, between the danger of the miseries of
an unlawful war, and the danger of betraying our king or king-
dom, for want of necessary defence, how cautelous should all
sober Christians be !
IX. If you would promote the common good, do your best
to procure wise and faithful rulers.
Quest. What can private men do in this ?
Ans. 1. In cases where they have choosing voices they ought
to prefer the best with greatest resolution, and not for slothful-
ness to omit their part, nor for worldly interest, or the fear of
men, betray their country, as ever they would escape the punish-
ment of the perfidious. Wo to that Judas that sells his country
and conscience for any bribe, or by self-saving fear !
2. In other cases, where you have no choosing vote with men,
you have a praying voice with God : pray for kings, and all in
authority, that we may live a quiet and peaceable life, in all
godliness and honesty. God hath commanded no duty in vain :
do it earnestly and constantly, and hope for a good issue from
God ; do it not selfishly that you may have prosperity or pre-
ferment by them, but sincerely for their own and the common
good; God is the fountain of power, the absolute sovereign of
all the world; men are but his provincial officers 3 none claim-
314 HOW TO ])() GOOD to many.
eth an universal government of the world but one that pretend-
eth to be Christ's vicar-general, and none believe his claim but
blinded men. There is no power but of and under God, who
hath made rulers his ministers for our good, to be a praise to
them that do well, and a terror to evil doers ; that they that
will not be moved with the hopes of God's future rewards, and
the fears of his punishments, may be moved by that which is
near them within the reach of sense. And all men regard their
bodies, though only believers are ruled by the everlasting inter-
est of their souls.
Therefore, pray hard for kings and magistrates ; for if they
be good they are exceeding great blessings to the world. They
will remember that their power is for God, and the common
good, and that to God they must give a strict account \ they
will take God's law for the only universal law to the world, and
conform their own as by-laws to it. They will take their own
interest to consist in pleasing God, and promoting the gospel
and kingdom of Christ, and the piety and saving of men's souls.
They will be examples of serious godliness, of justice and so-
briety, trustiness, and temperance, and chastity to their subjects ;
in their eyes a vile person will be condemned, but they will
honour those that fear the Lord. (Psalm xv. 4.) They will love
those most that love Christ best, and most diligently obey him,
and tenderly fear to sin against him ; those please them best that
please God best, and are most useful to the common good ; they
will set their hearts on the people's welfare, and are watching
for all, while all securely live under their vigilancy. They will
cherish all that Christ cherisheth, and especially the faithful
pastors of the churches, that seek not the world, but the welfare
of the flocks ; when some are saying, 6 In this mountain we
must worship God, and some at Jerusalem,' they will teach them
all to worship God in spirit and truth. When pastors and peo-
ple grow peevish and quarrelsome for their several interests,
opinions, and wills, a Constantine will cast all their libels into
the fire, and rebuke the unpeaceable, and restrain the violent,
and teach them to forgive and love each other, and will be the
great justice of peace to all the churches in the land, and pare
their nails that would tear and scratch their brethren ; he will
countenance the sound and peaceable, and tolerate all the tole-
rable, but will tie the hands of strikers, and the tongues of re-
vilers ; he will contrive the healing of exasperated minds, and
take away the occasions of division, and rebuke them that call
HOW TO ])() GOOD TO MANY. 315
for fire from heaven, or for the sword to do that which belong-
eth to the word, or to execute their pride and wrath ; godliness
will have all the encouragement they can give it, and innocency a
full defence ; malignity, and persecution, and perjury, and un-
peaceable revenge, will be hateful where they rule; and they had
rather men feared sin too much than too little ; and would have
all men prefer the law and honour of God to theirs ; where the
righteous bear rule, the people rejoice. The wisdom, piety, and
impartiality of their governors suppresseth profaneness, oppres-
sion, and contention, and keepeth men in the way of love and
peace ; and as the welfare of all is the care of such a ruler
above his own pleasure, wealth, or will, so he will have the
hearts, and hands, and wealth of all with readiness to serve him :
no wonder if such are called nursing-fathers, and the light of
our eyes, and the breath of our nostrils, and the shadow of a
rock in a weary land. As they bear the image of God's super-
eminency, and doubly honour him, they are doubly honoured by
him ; so that the names of pious princes show not only the
sense of mankind, but the special providence of God in making
the memory of the just to be blessed ; and as they could not en-
dure to see in their days ungodliness triumph, or serious godli-
ness made a scorn, or conscience and fear of sinning made a dis-
grace, or the gospel hindered, and faithful ministers forbid to
preach it ; so God will not suffer their consciences to want the
sense of his love, nor their departing souls to fail of their ever-
lasting hopes, nor their memories to be clouded by obscurity or
reproach. Even among heathens what a name have those em-
perors left behind them who lived in justice, charity, and all
virtue, and wholly studied the good of all ? What a wonder is
it that M. Antonine should be so extolled by so many writers,
and not one of them all, as I remember, speak one word of evil
of him, save that a small short persecution of the Christians was
made in his time, till he restrained it ! And all the people
almost deified him, and would have perpetuated his line and
name in the throne, but that the horrid wickedness of his pos-
terity forced them to a change. What a name hath excellent
Alexander Severus left behind him ! And what a blessing have
wise, and godly, and peace-making christian princes been in
divers ages to the world.
And both the inferior magistrates and the clergy usually
much conform themselves, at least in outward behaviour, to
their example 3 for they will choose men of wisdom, conscience,
316 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
and justice, under them, to judge and govern. The bishops and
pastors which they choose will be able, godly, laborious men ;
not seekers of worldly wealth and honour, nor envious silencers
of faithful preachers, nor jealous hinderers of religious duties,
nor flattering men-pleasers, nor such as lord it over God's herit-
age ; but such as rule not by constraint, but willingly, as examples
of love and piety to the flock. Pray hard, therefore, for kings,
and all in authority, and honour all such as unspeakable blessings
for the good of all.
But, on the contrary, wicked rulers will be Satan's captains
against Jesus Christ, and men's sanctification and salvation.
They will be wolves in the place of shepherds, and will study
to destroy the best of the people, and to root out all serious
godliness and justice. Conscience, and fearing sin, will be to
them a suspected, yea, a hated thing. If any abuse it, it serves
them for a pretence against it. They take the people's welfare
and their own interest to be enemies, and presently look on
those, whom they should rule and cherish, as the adversaries
whom they must tread down. They will purposely make edicts
and laws that are contrary to God's law, that they may have
advantage to persecute the faithful, and to destroy them as dis-
obedient. They will study to conquer conscience and obedience
to God, lest his authority should be regarded above theirs,
and Christ is used by them as if he were an usurper, and not
their Sovereign, but were again to be taken for an enemy to
Caesar ; and their hatred to true ministers will be such as Paul's
accusers intimate, who said, " He preached another king, one
Jesus/' Wicked rulers will be the capital enemies to all that
will be enemies to wickedness, and resolved to please God and
save their souls. They will not be obeyed under God, but before
him, nor served by the faithful servants of Christ, nor pleased
but at the rate of men's damnation, by displeasing God. -All
men love their like. The worst men, if flatterers, will seem
the best to them, and the best the worst and most intolerable,
and church and state is like to be written by their copy. O
what dreadful plagues have wicked rulers been to the world, and
what a dismal case do they continue the earth in to this day !
Not but that people, and especially priests, do contribute
hereto, but the chief authors are men in greatest power. Five
parts of six of the world at this day are heathens and infidels.
And what's the cause ? Rulers will not suffer the gospel to
be preached to them. The eastern Christians were all torn
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 31/
in pieces by the wickedness and contention of the governors of
the state and church, banishing and murdering one another,
so that when the Turks invaded them, the promise of liberty to
exercise their religion tempted them to make the less resist-
ance, thinking they could not be much worse than before. But
the vulgar are so apt to follow the rulers, that ever since, the
most of the Easterns are apostatized from Christ, and turned to
Mahometanism, though in those countries where the Turk al-
loweth the christian people to have governors of their own,
religion somewhat prospereth, yet where that privilege is denied
them, and Turks only are their rulers, it withereth away, and
comes to almost nothing.
And what keepeth out reformation, that is, the primitive
simple Christianity, from the popish countries that have religion
corrupted by human superfluities, but the seduction of priests,
and the tyranny of rulers, that will not endure the preaching
of the gospel, and the opening of the Scriptures to the people
in a known tongue ? How much holy blood have Roman
and Spanish inquisitors, and French and Irish murderers, and
most other popish rulers to answer for? Even Walsh, the
papist, in his Irish history, tells us all, out of Ketin, and others,
how commonly, for ages, they lived there in the sin of bloody
wars and murders, yea, even when they professed great ho-
liness. Wicked rulers are as the pikes in the pond, which live
by devouring all about them. It is Satan's main design in the
world to corrupt God's two great ordinances of magistracy and
ministry, and turn them both against Christ's kingdom, and
to destroy Christians in Christ's name. Oh ! therefore, pray
hard that all christian nations may have good rulers, and be
very thankful to God for such.
X. And if you would be instruments of public good, know
what are public sins and dangers, that you may do your part
against them, and join not with any that will promise never to
endeavour any reforming alteration. The chiefest are igno-
rance, pride, and self-willedness in teachers and people, malig-
nant enmity to goodness, impatience with the infirmities of
good men, judging of persons and things by self-interest, cove-
tousness, sensuality, and taking Christianity but as the religion
of the land, without diligent study to be rooted in the truth.
And the scandals of hypocrites and tempted Christians harden-
ing the enemies, especially by divisions, and public temerities,
and misc images, is not the least.
318 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
XI. I would also, in order to public good, persuade serious
Christians to be more zealous in communication with their
neighbours, and live not over-strangel y to others, and say not as
Cain, " Am f my brother's keeper ?" lie kind and loving to all
about you, and live not as unknown men to them ; nor alienate
them by sourness, contempt, or needless singularity, but become
all things lawful, to all men, to save some ; lend them good
books, and draw them to hear God's faithful ministers ; persuade
them to pray in their families, even with a form or book, till
they need it not.
XII. Lastly, if you would do good, be such as you would
have others be, and teach them by examples of piety, charity,
patience, self-denial, forbearing, and forgiving, and not by mere
words contradicted by your lives. These are the materials by
which you must do good to all.
VI. What now remaineth but that we all set ourselves to
such a fruitful course of life ? I greatly rejoice in the grace of
God, which 1 daily see in many such of my familiar acquaint-
ance, who study to do good to all, and to live in love, and
peace, and holiness, by example, and by self-denial, and constant
charity, using Christ's talents to their Master's ends, for the
temporal and eternal good of many. But, alas ! too many live
as if it were enough to do no harm, and say, as the slothful
servant, " Here is thy talent which I hid."
And some there be that, in a blind jealousy of the doctrine
of justification, (not understanding what the word justification
signifieth,) cry down even the words of James, as if they were
irreconcileable with Paul's, and can scarce bear him that saith
as Christ, (Matt, xii.,) " By thy words thou shalt be justified,
and by thy words thou shalt be condemned ;" as if they had
never read, " Well done, good and faithful servant," &c. ;
" For I was hungry, and ye fed me," &c. Nor Heb. v. 9. " He
is the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him ;" or
Heb. xiii., " With such sacrifice, God is well pleased;" or, " He
that doeth righteousness is righteous ;" or " That we shall be
judged according to our works ;" or Rev. xxii. 14, " Blessed
are they that do his commandments, that they may have right
to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the
city ;" or Gal. vi. 7, 8, " What a man soweth, that shall he
reap. He that soweth to the Spirit, of the Spirit shall reap
everlasting life :" with many such.
No man well in his wits can think that anything we do can
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 319
merit of God in commutative justice, as if he received anything
from us. This were even to deny God to be God. But are
we not under a law of grace. And doth not that law command
us obedience, and the improvement of our talents in doing
good ? And shall we not be judged by that law ? And what
is judging, but justifying or condemning ? No works of ours
can stand the trial by the law of innocency or works, but only
the perfect righteousness of Christ. But he that is accused
of final impenitency, infidelity, hypocrisy, or unholiness, if truly
accused, shall never be justified, and if falsely, must be justified
against that charge by somewhat besides what is done out of
him by Jesus Christ.
It is an easier thing to be zealous for an opinion, which is
sound, or supposed such, about works and grace, than to be
zealous of good works, or zealously desirous of grace. How sad
use did Satan make of men's zeal for orthodox words, when the
Nestorian, Eutychian, and Monothelite controversies were in
agitation ! He went for a hollow-hearted neuter that did not
hereticate one side or other. And I would that factious, ig-
norant zeal were not still alive in the churches. How many
have we heard on one side reviling lutherans, calvinists, ar-
minians, episcopals, presbyterians, independents, &c, to render
them odious that never understand the true state of the dif-
ference. And how fiercely do some papists and others cry
down solifidians, and persuade men that we are enemies to good
works, or think that they are not necessary to salvation,
(because some rashly maintained that in a faction against George
Major, long ago,) or at least that they are no further necessary,
but as signs to prove that which God knoweth without them.
And, on the other side, how many make themselves and others
believe that the true expositors of Saint James's words are
almost papists, and teach men dangerously to trust to works
for their justification, while they understand not what either of
the apostles mean by justification, faith, or works. Many so
carefully avoid trusting to good works, that they have none or
few to trust to. No doubt nothing of man must be trusted to
for the least part that belongs to Christ, but all duty and means
must be both used and trusted for its own part.
Consider well these following motives, and you will see
why all Christians must be zealous of doing all the good
they can.
1. It rendereth a man like to God to be good, and to do
320 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
good ; on which account Christ requireth it even towards our
enemies, (Matt, v.,) that we may be perfect, as our Heavenly
Father is perfect, who doth good even to the unjust ; and he
that is likest God is the best man, most holy, and most happy,
and shall have most communion with God.
2. And when Christ came down in flesh to call man home
by making God better known to the world, he revealed him in
his attractive goodness, and that was by his own beneficence to
man. He came to do the greatest good ; to be the Saviour of
the world, and to reconcile revolted man to God ; and all his
life, yea, his death and heavenly intercession, is doing good to
those that were God's enemies. And to learn of Christ, and
imitate his example, is to be his true desciples. And what
else do his laws command us ? They are all holy, just, and
good; and our goodness is to love them, and obey them. By
keeping these we must show that we are his disciples. When
he tells you who you must do good to, in the instance of the
Samaritan, he addeth, " Go thou and do likewise. " (John xv.)
He largely tells us of what importance it is for every branch
that is planted into him to bring forth fruit.
3. It is much of the end of all the sanctifying operations of
the Holy Spirit. Grace is given us to use ; even natural powers
are given us for action. What the better were man for a
tongue, or hands, or feet, if he should never use them ? Life is
a principle of action. It were as good have no life, as not to
use it. And why doth God make men good, but that thev
may do good, even in their duty to God, themselves, and one
another ?
4. It is God's great mercy to mankind, that he will use us all
in doing good to one another ; and it is a great part of his wise
government of the world, that in societies men should be tied to
it by the sense of every particular man's necessity ; and it is a
great honour to those that he maketh his almoners, or servants,
to convey his gifts to others ; God bids you give nothing but what
is his, and no otherwise your own but as his stewards. It is his
bounty, and your service or stewardship, which is to be exercised.
He could have done good to all men by himself alone, without
you, or any other, if he would ; but he will honour his servants
to be the messengers of his bounty. You best please him when
you readily receive his gifts yourselves, and most fully communi-
cate them to others. To do good, is to receive good ; and yet
he will reward such for doing and receiving.
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 321
5. Self-love, therefore, should persuade men to do good to
all. You are not the least gainers by it yourselves. If you can
trust Christ, sure you will think this profitable usury. Is not a
cup of cold water well paid for, when Christ performs his pro-
mise ? ' And is it not a gainful loss which is rewarded in this life
an hundred fold, and in the world to come, with life eternal ?
Those that live in the fullest exercise of love, and doing good,
are usually most loved, and many are ready to do good to
them. And this exercise increaseth all fruitful graces :
and there is a present delight in doing good, which is itself a
great reward. The love of others makes it delightful to us :
and the pleasing of God, and the imitation of Christ, and the
testimony of conscience, make it delightful. An honest phy-
sician is far gladder to save men's lives or health, than to get
their money. And an honest soldier is gladder to save his
country, than to get his pay. Every honest minister of Christ
is far gladder to win souls, than to get money or preferment.
7 he believing giver hath more pleasure than the receiver ; and
this without any conceit of commutative meriting of God, or
any false trust to works for justification.
6. Stewards must give account of all. What would you
wish were the matter of your true account, if death or judg-
ment were to-morrow ? Would you not wish you had done all
the good you could ? Do you believe that all shall be judged
according to their works ? Did you ever well study that great
prediction of Christ ? Matt. xxv.
And it is some part of a reward on earth, that men that do
much good, especially that to whole nations, are usually honoured
by posterity, however they be rewarded by the present age.
7. Every true Christian is absolutely devoted to do good.
What, else is it to be devoted to God, our Creator and Redeemer ?
What live we for, or what should we desire to live for, but to
do good ?
II. But this exhortation is especially applicable to them that
have special opportunity.
crates are the capitals in the societies and public
affairs of mankind. They are placed highest that they may
have an universal influence. Though it be too high a word to
call them gods, or God's vicegerents, (unless secundum quid,)
yet they are his officers and regent ministers ; but it is for
the common good. In them God shows what order can do in
the government of the world. As the placing of the same figure
VOL. XVII. Y
322 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
before many, doth accordingly advance its value in signification,
so it is a wonder to note what the place of one man signifieth at
the head of an army, of a city, of a kingdom. They are ap-
pointed by God to govern men in a just subordination to
God's government, and not otherwise. To promote obe-
dience to God's laws by theirs, and by their judgment and
execution to give men a foretaste what they may at last ex-
pect from God : and by their rewards and punishments to
foretel men whom God will reward and punish : and by their
own examples to show the subjects how temperately, and so-
berly, and godly, God would have them live. Atheists can see and
fear a magistrate, that fear not God because they know him not.
They that prefer those as the most worthy of honour whom
God abhorreth for their wickedness, and hate and oppress those
whom God will honour, do show themselves enemies to him that
giveth them all their power. And they that by countenance
or practice do teach men to despise the fear of God, and to
make light of drunkenness, whoredom, lying, perjury, and such
like odious crimes, do, in a sort, blaspheme God himself, as if he
who exalted them were a lover of sin, and a hater of his own
laws and service. There are few rulers that are unwilling of
power, or to be accounted great ; and do they not know, that it
is a power to do good that God has given them ; and that
obligation to do it is as essential to their office as authority ?
And that they who govern as the officers of God, and pretend to
be liker him in greatness than their subjects, must also be liker to
him in wisdom and goodness.
Wo to that man who abuseth and opposeth the just and
faithful in the name of God, and by pretence of authority from
him to do it ! Wo to him that in God's name, and as by his
authority, countenanceth the wicked whom God abhorreth, and
under Christ's banner fighteth against him ! As Christ saith of
the offensive, " It were good for that man that he had never
been born." (Prov. xxiv. 24.) "He that saith to the wicked,
thou art righteous, him shall the people curse ; nations shalL
abhor him." (Prov. xvii. 15.) " He that justifieth the wicked,
and he that condemneth the just, even they both are an abomi-
nation to the Lord.
God looketh for great service from great men ; great trust
and talents must have great account ; a prince, a lord, a ruler,
must do much more good, in promoting piety, conscience, vir-
tue, than the best inferiors 5 to whom men give much, from
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 323
them they expect the more. It greatly concerneth such men
seriously to ask their conscience, can I do no more to encourage
godliness, conscience, and justice, and to disgrace malignity,
brutish sensuality, and fleshly lusts, than I have done ? O when
they must hear, " Give account of thy stewardship, thou shalt
be no longer steward," little think many rulers what an account
it is that will be required of them ! O what a deal of good may
the rulers of the earth do, if, instead of over-minding their par-
tial interests, and serving the desires of the flesh, they did but
set themselves with study and resolution to promote the com-
mon good, by disgracing sin, and encouraging wisdom, piety,
and peace ! And where this is not sincerely done, as surely as
there is a righteous God, and a future judgment, they shall pay
for their omissive treachery. And if Satan do prevail to set his
own captains over the armies of the Lord, to betray them to
perdition, they shall be deepest in misery, as they were in guilt.
One would think the great delight that is to be found in doing
good to all, should much more draw men to desire authority and
greatness, than either riches, or voluptuousness, or a domineer-
ing desire that all men should fulfil their wills.
II. The ministers of Christ also have the next opportunity to
do good to many ; and it is a debt that by many and great
obligations they owe to Christ and men. But it will not be done
without labour, and condescension, and unwearied patience. It
is undertaken by all that are ordained to this office, but O that
it were performed faithfully by all ! What a doleful life would
the perfidious soul-betrayers live if they knew what a guilt they
have to answer for ! Even the contempt of the people's souls,
and of the blood of Christ that purchased them ! O hear that
vehement adjuration, (2 Tim. iv. 1, 2,) "I charge thee before
God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the
quick and the dead at his appearing and kingdom, preach the
word ; be instant, in season and out of season ; reprove, rebuke,
exhort, with all long-suffering and doctrine." Speak with holy
studied skill ; speak with love and melting pity ; speak with
importunity ; take no denial ; speak as St. Paul, (Acts xx.,)
publiclv, and from house to house ; speak before you are silenced
in the dust ; speak before death have taken away your hearers.
It is for souls, it is for Christ, it is for yourselves too : while you
have opportunity, do good to all. But of this I have formerly
said more in my c Reformed Pastor.'
III. And let all men take their common and special oppor-
y2
324 HOW TO X)0 GOOD TO MANY.
tunities to do good : time will not stay ; yourselves, your wives,
your children, your servants, your neighbours, are posting to
another world ; speak now what you would have them hear ; do
them now all the good you can. It must be now or never ;
there is no returning from the dead to warn them. O live not as
those infidels, who think it enough to do no harm, and to serve
their carnal minds with pleasure, as born for nothing but a
decent and delightful life on earth. You are all in the vineyard
or harvest of the Lord; work while it is day, the night is at hand
when none can work ; wo to the slothful, treacherous hypocrite
when the judgment cometh !
Stay not till you are entreated to do good ; study it, and seek
it. Give while there are men that need, and while you have it,
especially to the household of faith. Fire and thieves may de-
prive you of it; at the furthest, death will quickly do it. Happy
are they that know their day, and, trusting in Christ, do study
to serve him in doing good to all.
And the doctrine in hand doth further teach us some con-
sectaries which all do not well consider.
I. That living chiefly to the flesh in worldly prosperity, and
dropping now and then some small good on the by, to quiet
conscience, is the property of an hypocrite. But to sound
Christians, fruitfulness in doing good is the very trade of their
lives, of which they are zealous, and which they daily study.
II. That all Christians should be very careful to avoid doing
public hurt ; it woundeth conscience to be guilty of wronging
of any one man ; we find it in dying men, that cannot die in
peace till they have confessed wrongs, and made satisfaction,
and asked forgiveness. And who knoweth but the many appa-
ritions that have certainly been on such occasions may be done
by miserable souls, to seek some ease of the torment of their
own consciences ? But to hurt many, even whole parishes,
cities, churches, kingdoms, how much more grievous will it
prove ! And yet, alas ! how quickly may it be done : and how
ordinarily is it done. What grievous mischief may even well-
meaning men do by one mistaken practice, or rash act. By
the fierce promoting one error ; by letting loose one passion,
or carnal affection ; by venturing once on secret sin ; yea,
by one rash, sinful word. How much more if they are drawn
and set in an unlawful interest and way. And little know we
when a spark is kindled how it will end, or how many ways
Satan hath to improve it. And one hurtful action, or unwarrant-
HOW TO BO GOOD TO MANY. 325
able way, may blast abundance of excellent endowments, and
make such a grievous damage to the church, who else might
have been an eminent blessing. And if good men may do so
much hurt, what have the enemies of godliness to answer for,
who, by worldliness and malignity, are corrupters, dividers, and
destroyers ?
III. The text plainly intimateth that it is a great crime in
them, that instead of doing good while they have opportunity,
think it enough to leave it by will to their executors to do it.
When they have lived to the flesh, and cannot take it with them,
they think it enough to leave others to do that good which they
had not a heart to do themselves ; but a treasure must be laid
up in heaven beforehand, and not be left to be sent after;,
(Matt. vi. 20, 21;) and he that will make friends of the mam-
mon of unrighteousness must now be rich towards God ; (Luke
xii. 21 ;) it is no victory over the world to leave it when you
cannot keep it ; nor will any legacy purchase heaven for an un-
holy, worldly soul.
IV. Yet they that will do good neither living nor dying are
worst of all. Surely the last acts of our lives, if possibje, should
be the best ; and as we must live in health, so also in sickness,
and to the last in doing all the good we can ; and, therefore, it
must needs be a great sin to leave our estates to those that are
like to do hurt with them, or to do no good, so far as we are
the free disposers of them.
The case, I confess, is not without considerable difficulties,
how much a man is bound to leave to his children, or his near-
est kindred, when some of them are disposed to live unprofita-
bly, and some to live ungocllily and hurtfully. Some think men
are bound to leave them nothing; some think they ought to leave
them almost all ; and some think that they should leave them
only so much as may find them tolerable food and raiment. I
shall do my best to decide the case in several propositions.
1 . The case is not with us as it was with the Israelites, who
might not alienate their inheritances from the tribes ; yet even
they had power to prefer a younger son, that was more deserv-
ing, before an elder, that was worse.
2. Where either law or contract have disabled a man to alien-
ate his estate from an ungodly heir, there is no room for a doubt
what he must do.
3. Nature teachelh all men to prefer a child that is pious and
hopeful in his provisions and legacies, before a stranger that is
320 HOW TO DO GOO]) TO MANY.
somewhat better, and not to alienate his estate for want of a
higher degree of goodness.
4. When there is just cause to disinherit an elder son, a
younger is to be preferred before a stranger ; or a kinsman, if
there be no tolerable son.
5. And a son that ought not to be trusted with riches, or a
great estate, yet ought to have food and raiment ; (unless he
come to that state of obstinate rebellion in sin, for which God's
law commanded the Israelites to bring forth their sons to be
put to death ; in such cases the house of correction is fittest for
them ;) yet should he have such food as may humble him, and
not to gratify his lust.
6. If a man that hath the full power to dispose of his estate,
real or personal, have sons and kindred, that, according to the
judgment of sound reason, are like, if they had this estate, to do
mischief with it, or maintain them in a wicked life, or in a mere
unprofitable life of idleness, living only to themselves, and fleshly
ease and pleasure, that man ought to give his estate from such
to some that are more likely to do good with it, and to use it for
God, and the public benefit.
This is much contrary to the common course of most, that
think no estate too great for their heirs, nor any portion too
great for their daughters, be they what they will, or what use
soever they are like to make of it : but these following reasons
prove it to be true.
1. Every man hath his estate from God, and for God, and is
bound, as his steward, accordingly to use it. This is past doubt ;
and how doth that man use it for God, who leaveth it to one
that is likely to use it for the devil, in a fleshly, unprofitable life ?
What account can such a steward give ? Did God give it you
to maintain idleness and sin ?
Obj. O, but it is a son whom I am bound to provide for.
Ans. Are you more bound to your son than to yourself? God
doth not allow you to spend it on yourself, to maintain idleness
and vice. (Rom. xiii. 13, 14.) "Make no provision for the flesh to
satisfy the lust (or will) thereof." And may you leave it for such
a use as is forbidden both your son and you ? It is God that is
the owner of it, and it is to him that you must both use and
leave it : u Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all
to the glory of God." And will you leave it to be the fuel of lust
and sin ?
Obj. I leave it not for sin ; but if he misuse it I cannot help
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 327
it. Ans. Would that excuse you if you put a sword into a mad-
man's hand to say, I cannot help it if he use it ill ? You might
have helped it 3 it is supposed that you foreknew how he was
like to use it.
Obj. But he may prove better hereafter, as some do. Ans.
It is not bare possibilities that must guide a wise man's actions
when probability is against them. Would you commit your
children to the care of a madman, or a knave, because he may
possibly come to his wits, or become honest ? Have you not
long tried him, and have you not endeavoured to cure him of his
idleness, wickedness, or lust ? If it be not done, what ground
have you to presume it will be done when you are dead ? You
may have so much hope as not utterly to despair of him, but
that will not allow you to trust him with that which God made
you steward of for his use and service.
But if such hopes may be gratified, give your estate in trust
to some conscionable friend, with secret order to give it your
son, or kinsman, if he become hereafter fit to use it according to
the ends for which God giveth it.
Reas. 2. The obligation in my text of doing good to all, ex-
tendeth to the end of our lives, and, therefore, to our last will
and testament. Therefore, you must make your wills so as may
do good to all, and not to cherish sin and idleness.
Reas. 3. You are bound to your best to destroy sin and idle-
ness, and, therefore, not to feed and cherish it.
Reas. 4. Doing good is the very thing which you are cre-
ated, redeemed, and sanctified for ; and, therefore, you must ex-
tend your endeavours to the utmost, and to the last, that as much
as may be, may be done when you are dead. If magistrates and
ministers took care for no longer than their own lives, what
would become of the state or church.,
Reas. 5. The common good is better than the plenty of a
sinful child ; yea, it is to be preferred before the best child, and
before ourselves, and, therefore, much more before the worst.
Reas. 6. It is a dreadful thing to be guilty of all the fleshly
sins which your ungodly sons will commit with your estate, when
they shall by it maintain the sins of Sodom, pride, fulness of
bread, and abundance of idleness, if not to strengthen their
hands for oppression or persecution, to think that they will
spend their days in voluptuousness, because you give them pro-
vision for the flesh.
Reas. 7. It is cruelty to them that are already so bad to make
328 HOW TO DO GOOJ) TO MANY.
their temptations to sin much stronger, and their place in hell
the worse, and to make the way to heaven as hard to them as
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle ; to prepare them
to want a drop of water in hell, who were clothed richly, and
fared sumptuously on earth ; to entice them to say, c Soul, take
thine ease, thou hast enough laid up for many years/ till they
hear, ' Thou fool, this night shall they require thy soul ;' to
cherish that love of the world which is enmity to God, hy feed-
ing that lust of the flesh, and lust of the eyes, and pride of life,
which are not of the Father, hut of the world.
Reas. 8. When this preferring unprofitable and ungodly
children before God and the common good is so common and
reigning a sin in the world, it is a great fault for religious men
to encourage them in it by their example, and to do as they.
Reas. 9. It is a sin to cast away any of God's gifts. When
Christ had fed men by a miracle, he saith, " Gather up the frag-
ments that nothing be lost :" if you should cast your money into
the sea, it were a crime ; but to leave to such as you foresee are
most likely to use it sinfully is more than casting it away.
If you saw men offer sacrifice to Bacchus, or Venus, you would
abhor it : do not that which is so like it, as to leave bad men
fuel for fleshly lust.
Reas. 10. It is the more dreadful, because it is dying in
studied sin, without repentance. To put so much sin into one's
will, shows a full consent, and leaveth no room and time to re-
pent of it.
On all these accounts, I advise all the stewards of God, as
they love him, and the public good, and their own souls, while
they have opportunity, even to the last breath, to do good to all,
and to provide more for the common good than for superfluities
to any, and than for the maintaining ungodly children in sin, to
the increase of their guilt and misery.
Indeed, in the choice of a calling, employment, and condi-
tion of life, and place for their children, doing good should be
preferred before their rising in the world : and they that justly
endeavour to raise their families in wealth, honour, or power,
should do it only that they might do the more good. But it is
Satan's design to turn all God's mercies to the cherishing of
wickedness, and even the love of parents to their children to the
poisoning of their souls, the strengthening of their snares, and
the hinderance of their own and other men's salvation. But it
is shame and pity that they who in baptism devoted their chil-
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 329
dren to God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, renouncing
the world, the flesh, and the devil, as under the banner of the
cross, should labour all their life, that impenitently at death they
may leave all that they can get to such as, in all probability, will
use it in pride, fulness, and idleness, for the flesh, the world, and
the devil, against him and his interest, from whom they re-
ceived it 5 and to whom both they and all they had were once
devoted.
When men are loth that their estates should remove from the
name and family, (for which there may be just cause,) I take it
for the safest way, as aforesaid, to trust some, as men do their
children with guardians, by the advice of lawyers, to secure all
from their unworthy heirs, for the next, or some other of the
name and lineage, that proveth worthy.
There are many other good works by which some rich men
may be very profitable to the commonwealth, such as setting
all the poor on work, and building hospitals for the impo-
tent, &c.j but these this city is happily acquainted with
already ; and though still there be much wanting, yet there is
much done.
V. But one more I will presume to name only to you that are
merchants, for I am not one who have the ear of princes, who
are more able. Might not somewhat more be done than yet is,
to further the gospel in your factories, and in our plantations ?
Old Mr. Eliots, with his helpers in New England, have shown
that somewhat may be done, if others were as charitable and
zealous as they. The Jesuits and friars showed us, in Congo,
Japan, China, and other countries, that much might be done
with care and diligence. Though the papal interest was a cor-
rupt end, and all the means which they used were not justifiable,
when I read of their hazards, unwearied labours, and success,
I am none of those that would deprive them of their deserved
honour, but rather wish that we who have better ends and prin-
ciples, might do better than they, and not come so far behind
them as we do, if half be true that Peter Maffaeus, and the Jesuits'
epistles, and many other writers, tell us of them. I know that
they had the advantage of greater helps from kings, and pope,
and prelates, and colleges endowed with trained men and
copious maintenance. But might not somewhat more be done
by us than is yet done ?
1. Is it not possible to send some able, zealous chaplains to
330 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
those factories which are in the countries of infidels and hea-
thens ; such as thirst for the conversion of sinners, and the
enlargement of the church of Christ, and would labour skil-
fully and diligently therein ? Is it not possible to get some short
christian books, which are fitted for that use, to be translated
into such languages that infidels can read, and to distribute them
among them ? If it be not possible also to send thither reli-
gious, conscionable factors, who would further the work, the
case of London is very sad.
II. Is it not possible, at least, to help the poor ignorant
Armenians, Greeks, Muscovites, and other Christians, who have
no printing among them, nor much preaching or knowledge ;
and, for want of printing, have very few Bibles, even for their
churches or ministers ? Could nothing be done to get some
Bibles, catechisms, and practical books printed in their own
tongues, and given among them ? I know there is difficulty in
the way ; but money, and willingness, and diligence, might do
something.
III. Might not something be done in other plantations, as
well as in New England, towards the conversion of the natives
there? Might not some skilful, zealous preachers be sent
thither, who would promote serious piety among those of
the English that have too little of it, and might invite the
Americans to learn the gospel, and teach our planters how
to behave themselves christianly towards them, to win them to
Christ ?
IV. Is it not possible to do more than hath been done to con-
vert the blacks that are our own slaves, or servants, to the chris-
tian faith ? Hath not Mr. Goodwin justly reprehended and
lamented the neglect, yea, and resistance of this work in Barba-
does, and the like elsewhere ? 1 . Might not better teachers be
sent thither for that use ? 2. Is it not an odious crime of Chris-
tians to hinder the conversion of these infidels, lest they lose
their service by it, and to prefer their gain before men's souls ?
Is not this to sell souls for a little money, as Judas did his Lord ?
And whereas the law manumits them from servitude when they
turn Christians, that it may invite them to conversion, (and this
occasioneth wicked Christians to hinder them from knowledge,)
were it not better move the Government, therefore, to change
that law, so far as to allow these covetous masters their service
for a certain time, using them as free servants ? 3. And whereas
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 331
they are allowed only the Lord's Day for their own labour, and
some honest Christians would willingly allow them some other
time instead of it, that they might spend the Lord's day in
learning to know Christ, and worship God, but they dare not
do it, lest their wicked neighbours rise against them, for giving
their slaves such an example ; might not the governors be pro-
cured to force the whole plantation to it by a law, even to allow
their infidel servants so much time on another day, and cause
some to congregate them for instruction on the Lord's days ?
Why should those men be called Christians, or have any chris-
tian reputation, or privileges themselves, who think both Chris-
tianity and souls to be no more worth than to be thus basely
sold for the gain of men's servilest labours ? And what, though
the poor infidels desire not their own conversion, their need is
the greater, and not the less.
V. I conclude with this moving inference : The great oppo-
sition that is made against doing good by the devil and his
whole army through all the world, and their lamentable success,
doth call aloud to all true Christians to over-do them. O what
a kingdom of malignants hath Satan, doing mischief to men's
souls and bodies through the earth ! hating the godly ; oppressing
the just; corrupting doctrine; introducing lies; turning Christ's
labourers out of his vineyard; forbidding them to preach in his
name the saving word of life ; hiding or despising the laws of
Christ, and setting up their own wills and devices in their stead;
making dividing, distracting engines, on pretence of order,
government, and unity ; murdering men's bodies, and ruining
their estates, and slandering their names, on pretence of love to
the church and souls ; encouraging profaneness, blasphemy,
perjury, whoredom, and scorning conscience, and fear of sin-
ning. What diligence doth Satan use through the verv chris-
tian nations, to turn Christ's ordinances of magistracy and mi-
nistrv against himself, and to make his own officers the most
mischievous enemies to his truth and kingdom, and saving
work ; to tread down his family and spiritual worship, as if it
were by his own authority and commission. To preach down
truth, and conscience, and real godliness, as in Christ's own
name, and fight against him with his own word, and to teach
the- people to hate his servants, as if this pleased the God of
love.
And, alas ! how dismal is their success ! In the East, the
332 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY.
church is hereby destroyed by the barbarous Mahometans : the
remnants by their prelates continued in sects, in great ignorance,
and dead formality, reproaching and anathematizing one another,
and little hope appearing of recovery. In the West, a dead
image of religion, and unity, and order, dressed up with a mul-
titude of gauds, and set up against the life and soul of religion,
unity, and order, and a war hereupon maintained for their de-
struction, with sad success : so that, usually, the more zealous
men are for the papal and formal human image, the more zea-
lously they study the extirpation of worshipping God in spirit
and truth, and thirst after the blood of the most serious wor-
shippers 5 and cry down them as intolerable enemies who take
their baptism for an obliging vow, and seriously endeavour to
perform it, and live in good earnest, as Christianity bindeth
them : and they take it for an insufferable crime to prefer
God's authority before man's, and to plead his law against any
thing that men command them. In a word, he is unworthy
to be accounted a Christian with them, who will be a Christ-
ian indeed, and not despise the laws of Christ, and unworthy
to have the liberty and usage of a man that will not sin and
damn his soul : so much more cruel are they than the Turkish
tyrants, who, if they send to a man for his head, must be
obeyed.
And is the devil a better master than Christ ? And shall his
work be done with greater zeal and resolution ? Will he give
his servants a better reward ? Should not all this awaken
us to do good with greater diligence than they do evil ? And
to promote love and piety more earnestly than they do malig-
nity and iniquity ? Is not saving church and state, souls
and bodies, better worth resolution and labour than destroy-
ing them ?
And the prognostics are encouraging. Certainly, Christ and
his kingdom will prevail. At last, all his enemies shall be made
his footstool ; yea, shall from him receive their doom to ever-
lasting punishment, which rebels against omnipotency, good-
ness, and mercy, do deserve. Jf God be not God, if Christ
will not conquer, if there be no life to come, let them boast of
their success : but when they are rottenness, and dust, and their
souls with devils, and their names are a reproach, Christ will be
Christ, his promises and threatenings all made good. (2 Thess.
i. 6, &c.) He will judge it righteous to recompense tribulation
HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. 333
to your troublers, when he cometh with his mighty angels in
flaming fire, to take vengeance on rebels, and to be glorified in
his saints, and admired in all true believers. And when that
solemn judgment shall pass on them that did good, and that did
evil, described Matt, xxv., with a " Come, ye blessed, inherit
the kingdom," and " Go, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." Doing
good and not doing it, much more doing mischief, will be better
distinguished than now they are, when they are rendered as the
reason of those different dooms.
TRUE CHRISTIANITY;
OR,
CHRIST'S ABSOLUTE DOMINION,
AND
MAN'S NECESSARY SELF-RESIGNATION
AND SUBJECTION.
IIV TWO ASSIZE SERMONS,
PREACHED BEFORE THE HONOURABLE JUDGE OF
ASSIZE, AT WORCESTER, AUG. 2, 1654.
" For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might
be Lord both of the dead and the living." — Rom. xiv. 9.
TO THE
RIGHT HONOURABLE SERJEANT GLYN,
NOW JUDGE OF ASSIZE IN THIS CIRCUIT.
My Lord,
Could my excuse have satisfied you, this sermon had been
confined to the auditory it was prepared for. I cannot expect
that it should find that candour and favour with every reader,
as it did with the hearers. When it must speak to all, the
guilty will hear, and then it will gall. Innocency is patient
in hearing a reproof, and charitable in the interpretation, but
guilt will smart and quarrel, and usually make a fault in him
that findeth one in them. Yet I confess this is but a poor jus-
tification of his silence that hath a call to speak. Both my
calling and this sermon would condemn me, if, on such grounds,
I should draw back, but my backwardness was caused by the
reason which I then tendered your Lordship as my excuse, viz.,
because here is nothing but what is common, and that it is in
as common and homely a dress. And I hope we need not
fear that our labours are dead, unless the press shall give them
life. We bring not sermons to church, as we do a corpse for
a burial. If there be life in them, and life in the hearers, the
connaturality will cause such an amicable closure, that through
the reception, retention, and operation of the soul, they will
be the immortal seed of a life everlasting. But yet seeing
the press hath a louder voice than mine, and the matter in
hand is of such exceeding necessity, I shall not refuse, upon
such an invitation, to be a remembrancer to the world of a
doctrine and duty of such high concernment, though they
have heard it ever so oft before. Seeing, therefore, I must
present that now to your eyes, which I lately presented to your
ears, I shall take the boldness to add one word of application
in this epistle, which I thought not seasonable to mention in
the first delivery, and that shall be to your Lordship, and all
VOL XVII. z
338 TO THE RIGHT HON. SERJEANT GLYN.
others in your present case, that are elected members of this
expected Parliament. Be sure to remember the interest of your
Sovereign, the great Lord-protector of heaven and earth. And
as ever you will make him a comfortable account of your power,
abilities, and opportunities of serving him, see that you prefer
his interest before your own, or any man's on earth. If you
go not thither as sent by Him, with a firm resolution to serve
him first, you were better sit at home. Forget not that he
hath laid claim to you, and to all that you have, and all that
you can do. I am bold with all possible earnestness to entreat
you, yea, as Christ's minister to require you, in his name, to
study and remember his business and interest, and see that it
have the chief place in all your consultations. Watch against
the encroachments of your own carnal interests, consult not
with flesh and blood, nor give it the hearing when it shall offer
you its advice. How subtilly will it insinuate ! How impor-
tunately will it urge you ! How certainly will it mar all, if you
do not constantly and resolvedly watch ! O how hard, but
how happy is it to conquer this carnal self ! Remember still
that you are not your own; that you have an unseen master that
must be pleased, whoever be displeased, and an unseen kingdom
to be obtained, and an invisible soul that must be saved, though
all the world be lost, Fix your eyes still on him that made
and redeemed you, and upon the ultimate end of your christian
race, and do nothing wilfully unworthy such a master, and
such an end. Often renew your self-resignation, and devote
yourself to him ; sit close at his work, and be sure that it be
his, both in the matter, and in your intent. If conscience should
at any time ask c Whose work are you now doing }' Or a man
should pluck you by the sleeve, and say, e Sir, whose cause
are you now pleading?' See that you have the answer of a
Christian at hand ; delay not God's work till you have done
your own, or any one's else. You will best secure the common-
wealth, and your own interest, by looking first to his. By neg-
lecting this, and being carnally wise, we have wheeled about
so long in the wilderness, and lost those advantages against the
powers of darkness, which we know not whether we shall ever
recover again. It is the great astonishment of sober men, and
not the least reproach that ever was cast on our holy profession,
to think with what a zeal for the work of Christ men seemed
to be animated in the beginning of our disagreements, and
how deeply they did engage themselves to him in solemn vows,
TO THE RIGHT HON. SERJEANT GLYN. 339
protestations, and covenants, and what advantages carnal self
hath since got, and turned the stream another way ! So that
the same men have since been the instruments of our calamity,
in breaking in pieces and dishonouring the churches of Christ,
yea, and gone so near to the taking down, as much as in them
lay, the whole ministry that stand approved in the land. O do
not, by trifling, give advantage to the tempter to destroy your
work and you together ! Take warning by the sad experiences
of what is past, bestir you speedily and vigorously for Christ,
as knowing your opposition, and the shortness of your time.
c Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when he cometh, shall
find so doing.' If you ask me wherein this interest of Christ
doth consist, I shall tell you, but in a few unquestionable par-
ticulars. 1. In the main, that truth, godliness, and honesty
be countenanced and encouraged, and their contraries by all fit
means suppressed. 2. In order to this, that unworthy men be
removed from magistracy and ministry, and the places supplied
with the fittest that can be had. 3. That a competent main-
tenance may be procured where it is wanting, especially for
cities and great towns, where more teachers are so necessary
in some proportion to the number of souls, and on which the
country doth so much depend. Shall an age of such high pre-
tences to reformation and zeal for the churches, alienate so
much, and then leave them destitute, and say, it cannot be had ?
4. That right means be used, with speed and diligence, for the
healing of our divisions, and the uniting of all the true churches
of Christ at last, in these nations ; and O that your endeavours
might be extended much further ! To which end I shall mention
but these two means of most evident necessity. 1. That there
be one Scripture creed, or confession of faith, agreed on by
a general assembly of able ministers, duly and freely chosen
hereunto, which shall contain nothing but matter of evident
necessity and verity. This will serve, 1. For a test to the
churches to discern the sound professors from the unsound, (as
to their doctrine,) and to know them with whom they may
close as brethren, and whom they must reject. 2. For a test
to the magistrate of the orthodox to be encouraged, and of the
intolerably heterodox, which it seems is intended in the 37th
article of the late formed government, where all that will have
liberty must profess faith in God by Jesus Christ, which, in a
christian sense, must comprehend every true fundamental
article of our faith, and, no doubt, it is not the bare speaking
z 2 '
340 TO THE RIGHT HON. SERJEANT GLYN.
of those words in an unchristian sense that is intended ; as if
a ranter should say, that himself is God, and his mate is Jesus
Christ.
2. That there be a public establishment of the necessary li-
berty of the churches, to meet their officers and delegates on
all just occasions, in assemblies smaller or greater, (even na-
tional, when it is necessary,) seeing, without associations and
communion in assemblies, the unity and concord of the churches
is not like to be maintained. I exclude not the magistrates'
interest, or oversight, to see that they do not transgress their
bounds. As you love Christ, and his church, and gospel, and
men's souls, neglect not these unquestionable points of his in-
terest, and make them your first and chiefest business, and let
none be preferred before him until you know them to be of
more authority over you, and better friends to you, than Christ
is. Should there be any among you that cherish a secret root
of infidelity, after such pretences to the purest Christianity, and
are zealous of Christ lest he should over-top them, and do set
up an interest inconsistent with his sovereignty, and thereupon
grow jealous of the liberties and power of his ministers, and of
the unity and strength of his church, and think it their best
policy to keep under his ministers, by hindering them from the
exercise of their office, and to foment divisions, and hinder our
union, that they may have parties ready to serve their ends; I
would not be in the case of such men, when God ariseth to
judge them, for all the crowns and kingdoms on earth ! If they
stumble on this stone, it will break them in pieces, but if it
fall upon them, it will grind them to powder. They may seem
to prevail against him awhile, when their supposed success
is but a prosperous self-destroying, but mark the end, when
his wrath is kindled, yea, but a little, and when these, his ene-
mies that would not he should reign over them, are brought
forth and destroyed before him, then they will be convinced
of the folly of their rebellion. In the mean time, let wisdom
be justified of her children.
My lord, I had not troubled you with so many words, had I
not judged it probable that many more whom they concern may
peruse them. I remain,
Your Lordship's servant in the work of Christ,
RICHARD BAXTER.
August 5, 1654.
A SERMON
ON THE
ABSOLUTE DOMINION OF GOD-REDEEMER;
AND
THE NECESSITY OF BEING DEVOTED AND LIVING
TO HIM.
1 CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20.
And ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price, there-
fore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are
God's,
Fundamentals in religion are the life of the superstructure.
Like the vitals and naturals in the body, which are first necessary
for themselves and you also, for the quickening and nourishing
of the rest ; there being no life or growth of the inferior parts,
but what they do receive from the powers of these : it is but a
dead discourse, which is not animated by these greater truths,
whatever the bulk of its materials may consist of. The frequent
repetition, therefore, of these is as excusable as frequent preach-
ing : and they that nauseate it as loathsome battology, do love
novelty better than verity, and playing with words to please the
fancy, rather than closing with Christ to save the soul. And as
it is the chief part of the cure, in most external maladies, to cor-
roborate the vital and natural powers, which then will do the
work themselves, so it is the most effectual course for the cure
of particular miscarriages in men's lives, to further the main
work of grace upon their hearts. Could we make men better
Christians, it would do much to make them better magistrates,
counsellors, jurors, witnesses, subjects, neighbours, &c. And
this must be done by the deeper impress of those vital truths
and the good in them exhibited, which are adequate objects of
our vital graces. Could we help you to wind up the spring of
342 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
faith, and so move the first wheel of christian love, we should
find it the readiest and surest means to move the inferior wheels
of duty. The flaws and irregular motions without, do show
that something is amiss within, which, if we could rectify, we
might the easier mend the rest. I shall suppose, therefore, that
I need no more apology for choosing such a subject at such a
season as this, than for bringing bread to a feast. And if I me-
dicate the brain and heart, for the curing of senseless paralytic
members, or the inordinate convulsive motions of any hearers, I
have the warrant of the apostle's example in my text. Among
other great enormities in the church of Corinth, he had these
three to reprehend and heal : first, their sidings and divisions
occasioned by some factious, self-seeking teachers. Secondly,
their personal contentions by law-suits, and that before unbe-
lieving judges. Thirdly, the foul sin of fornication, which some
among them had fallen into. The great cure which he useth to
all these, and more especially to the last, is the urging of these
great foundation truths, whereof one is in the words before my
text, viz., the right of the Holy Ghost ; the other in the words
of my text, which contains, first, a denial of any right of pro-
priety in themselves. Secondly, an asserting of Christ's pro-
priety in them. Thirdly, the proof of this from his purchase,
which is his title. Fourthly, their duty concluded from the for-
mer premises, which is to glorify God, and that with the whole
man, with the spirit, because God is a Spirit, and loathes hypo-
crisy ; with the body, which is particularly mentioned, because
it seems they were encouraged to fornication by such conceits,
that it was but an act of the flesh, and not of the mind, and
therefore, as they thought, the smaller sin. The apostle's words,
from last to first, according to the order of intention, do express,
first, man's duty to glorify God with soul and body, and not to
serve our lusts. Secondly, the great fundamental obligation to
this duty, God's dominion or propriety. Thirdly, the founda-
tion of that dominion, Christ's purchase. According to the
order of execution, from first to last, these three great funda-
mentals of our religion lie thus : First, Christ's purchase. Se-
condly, God's propriety thence arising. Thirdly, man's duty —
wholly to glorify God, arising from both. The argument lies
thus : they that are not their own, but wholly God's, should
wholly glorify God, and not serve their lusts ; but you are not
your own, but wholly God's : therefore you should wholly glo-
rify God, and not serve your lusts. The major is clear by the
OF GOD- REDEEMER. 343
common light of nature. Every one should have the use of
their own. The minor is proved thus : they that are bought with
a price, are not their own, but his that bought them ; but you
are bought with a price : therefore, &c. For the meaning of
the terms briefly ; iavlSv, vestri, as the vulgar ; vestri juris, as
Beza, and others, is most fitly expressed by our English, your
own : " ye are bought:" a " synecdoche generis," saith Pis-
cator, for "ye are redeemed with a price." There is no buy-
ing without a price. This, therefore, is an emphatical pleonas-
mus, as Beza, Piscator, and others ; as to see with the eyes, to
hear with the ears. Or else, " a price," is put for " a great
price," as Calvin, Peter Martyr, and Piscator, rather think :
and therefore the vulgate adds the epithet magno, and the Ara-
bic pretioso, as Beza notes, as agreeing to that of 1 Peter i. 18.
I see not but we may suppose the apostle to respect both the
purchase and the greatness of the price, as Grotius and some
others do. " Glorify God," that is, by using your bodies and
souls wholly for him, and abstaining from those lusts which do
dishonour him. The vulgate adds et portate, q. cl. bear God
about in your hearts, and let his Spirit dwell with you instead
of lust. But this addition is contrary to all our Greek copies.
Grotius thinks that some copies had dparov Qeov, and thence some
unskilful scribe did put apa re : however, it seems that read-
ing was very ancient, when not only Austin, but Cyprian and
Tertullian followed it, as Beza noteth. The last words, " And
in your spirit, which are God's," are out of all the old Latin
translations, and therefore it is like out of the Greek, which
they used : but they are in all the present Greek copies, except
our manuscript, as also in the Syriac and Arabic version.
The rest of the explication shall follow the doctrines, which
are these.
Doct. 2. Because we are so bought we are not our own, but
his that bought us.
Doct. 3. Because we are not our own, but wholly God's, there-
fore we must not serve our lusts, but glorify him in the body and
spirit. In these three conclusions is the substance of the text;
which I shall first explain, and then make application of them
in that order as the apostle here doth.
The points that need explication are these.
First. In what sense are we said to be bought with a price ?
Who bought us ? And of whom ? And from what ? And
with what price ?
344 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
Secondly. How we are God's own upon the title of this pur-
chase.
Thirdly. How we are not our own.
Fourthly. What it is to glorify God in body and in spirit on
this account.
Fifthly. Who they be that, on this ground, are or may be
urged to this duty.
1. For the first of these, whether buying here be taken
properly or metaphorically I will not now inquire.
First. Mankind by sin became guilty of death, liable to
God's wrath, and a slave to Satan, and his own lusts. The sen-
tence in part was past, and execution begun : the rest would
have followed, if not prevented. This is the bondage from
which we were redeemed.
Secondly. He that redeemed us is the Son of God — himself
God and man, and the Father by the Son. " He purchased us
with his own blood." (Acts xx. 28.)
Thirdly. The price was the whole humiliation of Christ; in
the first act whereof, his incarnation, the Godhead was alone,
which, by humbling itself, did suffer reputatively, which could
not really. In the rest, the whole person was the sufferer, but
still the human nature really, and the divine but reputatively.
And why we may not add, as part of the price, the merit of that
obedience, wherein his suffering did not consist, I yet see not.
But from whom were we redeemed ?
Answer. From Satan, by rescue against his will ; from God's
wrath or vindictive justice, by his own procurement and consent.
He substituted for us such a sacrifice, by which he could as fully
attain the ends of his righteous government, in the demonstra-
tion of his justice and hatred of sin, as if the sinner had suf-
fered himself: and in this sound sense it is far from being an
absurdity, as the socinian dreameth, for God to satisfy his own
justice, or to buy us of himself, or redeem us from himself.
2. Next let us consider how we are God's, upon the title of
this purchase. By " God," here is meant both the Son, who
being God, hath procured a right in us by his redemption, and
also the Fathfv, who sent his Son, and redeemed us by him, and
to whom it was that the Son redeemed us. " Thou hast re-
deemed us to God by thy blood." (Rev. v. 9.) In one word, it
is God as Redeemer, the manhood also of the second person in-
cluded, that hath purchased this right. Here you must observe
that God, as Creator, had a plenary right of propriety and
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 345
government, on which he founded the law of works that then
was. This right he hath not lost. Our fall did lose our right
in him, but could not destroy his right in us. Because it de-
stroyed our right, therefore the promissory part of that law was
immediately thereupon dissolved, or ceased through our incapa-
city, and therefore divines say that, as a covenant, it ceased ;
but because it destroyed not God's right, therefore the precep-
tive and penal parts of that law do still remain. But how re-
main ? In their being ; but not alone, or without remedy : for
the Son of God became a sacrifice in our stead ; not that we
might absolutely, immediately, or, ipso facto <, be fully delivered,
or that any man should, ab ipsa hostia, from the very sacrifice
as made, have a right to the great benefits of personal, plenary
reconciliation, and remission, and everlasting life \ but that the
necessity of perishing through the dissatisfaction of justice for
the alone offences against the law of works being removed from
mankind, they might all be delivered up to him as proprietary
and rector, that he might rule them as his redeemed ones, and
make for them such new laws of grace, for the conveyances of
his benefits, as might demonstrate the wisdom and mercy of our
Redeemer, and be most suitable to his ends. The word is now
morally dead in sin, though naturally alive. Christ hath re-
deemed them, but will cure them by the actual conveyance of
the benefits of redemption, or not at all. He hath undertaken
to this end himself to be their physician, to cure all that will
come to him and take him so to be, and trust him, and obey
him in the application of his medicines. He hath erected an
hospital, his church, to this end, and commanded all to come
into this ark. Those that are far distant he first commandeth
to come nearer, and those that are near he inviteth to come in.
Too many do refuse, and perish in their refusal. He will not
suffer all to do so, but mercifully boweth the wills of his elect,
and, by an insuperable powerful drawing, compels them to come
in. You may see, then, that here is a novum jus, et dominii, et
imperii, a new right of propriety and rule, founded on the new
bottom of redemption : but that this doth not destroy the old,
which was founded on creation ; but it is in the very nature and
use of it an emendative addition. Redemption is to mend the
creature, not of any defect that was left in the creation, but
from the ruin which came by our defacing transgression. The
law of grace upon this redemption is superadded to the law of
nature given on the creation : not to amend any imperfections
346 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
in that law, but to save the sinner from its insufferable penalty
by dissolving its obligation of him thereto : and thus, in its
nature and use, it is a remedying law. And so you may see that
Christ is now the owner, and, by right, the governor of the
whole world, on the title of redemption, as God before was, and
still is, on the title of creation.
3. By this you may also perceive in what sense we are not
our own. In the strictest sense, there is no proprietary, or ab-
solute Lord, in the world, but God. No man can say this is
fully and strictly mine. God gives us, indeed, whatever we
enjoy $ but his giving is not as man's. We part with our pro-
priety in that which we give, but God gives nothing so. His
giving to us makes it not the less his own. As a man giveth
his goods to his neighbour to dispose of for his use, or instru-
ments to his servant to do his work with, so God giveth his
benefits to us : or, at the utmost, as you give clothes to your
child, which are more yours still than his, and you may take
them away at your pleasure. I confess, when God hath told
us that he will not take them away, he is, as it were, obliged, in
fidelity, to continue them, but yet doth not, hereby, let go his
propriety : and so Christ bids us call no man on earth Father,
that is, our absolute lord or ruler, because we have but one such
master, who is in heaven. (Matt, xxiii. 7 — 10.) So that you
see by this what propriety is left us, and what right we have
to ourselves and our possessions. Even such, as a steward in his
master's goods, or a servant in his tools, or a child in his coat,
which is a propriety, improper subordinate, and secundum quid,
and will secure us against the usurpation of another. One ser-
vant may not take his fellow's instrument from him, nor one
child his brother's coat fom him, without the parent's or mas-
ter's consent. They have them for their use, though not the
full propriety. It may be called a propriety, in respect to our
fellow servant, though it be not properly so as we stand in re-
spect to God. We have right enough to confute the leveller,
but not to exempt either us or ours from the claim and use of
our absolute Lord.
4. What it is to glorify God in body and spirit? I answer,
in a word, it is when, upon true believing apprehensions of his
right to us, and of our great obligations to him as our Re-
deemer, we heartily and unfeignedly devote ourselves to him,
and live as a people so devoted ; so bending the chief of our
care and study how to please him in exact obedience, that the
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 347
glory of his mercy and holiness, and of his wise and righteous
laws, may be seen in our conversations ; and that the holy con-
formity of our lives to these laws may show that there is like
conformity in our minds, and that they are written in our hearts ;
when the excellency of the christian religion is so apparent in
the excellency of our lives, causing us to do that which no others
can imitate, that the lustre of our good works may shine before
men, and cause them to glorify our Father in heaven. To con-
clude; when w r e still respect God as our only absolute sovereign,
and Christ as our Redeemer, and his Spirit as our sanctifier, and
his law as our rule ; that the doing of his will, and the denying
of our own, is the daily work of our lives, and the promoting of
his blessed ends is our end : this is the glorifying of God who
hath redeemed us.
5. The last question is, Who they be that are and may be
urged to glorify God, on this ground, that he hath bought them ?
Doubtless only those whom he hath bought ; but who are those ?
It discourageth me to tell you, because among the godly it is a
controversy ; but if they will controvert points of such great
moment, they cannot disoblige or excuse us from preaching
them. Among the variety of men's opinions it is safe to speak
in the language of the Holy Ghost, and accordingly to believe,
that, " As by the offence of one, judgment came upon all
men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the
free gift came upon all men, to justification of life;" (Rom. v. IS;)
and, " That he gave himself a ransom for all, and is the only
mediator between God and man." (1 Tim. ii. 5, 6.) "That he is
the propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours only, but also for
the sins of the whole world." (1 John ii. 2.) " That God is the
Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe/' (1 Tim. iv.
10.) "That he is the Saviour of the world." (John iv 42;
1 John iv. 14, 15.) "That he tasteth death for every man,"
(Heb. ii. 9,) with many the like. It is sad to consider how
men's unskilfulness to reconcile God's general grace with his
special, and to assign to each its proper part, hath made the pe-
lagians, and their successors, to deny the special grace ; and too
many of late no less dangerously to deny the general grace ;
and what contentions these two erroneous parties have main-
tained, and still maintain, in the church, and how few observe
or follow that true and sober mean which Austin, the maul of
the pelagians, and his scholars, Prosper and Fulgentius, walked
in 1 If when our dark confused heads are unable to assign each
348 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
truth its place, and rightly to order each wheel and pin in the
admirable fabric of God's revelations, we shall, therefore, fall a
wrangling against them, and reject them, we may then be drawn
to blaspheme the Trinity, to reject Christ's human nature or his
divine ; and what truth shall we not be in danger to lose ? To
think this general grace to be inconsistent with the special, is no
wiser than to think the foundation inconsistent with the fabric
that is built thereupon ; and that the builders themselves should
have such thoughts is a matter of compassionate consideration
to the friends of the church. Doubtless Christ died not for all
alike, nor with equal intentions of saving them ; and yet he
hath borne the sins of all men on the cross, and was a sacrifice,
propitiation, and ransom for all. Even they that bring in
damnable heresies, deny the Lord that bought them, and bring
on themselves swift destruction. (2 Peter ii. 1.) "God sent not
his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world
through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not
condemned ; but he that believeth not is condemned already,
because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten
Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come
into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, be-
cause their deeds were evil." (John iii. 17- — 19.) I doubt not
but my text doth warrant me to tell you all that you are not
your own, but are bought with a price, and, therefore, must
glorify him that bought you ; and I am very confident, that if
any one at judgment will be the advocate of an unbeliever, and
say, he deserves not a sorer punishment for sinning against the
Lord that bought him, his plea will not be taken ; or if any
such would comfort the consciences in hell, or go about to cure
them of so much of their torment, by telling them that they never
sinned against one that redeemed them, nor ever rejected the
blood of Christ shed for them, and, therefore, need not accuse
themselves of any such sin, those poor sinners would not be able
to believe them. If it be only the elect with whom we must
thus argue, e You are not your own, you are bought with a
price, therefore glorify God,' then can we truly plead thus
with none till we know them to be elect, which will not be in
this world. I do not think Paul knew them all to be elect that
he wrote to, I mean, absolutely chosen to salvation ; nor do I
think he would so peremptorily affirm them to be bought with a
price, who were fornicators, defrauders, contentious, drunk at
the Lord's supper, &c, and from hence have argued against their
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 349
sins, if he had taken this for a privilege proper to the elect. I
had rather say to scandalous sinners, ( You are bought with a
price, therefore, glorify God/ than, ' You are absolutely elect to
salvation, therefore, glorify God/ And I believe,, that as it is
the sin of apostates to " Crucify to themselves the Son of God
afresh," (Heb. vi. 5, 6,) so is it their misery, that "There re-
maineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking
for of judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall devour the
adversaries, because they have trodden under foot the Son of
God, and counted the blood of the covenant wherewith they were
sanctified, an unholy thing." (Heb. x. 26 — 28.) Lastly, I judge it
also a good argument to draw us from offending others, and
occasioning their sin, that "Through us our weak brother shall
perish for whom Christ died/' (1 Cor. viii. 11.) So much for
explication.
I would next proceed to the confirmation of the doctrines
here contained, but that they are so clear in the text, and in
many others, that I think it next to needless, and we have now no
time for needless work, and, therefore, shall only cite these two
or three texts, which confirm almost all that I have said to-
gether. (Rom. xiv. 9.) " For to this end Christ both died, and
rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and
living." (2 Cor. v. 14, 15.) "We thus judge, that if one died
for all, then were all dead ; and that he died for all, that they
which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto
him which died for them, and rose again." (Matt, xxviii.
18 — 20.) "All power is given me in heaven, and in earth. Go
ye, therefore, disciple all nations, baptizing them, &c, teaching
them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you."
(I Peter i. 17, 18.) "If ye call on the Father who without
respect of persons judgeth every man according to his works,
pass the time of your sojourning here in fear; forasmuch as ye
know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as
silver and gold, from your vain conversation, but with the
precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish, and
without spot." These texts speak to the same purpose with
that which I have in hand.
Use. In applying these very useful truths, would time permit,
I should begin at the intellect^ with a confutation of divers con-
trary errors, and a collection of many observable consectaries. It
would go better with all the commonwealths and princes on earth,
if they well considered that the absolute propriety and sove-
350 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
reignty of God-redeemer is the basis of all lawful societies and
governments ; and that no man hath any absolute propriety, but
only the use of the talents that God doth entrust him with ; that
the sovereignty of the creature is but analogical, secundum quid;
improper and subordinate to God, the proper sovereign ; that it
belongs to him to appoint his inferior officers ; that there is no
power but from God ; and that he giveth none against himself;
that a theocracy is the government that must be desired and
submitted to, whether the subordinate part be monarchical,
aristocratical, or democratical ; and the rejecting of this was the
Israelites' sin in choosing them a king; that it is still possible and
necessary to live under this theocracy, though the administra-
tion be not by such extraordinary means as among the Israelites ;
that all human laws are but by-laws subordinate to God's.
How far his laws must take place in all governments. How far
those laws of men are ipso facto null, that are unquestionably
destructive of the laws of God : how far they that are not
their own, may give authority to others : and what aspect
these principles have upon liberty in that latitude as it is taken
by some : and upon the authority of the multitude, especially
in church-government. Should I stand on these and other the
like consequents, which these fundamentals in hand might lead
us to discuss, I should prevent that more seasonable application
which I intend, and perhaps be thought, in some of them, to
meddle beyond my bounds, I will only say, that God is the first
and the last in our ethics and politics, as well as in our physics ;
that as there is no creature which he made not, so it is no good
right of property or government which he some way gives not ;
that all commonwealths not built on this foundation, are as castles
in the air, or as children's tottering structures, which in the very
framing are prepared for their ruin, and strictly are no common-
wealths at all ; and those governors that rule not more for God,
than for themselves, shall be dealt with as traitors to the univer-
sal sovereign. Thus far, at least, must our politics be divine, un-
less we will be mere confederate rebels.
But it is yet a closer application which I intend. Though
we are not our own, yet every man's welfare should be so dear
to himself, that methinks every man of you should presently in-
quire how far you are concerned in the business w r hich we have
in hand. I will tell you how far. The case here described is
all our own. We are bought with a price, and, therefore, not
our own, and, therefore, must live to him that bought us. We
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 351
must do it, or else we violate our allegiance, and are traitors to
our Redeemer. We must do it, or else we shall perish as des-
pisers of his blood. It is no matter of indifferency, nor a duty
which may be dispensed with. That God is our owner by crea-
tion and redemption, and who doth hitherto keep our souls in
these bodies, by whose mere will and power you are all here
alive before him this day, will shortly call you before his bar,
where these matters will be more seriously and searchingly in-
quired after. The great question of the day will then be this,
Whether you have been heartily devoted to your Redeemer, and
lived to him ; or to your carnal selves. Upon the resolution of
this question your everlasting salvation or damnation will de-
pend. What think you then ? Should not this question be now
put home by every rational hearer to his own heart ? But I
suppose some will say, there is no man that wholly lives to God,
for all are sinners ; how then can our salvation depend so much
on this ? I answer in a word : Though no man pay God all
that he oweth him, yet no man shall be saved that giveth him
not the pre-eminence : he will own none as true subjects that do
not cordially own him in his sovereignty. Be it known to you
all, there shall not a man of you enter into his kingdom, nor
ever see his face in peace, that giveth him not the chiefest room
in your hearts, and maketh not his work your chiefest business.
He will be no underling, or servant, to your flesh. He will be
served with the best, if he cannot have all. And in this sense is
it that I say the question will be put, in that great day by the
Judge of all, whether God or our carnal selves were preferred ?
And whether we lived to him that bought us, or to our flesh ?
Beloved hearers, 1 will ask you whether you, indeed, believe that
there will be such a day. I will take it for granted, while you
call yourselves Christians, much less will I question whether you
would then be saved or condemned. Nature will not suffer you
to be willing of such a misery, though corruption make vou too
willing of the cause. But the common stupidity of the world
doth persuade me to ask you this, whether you think it meet
that men who must be so solemnly examined upon this point,
and whose life or death depends on the decision, should not ex-
amine themselves on it beforehand, and well consider what
answer they must then make ? And whether any pains can be
too great in so needful a work ? And whether he that miscar-
rieth to save a labour, do not madly betray his soul unto perdi-
tion ? As if such rational diligence were worse than hell, or
352 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
his present carnal ease were more desirable than his salvation ?
Let us then rouse up ourselves, brethren, in the fear of God, and
make this a day of judgment to ourselves. Let us know whether
we are children of life or death. O, how can a man that is well
in his wits enjoy with any comfort the things of this world, be-
fore he know, at least in probability, what he shall enjoy in the
next ! How can men go cheerfully up and down about the
business of this life, before they have faithfully laboured to make
sure that it shall go well with them in the life to come ! That
we may now know this without deceit, let us all, as in the pre-
sence of the living God, lay bare our hearts, examine them, and
judge them, by this portion of his word, according to the evi-
dence.
7. Whoever he be that takes not himself for his own, but
lives to his Redeemer, he is one that hath found himself really
undone, and hath unfeignedly confessed the forfeiture of his
salvation, and finding that redemption hath been made by
Christ, and that there is hope and life to be had in him, and
none but him, as he gladly receives the tidings, so he cheerfully
acknowledgeth the right of his Redeemer, and in a sober, de-
liberate, and voluntary covenant, renounceth the world, the
flesh, and the devil, and resigneth up himself to Christ as his
due. He saith, ' Lord, I have too long served thine enemies
and mine own ; by cleaving to myself, and forsaking God, I have
lost both myself and God, wilt thou be my Saviour, and the
physician of my soul, and wash me with thy blood, and repair
the ruins of my soul by thy Spirit, and I am willing to be thine ;
I yield up myself to the conduct of thy grace, to be saved in
thy way, and fitted for thy service, and live to God, from whom
I have revolted.' This is the case of all that are sincere.
By many Scriptures, we might quickly confirm this, if it were
liable to question. " If any man come to me, and hate not
his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren,
and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my dis-
ciple : and whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after
me, cannot be my disciple." (Luke xiv. 26, 27.) So verse 33 :
" Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath,
he cannot be my disciple." Which is expounded, Matt. x. 37 :
" He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy
of me." " If any man will come after me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever
will save his life, shall lose it : and whosoever will lose his
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 353
life for my sake, shall find it." (Matt. xvi. 24;) " Whom have I in
heaven hut thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire he-
sides thee." (Psalm lxxiii. 25 — 27.) "The Lord is the portion of
mine inheritance/' &c. (Psalm xvi. 5.) Moses refused honour,
and chose " rather to suffer affliction with the people of God,
than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the
reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for
he had respect to the recompense of the reward. " (Heh. xi.
24 — 26.) I forhear citing more, the case heing so evident, that
God is set highest in the heart of every sound believer, they
heing in covenant resigned to him as- his own. On the con-
trary, most of the unsanctified are Christians but in name,
because they were educated to this profession, and it is the
common religion of the country where they live, and they hear
none make question of it, or if they do, it is to their own
disgrace, the name of Christ having got this advantage, to be
every where among us well spoken of, even by those that shall
perish for neglecting him and his laws. These men have re-
signed their names to Christ, but reserved their hearts to flesh-
pleasing vanities. Or if under conviction and terror of con-
science, they do make any resignation of their souls to Christ,
it comes short of the true resignation of the sanctified in these
particulars.
1. It is a firm and rooted belief of the gospel, which is the
cause of sincere resignation to Christ. They are so fully per-
suaded of the truth of those things which Christ hath done, and
promised to do hereafter, that they will venture all that they
have in this world, and their souls, and their everlasting state
upon it. Whereas the belief of self- deceivers is only super-
ficial, staggering, not rooted, and will not carry them to such
adventures. (Matt. xiii. 21 — 23.)
2. Sincere self-resignation is accompanied with such a love
to him that we are devoted to, which overtoppeth (as to the
rational part) all other love. The soul hath a prevailing com-
placency in God, and closeth with him as its chiefest good.
(Psalm, l xxm * 25, and lxiii. 3.) But the unsanctified have no
such cr >mplacency in him ; they would fain please him by their
flatten es > lestne should do them any hurt, but might they enjoy
but tr ie P^asures of this world, they could be well content to
live wi; tnout mm -
3 Sincere self-resignation is a departing from our carnal
selves an( * a ^ creatures as they stand in competition with Christ
Yqjw. XVII. A A
354 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
for our hearts, and so it containeth a crucifying of the flesh, and
mortification of all its lusts. (Gal. v. 24 ; Rom. viii. 1 — 14.) There
is a hearty renouncing of former contradictory interest and
delights, that Christ may he set highest, and chiefly delighted
in. But self- deceivers are never truly mortified when they seem
to devote themselves most seriously to Christ ; there is a con-
trary prevailing interest in their minds, their fleshly felicity is
nearer to their hearts, and this world is never unfeignedly
renounced.
4. Sincere self-resignation is resolved upon deliberation, and
not a rash, inconsiderate promise, which is afterwards reversed.
The illuminated see that perfection in God, that vanity in the
creature, that desirable sufficiency in Christ, and emptiness in
themselves, that they firmly resolve to cast themselves on him,
and he his alone, and though they cannot please him as they
would, they will die before they will change their Master; but
with self-deceivers it is not thus.
5. Sincere resignation is absolute and unreserved : such do
not capitulate and condition with Christ, * I will be thine so far,
and no further, so thou wilt but save my estate, or credit, or
life.' But self-deceivers have ever such reserves in their hearts,
though they do not express them, nor, perhaps, themselves
discern them. They have secret limitations, expressions, and
conditions ; they have ever a salve for their worldly safety or
felicity, and will rather venture upon a threatened misery which
they see not, though everlastingly, than upon a certain tem-
porary misery which they see. These deep reserves are the
soul of hypocrisy.
b\ Sincere self-resignation is fixed and habituate ; it is not
forced by a moving sermon, or a dangerous sickness, and then
forgotten and laid aside, but it is become a fixed habit in the
soul. It is otherwise with self-deceivers; though they will
oblige themselves to Christ with vows, in a time of fear and
danger, yet so loose is the knot, that when the dange* sevfttf^
over, their bonds fall off. It is one thing to be affrighted, and
another to have the heart quite changed and renewed. It is
one thing to hire ourselves with a master in our necessities, and
yet serve ourselves, or run away, and another thing to nail our
ears to his door, and say, * [ love thee, and therefore will not
depart.' ?° l
So much for the first mark of one that lives not as hi/own,
but as God's, to wit, sincere self-resignation. The second is this.
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 355
2. As the heart is thus devoted to God, so also is the life,
where men do trulv take themselves for his. And that will
appear in these three particulars.
1 . The principal study and care of such men is how to please
God, and promote his interest, and do his, work. This is it
that they most seriously mind and contrive. Their own felicity
they seek in this way. (1 Cor. vii. 32, ,30 ; Rom. vi. 1 1, 13, 16 ;
Col. i. 10, and iii. 1—3 ; Phil. i. 20, 21, 24.) It is not so with
the unsanctified, they drive on another design. Their own
work is principally minded, and their carnal interest preferred
to Christ's. They live to the flesh, and make provision for it,
to satisfy its desires. (Rom. xiii. 14.)
2. It is the chiefest delight of a man devoted to God to see
Christ's interest prosper and prevail. It cloth him more good
to see the church flourish, the gospel succeed, the souls of men
brought in to God, and all things fitted to his blessed pleasure,
than it would do him to prosper himself in the world; to do
good to men's bodies, much more to their souls, is more pleas-
ing to him than to be honourable or rich. To give is sweeter
to him than to receive. His own matters he respects as lower
things, that come not so near his heart as God's. But with
the unsanctified it is not so, their prosperity and honours are
most of their delight, and the absence of them their greatest
trouble.
3. With a man that is truly devoted to God, the interest of
Christ doth bear down all contradicting interest in the ordinary
course of his life. As his own unrighteous righteousness, so
his own renounced carnal interest is loss and clung to him in
comparison of Christ's. (Phil. iii. 8, 9.) He cannot take himself
to be a loser by that which is gain to the souls of men, and
tendeth to promote the interest of his Lord. He serveth God
with the first and best, and lets his own work stand by till
Christ's be done, or rather owneth none but Christ's, his own
dishonour being lighter to him than Christ's, and a ruined
estate less grievous than a ruined church ; therefore doth lie
first seek God's kingdom and its righteousness, (Matt. vi. 33,)
and chooseth rather to neglect his flesh, his gain, his friends,
his life, than the cause and work of Christ. It is far other-
wise with the unsanctified, they will contentedly give Christ
the most glorious titles, and full-mouthed commendations,
(Luke vi. 46,) but they have one that is nearer their hearts than
he, their carnal self must sway the sceptre. God shall have
A A 2
356 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
all that the flesh can spare ; if he will be content to be served
with its leavings, they will serve him, if not, they must be ex-
cused, they can allow him no more. The trying time is the
parting time, when God or the world must needs be neglected.
In such a strait, the righteous are still righteous. (Rev. xxii. 11.)
But the unsteadfast in the covenant do manifest their unstead-
fastness, and though they will not part with Christ professedly,
nor without some witty distinctions and evasions, nor without
great sorrow, and pretence of continued fidelity, yet part they
will, and shift for themselves, and hold that they have as long
as they can. (Luke xviii. 23.) In a word, the sanctified are
heartily devoted to God, and live to him, and were they inca-
pable of serving or enjoying him, their lives would afford them
little content, whatever else they did possess. But the unsanc-
tified are more strongly addicted to their flesh, and live to their
carnal selves, and might they securely enjoy the pleasures of
this world, they could easily spare the fruition of God, and
could be as willing to be dispensed with for his spiritual service,
as to perform it. And thus I have given you the true descrip-
tion of those that live to their Redeemer, as being not their own,
and those that live to themselves, as if they were not his that
bought them.
Having thus told you what the word saith, it followeth that
we next inquire what your hearts say : you hear what you must
be, will you now consider what you are ? Are all the people that
hear me this day devoted in heart and life to their Redeemer ?
Do you all live as Christ's, and not your own ? if so, I must needs
say it is an extraordinary assembly, and such as I had never
the happiness to know. O that it were so indeed ! that we
might rejoice together, and magnify our Deliverer, instead of
reprehending you, or lamenting your unhappiness. But, alas !
we are not such strangers in the world, as to be guilty of such a
groundless judgment. Let us inquire more particularly into
the case.
1. Are those so sincerely devoted to Christ? And do they
so deny themselves, whose daily thoughts, and care, and labour,
is, how they may live in more reputation and content, and may
be better provided for the satisfying of their flesh ? If they be
low and poor, and their condition is displeasing to tfyem, their
greatest care is to repair it to their minds ; if they be higher,
and more wealthy, their business is to keep it, or increase it,
that hunt after honour, and thirst after a thriving and more
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 357
plenteous state ; that can stretch their consciences to the size
of all times, and humour those that they think may advance
them, and be most humble servants to those above them, and
contemptuously neglect whosoever is below them ; that will
put their hands to the feet of those that they hope to rise by,
and put their feet on the necks of their subdued adversaries, and
trample upon all that stand in their way ; that applaud not men
for their honesty, but their worldly honours ; and will magnify
that man while he is capable of advancing them, whom they
would have scorned, if Providence had laid him in the dust :
that are friends to all that befriend their interests and designs,
and enemies to the most upright that cross them in their course :
that love not men so much because they love God, as because
they love them. Are these devoted to God, or to themselves ?
Is it for God, or themselves, that men so industriously scramble
for honours, and places of government, or of gain ? Will they
use their offices or honours for God, that hunt after them as a
prey, as if they had not burden enough already, nor talents
enough to answer for neglecting ? Are those men devoted to
God, that can tread down his most unquestionable interest on
earth, when it seems to be inconsistent with their own ? Let
the gospel go down, let the church be broken in pieces, let sound
doctrine be despised, the ministers be hindered, or tried with
vexations, let the souls of people sink or swim, rather than they
should be hindered in the way of ambition ! I shall leave it to
the trial of another day, whether all the public actions of this
age, with their effects, have been for God or for self. This doth
not belong to my examination, but to his that will thoroughly
perform it 'ere long, and search these matters to the quick,
and open them to the world. There were never higher pre-
tences for God in an age, than have been in this ; had there
been but answerable intentions and performances, his affairs and
our own had been in much better case than they are ; but
enough of this. Should we descend to men's particular families
and conversations, we should find the matter little better
with the most. Are they all for God that follow the world so
eagerly, that they cannot spare him a serious thought ? An
hour's time for his worship in their families, or in secret ? That
will see that their own work be done ; but for the souls of those
that are committed to their charge they regard them not ? Let
them be ever so ignorant they will not instruct them, nor cause
them to read the word, or learn a catechism; nor will
spend the Lord's peculiar day in such exercises; and it is
358 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
much if they hinder not those that would. Is it for God
that men give up their hearts to this world, so that they
cannot have once a day or week, to think soberly what they
must do in the next. Or how they may be ready for their great
approaching change. Is it for God that men despise his
ministers, reject his word, abhor reformation, scorn a church
government, and deride the persons that are addicted to his
fear, and the families that call upon his name ? These men
will shortly understand a little better than now they will do,
whether, indeed, they live to God or to themselves.
2. If you are devoted to God, what do you for him ? Is
it his business that you mind ? How much of your time do you
spend for him ? How much of your speech is for him ? How
much of your estates yearly is serviceable to his interest ? Let
conscience speak, whether he have your studies and affections ;
let your families be witnesses whether he have your speeches
and best endeavours ; let the church witness what you have
done for it; and the poor witness what you have done for them ;
and the souls of ignorant and ungodly men, what you have done
for them. Show by the work you have done who you have
lived to, God or your carnal selves. If, indeed, you have lived
to God, something will be seen that you have done for him ;
nay, it is not a something that will serve the turn, it must be
the best. Remember that it is by your works that vou shall be
judged, and not by your pretences, professions, or compliments ;
your Judge already knows your case, he needs no witnesses, he
will not be mocked with saying you are for him ; show it, or
saying it will not serve.
Methinks now the consciences of some of you should pre-
vent me, and preach over the sharper part of the sermon to
youselves, and say, ' I am the man that have lived to myself/
and so consider of the consequence of such a life ; but I will
leave this to your meditation, when you go home, and next pro-
ceed to the exhortative part of application.
Men, brethren, and fathers, the business that I come hither
upon is to proclaim God's right to you, and all that is yours,
even his new right of redemption, supposing that of creation ;
and to let you know, that you are all bought with a price, and
therefore are not your own, but his that bought you, and must
accordingly be dedicated and live to him. Honourable and Wor-
shipful, and all men, of what degree soever, I do here, on the
behalf and in the name of Christ, lay claim to you all, to vour
souls and bodies, to ail your faculties, abilities, and interests, on
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 359
the title of redemption ; all is God's. Do you acknowledge
his title, and consent unto his claim ? What say you ? Are you
his; or, are you not? Dare you deny it? If any man dare be
so bold, I am here ready to make good the claim of Christ. If
you dare not deny it, we must take it as confessed. Bear wit-
ness all, that God laid claim to you and yours, and no man durst
deny his title. I do next, therefore, require you, and command
you, in his name, give him his own ; render to God the things
that are God's. Will you this day renounce .your carnal selves,
and freely confess you are not your own ; and cheerfully and
unreservedly resign yourselves to God, and say, as Jos. xxiv. 15,
" As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord ?" Do not
ask what God will do with you ; or how he will use you, or dis-
pose of you. Trust him for that, and obey his will. Fear not
evil from the chiefest good, unless it be in neglecting or resist-
ing him. Be sure of it, God will use you better than Satan
would, or than this world would, or better than you have used,
or would use, yourselves. He will not employ you in dishonour-
able drudgeries, and then dash you in pieces. He will not
seduce you with swinish sensualities, and keep you in play with
childish vanities, till you drop into damnation before you are
aware : nor will he lull you asleep in presumptuous security,
till you unexpectedly awake in unquenchable lire. You need
not fear such dealing as this from him : " His commandments
are not grievous/' (i John v. 3.). " His yoke is easy, his
burden is light, and tendeth to the perfect rest of the soul."
(Matt. xi. 28 — 30.) W 7 hat say you ? Will you hereafter be
his ; unfeignedly his ? Resolvedly, unreservedly, and constantly
his ? Or will you not take heed, " that you refuse not him that
speaketh." (Heb. xii. 25.) Reject not, neglect not, this offer,
lest you never have another on the like terms again : he is
willing to pardon all that is past, and put up with all the wrongs
that you have done him, so you will but repent of them ; and
now at last be heartily and entirely his ; not only in tongue,
but in deed and life. Well, I have proclaimed God's right to
you ; I have offered you his gracious acceptance ; if yet you
demur, or sleepily neglect it, or obstinately resist him, take that
you get by it ; remember you perish not without warning. The
confession of Christ's right, which this day you have been
forced to, shall remain as on record, to the confusion of your
faces ; and you shall then be forced to remember, though you
had rather forget it, what now you are forced to confess, though
vou had rather you could deny it. But I am loth to leave vou to
360 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
this prognostic, or to part on terms so sad to your souls, and sad
to me ; I will add, therefore, some reasons to persuade you to
submit : and though it he not in my power to follow them so
to your hearts as to make them effectual, yet 1 shall do my part
in propounding them, and leave them to God to set them home,
beseeching him that maketh, new maketh, openeth, and soften-
eth hearts at his pleasure, to do these blessed works on yours,
and to persuade you within, while I am persuading you without,
that I may not lose my labour and my hopes, nor your souls, nor
God his due.
1. Consider the fulness of God's right to you; no creature is
capable of the like. He made you of nothing, and, therefore,
you have nothing which is not his. He redeemed you when you
were fallen to worse than nothing. Had not Christ ransomed you
by being a sacrifice for your sin, you had been hopelessly left to
everlasting perdition ; give him, therefore, his own which he
hath so dearly bought. (1 Peter i. 18.)
2. Consider that you have no right of propriety to your-
selves ; if you have, how came you by it ? Did you make your-
selves ? Did you redeem yourselves ? Do you maintain and
preserve yourselves ? If you are your own, tell God you will
not be beholden to him for his preservation ; why cannot you
preserve yourselves in health if you are your own ? Why can-
not you recover yourselves from sickness ? Is it yourselves that
gives power to your food to nourish you ? to the earth to
bear you, and furnish you with necessaries ? to the air to
cool and recreate your spirits ? If you are your own, save your-
selves from sickness and death ; keep back your age ; deliver
your souls from the wrath of God ; answer his pure justice for
your own sins ; never plead the blood of a Redeemer, if you are
your own. If you can do these things I will yield that you are
your own. But no man can ransom his soul from death, it cost
a dearer price than so. (Act xx. 28.) You are not debtors,
therefore, to the flesh, to live after it, (Rorn. viii. 12,) but to
him that died, to subdue the flesh. (Rom. vi. 1 1.)
3. None else can claim any title to you, further than under
God upon his gift. Men did not create you or redeem you,
" Be not, therefore, the servants of men," (1 Cor. vii. 23,) un-
less it be under Christ, and for him. Certahilv Satan did not
create you, or redeem you ; what right then hath he to you,
that he should he served ?
4. Seeing then that you are God's, and his alone, is it not
the most heinous thievery to rob him of his right? If they must
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 361
be hanged that rob men of so small a thing as earthly neces-
saries, wherein they have but an improper derived propriety,
what torments do those deserve that rob God of so precious a
creature, that cost him so dear, and might be so useful, and
wherein he hath so full and unquestionable propriety ; the great-
est, the richest, and wisest men that are trusted with most, are
the greatest robbers on earth, if they live not to God, and shall
have the greatest punishment.
5. Is it not incomparably more honourable to be God's, than
to be your own ; and to live to him than to yourselves ? The
object and end doth nobilitate the act, and thereby the agent.
It is more honourable to serve a prince than a ploughman. That
man that least seeks his own honour or carnal interest, but
most freely denieth it, and most entirely seeks the honour of
God, is the most highly honoured with God and good men, when
self-seekers defraud themselves of their hopes. Most men
think vilely, or at least suspiciously, of that man that seeks for
honour to himself; they think if the matter were combustible he
need not to blow the fire so hard ; if he were worthy of honour,
his worth would attract it by a sweet, magnetic power ; so much
industry they think is the most probable mark of indignity,
and of some consciousness of it in the seeker's breast. H he
attain some of his ends, men are ready to look on his honour
but as alms, which he was fain to beg for before he got it. And
could he make shift to ascend the throne, so much in the eyes of
the wisest men would be detracted from his honour, as they did
believe himself to have a hand in contriving it, quod sequitur
fugio, &c. They honour him more that refuseth a crown when
it is olfered, than him that ambitiously aspireth after it, or rapa-
ciously apprehendeth it. If they see a man much desire their ap-
plause, they think he needeth it rather thandeserveth it. Solomon
saith, "To search their own glory is not glory." (Prov. xxv. 27.)
6\ You can never have a better master than God, nor yet a
sweeter employment than his service. There is nothing in him
that may be the least discouragement to you, nor in his works
that should be distasteful. The reason why the world thinks
otherwise, is because ef the distempered averseness of their
souls. A sick stomach is no fit judge of the pleasantness of
meats. To live to God is to live to the truest and highest
delights. His kingdom is not in meats and drinks, but in
righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. His servants,
indeed, are often troubled ; but ask them the reason, and they
362 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
will quickly tell you that it is not for being his servants, or for
serving him too much ; but for fear lest they are not his servants,
or for serving him no better. It is not in his ways, or at least not
for them, that they meet with their perplexities, but in stepping
out of them, and wandering in their own. Many, besides the
servants of God, do seek felicity and satisfaction to their minds,
and some discover where it lieth ; but only they attain it, and
enjoy it.
But, on the contrary, he hath an ill master that is ruled by
himself. A master that is blind, and proud, and passionate, that
will lead you unto precipices, and thence deject you; that will
most effectually ruin you when he thinks he is doing you the
greatest good; whose work is bad, and his wages no better;
that feedeth his servants in plenty but as swine, and in the day
of famine denieth them the husks. Whatever you may now
imagine while you are distracted with sensuality, I dare sav, if
ever God bring you to yourselves, you will consider that it is
better to be in your Father's house, where the poorest servant
hath bread enough, than to be fed with dreams and pictures, and
to perish with hunger. Reject not God till you have found a
better master.
7. If you will needs be your own, and seek yourselves, you
disengage God from dealing with you as his in a gracious sense.
If you will not trust him, nor venture yourselves upon his pro-
mise and conduct, but will shift for yourselves, then look to
yourselves as well as you can ; save yourselves in danger, cure
your own diseases, quiet your own consciences, grapple with
death in your own strength, plead your own cause in judgment,
and save yourselves from hell if you can ; and when you have
done, go and boast of your own sufficiency and achievements,
and tell men how little you were beholden to Christ. Wo to
you, if, upon these provocations, God should give you over to
provide for yourselves, and leave you without any other salvation
than your own power is able to effect. Mark the connexion of
this sin and punishment in Deut. xxxii. 18 — 20. Of the Rock
that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that
formed thee. And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them,
because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters :
and he said, " I will hide my face from them, I will see what
their end shall be." As if he should say, I will see hew well
they can save themselves, and make them know by experience
their own insufficiencv.
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 363
8. Those men that seek themselves, and live to themselves^
and not to God, are unfaithful and treacherous both to God and
man. As they neglect God in prosperity, so they do but flatter
him in adversity. (Psalm Ixxviii. 34 — 37.) And he that will be
false to God, whose interest in him is so absolute, is unlikely to
be true to men, whose interest in him is infinitely less : he that
can shake off the great obligations of creation, redemption,
preservation, and provision, which God layeth on him, is unlikely
to be held by such slender obligations as he receives from men. I
will never trust that man far, if I know him, that is false to his
Redeemer. He that will sell his God, his Saviour, his soul, and
heaven for a little sensuality, vain glory, or worldly wealth, I shall
not wonder if he sell his best friend for a groat. Self-seeking men
will take you for their friend no longer than you serve their turns;
but if once you need them, or stand in their way, you shall find
what they esteemed you for. He that is in haste to be rich, and
thereupon respecteth persons for a piece of bread, that man will
transgress, saith Solomon. (Prov. xxviii. 20, 21.)
9. Sanctification consisteth in your hearty resignation and
living to God ; and therefore you are unsanctified if you are
destitute of this. " Without holiness none shall see God." (Heb.
xii. 14.) And what is holiness, but our sincere dedication and
devotedness to God ? Being no longer common and unclean,
but separated in resolution, affection, and conversation, from
the world and our carnal selves to him. It is the office of the
Holy Ghost to work you to this ; and if you resist and refuse it,
you do not soundly believe in the Holy Ghost, but instead of
believing in hi in you fight against him.
10. You are verbally devoted to Christ in solemn covenant,
entered into in baptism, and frequently renewed in the Lord's
supper, and at other seasons. Did you not there solemnly, by
your parents, resign yourself to Christ as his ? And renounce
the flesh, the world, and the devil, and promise to fight under
Christ's banner against them to your lives' end ? O happy per-
son that performeth this covenant, and everlastingly miserable
are they that do not. Fides non recepta, sed custodita vivificut,
saith Cyprian. It is not covenant-making, without covenant-
keeping, that is like to save you. Do you stand to the covenant
that you made by your parents ? Or do you disclaim it ? If you
disclaim it, you renounce your part in Christ, and his benefits
in that covenant made over to you. If you stand to it, you
must perform your promise, and live to God, to whom you were
364 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
resigned. To take God's oath of allegiance so solemnly, and
afterward to turn to his enemies which we renounced, is a re-
bellion that shall not be always unrevenged.
1 1 . God's absolute dominion and sovereignty over us is the
very foundation of all religion, even of that little which is found
left among infidels and pagans, much more evidently of the
saving religion of Christians. He that dare say he believeth
not this, will never, sure, have the face to call himself a Chris-
tian. Is it not a matter of most sad consideration, that ever so
many millions should think to be saved by a doctrine which they
believe not, or by a religion that never went deeper than the
brain, and is openly contradicted by the tenour of their lives ?
Is a true religion enough to save you, if you be not true to that
religion ? How do men make shift to quiet their consciences
in such gross hypocrisy ? Is there a man to be found in this
congregation that will not confess that he is rightfully his Re-
deemer's ? But hath he indeed their hearts, their time, their
strength, and their interest ? Follow some of them from morn-
ing to night, and you shall not hear one serious word for Christ,
nor see any serious endeavours for his interest : and yet men will
profess that they are his. How sad a case is it, that men's own
confessions should condemn them, and that which they called
their religion should judge them to that everlasting misery which
they thought it would have saved them from ! And how glo-
rious would the christian religion appear if men were true to it;
if Christ's doctrine had its full impression on their hearts, and
were expressed in their lives. Is he not an excellent person that
denieth himself, and doth all for God : that goeth on no busi-
ness but God's : that searcheth out God's interest in every part
of his calling and employment; and intendeth that, "whether
he eat or drink, or whatever he doth, doth all to the glory of
God;" (1 Cor. x. 31 ;) that can say, as Paul, u I am crucified
with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in
me;" (Gal. ii. 20;) and "What things were gain to me, those
I counted loss for Christ : yea, doubtless, and I count all things
but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do
count them but dung, that I may win Christ;" (Phil. iii. 7, 8;)
and " For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." (Phil. i. 21.)
Perhaps you think that the degree of these examples is inimi-
table by us : but I am sure all that will be saved must imitate
them in the truth.
OF GOD- REDEEMER. 365
1 2. Self-seeking is self-losing, and delivering up yourself, and
all you have to God, is the only way to save yourselves, and to
secure all. The more you are his, the more you are your own
indeed ; and the more you deliver to him, and expend for him,
the greater is your gain. These paradoxes are familiar, tried
truths to the true believer : these are his daily food and exer-
cise which seem to others such scorpions as they dare not touch,
or such stones as they are not able to digest. He knoweth that
self-humbling is the true self-exalting, and self-exalting is the
infallible way to be brought low. (Luke xiv. 1 1, and xviii. 14 ;
Matt, xxiii. 12.) He believeth that there is a losing of life
which saves it, and a saving of it which certainly loseth it.
(Matt. x. 39, and xvi. 25.) O that I could reach the hearts of
self-seekers, that spend their care and time for their bodies, and
live not unto God ! That 1 were but able to make them see the
issue of their course, and what it would profit thein to " win all
the world, and lose their own souls." O all you busy men of this
world, hearken to the proclamation of him that bought you ;
" Ho, every one that thirsteth come ye to the waters ! Buy
wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do
you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour
for that which satisfieth not ? Hearken diligently to me, and
eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fat-
ness. Incline your ear, and come unto me : hear, and your soul
shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you."
(Isaiah lv. 1 — 3.) O, sirs, what a deal of care and labour do
you lose ! How much more gainfully might your lives be im-
proved ? Godliness with contentment " is the great gain."
(1 Tim. vi. 9.) That which you now think you make your own,
will shortly prove to be least your own ; and that is most lost
which you so carefully labour for. You that are now so idlv
busy in gathering together the treasure of an ant-hillock, and
building children's tottering piles, do you forget that the foot
of death is coming to spurn it all abroad, and tread down you
and it together ? You spend the day of life and visitation in
painting your phantasies with the images of felicity, and in
dressing yourselves, and feathering your nest with that which
you impiously steal from God ; and do you forget that the night
of blackness is at hand, when God will undress you of your
temporary contents, and deplume you of all your borrowed
bravery. How easily, how speedily, how certainly will he do
it. Read over your case in Luke xii. 16 — 22. How can you
366 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
make shift to read such texts, and not perceive that they speak
to you ? When you are pulling down and building up, and
contriving what to do with your fruits, and saying to yourselves,
* I have so much now as may serve me so many years, J will
take mine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.' Remember, then,
the conclusion : but God said unto him, " Thou fool, this night
thy soul shall be required of thee. Then whose shall these
things be which thou hast provided?" So is he that layeth up
treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God. ' Are these
things yours or mine ? (saithGod.) Whose are they ? If they
are yours, keep them now if you can : either stay with them,
or take them with vou.' But God will make you know that they
are his, and disrobe such men as thieves, who are adorned with
that which is none of their own. 'This honour, (saith God,)
is mine ; thou hast stolen it from me : this wealth is mine ; this
life, and all is mine;' only thyself he will not own. They shall
require thy soul that have conquered and ruled it. Though it
was his by the right of creation and redemption, yet seeing it
was not his by a free dedication, he will not own it as to ever-
lasting salvation, but say, " Depart from me, I know you not,
ye workers of iniquity/' (Matt. vii. 23.) O with what hearts
then will self-seeking gentlemen part with their honours and
estates, and the earthly minded with their beloved possessions!
When he that resigned all to God, and devoted himself and all
to his service, shall find his consumed estate to be increased, his
neglected honour abundantly repaired, and in this life he shall
receive an hundred fold, and in the world to come eternal life.
(Matt. x. 30; John iv. 56; 1 Tim. vi. 12, 19.)
13. Lastly: consider, when judgment comes, inquiry will
be made whether you have lived as your own, or as his that
bought you. Then he will require his own with improvement.
(Luke xix. 25.) The great business of that day will be, not so
much to search after particular sins, or duties, which were con-
trary to the scope of heart and life; but to know whether you lived
to God, or to your flesh. Whether your time, and care, and
wealth, were expended for Christ in his members and interest,
or for your carnal selves. (Matt, xxv.) Inasmuch as you did it
not to these ; you did it not to him. You that Christ hath given
authority to shall then be accountable whether you improved it
to his advantage. You that he hath given honour to must then
give account whether you improved it to his honour. In the
fear of God, Sirs, cast up your accounts in time, and bethink
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 367
you what answer will then stand good : it will be a doleful hear-
ing to a guilty soul, when Christ shall say, ' I gave thee thirty or
forty years' time : thy flesh had so much in eating and drinking,
and sleeping, and labouring, in idleness, and vain talking, and
recreations, and other vanities : but where was my part ? How
much was laid out for the promotion of my glory ? I lent you so
much of the wealth of the world ; so much was spent on your
backs, and so much on your bellies, so much on costly toys or
superfluities, so much in revengeful suits and contentions, and
so much was left behind for your posterity ; but where was my
part ? How much was laid out to further the gospel, and to re-
lieve the souls or the bodies of your brethren? I gave thee a
family, and committed them to thy care to govern them for me,
and fit them for my service ; but how didst thou perform it ? O,
brethren, bethink you in time what answer to make to such in-
terrogatories ; your Judge hath told you that your doom must
then pass according as you have improved your talents for him;
and that he that hideth his talent, though he give God his own,
" shall be cast into utter darkness, where is weeping and gnash-
ing of teeth." (Matt. xxv. 30.) How easily will Christ then
evince his right in you, and convince you that it was your duty
to have lived unto him ? Do you think, Sirs, that you shall then
have the face to say, ' I thought, Lord, that I had been made
and redeemed for myself? I thought I had nothing to do on
earth, but live in as much plenty as I could, and pleasure to my
flesh, and serve thee on the by, that thou mightest continue my
prosperity, and save me when I could keep the world no longer.
J knew not that I was thine, and should have lived to thy glory.'
If any of you plead thus, what store of arguments hath Christ
to silence you 1 He will then convince you that his title to
you was not questionable. He will prove that thou wast his by
thy very being, and fetch unanswerable arguments from every
part and faculty : he will prove it from his incarnation, his life
of humiliation, his bloody sweat, his crown of thorns, his cross,
his grave. He that had wounds to show after his resurrection,
for the convincing of a doubting disciple, will have such scars to
show then as shall suffice to convince a self-excusing rebel. All
these shall witness that he was thy rightful Lord. He will prove
it also from the discoveries of his word, from the warnings of his
ministers, from the mercies which thou receivedst from him,
that thou wast not ignorant of his right, and of thy duty ; or
at least not ignorant for want of means. He will prove it from
368 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
thy baptismal covenant and renewed engagements. The con-
gregation can witness that you did promise to be his, and seal
to it by the reception of both his sacraments. And as he will
easily prove his right, so will he as easily prove that you denied
it to him. He will prove it from your works, from the course
of your life, from the stream of your thoughts, from your love,
your desires, and the rest of the affections of your disclosed
hearts.
O, brethren, what a day will that be, when Christ shall come
in person, with thousands of his angels, to sit in judgment on
the rebellious world, and claim his due, which is now denied
him ! When plaintiff and defendant, witnesses and jurors,
counsellors and justices, judges, and all the princes on earth,
shall stand equal before the impartial Judge, expecting to be
sentenced to their unchangeaole state ! Then, if a man should
ask you, ( What think you now, Sir, of living to God ? Is it
better to be devoted to him, or to the flesh? Which now do
you take for the better master ? What would you do now
if it were all to do again ? What would you then say to such
a question ? How would you answer it ? Would you make
as light of it as now you do ?' O, Sirs, you may hear these things
now from your poor fellow-creature, as proud-hearted gallants,
or as self-conceited deriders, or as besotted worldlings, or
senseless blocks, or secret infidels, that as those, Deut. xxix. 19,
do bless themselves in their hearts, and say, ' We shall have
peace, though we walk in the imagination of our hearts.' But
then you will hear them as trembling prisoners. Read the
20th verse at leisure. Such a sight will work when words will
not, especially words not believed, nor considered of. When
you shall see the God that you disowned, the Redeemer whom
you neglected, the glory which you forfeited, by preferring the
pleasures of the flesh before it, the saints triumphing whom
you refused to imitate, and a doleful eternity of misery to be
remedilessly endured, then saints will seem wiser men in your
eyes, and how gladly would you then be such ? But O, too
late ! What a thing is it, that men who say they believe such
a judgment, and everlasting life and death, as all Christians
profess to do, can yet read, and hear, and talk of such things as
insensibly as if they were dreams or fables ! I know it is the
nature of sin to deceive, and of a sinful heart to be too willing
of such deceiving, and it is the business of Satan by deceiving
to destroy, and with the most specious baits to angle for souls j
OK GOD-REDEEMER, 369
and therefore I must expect that those of you that are taken
and are the nearest to the pit, should be least fearful of the
danger, and most confident to escape, though you are conscious
that you live not to God, but to yourselves. But for my part,
I have read and considered what God saith in his word, and I
have found such evidence of its certain truth, that I heartilv
wish that I might rather live on a dunghill, and be the scorn
of the world, and spend my few days in beggary and calamity,
than that I should stand before the Lord, my Judge, in the case
of that man, whatever he be, that is not in heart and life de-
voted unto God, but liveth to his flesh. For I know that if
we live after the flesh, we shall die. (Rom. viii. 13.) 1 had
rather lie here in Lazarus's poverty, and want the compassion
and relief of man, than to be clothed with the best, and fare
deliciously, and hereafter be denied a drop of water to cool the
flames of the wrath of God.
I confess this is likely to seem but harsh and ungrateful
preaching to many of you. Some pleasant jingles, or witty
sayings, or shreds of reading, and pretty cadency of neat ex-
pressions, were likelier to be accepted, and procure applause
with them who had rather have their ears and fantasy tickled
than rubbed so roughly, and be roused from their ease and
pleasing dreams. But shall I preach for myself, while I pretend
to be preaching you from yourselves to God ? Shall I seek
myself, while I am preaching of the everlasting misery of self-
seekers ? God forbid. Sirs, I know the terrors of the Lord,
(2 Cor. v. 11,) I believe, and therefore speak. Were I a
Christian no deeper than the throat, I would fish for myself,
and study more to please you than to save you. I love not to
make a needless stir in men's consciences, nor to trouble their
peace by a doctrine which I do not believe myself. But I believe
that our Judge is even at the door, and that we shall shortly
see him coining in his glory, and the host of heaven attending
him with acclamations. In the mean time, your particular
doom draws on ; the fashion of all these things passeth away,
as those seats will anon be empty when you are departed, so
it is but a moment till all your habitations shall change their
possessors, and the places of your abode, and too great delight,
shall know you no more. I must needs speak to you as to
transient, itinerant mortals, who must, ere long, be carried on
men's shoulders to the dust, and there be left by those that
must shortly follow you ; then farewell honours and fleshly
VOL. XVII. B B
3/0 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
delights ; farewell all the accommodations and contents of this
world. O that you had sooner bid them farewell ! Had you
lived to Christ as you did to them, he would not so have turned
you off, nor have left your dislodged souls to utter desolation.
Jn a word, as sure as the word of God is true, if you own him
not now as your Lord and Sovereign, he will not own you then
as his chosen to salvation. And if now you live not to him,
you shall not then live with him. " Be not deceived, God is
not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap. For he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap
corruption, but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit
reap everlasting life." (Gal. v. 7, 8.) " Consider this, ye that
forget God, lest he should tear you in pieces, and there be none
to deliver you." (Psalm 1. 22.)
Beloved hearers, believe as you pretend to believe, and then
live as you do believe. If you believe that you are not your
own, but his that made you, and bought you with a price, and
that he will thus try you for your lives and everlasting comforts
on this question, whether you have lived to him, or to your-
selves ? Then live as men that do indeed believe it. Let your
religion be visible, as well as audible, and let those that see
your lives, and observe the scope of your endeavours, see that
you believe it. But if you believe not these things, but are
infidels in your hearts, and think you shall feel neither pain
nor pleasure when this life is ended, but that man dieth as the
beast, then I cannot wonder if you live as you believe. He that
thinks he shall die like a dog, is like enough to live like a dog,
even in his filthiness, and in snarling for the bones of worldly
vanities, which the children do contemn.
Having spoken thus much by way of exhortation, I shall add
few words for your more particular direction, that you may
see to what my exhortation doth tend, and it may not be lost.
1. Be sure that you look to the uprightness of your heart,
in this great business of devoting yourselves to God ; espe-
cially see,
1. That you discern, and soundly believe that excellency in
God which is not in the creature, and that perfect felicity in his
love, and in the promised glory, which will easily pay for all
your losses.
2. And that upon a deliberate comparing him with the plea-
sures of this world, you do resolvedly renounce them, and de-
dicate yourselves to him.
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 371
3. And especially that you search carefully lest any reserve
should lurk in your hearts, and you should not deliver up your-
selves to him absolutely, for life and death, for better and worse,
but should still retain some hopes of an earthly felicity, and not
take the unseen felicity for your portion. " It is the lot of the
wicked to have their portion in this life." (Psalm xvii. 14.)
And let me here warn you of one delusion, by which many
thousands have perished, and cheated themselves out of their
everlasting hopes. They think that it is only some grosser dis-
graceful sins, as swearing, drunkenness, whoredom, injustice,
&c, that will prove men's perdition, and because they are not
guilty of these, they are secure, when, as it is the predomi-
nancy of the interest of the flesh against the interest of God in
their hearts and lives, that is the certain evidence of a state of
damnation, which way soever it be that this is expressed. Many
a civil gentleman hath his heart more addicted to his worldly
interest, and less to God, than some whoremongers and drunk-
ards. If you live with good reputation for civility, yea, for
extraordinary ingenuity, yea, for religious zeal, and no dis-
graceful vice is perceived in your lives, yet if your hearts be on
these things which you possess, and you love your present en-
joyments better than God, and the glory that he hath promised,
your case is as dangerous as the publicans and harlots. You
may spend your days in better reputation, but you will end
them in as certain desolation as they. The question is only
whether God have your hearts and lives, and not whether you
denied them to him with a plausible civility. Nay, it is merely
for their carnal selves to preserve their reputation, that some
men do forbear those grosser crimes, when yet God hath as
little of them as of the more visible profane. " Love not the
world, nor the things that are in the world. If any man love
the world, the love of the father is not in him." (1 John, ii. 15.)
2. If you are wholly God's, live wholly to him, at least do
not stint him, and grudge him your service. It is grown the
common conceit of the world, that a life of absolute dedication
to God is more ado than needs. ' What needs all this ado,' say
they ? i Cannot you be saved with less ado than this ?' I will
now demand of these men but an answer to these few sober
questions.
1. Do you fear giving more to God than his due? Is not
all his own ? And how can you give him more than all ?
2. He is not so backward in giving to you, that owes you
b b 2
372 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
nothing, but gives you plenty, variety, and continuance of all
the good you enjoy, and do you think you well requite him !
3. Christ said not of his life and precious blood, it is too
much, and will you say of your poor unprofitable service it is
too much ?
4. Who will you give that to which you spare from God ?
That time, and study, and love, and labour ? To any that hath
more right to it, or better deserves it, or will better reward you
than he will do ?
5. Are you afraid of being losers by him ? Have you cause for
such fears ? Is he unfaithful, or unable to perform his promises ?
Will you repent when you come to heaven that you did too
much to get it ? Will not that blessedness pay you to the full ?
6. What if you had no wages but your work? Is it not
better to live to God than to man ? Is not purity better than
impurity ? If feasting be grievous, it is because you are sick.
If the mire be your pleasure, it is because you are swine, and not
because the condition is desirable.
7. Will it comfort you more in the reckoning and review to
have laid out yourselves for God, or for the world ? Will you
then wish that you had done less for heaven, or for earth ?
Sirs, these questions are easily answered if you are but willing
to consider them.
8. Doth it beseem those to be afraid of giving God too
much, that are such bankrupts as we are, and are sure that
we shall not give him the twentieth part of his due, if we
do the best we can, and when the best, that are 'scorned by the
world for their forwardness, do abhor themselves for their back-
wardness ! Yea, could we do all, we are but unprofitable ser-
vants, and should do but our duty. (Luke xvii. 10.) Alas !
how little cause have we to fear lest we should give God too
much of our hearts, or of our lives !
3. If you are not your own, remember that nothing else is
your own. What can be more your own than yourselves ?
1. Your parts and abilities of mind or body are not your own ;
use them, therefore, for him that owneth them.
2. Your authority and dignities are not your own ; see, there-
fore, that you make the best of them for him that lent them you.
3. Your children themselves are not your own ; design them
for the utmost of his service that trusts you with them, educate
them in that way as they may be most serviceable to God.
It is the great wickedness of too many of our gentry, that they
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 373
prepare their posterity only to live plenteously, and in credit in
the world, but not to be serviceable to God or thee ommon-
wealth. Design them, all that are capable, to magistracy or
ministry, or some useful way of life. And whatever be their
employment, endeavour to possess them with the fear of the
Lord, that they may devote themselves to him. Think not the
preaching of the gospel a work too low for the sons of the
noblest person in the land. It would be an excellent further-
ance to the work of the gospel if noblemen and gentlemen would
addict those sons to the ministry that are fit for it, and can be
spared from the magistracy. They might have more respect
from their people, aud easier rule them, and might better win
them with bounty than poor men can do. They need not to
contend with them for tithes or maintenance.
4. If you are not your own, your whole families are not your
own. Use them, therefore, as families that are dedicated to
God.
5. If you are not your own, then your wealth is not your
own. Honour God, therefore, with your substance, and with
the first fruits of your increase. (Prov. iii. 9.) Do you ask how ?
Are there no poor people that want the preaching of the gospel
for want of means, or other furtherance ? Are there no godly
scholars that want means to maintain them at the universities,
to fit them for this work ? Are there no poor neighbours about
you that are ignorant, that if you buy them bibles and cate-
chisms, and hire them to learn them, might come to knowledge
and to life ? Are there no poor children that you might put
apprentices to godly masters, where soul and body might both
have helps ? The poor you have always with you. It is not
for want of objects for your charity ; if you hide your talents,
or consume them on yourselves, the time is coming when it
would do you more good to have laid them out to your Master's
use, than in pampering your flesh.
Some grudge that God should have the tenths, that is, that
they should be consecrated to the maintenance of his service.
But little do these consider that all is his, and must all be ac-
counted for. Some question whether now there be such a sin
as sacrilege in being, but little do they consider that every
sin is a kind of sacrilege. When you dedicated yourself to
God, you dedicated all you had, and it was God's before; do
not take it from him again. Remember the halving of Ananias,
and give God all.
374 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
Obj. But must we not provide for our families }
Answ. Yea, because God requires it, and in so doing, you
render it to him. That is given to him which is expended
in obedience to him, so be it you still prefer his most eminent
interest.
Lastly, if you are not your own, then must not your works
be principally for yourselves, but for him that owneth you. As
the scope of your lives must be to the honour of your Lord, so
be sure that you hourly renew these intentions. When you set
your foot out of your doors, ask whether your business you go
upon be for God. When you go to your rest, examine your-
selves what you have done that day for God, especially let no
opportunity overslip you wherein you may do him extraordinary
service. You must so perform the very labours of your callings,
that they may be ultimately for God ; so love your dearest
friends and enjoyments, that it be God that is principally loved
in them.
More particularly as to the business of the day, what need
I say more than in a word to apply this general doctrine to your
special works ?
1. If the honourable judges and the justices will remember
that they are God's, and not their own, what a rule and stay
will it be to them for their work ? What an answer will it
afford them against all solicitations from carnal self, or impor-
tunate friends ? viz., I am not mine own, nor come I hither
to do mine own work, I cannot therefore dispose of myself or
it, but must do as he that owns me doth command me. How
would this also incite them to promote Christ's interest with
their utmost power, and faithfully to own the causes which he
owneth !
2. If all counsellors, and solicitors of causes, did truly take
themselves for God's, and not their own, they durst not plead
for, nor defend a cause they knew which God disowneth.
They would remember that what they do against the innocent,
or speak against a righteous cause, is done and said against
their Lord, from whom they may expect, ere long, to hear, ( In
as much as you said or did this against the least of these, you
said or did it against me/ God is the great patron of inno-
cency, and the pleader of every righteous cause, and he that
will be so bold as to plead against him, had need of a large fee
to save him harmless. Say not it is your calling which you
must live by, unless you that once listed yourselves in your
OF GOD- REDEEMER. 375
baptism under Christ, will now take pay, and make it your
profession to fight against him. The emptier your purses are
of gain so gotten, the richer you are, or at least the fuller they
are, you are so much the poorer. As we that are ministers
do find by experience, that it was not without provocation from
us that God of late hath let loose so many hands, and pens,
and tongues against us, though our calling is more evidently
owned by God than any one in the world besides, so I doubt
not but you may find, upon due examination, that the late
contempt which hath been cast upon your profession, is a
reproof of your guilt from God who did permit it. Had lawyers
and divines less lived to themselves, and more to God, we
might have escaped, if not the scourge of reproachful tongues,
yet at least the lashes of conscience. To deal freely with you,
gentlemen, it is a matter that they who are strangers to your
profession can scarce put any fair construction upon, that the
worst cause, for a little money, should find an advocate among
you. This driveth the standers by upon this harsh dilemma,
to think that either your understandings or your. consciences
are very bad. If, indeed, you so little know a good cause from
a bad, then it must needs tempt men to think you very unskilful
in your profession. The seldom and smaller differences of
divines, in a more sublime and mysterious profession, is yet a
discovery so far of their ignorance, and is imputed to their
disgrace. But when almost every cause, even the worst that
comes to the bar, shall have some of you for it, and some against
it, and in the most palpable cases you are some on one side,
and some on the other, the strange difference of your judgments
doth seem to betray their weakness. But if you know the
causes to be bad which you defend, and to be good which you
oppose, it more evidently betrays a deplorable conscience. I
speak not of your innocent or excusable mistakes in cases of
great difficulty ; nor yet of excusing a cause bad in the main
from unjust aggravations : but when money will hire you to
plead for injustice against your own knowledge, and to use your
wits to defraud the righteous, and spoil his cause, or vex him
with delays, for the advantage of your own unrighteous client,
I would not have your conscience for all your gains, nor your
account to make for all the world : it is sad, that any known
unrighteous cause should have a professed Christian, in the face
of a christian judicature, to defend it, and Satan should plead
by the tongues of men so deeply engaged to Christ : but it is
376 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION
incomparably more sad, that almost every unjust cause should find
a patron ; and no contentious, malicious person should be more
ready to do wrong, than some lawyers to defend him, or a
(dear-bought) fee ! Did you honestly obey God, and speak not
a word against your judgment, but leave every unjust man to
defend his own cause, what peace would it bring to your con-
sciences ; what honour to your now reproached profession ; what
relief to the oppressed ; and what an excellent cure to the
troublesome contentions of proud or malicious men.
3. To your juries and witnesses I shall say but this, you also
are not your own ; and he that owneth you hath told vou,
" That he will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in
Vain." It is much into your hands that the law hath committed
the cause of the just; should you betray it by perjury and
false witnesses, while there is a conscience in your guilty breast,
and a God in heaven, you shall not want a witness of your sin,
or a revenger of the oppressed, if the blood of Christ on your
sound repentance do not rescue you.
4. If plaintiff and defendant did well consider that they are
not their own, they would not be too prone to quarrels, but
would lose their right, when God, the chief proprietor, did re-
quire it. Why do you not rather take wrong, and suffer your-
selves to be defrauded, than do wrong and defraud, and that
your brethren ? (1 Cor. vi. 7 — 9.)
To conclude : I earnestly entreat you all, that have heard me
this day, that when you go home, you will betake yourselves to
a sober consideration of the claim that God hath laid to you,
and the right he hath in you, and all that you have : and resolve,
without any further delay, to give him his own ; and give it not
to his enemies, and yours. When you see the judgment set,
arubthe prisoners waiting to receive their sentence, remember
with what inconceivable glory and terror your Judge will shortly
come to demand his due ; and what an inquiry must be made
into the tenour of your lives. As you see the eclipsed sun with-
draw its light,* so remember how before this dreadful final
judgment, the sun and moon, and the whole frame of nature,
shall be dissolved S And how God will withdraiv the light of his
countenance from those that have neglected him in the day
of their visitation. As ever you would be his, then see that you
be his now ; own him as your absolute Lord, if you expect he
* This sermon was preached at the time of the eclipse.
OF GOD-REDEEMER. 3/7
should own you then as his people. Wo to you that ever you
were horn ! if you put God then to distrain you for his due, and
to take that up in your punishment, which you denied to give
him in voluntary obedience. You would all be his in the time
of your extremity ; then you cry to him as your God for deliver-
ance. Hear him now, if vou would then be heard: live to him
now, and live with him for ever. A popish priest can persuade
multitudes of men and women to renounce the very possession
of worldly goods, and the exercise of their outward callings in a
mistaken devotedness to God. May not I, then, hope to prevail
with you to devote yourselves, with the fruit of your callings
and possessions, to his unquestionable service ? Will the Lord
of mercy but fasten these persuasions upon your hearts, and
cause them to prevail, what a happy day will this prove to us !
God will have his own, the church will have your utmost help, the
souls of those about you will have the fruit of your diligence and
good examples, the commonwealth will have the fruit of your
fidelity, the poor will have the benefit of your charity, I shall
have the desired end of my labour, and yourselves will have the
great and everlasting gain.
SERMON
OF THE
ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST;
AND THE
NECESSITY OF MAN'S SUBJECTION, DEPENDENCE,
AND CHIEFEST LOVE TO HIM.
Preached before the Judges of Assise , at Worcester.
" But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them,
bring hither, and slay them before me." — Luke xix. 27.
Christian Reader,
When I had resolved, at the desire of the Honourable Judge
of Assize, to publish the foregoing sermon, I remembered that,
about six years before, I had preached another on the like occa-
sion, on a subject so like, and to so like a purpose, that I con-
ceived it not unfit to be annexed to the former. I have endea-
voured to show you, in both these sermons, that Christ may be
preached without Antinomianism; that terror may be preached
without unwarrantable preaching the law; that the gospel is not
a mere promise, and that the law is not so terrible as it is to the
rebellious: as also what that superstructure is, which is built on
the foundation of general redemption rightly understood; and
how ill we can preach Christ's dominion in his universal pro-
priety and sovereignty, or yet persuade men to sanctification
and subjection, without this foundation. I have laboured to fit
all, or almost all, for matter and manner, to the capacity of the
vulgar. And though, for the matter, it is as necessary to the
greatest, yet it is for the vulgar, principally, that I publish it ;
and had rather it might be numbered with those books which
are carried up and down the country from door to door in ped-
lars' packs, than with those that lie on booksellers' stalls, or
are set up in the libraries of learned divines. And to the same
use would I design the most of my published labours, should
God afford me time and ability, and contentious brethren give
me leave.
RICHARD BAXTER.
August 7, 1654.
SERMON
OF THE
ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST.
PSALM ii. 10, 11, 12.
Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings ; be instructed, ye judges
of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with
trembling, &c.
To waste this precious hour in an invective against injustice
and its associates, is none of my purpose; they are sins so
directly against the principles in nature, so well known, I believe,
to you all, and so commonly preached against upon these occa-
sions, that upon the penalty of forfeiting the credit of my
discretion, I am bound to make choice of a more necessary
subject. What? Have we need to spend our time and studies to
persuade Christians from bribery, perjury, and oppression; and
from licking up the vomit which pagans have cast out ? And
that in an age of blood and desolation, when God is taking the
proudest oppressors by the throats, and raising monuments of
justice upon the ruins of the unjust. And I would fain believe
that no corrupt lawyers do attend your judicatures, and that
Jezebel's witnesses dwell not in our country, nor yet a jury that
fear not an oath; I have therefore chosen another subject,
which, being of the greatest moment, can never be unseason-
able ; even to proclaim him who is constituted the King and
Judge of all, to acquaint you with his pleasure, and to demand
your subjection.
The chief scope of the Psalm is, to foretel the extent and
prevalency of the kingdom of Christ, admonishing his enemies
to submit to his government, deriding the vanity of their op-
posing projects and fury, and forewarning them of their ruin if
thev come not in.
382 THE ABSOLUTE
The verses which I have read are the application of the fore-
going prediction, by a serious admonition to the proudest
offenders : they contain, 1. The persons admonished, "kings
and judges." 2. Their duty: 1. In general to God, "serve
him;" with the adjuncts annexed: 1. Rejoicing. 2. Fear and
trembling. 2. More especially their duty to the Son, " kiss
him/' 3. The motives to this duty. 1. Principally and
directly expressed, " lest he be angry/' which anger is set
forth by the effect, " and ye perish/' which perishing is aggra-
vated, 1. From the suddenness and unexpectedness, " in the
way." 2. From the dreadfulness, " kindled." 1 . It is fire, and
will kindle and burn. 2. A little of it will produce this sad
effect. 3. It will be wo to those that do not escape it ; which
wo is set forth by the contrary happiness of those that by sub-
mission do escape. 2. The motives subservient and implied are
in the monitory words, • be wise, be learned," q. d. else you
will show and prove yourselves men of ignorance and madness,
unlearned and unwise.
Some questions here we should answer for explication of the
terms : as,
1. Whether the Lord in verse 11, and the Son in verse 12,
be both meant of Christ the Second Person ?
2. Whether the anger here mentioned be the anger of the
Father or the Son, "lest he be angry?" I might spend much
time here to little purpose, in showing you the different judg-
ment of divines of these, when in the issue there is no great
difference, which ever way we take them.
3. What is meant by " kissing the Son ?" I answer, accord-
ing to its threefold object, it hath a threefold duty contained
in it.
1. We kiss the feet in token of subjection ; so must we kiss
the Son.
2. We kiss the hand in token of dependence ; so must we
kiss the hand of Christ ; that is, resign ourselves to him, and
expect all our happiness and receivings from him.
3. We kiss the mouth in token of love and friendship j and
so also must we kiss the Son.
4. What is meant by "perishing in the way?" I answer,
(omitting the variety of interpretations,) it is their sudden un-
expected perishing in the heat of their rage, and in pursuit of
their designs against the kingdom of Christ.
I know no other terms of any great difficulty here.
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 383
Many observations might be hence raised : as,
1. Serving the Lord is the great work and business that the
world hath to do.
2. This service should be accompanied with rejoicing.
3. So should it also with fear and trembling.
4. There is no such opposition between spiritual joy and
fear, but that they may and must consist together.
5. Scripture useth familiar expressions concerning man's
communion with Christ, such as this, " kiss the Son."
6. There is anger in God, or that which we cannot conceive
better of than under the notion of anger.
7. There is a way to kindle this anger ; it is man that
kindleth it.
8. The way to kindle it chiefly is not kissing the Son.
9. The kindling of it will be the perishing of the sinner.
10. The enemies of Christ shall perish suddenly and un-
expectedly.
11. A little of God's anger will utterly undo them.
12. They are blessed men that escape it, and miserable that
must feel it.
13. It is therefore notorious folly to neglect Christ, and stand
out.
14. Kings, judges, and rulers of the earth, are the first men
that Christ summons in, and the chief in the calamity if they
stand out.
But I will draw the scope of the text, into this one doc-
trine ; in the handling whereof 1 shall spend the time allotted
me.
Doct. No power or privilege can save that man from the
fearful, sudden, consuming wrath of God, that doth not un-
feignedly love, depend upon, and subject himself unto the Lord
Jesus Christ.
If they be the greatest kings and judges, yet if they do not
kiss the mouth, the hand, the feet of Christ, his wrath will be
kindled, and they will perish in the way of their rebellion and
neglect.
In handling this point I shall observe this order.
1. I will show you what this love, dependence, and subjection
are.
2. What wrath it is that will thus kindle and consume them.
3. Why this kissing the Son is the only way to escape it.
4. Why no power or privilege else can procure their escape.
384 THE ABSOLUTE
5. The application.
For the first I shall only give you a naked description, wish-
ing that I had time for a fuller explication.
1 . Subjection to Christ is, the acknowledging of his abso-
lute sovereignty, both as he is God, Creator, and as Redeemer
over all the world, and particularly ourselves; and a hearty con-
sent to this his sovereignty; especially that he be our Lord, and
his laws our rule, and a delivering up ourselves to him to be
governed accordingly.
2. This dependence on Christ is, when acknowledging the
sufficiency of his satisfaction, and his power and willingness to
save all that receive him, manifested in his free universal offer
in the gospel, we do heartily accept him for our only Saviour?
and accordingly, renouncing all other, do wait upon him believ-
ingly for the benefits of his sufferings and office, and the per-
formance of his faithful covenant to us, in restoring us to all the
blessings which we lost, and advancing us to a far greater ever-
lasting glory.
3. This affection to Christ is, when in the knowledge and
sense of his love to us, both common and especial, and of his
own excellency, and the blessedness of enjoying him, and the
Father and Life by him, our hearts do choose him, and the
Father by him as the only happiness, and accordingly love him
above all things in the world.
As this threefold description containeth the sum of the gos-
pel, so hath it nothing but what is of necessity to sound Chris-
tianity. If any one of these three be not found in thy heart,
either have I little skill in divinity, or thou hast no true Chris-
tianity, nor canst be saved in that condition.
Object. But do not the Scriptures make believing the con-
dition of the covenant? But here is a great deal more than
believing.
Ans. Sometimes faith is taken in a narrower sense, and then
it is not made the sole condition of the new covenant ; but re-
pentance, and forgiving others, are joined with it as conditions
of our forgiveness ; and obedience and perseverance, as condi-
tions of our continued justification and salvation. But when
faith is made the sole condition of the covenant, then it com-
prehendeth essentially, (not only supposeth as precedent or con-
comitant,) if not all three, yet at least the two first of the
afore described qualifications; viz., dependence and subjection,
which, if it were well understood, would much free the common
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 385
sort of Christians from their soul-destroying mistakes, and the
body of divinity from a multitude of common errors, and our
religion from much of that reproach of solifidianism which is
cast upon it by the papists.
2. I must be as brief in opening the second thing, viz. What
wrath it is that will thus kindle and consume them. What
wrath is in God we need not here trouble ourselves to inquire,
but only what is intimated in the threats or curses of the cove-
nants. As there are two covenants, so each hath his proper
penalty for its violation.
1. Then till men do come in and submit to Christ they lie
under the wrath of God for all their sins, as they are against the
covenant of works, or they are liable to the curse of that
covenant : Christ's death hath taken away the curse of that
covenant ; not absolutely from any man, but conditionally,
which becomes absolute when the condition is performed. The
elect themselves are not by nature under the covenant of grace,
but remain under the curse of the first covenant till they come
in to Christ.
2. Whosoever rejecteth or neglecteth his grace, and so finally
breaketh the new covenant, must also bear the curse or penalty
thereof, besides all the former, which is a far greater curse, even
as the blessings of this covenant are far greater than those of
the first. It was a heavy punishment to be cast out of Para-
dise, and from the presence and favour of God, and to be cursed
by him, and subjected to eternal death, and all creatures below
cursed for our sakes, to bear all those curses and plagues threat-
ened in Deut. xxvii. and xxviii., and to have the wrath of God
smoke against us, &c, as Deut. xxix. 20. " But of how much
sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy that doth tread under
foot the blood of this covenant, and do despite to the Spirit of
Grace?" (Heb. x. 28, 29.) It is true, that for all other sins
the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience,
(or unpersuadeableness,) that is, on them that will not be per^
suaded to obey the Lord Christ. (Eph. v. 6.) But it is on no
other with us, for this is the condemnation, " that light is come
into the world, and men love darkness rather than light."
(John i. 19.)
3. Why is this kissing the Son, that is, loving, depend-
ing on, and submitting to him, the only way to escape these
curses ?
Ans. 1. The most proper and primary reason which can be
VOL, xvji. c c
386 , THE ABSOLUTE
given, is, the will of the Great Lawgiver, who, having absolute
sovereignty over us, might dispose of us as he please, and make
us such laws and conditions as seem best to his wisdom, upon
which our justification and salvation should depend : he hath
resolved that this shall be the only condition and way; and
that, as no man shall be justified by a mere Christ, or his death
abstracted from faith, (that is of age and use of reason,) so
this faith shall be the condition upon which they shall be
justified : or, as a Christ neglected shall save no man, so the
accepting or receiving of him shall justify and save them, as the
condition of the covenant performed, under which notion it is
that faith justifieth.
2. Yet other improper or subordinate reasons (which receive
their life from the former, and without it would be no reasons,)
maybe given : as, 1. from the equity; and, 2. from the suitable-
ness and conveniency.
1. It is but equal that he who hath bought us, and that so
dearly, and from a state so deplorable and desperate as we were
in, should be acknowledged and accepted for our Saviour and
our Lord, and that we who are not our own, " but are bought
with a price, should glorify him with our bodies and souls, which
are his," (1 Cor. vi. 20, and vii. 23,) especially when, for that
end he both died and rose again, that he might rule, or be Lord
over, both quick and dead. (Rom. iv. 9.) ]f one of you should
buy a man from the galleys or gallows, with the price of vour
whole estate, or the life of your only Son, would you not expect
that he should be at your disposal ? That he should love you,
depend on you, and be subject to you.
2. And as salvation by free grace through Christ is a way
most suitable to God's honour, and to our own necessitous and
low condition, so, in subordination thereto, the way of believing
is most rationally conducible to the same ends. As we could not
have had a fitter way to the Father than by Christ, so neither
could there be a more fit way to Christ, or means to partake of
him, than by faith : for though I cannot call it the instrumental
cause of our justification, either active or passive, yet is this
faith, or acceptation of Christ for our Saviour and King, which
is here called " kissing the Son," the fairest condition that we'
could reasonably expect, and the most apparently tending to the
honour of our Redeemer; applying and appropriating to our-
selves the person, righteousness, and benefits procured and of-
fered, but not the least of the honour of the work. All we do
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 387
is but to accept what Christ hath procured, and that must be by
the special assistance of his Spirit too.
4. The fourth thing I promised, is to show you why no other
privilege or power in the world can save him that doth not kiss
the Son. It may here suffice that I have showed you God's de-
termination to the contrary. But further consider, (if any should
hope to escape by their dignities, titles, friends, strength, or any
other endowments or virtuous qualifications,) 1. What is their
task. 2. What is their power to perform it.
1. They must resist the irresistible will of God. They must
do that which heaven or earth, men or devils, were never able
yet to do. They have resisted his laws and his love, but they
could never resist his purpose or his power. The power that
undertaketh to save an enemy, or neglecter of Christ, must first
overcome the power of the Almighty, and conquer him that
doth command the world. And who hath the strength that is
sufficient for this ? Sinner, before thou venture thy soul upon
such a mad conceit, or think to be saved whether God will or
not, try first thy skill and strength in some inferior attempt ; bid
the sun or moon stand still in the firmament, invert the several
seasons of the year, bid the snow and frost to come in summer,
and the flowers and fruits to spring in winter ; command the
streams to turn their course, or the tide its times, or the winds
their motion. If these will obey thee, and thy word can prevail
with them against the law of their Creator, then mayest thou
proceed with the greater confidence and courage, and have some
hope to save the neglecters of Christ. Or try first whether thou
canst save thy present life against the course of nature and will
of God : call back thine age and years that are past ; com-
mand thy pains and sickness to be gone ; chide back this bold
approaching death ? Will they not obey thee ? Canst thou
do none of these ? How then canst thou expect the saving of
thy soul against the determinate will and way of God ? Where
dwelleth that man, or what was his name, that did neglect
Christ, and yet escape damnation ? Who hath hardened him-
self against him and hath prospered ? (Job ix. 4.) And dost
thou think, then, to be first ? Thou mayest, perhaps, knock
boldly at the gate of heaven, and plead thy greatness, thy vir-
tues, thy alms deeds, and formal devotion, but thou shalt receive
a more vvoful answer than thou dost expect. Jesus we know, and
obediential faith in him we know, but who are ye ?
2. He that will save the soul, that loveth not, dependeth not
c c 2
388 THE ABSOLUTE
on, and subjecteth not himself to Christ, must first make false
the word of God, and make the true and faithful God a liar ?
This is another part of his task : " God hath given it under his
hand for truth, That " he that believeth not is condemned al-
ready; (John iii. 18 ;) That " he shall not see life, but the wrath
of God abideth on him;" (John iii. 36 ;) that they who are in-
vited to Christ, and make light of it, or make excuses, " shall
never taste of his supper;" (Luke xiv. 24; Matt. xxii. 5, 8;)
That " it shall he easier for Sodom in the day of judgment, than
for that city which refuseth the offers of the gospel;" (Matt.
x. 15 ;) that whosoever would not have Christ to reign over
them " shall be brought forth at last and destroyed before him
as his enemies;" (Luke xix. 27 ;) that u they shall all be damned
that believe not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness."
(2 Thess. ii. 12, &c.) And hath the Almighty said that thus it
shall be ? Who, then, is he that dare say it shall not be ? Is
this the concluded decree of heaven ? What power or policy
is able to reverse it ? Hath God said it, and will he not do it?
Thus you see his task that will undertake to save one neg-
lecter of Christ.
2. Let us now consider what power that is which must per-
form it. Jf it be done it must be either, 1. By wisdom ; or,
2. By strength ; whereas, the chiefest of men, even the kings
and judges of the earth, are both ignorant and impotent.
1. Ignorant. Though judges are learned in the repute of the
world, alas ! poor crawling, breathing dust ! do you know the
secrets of your Maker's counsel ? And are you able to over-
reach them, and frustrate his designs ? Doth this book know
what is written in it ? Can the seat you sit on over-top your
counsels ? More likely than for you to overtop the Lord.
Silly worms ! you know not what God is, nor know you any
one of his revealed thoughts, no more than that pillar doth
know your thoughts. You know not what you are yourselves,
nor see any further than the superficies of your skin. What is
thy soul ; and whence didst thou receive it ? Dost thou know
its form ; or didst thou feel it enter ? Which part didst thou
feel it first possess ? Thou canst call it a spirit, but knowest
thou what a spirit is ; or rather only what it is not ? Thou
knowest not that whereby thou knowest : and how was thy
body formed in the womb ? What was it an hundred years ago ?
What is that vital heat and moisture ? What causeth that
order and diversity of its parts ? When will the most expert
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 389
anatomists and physicians be agreed ? Why, there are myste-
ries in the smallest worm, which thou canst not reach; nor
couldst thou resolve the doubts arising about an ant or atom,
much less about the sun, or fire, or air, or wind, &c. : and canst
thou not know thyself, nor the smallest part of thyself, nor the
smallest creature ; and yet canst thou over-reach the everlasting
counsels.
2. And is thy might and power any greater than thy policy?
Why, what are the kings and rulers of the earth but lumps of
clay, that can speak and go ; moving shadows, the flowers of a
day, a corruptible seed, blown up to that swelled consistence in
which it appears, as children blow their bubbles of soap, some-
what invisible condensate; which, that it may become visible,
is become more gross, and so more vile, and will shortly be
.almost all turned into invisible again; and that little dust which
corruption leaves by the force of fire, may be dissipated yet
more, and then where is this specious part of the man ? Surely
now that body, which is so much esteemed, is but a loathsome
lump of corruptible flesh, covered with a smooth skin, and
kept a little while from stinking by the presence of the soul,
and must shortly be cast out of sight into a grave, as unfit for
the sight or smell of the living, and there be consumed with
rottenness and worms. These are the kings and rulers of
the earth ; this is the power that must conquer heaven, and
save them that rebel against Christ the Lord. They that can-
not live a month without repairing their consuming bodies
by food, one part whereof doth turn to their vital blood and
spirits, and the other to loathsome insufferable excrements, so
near is the kin between their best and worst, judge all you that
have common reason, whether he that cannot keep himself
alive an hour, and shortly will not be able to stir a finger, to re-
move the worms that feed upon his heart, be able to resist the
strength of Christ, and save the soul, that God hath said and
sworn shall not be saved. Ah ! poor souls, that have no better
saviours. And well may Christ, his truth, and cause, prevail
that have no stronger enemies.
Use 1. You have here a text that will fully inform you how
you are like to speed at the bar of Christ ; who shall die and
who shall live. The great assize is near at hand, the feet of our
Judge are even at the door. Go thy way, unbelieving sinner,
when thou hast had all the pleasure that sin will afford thee, lie
down in the dust and sleep awhile, the rousing voice shall
390 THE ABSOLUTE
quickly awake thee, and thine eyes shall see that dreadful day.
O blessed day 1 O doleful day ! ] Messed to the saints, doleful
to the wicked. O the rejoicing ! O the lamenting that there
will be! The triumphant shoutings of joyful saints; the
hideous roaring cries of the ungodly, when each man hath
newly received his doom, and there is nothing but eternal gloi v
and eternal fire. Beloved hearers, every man of you shall
shortly there appear, and wait as the trembling prisoner at the
bar, to hear what doom must pass upon you. Do you not be-
lieve this ? I hope you do believe it. Why what would you give
now to know, for certain, how it shall go with you ? Why here
is the book by which you must be judged, and here is the sum
of it in my text, and the grounds upon which the Judge will
then proceed. Will you but go along with me, and answer the
questions which hence I shall put to you, and search and judge
yourselves by them as you go, you may know what doom you
may then expect ; only deal faithfully, and search thoroughly,
for self- flattery will not prevent your sorrow.
And here you must know that it is the kiss of the heart, and
not of the lips, which we must here inquire after. The question
will not be at the great day who hath spoken Christ fair ; or
who hath called themselves by the name of Christians ; or who
hath said the Creed or the Lord's Prayer oftenest; or cried
Lord, Lord ; or come to church ; or carried a Bible ; or who
hath held this opinion, or who that. It would make a man's
heart ache to think how zealously men will honour the shadow
of Christ, and bow at his name, and reverence the image of the
cross which he died on, and the names and relics of the saints
that died for him, and yet do utterly neglect the Lord himself,
and cannot endure to be governed by him, and resis this Spirit,
and scorn his strict and holy ways, and despitefully hate them
that most love and obey him, and yet believe themselves to be
real Christians. For God's sake, Sirs, do not so delude your
immortal souls, as to think your baptism, and your outward de-
votion, and your good meanings, as you call them, and your
righteous dealing with men, will serve the turn to prove you
Christians. Alas ! this is but, with Judas, to kiss the mouth of
Christ, and indeed to fetch your death from those blessed lips,
from whence the saints do fetch their life. I will show you
some surer signs than these.
1. And, first, let me a little inquire into your subjection to
Christ. Do you remember the time when you were the servants
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 391
of sin, and when Satan led you captive at his will, and the
prince of darkness ruled in your souls, and all within you was
in a carnal peace ? Do you remember when the Spirit in the
word came powerfully upon your hearts, and bound Sat?* ....a
cast him out, and answered all your reasonings, and conquered
all your carnal wisdom, and brought you from darkness to light,
and from the power of Satan to God ? (Acts xxvi. 18.) Or, at
least, are you sure that now you live not under the same lord
and laws as the ungodly do ? Hath Christ now the only sove-
reignty in your souls ; is his word thy law, which thou darest not
pass ? Doth it bind thy thoughts, and rule thy tongue, and
command thyself, and all thou hast ? Hast thou laid all down
at the feet of Christ, and resigned thyself and all to his will,
and devoted all to his disposal and service ? If custom bid thee
curse and swear, and Christ forbid thee, which dost thou obey ?
If thy appetite bid thee take thy cups, or fare deliciously every
day; if thy company bid thee play the good fellow, or scorn
the godly ; if thy covetousness bid thee love the world, and
Christ forbid thee, which dost thou obey ? If Christ bid thee
be holy, and walk precisely, and be violent for heaven, and strive
to enter in, and the world and the flesh be enemies to all this,
and cry it down as tedious folly, which dost thou obey? Dost
thou daily and spiritually worship him in private, and in thy
family, and teach thy children and servants to fear the Lord ?
I entreat you, Sirs, deal truly in answering these questions :
never man was saved by the bare title of a Christian. If you
are not subject to Christ, you are not Christians, no more than
a picture or a carcass is a man, and your salvation will be such
as your Christianity is. Subjection is an essential part of thy
faith, and obedience is its fruit. In short, then, dost thou make
him thy fear, and tremble at his word ? Dare thou run upon
fire or water, sword or cannon, rather than wilfully run upon his
displeasure ? Wouldest thou rather displease thy dearest friend,
the greatest prince, or thine own flesh, than wittingly provoke
him ? When Christ speaks against thy sweetest sin, thy nature,
or custom, or credit, or life, against thy rooted opinions, or thy
corrupt traditions, art thou willing to submit to all that he re-
vealeth ? Dost thou say, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant hear-
eth ? Lord, what wouldest thou have me to do ? I am ready
to do thy will, O God."
Beloved hearers, this is the frame of every servant of Christ,
and this is the acknowledging and accepting him for your Lord.
392 THE ABSOLUTE
I beseech you cozen not your souls with shows and formalities.
If ever you be saved without this subjection, it must be without
Christ's merits or mercy. It must be in a way that Scripture
revealeth not, nay, it must be in despite of God, his truth must
be falsified, and his power must be mastered, before the diso-
bedient can be saved from his wrath.
2. Examine, also, your dependence on Christ, whether you
kiss his hand as well as his feet. Do you understand that you
are all by nature condemned men, and liable to the everlasting
wrath of God ; that Christ hath interposed and paid this
debt, and bought us as his own by the satisfaction of that
justice ; that all things are now delivered into his hands,
(John xiii. 3,) and he is made head over all things to his church.
(Eph. i. 21, 22.) Dost thou take him for thy only Saviour,
and believe the history of his life and passion, the truth of his
divine and human nature, his resurrection, his office, and his
approaching judgment ? Dost thou see that all thy supposed
righteousness is but vanity and sin, and that thyself art unable
to make the least satisfaction to the law by thy works or suf-
ferings, and if his blood do not wash thee, and his righteousness
justify thee, thou must certainly be damned yet, and perish for
ever ? Dost thou, therefore, cast thyself into his arms, and
venture thy everlasting state upon him, and trust him with thv
soul, and fetch all thy help and healing from him ? When sin
is remembered, and thy conscience troubled, and the fore-
thoughts of judgment do amaze thy soul, dost thou then fetch
thy comfort from the views of his blood, and the thoughts of
the freeness and fulness of his satisfaction, his love, and gospel
offers and promises ? Dost thou so build upon his promise of
a happiness hereafter, that thou canst let go all thy happiness
here, and drink of his cup, and be baptised with his baptism,
and lose thy life upon his promise that thou shalt save it ?
Canst thou part with goods and friends, and all that thou hast,
in hope of a promised glory which thou never sawest ? If thou
canst thus drink with him of the brook in the way, thou shalt
also with him lift up the head. (Psalm ex. 7.) Dost thou
perceive a Mediator as well as a God in all thy mercies, both
special and common, and taste his blood in all that thou re-
ceivest, and wait upon his hand for thy future supplies ? Why,
this is kissing the hand of Christ, and depending upon him.
O how contrary is the case of the world, whose confidence is
like the Samaritan's worship, they trust God and their wits, and
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 393
labours, Christ and their supposed merits ; I would I might not
say Christ and deceit, and wicked contrivances. O blas-
phemous ! joining of heaven and hell to make up one foundation
of their trust !
3. Examine a little also your love to Christ. Do you thus
kiss the son ? Do your souls cleave to him, and embrace him
with the strongest of your affections ? Sirs, though there is
nothing that the blind world is more confident in than this,
that they love Christ with all their hearts, yet is there nothing
wherein they are more false and faulty. 1 beseech you, there-
fore, deal truly in answering here. Are your hearts set upon
the Lord Jesus ? Do you love him above all things in this
world ? Do you stick at your answer ? Do you not know ?
Sure, then, at best you love him but little, or else you could not
choose but know it. Love is a stirring and sensible affection,
you know what it is to love a friend. Feel by this pulse whether
you live or die. Doth it beat more strongly toward Christ than
to any thing else ? Never question man the necessity of this ;
he hath concluded, c If thou love anything more than him, thou
art not worthy of him, nor canst be his disciple/ Are thy
thoughts of Christ thy freest and thy sweetest thoughts ? Are
thy speeches of him thy sweetest speeches ? When thou awa-
kest art thou still with him ; and is he next thv heart? When
thou walkest abroad, dost thou take him in thy thoughts ?
Canst thou say, and lie not, that thou wast ever deeply in love
with him, that thou dost love him but as heartily as thou dost
thy friend, and art as loth to displease him, and as glad of his
presence, and as much troubled at his strangeness or absence ?
Hath thy minister, or godly acquaintance ever heard thee be-
moaning thy soul for want of Christ, or inquiring what thou
shouldest do to attain him ? or thy family heard thee com-
mending his excellency, and labouring to kindle their affections
towards him ? Why love will not be hid, when it hath its
desire, it will be rejoicing, and when it wants it, it will be com-
plaining. Or, at least, can thy conscience witness thy longings,
thy groans, thy prayers for a Christ ? Wilt thou stand to the
testimony of these witnesses ? Do you love his weak, his poor,
despised members ? Do you visit them, clothe them, feed them,
to your power ? Not only in a common natural compassion
to them as they are your neighbours, but do you love or relieve
a prophet in the name of a prophet, or a disciple in the name
of a disciple. (Matt. x. 40, 42.) Shall all these decide the
question ?
394 THE ABSOLUTE
Beloved hearers, I profess to you all, in the name of our
Lord, that it is not your bold and confident affirming that you
love Christ, which will serve your turn when Christ shall judge ;
he will search deep, and judge according to the truth in the
inward parts. How many thousands will then perish as his
utter enemies, that verily thought themselves his friends ? How
easily now might they find their mistake if they would but be
at the pains to examine themselves ? O try, try, Sirs, before
God try you, judge yourselves before Christ judge you. It
would grieve a man's heart that knows what it is to love Christ,
to believe, to be subject to him, to see how rare these are in
the world, and yet how confident and careless most men are. It
may be that you may think much that I so question your love,
yet Christ, that knew all things, questioned Peter's love to him,
and that three times, till it grieved Peter. I am a stranger to
the most of you, and therefore know not your conditions or
inclinations. Yet judge me not censorious if I fear the worst,
and if I measure you by the rest of the world, and then I may
confidently and sadly conclude that Christ hath few loving
subjects among you. If we could hear your oaths and vain
speeches turned to heavenly, soul-edifying discourse, and your
covetousness to eonsv ; onableness, and see that the word of
Christ were your law, and that you laid out your endeavours
for heaven in good earnest, then we should say, c These people
are the loving subjects of Christ/ But when men are enemies to
Christ's doctrine, and ways, and worship, and had rather live
after the flesh, and the world, and the traditions of their
fathers, and are notorious for profaneness, superstition, and en-
mity to reformation, who can choose but condole your case ?
And if your obstinacy will not endure us to help you, yet you
shall give us leave, whether you will or no, to lament you.
Use 2. But it is time that I turn my speech to exhortation,
and O that you would encourage me with your resolutions to
obey ! My business here to-day is as his herald and ambas-
sador, to proclaim the Lord Jesus your King and Saviour, and
to know whether you will heartily acknowledge and take him
so to be or not. And to persuade you to take so fair an offer
while you may have it, and to kiss the Son lest his wrath be
kindled. This is my business here, in which if I had not some
hope to speed, the Lord knows I would not have been here
to-day. You will say, ' This is a common errand ; do you think
we never heard of Christ before V I confess it is common,
blessed be God for it, (and long may it so continue and increase,
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 395
and let it be as constant and durable to us as the sun in the
firmament : and the Lord grant that England's sins or enemies
may never bereave them of the blessing of the gospel, and then
it will be a happier land than yet ever was any on the face of
the earth,) but is it as common to receive Christ in love and
obedience ? I would it were. I know the name of Christ is
common. The swearer doth swear by it, the beggar begs by
it, the charmer puts it into his charms, and the jester into his
jests, and every papist and ignorant protestant doth mutter it
oft times over in his prayers. But who trembleth at it ? Or
triumpheth in it ? Who maketh it his fear and his joy ? And
give up their souls and lives to be governed by Christ ? I do
here solemnly proclaim to you that the Lord Jesus will not be
put off with your compliments ; he cares not for your mere name
of Christianity, nor your cap, nor your knee. If thy heart be
not set upon him, thou art none of his. His word must be
your law, and you must depend on him alone for soul and body,
or never look for mercy at his hands. He is the author of
eternal salvation to them only that obey him. (Heb. v. 9.)
What say you then, Sirs, in answer to my message ? And
what course do you resolve upon ? Shall Christ be your love,
and your Lord, or not ? Will you kiss the Son, or will you slight
him still ? Methinks you should easily be resolved, and say,
' Away with pleasure, and credit, and worldly gain ; away with
these bewitching delights and companions; Christ hath bought
mv heart, and he shall have it ; he is my Lord, and I will be
ruled by him.' Hearers, I hope God hath kept you alive till
now to show you mercy, and brought some sinners hither to-
day to prevail with their hearts ; and my hope is somewhat
strengthened by God's disposal of my own spirit 5 I was strongly
tempted to have preached this sermon in the enticing words of
human wisdom, tending to a proud ostentation of parts ; but
Christ hath assisted me to conquer the temptation, and com-
manded me to preach him in plainness, and evidence of the
Spirit. I come not to persuade you to opinions or factions, to
be for this side, or for that, but to be with all your hearts for
Christ, as ever you look that Christ should be for you : to love
him as he that hath bought you from eternal wrath, and died to
save you from everlasting burnings ; to lay hold on him with
most earnest affectionate apprehension, as a man that is ready
to drown would do upon a bough, or upon the hand of his friend
that would pull him to the shore ; to wait for the law of thy
direction from him, and do nothing till thou hast asked counsel
396 THE ABSOLUTE
at his word, and know his mind, whether thou shouldest do it
or no, till thou feel thy conscience hound by his law, that thou
canst not stir till he give thee leave ; that the commands of
parents and princes may stoop to his, much more the commands
of custom and company, of credit or pleasure, of the world or
flesh ; these are the things that I exhort you to ; and I must
tell you that Christ doth flatly expect them at your hands.
I will here back these exhortations with some persuading
considerations. Think of what I say, and weigh it as we go.
If I speak not truth and reason, then reject it with disdain, and
spare not ; but if it be, and thy conscience tell thee so, take
heed then how thou dost neglect or reject it, lest thou be found
a fighter against the Spirit, and lest the curse of God do seize
upon that heart that would not yield to truth and reason.
And I will draw these considerations only from my text :
1. Thou art else a rebel against thy sovereign Lord. This I
gather from the command in my text : and, indeed, the scope
of the whole psalm. God hath given thee into the hands of
his son, and made him Lord and King of all, and commanded
all men to accept him, and submit unto him. Who can show
such title to the sovereignty ? such right to rule thee as Christ
can do ? He is thy Maker, and so is not Satan ; he dearly
bought thee, and so did not the world ; " Thou wast not re-
deemed with silver, and gold, and corruptible things." (1 Peter
i. 18.) I make this challenge here in the behalf of Christ ; let
any thing in the world step forth and show a better title to thee,
to thy heart, and to thy life, than Christ doth show, and let
them take thy heart, and take the rule. But why do I speak
thus ? I know thou wilt confess it ; and yet wilt thou not yield
him thy chiefest love and obedience : out of thy own mouth
then art thou condemned, and thou proclaimest thyself a know-
ing and wilful rebel.
2. To deny thy affections and subjection to Christ is the
most barbarous unkindness that a sinner can be guilty of. Did
he pity thee in thy lost estate, and take thee up when thou lay-
est wounded in the way, and make thee a plaster of the blood
of his heart ? And is this thy requital ? Did he come down
from heaven to earth, to seek thee when thou wast lost, and
take upon him all thy debt, and put himself into the prison of
the world and flesh ? Hath he paid for thy folly, and borne
that wrath of God which thou must have suffered for ever ? And
doth he not now deserve to be entertained with most affection-
ate respect ? But with a few cold thoughts instead of hearty
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 397
love ; and with a few formal words instead of worship ? What
hurt had it been to him if thou hadst perished ? What would
he have lost by it if thou hadst lain in hell ? Would not justice
have been glorified upon a disobedient wretch ? Might not he
have said to his Father, 6 What are these worms and sinners to
me ? must I smart for their folly ? must I suffer when they have
sinned ? must I debase myself to become man because they
would have exalted themselves to become as God ? If they
will needs undo themselves what is it to me ? If they will cast
themselves into the flames of hell must I go thither to fetch
them out?' Thus Christ might have put off the suffering and
the shame, and let it fall and lie where it was due ; but he did
not ; his compassion would not suffer him to see us suffer; jus-
tice must be satisfied, the threat must be fulfilled ; Christ sceth
that we cannot overcome it, but he can ; therefore, he comes
down into flesh, he lives on earth, he fasteth, he weepeth, he is
weary, he is tempted, he hath not a place to put his head, he is
hated, he is spit upon, he is clothed as a fool, and made a scorn,
he sweateth blood, he is crucified with thieves, he bears the
burden that would have sunk all us to hell ; and must he after
all this be neglected and forgotten, and his laws that should
rule us be laid aside, and be accounted too strict and precise
for us to live by ? O let the heavens blush, and the earth be
ashamed, at this barbarous ingratitude ! How can such a peo-
ple show their faces at his coming, or look him in the face when
he shall judge them for this ! Would you use a friend thus ?
No, nor an enemy. Methinks you should rather wonder with
yourselves that ever Christ should give you leave to love him,
and say, will the Lord endure such a wretch to kiss him ? Will
he suffer himself to be embraced by those arms, which have been
defiled so oft by the embracements of sin ? Will he so highly
honour me as to be his subject and his servant, and to be guided
by such a blessed and perfect law ? And doth he require no
harder conditions than these for my salvation ; take, then, my
heart, Lord, it is thine ; and O that it were better worth thy
having, or take it and make it better $ the spear hath opened
me a passage to thy heart, let the Spirit open thee a passage
into mine ; deservedly may those gates be fuel for hell, that
would not open to let in the King of Glory.
3. To deny thy affection and subjection to the Son is the
greatest folly and madness in the world. Why doth he require
this so earnestly at thy hands ? Is it for thy hurt, or for thy
398 THE ABSOLUTE
good ? Would he make a prey of thee for his own advantage ?
Is it not any need that he hath of thee or of thy service,
or because thou hast need of him for thy direction and
salvation ? Would he steal away thy heart, as the world doth, to
delude it ? Would he draw thee as Satan doth, to serve him,
that he may torment thee ? If so, it were no wonder that thou
art so hardly drawn to him ; but thou knowest sure that Christ
hath none of these ends.
The truth is this : his dying on the cross is but part of the
work that is necessary to thy salvation ; this was but the paying
of the debt ; he must give thee moreover a peculiar interest,
and make that to be absolutely thine, which was thine but con-
ditionally ; he must take off thy rags, and wash thy sores, and
qualify thy soul for thy prepared glory, and bring thee out of the
prison of sin and death, and present thee to his Father blameless
and undefiled, and estate thee in greater dignity than thou fell
from : and all this must he do by drawing thee to himself, and
laying himself upon thee as the prophet upon the child, and
closing thy heart with his heart, and thy will with his will, and
thy thoughts and ways with the rule of his word ; and is this
against thee, or for thee ? Is there any hurt to thee in all this ?
I dare challenge earth and hell, and all the enemies of Christ in
both, to show the least hurt that ever he caused to the soul of a
believer, or the least wrong to the soul of any.
And must he then have such a stir to do thee good ? Must he
so beseech thee to be happy, and follow thee with entreaties ? And
yet art thou like a stock that neither hears nor feels ? Nay, dost
thou not murmur and strive against him, as if he were about to
do thee a mischief, and would rather cut thy throat than cure
thee, and were going to destroy thee, and not to save thee ? I
appeal to any that hath not renounced his reason, whether this
be not notorious brutish unreasonableness ; and whether thou
be not like a beast, that must be cast or held while you dress
his sores, than to a man that should help on his own recovery.
Foolish sinner ! it is thy sin that hurts thee, and not thy Savi-
our ; why dost thou not rather strive against that ? It is the
devil that would destroy thee, and thou dost not grudge, at thy
obedience to him. Be judge thyself, whether this be wise or
equal dealing.
Sinner, I beseech thee in the behalf of thy poor soul, if thou
have such a mind to renounce thy Saviour, do it not till thou
hast found a better master : say as Peter, " Whither shall we go
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 399
Lord? thou hast the words of eternal life I and when thou
knovvest once where to be better, then go thy way ; part with
Christ, and spare not. If thy merry company, or thy honour,
or thy wealth, or all the friends and delights in the world, will
do that for thee which Christ hath done, and which at last he
will do if thou stick to him, then take them for thy gods, and
let Christ go. In the mean time let me prevail with thee, as
thou art a man of reason, sell not thy Saviour till thou know
for what; sell not thy soul till thou know why; sell not thy hopes
of heaven for nothing. God forbid that thy wilful folly should
bring thee to hell, and there thou shouldest lie roaring and cry-
ing out for ever, c This is the reward of my neglecting Christ ;
he would have led me to glory, and I would not follow him ; I
sold heaven for a few merry hours, for a little honour, and ease,
and delight, to my flesh : here I lie in torment, because I would
not be ruled by Christ, but chose my lusts and pleasures before
him.' Sinner, do not think I speak harshly or uncharitably to
call this neglect of Christ thy folly ; as true as thou livest and
nearest me this day, except thy timely submission do prevent it,
which God grant it may, thou wilt one of these days befool thy-
self a thousand times more than I now befool thee, and call thy-
self mad, and a thousand times mad, when thou thinkest how
fair thou wast for heaven, and how ready Christ was to have
been thy Saviour and thy Lord, and how light thou madest of
his offers ; either this will prove true to thy cost, or else am I a
false prophet, and a cursed deceiver. Be wise, therefore, be
learned, and kiss the Son.
The former considerations were drawn from the aggravations
of the sin ; the following are drawn from the aggravations of the
punishment, and from the words of the text too.
1 God will be angry if you kiss not the Son. His wrath
is as fire, and this neglect of Christ is the way to kindle it. If
thou art not a believer thou art condemned already ; but this
will bring upon thee double condemnation. Believe it for a
truth, all thy sins, as they are against the covenant of works,
even the most heinous of them, are not so provoking and de-
stroying as thy slighting of Christ. Oh ! what will the Father say
to such an unworthy wretch ! ' Must I send my Son from my
bosom to suffer for thee ? Must he groan when thou shouldest
groan, and bleed when thou shouldest bleed, and die when thou
shouldest die ? And canst thou not now be persuaded to em-
brace him, and obey him ? Must the world be courted whilst
400 THE ABSOLUTE
he stands by ? Must he have the naked title of thy Lord and
Saviour while thy fleshly pleasures and profits have thy heart ?
What wrath can be too great, what hell too hot, for such an
ungrateful, unworthy wretch ! Must I prepare thee a portion of
the blood of my Son, and wilt thou not be persuaded now to
drink it ? Must I be at so much cost to save thee, and wilt
thou not obey that thou mayest be saved ? Go seize upon him,
justice, let my wrath consume thee, let hell devour thee, let
thy own conscience for ever torment tnee ; seeing thou hast
chosen death, thou shalt have it, and as thou hast rejected
heaven, thou shalt never see it, " but my wrath shall abide upon
thee for ever." (John iii. 36.) Wo to thee, sinner, if this be
once thy sentence ! Thou wert better have all the world angry
with thee, and bound in an oath against thee, as the Jews
against Paul, than that one drop of his anger should light upon
thee ; thou wert better have heaven and earth to fall upon
thee, than one degree of God's displeasure.
2. As this wrath is of fire, so is it a consuming fire, and
causeth the sinner utterly to perish. All this is plain in the
text; not that the being of the soul will cease, such a perishing
the sinner would be glad of; a happy man would he think him-
self, if he might die as the brutes, and be no more : but such
wishes are vain. It is but a glimpse of his own condition, which
he shall see in the great combustion of the world ; when he seeth
the heaven and earth on fire, he seeth but the picture of his ap-
proaching wo ; but alas ! it is he that must feel the devouring
fire. The world will be but refined or consumed by its fire ;
but there must he bum, and burn for ever, and yet be neither
consumed or refined. The earth will not feel the flames
that burn it, but his soul and body must feel it with a witness; lit-
tle know his friends that are honourably interring his corpse what
his miserable soul is seeing arid feeling ; here endeth the story
of his prosperity and delights, and now begins the tragedy that
will never end ; oh ! how his merry days are vanished as a
dream, and his jovial life as a tale that is told ; his witty jests,
his pleasant sports, his cards and dice, his merry company and
wanton dalliance, his cups and queans, yea, his hopes of heaven
and confident conceits of escaping this wrath, are all perished
with him in the way ; as the wax melteth before the fire, as the
chaff is scattered before the wind, as the stubble consumeth be-
fore the flames, as the flowers do wither before the scorching
sun ; so are all his sinful pleasures withered, consumed, scattered
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 401
and melted. And is not the hearty embracing of Christ, and
subjection to him, a cheap prevention of all this ? Oh ! who
among you can dwell with the devouring- fire ! " Who can dwell
with the everlasting burnings !" (Isaiah xxxiii. 14.) This God
hath said he will surely do if you are able to gainsay and resist
him ; try your strength, read his challenge, u Who would set
the briars and thorns against me in battle ? I would go through
them, I would burn them together." (Isaiah xxvii. 4.)
3. This perishing will be sudden and unexpected, in the way
©f their sin and resistance of Christ, in the way of their fleshly
delights and hopes ; " They shall perish in the way." (1 Thes*
v. 3 ; Matt. xxiv. 30.) As fire doth terribly break out in the
night when men are sleeping, and consuineth the fruit of their
long labours ; so will this fire break forth upon their souls, and
how near may it be when you little think on it ! A hundred to
one but some of us present shall within a few months be in
another world, and what world it will be you may easily con-
ceive if you do not embrace and obey the Son. How many have
been smitten, with Herod, in the midst of their vain glory? How-
many, like Ahab, have been wounded in fight, and dunged the
earth with their flesh and blood, who left the Lord's people to
be fed with bread and water of affliction, in confidence of their
own return to peace ? How many have been swallowed up like
Pharaoh and his host, in their rash and malicious pursuit of the
godly ? Little thinks many an ignorant, careless soul what a
change of his condition he shall shortly find ; those thousands of
souls that are now in misery did as little think of that doleful
state while they were merrily pleasing the flesh on earth, and
forgetting Christ and their eternal state, as you do now ; they
could as contemptuously jeer the preacher as you, and verily be-
lieved that all this talk was but words, and wind, and empty
threats, and ventured their souls as boldly upon their carnal
hopes. Little thought Sodom of the devouring fire when they
were furiously assaulting the door of their righteous reprover !
as little do the raging- enemies of godliness among us think of
the deplorable state which they are hastening to ! They will
cry out themselves then, c Little did I think to see this day, or
feel these torments !' Why, thou would eat not think of it, or
else thoumightest ; God told thee in Scripture, and ministers in
their preaching, but thou wouldest not believe till it was too late.
4. A little of God's wrath will bringdown all this upon those
vol. xvii. J) P
402 THE ABSOLUTE
that emhrace not and obey not the Son. If his wrath he kin-
died, yea, hut a little, &e. As his mercy being the mercy of
an infinite God, a little of it will sweeten a world of crosses \ so
therefore will a little of his wrath consume a world of pleasures;
one spark fell among the Bethshemites, and consumed fifty
thousand and seventy men, hut for looking into the ark, till the
people cry out, " Who can stand before this holy Lord God }"
(1 Sarn. vi. 19, 20.) How then will the neglecters of Christ
stand before him ? Sirs, me thinks we should not hear of this as
strangers, or unbelievers ! There did hut one spark fall upon
England, and what a combustion hath it cast this kingdom into.
How many houses and towns hath it consumed ? How many
thousands of people hath it empoverished. How many children
hath it left fatherless : and how many thousand bodies hath it
bereaved of their souls ? And though there are as many hearty
prayers and tears poured forth to quench it as most kingdoms
on earth have had, yet is the fire kindled afresh, and threaten*
eth a more terrible desolation than before, as if it would turn
us all to ashes. One spark fell upon Germany, another upon
Ireland, and what it hath done there I need not tell you. If a
little of this wrath do but seize upon thy body, what cries, and
groans, and lamentations doth it raise. If it be on one mem-
ber, yea, but a tooth, how dost thou roar with intolerable pain,
and wouldest not take the world to live for ever in that condi-
tion. If it seize upon the conscience, what torments doth it
cause, as if the man were already in hell : he thinketh every
thing he seeth is against him ; he feareth every bit he eateth
should be his bane. If he sleep, he dreams of death and judg-
ment ; when he avvaketh, his conscience and horror awake with
him : he is weary of living, and fearful of dying ; even the
thoughts of heaven are terrible to him, because he thinks it is
not for him. Oh 1 what a pitiful sight it is to see a man under
the wrath of God ! And are these little sparks so intolerable
hot ? What then do you think are the everlasting flames ? Be-
loved hearers, if God had not spoke this I durst not have spoke
it : the desire of my soul is, that you may never feel it, or else
I should never have chosen so unpleasing a subject, but that
I hope the foreknowing may help you to prevent it ; but let me
tell you from God, that as sure as the heaven is over your head,
and the earth under your feet, except the Son of God be nearer
thy heart, and dearer to thy heart than friends, or goods, or
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 403
pleasures, or life, or any tiling in this world, this burning
wrath will never be prevented. (Matt. x. 37 ; Luke xiv. 46.)
5. When this wrath of God is thoroughly kindled, the world
will discern the blessed from the wretched. " Then blessed are
they that trust in him." It is the property of the wicked to be
wise too late. Those that now they esteem but precise fools,
will then be acknowledged blessed men. Bear with their scorns,
Christians, in the meantime, they will very shortly wish them-
selves in your stead, and would give all that ever they were
masters of, that they had sought and loved Christ as earnestly
as you, and had a little of your oil when they find their lamps
are out. (Matt. xxv. 8.)
And now, hearers, what is your resolution ? Perhaps you
have been enemies to Christ, under the name of Christians ; will
you still be so ? Have you not loathed this busy, diligent serving
of him ; and hated them that most carefully seek him, more
than the vilest drunkard or blasphemer ? Have not his word, and
service, and Sabbaths, been a burden to you ? Have not multi-
tudes ventured their lives against his ordinances and govern-
ment ? Nay, is it not almost the common voice of the nation in
effect: e Give us our sports, and liberty of sinning; give us our
readers, and singing men, and drunken preachers ; give us our
holidays and ceremonies, and the customs of our forefathers ;
away with these precise fellows, they are an eye-sore to us ;
these precise preachers shall not control us, this precise Scrip-
ture shall be no law to us :' and, consequently, this Christ shall
not rule over us ?
How long hath England rebelled against his government ?
Mr. Udal told them, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, c that if
they would not set up the discipline of Christ in the church,
Christ would set it up himself in a way that would make their
hearts to ache.' I think their hearts have ached by this time ;
and as they judged him to the gallows for his prediction, so
hath Christ executed them by thousands for their rebellion
against him ; and yet they are as unwilling of his government as
ever. The kings of the earth are afraid lest Christ's govern-
ment should unking them ; the rulers are jealous lest it will
depose them from their dignities ; even the reformers that have
ventured all to set it up, are jealous lest it will encroach upon
their power and privileges; kings are afraid of it, and think
themselves but half kings, where Christ doth set up his word and
discipline ; parliaments are afraid of it, lest it should usurp their
D d2
404 THE ABSOLUTE
authority ; lawyers are afraid of it, lest it should take away their
gains, and the laws of Christ should over-top the laws of the
land ; the people are afraid of it, lest it will compel them to
subjection to that law and way which their souls abhor : indeed,
if men may be their own judges, then Christ hath no enemies
in England at all, we are his friends, and all good Christians.
It is precisians and rebels that men hate, and not Christ : it is
not the government of Christ that we are afraid of, but the
domineering of aspiring, ambitious presbyters, (viz., that genera-
tion of godly, learned, humble ministers, who have done more
than ever did any before them, to make themselves incapable
of preferment or domineering,) and when men disobey and dis-
regard our doctrine, it is not Christ, but the preacher, that they
despise and disobey. And if the Jews might so have been their
own judges, it was not the Son of God whom they crucified, but
an enemy to Caesar, and a blasphemer that works by the devil.
It was not Paul, a saint, that they persecuted, but one that they
found to be a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition amongst
the people. But were there no seditious persons but apostles
and Christians ; nor no troublers of Israel but Elias ; nor no
enemies to Caesar but Christ and his friends ? Oh ! God will
shortly take off the veil of hypocrisy from the actions of the
world, and make them confess that it was Christ they resisted,
and that it was his holy ways and word that did kindle their
fury ; else would they as soon have fallen upon the ungodly
rabble, as they did upon the most zealous and conscionable
Christians : and, however you mangle and deform them with
your false accusations and reproach, he will then know and own
his people and his cause, and will say to the world, e In despising
them you despised me ; and, inasmuch as you did it to one of
these little ones, you did it unto me/ As Dr. Stoughton saith,
c If you strike a schismatic, and God find a saint lie a-bleeding,
and you to answer it, I would not be in your coat for more than
you got by it.' Hath the world ever gained by resisting Christ ?
Doth it make the crown sit faster on the heads of kings ? Or,
must they not rather do to Christ as King John to his supposed
vicar, resign their crowns to him, and take them from him again
as his tributaries, before they can hold them by a certain
tenure ? Read over but this psalm, and judge : " Herod must
kill the child Jesus to secure his crown : the Jews must kill him
lest the Romans should come and take away their place and
nation. (John xi. 48.) And did this means secure them; or,
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 405
did it bring upon them the destruction which they thought to
avoid?
Or have the people been greater gainers by this than by their
kings ? What hath England got by resisting his gospel and go-
vernment, by hating his servants, and by scorning his holv ways ?
What have you got by it in this city ? What say you ? Have
you yet done with your enmity and resistance ? Have you
enough ; or would you yet have more ? If you have not done
with Christ, he hath not done with you ; you may try again,
and follow on as far as Pharaoh if you will, but if you be
not losers in the latter end, I have lost my judgment ; and
if you return in peace, God hath not spoken by me. (1 Kings
xxii. 28.)
Sirs, I am loth to leave you till the bargain be made : What
say you? Do you heartily consent that Christ shall be your
Sovereign, his word your law, his people your companions, his
worship your recreation, his merits your refuge, his glorv your
end, and himself the desire and delight of your souls ? The Lord
Jesus Christ now waiteth upon you for your resolution and
answer ; thou wilt very shortly wait upon him for thy doom :
as ever thou wouldest then have him speak life to thy soul, do
thou now resolve upon the way of life. Remember thou art
almost at death and judgment. What wouldest thou resolve if
thou knewest that it were to-morrow ? If thou didst but see
what others do now suffer for neglecting him, that doth now offer
thee his grace, what wouldest thou then resolve to do ? Sirs, it
stirreth my heart to look upon you, (as XerxTes upon his army,)
and to think that it is not an hundred years till every soul of you
shall be in heaven or in hell ! and it maybe, not an hundred hours
till some of your souls must take their leave of your bodies ; when
it comes to that, then you will cry, c away with the world,
awav with my pleasures ; nothing can comfort me now but
Christ ;' why, then, will you not be of the same mind now ?
When the world cries, ' away with this holiness, and praying,
and talking of heaven ! Give us our sports, and our profits, and
the customs of our forefathers,' that is, " away with Christ, and
give us Barabbas," then do ye cry, l away with all these, and
give us Christ.
Oh ! if it might stand with the will of God that I might
choose what effect this sermon should have upon your hearts ;
verily, it should be nothing that should hurt you in the least ;
but this it should be, it should now be to fasten upon your souls,
40(5 THIS ABSOLUTE
and pierce into your consciences, as an arrow that is drawn out
of the quiver of God ; it should follow thee home to thy house,
and bring thee down on thy knees in secret, and make thee
there lament thv case, and cry out in the bitterness of thy
spirit, c Lord, I am the sinner that have neglected thee ; I have
tasted more sweetness in the world than in thy blood, and taken
more pleasure in my earthly labours and delights than I have
done in praying to thee, or meditating on thee ; I have compli-
mented with thee by a cold profession, but my heart was never
set upon thee/ And here should it make thee lie in tears and
prayers, and follow Christ with thy cries and complaints, till he
should take thee up from the dust, and assure thee of his par-
don, and change thy heart, and close it with his own, If thou
wert the dearest friend that I have in the world, this is the suc-
cess that I would wish this sermon with thy soul, that it might
be as a voice still sounding in thine ears, that when thou art
next in thy sinful company or delight, thou mightest, as it were,
hear this voice in thy conscience, 6 Is this thine obedience to
him that bought thee?' That when thou art next forgetting
Christ, and neglecting his worship in secret, or in thy family, or
public, thou mightest see this sentence, as it were, written upon
thy wall, u Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and thou perish. "
That thou mightest see it, as it were, written upon the tester
of thy bed, as often as thou liest down in an unregenerate
state ; and that it may keep thine eyes waking, and thy soul
disquieted, and give thee no rest, till thou hadst rest in Christ.
In a word ; if it were but as much in my hands as it is in yours,
what should become of this sermon, I hope it would be the
best sermon to thee that ever thou heardest : it should lay thee
at the feet of Christ, and leave thee in his arms. Oh ! that I
did but know what arguments would persuade you, and what
words would work thy heart hereto ! If I were sure it would
prevail, I would come down from the pulpit, and go from
man to man, upon my knees, with this request and advice
in my text : Oh ! " kiss the Son, lest he be angry ; and you
perish."
But if thy hardened heart make light of all, and thou go on
still in thy careless neglect of Christ, and yet wilt not believe
but thou art his friend and servant, I do here from the word,
and in the name of Christ, pass this sentence upon thy soul :
Thou shalt go hence, and perhaps linger out in thy security a
few days more, and then be called by death to judgment, where
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 407
thou shalt he doomed to this everlasting fiery wrath. Make
as light of it as thou wilt, feel it thou shalt, put it off and
escape if thou canst ; and when thou hast done, go boast
that thou hast conquered Christ. In the meantime I re-
quire this congregation to bear witness that thou hadst
warning.
This to all in general : my text yet directeth me to speak
more particularly to the rulers and judges of the earth.
Honourable and reverend judges, worshipful magistrates, if
you were all kings and emperors, all is one to Christ, you were
but high and mighty dust and ashes ; Christ sendeth his sum-
mons first to you, he knows the leaders' interest in the vulgar;
vou are the commanders in the host of God, and must do him
more service than the common soldiers : if one of you should
neglect him, and stand out against him, he will begin with you
in the sight of the rest, and make your greatness a stepping-
stone to the honour of his justice, that the lowest may under-
stand what they have to do when they see the greatest cannot
save themselves.
Shall I say you are wiser than the people, and therefore that
this admonition is needless to you ? No, then I should accuse
the Spirit in my text : the cedars of the earth have always
hardly stooped to Christ, which hath made so many of them
rooted up. Your honours are an impediment to that self-abas-
ing which he expecteth : your dignities will more tend to blind
you than to illuminate. There are few of any sort, but fewest
of the great, and wise, and mighty, that are called : yet a man
would think that among those that have held out, in these
trying times, there should be no need of these suspicions : but
hath there not been always a succession of sinners, even of those
that have beheld the ruin of their predecessors ? Who would
have thought that a generation that had seen the wonders in
Egypt, and had passed through the sea, and been maintained in
a wilderness with constant miracles, should yet be so vile idola-
ters, or murmuring unbelievers, that only two of them should
enter into rest ? The best of saints have need of self-suspicion
and vigilancy. My advice to you, therefore, is this, learn wisdom
by the examples that your eyes have seen : " Them that honour
God, he will honour ; and they that despise him, shall be lightly
esteemed. " (1 Sam. ii. 30.)
More particularly, let me advise you as your duty to the
408 THE ABSOLUTE
Son, 1. That you take your commission and office as from him.
I think it a doctrine more common than true, that ministers
only are under Christ the Mediator, and magistrates are onlv
under God as Creator. Christ is now Lord of all, and vou are
his servants, as there is no power but from God, so none from
God but by Christ. Look upon yourselves as his vicegerents,
therefore do not that which beseemeth not a vicegerent of
Christ. Remember that as you see to the execution of the
laws of the land, so will Christ see that his laws be obeyed by
you, or executed on you. Remember when you sit and judge
offenders, that you represent him that will judge you and all the
world. And O how lively a resemblance have you to raise your
apprehension ! Think with yourselves, ' Thus shall men
tremble before his bar ; thus shall they wait to hear their doom;'
and be sure that your judgment be such as may most lively
represent the judgment of Christ, that the just may depart from
your bar with joy, and the unjust with sadness. Let your
justice be most severe where Christ is most severe, and so far
as you can exercise your clemencv, let it be about those offences
which our laws are more rigorous against than the laws of
God. Re sure yet that you understand the extent of your com-
mission, that you are not the sole officers of Jesus Christ, you
are under him as he is head over all ; ministers are under him
as he is head to his church. (Eph. i. 22.) Ministers are as truly
the magistrates' teachers, as magistrates are their governors,
yea, bv as high and undoubted authority must they oversee,
govern, and command ministerially, as their Lord's ambassa-
dors, both kings and parliaments to do whatsoever is written
in this bible, as you may command them to obey the laws of the
land ; yea, and as strict a bond lieth on you to obey them so
far as they speak according to this word, and keep within the
bounds of their calling, as doth on them to obey you in yours.
(Heb. xiii. 7, 17.) Deal not with them so dissemblingly as
to call them your pastors, teachers, overseers, and rulers, (as
Scripture bids you,) and yet to learn of them but what you list,
or to deny them leave to teach or advise you, further than thev
receive particular warrant and direction from yourselves. Should
our assembly limit all their ministerial advice to the warrant
and direction of parliament, and not extend it to the warrant
and directions of Christ, would they not become the servants
and pleasers of men ? If you do not your best to set up all the
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 409
government of Christ, even that in and proper to his church,
as well as that which is over them, and for them, men may
well think it is your own seats, and not Christ's that you would
advance. I would all the magistrates in England did well con-
sider that Christ hath been teaching them this seven years,
that their own peace or honours shall not be set up before his
gospel and government 5 and that they do but tire themselves
in vain in such attempts ; then they would learn to read my
text with the vulgar, apprehendite disciplinam. And if the de-
cisive power of the ministry be doubtful, yet at least they would
set up their nunciative in its vigour. Christ will rule England
either as subjects or as rebels, and all that kings and states do
gain by opposing his rule, will not add one cubit to the stature
of their greatness. Yet do I not understand by the government
of Christ, a rigid conformity to the model of this or that party,
or faction, with a violent extirpation of every dissenter. It
is the ignorant part of divines, (alas ! such there are,) who,
with the simple fellow in Erasmus, do expound Paul's hcereticum
hominem devita, i. e. de vita tolle. It is the essentials, and not
the accidentals of discipline that I speak of: and if some
disengaged standers-by be not mistaken who have the advan-
tage by standing out of the dust of contention, each party hath
some of these essentials, and the worst is nearer the truth than
his adversary is aware of: and were not the crowd and noise
so great that there is no hope of being heard, one would think
it should be possible to reconcile them all. However, shall the
work be undone while each party striveth to have the doing
of it ? I was afraid when I read the beginning and end of this
controversy in France. The learned Ramus pleadeth for po-
pular church government in the synods; they rejected it as an
unwarrantable novelty ; the. contention grew sharp, till the Pa-
risian massacre silenced the difference. And must our diffe-
rences have so sharp a cure ? Will nothing unite disjoined
Christians but their own blood ? God forbid. But in the mean
time, while we quarrel, the work standeth still. Some would
have all the workers of iniquity now taken out of the kingdom
of Christ, forgetting that the angels must take them out at last.
(Matt, xiii.) Some ministers think as Ivlyconius did, when he
was called to the ministry, by a vision leading him into a corn-
held, and bidding him reap, he thought he must put in his
sickle at the bottom, till he was told ' domino meo non opus est
410 THE ABSOLUTE
str amine, moth arista in horrea colli y ant ur' c Mv master
needeth not straw; gather but the ears, and it shall suffice/
Once more : I know I speak not to the parliament that should
remedy it, but yet that you may be helpful in your places to
advance this work of Christy let me tell you what is the thing
in England that cries for reformation next our sins, even the
fewness of overseers in great congregations, which maketh the
greatest part of pastoral work to lie undone, and none to watch
over the people in private, because they are scarce sufficient
for the public work. It is pity that Musculus, that may be
head of a society of students if he will continue a papist, must
weave and dig for his living if he will be a protestant. It is
pity that even Luther's wife and children must wander destitute
of maintenance when he is dead, when iEsop, the stage-player,
can leave his son one hundred and fifty thousand pounds ; and
Roscius have thirty pounds a- day for the same trade ; and Aris-
totle be allowed eight hundred talents to further his search into
the secrets of nature. But am I pleading that ministers may
have more maintenance ? No, be it just or unjust, it is none
of my errand. But O that the church had more ministers,
which, though at the present they cannot have for want of men,
yet hereafter they might have if it were not for want of main-
tenance. Alas ! then, what pity is it that every reformation
should diminish the churches' patrimony. If the men have of-
fended, or if the office of bishops or deans be unwarrantable,
yet what have the revenues done ? Is it not pity that one troop
of an hundred men shall have seven commanding officers allowed
them, besides others, and ten thousand, or forty thousand, shall
have but one or two overseers allowed them for their souls,
when the ministerial work is more laborious, and of greater
concernment than the work of those commanders ? I tell you
again, the great thing that cries for reformation in England,
next to sin, is the paucity of ministers in great congregations.
I tell you this, that you may know which way to improve your
several interests for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ
in England.
To you, lawyers and jurors, my advice is this, " Kiss the
Son." Remember the judgment is Christ's, every cause of truth
and innocency doth he own, and will call it his cause. Wo,
therefore, to him that shall oppose it ! Remember every time
you take a fee to plead against a cause that you know to be
SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. 411
just, you take a fee against a cause of Christ. Will you be of
counsel against him that is your Counsellor and King ? Dare you
plead against him that you expect should plead for you ? or
desire judgment, as the Jews, against your Lord and Judge ?
Hath he not told you that he will say, " Inasmuch as ye did it
to one of these little ones, ye did it unto me ?" Remember,,
therefore, when a fee is offered you against the innocent, that
it is a fee against Christ; and Judas's gain will be loss in the end,
and will be too hot to hold long ; you will be glad to bring it
back, and glad if you could be well short of it, and cry, ' I
have sinned in betraying the cause of the innocent.' Say not
it is our calling that we must live upon. If any man of you
dare upon such grounds plead a cause against his conscience,
if his conscience do not plead it again more sharply against
him, say 1 am a false prophet. If any, therefore, shall say of
you, as the Cardinals of Luther, ' Cur homini os non obstruitis
auro, et argenio,' let the same answer serve turn, c Hem pecu-
mam, non curat, &c. If any honourable or worshipful friend
must be pleasured, inquire first whether he be a better friend
than Christ. Tell him the cause is Christ's, and you cannot
befriend him, except he procure you a dispensation from him.
When Pompey saw his soldiers ready to fly, he lay down in the
passage, and told them they should tread upon him then ;
which stopped their flight. So suppose every time you are
drawn in to oppose a just cause, that you saw Christ saying,
' Thou must trample upon me, if thou do this.' As Luther to
Melancthon, 6 Ne causa fidei sit sinejide,' so say I to you all,
' Ne causa justitiae sit sine justitid.' When you begin to be cold
in a good cause, suppose you saw Christ showing you his scars,
as the soldier did to Caesar when he desired him to plead
his cause, ( See here, I have done more than plead for you/
We have had those that have had a tongue for a fee or a friend,
but none for Christ ; but God hath now, therefore, shut their
mouths, and we may say of them, as Granius by his bad
lawyer, when he heard him grown hoarse, c If they had not
lost their voices, we had lost our cause.' To conclude, remem-
ber, all of you, that there is an appeal from these earthly-
judgments ; these causes must all be heard again, your witnesses
re-examined, your oaths, pleadings, and sentences reviewed,
and then, as Lampridius saith of Alexander Severus, that he
would vomit choler if he saw a corrupt judge, so will Christ
412 THE ABSOLUTE
vomit wrath, and vomit you out in wrath from his presence, if
corrupt. Therefore, " kiss the son, lest he be angry, and you
perish," &c. I am sensible how I have encroached on your
great affairs. Melancthon was wont to tell of a priest that
begun his sermon thus, ' Scio quod vos non libenter auditis, et
ego non libenter concionor, non diu igitur vos teneam.' But I
may say contrary. I am persuaded that you hear with a good
will, and I am certain that I preach willingly, and therefore I
was bold to hold you the longer.
SERMON OF JUDGMENT
PREACHED AT PAUL'S,
BEFORE
THE HON. LORD MAYOR AND ALDERMEN
OF THE CITY OF LONDON,
Dec. \7th, 1654.
AND NOJV ENLARGED.
Cf Every one of you shall give account of himself to God." — Rom. xiv. 12.
'* The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear
his voice, and shall come forth. They that have done good to the resur-
rection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of dam-
nation."— John v. 28, 29.
TO THE
RIGHT HON. CHRISTOPHER PACK,
LORD MAYOR OF LONDON;
WITH THE
RIGHT WORSHIPFUL ALDERMEN.
Right Honourable,
Being desired to preach before you at Paul's, I was fain to
preach a sermon which J had preached once before to a poor
ignorant congregation in the country, having little leisure for
study in London. I was glad to see that the more curious sto-
machs of the citizens did not nauseate our plain country doctrine,
which I seemed to discern in the diligent attention of the great-
est congregation that ever I saw met for such a work. But I
little expected that you should have so far esteemed that dis-
course, as to have thought it meet for the "view of the world, as
I understood by a message from you, desiring it may be printed.
I readily obey your will, when it gives me the least intimation
of the will of God. It is possible some others may afford it the
like favourable acceptance and entertainment. I am sure the
subject is as necessary as common, and the plainness makes it
the litter for the ignorant, who are the far greater number, and
have the greatest need. I have added the ninth, tenth, eleventh,
and twelfth heads, or common places, which 1 did not deliver
to you for want of time, and because the rest are too briefly
touched (as contrived for an hour's work). I have enlarged
these, though making them somewhat unsuitable to the iest,
yet suitable to the use of those they are now intended for : the
directions also in the end are added.
Blessed be the Father of Lights ! who hath set up so many
burning and shining lights in your city, and hath watered you
so plenteously with the rivers of his sanctuary, that you have
frequent opportunities for the refreshment of your souls, to the
joy of your friends, the grief of your enemies, and the glory of
416 TO THE RIGHT HON. CHRISTOPHER PACK.
that Providence which hath hitherto maintained them, in de-
spite of persecution, heresies, and hell ! It was not always so in
London : it is not so in other places, or famous cities in the
world ; nor are you sure that it will he always so with you. It
doth me good to rememher what blessed lights have shined
among you, that now are more gloriously shining in a higher
sphere — Preston, Sibbes, Stoughton, Taylor, Stock, Randal,
Gouge, Gataker, with multitudes more that now are with Christ.
It did me good to read in the preface to Mr. Gataker's funeral
sermon, by one of your reverend and faithful guides, what a
number of sound and unanimous labourers are yet close at work
in that part of Christ's vineyard : and it did me good in that
short experience and observation, while I was there, to hear and
see so much of their prudence, unity, and fidelity.
Believe it : it is the gospel of Christ that is your glory ; and
if London be more honourable than other great and famous
cities of the earth, it is the light of God's face, and the plenty
and power of his ordinances and Spirit, that doth advance and
honour it. .0 know, then, the dav of vour visitation !
7 7 j J
Three things I shall take leave to propound to your considera-
tion, which, I am certain, God requireth at your hand. The
first is, that you grow in knowledge, humility, heavenliness, and
unity, according to the blessed means that you enjoy. In my
eyes, it is the greatest shame to a people in the world, and a
sign of barbarism or blockishness, when we can hear and read
what a famous, learned, powerful minister such a place, or
such a place, had, and yet see as much ignorance, ungod-
liness, unruliness, and sensuality, as if the gospel had scarce
ever been there. I hope it is not thus with you, but I have found
it so in too many places of England. We who never saw the
faces of their ministers, but have only read their holy labours,
have been ready to think, 6 Sure there are few ignorant or un-
godly ones in such a congregation ! Sure they are a people rich
in grace and eminently qualified above their brethren, who have
lived under such teaching as this ! At least, sure there can be
none left who have an enmity to the fear of God !' But when
we have come to the towns where such men spent their lives,
and laid out their labours, we have found ignorant, sottish
worldlings, unprofitable, or giddy, unstable professors, and some
haters of godliness among them. O what a shame is this in
the eves of wise men ! And what a confounding aggravation
of their sin before God ! Thrive, therefore, and be fruitful in
TO THE RIGHT HON. CHRISTOPHER PACK. 417
the vineyard of the Lord, that it may not repent him that he
hath planted and watered you.
The second is this, improve your interest to the utmost, for
the continuance of a faithful ministry among you, and when any
places are void, do what you can to get a supply of the most
able men. Your city is the heart of the nation ; you cannot be
sick but we shall all feel it. If you be infected with false doc-
trines, the countries will, ere long, receive the contagion. You
have a very great influence on all the land, for good or evil !
And do you think the undermining enemies of the church have
not a special design upon you in this point, and will not promote
it as far as is in their power ? Could they but get in popish or
dividing teachers among you, they know how many advantages
they should gain at once. They would have some to grieve and
trouble your faithful guides, and hinder them in the work, and
lessen that estimation which, by their unity, they would obtain :
and every deceiver will hope to catch some fish that casteth his
net among such store. We beseech you, if there be learned,
holy, judicious men in England, that can be had for supply of
such occasions, let them be yours, that you may be fed with the
best, and guided by the wisest, and we may have all recourse
to you for advice ; and where there are most opposers and se-
ducers, there may be the most powerful, convincing helps at
hand. Let us, in the country, have the honest, raw, young
preachers, and see that you have the chief fathers and pillars in
the church. I speak it not for your sakes alone, but because we
have all dependence on you.
The third thing which I humbly crave is, that you will "know
them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord,
and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for
their works' sake, and be at peace among yourselves. " (1 Thes.
v. 12, 13.) And that you will, instead of grieving or rejecting
your guides, " obey them that have the rule over you, and sub-
mit vourselves ; for they watch for your souls as they that must
give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief,
for that is unprofitable for you." (Heb. xiii. 17.) Encourage
your teachers, for their work is great, their spirits are weak,
they are but frail men; the enemy is more industrious against
them than any men, and their discouragements are very many,
and the difficulties which they must encounter are very great.
Especially obey, submit, and encourage them in the work of
government and exercise of Christ's discipline, and managing
vol.. XVII. £ K
418 TO THE RIGHT HON. CHRISTOPHER PACK.
the keys of the kingdom which he hath put into their hands.
Do you not perceive what a strait your teachers are in. The
Lord Jesus requireth them to exercise his discipline faithfully
and impartially. He giveth them not empty titles of rule, but
lays upon them the burden of ruling. It is his work more
than their honour that he intends ; and if they will have the
honour, it must be by the work. The work is, as to teach the
ignorant, and convince the unbelieving and gainsaying, so to
admonish the disorderly and scandalous, and to reject and cast
out of the communion of the church the obstinate and impeni-
tent, and to set by the leprous that they infect not the rest, and
to separate thus the precious from the vile by Christ's discipline,
that dividing separation and soul-destroying transgressions may
be prevented or cured. This work Christ hath charged upon
them, and will have it done whoever is against it. If they obey
him, and do it, what a tumult, what clamours and discontents
will they raise ! How many will be ready to rise up against
them with hatred and scorn ! Though it be the undoubted
work of Christ, which, even under persecution, was performed
by the church guides. When they do but keep a scandalous,
untractable sinner from the communion of the church in the
Lord's supper, what repinings doth it raise ! But, alas ! this is
a small part of the discipline. If all the apparently obstinate
and impenitent were cast out, what a stir would they make ;
and if Christ be not obeved, what a stir will conscience make :
and it is not only between Christ and men, but between men
and men that your guides are put upon straits. The separatists
reproach them for suffering the impenitent to continue members
of their churches, and make it the pretence of their separation
from them, having little to say of any moment against the au-
thorised way of government, but only against our slackness in
the execution ; and if we should set to the close exercise of it,
as is meet, how would city and country ring of it ; and what
indignation should we raise in the multitude against us. O what
need have your guides of your encouragement and best assist-
ance in this strait! God hath set them on a work so un-
grateful and displeasing to flesh and blood that they cannot be
faithful in it, but twenty to one they will draw a world of hatred
upon themselves, if not men's fists about their ears. Festered
sores will not be lanced and searched with ease. Corrupted
members are unwilling to be cut off and cast aside, especially
if any of the great ones fall under the censure, who are big in
TO THE RJGHT HON. CHRISTOPHER PACK. 419
the eyes of the world, and in their own ; and yet our sovereign
Lord must be obeyed, and his house must be swept, and the
filth cast out, by what names or titles soever it be dignified with
men. He must be pleased, if all be displeased by it. With-
draw not your help, then, from this needful work. It is by the
word, Spirit, and ministry, that Christ, the King of his church,
doth govern it ; not separately, but jointly by all three. To
disobey these is to disobey Christ; and subjection to Christ is
essential to our Christianity. This, well thought on, might do
much to recover the unruly that are recoverable. You may
conjecture by the strange opposition that church government
meets with from all sorts of carnal and corrupted minds, that
there is somewhat in it that is eminently of God. I shall say
no more but this, that it is an able, judicious, godly, faithful
ministry ; not barely heard and applauded, but humbly and
piously submitted to, and obeyed in the Lord, that must be your
truest present glory, and the means of your everlasting peace
and joy.
So testifieth from the Lord your servant in the faith of
Christ,
RICHARD BAXTER.
BE 2
TO THE
IGNORANT OR CARELESS READER.
Seeing the Providence of God hath commanded forth this
plain discourse, I shall hope, upon experience of his dealing in
the like cases with me, that he hath some work for it to do in
the world. Who knows but it was intended for the saving of
thy soul, by opening thine eyes, and awaking thee from thy sin,
who art now in reading of it ! Be it known to thee, it is the
certain truth of God, and of high concernment to thy soul, that
it treateth of, and therefore requireth thy most sober considera-
tion. Thou hast in it, (how weakly soever it is managed by
me,) an advantage put into thy hand from God, to help thee in
the greatest work in the world, even to prepare for the great ap-
proaching judgment. In the name of God, I require thee, cast
not away this advantage ; turn not away thine ears or heart from
this warning that is sent to thee from the living God ! Seeing
all the world cannot keep thee from judgment, nor save thee
in judgment, let not all the world be able to keep thee from a
speedy and serious preparation for it. Do it presently, lest God
come before thou art ready ! Do it seriously, lest the tempter
overreach thee, and thou shouldest be found among the foolish
self-deceivers when it is too late to do it better. I entreat this
of thee on the behalf of thy soul, and as thou tenderest thy
everlasting peace with God, that thou wouldest afford these
matters thy deepest consideration. Think on them, whether
they are not true and weighty: think on them lying down and
rising up : and, seeing this small book is fallen into thy hands,
all that I would beg of thee concerning it is, that thou wouldest
bestow now and then an hour to read it, and read it to thy
family or friends, as well as to thyself; and as you go, consider
what vou read, and pray the Lord to help it to thy heart, and
TO THE IGNORANT OR CARELESS READER. 421
to assist thee in the practice, that it may not rise up in judg-
ment against thee. If thou hast not leisure on the other, take
now and then an hour on the Lord's days, or at night, to that
purpose : and if any passage, through brevity, especially near
the beginning, seem dark to thee, read it again and again, and
ask the help of an instructer, that thou mayest understand it.
May it but help thee out of the snares of sin, and promote the
saving of thy immortal soul, and thy comfortable appearance at
the great day of Christ, I have the thing which I intended and
desired. The Lord open thy heart, and accompany his truth
with the blessing of his Spirit ! Amen.
SERMON OF JUDGMENT,
&C. &C.
2 COR. v. 10, 11.
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,
that cvei*y one may receive the things done in his body,
according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
Knowing, therefore, the terrors of the Lord, we persuade
men.
It is not unlikely that some of those wits that are' taken more
with things new than with things necessary, will marvel that I
chose so common a subject, and tell me that they all know this
already; but I do it purposely upon these following considerations.
1 . Because I well know, that it is these common truths that are
the great and necessary things which men's everlasting happi-
ness or misery doth most depend upon. You may be ignorant
of many controversies and inferior points, without the danger of
your souls, but so you cannot be of these fundamentals. 2. Be-
cause it is apparent by the lives of men that few know these
common truths savingly, that think they know them. 3. Be-
cause there are several degrees of knowing the same truths, and
the best are imperfect in degree, the principal growth in know-
ledge, that we should look after, is, not to know more matters
than we knew before, but to know that better, and with a
clearer light and firmer apprehension, which we darkly and
slightly knew before. You may more safely be without any
knowledge at all of many lower truths, than without some
further degree of the knowledge of those which you already
know. 4. Besides, it is known, by sad experience, that many
perish who know the truth, for want of the consideration of it,
A SERMON OF JUDGMENT. 423
and making use of what they know, and so their knowledge
doth but condemn them. We have as much need, therefore,
to teach and help you to get these truths, which you know, into
your hearts and lives, as to tell you more. 5. And, indeed, it
is the impression of these great and master truths, wherein the
vitals and essentials of God's image upon the soul of man doth
consist: and it is these truths that are the very instruments of
the great works that are to be done upon the heart by the Spirit
and ourselves. In the right use of these it is that the principal
part of the skill and holy wisdom of a Christian doth consist ;
and in the diligent and constant use of these, lieth the life and
trade of Christianity. There is nothing amiss in men's hearts
or lives, but it is for want of sound knowing and believing, or
well using these fundamentals. 6. And moreover, methinks, in
this choice of my subject, I may expect this advantage with the
hearers, that I may spare that labour that else would be neces-
sary for the proof of my doctrine ; and that I may also have
easier access to your hearts, and have a fuller stroke at them,
and with less resistance. If I came to tell you of any thing not
common, I know not how far I might expect belief from you.
You might say c these things are uncertain to us ; or all men are
not of this mind.' But when every hearer confesseth the truth
of my doctrine, and no man can deny it without denying
Christianity itself, I hope I may expect that your hearts should
the sooner receive the impression of this doctrine, and the
sooner yield to the duties which it directs you to, and the easier
let go the sins, which, from so certain a truth, shall be dis-
covered.
The words of my text are the reason which the apostle giveth,
both of his persuading other men to the fear of God, and his
care to approve to God his own heart and life. They con-
tain the assertion and description of the great judgment, and
one use which he makes of it. It assureth us, that judged we
must be, and who must be so judged, and by whom, and
about what, and on what terms, and to what end.
The meaning of the words, so far as is necessary, I shall give
you briefly. " We all," both we apostles that preach the gospel,
and you that hear it, f must," willing or unwilling, there is no
avoiding it, " appear," stand forth, or make your appearance, and
there have your hearts and ways laid open, and appear as well
as we, w before the judgment seat of Christ ;" that is, before
424 A SERMON
the Redeemer of the world, to he judged hy him as our rightful
Lord. " That every one," even of all mankind, which are,
were, or shall he, without exception, " may receive," that is,
may receive his sentence, adjudging him to his due ; and then
may receive the execution of the sentence, and may go away
from the bar with that reward or punishment that is his due, ac-
cording to the law by which he is judged. " The things done
in his body," that is, the due reward of the works done in his
body ; or, as some copies read it, " the things proper to the
body," that is due to man, even body as well as soul. " Accord-
ing to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad," that is,
this is the cause to be tried and judged, whether men have
done well or ill, whilst they were in the flesh, and what is
due to them according to their deeds. " Knowing, therefore,
&c, that is, being certain therefore that these things are so, and
that such a terrible judgment of Christ will come, we persuade
men to become Christians, and live as such, that they may then
speed well, when others shall be destroyed; or, as others,
" Knowing the fear of the Lord," that is, the true religion,
i( we persuade men."
Doct. 1. There will be a judgment. Doct. 2. Christ will be
the judge. Doct. 3. All men shall there appear. Doct. 4. Men
shall be then judged according to the works that they did in
the flesh, whether good or evil. Doct. 5. The end of judgment
is, that men may receive their final due by sentence and execu-
tion. Doct. 6. The knowledge and consideration of the terrible
judgment of God, should move us to persuade, and men to be
persuaded, to careful preparation.
The ordinary method for the handling of this subject of
judgment should be this. 1 . To show you what judgment is in
the general, and what it doth contain ; and that is, 1. The per-
sons. 2. The cause. 3. The actions. 1. The parties are,
1. The accuser. 2. The defendant. 3. Sometimes assistants.
4. The judge. 2. The cause contains, 1. The accusation. 2.
The defence. 3. With the evidence of both. 4. And the merit.
The merit of the cause is as it agreeth with the law and equity.
3. The judicial actions are, I. Introductory. 1. Citation. 2. Com-
pulsion, if need he. 3. Appearance of the accused. II. Of the
essence of judgment, 1. Debate by, l.The accuser. 2. Defen-
dant, called the disceptation of the cause. 2. By the judge. 1.
Exploration. 2, Sentence. 3, To see to the execution 5 but
OF JUDGMENT. 425
because this method is less suitable to your capacities, and hath
something human, I will reduce all to these following heads :—
1 . I will show you what judgment is.
2. Who is the judge ; and why.
3. Who must be judged.
4. Who is the accuser.
5. How the citation, constraint, and appearance will be.
6. What is the law by which men shall be judged.
7. What will be the cause of the day ; what the accusation,
and what must be the just defence.
8. What will be the evidence.
9. What are those frivolous, insufficient excuses, by which the
unrighteous may think to escape.
10. What will be the sentence : who shall die, and who shall
live ; and what the reward and punishment is.
11. What are the properties of the sentence.
12. What and by whom the execution will be. In these par-
ticular heads we contain the whole doctrine of this judgment,
and in this more familiar method shall handle it.
I. For the first, judgment, as taken largely, comprehendeth all
the forementioned particulars ; as taken more strictly for the
act of the judge, it is the trial of a controverted case. In our
case, note these things following.
1. God's judgment is not intended for any discovery to him-
self of what he knows not already; he knows already what all
men are, and what they have done, and what is their due : but
it is to discover to others, and to men themselves, the ground
of his sentence, that so his judgment may attain its end : for
the glorifying his grace on the righteous, and for the convincing
the wicked of their sin and desert, and to show to all the world
the righteousness of the judge, and of his sentence and execu-
tion. (Rom. iii. 4, 26 ; and Rom. ii. 2.)
2. It is not a controversy, therefore, undecided in the mind
of God, that is there to be decided; but only one that is unde-
cided as to the knowledge and mind of creatures.
3. Yet is not this judgment a bare declaration, but a decision,
and so a declaration thereupon : the cause will be then put out
of controversy, and all further expectation of decision be at an
end ; and with the justified there will be no more accusation, and
with the condemned no more for ever.
II. For the second thing, who shall be the judge, I answer,
the judge is God himself, by Jesus Christ.
426 A SERMON
1. Principally, God as Creator.
2. As also, God as Redeemer, the human nature of Jesus
Christ having a derived subordinate power. God lost not
his right to his creature, either by man's fall, or the redemption
by Christ, but by the latter hath a new further right : but it is
in and by Christ that God judgeth ; for, as mere Creator of
innocent man, God judgeth none, but hath committed all judg-
ment to the Son, who hath procured his right by the redeeming
of fallen man. (John v. 22.) But as the Son only doth it in the
nearest sense, so the Father, as Creator, doth it remotely and
principally.
1. In that the power of the Son is derived from the Father,
and so standeth in subordination to him as fountain or
efficient.
2. In that the judgment of the Son (as also his whole media-
torship), is to bring men to God their Maker, as their ultimate
end, and to recover them to him from whom they are fallen, and
so as a means to that end, the judgment of the Son is subordi-
nate to the Father.
From hence you may see these following truths worthy your
consideration.
1. That all men are God's creatures, and none are the work-
manship of themselves, or any other ; or else the Creator should
not judge them on that right.
2. That Christ died for all, and is the Redeemer of the world,
and a sacrifice for all, or else he should not judge them on that
right. For he will not judge wicked men as he will do the
devils, as the mere enemies of his redeemed ones, but as being
themselves his subjects in the world, and being bought by him,
and therefore become his own, who ought to have glorified him
that bought them. (2 Cor. v. 14, 15 ; 2 Pet. ii. 1 ; 1. Cor. vi.
9, 20 ; 1 John ii. 2 ; Heb. ii. 9 ; 1 Tim. ii. 6, 7.)
3. Hence, it appeareth that all men were under some law of
grace, and did partake of some of the Redeemer's mercy.
Though the gospel came not to all, yet all had that mercy which
could come from no other fountain but his blood, and which
should have brought them nearer to Christ than they were,
(though it were not sufficient to bring them to believe,) and
which should have led them to repentance. (Rom. ii. 4.) For
the neglecting of which they justly perish, and not merely for
sinning against the law that was given manjn innocency : were
that so, Christ would not judge them as Redeemer, and that for
OF JUDGMENT. 42/
the abuse or non-improvement of his talents, as he tells us he
will do. (Matt. xxv. per totum.)
4. If God will be the judge, then none can expect, by any
shifts or indirect means, to escape at that day. For how should
it be?
1. It is not possible that any should keep out of sight, or hide
their sin, and the evil of their actions, and so delude the judge.
" God will not be mocked now, nor deceived then." (Gal.
vi. 7.) They grossly deceive themselves that imagine any
such thing. God must be omniscient and all- seeing, or he
cannot be God. Should you hide your case from men, and
from devils, and be ignorant of it yourselves, yet you cannot
hide it from God. Never did there a thought pass thy heart,
or a word pass thy mouth, which God was not acquainted with:
and as he knows them, so doth he observe them. He is not as
imperfect man, taken up with other business, so that he cannot
mind all ; as easy it is with him to mind every thought, or word,
or action of thine, as if he had but that one in the world to
observe, and as easy to observe each particular sinner, as if he
had but another creature to look after in the world. He is a
fool indeed that thinks now that God takes no notice of him,
(Ezek. viii. 12, and ix. 9,) or that thinketh then to escape in the
crowd : he that found out one guest that had not on a wedding
garment, (Matt. xxii. 12,) will then find out every unholy soul,
and give him so sad a salutation as shall make him speechless.
cc For he knoweth vain man; he seeth wickedness also, and
will he not consider it V (Job xi. 11.)
2. It is not possible that any should escape at that day by
any tricks of wit; any false reasoning in their own defence.
God knoweth a sound answer from an unsound, and a truth
from a lie. Pughteousness may be perverted here on earth, by
by outwitting the judge ; but so will it not be then : to hope
any of this, is to hope that God will not be God. It is in vain,
then, for the unholy man to say he is holy ; or a sinner to deny,
or excuse, or extenuate his sin : to bring forth the counterfeit
of any grace, and plead with God any shells of hypocritical
performances, and to think to prove a title to heaven by any
thing short of God's condition, all these will be vain attempts.
3. And as impossible will it prove by fraud or flattery, by per-
suasion or bribery, or by any other means, to pervert justice,
by turning the mind of God, who is the judge. Fraud and
flattery, bribery and importunity, may do much with weak men;
428 A SHIMON
but with God, they will do nothing. Were he changeable and
partial he were not God.
4. If God be judge, you may see the cavils of infidels are
foolish, when they ask, ( How long will God be in trying and
judging so many persons, and taking an account of so many
words, and thoughts, and deeds ? Sure it will be along time,
and a difficult work/ As if God were as man, that knoweth
not things, till he seek out their evidence by partial signs. Let
these fools understand, if they have any understanding, that the
infinite God can show to every man at once all the thoughts, and
words, and actions, that ever he hath been guilty of. And in the
twinkling of an eye, even at one view, can make all the world to
see their ways, and their deservings, causing their consciences
and memories to present them all before them, in such a sort, as
shall be equivalent to a verbal debate; (Psalm 1. 21, 22;) he will
set them in order before them.
5. If Jesus Christ be the judge, then what a comfort must it
needs be to his members that he shall be judge that loved them
to the death, and whom they loved above their lives ; and he
who was their rock of hope and strength, and the desire and
delight of their souls !
6. And if Jesus Christ must be the judge, what confusion
will it bring to the faces of his enemies, and of all that set light
by him in the day of their visitation, to see mercy turned against
them ; and he that died for them, now ready to condemn them ;
and that blood and grace, which did aggravate their sin, to be
pleaded against them, to the increase of their misery ; how sad
will this be !
7. If the God of love, and grace, and truth, be judge, then
no man need to fear any wrong. No subtlety of the accuser, nor
darkness of evidence ; no prejudice or partiality, or whatsoever
else may be imagined, can there appear to the wrong of your
cause. Get a good cause, and fear nothing : and if your cause
be bad, nothing can deliver you.
III. For the third point, Who are they that must be
judged ? K
Answ. All the rational creatures in this lower world, and it
seems angels also, either all, or some. But because their case
is more darkly made known to us, and less concerns us, we will
pass it by. Every man that hath been made or born on earth,
except Christ, who is God and man, and is the judge, must
be judged. If any foolish infidels shall say, c Where shall so
OF JUDGMENT. 429
great a number stand ?' I answer him, that he knoweth not
the things invisible, either the nature of spirits and spiritual
bodies, nor what place containeth them, or how, but easily he
may know that he that gave them all a being, can sustain them
all, and have room for them all, and can at once disclose the
thoughts of all, as I said before.
The first in order to be judged are the saints, (Matt, xxv.,)
and then with Christ they shall judge the rest of the world,
(1 Cor. vi. 2, 3,) not in an equal authority and commission
with Christ, but as the present approvers of his righteous judg-
ment. The princes of the earth shall stand then before Christ,
even as the peasants, and the honourable as the base ; the rich
and the poor shall meet together, and the Lord shall judge
them all. (Prov. xxii. 2.) No men shall be excused from stand-
ing at that bar, and giving up their account, and receiving their
doom. Learned and unlearned, young and old, godly and
ungodly, all must stand there. I know some have vainly ima-
gined that the righteous shall not have any of their sins men-
tioned, but their graces and duties only, but they consider not
that things will not then be transacted by words as we do now,
but by clear discoveries, by the infinite light; and that if God
should not discover to them their sins, he would not discover
the riches of his grace in the pardon of all these sins. Even
then they must be humbled in themselves, that they may be
glorified, and for ever cry, " Not unto us, Lord, but unto thy
name, be the glory."
IV. For the fourth particular, Who will be the accuser ?
Answ. 1. Satan is called in Scripture the accuser of the bre-
thren, (Rev. xii. 10,) and we find in Job i. and other places,
that now he doth practise even before God, and therefore we
j" - 1- - : * probable that he will do so then. But we would de-
termine of nothing that Scripture hath not clearly determined.
2. Conscience will be an accuser, though especially of the
wicked, yet in some sense, of the righteous, for it will tell the
truth to all. And, therefore, so far as men are faulty, it will
tell them of their faults. The wicked it will accuse of unpar-
doned sin, and of sin unrepented of, the godly only of sin re-
pented of, and pardoned. It will be a glass wherein every man
may see the face of his heart and former life. (Rom. i. 15.)
3. The Judge himself will be the principal accuser, for it is
he that prosecutes the cause, and will do justice on the wicked.
God judgeth even the righteous themselves to be sinners, or
430 A SERMON
else they could not be pardoned sinners. But he judgeth the
wicked to be impenitent, unbelieving, unconverted sinners.
Remember what I said before, that it is not a verbal accusation
but an opening of the truth of the cause to the view of our-
selves and others, that God will then perform.
Nor can any think it unworthy of God to be men's accuser by
such a disclosure, it being no dishonour to the purest light to
reveal a dunghill, or to the greatest prince to accuse a traitor.
Nor is it unmeet that God should be both accuser and judge,
seeing he is both absolute Lord and perfectly just, and so far
beyond all suspicion of injustice. His law, also, doth virtually
accuse. (Job v. 45.) But of this by itself.
V. For the fifth particular, how will the sinners be called
to the bar ?
Answ. God will not stand to send them a citation, nor require
him to make his voluntary appearance, but willing or unwilling,
he will bring them in.
1. Before each man's particular judgment, he sendeth death
to call away his soul, a surly serjeant, that will have no nay.
How dear so ever this world may be to men, and how loth so ever
they are to depart, away they must, and come before the Lord
that made them. Death will not be bribed. Every man that
was set in the vineyard in the morning of their lives, must be
called out at evening to receive according to what he hath done.
Then must the naked soul alone appear before its Judge, and
be accountable for all that was done in the body, and be sent
before till the final judgment, to remain in happiness or misery,
till the body be raised again, and joined to it.
In this appearance of the soul before God, it seemeth by
Scripture that there is some ministry of angels, for in Luke xvi.
22, it is said that the angels carried Lazarus, that is, his soul,
into Abraham's bosom. What local motion there is, or situa-
tion of souls, is no fit matter for the inquiry of mortals. And
what it is in this that the angels will do, we cannot clearly un-
derstand as yet, but most certain it is, that as soon as ever the
soul is out of the body, it comes to its account before the God of
spirits.
2. At the end of the world, the bodies of all men shall be
raised from the earth, and joined again to their souls, and the
soul and body shall be judged to their endless state, and this
is the great and general judgment where all men shall at once
appear. The same power of God that made men of nothing,
OF JUDGMENT. 431
will as easily then re- make them by a resurrection, by which
he will add much more perfection even to the wicked in their
naturals, which will make them capable of the greater misery ;
even they shall have immortal and incorruptible bodies,
which may be the subjects of immortal wo. (1 Cor. xv. 53 ;
Johnv. 28, 29.)
Of this resurrection, and our appearance at judgment, the
angels will be some way the ministers. As they shall come
with Christ to judgment, so they shall sound his trumpet,
(1 Thes. iv. 16,) and they shall gather the wicked out of
God's kingdom, and they shall gather the tares to burn them.
(Matt. xiii. 39 — 41,) In the end of the world, the angels shall
come forth and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall
cast them into the furnace of fire. (Matt, xvii. 49, 50.)
VI. For the sixth particular, What law is it that men shall
be judged by ?
Answ. That which was given them to live by. God's law is
but the sign of his will, to teach us what shall be due from us
and to us ; before we fell, he gave us such a law as was suitable
to our perfection ; when we had sinned, and turned from him,
as we ceased not to be his creatures, nor he to be our Lord,
so he destroyed not his law, nor discharged or absolved us from
the duty of our obedience. But because we stood condemned
by the law, and could be justified by it, having once transgressed
it, he was pleased to make a law of grace, even a new, a re-
medying law, by which we might be saved from the deserved
punishment of the old. So we shall be tried at judgment upon
both these laws, but ultimately upon the last. The first law
commanded perfect obedience, and threatened death to us if
ever we disobeyed. The second law, finding us under the guilt
of sin against the first, doth command us to repent, and believe
in Christ, and so return to God by him, and promiseth us pardon
of all our sins upon that condition, and also, if we persevere,
everlasting glory. So that in judgment, though it must be first
evinced that we are sinners, and have deserved death according
to the law of pure nature, yet that is not the upshot of the
judgment. For the inquiry will be next, whether they have
accepted the remedy, and so obeyed the law of grace, and per-
formed its condition for pardon and salvation^ and upon this
our life or death will depend. It is both these laws that condemn
the wicked, but it is only the law of grace that justifieth the
righteous.
432 A SERMON
Obj. But how shall heathens be judged by the law of grace,
that never did receive it ?
Answ. The express gospel some of them had not, and there-
fore shall not directly be judged by it, but much of the Re-
deemer's mercy they did enjoy, which should have led them to
repent, and seek out after recovery from their misery, and to
come nearer Christ, and for the neglect and abuse of this they
shall be judged, and not merely for sinning against the law that
was given us in pure innocency, so that Christ, as Redeemer,
shall judge them as well as others. Though they had but one
talent, yet must they give an account of that to the Redeemer,
from whom they received it. But if any be unsatisfied in this,
let them remember, that as God hath left the state of such more
dark to us, and the terms on which he will judge them, so doth
it much more concern us to look to the terms of our judgment.
Obj. But how shall infants be judged by the gospel that
were incapable of it ?
Answ. For ought I find in Scripture, they stand or fall
with their parents, and on the same terms, but I leave each to
their own thoughts.
VII. For the seventh head, what will be the cause of the
day to be inquired after? What the accusation ? And what
the defence ?
Answ. This may be gathered from what was last said. The
great cause of the day will be to inquire and to determine who
shall die, and who shall live ; who ought to go to heaven, and
who to hell for ever, according to the law by which they must
then be judged.
1. As there is a twofold law by which they must be judged, so
will there then be a twofold accusation. The first will be that
they were sinners, and so having violated the law of God, they
deserve everlasting death, according to that law. If no defence
could be made, this one accusation would condemn all the
world, for it is most certain that all are sinners, and as certain
that all sin deserveth death. The only defence against this ac-
cusation lieth in this plea, confessing the charge, we must plead
that Christ hath satisfied for sins, and upon that consideration,
God hath forgiven us, and therefore, being forgiven, we ought
not to be punished ; to prove this, we must show the pardon
under God's hand in the gospel. But because this pardoning
act of the gospel doth forgive none but those that repent and
believe, and so return to God, and to sincere obedience for the
OF JUDGMENT. 433
time to come, therefore the next accusation will be, that we
did not perform these conditions of forgiveness, and therefore,
being unbelievers, impenitent, and rebels against the Redeemer,
we have no right to pardon, but, by the. sentence of the gospel,
are liable to a greater punishment for the contempt of Christ
and grace. This accusation is either true or false ; where it
is true, God and conscience, who speak the truth, may well be
said to be the accusers. Where it is false, it can be only the
work of Satan, the malicious adversary, who, as we may see in
Job's case, will not stick to bring a false accusation.
If any think that the accuser will not do so vain a work, at
least they may see that potentially this is the accusation that
lieth against us, and which we must be justified against. For
all justification implieth an actual or potential accusation.
He that is truly accused of final impenitency, or unbelief,
or rebellion, hath no other defence to make, but must needs
be condemned.
He that is falsely accused of such non-performance of the
condition of grace, must deny the accusation, and plead his own
personal righteousness as against that accusation, and produce
that faith, repentance, and sincere obedience and perseverance
by which he fulfilled that condition, and so is evangelically
righteous in himself, and therefore hath part in the blood of
Christ, which is instead of a legal righteousness to him in all
things else, as having procured him a pardon of all his sin,
and a right to everlasting glory.
And thus we must then be justified bv Christ's satisfaction
only, against the accusation of being sinners in general, and of
deserving God's wrath for the breach of the law of works. But
we must be justified by our faith, repentance, and sincere obe-
dience itself, against the accusation of being impenitent un-
believers, and rebels against Christ, and having not performed
the condition of the promise, and so having no part in Christ
and his benefits. ■
So that in sum you see, that the cause of the day will be to
inquire, whether, being all known sinners, we have accepted of
Christ upon his terms, and so have a right in him and his be-
nefits, or not? Whether they have forsaken this vain world
for him, and loved him so faithfully that they have manifested
it in parting with these things at his command ? And this is
the meaning of Matt, xxv., where the inquiry is made to be
whether they have fed and visited him in his members, or not ?
VOL, XVII. F F
434 A SERMON
That is, whether they so far loved him as their Redeemer, and
God by him, as that they have manifested this to his members
according to opportunity, though it cost them the hazard or
loss of all, seeing danger, and labour, and cost are fitter to
express love by, than empty compliments, and bare professions.
Whether it be particularly inquired after, or only taken for
granted, that men are sinners, and have deserved death accord-
ing to the law of works, and that Christ hath satisfied by his
death, is all one as to the matter in hand, seeing God's inquiry
is but the discovery and conviction of us. But the last question
which must decide the controversy, will be, whether we have
performed the condition of the gospel.
I have the rather also said all this, to show you in what sense
these words are taken in the text, that " every man shall be
judged according to what he hath done in the flesh, whether
it be good or bad." Though every man be judged worthy of
death for sinning, yet every man shall not be judged to die for
it, and no man shall be judged worthy of life for his good works.
It is, therefore, according to the gospel, as the rule of judgment,
that this is meant. They that have repented and believed, and
returned to true, though imperfect obedience, shall be judged
to everlasting life, according to these works, not because these
Works deserve it, but because the free gift in the gospel, through
the blood of Christ, doth make these things the condition of
our possessing it. They that have lived and died impenitent
unbelievers, and rebels against Christ, shall be judged to ever-
lasting punishment, because they have deserved it, both by
their sin in general against the law, and by these sins in special
against the gospel. This is called the merit of the cause, that
is, what is a man's due according to the true meaning of the
law, though the due may be by free gift. And thus you see
what will be the cause of the day, and the matter to be inquired
after and decided, as to our life or death.
VIII. The next point in our method is to show you what shall
be the evidence of the cause.
Answ. There is a five-fold evidence among men. 1. When
the fact is notorious. 2. The knowledge of an unsuspected
competent judge. 3. The party's confession. 4. Witness.
5. Instruments and visible effects of the action. All these evi-
dences will be at hand, and any one of them sufficient for the
conviction of the guilty person at that day.
I. As the sins of all men, so the impenitency and rebellion of
OF JUDGMENT.
435
the wicked was notorious, or at least will be then : for though
some play the hypocrites, and hide the matter from the world
and themselves, yet God shall open their hearts and former lives
to themselves, and to the view of all the world. He shall set
their sins in order before them, so that it shall be utterlv in vain
to deny or excuse them. If any men will then think to make
their cause as good to God as they can now do to us, who are
not able to see their hearts, they will be foully mistaken. Now
they can say they have as good hearts as the best ; then God will
bring them out in the light, and show them to themselves, and
all the world, whether they were good or bad. Now they will
face us down that they do truly repent, and they obey God as
they can ; but God, who knoweth the deceivers, will then un-
deceive them. We cannot now make men acquainted with their
own unsanctified hearts, nor convince them that have not true
faith, repentance, or obedience ; but God will convince them of
it : they can find shifts and false answers to put off a minister
with, but God will not be so shifted off. Let us preach as
plainly to them as we can, and do all that ever we are able, to
acquaint them with the impenitence and unholiness of their
own heart, and the necessity of a new heart and life ; yet we
cannot do it, but they will believe, whether we will or not, that
the old heart will serve the turn. But how easily will God make
them know the contrary. We plead with them in the dark ; for
though we have the candle of the gospel in our hands when we
come to show them their corruption, yet they shut their eyes,
and are wilfully blind ; but God will open their eyes whether
they will or not ; not by holy illumination, but by forced con-
viction, and then he will plead with them as in the open light.
See here thine own unholy soul ; canst thou now say thou didst
love me above all ? Canst thou deny but thou didst love this
world before me, and serve thy flesh and lusts, though I told
thee if thou didst so thou shouldest die ? Look upon thy own
heart now, and see whether it be an holy or an unholy heart ;
a spiritual or a fleshly heart; a heavenly or an earthly heart.
Look now upon all the course of thy life, and see whether thou
didst live to me, or to the world and thy flesh. Oh ! how easily
will God convince men, then, of the very sins of their thoughts,
and in their secret closets, when they thought that no witness
could have disclosed them. Therefore, it is said that the books
shall be opened, and the dead judged out of the books. (Rev.
xx. 12; Dan. vii. 10.)
f f 2
436 A SERMON
2. The second evidence will be the knowledge of the Judge. If
the sinner would not be convinced, yet it is sufficient that the
Judge knoweth the cause : God needeth no further witness : he
saw thee committing adultery in secret, lying, stealing, for-
swearing, in secret. If thou dost not know thy own heart to be
unholy, it is enough that God knoweth it. If you have the face
to say, " Lord, when we did see thee an hungry," &c, (Matt.
xxv. 44. ;) yet God will make good the charge against thee, and
there needeth no more testimony than his own. Can foolish
sinners think to lie hid, or escape at that day, who will now sin
wilfully before their Judge ; who know, every day, their Judge is
looking on them, while they forget him and give up themselves
to the world, and yet go on, even under his eye, as if to his face
they dared him to punish them ?
3. The third evidence will be the sinner's confession. God
will force their own consciences to witness against them, and
their own tongues to confess the accusation. If they do at first
excuse it, he will leave them speechless, yea, and condemning
themselves before they have done.
Oh ! what a difference between their language now and then.
Now we cannot tell them of their sin and misery, but they
either tell us of our own faults, or bid us look to ourselves, or
deny or excuse their fault, or make light of it : but then their
own tongues shall confess them, and cry out of the wilful folly
which they committed, and lay a heavier charge upon them than
we can now do. Now, if we tell them that we are afraid they
are unregenerate, and lest their hearts are not truly set upon
God, they will tell us they hope to be saved with such hearts as
they have. But then, oh ! how they will confess the folly and
falseness of their own hearts. You may see a little of their
case even in despairing sinners on earth, how far they are from
denying or excusing their sins. Judas cries out, " I sinned in
betraying the innocent blood." (Matt. xxiv. 7-) Out of their
own mouth shall they be judged. That very tongue that now
excuseth their sin, will, in their torments, be their great accuser j
for God will have it so to be.
4. The fourth evidence will be the witness of others. Oh !
how many thousand witnesses might there be produced, were
there need to convince the guilty soul at that day !
1'. All the ministers of Christ that ever preached to them, or
warned them, will be sufficient witnesses against them. We must
needs testify that we preached to them the truth of the gospel,
OF JUDGMENT. 437
and they would not believe it. We preached to them the good-
ness of God, yet they set not their hearts upon him. We
showed them their sin, and thev were not humbled. We told
them of the danger of an unregenerate state, and they did not
regard us. We acquainted them with the absolute necessity of
holiness, but they made light of all. We let them know the
deceitfulness of their hearts, and the need of a close and faith-
ful examination, but they would not bestow an hour in such a
work, nor scarce once be afraid of being mistaken and miscar-
rying. We let them know the vanity of this world, and yet
they would not forsake it, no, not for Christ, and the hopes of
glory. We told them of the everlasting felicity they might at-
tain, but they would not set themselves to seek it.
What we shall think of it then the Lord knows ; but surely
it seemeth now to us a matter of very sad consideration, that we
must be brought in as witnesses against the souls of our neigh-
bours and friends in the flesh. Those whom we now unfeignedly
love, and would do any thing that we were able to do for their
good; whose welfare is dearer to us than all worldly enjoyments;
alas ! that we must be forced to testify to their faces for their
condemnation. Ah ! Lord, with what a heart must a poor mi-
nister study when he considereth this, that all the words that he
is studying must be brought in for a witness against many of his
hearers. With what a heart must a minister preach when he re-
membereth that all the words that he is speaking must condemn
manv, if not most of his hearers ? Do we desire this sad fruit
of our labours ? No ; we may say with the prophet, " I have
not desired the wofui day, thou knowest." (Jer. xvii. 16.) No;
if we desired it, we would not do so much to prevent it : we
would not study, and preach, and pray, and entreat men, that if
it were possible we might not be put on such a task : and,
doubtless, it should make every honest minister study hard, and
pray hard, and entreat hard, and stoop low to men, and be ear-
nest with men in season and out of season, that if it may be
thev may not be the condemners of their people's souls. But if
men will not hear, and there be no remedy, who can help it? '
Christ himself came not into the world to condemn men, but
to save them, and yet he will condemn those who will not
yield to his saving work. God takes no pleasure in the death of
a sinner, but rather that he repent and live: (Ezek. xviii. 23, 32 :)
and yet he will rejoice over those to do them hurt, and destroy
them who will not return: (Deut. xxviii. 63 :) and if we must
be put on such a work, he will make us like-minded. The
'438 A SERMON
Holy Ghost tells us that the saints shall judge the world ; (1 Cor.
vi. 2, 3 ;) and if they must judge, they will judge as God judgeth.
You cannot blame us for it, sinners. We now warn you of it
beforehand, and if you will not prevent it, blame not us, but
yourselves. Alas ! we are not our own masters. As we now
speak not to you in our own names, so then we may not do
what we list ourselves ; or if we might, our will will be as God's
will. God will make us judge you, and witness against you:
can we absolve you when the righteous God will condemn you ?
When God is against you, whose side would you have us be of?
We must be either against God or you ; and can you think that
we should be for any one against our Maker and Redeemer ?
We must either condemn the sentence of Jesus Christ, or
condemn you ; and is not there more reason to condemn
you than him ? Can we have any mercy on you, when he
that made you will not save you, and he that formed you
will show you no mercy? (Isaiah xxvii. 11;) yea, when he
that died for you will condemn you, shall we be more mer-
ciful than God ? But, alas ! if we should be so foolish and
unjust, what good would it do you ? If we would be false
witnesses and partial judges, it would not save you ; we are
not justified if we absolve ourselves. (1 Cor. iv. 5.) How unable,
then, shall we be, against God's sentence, to justify you. It' all
the world should say you were holy and penitent, when God
knows you were unholy and impenitent, it will do you no good.
You pray every day that his will may be done, and it will be
done. It will be done upon you, because it was not done by
you. What would you have us say if God ask us, ( Did you
tell this sinner of the need of Christ, of the glory of the world
to come, and the vanity of this ?' Should we lie, and say we
did not? What should we say if he ask us, 'Did not you tell
them the misery of their natural state, and what would become
of them if they were not made new?' Would you have us lie
to God, and say we did not ? Why, if we did not, your blood
will be required at our hands: (Ezek. xxxiii. 6, and iii. IS :)
and would you have us bring your blood upon our own heads
by a lie ? Yea, and to do you no good, when we know that
lies will not prevail with God ? No, no, sinners ; we must un-
avoidably testify to the confusion of your faces : if God ask us,
we must bear witness against you, and say, ' Lord, we did what
we. could, according to our weak abilities, to reclaim them : in-
deed, our own thoughts of everlasting things were so low, and
our hearts so dull, that we must confess we did not follow them
OF JUDGMENT. 439
so close, nor speak so earnestly, as we should have done. We
did not cry so loud, or lift up our voice as a trumpet to awaken
them. (Isaiah lviii. i.) We confess we did not speak to them
with such melting compassion, and with such streams of tears
beseech them to regard, as a matter of such great concernment
should have been spoken with : we did not fall on our knees to
them, and so earnestly beg of them, for the Lord's sake, to have
mercy upon their own souls, as we should have done. But yet
we told them the message of God, and we studied to speak it to
them as plainly and as piercingly as we could. Fain we would
have convinced them of their sin and misery, but we could not :
fain we would have drawn them to the admiration of Christ, but
they made light of it. (Matt. xxii. 5.) We would fain have
brought them to the contempt of this vain world, and to set
their mind on the world to come, but we could not. Some com-
passion thou knowest, Lord, we had to their souls : many a
weeping or groaning hour we have had in secret, because they
would not hear and obey, and some sad complaints we made
over them in public. We told them that they must shortly die,
and come to judgment, and that this world would deceive them,
and leave them in the dust. We told them that the time was at
hand when nothing but Christ would do them good, and nothing
but the favour of God would be sufficient for their happiness,
but we could never get them to lay it to heart. Many a time
did we entreat them to think soberly of this life, and the life to
come, and to compare them together with the faith of Chris-
tians, and the reason of men, but they would not do it. Many a
time did we entreat them but to take now and then an hour in
secret to consider who made them, and for what he had made
them, and why they were sent into this world, and what their
business here is, and whither they are going, and how it will go
with them at their latter end ; but we could never get most of
them to spend one hour in serious thoughts of these weighty
matters. Many a time did we entreat them to try whether they
were regenerate or not, whether Christ and his Spirit were in
them or not, whether their souls were brought back to God by
sanctification, but they would not try. We did beseech them
to make sure work, and not leave such a matter as everlasting-
joy or torment to a bold and mad adventure, but we could not
prevail. We entreated them to lay all other business aside a little
while in the world, and to inquire, by the direction of the word
of God, what would become of them in the world to come ;
440 A SERMON
and to judge themselves before God came to judge them, seeing
they had the law and rule of judgment before them, but their
minds were blinded, and their hearts were hardened, and the
profit and pleasure, and honour of this world did either stop
their ears, or quickly steal away their hearts, so that we could
never get them to a sober consideration, nor ever win their hearts
to God.
This will be the witness that many a hundred ministers of
the gospel must give in against the souls of their people at
that day. Alas ! that you ever should cast this upon us ! For
the Lord's sake,, sirs, pity your poor teachers, if you pity not
yourselves ! We had rather go a thousand miles for you ; we
had rather be scorned and abused for your sakes ; we had rather
lay our hands under your feet, and beseech you on our knees
with tears, were we able, than be put on such a work as this.
It is you that will do it if it be done. We had rather follow
you from house to house, and teach and exhort you, if you will
but hear us, and accept of our exhortation. Your souls are
precious in our eyes, for we know they were so in the eyes of
Christ, and therefore we are loth to see this day ; we were once
in your case, and therefore know what it is to be blind, and
careless, and carnal, as you are, and therefore would fain ob-
tain your deliverance. But if you will not hear, but we must
accuse you, and we must condemn you, the Lord judge be-
tween you and us, for we can witness that it was full sore against
our wills. We have been faulty, indeed, in doing no more for
you, and not following you with restless importunity ; (the good
Lord forgive us !) but yet we have not betrayed you by silence.
2. All those that fear God, that have lived among ungodly
men, will also be sufficient witnesses against them. Alas ! they
must be put upon the same work, which is very unpleasant to
their thoughts, as ministers are ; they must witness before the
Lord that they did, as friends and neighbours, admonish them :
that they gave them a good example, and endeavoured to walk
in holiness before them ; but, alas ! the most did but mock
them, and call them puritans, and precise fools, and they made
more ado than needs for their salvation : they must be forced
to testify, ( Lord, we would fain have drawn them with us to hear
the word, and to read it, and to pray in their families, and to
sanctify the holy day, and take such happy opportunities for
their souls; but we could not get them to it; we did in our
places what we were able to give them, the example of a godly
OK JUDGMENT. 441
conversation^ and they did but deride us ; they were readier to
mark every slip of our lives, and to observe all our infirmities,
and to catch at any accusation that was against us, than to fol-
low us in any work of holy obedience, or care for our everlasting
peace.' • The Lord knows it is a most heavy thing to consider
now, that poor neighbours must be fain to come in against those
they love so dearly, and by their testimony to judge them to
perdition. Oh ! heavy case to think of, that a master must
witness against his own servant ! Yea, a husband against his own
wife, and a wife against her husband ; yea, parents against their
own children, and say, ( Lord, I taught them thy w r ord, but
they would not learn ; I told them what would come on it if
they returned not to thee ; I brought them to sermons, and I
prayed with them and for them. I frequently minded them of
these everlasting things, and of this dreadful day which they
now see. But youthful lusts, and the temptations of the flesh
and the devil, led them away, and I could never get them tho-
roughly and soundly to lay it to their hearts.' Oh ! you that
are parents, and friends, and neighbours, in the fear of God,
bestir you now, that you may not be put to this at that day of
judgment. Oh, give them no rest, take no nay of them till you
have persuaded their hearts from this world to God, lest you be
put to be their condemners. It must be now that you must
prevent it, or else never ; now while you are with them, while
you and they are in the flesh together, which will be but a little
while. Can you but now prevail with them all will be well, and
you may meet them joyfully before the Lord.
3. Another witness that will testify against the ungodly at
that day, will be their sinful companions. Those that drew
them into sin, or were drawn by them, or joined with them in
it. Oh 1 little do poor drunkards think, when they sit merrily in
an alehouse, that one of them must bear witness against an-
other, and condemn one another. If they thought of this,
methinks it should make them have less delight in that com-
pany. Those that now join with you in wickedness, shall then
be forced to witness, c I confess, Lord, I did hear him swear
and curse ; I heard him deride those that feared the Lord, and
make a jest of a holy life ; I saw him in the alehouse when he
should be hearing the word of God, or reading, or calling upon
God, and preparing for this day ; I joined with him in fleshly
delights, in abusing thy creature, and our own bodies.' Sinners,
look your companions in the face the next time you are with
442 A SERMON
them, and remember this that I now say, that those men shal
give in evidence against yon that now are your associates in all
your mirth ; little think the fornicator and lustful wanton, that
their sinful mates must then bear witness of that which they
thought the dark had concealed, and tell their shame before all
the world. But this must be the fruit of sin. It is meet that
they who once encouraged one another in sin, should condemn
one another for it. And marvel not at it, for they shall be
forced to it, whether they will or no. Light will not then be
hid ; they may think to have some ease to their consciences by
accusing and condemning others. When Adam is questioned for
his sins, he presently accuseth the woman. (Gen. iii. 12.) When
the conscience of Judas was awakened, he runs to the pharisees
with the money that drew him to it, and they cast it back in his
own face, " See thou to it, what is that to us }" (Matt, xxvii.
4 — 6.) Oh ! the cold comfort that sinners will have at that day,
and the little pleasure that they will find in remembering their
evil ways. Now, when a fornicator, or a worldling, or a merry
voluptuous man, is grown old, and cannot act all his sin again,
he takes pleasure in remembering and telling others of his
.former folly, what he once was, and what he did, and the merry
hours that he had, but then when sinners are come to them-
selves a little more, they will remember and tell one another
of these things with another heart. Oh ! that they did but
know how these things will then affect them !
4. Another witness that will then rise up against them will
be the very devils that tempted them. They that did purposely
draw them to sin, that they might draw them to torment for
sin. They can witness that you hearkened to their temptations
when you would not hearken to God's exhortations. They
can witness that you obeyed them in working iniquity. But
because you may think the accuser's testimony is not to be
taken, I will not stand on this, though it is not nothing where
God knoweth it to be true.
5. The very angels of God also may be witnesses against the
wicked, therefore are we advised in Scripture not to sin before
them. (Eccl. v. 6; 1 Cor. xi. 10; 1 Tim. v. 21.) I charge
thee before the elect angels, &c. They can testify that they
would have been ministering spirits for their good, when the
wicked rather chose to be slaves to the spirit of maliciousness.
The holy angels of God do many a time stand by when you are
sinning. They see you when you see not them ; they are em-
OF JUDGMENT. 443
ployed by God in some sort for your good as well as we. And
as it is the grief of ministers that their labours succeed not, so
may we suppose that according to their state and nature it is
theirs. For thev; that rejoice in heaven at the conversion of
one sinner, may be said to sorrow, or to lose those joys, when
you refuse to be converted. These noble spirits, these holy and
glorious attendants of Christ, that shall wait upon him to judg-
ment, will be witnesses against rebellious sinners, to their con-
fusion. Sirs, you have all in you naturally a fear of spirits, and
invisible powers ; fear them aright, lest hearkening to the de-
ceiving spirits, and refusing the help of the angels of God,
and wilfully sinning before their faces, you should cause them,
at that clay, to the terror of your souls, to stand forth as witnesses
against you, to your condemnation.
6. Conscience itself will be a most effectual witness against
the wicked at that day ; I before told you it will be a discerner,
and force them to a confession, but a farther office it hath,
even to witness against them. If none else in the world had
known of their secret sins, conscience will say, ' I was ac-
quainted with them/
7. The Spirit of Christ can witness against the ungodly that
he oft moved them to repent and return, and they rejected his
motions ; that he spoke to their hearts in secret, and oft set
in with the minister, and often minded them of their case, and
persuaded them to God, but they resisted, quenched, and grieved
the Spirit. (Acts vii. 51.) As the Spirit witnesseth with the
spirits of the righteous that they are the children of God,
(Rom. viii. 16,) so doth he witness, with the conscience of the
wicked, that they were children of rebellion, and therefore are
justly children of wrath. This Spirit will not always strive with
men ; at last, being vexed, it will prove their enemy, and rise up
against them. (Gen. vi. 3 ; Isa. lxiii. 10.) If you will needs
grieve it now, it will grieve you then. Were it not a Spirit of
grace, and were it not free mercy that it came to offer you,
the repulse would not have been so condemning, nor the witness
of this Spirit so heavy at the last. But it was the Spirit of
Jesus that came with recovering grace, which you resisted, and
though the wages of every sin is death, yet you will find that it
will cost you somewhat more to reject this salvation, than to
break the Creator's law of works. Kindness, such kindness,
will not be rejected at easy rates.
Many a good motion is now made by the Spirit to the heart
444 A SERMON
of a sinner, which he doth not so much as once observe, and
therefore doth not now remember them. But then they shall
be brought to his remembrance with a witness. Many a thou-
sand secret motions to repentance, to faith, to a holy life, will
be then set before the eyes of the poor, unpardoned, trembling
sinner, which he had quite forgotten, and the Spirit of God
shall testify to his confusion. At such a sermon I persuaded
thy heart to repent, and thou wouldest not ; at such a time I
showed thee the evil of thy sin, and persuaded thee to have
forsaken it, but thou wouldest not. I minded thee in thy secret
thoughts of the nearness of judgment, and the certainty and
weight of everlasting things, the need of Christ, and faith, and
holiness, and of the danger of sinning, but thou didst drown all
my motions in the cares and pleasures of the world. Thou
hearkenest rather to the devil than to me. The sensual inclina-
tions of thy flesh did prevail against the strongest arguments
that I used. Though I showed reasons, undeniable reasons,
from thy Creator, from thy Redeemer, from nature, from grace,
from heaven, and from hell, yet all would not so much as stop
thee, much less turn thee, but thou wouldest go on ; thou
wouldest follow thy flesh, and now let it pay thee the wages of
thy folly ; thou wouldest be thy own guide, and take thine own
course, and now take what thou gettest by it.
Poor sinners ! I beseech you, in the fear of God, the next time
you have any such motions from the Spirit of God, to repent,
and believe, and break off your sins, and the occasions of them ;
consider then what a mercy is set before you, and how it will
confound you, at the day of judgment, to have all these motions
brought in against you, and that the Spirit of grace itself should
be your condemner. Alas ! that men should choose their own
destruction, and wilfully choose it, and that the foreknowledge
of these things should not move them to relent !
So much concerning the witness that will be brought in
against the sinner.
5. The fifth evidence that will be given against the sinner
will be the instruments and effects. You know, among men,
if a man be found murdered by the highway, and you are found
standing by, with a bloody sword in your hand, especially if
there were a former dissension between you, it will be an evi-
dence that will prove a strong presumption that you were the
murderer, but if the fact be certain by other evidence, then
many such things may be brought for aggravation of the fault.
OF JUDGMENT. 445
So a twofold evidence will be brought against the sinner
from these things ; one to prove him guilty of the fact, the other
to aggravate the fault, and prove that his sin was very great.
For the former, 1. The very creatures which sinners abused
to sin, may be brought in against them to their conviction and
condemnation. For though these creatures shall be consumed
with the last destroying fire, which shall consume all the world,
yet shall they have a being in the memory of the sinner, an
esse cognitum. The very wine or ale, or other liquor, which
was abused to drunkenness, may witness against the drunkard.
The sweet morsels by which the glutton did please his appetite,
and all the good creatures of God which he luxuriously de-
voured, may witness against him. (Luke xvi. 19, 25.) He that
fared deliciously every day in this life, was told by Abraham
when he- was dead, and his soul in hell, " Remember that thou
in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus
evil things, but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented ;"
though their sweet morsels and cups are past and gone, yet
must they be remembered at judgment and in hell. " Remem-
ber, son, "saith Abraham ; yea, and remember he must, whether
he will or no. Long was the glutton in sinning, and many a
pleasant bit did he taste, and so many evidences of his sin will
lie against him, and the sweetness will then be turned into gall.
The very clothing and ornaments by which proud persons did
manifest their pride, will be sufficient evidence against them, as
his being clothed with purple and line linen is mentioned.
(Luke xvi. 19.)
The very lands, and goods, and houses of worldlings will be
an evidence against them. Their gold and silver, which the
covetous do now prefer before the everlasting riches with Christ,
will be an evidence against them. " Go to now, ye rich men,
weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
Your riches are coirupted, and your garments are moth-eaten ;
your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them will be a
witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire.
Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold the
hire of the labourers, who have reaped down your fields, which
is of you kept back by fraud, crieth ; and the cries of them
which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of
sabbaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton.
Ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter."
(James v. 1 — 5.) Oh ! that worldlings would well consider this one
446
A SERMON
text, and therein observe whether a life of earthly pleasure, and
fulness of worldly glory and gallantry, be as desirable as they
imagine, and to what time and purpose they now lay up their
treasures, and how they must hear of these things hereafter,
and what effect the review of their jovial days will have upon
their miserable, condemned souls.
2. The very circumstances of time, place, and the like, may
evidence against his condemnation. The drunkard shall re-
member, in such an alehouse I was so oft drunk, and in such a
tavern I wasted my time. The adulterer and fornicator shall
remember the very time, the place, the room, the bed where they
committed wickedness. The thief and deceiver will remember
the time, place, and the persons they wronged, and the things
which they robbed or deceived them of. The worldling will
remember the business which he preferred before the service of
God, the worldly matters which had more of his heart than his
Maker and Redeemer had, the work which he was doing when
he should have been praying, or reading, or catechising his
family, or thinking soberly of his latter end. A thousand of
these will then come into his mind, and be as so many evidences
against him to his condemnation.
3. The very effects, also, of men's sins will be an evidence
against them. The wife and children of a drunkard are impo-
verished by his sin ; his family and the neighbourhood are dis-
quieted by him. These will be so many evidences against him.
So will the abuse of his own reason, the enticing of others to
the same sin, and hardening them by his example.
One covetous, unmerciful landlord doth keep an hundred,
or many hundred, persons or families in so great necessities, and
care, and labour, that they are tempted by it to overpass the
service of God, as having scarce time for it, or any rcom for it
in their troubled thoughts ; all these miserable families and
persons, and all the souls that are undone by this temptation,
will be so many evidences against such oppressors.
Yea, the poor whom they have neglected to relieve when they
might, the sick whom they have neglected to visit vrhen they
might, will all witness then against the unmerciful. (Matt. xxv.J
The many ignorant, worldly, careless sinners that have pe-
rished under an idle and unfaithful minister, will be so many
witnesses against him to his condemnation. They may then
cry out against him to his face, i 1 was ignorant, Lord, and he
never did so much as teach me, catechise me, nor tell me of
OF JUDGMENT. 447
these things. I was careless, and minded the world, and he let
me go on quietly, and was as careless as I, and had never plainly
and faithfully warned me, to wake me from my security/ And
so their blood will be required at his hands, though themselves
also shall perish in their sins. (Ezek. xxxiii. 7, 8.)
And as these evidences will convince men of sin, so there-
are many more which will convince them of the greatness of
their sin. And these are so many that it would too much
lengthen my discourse to stand on them. A few I shall briefly
touch.
1 . The very mercy of God in creating men, in giving and
continuing their being to them, will be an evidence for the ag-
gravation of their sin against him. What, will yoii abuse Him
by whom it is that you are men ? Will you speak to his dis-
honour that giveth you your speech ? Will you live to his dis-
honour who giveth you your lives ? Will you wrong him by
his own creatures, and neglect Him without whom you cannot
subsist ?
2. The redemption of men by the Lord Jesus Christ will be
an evidence to the exceeding aggravation of their sins. You
sinned against the Lord that bought you. (1 Pet. ii. 1.) When
the feast was prepared, and all things were ready, you made
light of it, and found excuses, and would not come. (Matt. xxii.
4 — 6; Luke xiv. 17, 18.) Must Christ redeem you, by so dear
a price, from sin and misery, and yet will you continue the
servants of sin, and prefer your slavery before your freedom,
and choose to be Satan's drudges, rather than to be the servants
of God ? The sorrows and sufferings that Christ underwent
for you will then prove the increase of your own sorrows. As
a neglected Redeemer it is that he will condemn you ; and then
you would be glad that it were but true doctrine that Christ
never died for you, that you might not be condemned for re-
fusing a Redeemer, and sinning against him that shed his blood
for you. How deeply will his wounds then wound your con-
sciences ! You will then remember, that to this end he hath
died, rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead
and the living, and that he therefore died for all, that they
which live should not henceforth live to themselves, but to him
that died for them, and rose again. (Rom. xiv. 9; 2 Cor. v.
14,15; Matt, xxviii. 18—20; 1 Peter i. 17, 18.) You will
then understand that you were not your own, but were bought
with a price, and therefore should have glorified him that bought
448 A SERMON
you, with your bodies and spirits, because they were his.
(1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.) This one aggravation of your sin will make
you doubly and remedilessly miserable, that you trod under foot
the Son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant, where-
with you were sanctified, an unholy thing, (Heb. x. 26 — 29.)
and crucified to yourselves the Son of God afresh, and put him
to open shame. (Heb. vi. 5, 6.)
3. Moreover, all the personal mercies which they received
will be so many evidences for the condemnation of the ungodly.
The very earth that bore them, and yielded them its fruits,
while they themselves are unfruitful to God, the air which they
breathed in, the food which nourished them, the clothes which
covered them, the houses which they dwelt in, the beasts that
laboured for them, and all the creatures that died for their use,
all these may rise up against them to their condemnation. And
the Judge may thus expostulate with them, c Did all these
mercies deserve no more thanks ? Should you not have served
Him that so liberally maintained you ? God thought not all these
too good for you, and did you think your hearts and services
too good for him ? He served you with the weary labours of
your fellow-creatures, and should you have grudged to bear his
easy yoke ? They were your slaves and drudges, and you re-
fused to be his free servants and his sons. They suffered death
to feed your bodies, and you would not suffer the short for-
bearance of a little forbidden fleshly pleasure for the sake of
him that made you and redeemed you.'
Oh ! how many thousand mercies of God will then be re-
viewed by those that neglected them to the horror of their
souls, when they shall be upbraided by the Judge with their
base requital ! All the deliverances from sickness and from dan-
ger, all the honours and privileges, and other commodities, which
so much contented them, will then be God's evidence to shame
them and confound them. On this supposition doth the apos-
tle reprove such, " Despisest thou the riches of his goodness,
and forbearance, and long-suffering, not knowing that the good-
ness of God leadeth thee to repentance ? But after thy hard
and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against
the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judg-
ment of God, who will render to every man according to his
deeds." (Rom. ii. 4 — -6.)
4. Moreover, all the means which God used for the recovery
of sinners in the day of their visitation will rise up against im-
OF JUDGMENT. 449
penitent souls, in judgment to their condemnation. You can
hear sermons carelessly and sleepily now ; but, oh ! that you
would consider how the review of them will then awake you !
You now make light of the warnings of God and man, and of
all the wholesome advice that is given you, but God will not
then make light of your contempt. Oh ! what cutting questions
will they be to the hearts of the ungodly, when all the means
that were used for their good are brought to their remembrance
on one side, and the temptations that drew them to sin on the
other side j and the Lord shall plead his cause with their con-
sciences, and say, ' Was I so hard a master, or was my work so
unreasonable, or were my wages so contemptible, that no per-
suasions could draw you into my service ? Was Satan so good
a master, or was his work so honest and profitable, or were his
wages so desirable, that you would be so easily persuaded to do
as he would have you ? Was there more persuading reason in
his allurements and deceits than in all my holy words, and all
the powerful sermonithat you heard, or all the faithful admo-
nitions you received, or all the good examples of the righteous,
or in all the works of God which you beheld ? Was not a rea-
son fetched from the love of God, from the evil of sin, the
blood of Christ, the judgment to come, the glory promised, the
torments threatened, as forcible with you, and as good in your
eyes to draw you to holiness, as a reason from a little fleshly de-
light or worldly gain, to draw you to be unholy ?'
In the name of God, sinners, I entreat you to bethink your-
selves in time, how you will sufficiently answer such questions
as these. You should have seen God in every creature you be-
held, and have read your duty in all his works ; what can you
look upon above you, or below you, or round you, which might
not have showed you so much of the wisdom, and goodness,
and greatness of your Maker, as should have convinced you that
it was your duty to be devoted to his will; and yet you have his
written word which speaks plainer than all these ; and will you
despise them all ? Will you not see so great a light ? Will
you not hear so loud and constant calls ? Shall God and his
ministers speak in vain ? And can you think that you shall not
hear of this again, and pay for it one day ? You have the Bible
and other good books by you, why do you not read them ? You
have ministers at hand, why do you not go to them, and ear-
nestly ask them, Sir, " What must I do to be saved," and en-
treat them to teach you the way to life ? You have some neigh-
vol, xvn. G G
450 A SERMON
Lours that fear God, why do you riot go to them, and take their
good advice, and imitate them in the fear of God, and in a holy
diligence for your souls ? Now is the time for you to bestir
yourselves ; life and death are before you. You have gales of
grace to further your voyage. There are more for you than against
you. God will help you, his Spirit will help you, the minis-
ters will help you, every good Christian will help you, the angels
themselves will help you, if you will resolvedly set yourselves to
the work ; and yet will you not stir? Patience is waiting on you,
mercies are enticing you, scourges are driving you, judgment
stayeth for you, the lights of God stand burning by you to
direct you, and yet will you not stir, but lie in darkness ; and
do you not think you shall not hear of this ; do you think this
will not one day cost you dear ?
IX. The ninth part of our work is to show you what are those
frivolous excuses by which the unrighteous may then endeavour
their defence.
Having already showed you what the T °\?fence must be that
must be sufficient to our justification :
If any first demand whether the evidence of their sin will not
so overwhelm the sinner, that he will be speechless, and past
excuse, I answer, before God hath done with him he will be so.
But it seems, at first, his dark understanding and partial cor-
rupted conscience, will set him upon a vain defence ; for Christ
telleth us that "Many will say to me in that day, Lord ! Lord !
have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast
out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works ? and
then will I profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from
me, ye that work iniquity." (Matt. vii. 22, 23.) And in Matt.
xxv. 1 1, the foolish virgins cry, " Lord ! Lord ! open to us •.' ,
and ver. 44, " Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord,
when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked,
or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?" and
ver. 24, 25, they fear not to cast seme of the cause of their neg-
lect on God himself: "Then he which had received the one
talent came and said, Lord, I knew that thou art an hard man,
reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou
hast not strawed, and I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent
in the earth ; lo ! there thou hast that is thine."
It is clear, then, that excuses they will be ready to make, and
their full conviction will be in order after these excuses, (at least,
as in their minds, if not in words.) But what the particular
OF JUDGMENT. 451
excuses will be, we may partly know by these Scriptures which
recite them, and partly by what the ungodly do now say for
themselves : and because it is for their present benefit that I
now make mention of them, that they may see the vanity of
all such excuses, I will mention them as I now meet with them
in the mouths of sinners in our ordinary discourse; and these
excuses are of several sorts — some by which they would justify
their estate; some excuses of particular actions, and that either
in whole or in part ; some by which they would put by the pe-
nalty, though they confess the sin ; some by which they lay the
blame on other men, and in some they would cast it upon God
himself. I must touch but some of them very briefly.
The first excuse : ( 1 am not guilty of these things which I
am accused of, I did love God above all, and my neighbour as my-
self: I did use the world but for necessity, but God had my heart.'
Answ. The all-seeing Judge doth know the contrary ; and
he will make thy conscience know it. Look back, man, upon
thy heart and life ! How seldom and how neglectfully didst thou
think of God ! How coldly didst thou worship him, or make
any mention of him ! How carelessly didst thou serve him !
And think much of all that thou didst therein. Thou rather
thoughtest that his service was making more ado than needs,
and didst grudge at those who were more diligent than thyself;
but for the world, how heartily and how constantly didst thou
seek and serve it ? And yet wouidst thou now persuade the
Judge that thou didst love God above all ? He will show thee
thy naked heart, and the course of thy former life, which shall
convince thee of the contrary.
The second excuse : ' I lived not in any gross sin, but only
in small infirmities : I was no murderer, or adulterer, or forni-
cator, or thief; nor did I deceive or wrong any, or take any
thing by violence.'
Answ. Was it not a gross sin to love the world above God,
and to neglect Christ that died for thee, and never to do him
one hour's hearty service, but merely to seek thy carnal self, and
to live to thy flesh ? God will open thine eyes then, and show
thee a thousand gross sins, which thou now forgettest, or rnakest
light of; and it is not only gross sin, but all sin, great or small,
that deserveth the wrath of God, and will certainly bring thee
under it for ever, if thou have not part in Christ to relieve thee.
Wo to the man that ever he was born that must answer in his
own name for his smallest offences !
G G 2
452 A SERMON
The third excuse : c I did it ignorantly ; I knew not that there
was so much required to my salvation. I thought less ado might
have served the turn ; and that if I looked to my body, God
would take care of my soul, and that it was better to trust him
what would become of me hereafter, than to trouble my mind
so much about it. Had I known better, I would have done
better/
Answ. 1. If you knew not better, who was it along of but
yourself? Did God hide these things from you? Did he not
tell them you in his word as plainly as the tongue of man can
speak, that except you were regenerate and born again, you
should not enter into the kingdom of God; (John iii. 3, 5 ;) that
without holiness none should see God; (Heb. xii. 14;) that you
must strive to enter in at the strait gate ; for many shall seek
to enter, and shall not be able: (Luke xiii. 24 :) that if you
lived after the flesh you should die; and if by the Spirit you
mortified the deeds of the body you should live : (Rom. viii. 13 :)
that if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, the same is none
of his; (Rom. viii. 9 :) and to be carnally-minded is death, but
to be spiritually-minded is life and peace: (Rom. viii. 9 :) that
you must not lay up for yourselves a treasure on earth, where
rust and moth do corrupt, and thieves break through and steal ;
but must lay up for yourselves a treasure in heaven, where rust
and moth do not corrupt, and thieves do not break through and
steal : (Matt. vi. 1 9, 20 :) that you must seek first the kingdom
of God, and the righteousness thereof; (Matt. vi. 23 ;) and not
labour for the food that perisheth, but for the food that endureth
to everlasting life, which Christ would have given you; (John
vi. 27 ;) that if you be risen with Christ, you must seek those
things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand
of God, and not the things that are on earth; (Col. iii. 1 — 3;)
yea, your very conversation should be in heaven. (Phil. iii.
19—21.)
What say you ? Did not God tell you all this and much
more, and plainly tell it you ? Turn to your Bibles and see the
words, and let them witness against you.
2. And could you think with any reason that your souls being
so much more precious than your bodies, you should yet do so
much more for your bodies than your souls ? Could you think
all the labours of your lives little enough for a frail body that
must lie shortly in the dirt, and that your immortal souls should
be no more regarded ? Could you think, with any reason that
OF JUDGMENT. 453
your souls should do so much for a life of a few years' continu-
ance, and do no more for a life that shall have no end ?
3. And whereas you talk of trusting God with your souls, you
did not trust him : you did but on that pretence carelessly dis-
regard them. If you trust God, show any word of promise that
ever he gave you to trust upon, that ever an impenitent, carnal,
careless person shall be saved ? No, he hath told you enough to
the contrary : and could you think that it was the will of God
that you should mind your bodies more than your souls, and this
life more than that to come ? Why, he hath bid you strive, and
run, and fight, and labour, and care, and seek, and use violence,
and all diligence, for the safety of your souls, and for the life to
come ; but where hath he bid you do so for your bodies ? No ;
he knew that you were prone to do too much for them, and
therefore he hath bid you " care not, and labour not/' that is,
do it as if you did it not ; and let your care and labour for
earthly things be none, in comparison of that for heavenly
things. You know God can as well maintain your lives without
your care and labour, as save your souls without it : and yet you
see he will not, he doth not. You must plough, and sow, and
reap, and thrash, for all God's love and care of you, and not
say, i I will let all alone and trust God/ And must you not much
more use diligence in much greater things ? If you will trust
God, you must trust him in his own way, and in the use of his
own means.
The fourth excuse : e I was never brought up to learning, I
cannot so much as read ; nor did my parents ever teach me any
of these things, but only set me about my worldly business, and
provide food and raiment for me, but never once told me that I
had a soul to save or lose, and an everlasting life to provide and
prepare for, and therefore I could not come to the knowledge of
them/
Answ. The greater is their sin who thus neglected you : but
this is no sufficient excuse for you. Heaven is not prepared for
the learned only ; nor will Christ ask you at judgment whether
vou are good scholars, or not ; no, nor so much as whether you
could write or read. But, consider well, was not God's word so
plainly written that the unlearned might understand it ? Did
he not put it into the most familiar style, though he knew it
would be offensive so the proud scholars of the world, on purpose
that he might fit it to the capacities of the ignorant ? And if you
could not read, yet tell me, could you not have learned to read
454 A SERMON
at twenty or thirty years of age, if you had been but willing to
bestow now and then an hour to that end ; or, at least, did you
not live near some that could read; and could you not have
procured thern to read to you, or to help you ; and did you not
hear these things read to you in the congregation by the minis-
ter, or might have done if you would ; and if your parents did
neglect you in your youth, yet when you came to a fuller use of
reason, and heard of the matters of salvation from God's word,
did it not concern you to have looked to yourselves, and to
have redeemed that time which you lost in your youth, by dou-
bling your diligence when you came to riper years ? The apos-
tles gathered churches among heathens who never heard of
Christ before, and converted many thousand souls who were
never once told of a Saviour, or the way to salvation, till they
had passed a greater part of their lives. If you loitered till the
latter part of the day, it behoved you then to have bestirred
yourselves the more ; and not to say, ' Through the fault of my
parents I lost the beginning of my life, and therefore I will lose
all ; they taught me not then, and therefore I will not learn
now.' Have you not seen some of your neighbours who were as
ill educated as yourselves attain to much knowledge afterwards
by their industry; and why might not you have done so if you
had been as industrious as they ? may not God and conscience
witness that it was because you cared not for knowledge, and
would not be at pains to get it, that you knew no more ? Speak
truth, man, in the presence of thy Judge ! Was thy heart and
mind set upon it ? Didst thou pray daily for it to God ? Didst
thou use all the means thou couldst to get it ? Didst thou at-
tend diligently on the word in public, and think of what thou
heardest, when thou earnest home ? Didst thou go to the mi-
nister, or to others that could teach thee, and entreat them to
tell thee the way to salvation ? Or didst thou not rather care-
lessly neglect these matters, and hear a sermon as a common
tale, even when the minister was speaking of heaven or of hell ?
It was not, then, thine unavoidable ignorance, but thy negli-
gence.
Yea, further, answer as in the presence of God : didst thou
obey so far as thou didst know ? Or, didst thou not rather sin
against that knowledge which thou hadst? Thou knewest that
the soul was better than the body, and everlasting life more to
be regarded than this transitory life, but didst thou regard it ac-
cordingly ? Thou, sure, knewest that God was better than the
OF JUDGMENT. 455
world, and heaven than earth; at least, thou wast told of it;
but didst thou accordingly value him, and love him more ? Thou
knewest, sure, that there was no salvation without faith, and
repentance, and newness of life, and yet they were neglected.
In a word, many a thousand sins which were committed, and
duties that were omitted, against thy own knowledge and con-
science, will mar this excuse.
The fifth excuse : ' I lived not under a powerful minister to
tell me of these things, but where there was no preaching
at all/
Answ. And might you not have gone where a powerful mi-
nister was, with a little pains ? Yea, did not the very plain
word that you heard read tell you of these things ; and might
you not have had a Bible yourselves, and found them there?
The sixth excuse : ' I was a servant, and had no time from
Iny labour to mind these matters : I lived with an hard master,
that required all his own work of me, but would allow me no
time for the service of God/ Or else, e I was a poor man, and
had a great charge to look after, and with my hard labour had
much ado to live, so that I had no time for heavenlv things.'
Answ. 1 . Who should be first served, God or man ? What
should be first sought after, heaven or earth ? Did not Christ
tell thee, "One thing is necessary?" (Luke x. 41, 42.) Was
it not as needful to see that you escape damnation, and get safe
to heaven when this life ended, as to see that you had food and
raiment for yourselves and yours ?
2. Did you spend no time in recreation, nor idleness, nor vain
talking ? Why might not that, at least, have been spent about
i evenly things ?
3. Could you have taken no time from your rest or eating, or
at other intermissions ? Man's body will not endure fo great
labours as have no intermission : .nd why then might not god-
liness have been your ease and recre; ^on ?
4. Or might you not have minde 1 these things, ev when
you were about your la" our, if you had but a heart to ehem ?
5. At least you might have spent the Lord's ow \ day in hear-
ing, reading, and pondering of these matters, Wuen you were
forced to forbear your worldly labours, even by the wholesome
law of the land. These, therefore, are all but vain excuses; and
God will shortly make thee speak out, and plainly confess, it was
not so much for want of time, or helps, or warning, as for want
of a heart to use them well. I should have found some time,
456 A SERMON
though it had been when I should have slept, if my heart had
been but set upon it.
The seventh excuse : c Little did I think to have seen this
day. I did not believe that ever God would be so severe. I
thought his threatenings had been but to keep men in awe ; and
I suspected either that the Scripture was not his word, or else
I thought he would be better than his word. I thought all that
I heard of another life had been uncertain, and therefore was
loth to let go a certainty for an uncertainty, and lose my pre-
sent pleasures which I had in hand for the hopes of that which
I never did see/
Answ. He that will not know his misery by believing to
prevent it, shall know it by feeling to endure it. You were told,
and told again, what your unbelief would bring you to. Did God's
word make heaven and earth ? Doth it support and secure
them ? And is not his word sufficient security for you to have
trusted your souls upon ? Did you know where was any better
security to be had, and where was any surer ground for your
confidence ? And did you think so basely and blasphemously
of God, that he would falsify his word, lest such as you should
suffer, and that he was fain to rule the world by a lie ? Did
God make the world so easily ? And can he not govern it by
true and righteous means ? What need God to say that which
he will not do to awe sinners ? Can he not awe them by truth ?
Is it not just that those should eternally perish who will enter-
tain such desperate thoughts of God, and then, by such wicked
imaginations, encourage themselves in sin against him ?
And for the truth of Scripture, God did not bid you believe
it without evidence. He stamped on it the image of his own
purity and perfection, that you might know it by that image
and superscription, if you had eyes to see them. He sealed it
by uncontrolled multitudes of miracles. He delivered it down
to your hands by infallible witnesses, so that he left you no
room for rational doubting.
And you knew that the matters of this world were not only
uncertain, but certainly vain and transitory, and would shortly
come to nothing, and leave you in distress. If it had been un-
certain whether there were a glory and misery hereafter, (as it
was not) should not reason have taught you to prefer the least
probabilities of an everlasting unspeakable happiness before that
which is certainly perishing and vain ? These excuses will but
condemn you.
OF JUDGMENT. 457
The eighth excuse : ' I was so enticed and persuaded by sin -
ners to do as they did, that I could not deny them : they would
never let me rest.'
And were you not as earnestly persuaded by God to forsake
sin, and serve him, and yet that would not prevail with you?
You could not deny the devils and fools, but you could deny
God and all his messengers. Were not ministers as earnest
with you every week to repent and amend ? What did men
entice you with ? With a little deluding fleshly pleasure for a
few davs ? And what did God entice you with ? With the
promise of endless, inconceivable felicity ! And if this were a
smaller matter in your eyes than the other, then you have had
your choice, be content with it, and thank yourselves. In your
lifetime you had the good things which you chose, and pre-
ferred before heaven, and therefore cannot expect to have hea-
ven besides.
The ninth excuse : ( I lived among ungodly persons, who de-
rided all that feared God ; so that if I had not done as they did,
but had made any more ado to be saved, I should have been the
very scorn of the place where I lived. '
Answ. And was not heaven worth the enduring of a scorn ?
Is he not worthy to go without it who thinks so basely of it ?
Did not Christ tell you that if you were ashamed of him before
men, he would be ashamed of you before his Father and the
angels of heaven ? (Mark viii. 38.) He suffered more than
scorns for you ; and could not you suffer a scorn for him and
yourselves ? Seeing you chose rather to endure everlasting
torment, than a little derision from ignorant men, take that
which you made choice of: and seeing so small a matter would
drive you from heaven, and part God and you as a mock, as the
wind of a man's mouth, no wonder if you be commanded to
depart from him into everlasting fire.
The tenth excuse : ( I had ungodly persons to my parents, or
masters, or landlord, or governors, who threatened to undo me
if I had addicted myself to so strict a life, and if I would not
believe and do as thev did/
Answ. What if they threatened you with present death?
Did not God also threaten you with everlasting death if you
were not ruled by him ? And whose threatening should you
have chiefly feared ? Is man more dreadful than God ? Is
death more terrible than hell ? Did not Christ bid vou " fear
458 A SERMON
not them that can kill the body, and after that can do no more;
but fear him that is able to destroy both body and soul in hell-
fire ? yea, I say unto you, fear him." (Matt. x. 28; Luke xii.
4, 5.) "Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of
their revilings : for the moth shall eat them up like a garment,
and the worm shall eat them like wool, but my righteousness
shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to genera-
tion." (Isaiah li. 7.) Seeing, therefore, you have chosen rather
to suffer from God for ever for your sin, than to suffer small
matters for well-doing for a moment, you must ever bear vour
own choice. Christ told you beforehand, that if you could
not forsake all the world, and your own lives, for him, you could
not be his disciples. (Matt. x. 37 — 39.) And seeing you thought
his terms too hard, and would needs seek you out a better ser-
vice, even take what you have chosen and found.
The eleventh excuse : ' I saw so many follow their pleasure
and their worldly business, and never look after these higher
things, and so few go the other way, that I thought sure God
would not damn so great a part of the world, and therefore I
ventured to do as the most did/
Answ. God will make good his word upon many or few.
Did you doubt of his will, or of his power ? For his will — he
hath told it you in his word ; for his power — he is as able to
punish many as one man. What is all the world to him, but as
a drop of a bucket, as the dust of the balance ? He told you
beforehand that the gate was strait, and the way to heaven
was narrow, and few did fino! it ; and the gate to destruction
was wide, and the way was broad, and many did enter in at it.
(Matt. vii. 13, 14.) And if you would not believe him, you must
bear what your unbelief hath brought you to. What if you had
twenty children, or servants, or friends, and the greater part of
them should prove false to yon, and seek your destruction, or
prove disobedient, and turn tc ur enemy, would you think it
a good excuse if the rest shoi^.d do the like because of their
example ? Will you therefore ^rong God because you see
others wrong him? Would you hnt in the face of your own
father, if you saw others do so ? God warned you that you
should not follow a multitude to do evil. (Exod. xxiii. 2.) And
if yet you will do as most do, you must even speed as most
speed. You should not so much consider who they be as what
they do, and whither they go, and who they forsake, and what
OF JUDGMENT. 459
they lose, and what strength is in the reasons that move
them to do this : and then you would find it is God they for-
sake, it is sin they choose ; it is heaven they lose, it is hell they
run into ; and it is no true reason, but Satan's delusion, and
sensual inclinations that lead them to it: and should they
be imitated, be they many, or be they few, in such a course
as this ?
The twelfth excuse : e I saw so many faults in those that were
accounted godly, and saw so much division among them, that
I thought they were as bad as others ; and among so many
opinions I knew not what religion to be of.'
Answ. 1. A spot is soonest seen in the fairest cloth; and
the malicious world useth to make such far worse than they are.
2. But suppose all were true that malice saith of some, you
could not say the like by others.
3. Or, if you could, yet it was God's law, and not men's
faults, that was made the rule for you to live by : will it excuse
you that others are bad ?
4. And from their diverse opinions you should have taken
counsel at God's word, which was right. Did you first search
the Scripture impartially, as willing to know the truth, that you
might obey it ? And did you pray daily that God would lead
you into truth ? And did you obey as much as you knew ?
Did you join with the godly so far as they are all agreed ? They
are all agreed in the fundamental articles of Christianity, and in
all things absolutely necessary to a holy life, and to salvation ;
that all known sin is to be forsaken, and all known duty to be
done. Why did you not so far, then, agree with them ? Alas !
the imperfections of the godly, and the false accusations of the
malicious world, will prove but a poor cover for your wilful un-
godliness, and Christ will convince you of the vanity of these
excuses.
The thirteenth excuse: c The Scriptures were so dark that I
could not understand them. And I saw the wisest men differ
so much in the exposition of them, that I thought it was in vain
for me to trouble myself about them. If God would have had
us live according to the Scriptures, he would sure have written
them plainly, that men might understand them.'
Answ. 1. It is all plainly written according to the nature of
the subject, but a prejudiced, disaffected, yea, or but untaught,
disused soul, cannot at first understand the plainest teaching.
The plainest Greek or Hebrew grammar that can be written,
460 A SERMON
will be utterly obscure to him who has but newly entered the
English school, yea, after many years' time that he spends in
learning. Did you study hard, and pray for God's teaching,
and inquire of others, and wait patiently in Christ's school, that
you might come to further knowledge by degrees ? And were
you willing to know even those truths that called you out to
self-denial, and that did put you on the hardest flesh- displeasing
duties? Had you done thus, you would have admired the light
of the holy Scripture, and now have rejoiced that ever you saw
them, and not have quarrelled at its seeming darkness. This
word might have made you wise to salvation, as it hath done
others. (Acts xx. 32; 2 Tim. iii. 15—17.) "This law of
the Lord is perfect, converting the soul \ the testimony of the
Lord is sure, making wise the simple ; the statutes of the Lord
are right, rejoicing the heart \ the commandment of the Lord
is pure, enlightening the eyes." (Psalm xix. 7, 8.)
2. So much as is of necessity to salvation, is as plain as you
could desire. Yet if you be judged by these, you will be con-
demned, for you did not obey that which was most plain.
What darkness is in such words as these, " Except ye repent,
ye shall all perish." (Luke xiii. 3, 5.) " Love not the world,
nor the things in the world. If any man love the world, the
love of the Father is not in him." (1 John ii. 15.) " He that
Avill come after me, let him deny himself," &c. (Matt. xvi. 24.)
3. If there had been nothing that seemed difficult to you,
would you not have despised its simplicity, and have thought
yourselves wise enough at the first reading, and needed no more ?
The fourteenth excuse : c There were so many seeming con-
tradictions in the Scripture, and so many strange improbable
things, that I could not believe it/
Ansvv. 1. The contradictions were in your fancy, that did not
understand the word which you read. Must the raw, inexpe-
rienced learner despise his book or teacher as oft as in his ig-
norance he thinks he meets with contradictions ? Did you
think God was no wiser than you, and understood not himself,
because you understood him not ? Nor could reconcile his own
words, because you could not reconcile them ? You would
needs be a judge of the law, instead of obeying it, and speak
evil of it, rather than do it. (James iv. 1 1 .)
2. And these things which you called improbable in the
word, were the wonders of God, of purpose to confirm it. If
it had not been confirmed by wonders, you would have thought
Of JUDGMENT. 461
it unproved, and yet now it is so confirmed, you will not believe
the doctrine, because the witness seems incredible. And that
is, because they are matters above the power of man, as if they
were therefore above the power of God. You shall at last have
your eyes so far opened, as to see those seeming contradictions
reconciled, and the certainty of those things which you ac-
counted improbable ; that you may be forced to confess the
folly of your arrogancy and unbelief; and then God will judge
you in righteousness, who presumed unrighteously to judge him
and his word.
The fifteenth excuse : c It seemed so unlikely a thing to me,
that the merciful God should damn most of the world to ever-
lasting fire, that I could not believe it.'
Answ. 1. And did it not seem as unlikely to you that his
word should be false ?
2. Should it not have seemed as unlikely that the Governor of
the world should be unjust, and suffer his law to be unexecuted,
and the worst to speed as well as the best ; and to suffer vile
sinful dust to despise his mercy, and abuse his patience, and
turn all his creatures against him without due punishment ?
3. Did you not feel pain and misery begin in this life ?
4. You saw toads and serpents which had never sinned, and
you would rather live in any tolerable suffering than to be a
toad. And is it not reason that it should go worse with con-
temptuous sinners, than with those creatures that never sinned ?
5. Could you expect that those should come to heaven that
would not believe there was such a state, but refused it, and
preferred the world before it ? And to be out of heaven is to
be out of all happiness ; and he that is so out of all happiness,
and knows that he lost it by his own folly, must needs torment
himself with such considerations, were there no other torments :
and as man is capable of greater felicity than brutes, so must
he needs be capable of more misery.
The sixteenth excuse : ' The things which God promised in
heaven, and threatened in hell, were all out of my sight, and
therefore I could not heartily believe them. Had I but once
seen them, or spoke with one that had seen them, I should have
been satisfied, and have contemned the things of the world.'
Answ. Will you not believe till you see or feel ? Was not
God's word sufficient evidence ? Would you have believed one
from the dead that had told you he had seen such things
And would you not believe Stephen that saw them ? (Acts i.
462 A SERMON
56.) Or Paul, that heard and saw them ? (2 Cor. xii. 3, 4.)
Nor Christ, that came purposely from heaven to reveal them ?
Why? flesh and blood cannot see them. You see not God, will
you not therefore believe that there is a God ? Indeed, what-
ever you imagine, if you would not believe Moses and the
prophets, Christ and his apostles, neither would you have be-
lieved though one had risen from the dead, for God's word is
more credible than a dead man's, and Christ did rise from the
dead to attest it. Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet
believed. Noah saw no rain when he was preparing the ark,
but because he believed, he made ready and escaped, (Heb. xi.
7,) when the world, that would not believe, did perish. But
seeing God's word was of no more weight with you, and no
knowledge would serve your turn but by seeing and feeling, you
shall see and feel everlastingly to your sorrow.
The seventeenth excuse : * It was so strict a law that God
would have ruled me by, and the way to heaven was so strait
and difficult, that I could not endure it. I was not able to deny
my flesh, and live such a life.'
Answ. 1. You are not able because you are not willing.
What was there but your own wicked hearts that should make
such a life seem grievous to you ? Every thing is hard and
grievous to him who loathes it, and whose heart is against it.
The chief thing that God called you to was to love him, and
make him your delight, and are love and delight such grievous
things ? It was not grievous to you to love your meat, or drink,
or money. It was no hard matter to you to love a friend that
loved you, no, nor to love your sin which was your enemy, and
what should make it seem hard to love God but a wicked heart ?
Is not he better and more lovely than all these? And had
you but loved him, all the rest of his service would have seemed
easy to you. To think of him, to speak of him, to pray to him,
to praise him, yea, to deny all and suffer for him, would have
been sweet and pleasant to you, so far as you had loved him.
It was not God, therefore, but your own naughty hearts that
made his work seem grievous to you, and the way to heaven
seem hard. He told you truly that his yoke was easy, and his
burthen light, and his commandments were not grievous.
(Matt. xi. 29 ; 1 John v. 3.) They that tried them found them
the very joy and delight of their souls, and why could not you
do so ?
2. But what if the way to heaven had been harder than it
OF JUDGMENT.
463
was ? Was not heaven worth your labour ? Were you afraid
of being a loser by it ? Could not God requite your labour or
sufferings ? Doth any repent when they come to heaven that
it cost them so dear to come thither ? And is not hell worse
than the hardest way to heaven ? Seeing you have chosen hell
to save you labour and suffering in this life, you must have your
choice. And seeing you thought not everlasting life to be worth
so much as God required, that is, the accepting thankfully, and
minding and seeking, and preferring it before this life, you have
none to blame for the loss of it but yourselves.
The eighteenth excuse : ' It was God that made me of a
sensual nature. He gave me an appetite to meat, and drink,
and ease, and lust. He gave me that flesh which ruled me,
how then can he condemn me for living according to the nature
which he gave me }'■
Answ. He gave that appetite to be exercised moderately
under the rule of reason, for the preservation and propagation
of mankind. But did he not also give you reason to govern
that appetite ? And the revelation of his will to guide that
reason ? He gave you your flesh to be a servant, and not a
master. Your beast hath fleshly appetite without reason, and
therefore God hath put him under you who have reason, that
you should rule him. Will you let your beast do what he list,
and madly run upon whom you list, and say, you do but let
him live according to his nature, which God hath given him ?
Why, God that gave him such nature, did intend him to be
ruled by a higher nature, even by the reason which he gave to
you, and so he did also by your flesh and sensual appetite.
The nineteenth excuse : c But I lived among so many baits
which enticed this flesh, that 1 could not resist them. My meat
was a snare to me, my drink a snare, my clothes, my house, my
land a snare, every beauty that I saw was a snare. And the
better all these were, the stronger was my snare. If God would
not have had my heart ensnared and drawn from him, he should
not have put so many baits in my way. Yea, and they were
so near to me, and daily with me, that though I was resolved to
forbear them before, yet when they were brought to my hand,
I could not forbear/
Answ. 1. Is this the thanks that God hath for his mercies ? He
sent you all these as favours from his own hand. He wrote his
own name upon them, that in them you might see his power,
and wisdom, and goodness, and so be led up to the consideration
464 A SERMON
of him, that you might fall in love with himself, who was the
fountain, the life, the end of all. And do you overlook God in
the creature, and live as without him in the world, and doat
upon that which should have drawn you to himself, and then lay
the blame on God ? If he send a suitor to speak to you in his
name, and write you a love-letter with his own hand, will you
fall in love with the messenger of the letter, and neglect the
sender, and then blame him that wrote his letter on so fair a
paper, or in so neat a hand, or that sent it by such a comely mes-
senger ? Certainly those excuses are too gross to take with the
wise and righteous God, or to seem sufficient to a well-informed
conscience.
2. And whereas you speak of the power of these objects, was
there not much more in God, in Christ, in the promised glory,
to have drawn your heart another way ? Why, then, did not
these take as much with you as the other ? You could not
choose, forsooth, but be enticed with such baits as were fitted to
your sensual appetite, and such things as a dog or a swine may
enjoy as well as a man, but you could choose when Christ and
glory were offered you. Yea, you did choose to refuse the offer,
and tread them under feet by your neglect. When Satan set
your cups, and your harlots, and your profits before you, on one
side, did not God set his favour and everlasting happiness on
the other side ? And was it wise or equal dealing to prefer
your lusts before that glory ?
3. Moreover, it was not in the power of any of those baits
to force your will, or to necessitate you to choose them. They
could be but baits to entice you, and it was still in your own
choice whether you would yield to the enticement, and choose
them or not. Shall every man be false to God that hath any
bait to entice him from him ? Will you excuse your child or
friend if he would be false to you upon as great enticements as
these ? If a cup of drink, or a whore, or a little gain, could
draw him more than all your love and interest, I do not think
you would hold him excused.
And whereas you speak of the nearness and continuance of
these allurements, I would fain know was not God as near you,
and continually near you, to draw you to himself? Faith might
have seen him, though flesh and blood cannot. Did he not
stand by you when you were in your cups and lustful pleasures ?
Did he not tell you of the danger, and offer you far better things,
if you would obey him and despise those baits ? But you would
OF JUDGMENT. 465
hearken to none of this ; yon should have remembered that he
stood over you, and was looking on you, and you should have
said, as Joseph, " How can I do this great wickedness, and sin
against God?" (Gen. xxxix. 9.) You had also Scripture near
you, and reason near you, and conscience near you, as well as
the bait was near you, and therefore this is a vain excuse.
The twentieth excuse : * It was God that let loose the devil
to tempt me, and he was too subtle for me to deal with, and
therefore what wonder if I sinned, and were overcome ?'
Answ. 1. He did not let loose the devil to constrain you to
sin. He could but entice, and you might choose whether you
would yield. The devil could neither make you sin against
your will, nor yet necessitate you to be willing.
2. You were a sure friend to Christ that while, that would
forsake him as oft as you were tempted by the devil. Is that a
friend or a servant worthy to be regarded, that will disobey you,
or betray you, as oft as he is tempted to it ?
3. Will you excuse your servant if he leave your work
undone, and follow cards or dice, or the alehouse, and say, * I
was tempted to it by one that was cunninger than I?' Shall
every murderer or thief escape hanging because the devil was
too cunning for him in his temptations ? Would you have the
jury or the judge to take this for a good excuse ?
4. And why did you not hearken to God, that enticed you
the other way ? You forgot what helps he afforded you to dis-
cover the wiles of Satan, and to vanquish the temptation. He
told you it was an enemy that tempted you, and would you
hearken to an enemy ? He told you it was a dream, a shadow,
a painted pleasure, a gilded carcass, a lying promise, and de-
ceitful vanity, by which you were tempted, and yet would you
regard it before your God ? Pie told you that it was your God,
your Saviour, your hope, your everlasting happiness that the
tempter would beguile you of, and yet would you be beguiled ? He
told you, and plainly, and often told you, that the tempter
would lead you to eternal fire, and undo you everlastingly before
you were aware, and that a fatal hook was covered with that
bait, and yet would you swallow it ?
5. It is plain by all this that it was not your natural weakness
of faculties that caused you to be overcome by the subtleties of
the devil, as a silly child is deceived by a crafty fellow that
overwits him. But it was your careless inconsiderateness, your
sensual inclinations, and vicious disposition that drew you to a
VOL. XVII, ll H
466 A SERMON
wilful obeying of the tempter, and rejecting the wholesome
advice of Christ. This, therefore, is a frivolous excuse of your sin.
The one-and- twentieth excuse : £ But 1 hope you will not
say that all men have free will, and if my will were not free, how
could I choose but sin ?'
Answ. 1. Your will was not free from God's rule and govern-
ment ; 2. Nor was it free from its natural inclination to good in
general ; for either of these were more, properly slavery. 3. Nor
was it free from the influence of a dark understanding. 4. Nor
free from its own contracted, vicious inclination. 5. Nor freed
from the temptations of the flesh, the world, and the devil.
But it was, 1. Free from any natural determination to evil, or
to any thing that was doubtful. 2. And free from the co-action
or violence of any. 3. And free from an irresistible determina-
tion of any exterior cause, at least ordinarily. So that naturally,
as men, you have the power or faculty of determining your own
wills, of ruling your inferior faculties in a great measure, yea,
of ruling the senses and the fantasy itself, which doth so much
to dispose of our understanding. And if your wills, which are
naturally free, are yet so habitually vicious that they incline you
to do evil, that is not an excuse, but an aggravation of your sin.
But of this more under the next.
The two-and-twentieth excuse: c But I have not power of
myself to any thing that is good. What can the creature do ?
Without Christ, we can do nothing. It is God that must
give me ability, or I can have none, and if he had given it me,
I had not been an unbeliever or impenitent. I can no more
believe of myself, than I can fulfil the law of myself.'
Answ. 1. These are the vain cavils of learned folly, which
God will easily answer in a word. The word " power" is taken
in several senses. Sometimes, and most commonly and fitly, for
a faculty or a strength by ( which a man can do his duty if he
will. This physical power you have, and the worst of sinners
have, while they are men on earth. Were they actually willing,
they might acceptably perform sincere obedience, and were
they dispositively willing, they might actually believe and will.
And thus the ungodly have power to believe.
Sometimes the word u power" is taken for authority or leave,
for legal or civil power. And thus you have all not only power
or liberty to believe, but also a command which makes it your
duty, and a threatening adjoined, which will condemn you if you
do not.
OF JUDGMENT. 4.Q*]
Sometimes the word " power " is taken ethically and less pro-
perly, for a disposition, inclination, habit, or freedom from the
contrary habit or disposition. And in this sense it is true that
none but the effectually called have a power to believe. But
then observe, 1. That this is but a moral less proper, and not a
physical proper impotency, and therefore Austin chooseth rather
to say that all men have power to believe, but all have not a
will, or faith itself, because we use to difference power from will-
ingness, and willingness actuate th the power which we had
before. And therefore our divines choose rather to call grace a
habit, when they speak exactly, than a power ; and Dr. Twiss
derides the Arminians for talking of a power subjected in
a power. 2. Note, that this impotency is but the same thing
with your unwillingness, and wilful blindness in another word.
3. Note, that this impotency is along of yourselves as to the ori-
ginal, and much more as to the not curing, or removing of it.
Hath God given you no means towards the cure of this disabi-
lity, which you have neglected ? 4. Note, that this impotency
is no just excuse, but an aggravation of your sin. If you were
willing to be the servant of Christ, and yet were not able, either
because he would not accept you, or because of a want of na-
tural faculties, or because of some other natural difficulty which
the willingest mind could not overcome, this were some excuse,
but to be habitually wilful in refusing grace, is worse than to
be merely, actually unwilling. If a man have so accustomed
himself to murder, drunkenness, stealing, or the like wickedness,
so far that he cannot leave it, will you therefore forgive him ?
Or will any judge or jury hold him excused ? Or rather think
him the more unfit for mercy ? 5. Note, also, that the want
of a supernatural habit, no, nor the presence of the contrary
habit, do not efficiently determine the will to particular acts,
much less take away its natural freedom. 6. And that till habits
attain an utter predominancy, (at least) there is a power re-
maining in the will to resist them, and use means against
them, though eventually the perverse inclination may hinder the
use of it.
The three-and-twentieth excuse : c I have heard from learned
men that God doth determine all actions, natural and free, as
the first efficient physical immediate cause, or else nothing
could act. And then it was not along of me that I chose
forbidden objects, but of him that irresistibly moved me thereto^
and whose instrument I was.'
H H 2
468 A SERMON
Answ. This is a trick of that wisdom which is foolishness
with God, and to be deceived by vain philosophy.
1. The very principle itself is most likely to be false, and
those that tell you this do err. Much more, I think, may be
said against it than for it.
2. I am sure it is either false or reconcileable with God's
holiness/and man's liberty and culpability; so that it is a mad
thing to deceive yourselves with such philosophical uncertain-
ties, when the truth which you oppose by it is infallibly certain.
That God is not the author of sin, but man himself, who is
justly condemned for it, is undoubtedly true, and would you
obscure so clear a truth by searching into points beyond human
reach, if not unsound, as you conclude them.
The four-and- twentieth excuse: c But at least those learned
divines among us that doubt of this, do yet say that the will is
necessarily and infallibly determined by the practical under-
standing, and that is as much irresistibly necessitated by
objects, and therefore whatever act was done by my understand-
ing or will, was thus necessitated, and I could not help it.
They say, liberty is but the acting of the faculty agreeably to
its nature, and it was God, as Creator, that gave Adam his
faculties, and God, by providential dispose, that presented all
objects to him, by which his understanding, and so his will,
were unavoidably necessitated/
Answ. This is of the same nature with the former, uncertain,
if not certainly false. Were this true, for ought we can see,
it would lay all the sin and misery of this world on God, as the
irresistible necessitating cause, which because we know infal-
libly to be false, we have no reason to take such principles to
be true which infer it. The understanding doth not, by a ne-
cessary efficiency, determine the will, but morally, or rather, is
regularly a condition, or necessary antecedent, without which
it may not determine itself. Yea, the will, by commanding the
sense and fantasy, doth much to determine the understanding.
As the eye is not necessary to my going, but to my going right,
so is not the understanding's guidance necessary to my willing,
(there the simple apprehension may suffice,) but to my right
willing. There are other ways of determining the will. Or, if
the understanding did determine the will, efficiently and neces-
sarily, it is not every act of the understanding that must do it.
If it be so when it saith, This must be done, and saith importu-
nately, yet not when it only saith, This maybe done, or you
OF JUDGMENT. 469
may venture on it, which is the common part which it hath in
sin.
I am not pleased that these curious objections fall in the
way, nor do I delight to put them into vulgar heads; but finding
many young scholars, and others that have conversed with them,
assaulted with these temptations, I thought meet to give a
touch, and but a touch, to take them out of their way, as Mr.
Fenner hath done more fully in the preface to his Hidden
Manna, on this last point, to which I refer you. I only add
this :
The will of man in its very dominion doth bear God's image.
It is a self-determining power, though it be biassed by habits,
and needs a guide. As the heart and vital spirits by which it
acteth are to the rest of the body, so is it to the soul. The
light of nature hath taught all the world to carry the guilt of
every crime to the will of man, and there to leave it. Upon
this all laws and judgments are grounded. From ignorance
and intellectual weakness, men commonly fetch excuses for
their faults, but from the will they are aggravated. If we think
it strange that man's will should be the first cause, so much as
of a sinful mode, and answer all occurring objections, it may
suffice that we are certain the Holy Majesty is not the author
of sin, and he is able to make all this as plain as the sun, and
easily answer all these vain excuses, though we should be unable :
and if we be much ignorant of the frame and motions of our
own souls, and especially of that high, self-determining princi-
ple, free will, the great spring of our actions, and the curious
engine by which God doth sapiently govern the world, it is no
wonder, considering that the soul can know itself but by re-
flection, and God gave us a soul to use, rather than to know
itself, and to know its qualities and operations, rather than its
essence.
The five-and-twentieth excuse : c No man can be saved, nor
avoid any sin, nor believe in Christ, but those whom God hath
predestinated thereto. I was under an irreversible sentence
before 1 was born, and therefore I do nothing but what I was
predestinated to do, and if God decreed not to save me, how
could I help it ?'
Answ. 1. God's judgments are more plain, but his decrees or
secret purposes are mysterious, and to darken certainties by
having recourse to points obscure, is no part of Christian wisdom.
God told you your duty in his word, and on what terms you
470 A SERMON
must be judged to life or death ; hither should you have recourse
for direction, and not to the unsearchable mysteries of his mind.
2. God decreeth not to condemn any but for sin. Sin, I say,
is the cause of that condemnation, though not of his decree.
3. God's decrees are acts immanent in himself, and make no
change on you, and therefore do not necessitate you to sin, any
more than his foreknowledge doth. For both cause only a ne-
cessity of consequence which is logical, as the divines on both
sides do confess. And therefore this no more caused you to
sin, than if there had been no such decree. And it is a doubt
whether that decree be not negative, a willing suspending of
the divine will, as to evil, or at most a purpose to permit it.
The six-and-twentieth excuse : c If it be no more, yet doth
it make my perdition unavoidable, for even God's foreknowledge
doth so ; for if he foreknow it, all the world cannot hinder it
from coming to pass.'
Answ. Must God either be ignorant of what you will do, or
else be the cause of it ? You foreknow that the sun will rise
to-morrow, that doth not cause it to rise. If you foreknow that
one man will murder another, you are not the cause of it by
foreknowing it. So is it here.
The seven-and-twentieth excuse: 6 God might have hindered
my sin and damnation if he would/
Answ. And will you wilfully sin, and think to escape, because
God doth not hinder you ? The prince that makes a law against
the murder, could lock you up, and keep you from being a
murderer. But are you excusable if he do not ? We are certain
that God could have hindered all the sin, and death, and confu-
sion, and misery that is in the world, and we are as certain that
he doth not hinder it but by forbidding it, and giving men
means against it, and we are certain that he is just, and good,
and wise in all, and not bound to hinder it, and what his reasons
are you may better know hereafter. In the mean time, you had
better have looked to your own duty.
The eight-and-twentieth excuse : e How could I be saved if
Christ did not die for me ? He died but for his elect, and none
could be saved without his death.'
Answ. He did die for you, and for more than his elect, though
he absolutely purposed only their salvation. Your sins crucified
him, and your debt lay upon him, and he so far ransomed you,
that nothing but your wilful refusal of the benefits could have
condemned you.
OF JUDGMENT. A"]Y
The nine-and-twentieth excuse : f It was Adam's sin that
brought me into this depravedness of will, which I can neither
cure, nor could prevent.'
Answ. 1. If Adam cast away his holiness, he could no more
convey that to us which he cast away, than a nobleman that is
a traitor can convey his lost inheritance or honours to his son.
2. You perish, not only for your original sin, but for reject-
ing the recovering mercy of the Redeemer. You might have
had Christ and life in him for the accepting.
The thirtieth excuse : c God will require no more than he
gives. He gave me not grace to repent and believe, and without
his gift I could not have it/
Answ. 1. God will justly require more than he giveth, that is,
the improvement of his gifts, as Matt. xxv. shows. He gave
Adam but a power to persevere, and not actual perseverance,
yet did he justly punish him for want of the act, even for not
using by his own will the power which he had given him.
2. It is along of yourself if God did not give you grace to
believe 5 it was because you wilfully refused some preparatory
grace. Christ found you at a great distance from him, and he
gave you grace sufficient to have brought you nearer to him
than you were ; you had grace sufficient to have made you better
than you were, and restrained many sins, and brought you to
the means, when you turned your back on them. Though this
were not sufficient to cause you to believe, it was sufficient to
have brought you nearer to believing, and through your own
wilfulness became not effectual ; even as Adam had sufficient
grace to have stood, which was not effectual. So that you had
not only Christ offered to you, if you would but accept him,
but you had daily and precious helps and means to have cured
your wills, and caused you to accept him, for neglect of which,
and so for not believing, and so for all your other sins, you
justly perish.
The one- and -thirtieth excuse : ( Alas ! man is a worm, a
dry leaf, (Job xiii. 25,) a silly, foolish creature, and therefore
his actions be not regardable, nor deserve so great a punishment.'
Answ. Though he be a worm, and as nothing to God, and
foolish by sin, yet he is naturally so noble a creature, that the
image of God was on him ; (Gen. xii. 26. and v. i ; James iii.
9 ;) and the world made his servants, and angels his at-
tendants. (Heb. i. 14.) So noble, that Christ died for him,
God takes special care of him ; he is capable of knowing and
4/2 A SERMON
enjoying God, and heaven is not thought too good for him if he
will obey. And he that is capable of so great good, must be
capable of as great evil, and his ways not to be so overlooked
by that God that hath undertaken to be his Governor. When
it tendeth to infidelity, the devil will teach you to debase man,
even lower than God would do.
The two-and-thirtieth excuse : c Sin is no being ; and shall
men be damned for that which is nothing ? '
Answ. 1. It is such a mode as deformeth God's creature. It
is a moral being ; it is a relation of our actions and hearts to
God's will and law.
2. They that say sin is nothing, say pain and loss are nothing
too. You shall, therefore, be paid with one nothing for another.
Make light of your misery, and say it is nothing, as you did of
your sin.
3. Will you take this for a good excuse from your children or
servants if they abuse you ? or, from a thief or a murderer ?
Shall he escape by telling the Judge that his sin was nothing ?
or, rather have death, which is nothing, as the just reward
of it?
The three- and-thirtieth excuse: ( But sin is a transient
thing ; at least it doth God no harm, and therefore why should
he do us so much harm for it ? '
Answ. 1. It hurts not God, because he is above hurt. No
thanks to you if he be out of your reach.
2. You may wrong him, when you cannot hurt him ; and
the wrong deserves as much as you can bear. If a traitor en-
deavour the death of the prince in vain, his endeavour deserves
death, though he never hurt him. You despise God's law and
authority; you cause the blaspheming of his name; (Rom.
ii. 24 ;) he calls it a pressing him as a cart is pressed with
sheaves, (Amos ii. 13,) and a grieving of him.
3. And you wrong his image, his church, the public good,
and the souls of others.
The four-and-thirtieth excuse : c But God's nature is so
good and merciful, that sure lie will not damn his own crea-
tures.'
Answ. 1. A merciful judge will hang a man for a fault against
man ; by proportion, then, what is due for sin against God ?
2. All the death and calamity which you see in the world,
comes from the anger of this merciful God ; why, then, may not
future misery come from it ?
OF JUDGMENT. 473
3. God knoweth his own mercy better than you do ; and he
hath told you how far it shall extend.
4. He is infinitely merciful ; but it is to the heirs of mercy,
not to the final rejectors of his mercy.
Hath not God been merciful to thee in bearing with thee so
long, and offering thee grace in the blood of Christ till thou
didst wilfully reject it ? Thou wilt confess, to thy everlasting
woe, that God was merciful ; had he not been so merciful, thou
wouldst not have been so miserable for rejecting it.
The five-and-thirtieth excuse : ' I would not so torment mine
enemy myself.'
Answ. No reason you should. Is it all one to wrong you, and
to wrong the God of heaven ? God is the only judge of his own
wrongs.
The six-and-thirtieth excuse : c All men are sinners, and I
was but a sinner/
Answ. All were not impenitent, unbelieving, rebellious sinners,
and therefore all are not unpardoned, condemned sinners. All
did not live after the flesh, and refuse to the last to be con-
verted, as you did. God will teach you better to difference
between sinners and sinners.
The seven-and-thirtieth excuse: c But if Christ have satis-
fied for my sins, and died for me, then how can I justly suffer
for the same sins ? will God punish one sin twice ?
Answ. 1 . Christ suffered for man in the nature of man, but not
in your person, nor you in him. It was not you that provided
the price, but God himself ; Christ was not man's delegate in
satisfying, and therefore received not his instructions from us,
nor did it on our terms, but his own. It was not the same
thing which the law threatened that Christ underwent ; for
that was the damnation of the sinner himself, and not the suf-
fering of another for him ; it cannot therefore be yours, but
on Christ's own terms. He died for thy sin, but with this in-
tent, that for all that, if thou refuse him, thou shalt die thyself.
It is therefore no wrong to thee to die, for it was not thou that
diedst before : and Christ will take it for no wrong to him ; for
he will judge thee to that death. It is for refusing a Christ that
died for thee that thou must perish for ever.
The eia;ht-and-thirtieth excuse : ' But I did not refuse Christ :
1 believed and trusted in him to the last; and repented for my
sins, thouffh I sometimes was overtaken by them.'
Answ. Had this been true, thy sin would not have condemned
4/4 A SERMON
thee : but there is no mocking God ; lie will show thee then
thy naked heart, and eonvinee thousands that thought they be-
lieved and repented, that indeed they did not. By thy works,
also, will this be discovered, this is, by the main bent and scope
of thy life, as Matt. xxv. throughout, and James ii.
The nine-and-thirtieth excuse: * I did many good works;
and I hope God will set those against my evil works/
Answ. Thy good works were thy sins, because, indeed, they
were not good, being not done in sincerity of heart for God.
The best man's works have some infirmitv, which nothing can
cleanse but the blood of Christ, which thou hast made light of,
and therefore hast no part in. If all thy life had been spent
in perfect works except one day, they would not make satisfac-
tion for the sins of that day, for they are but part of thy duty.
Wo to him that hath no better a Saviour at judgment than his
own good works !
The fortieth excuse : e I have lived in poverty and misery on
earth, and therefore I hope I have had my suffering here, and
shall not suffer in this world and another too.'
Answ. 1. By that rule all poor men, and murderers, and thieves
that are tormented and hanged, should be saved. But as god-
liness hath the promise of this life and that to come, so im-
penitency and wickedness hath the threatening of this life and
that to come.
2. The devils and the damned have suffered much more than
you already, and yet they are never the nearer a deliverance.
When thou hast suffered ten thousand years, thy pain will be
never the nearer an end. How, then, can a little misery on
earth prevent it ? Alas ! poor soul, these are but the foretastes
and beginnings of thy sorrow. Nothing but pardon through the
blood of Christ could have prevented thy condemnation ; arid
that thou rejectest by infidelity and impenitency. His sufferings
would have saved thee if thou hadst not refused him, but all
thy own sufferings will yield thee no relief.
So much for the answering of the vain excuses which poor
sinners are ready to make for themselves, wherein I have been so
large, as that this part, I confess, is disproportionate to the
rest : but it was for these two reasons.
1. That poor careless souls might see the vanity of such de-
fences : and consider, if such a worm as I can easilv confute
them, how easily and how terribly will they be all answered by
their Judge !
OF JUDGMENT. 475
2. I did it the rather, that godly Christians might the better
understand how to deal with these vain excuses when they meet
with them, which will be daily, if they deal with men in this sad
condition.
X. We have done with that part of the judgment which con-
sisted! in the exploration or trial of the cause. We now come
to that which is the conclusion and consummation of all ; and
that is, to show you what the sentence will be, and on whom.
And for this we must go straight to the word of God for our
light, it being impossible for any man to have any particular
knowledge of it, if Christ had not there revealed it unto us. In-
deed, almost all the world do acknowledge a life after this,
where it shall go well with the good, and ill with the bad. But
who shall be then accounted righteous, and who unrighteous,
and on what terms and grounds, by whom they shall be judged,
and to what condition, they know not.
The sentence in judgment will be, 1. Either on those that
never had means to know Christ ; 2. Or on those that had.
1. For the former, as it less concerneth us to inquire of their
case, so it is more obscurely revealed to us in the Scripture. It
is certain that they shall be judged according to their use of the
means which they had, (Rom. ii. 11 — 16,) and the talents
which they received. (Matt, xxv.) But that it falleth out that
he that hath but the one talent of natural helps doth improve it
to salvation ; or that ever they, who knew not Christ, are justi-
fied and saved without that knowledge, (being at age and use of
reason,) I find not in the Scriptures. I find, indeed, that as
many as have sinned without law, shall also perish without law;
and as many as have sinned in the law, shall be judged by the
law. (Rom. ii. 12.) But not that any that are justified by the
works of nature, such as are here said to be without law. I find
also that " they have the work of the law written in their hearts,
their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the
mean while accusing, or else excusing, one another, in the day
when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ ac-
cording to the gospel." (Rom. ii. 15, 16.) And I believe it is
a just excuse, and not an unjust, which is here meant. But it
will be but an excuse so far as they were guiltless ) and that will
be but in tanto, and not in toto, in part only, and so not a full
justification. A heathen's conscience may excuse him from those
sins which he was never guilty of, but not from all. But no more
of them.
4J6 A SERMON
2. The case of those who heave had the gospel is more plainly
opened to ns in God's word. Their sentence is opened in many
places of Scripture, but most fully in Matt. xxv., whence we
will now collect it.
There we find that Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, as King of
the world, shall sit in judgment on all men at the last, and shall
separate them one from another as a shepherd divideth the
sheep from the goats, and so shall pass the final sentence. This
sentence is two-fold, according to the different condition of
them that are judged. To them on the right hand there is a
sentence of justification, and adjudication to everlasting glory;
to them on the left hand there is a sentence of condemnation to
everlasting punishment.
The sentence on each of these containeth both the state
which they are judged to, and the reason or cause of the judg-
ment to that state : for as God will not judge any to life or
death without just cause, so he will publish this cause in his
sentence, as it is the manner of judges to do ; if you say,
c Christ will not use a voice/ let it satisfy that though we know
not the manner, yet if he do it but by mental discovery, as he
shows men what shall everlastingly befal them, so he will show
them why it shall so befal them.
1. The sentence on them on the right hand will con tain j 1.
Their justification, and adjudication to blessedness, and that both
as generally denominated, and as particularly determined and
described. 2. And the cause of this judgment. 1. In general
they shall be pronounced blessed ; Satan would have had them
cursed and miserable. The law did curse them to misery; many a
fearful thought hath possessed their own breasts, lest they should
prove at last accursed and miserable : but now they hear the
contrary from their Judge. All the promises in the gospel could
not perfectly overcome those their fears ; all the comfortable
words of the ministers of the gospel could not perfectly subdue
them ; all the tender mercies of God in Christ could notperfectlv
subdue them ; but now they are vanished all for ever. He that
once had heard his Redeemer in judgment call him " blessed,"
will never fear being cursed more ; for he that Christ blessed,
shall be blessed indeed.
The description of their blessedness followeth, "Come, in-
herit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the
world :" and also they are called " blessed of the Father." Here
is the fountain of their blessedness — the Father, and the state
OF JUDGMENT. 477
of their blessedness in being the Father's; for I suppose they
are called u the blessed of the Father/' both because the Father
blessed them, that is, makes them happy, and because these
blessed ones are the Father's own : and so Christ will publish
it to the world in judgment, that he came to glorify the Father,
and will proclaim him the principal efficient, and ultimate end
of his work of redemption, and the blessedness of his saints ;
and that himself is, as Mediator, but the way to the Father. It
is the Father that " prepared" the kingdom for them, and
"from the foundation of the world" prepared it; both for
them, as chosen ones, and for them as future believers and
righteous ones. It is called a kingdom, partly in respect to
God, the King, in whose glory we shall partake ill our places ;
and partly metaphorically, from the dignity of our condition.
For so it is that ourselves are said to be made kings, (Rev. i. 6.,
and v. 1 ; 1 Peter ii. 9,) and not that we are properly kings, for
then we must have subjects who must be governed by us.
Thus we see their blessedness in the fountain, end, and state
of dignity. As to the receptive act on their part, it is ex-
pressed by two words ; one signifying their first entrance on it
— -" come," the other their possession — " inherit :" that is, pos-
sess it as given by the Father, and redeemed by the Son, and
hold it in this tenure for ever.
The true believer was convinced in this life that, indeed, there
was no true blessedness but this enjoyment of God in the kingdom
of heaven. The Lord revealed this to his heart by his word and
Spirit; and therefore he contemned the seeming happiness on
earth, and laid up for himself a treasure in heaven, and made
him friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, and ven-
tured all his hope in this vessel. And now he findeth the wis-
dom of that choice in a rich return. God made him so wise a
merchant as to sell all for this pearl of greatest price, and
therefore now he shall find the gain. As there is no other
true happiness but God in glory, so there is nothing more suit-
able and welcome to the true believer. Oh ! how welcome will
the face of that God be, whom he loved, whom he sought,
whom he longed and waited for. How welcome will that king-
dom be which he lived in hope of; which he parted with all for,
and suffered for in the flesh ! How glad will he be to see the
blessed face of his Redeemer, who, by his manifold grace, hath
brought him unto this ! I leave the believing soul to think of
478 A SERMON
it, and to make it the daily matter of his delightful meditation-
what an inconceivable jpy, in one moment, this sentence of Christ
will fill his soul with. Undoubtedly, it is now quite past our
comprehensions, though our imperfect forethoughts of it may
well make our lives a continual feast.
Were it but our justification from the accusations of Satan,
who would have us condemned either as sinners in general, or
as impenitent, unbelieving rebels against him that redeemed us
in special, it would lift up the heads of the saints in that dav.
After all the fears of our own hearts, and the slanderous accu-
sations of Satan and the world, that we were either impenitent
infidels, or hypocrites, Christ will then justify us, and pronounce
us righteous. So much for the condition to which they are
judged.
2. The reason or cause of this justification of the saints is
given us both, 1 . In a general denomination, and, 2. In a par-
ticular description. 1. In general, it is because they were righ-
teous, as is evident. Matt. xxv. 46, " The righteous shall go into
life everlasting." And, indeed, it is the business of every just
judge to justify the righteous, and condemn the unrighteous :
and shall not the Judge of all the earth judge righteously^?
(Gen. xviii. 25.) Gtod makes men righteous before he judges
them so, and judgeth them righteous because they are so. He
that abominateth that man who saith to the righteous, ' Thou art
wicked,' or to the wicked, ' Thou art righteous,' who justifieth
the wicked, and condemneth the righteous, will certainly never
do so himself.
Indeed, he will justify them who are sinners, but not against
the accusation that they are sinners, but against the accusation
that they are guilty of punishment for sin : but that is because
he first made them just, and so justifiable, by pardoning their
sin through the blood of Christ.
And it is true also that he will justify those that were wicked,
but not those that are wicked: but judgment findeth them as
death leaveth them ; and he will not take them for wicked who
are sanctified and cleansed of their former wickedness. So that
Christ will first pardon them before he justify them against
the charge of being sinners in general ; and lie will first give
men faith, repentance, and new obedience, before he will justify
them against the charge of being impenitent infidels, or hypo-
crites, and consequently unpardoned, and doubly guilty of
OF JUDGMENT. 479
damnation. This two-fold righteousness he will first give men,
and so constitute them just, before he will declare it, and sen-
tence them just.
2. The reason of the sentence particularly described, is from
their faith and love to Christ, expressed in their obedience, self-
denial, and forsaking all for him. " For I was hungry, and ye
fed me ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger,
and ye took me in ; naked, and ye clothed me ; I was sick, and
ye visited me ; I was in prison, and ye came to me. Verily, I
say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Matt. xxv. 35 —
41.) Here is, 1. The causal conjunction " for." 2. And the
cause or reason itself.
Concerning both which observe, 1. How it is that man's obe-
dience and self-denial is the reason and cause of his justification.
2. Why it is that God will have the reason or cause thus de-
clared in the sentence.
For the first, observe that it is one thing to give a reason of
the sentence, and another thing to express the cause of the
benefit given us by the promise, and judged to us by the sen-
tence. Man's obedience was no proper cause why God did, in
this life, give pardon of sin to us, or a right to glory ; much less
of his giving Christ to die for us : and therefore, as to our con-
stitutive justification at our conversion, we must not say or think
that God doth justify us, for, or because of, any works of our
obedience, legal or evangelical. But when God hath so justi-
fied us, when he comes to give a reason of his sentence in judg-
ment, he may and will fetch that reason partly from our obedi-
ence, or our performance of the conditions of the new covenant:
for, as in this life, we had a righteousness consisting in free
pardon of all sin through the blood of Christ, and a righteous-
ness consisting in our personal performance of the conditions of
the promise which giveth that pardon, and continueth it to us,
so at judgment we shall accordingly be justified. And as our
evangelical personal righteousness, commonly called inherent,
was at first only in our faith and repentance, and disposition to
obey ; but afterwards in our actual sincere obedience, in which
sense we are constitutively justified, or made righteous here by
our works, in James's sense; (James ii. 24 ;) so, accordingly, a
double reason will be assigned of our sentential justification ; one
from our pardon by Christ's blood and merits, which will prove
our right to impunity and glory, the other from our own faith
480 A SERMON
and holy obedience, which will prove our right to that pardon
through Christ, and to the free gift of* a right to glory : and so
this last is to be pleaded in subordination to the former, for
Christ is become the author of eternal salvation to all them that
obey him. (Heb. v. 9.) He, therefore, that will be saved, must
have a Christ to save him as the author, and an obedience to
that Christ as the condition of that salvation ; and consequently
both must be declared in the judgment.
The reason why the Judge doth mention our good works,
rather than our believing, may be because those holy, self-deny-
ing expressions of faith and love to Christ do contain or cer-
tainly imply faith in them, as the life of the tree is in the fruit;
but faith doth contain our works of obedience but only as their
cause. These works also are a part of the personal righteous-
ness which is to be inquired after ; that is, we shall not be
judged righteous merely because we have believed, but also be-
cause we have added to our faith virtue, and have improved our
talents, and have loved Christ to the hazard of all for his sake :
for it is not only, or principally, for the goodness of the work
considered in itself, or the good that is done by it to the poor ;
but it is as these works did express our faith and love to Christ by
doing him the most costly and hazardous service ; that by faith
we could see Christ in a poor beggar, or a prisoner ; and could
love Christ in these better than our worldly goods or liberties,
which we must part with, or hazard by the works that are here
mentioned.
2. The reasons why Christ will so publicly declare the per-
sonal righteousness of men to be the reason or cause of his justi-
fying sentence, are because it is the business of that day, not
only to glorify God's mere love and mercy, but eminently to glo-
rify his remunerative justice ; and not only to express his love to
the elect as such, but to express his love to them as faithful and
obedient, and such as have denied all for Christ, and loved Cod
above all ; and to show his justice to the men, and faithfulness
in fulfilling all his promises, and also his holiness in the high
estimation of the holiness of his people. I shalk express this
in the words of a learned divine : (Dr. Tvviss against Mr. Cot-
ton, page 40 :) ( Was there no more in God's intention when he
elected some, than the manifestation of the riches of his glori-
ous grace ? Did not God purpose also to manifest the glory of
his remunerative justice ? Is it not undeniable that God will be-
stow salvation on all his elect (of ripe years) by way of reward
OF JUDGMENT. 481
and crown of righteousness, which God the righteous Judge will
give ? (2 Tim. iv. ; 2 Thess. i.) It is great pity this is not con-
sidered, as usually it is not, especially for the momentous conse-
quence thereof in my judgment.' So far he.
So much of the sentence of justification which shall be passed
by Christ, at judgment, upon the righteous.
2. We are next to consider of the sentence of condemnation
which shall then, by Christ, be passed on the unrighteous; which
is delivered to us by Christ, (Matt, xxv.,) in the same order as
the former.
This sentence contained^ 1. The condemnation itself. 2. The
reason or cause of it.
The condemnation expresseth the misery which they are
judged to. 1. Generally in the denomination " cursed." 2. Par-
ticularly by description of their cursed state.
To be cursed, is to be a people destinated and adjudged to
utter unhappiness ; to all kinds of misery without remedy.
2. Their cursed condition is described in the next words ;
" Depart from me into everlasing fire, prepared for the devil
and his angels."
1. "Depart:" From whom? From the God that made
them in his image 5 from the Redeemer that bought them by the
price of his blood, and offered to save them freely for all their
unworthiness, and many a time entreated them to accept his
offer, that their souls might live; from the Holy Ghost the Sanc-
tifier and Comforter of the faithful, who strove with their hearts,
till they quenched and expelled him. Oh ! sad departing !
Who would not then choose rather to depart from all the friends
he had in the world, and from any thing imaginable ; from his
life, from himself, if it were possible, than from Christ ?
" Depart :" From what ? Why from the presence of the Judge,
from all further hopes of salvation for ever, from all possibility
of evei being saved, and living in the joyful inheritance of the
righteous. " Depart :" Not from God's essential presence, for
that will be with them to their everlasting misery, but from the
presence of his grace, in that measure as they enjoyed it. " De-
part :" Not from your fleshly pleasures, and honours, and pro-
fits of the world, these were all gone and passed already, and
there was no further need to bid them depart from these.
Houses and lands were gone, mirth and recreations were gone,
their sweet morsels and cups were gone, all the honour that men
could give them was gone, before they were set at Christ's bar
VOL. XVII. I I
482 A SERMON
to be judged. But from all expectations of ever enjoying these
again, or ever tasting their former delights, from these they must
depart : not from their sin, for that will go with them. But the
liberty of committing that part of it which was sweet to them,
as gluttony, drunkenness, whoredom, idleness, and all volup-
tuousness — from these they must depart. But this is consequen-
tial. It is Christ and the possibility of salvation that they are
sentenced to depart from.
But whither must they depart? 1. Into fire. 2. Into that
fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels. 3. Into
everlasting fire.
1. Not into a purifying, but a tormenting, fire. Whether
elementary or not, whether properly or metaphorically called
fire, let us not vainly trouble ourselves to inquire. It is enough
to know, that as fire is one of the most grievous tormentors of
the flesh, so grievous will be those infernal torments to the
whole man, soul and body, such as is most fitly represented to
us under the notion of fire, and of burning. It is easy for a
secure, unbelieving soul to read and hear of it ; but wo, and
ten thousand woes to them that must endure it ! In this life
they had their good things, when it went harder as to the flesh
with better men ; but now they are tormented, when the godly
are comforted. (Luke xvi. 25.)
2. But why is it called " a fire prepared for the devil and his
angels?" 1. What is this devil that hath angels? 2. Who
are his angels ? 3. When was it prepared for them ? 4. Was it
not also prepared for wicked men ? To these in order.
1. It seems by many passages in Scripture that there is an
order among spirits, both good and bad ; and that there is one
devil, who is the prince over the rest.
2. It seems, therefore, that it is the rest of the evil spirits
that are called " his angels.''* And some think that the wicked
who served him in this life shall be numbered with his angels in
the life to come. Indeed, the apostle calls him, " the god of
this world," (2 Cor. iv. 4,) as is ordinarily judged by expositors ;
and " the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now
worketh in the children of disobedience;" (Eph. ii. 2 ;) and he
calleth false, seducing teachers " the ministers of Satan :"
(2 Cor. xi. 15 :) but that wicked men are here meant as part
of his angels is not clear.
3. If it be the preparation of God's purpose that is here
meant, then it was from eternity : but if it be any commination
OF JUDGMENT. 483
of God as ruler of the angels, then was this fire prepared for
them conditionally, from the beginning of that commination,
and was due to them at their fall.
4. It seems that the reason why here is no mention of pre-
paring hell-fire for the wicked, but only for the devils, is not
because, indeed, it was not prepared also for the wicked ; but
to note that it is the torment which was first prepared for, or
assigned to, the devils ; thereby showing the greatness of the
misery of the wicked, that the devil and his angels must be their
companions. Though some think, as is said before, that the
reason why wicked men are not mentioned here, is because they
are part of the angels of the devil, and so included. And some
think it is purposely to manifest GodVgeneral love to mankind,
that prepared not hell for them, but they cast themselves into
the hell prepared for the devils. But the first seems to be the
true sense.
And how apparently righteous are the judgments of the Lord !
That those men who would here entertain the devil into their
hearts and daily familiarity, should be then entertained by him
into his place of torments, and there remain for ever in his
society ! Though few entertained him into visible familiarity
with their bodies, as witches do, who so make him their familiar,
yet all wicked men do entertain him in a more full and constant
familiarity with their souls than these witches do with their bodies.
How familiar is he in their thoughts, to fill them with vanity, lust,
or revenge ! How familiiar is he in their hearts, to fill them with
covetousness, malice, pride, or the like evils ; and to banish all
thoughts of returning to God, and to quench every motion that
tendeth to their recovery ! How familiar is he with them, even
when they seem to be worshipping God in the public assemblies,
stealing the word out of their hearts, filling them with vain and
wandering thoughts, blinding their minds that they cannot un-
derstand the plainest words which we are able to speak to them,
and filling them with a proud rebellion against the direction of
their teachers, and an obstinate refusal to be ruled by them, be
the matter never so necessary to their own salvation ! How
familiar are these evil spirits in their houses, filling them with
ignorance, worldliness, and ungodliness, and turning out God's
service, so that they do not pray together once in a day, or per-
haps at all ! How familiarly doth Satan use their tongues, in
cursing, swearing, lying, ribaldry, backbiting, or slandering;
and is it not just with God to make these fiends their familiars
i i 2
484
A SERMON
in torment, with whom they entertained such familiarity in sin I
As Christ, with all the blessed angels and saints, will make hut one
kingdom or family, and shall live all together in perpetual delights;
so the devil and all his hellish angels and wicked men shall
make but one household, and shall live all together in perpetual
misery. O poor sinners ! you are not troubled now at his pre-
sence and power in your hearts ; but will you not then be trou-
bled at his presence and tormenting power ? As long as you
do not see him, let him do what he will with you, it grieves you
little or nothing at all 5 but what will you say when you must
see him, and abide with him for ever? Oh ! sirs, his name is
easily heard, but his company will be terrible to the stoutest
heart alive. He showeth you a smiling face when he tempteth
you, but he hath a grimmer face to show you when temptations
have conquered you, and torments must succeed. As those who
write of witches say he appeareth at first to them in some
comely tempting shape, till he have them fast tied to him, and
then he beats them, and affrights them, and seldom appears to
them but in some ugly hue. Believe it, poor sinners, you do not
hear or see the worst of him when you are merry about your
sinful pleasures, and rejoicing in your hopes of the commo-
dities or preferments of the world. He hath another kind of
voice which you must hear, and another face to show you, that
will make you know a little better whom you had to do with !
You would be afraid now to meet him in the dark. What will
it be to live with him in everlasting darkness ? Then you will
know who it was that you entertained and obeyed, and played
with in your sins.
3. And as the text tells us, that it is u a fire prepared for the
devil and his angels," so it telleth us that it is "an everlasting
fire." It had a beginning, but it shall have no end. If these
wretches would have chosen the service of God, they would have
met with no difficulty or trouble, but what would have had a
speedy end. Poverty and injuries would have had end; scorns
and abuses would have had an end ; fasting, humiliation,
sorrow for sin, watching, and fighting against our spiritual
enemies, would all have had an end. But to avoid these,
they chose that ease, that pleasure, which hath brought them
to that torment which never will have end. I have said so
much of these things already in my book called the Saints'
Rest, that I will now sav hut this much. It is one of the
wonders of the world how men who do believe, or think they
OF JUDGMENT. 485
do believe, this word of Christ to be true, that " the wicked
shall go into everlasting fire/' can yet venture on sin so boldly,
and live in it so fearlessly, or sleep quietly till they are out
of this unspeakable danger. Only the commonness of it, and
the known wickedness of man's heart, doth. make this less
wonderful : and were there nothing else to convince us that
sinners are mad, and dead as to spiritual things, this were
enough, that ever the greatest pleasures or profits of the world,
or the most enticing baits which the devil can offer them, should
once prevail with them to forget these endless things, and draw
them to reject an everlasting glory, and cast themselves despe-
rately into everlasting fire; yea, and all this under daily warn-
ings and instructions, and when it is told them beforehand by
the God of truth himself ! For the Lord's sake, sirs, and for
your souls' sakes, if you care not what ministers say, or what
such as I say, yet will you soberly read now and then this twenty-
fifth chapter of Matthew, and regard what is told you by him
that must be your Judge ! and now and then bethink yourselves,
soberly, whether these are matters for wise men to make light
of; and what it is to be everlastingly in heaven or in hell-fire,
2. We have seen what is the penalty contained in the sen-
tence against the ungodly, the next thing that the text directs
us to is the cause or reason of the sentence, verse 42, " For I
was hungry, and ye gave me no meat," &c. The reason is not
given expressly either for their sin against the law of works, that
is, because they were sinners, and not perfectly innocent, nor
yet from their unbelief, which is the great sin against the law
of grace, but it is given from their not expressing their faith
and love to Christ in works of mercy and self-denial. And
why is this so ?
1. We must not suppose that these words of Christ do
express the whole judicial process in every point, but the chief
parts. It is supposed that all men are convicted of being sinners
against the perfect law of the Creator, and that they are guilty
of death for that sin, and that there is no way but by Christ to
obtain deliverance. But because all this must be acknowledged
by the righteous themselves, as well as by the wicked, therefore
Christ dotli not mention this, but that only which is the turning
point or cause in the judgment. For it is not all sinners that
shall be finally condemned, but all impenitent, unbelieving
sinners, who have rebelled finally against their Redeemer,
486 A SERMON
2. And the reason why faith itself is not expressed, is,
1. Because it is clearly implied, and so is love to Christ as Re-
deemer, in that they should have relieved Christ himself in his
members; that is, as it is expressed in Matt. x. 42. They
should have received a prophet in the name of a prophet, and
a disciple in the name of a disciple ; all should be done for
Christ's sake, which could not be unless they believed in him,
and loved him. 2. Also because that the bare act of believing
is not all that Christ requireth to man's final justification and
salvation, but holy self-denying obedience must be added, and
therefore this is given as the reason of their condemnation, that
they did not so obey.
We must observe, also, that Christ here putteth the special
for the general ; that is, one way of self-denying obedience, and
expression of love, instead of such obedience in general. For
all men have not ability to relieve those in misery, being perhaps
some of them poor themselves ; but all have that love and self-
denial which will some way express itself, and all have hearts
and a disposition to do thus, if they had ability ; without such a
disposition, none can be saved.
It is the fond conceit of some, that if they have any love to the
godly, or wish them well, it is enough to prove them happv.
But Christ here purposely lets us know that whoever doth not
love him at so high a rate as that he can part with his substance,
or any thing in the world, to those uses which he shall require
them, even to relieve his servants in want and sufferings for the
Master's sake, that man is none of Christ's disciples, nor will be
owned by him at the last.
XI. The next point that we come to, is to show you the pro-
perties of this sentence at judgment.
When man had broken the law of his Creator at the first,
he was liable to the sentence of death, and God presently sat in
judgment on him, and sentenced him to some part of the pu-
nishment which he had deserved ; but upon the interposition of
the Son, he before the rest resolved on a way that might tend
to his recovery, and death is due yet to every sinner for every
sin which he commits, till a pardon do acquit him. But this
sentence, which will pass on sinners at the last judgment, doth
much differ from that which was passed on the first sin, or
which is due according to the law of works alone, for,
1. As to the penalty called the pain of loss, the first judgment
OF JUDGMENT. 487
did deprive man of the favour of his Creator, but the second
will deprive him of the favour both of the Creator and Re-
deemer ; the first judgment deprived him of the benefits of in-
nocency ; the second deprives him of the benefits of redemption,
the loss of his hopes, and possibility of a pardon, of the spirit
of justification and adoption, and of the benefits which condi-
tionally were promised and offered him. These are the punish-
ments of the last judgment, which the law of works did never
threaten to the first man, or to any, as it stood alone.
Also the loss of glory as recovered, is the proper penalty of
the violated law of grace, which is more than the first loss. As
if a man should lose his purse the second time, when another
hath once found it for him ; or rather as if a traitor redeemed by
another, and having his life and honours offered him if he will
thankfully accept it and come in, should by his refusal and ob-
stinacy lose this recovered life which is offered him, which is an
addition to his former penalty.
Besides, that the higher degree of glory will be lost, which
Christ would bestow on him, more than was lost at first. The
very work of the saints in heaven will be to praise and glorify
him that redeemed them, and the Father in him, which would
not have been the work of man, if he had been innocent.
2. As to the pain of sense, the last judgment by the Redeemer
will sentence them to a far sorer punishment than would have
befallen them if no Saviour had been offered them. (Heb. x.
29.) The conscience of Adam, if he had not been redeemed,
would never have tormented him for rejecting a Redeemer, nor
for refusing or abusing his gracious offers and his mercies ; nor
for the forfeiting of a recovered happiness ; nor for refusing the
easy terms of the gospel, which would have given him Christ and
salvation for the accepting ; nor for neglecting any means that
tended to recovery ; no, nor for refusing repentance unto life,
nor for disobeying a Redeemer that bought him by his blood.
As all these are the penalties of the Redeemer's law and judg-
ment, so is it a sorer penalty than conscience would have in-
flicted merely for not being perfectly innocent, and they will be
far sorer gripings and gnavvings of the never-dying worm for
the abuse of these talents, than if we had never been trusted
with any after our first forfeiture. Yea, and God himself will
accordingly proportion his punishments. So that you see that
privately and positively, or as to their loss and their feeling, the
Redeemer will pass on them a heavier doom than the Creator
488 \ SERMON
did, or would have done, according to the first law to perfect
man.
Another property of the judgment of Christ is, that it will he
final, peremptory, and excluding all further hopes or possibi-
lities of a remedy ) so was not the first judgment of the Creator
upon fallen man. Though the law of pure nature knew no re-
medy, nor gave man any hope of a Redeemer, yet did it not
exclude a remedy, nor put in any bar against one, but God was
free to recover his creature if he pleased. But in the law of
grace he hath resolved that there shall be no more sacrifice for
sin, but a fearful looking for of judgment and fire which shall
devour the adversary, (Heb. x. 26, 27,) and that the fire shall
be everlasting, the worm shall not die, and the fire shall not be
quenched. (Matt. xxv. ult. ; Matt. xiii. 42, 50; John v. 27 ;
Matt. v. 26 ; Matt. iii. 12, and Luke iii. 17 ; Mark ix. 43—48.)
He that now breaketh that pure law that requireth perfect
innocency (as we have all done) may fly to the promise of
grace in Christ, and appeal to the law of liberty, or deliverance,
to be judged by that, but he that falls under the penalty of that
law which should have saved him, as all final unbelievers and
impenitent, ungodly persons do, hath no other to appeal to.
Christ would have been a sanctuary and refuge to thee from the
law of works, hadst thou but come unto him; but who shall be
a refuge to thee from the wrath of Christ ? The gospel would
have freed thee from the curse of the law of works if thou hadst
but believed and obeved it, but what shall free thee from the
condemnation of the gospel ? Had there no accusation lain
against thee, but that thou wast in general a sinner, that is,
that thou wast not perfectly innocent, Christ would have an-
swered that charge by his blood. But seeing thou art also guilty
of those special sins which he never shed his blood for, who
shall deliver thee from that accusation ? When Christ gave
himself a ransom for sinners, it was with this resolution, both in
the Father and himself, that none should ever be pardoned, jus-
tified, or saved by that ransom that did not, in time of this life,
sincerely return to God by faith in the Redeemer, and live in
sincere obedience to him, and persevering herein. So that he
plainly excepted final infidelity, impenitency, and rebellion from
pardon ; he never died for the final non- performance of the
conditions of the new convenant, so that his judgment for these
will be peremptory and remediless. If you say, c Why cannot
God find out a remedy for this sin as well as he did for the
OF JUDGMENT. 489
first?' I say, God cannot lie. (Tit. i. 2.) He must be true
and faithful, as necessarily as he must be Cod, because of the
absolute perfection of his nature, and he hath said and resolved
that there shall be no more remedy.
Many other properties of Gods judgment general there are,
as righteousness, impartiality, inflexibility, and the like ;
which, because I would not make my discourse too long, I will
pass over, contenting myself with the mention of these which
are proper to the judgment of the Redeemer, according to his
own laws in special.
XII. The twelfth and last thing which I promised to unfold,
is the execution of this judgment. Here I should show you
both the certainty of the execution, and by whom it will be, and
how; but having done all this already in the third part of the
aforesaid Book of Rest, I shall now only give this brief touch
of it.
No sooner is the dreadful sentence passed," Go, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire," but away they must be gone, there is no delay,
much less any reprieve to be expected, and yet much less is
there any hope of an escape. If the Judge once say, e Take
him, gaoler,' and if Christ say, ' Take him, devils, you that ruled
and deceived him, now torment him,' all the world cannot rescue
one such soul. It will be in vain to look about for help. Alas !
there is none but Christ can help you, and he will not, because
you refused his help. Nay, we may say he cannot, not for
want of power, but because he is true and just, and therefore
will make good that word which you believed not. It is in
vain then to cry to hills to fall on you, and the mountains to
cover you from the presence of him that sitteth on the throne.
It will be then in vain now to repent, and wish you had not
slighted your salvation, nor sold it for little pleasure to your
flesh. It will be then in vain to cry, ( Lord, Lord, open to us ;
O spare us ; O pity us ; O do not cast us into these hideous
flames ! Do not turn us among devils ! Do not torment thy
redeemed ones in this fire 1' All this will be then too late.
Poor sinner, whoever thou art, that readest or nearest these
lines, I beseech thee, in compassion to thy soul, consider how
fearful the case of that man will be that is newly doomed to the
everlasting fire, and is hauled to the execution without remedy !
And what madmen are those that now do no more to prevent
such a misery, when they might do it on such easy terms, and
now have so fair an opportunity in their hands.
490 A SERMON
The time was when repentance might have done thee good,
but then all thy repentings be in vain. Now, while the day of
thy visitation lasteth, hadst thou but a heart to pray and cry for
mercy, in faith and fervency through Christ, thou mightest be
heard ; but then praying and crying will do no good, shouldest
thou roar out in the extremity of thy horror and amazement,
and beseech the Lord Jesus but to forgive thee one sin, or to
send thee on earth once more, and to try thee once again in the
flesh, whether thou wouldest not love him, and lead an holy
life, it would be all in vain. Shouldest thou beseech him by all
the mercifulness of his nature, by all his sufferings and bloody
death, by all the merciful promises of his gospel, it would be
all in vain. Nay, shouldest thou beg but one day's reprieval,
or to stay one hour before thou were cast into those flames, it
would not be heard, it would do thee no good. How earnestly
did a deceased gentleman (Luke xvi. 24) beg of Abraham for
one drop of water from the tip of Lazarus's finger to cool his
tongue, because he was tormented in the flame ! And what
the better was he ? He was sent to remember that he had his
good things in this life, and that remembrance would torment
him more. And do not wcnder or think much at this, that
Christ will not then be entreated by the ungodly. You shall
then have a remember, too, from Christ or conscience. He
may soon stop thy mouth, and leave thee speechless, and say,
c Remember, man, that I did one day send thee a message of
peace, and thou wouldest not hear it. I once did stoop to
beseech thee to return, and thou wouldest not hear. I besought
thee by the tender mercies of God, I besought thee by all the
love that I had showed thee, by my holy life, by my cursed
death, by the riches of my grace, by the offers of my glory, and
I could not get thee to forsake the world, to deny the flesh, to
leave one beloved sin for all this ! I besought thee over and
over again, sent many a minister to thee in my name, f waited
on thee many a day, and year, and all would not do, thou
wouldest not consider, return, and live, and now it is too late.
My sentence is past, and cannot be recalled. Away from me,
thou worker of iniquity. (Matt. vii. 22, 23.)
Ah, sirs, what a case then is the poor desperate sinner left
in ! How can I write this, or how can you that read or hear it
without trembling, once think of the condition that such
forlorn wretches will be in ! When they look above them, and
see the God that hath forsaken them, because they forsook him
OF JUDGMENT. 491
first ; when they look about them, and see the saints on one
hand, whom they despised, now sentenced unto glory, and the
wicked on the other hand, whom they accompanied and imi-
tated, now judged with them to everlasting misery ; when they
look below them, and see the flames that they must abide in,
even for evermore, and when the devils begin to hail them to
the execution ; oh ! poor souls, now what would they give for a
Christ, for a promise, for a time of repentance, for a sermon of
mercy, which once they slept under, or made no account of!
How is the case altered now with them ! Who would think
that these are the same men that made light of all this on earth,
that so stoutly scorned the reproofs of the word, that would
be worldly, and fleshly, and drunk, and proud, let preachers say
what they would, and perhaps hated those that did give them
warning. Now they are of another mind, but all too late. Oh,
were there any place for resistance, how would they draw back,
and lay hold of any thing, before they would be dragged away
into those flames ! But there is no resisting ; Satan's temp-
tations might have been resisted, but his executions cannot ;
God's judgments might have been prevented by faith and prayer,
repentance, and a holy life, but they cannot be resisted when
they are not prevented. Glad would the miserable sinner be if
he might but turn to nothing, and cease to be, or that he might
be any thing rather than a reasonable creature, but these wishes
are all in vain. There is one time, and one way of a sinner's
deliverance, if he fail in that one, he pe-pisheth for ever; all
the world cannot help him after that. " i i.ave heard thee in a
time accepted, and in a day of salvation have I succoured thee ;
behold now is the accepted time ; behold now is the day of
salvation." (2 Cor. vi. 2.) Now, he saith, " Behold, I stand
at the door and knock, if any man hear my voice and open the
door, I will come to him, and will sup with him, and he with
me." (Rev. iii. 20.) But for the time to come hereafter, hear
what he saith. " Because I have called, and ye refused ; I have
stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at
nought all my counsels, and would none of my reproof: I also
will laugh at your calamity ; I will mock when your fear
comcth ; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your de-
struction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish
cometh upon you, then shall they call upon me, but I will not
answer ; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me,
for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of
492 A SERMON
the Lord ; they would none of my counsels ; they despised all
my reproofs ; therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own
way, and be filled with their own devices \ for the turning away
of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall
destroy them, but whoso hearkeneth to me shall dwell safely,
and shall be quiet from fear of evil." I have recited all these
words, that you may see and consider whether I have spoke any
other thing than God himself hath plainly told you of.
Having said this much of the certainty of the execution, I
should next have spoken somewhat of the manner and the. in-
struments, and have showed how God will be for ever the prin-
cipal cause, and Satan and their own consciences the instru-
ments, in part, and in what manner conscience will do its part,
and how impossible it will be to quiet or resist it. But having
spoken so much of all this already elsewhere, as is said before, I
will forbear here to repeat it, leaving the reader that desireth it
there to peruse it.
The uses. — Use 1. Beloved hearers, it was not to fill vour
fancies with news that God sent me hither this day, nor to tell
you of matters that nothing concern you, nor by some terrible
words to bring you to an hour's amazement, and no more ; but
it is to tell you of things that your eyes shall see, and to fore-
tell you of your danger while it may be prevented, that your
precious souls may be saved at the last, and you may stand be-
fore God with comfort at that day ; but because this will not be
every man's case, no, nor the case of most, I must, in the name
of Christ, desire you to make, this day, an inquiry into your
own souls, and, as in the presence of God, let your hearts make
answer to these few questions, which I shall propound and debate
with vou.
Quest. 1. Do you soundly believe this doctrine which I have
preached to you ? What say you, sirs ? Do you believe it as a
most certain truth, that you and I, and all the world, must stand
at God's bar and be judged to everlasting joy or torment? I
hope you do all, in some sort, believe this : but blame me not if
I be jealous whether you soundly believe it, while we see in the
world so little of the effect of such a belief. I confess I am
forced to think that there is more infidelity than faith among
us, when I see more ungodliness than godliness among us ; and
I can hardly believe that man that will say or swear that he be-
lieveth these things, and yet liveth as carelessly and carnally as
an infidel. I know that no man can love to be damned ) yea,
OF JUDGMENT. 493
J know that every man that hath a reasonable soul hath naturally
some love to himself, and a fear of a danger which he verily
apprehendeth; he therefore that liveth without all fear, I must
think liveth without all apprehension of his danger. Custom
hath taught men to hold these things as the opinion of the
country; but if men soundly believed them, surely we should see
stronger effects of such a faith, than in the most we do see.
Doth the sleepy soul that liveth in security, and followeth this
world as eagerly as if he had no greater matters to mind; that
never once trembled at the thoughts of this great day, nor once
asked his own soul in good sadness, ' My soul, how dost thou
think then to escape?' I say, doth this man believe that he is
going to this judgment? Well, sirs, whether you believe it or
not, you will find it true; and believe it you must, before you
can be safe. For if you do not believe it, you will never make
ready. Let me therefore persuade you in the fear of God to
consider that it is a matter of undoubted truth.
1. Consider that it is the express word of the God of truth
revealed in Scripture as plainly as you can desire ; so that you
cannot be unbelieving without denying God's word, or giving
him the lie. (Matt. xiii. 38 — 50; Matt. xxv. throughout; Rom.
ii. 5—10, 16, and i. 32; John v. 28,29.) "The hour is
coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,
and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resur-
rection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrec-
tion of damnation/' " It is appointed to all men once to die,
and after this the judgment." (Heb. ix. 27.) " So then every
one of us shall give account of himself to God. (Rom. xiv. 9,
12.) "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God,
and the books were opened ; and another book was opened,
which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of
those things which were written in the books according to their
works." (Rev. xx. 12.) "But I say unto you, that every idle
word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof at
the day of judgment ; for by thy words thou shalt be justified,
and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. (Matt. xii. 36, 37.)
Many more most express texts of Scripture do put the truth of
this judgment out of all question to all that believe the Scripture,
and will understand it. There is no place left for a controversy
in the point. It is made as sure to us as the word of the living
God can make it ; and he who will question that, what will he
believe ? What say you, sirs ? Dare you doubt of this., which
494 A SERMON
the God of heaven hath so positively affirmed ? I hope you
dare not.
2. Consider it is a master-part of your faith, if you are
Christians, and a fundamental article of your creed, that Christ
shall come again to judge the quick and the dead : so that you
must believe it, or renounce your Christianity, and then you re-
nounce Christ, and all the hopes of mercy that you have in him.
It is impossible that you should soundly believe in Christ, and
not believe his judgment and life everlasting; because, as he
came to bring life and immortality to light in the gospel,
(2 Tim. i. 10,) so it was the end of his incarnation, death, and
resurrection, to bring you thither; and it is part of his honour
and office which he purchased with his blood, to be the Lord
and Judge of all the world. (Rom. xiv. 9; Job v. 22.) If,
therefore, you believe not heartily this judgment, deal plainly
and openly, and say you are infidels, and cast away the hypo-
critical visor of Christianity, and let us know you, and take you
as you are.
3. Consider that it is a truth which is known by the very
light of nature, that there shall be a happiness for the righteous
and a misery for the wicked, after this life ; which is evident,
1 . In that we have undeniable natural reason for it. 1 . God
is the righteous governor of the world, and therefore must make
a difference among his subjects, according to the nature of their
ways ; which we see is not done here, where the wicked prosper
and the good are afflicted ; therefore it must be hereafter.
2. We see there is a necessity that God should make pro-
mises and threatenings of everlasting happiness or misery for
the right governing of the world : for we certainly perceive that
no lower things will keep men from destroying all human society
and living worse than brute beasts ; and if there be a necessity
of making such threats and promises, then there is, certainly, a
necessity of fulfilling them ; for God ueedeth no lie, or means
of deceiving, to rule the world.
2. And as we see it by reason, so by certain experience, that
this is discernible by the light of nature ; for all the world, or
almost all, do believe it. Even those nations where the gospel
never came, aud have nothing but what they have by nature,
even the most barbarous Indians, acknowledge some life after
this, and a difference of men according as they are here. There-
fore you must believe thus much, or renounce your common rea-
son and humanity, as well as your Christianity. Let me, there-
OF JUDGMENT. 495
fore, persuade you all, in the fear of God, to confirm your souls
in the belief of this, as if you had heard Christ or an angel
from heaven say to you, c Oh ! man, thou art hasting to judg-
ment/
Quest. 2. My next question is, c Whether you do ever soberly
consider of this great day?' Sirs, do you use, when you are
alone, to think with yourselves how certain, and how dreadful
it will be ', how fast it is coming on ; and what you shall do,
and what answer you mean to make at that day ? Are your
minds taken up with these considerations? Tell me, is it so,
or not ?
Alas, sirs ! is this a matter to be forgotten ? Is not that
man even worse than mad who is going to God's judgment and
never thinks of it ? When, if they were to be tried for their
lives at the next assize they would think of it, and think again,
and cast a hundred times which way to escape. Methinks you
should rather forget to go to bed at night, or to eat your meat,
or do your work, than forget so great a matter as this.
Truly, I have often, in my serious thoughts, been ready to
wonder that men can think of almost any thing else, when they
have so great a thing to think of. What! forget that which
thou must remember for ever ! forget that which should
force remembrance, yea, and doth force it with some, whe-
ther they will or not. A poor despairing soul cannot for-
get it : he thinks, whichever way he goes, he is ready to be
judged. Oh ! therefore, beloved, fix these thoughts as deep in
your hearts as thoughts can go. Oh ! be like that holy man,
who thought that whichever way he went he heard the trumpet
sound, and the voice of the angel calling to the world, " Arise,
ye dead, and come to judgment/' You have warning of it from
God and man to cause you to remember it; do not then forget
it. It will be a cold excuse another day, 'Lord, I forgat this
day, or else I might have been ready/ You dare not, sure,
trust to such excuses.
Quest. 3. My next question to you is, ' How are you affected
with the consideration of this day ? Barely to think of it will
not serve. To think of such a day as this with a dull and sense-
less heart is a sign of fearful stupidity. Did the knees of king
Belshazzar knock together with trembling when he saw the
hand- writing on the wall ? (Dan. v. 6.) How then should thy
heart be affected, that seeth the hand- writing of God as a sum-
mons to his bar ?
49G A SERMON
When I began to preach of these things long ago, I confess
the matters seemed to me so terrible, that I was afraid that peo-
ple would have run out of their wits with fear; but a little ex-
perience showed me, that many are like a dog that is bred up in
a forge or furnace, that being used to it, can sleep, though the
hammers are beating, and the fire and hot iron flaming about
him, when another that had never seen it would be amazed at the
sight. When men have heard us seven years together, yea,
twenty years, to talk of a day of judgment, and they see it not,
nor feel any hurt, they think it is but talk, and begin to make
nothing of it. This is their thanks to God for his patience, be-
cause his sentence is not executed speedily, therefore their
hearts are set in them to do evil, (Eccles. viii. 11,) as if God
were slack of his promise, as some men account slackness,
(2 Peter lii. 9,) when one day with him is as a thousand years,
and a thousand years as one day. What, if we tell you twenty
years together that you must die, will you not believe us, be-
cause you have lived so long, and seen no death coming ?
Three or four things there be that should bring any matter to
the heart. I. If it be a matter of exceeding weight. 2. If
it concern not others only, but ourselves. 3. If it be certain.
4. If near.
All these things are here to be found, and therefore how should
your hearts be moved at the consideration of this great day !
1 . What matter can be mentioned with the tongue of man
of greater moment? For the poor creature to stand before his
Maker and Redeemer, to be judged to everlasting joy or tor-
ment ? Alas ! ail the matters of this world are plays, and toys,
and dreams to this ; matters of profit or disprofit are nothing to
it ; matters of credit or discredit are unworthy to be named
with it; matters of temporal life or death are nothing to it.
We see the poor brute beasts go every day to the slaughter,
and we make no great matter of it, though their life be as
dear to them as ours to us. To be judged to an everlasting
death or torment, this is the great danger that one would think
should shake the stoutest heart to consider it, and awake the
dullest sinner to prevent it.
2. It is a matter which concerned) every one of yourselves,
and every man or woman that ever lived upon the earth, or ever
shall do. I am not speaking to you of the affairs of some far
country that are nothing to you but only to marvel at, which you
never saw, nor ever shall do. No ; it is thy own self, man or
OP JUDGMENT. 497
woman, that hears me this day, that shall as surely appear
before the judgment seat of Christ, as the Lord liveth, and as he
is true and faithful : and that is as sure as thou livest on this
earth, or as heaven is over thee. That man who heareth all this
with the most careless and blockish heart, shall be awakened,
and stand with the rest at that day. That man who never
thought of it, but spent his time in worldly matters, shall leave all,
and there appear : that man that will not believe these things to
be true, but maketh a jest of them, shall see and feel what he
would not believe, and he also shall be there. The godly that
waited in hope for that day, as the day of their full deliverance
and coronation, they shall be there ; those who have lain in the
dust these five thousand years shall rise again, and all stand
there. Hearer, whoever thou art, believe it, thou mayest better
think to live without meat, to see without light, to escape death,
and abide for ever on earth, than to keep away from that ap-
pearance. Willing or unwilling, thou shait be there : and should
not a matter, then, which so concerneth thyself, go near to thy
heart, and awake thee from thy security ?
3. That it is a matter of unquestionable certainty, I have parti}*
showed you already, and more would do if I were preaching to
known infidels. If the careless world had any just reason to
think it were uncertain, their carelessness were more excusable.
Methinks a man should be affected with that which he is cer-
tain shall come to pass, in a manner as if it were now in doing.
" Ye perfectly know that the day of the Lord so cometh," &c.
saith the apostle. (1 Thess. v. 2.)
4. This day is not only certain, but it is near, and therefore
should affect you the more. I confess, if it were never so far
off, yet seeing it will come at last, it should be carefully re-
garded ; but when the Judge is at the door, (James v. 9,) and
we are almost at the bar, and it is so short a time to this assize,
what soul that is not dead will be secure ?
Alas ! sirs, what is a little time when it is gone ? How quickly
shall you and I be all in another world, and our souls receive
their particular judgment, and so wait till the body be raised
and judged to the same condition ? It is not an hundred years,
in all likelihood, till every soul of us shall be in heaven or hell:
and it is not like half, or a quarter, of that time, but it will be so
with the greater part of us : and what is a year, or two, or an
hundred ? How speedily is it come ! How many a soul that
is now in heaven or hell, within a hundred years dwelt in the
vol. xvi i. K K
498 A SERMON
places which you now dwell in, and sat in the seats you now sit
in ? And now their time is past, what is it ? Alas ! how
quickly will it be so with us ! You know not, when you go to
bed, but you may be judged by the next morning ; or, when
you rise, but you may be judged before night ; but certainly you
know that shortly it will be : and should not this, then, be laid
to heart? yea, the general judgment will not be long; for, cer-
tainly we live in the end of the world.
Quest. 4. My next question is, c Whether are you ready for
this dreadful judgment when it comes, or not?' Seeing it is
yourselves which must be tried, I think it concerns you to see
that you be prepared. How often hath Christ warned us in the
gospel, that we be " always ready," because we know not the
day or hour of his coming; (Matt. xxiv. 42,44, and xxv. 13;
1 Thess. v. 6 ;) and told us how sad a time it will be to those
that are unready. (Matt. xxv. 11, 12.) Did men but well know
what a meeting and greeting there will be between Christ and
an unready soul, it would sure startle them, and make them
look about them. What say you, beloved hearers, are you ready
for judgment, or are you not ? Methinks a man that knoweth
he shall be judged should ask himself the question every day of
his life, c Am I ready to give up my account to God ?' Do not
you use to ask this of your own hearts ? Unless you be careless
whether you be saved or damned, methinks you should, and ask
it seriously.
Quest. But who are they that are ready ? How shall I know
whether 1 be ready or not ?
Answ. There is a two-fold readiness: 1. When you are in a
safe case. 2. When you are in a comfortable case, in regard of
that day. The latter is very desirable, but the first is of abso-
lute necessity. This, therefore, is it that you must principally
inquire after.
In general, all those, and only those, are ready for judgment,
who shall be justified and saved, and not condemned, when judg-
ment comes — they who have a good cause in a gospel sense. It
may be known beforehand who these are ; for Christ judgeth, as
I told you, by his law. And therefore find out whom it is that
the law of grace doth justify or condemn, and you may certainly
know whom the Judge will justify or condemn ; for he judgeth
righteously.
If you further ask me who these are, remember that I told
you before, that every man that is personally righteous, by ful-
OF JUDGMENT. 499
filling the conditions of salvation in the gospel, shall be s aved ;
and he that is found unrighteous, as having not fulfilled them,
shall perish at that day.
Quest. Who are those ?
Answ. I will tell you them in a few words, lest you should
forget, because it is a matter that your salvation or damnation
dependeth upon.
1. The soul that unfeignedly repenteth of his former sinful
course, and turneth from it in heart and life, and loveth the way
of godliness which he hated, and hateth the way of sin which
he loved, and is become thoroughly a new creature, being born
again, and sanctified by the Spirit of Christ, shall be justified ;
but all others shall certainly be condemned.
Good news to repenting converted sinners ; but sad to im-
penitent, and him that knows not what this means.
2. That soul that feeling his misery under sin and the power
of Satan and the wrath of God, doth believe what Christ hath
done and suffered for man's restoration and salvation, and
thankfully accepteth him as his only Saviour and Lord, on the
terms that he is offered in the Gospel, and to those ends, even
to justify him, sanctify, and guide him, and bring him at last to
everlasting glory; that soul shall be justified at judgment; and
he that doth not, shall be condemned.
Or, in short, in Scripture phrase, " He 'that believe th shall
be saved ; and he that believeth not, shall be condemned."
(Markxvi. 16.)
; 3. The soul that hath had so much knowledge of the good-
ness of God, and his love to man in creation, redemption, and
the following mercies ; and hath had so much conviction of the
vanity of all creatures, as thereupon to love God more than all
things below, so that he hath the chiefest room in the heart,
and is preferred before all creatures ordinarily in a time of trial:
that soul shall be justified at judgment, and all others shall be
condemned.
4. That soul that is so apprehensive of the absolute sove-
reignty of God, as Creator and Redeemer, and of the righteous-
ness of his law, and the goodness of his holy way, as that he is
firmly resolved to obey him before all others ; and doth accord-
ingly give up himself to study his will, purposely that he may
obey it, and doth walk in these holy ways, and hath so far
mortified the flesh, and subdued the world and the devil, that
the authority and word of God can do no more with him than
K K 2
500 A SERMON
any other; and cloth ordinarily prevail against all the persuasion
and interest of the flesh ; so that the main scope and bent of
the heart and life is still for Cod ; and when he sinneth, he
riseth again by true repentance : I say, that soul, and that only,
shall be justified in judgment, and be saved.
5. That soul that hath such believing thoughts of the life to
come, that he taketh the promised blessedness for his portion,
and is resolved to venture all else upon it; and in hope of this
glory, doth set light comparatively by all things in this world,
and waiteth for it as the end of this life ; choosing any suffering
that God shall call him to, rather than to lose his hopes of that
felicity, and thus persevereth to the end ; I say that soul, and
none but that, shall be justified in judgment, and escape dam-
nation.
In these five marks I have told you, briefly, who shall be jus-
tified and saved, and who shall be condemned, at the day of
judgment. And if you would have them all in five words, they
are but the description of these five graces — repentance, faith,
love, obedience, hope.
But though I have laid these close together for your use ; yet,
lest you should think, that in so weighty a case, I am too short
in the proof of what I so determine of, I will tell you, in the
express words of many Scripture texts, who shall be justified,
and who shall be condemned. iC Except a man be born again, he
cannot enter into the kingdom of God." (John iii. 3.) " Without
holiness none shall see God." (Heb. xii. 14.) " Except ye repent,
ye shall all likewise perish." (Luke xiii. 3, 5.) "I send thee to
open their eyes, and turn them from darkness to light, and from
the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness
of sins, and an inheritance among the sanctified bv faith that is
in me." (Acts xxvi. 18.) " Whoever believeth in him, shall not
perish, but have everlasting life ; he that believeth on him, is
not condemned : he that believeth not, is condemned already,
because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten
Son of God : and this is the condemnation, that light is come
into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, be-
cause their deeds were evil." (John iii. 15 — 19.) "The hour is
coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,
and shall come forth, they that have done good, to the resur-
rection of life, and they that have done evil, to the resurrection
of damnation." (John v. 28, 29.) " Cast the unprofitable servant
into outer darkness ; there shall be weeping and gnashing of
OF JUDGMENT. 501
teeth. " (Matt. xxv. 30.) Ci Hut those, mine enemies, which
would not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay
them before me." (Luke xix. 270 " Friend^ how earnest thou in
hither, not having on a wedding garment? And he was speech-
Jess. Then said the king to the servants, Hind him hand and
foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness," &c.
(Matt. xxii. 12, 13.) " For I say unto you, that except your
righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pha-
risees, ye shall in nowise enter into the kingdom of heaven."
(Matt. v. 20.) " Not every one that saith, Lord, Lord, shall
enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the will of
my Father which is in heaven." (Matt. vii. 21.) " He is become
the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him." (Heb.
v. 6.) " HIessed are they that do his commandments, that they
may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in by the
gate into the city." (Rev. xxii. 14.) " There is then no con-
demnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, that walk not after
the flesh, but after the Spirit. For if ye live after the flesh, ye
shall die ; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of
the bodv, ye shall live." (Rom. viii. 1, 13.) " If any man have
not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. (Rom. viii. 9.) But if
ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law." (Gal. v. 18.)
" Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to the flesh,
shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the
Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." (Gal. vi. 7, 8.)
" For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
(Matt. vi. 21.) Read Psalm i., and many other texts to this
purpose, of which some are cited in my Directions for Peace of
Conscience. (Dir. xi.)
And thus I have told you from God's word, how you may
know whether you are ready for judgment ; which is the fourth
thing that I would advise you to inquire after.
O sirs ! what shift do you make to keep your souls from
continual terrors as long as you remain unready for judgment ?
How do vou keep the thoughts of it out of your mind that they
do not break your sleep, and meet you in your business, and
haunt you every way you go ; while judgment is so near, and
you are so unready? But I shall proceed to my next question.
Quest. 5. And in the last place, to those of you that are not yet
ready, nor in a condition wherein you may be safe at that day,
my question is, How are you resolved to prepare for judgment
502 - A SERMON
for the time to come ? Will you do no more than you have
clone hitherto ? Or, will you now set yourselves, with all your
might, to make preparation for so great a day ? Methinks you
should be now past all demurs, delays, or further doubtings
about such a business ; and by the consideration of what I have
said already, you should be fully resolved to lose no more time,
but presently to awake, and set upon the work. Methinks you
should all say, i We will do any thing the Lord shall direct us
to do, rather than we will be unready for this final doom !' Qh !
that there were but such hearts in you, that you were truly
willing to follow the gracious guidance of the Lord, and to use
but those sweet and reasonable means which he hath prescribed
you in his word, that you may be ready for that day. Alas ! it
is no hard matter for me to tell you or myself what it is that
we must do, if we will be happy ; and it is no very hard matter
to do it, so far as we are truly willing; but the difficulty is to
be truly and thoroughly willing to this work. If 1 shall tell
you what you must do for preparation, shall I not lose my la-
bour? Will you resolve and promise, in the strength of grace,
that you will faithfully and speedily endeavour to practise it,
whoever shall gainsay it ? Upon hope of this I will set vou
down some brief directions, which you must follow, if ever you
will, with comfort, look the Lord Jesus in the face at the houi
of death, or in the day of judgment.
The first direction is this : 6 See that your souls be sincerely
established in the belief of this judgment and everlasting life :'
for if you do not soundly believe it, you will not seriously pre-
pare for it. If you have the judgment and belief of an infidel,
you cannot have the heart or the life of a Christian. Unbelief
shuts out the most of the world from heaven : see that it do not
so by you. If you say you cannot believe what you would, I
answer, feed not your unbelief by wilfulness or unreasonable-
ness : use God's means to overcome it, and shut not your eyes
against the light, and then try the issue. (Heb. iii. 12 — 19.)
The second direction: ' Labour diligently to have a sound
understanding of the nature of the laws and judgment of God.'
On what terms it is that he dealeth with mankind, and on what
terms he will judge them to life or death, and what the reward
and punishment is. For if you know not the law by which you
must be judged, you cannot know how to prepare for the judg-
ment. Study the Scripture, therefore, and mark who they be
that God promiseth to save, and who they be that he threat-
OF JUDGMENT. 503
eneth to condemn ; for, according to that word, will the judg-
ment pass.
The third direction : ( See that you take it as the very business
of your lives to make ready for that day.' Understand that you
have no other business in this world but what doth necessarily
depend on this. What else have you to do but to provide for
everlasting [life,] and to use means to sustain your own bodies
and others of purpose for this work, till it be happily done ? Live
therefore as men that make this the main scope and care of
their lives, and let all things else come in but on the by. Re-
member every morning, when you awake, that you must spend
that day in preparation for your account, and that God doth
give it you for that end. When you go to bed, examine your
hearts what you have done that day in preparation for your last
day. and take that time as lost which doth nothing to this end/
The fourth direction : c Use frequently to think of the cer-
tainty, nearness, and dreadfulness of that day, to keep life in
your affections and endeavours, lest by inconsiderateness your
souls grow stupid and negligent ;' otherwise, because it is out
of sight, the heart will be apt to grow hardened and secure.
And do not think of it slightly, as a common thing, but pur-
posely set yourselves to think of it, that it may rouse you up to
such affections and endeavours as in some measure are answer-
able to the nature of the thing.
The fifth direction : 6 Labour to have a lively feeling on thy
heart of the evil and weight of that sin which thou art guilty of,
and of the misery into which it hath brought thee, and would
further bring thee if thou be not delivered, and so to feel the
need of a deliverer.' This must prepare thee to partake of
Christ now, and if thou partake not of him now, thou canst not
be saved by him then. It is these souls that now make light
of their sin and misery, that must then feel them so heavy, as to
be pressed by them into the infernal flames. And those that
now feel little need of a Saviour, they shall then have none to
save them when they feel their need.
The sixth direction : c Understand and believe the suffici-
ency of that ransom and satisfaction to justice which Christ hath
made for thy sins, and for the world, and how freely and uni-
versally it is offered in the gospel.' Thy sin is not incurable or
unpardonable, nor thy misery remediless : God hath provided a
remedy in his Son Christ, and brought it so near thy hands, that
504 A SERMON
nothing but thy neglecting or wilful refusing it can deprive thee
of the benefit. Settle thy soul in this belief.
The seventh direction : * Understand and believe that for all
Christ's satisfaction there is an absolute necessity of sound
faith and repentance to be in thy own self before thou canst
be a member of him, or be pardoned, adopted, or justified by
his blood/ He died not for final infidelity and impenitency as
predominant in any soul. As the law of his Father, which occa-
sioned his suffering, required perfect obedience or suffering, so
his own law, which he hath made for the conveyance of his
benefits, doth require yet true faith and repentance of men
themselves before they shall be pardoned by him, and sincere
obedience and perseverance before they shall be glorified.
The eighth direction : 6 Rest not, therefore, in an unrenewed,
unsanctified state, that is, till this faith and repentance be
wrought on thy own soul, and thou be truly broken off from thy
former sinful course, and from all things in this world, and art
dedicated, devoted, and resigned unto God.' Seeing this change
must be made, and these graces must be had, or thou must
certainly perish, in the fear of God see that thou give no ease to
thy mind till thou art thus changed. Be content with nothing
till this be done. Delay not another day. How canst thou
live merrily, or sleep quietly in such a condition, as if thou
shouldest die in it, thou wouldest perish for ever ? Especially
when thou art every hour uncertain whether thou shalt see
another hour, and not be presently snatched away by death ?
Methinks while thou ~rt in so sad a case, which way ever thou
art going, or whatever hou art doing, it should still come into
thy thoughts, c Oh ! wha* - if I should die before I be regenerate,
and have part in Christ !'
The ninth direction : ' Let it be the daily care of thy soul to
mortify thy fleshly desires, and overcome this world, and live
as in a continual conflict with Satan, which will not be ended
till thy life do end.' If any thing destroy thee by drawing away
thy heart from God, it will be thy carnal self, thy fleshly desires,
and the allurements of this world, which is the matter that they
feed upon. This, therefore, must be the earnest work of life,
to subdue this flesh, and set light by this world, and resist the
devil, that by these would destroy thee. It is the common case
of miserable hypocrites, that at first they list themselves under
Christ as for a fight ; but they presently forget their state and
OF JUDGMENT. 505
work, and when they are once, in their own conceit, regenerate,
they think themselves so safe, that there is no further danger,
and thereupon they do lay down their arms, and take that which
thev miscall their Christian liberty, and indulge and please
that flesh which they promised to mortify, and close with the
world which they promised to contemn, and so give up them-
selves to the devil, whom they promised to fight against. If
once you apprehend that all your religion lieth in mere believing
that all shall go well with you, and that the bitterness of death
is past, and in a forbearance of some disgraceful sins, and
being much in the exercise of your gifts, and in external ways
of duty, and giving God a cheap and plausible obedience in those
things only which the flesh can spare, you are then fallen into
that deceitful hypocrisy which will as surely condemn you as
open profaneness, if you get^not out of it. You must live as in
a fight, or you cannot overcome. You must live loose from all
things in this world, if you will be ready for another. You must
not live after the flesh, but mortify it by the Spirit, if you would
not die, but live for ever. (Rom. viii. 13.) These things are
not indifferent, but of flat necessity.
The tenth direction : * Do all your works as men that must
be judged for them.' Jt is not enough (at least in point of duty
and comfort) that you judge this preparation in general to be
the main business of your lives, but you should also order your
particular actions by these thoughts, and measure them by their
respects to this approaching day. Before you venture on them,
inquire whether they will bear weight in judgment, and be sweet
or bitter when they are brought to trial ? Both for matter and
manner this must be observed. O that you would remember
this when temptations are upon you, when you are tempted to
give up your minds to the world, and drown yourselves in earthly
cares, will you bethink you soberly whether you would hear of
this at judgment ; and whether the world will be then as sweet
as now ; and whether this be the best preparation for your
trial. When you are tempted to be drunk, or to spend your
precious time in alehouses, or vain unprofitable company, or at
cards, or dice, or any sinful or needless sports, bethink you then
whether this will be comfortable at the reckoning ; and whether
time be no more worth to one that is so near eternity, and must
make so strict an account of his hours ; and whether there be
not many better works before you, in which you might spend
your time to your greater advantage, and to your greater comfort
506 A SERMON
when it comes to a review ? When you are tempted to wan-
tonness, fornication, or any other fleshly intemperance, bethink
you soberly with what face these actions will appear at judg-
ment, and whether they will be then pleasant or unpleasant to
you. So when you are tempted to neglect the daily worship-
ping of God in your families, and the catechising and teaching
of your children or servants, especially on the Lord's day,
bethink yourselves then what account you will give of this to
Christ, when he that entrusted you with the care of your
children and servants, shall call you to a reckoning for the per-
formance of that trust.
The like must be remembered in the very manner of our
duties. How diligently should a minister study. How ear-
nestly should he persuade. How unvveariedly should he bear
all oppositions and ungrateful returns; and how carefully should
he watch over each particular soul of his charge, (as far as is
possible,) when he remembers that he must shortly be account-
able for all in judgment? And how importunate should we all
be with sinners for their conversion, when we consider that we
ourselves also must shortly be judged? Can a man be cold
and dead in prayer that hath any true apprehension of that
judgment upon his mind, where he must be accountable for all
his prayers and performances. Oh ! remember, and seriously
remember, when you stand before the minister to hear the word,
and when you are on your knees to God in prayer, in what a
manner that same person, even yourselves, must shortly stand
at the bar of the dreadful God ! Did these thoughts get
thoroughly to men's hearts, they would waken them out of their
sleepy devotions, and acquaint them that it is a serious business
to be a Christian. How careful should we be of our thoughts
and words if we believingly remembered that we must be ac-
countable for them all ! How carefully should we consider what
we do with our riches, and with all that God giveth us, and how
much more largely should we expend it for his service in works
of piety and charity, if we believingly remembered that we
must be judged according to what we have done, and give
aceount of every talent that we receive ! Certainly the be-
lieving consideration of judgment might make us all better
Christians than we are, and keep our lives in a more innocent
and profitable frame.
The eleventh direction : c As you will certainly renew your
failings in this life, so be sure that you daily renew your repent-
OF JUDGMENT. 507
ance, and fly daily to Christ for a renewed pardon, that no sin
may leave its sting in your souls/ It is not your first pardon
that will serve the turn for your latter sins. Not that you must
purpose to sin, and purpose to repent when you have done, as
a remedy, for that is an hypocritical and wicked purpose of re-
penting, which is made a means to maintain us in our sins, but
sin must be avoided as far as we can, and repentance and faith
in the blood of Christ must remedy that which we could not
avoid. The righteousness of pardon in Christ's blood is useful
to us only so far as we are sinners, and cometh in where our
imperfect inherent righteousness doth come short, but must not
be purposely chosen before innocency. I mean, we must rather
choose, as far as we can, to obey, and be innocent, than to sin
and be pardoned, if we were sure of pardon.
The twelfth direction : In this vigilant, obedient, penitent
course, with confidence upon God as a father, rest upon the
promise of acceptance and remission, through the merits and
intercession of him who redeemed you; look up in hope to the
glory that is before you, and believe that God will make good
his word, and the patient expectation of the righteous shall not
be in vain. Cheerfully hold on in the work that you have be-
gun ; and as you serve a better master than you did before vour
change, so serve him with more willingness, gladness, and de-
light. Do not entertain hard thoughts of him, or of his service,
but rejoice in your unspeakable happiness of being admitted
into his family and favour through Christ. Do not serve him
in drooping dejection and discouragement, but with love, and
joy, and filial fear. Keep in the communion of his saints,
where he is cheerfully and faithfully praised and honoured, and
where is the greatest visible similitude of heaven upon earth,
especially in the celebration of the sacrament of Christ's sup-
per, where he seals up a renewed pardon in his blood, and
where, unanimously, we keep the remembrance of his death,
until he come. Do not cast yourselves out of the communion
of the saints, from whom to be cast out by just censure and
exclusion is a dreadful emblem, and forerunner of the judgment
to come, where the ungodly shall be cast out of the presence of
Christ and his saints for ever.
I have now finished the directions, which I tender to you for
your preparation for the day of the Lord j and, withal, my
whole discourse on this weighty point. What effect all this
shall have upon your hearts the Lord knows : it is not in my
508
A SEIIMON
power to determine. If you are so far blinded and hardened
by shi and Satan, as to make light of all this, or coldly to com-
mend the doctrine, while you go on to the end in your carnal
worldly condition as before, I can say no more, but tell thee
again that judgment is near, when thou wilt bitterly bewail all
this, too late. And among all the rest of the evidence that
comes in against thee, this book shall be one which shall testify
to thy face, before angels and men, that thou wast told of that
day, and intreated to prepare.
But if the Lord shall show thee so much mercy as to open
thy eyes, and break in upon thy heart, and, by sober considera-
tion, turn it to himself, and cause thee faithfully to take the
warning that hath here been given thee, and to obey these direc-
tions, I dare assure thee from the word of the Lord, that this
judgment, which will be so dreadful to the ungodly, and the
beginning of their endless terror and misery, will be as joyful
to thee, and the beginning of thy glory. The Saviour that thou
hast believed in, and sincerely obeyed, will not condemn thee.
(Psalm i. 5, 6 ; Rom. viii. 1 ; John iii. 16.) It is part of his
business to justify thee before the world, and to glorify his me-
rits, his kingly power, his holiness, and his rewarding justice,
in thy absolution and salvation. He will account it a righteous
thing to recompense tribulation to thy troublers, and rest to thy-
self, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with
his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them
that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord
Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruc-
tion from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his
power. Even then shall he come to be glorified in his saints,
and to be admired in all them that lielieve, in that day, even be-
cause his servants' testimony, and his spirits among them, was
believed. (2 Thess. i. 6 — 10.) That day will be the great
marriage of the Lamb, and the reception of thee and all the
saints into the glory of thy beloved, to which they had a right
at their first consent and contract upon earth : and when the
bridegroom comes, thou who art ready shalt go into the mar-
riage, when the door shall be shut against the sleepy, negligent
world ; and though they cry " Lord, Lord, open to us," they
shall be repulsed with a " Verily, I know you not." (Matt. xxv.
10 — 13.) For this day, which others fear, mayest thou long,
and hope, and pray, and wait, and comfort thyself in all trou-
bles with the remembrance of it. (1 Cor. xv. 55 — 58; 1 Thess.
OF JUDGMENT. 509
iv. 17, IS.) If thou were ready to be offered to death for
Christ, or when the time of thy departing is at hand, thou
mayest look baek on the good fight which thou hast fought,
and on the course which thou hast finished, and on the faith
which thou hast kept, and mayest confidently conclude, that,
henceforth there is laid up for thee " a crown of righteousness,
which the Lord the righteous Judge shall give thee at that
day : and not to thee only, but unto all them also that love his
appearing." (2 Tim. iv. 6 — 8.) "Even so, come, Lord Jesus.'*
(Rev. xxii. 20.)
TREATISE OF DEATH,
THE LAST ENEMY TO BE DESTROYED.
SHOWING WHEREIN ITS ENMITY CONSISTETH,
AND HOW IT IS DESTROYED.
Part of it was preached at the Funeral of Elizabeth, the. late ivife of Mr
Joseph Baker, Pastor of the Church at St. Andrew's in Worcester.
With some few Passages of the Life of the said Mrs. Baker, observed.
" In whose eyes a vile person is contemned : but he honoureth them that fear
the Lord." — Psalm xv. 4.
" O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting
of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks he to God,
who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." — 1 Cor. xv. 55 — 57.
TO THE WOESHIPFUL
MAYOR, ALDERMEN, AND SHERIFF
OF THE
CITY OF WORCESTER]
WITH
THE REST OF THE INHABITANTS ; ESPECIALLY THOSE OF
THE PARISHES OF ANDREW'S AND HELEN'S,
Worshipful, and the rest Beloved,
The chief part of this following discourse being preached
among you, and that upon an occasion which you are obliged
to consider, (Isaiah lvii. 1,) being called, to publish it, I
thought it meet to direct it first to your hands, and to take this
opportunity plainly and seriously to exhort you in some matters
that your present and everlasting peace is much concerned in.
Credible fame reporteth you to be a people not all of one
mind or temper in the matters of God ; but that, 1. some of
you are godly, sober, and peaceable; 2. some well-meaning and
zealous, but addicted to divisions; 3. some papists; 4. some
hiders, seduced by your late deceased neighbour Clement Writer,
(to whom the quakers do approach in many opinions) ; 5. And
too many profane and obstinate persons, that are heartily and
seriously of no religion, but take occasion, from the divisions of
the rest, to despise or neglect the ordinances of God, and join
themselves to no assemblies.
1. To the first sort (having least need of my exhortation)
I say no more, but " as you have received Christ Jesus the
Lord, so walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him, and
established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding
therein with thanksgiving. And beware lest any man spoil
you by deceit," &c. (Col.ii. 6 — S.) Walk as " a chosen genera-
YOL. XVII. L L
514
THE DEDICATION.
tion, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; to show
forth the praises of him that hath called you out of darkness
into his marvellous light ; having your conversation honest
among the Gentiles : that, whereas they speak against you as
evil-doers, they may by your good works, which they shall be-
hold, glorify God in the day of visitation ; for so is the will of
God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance
of foolish men/' (1 Pet. ii. 9, 12, 15.) Your labour and pa-
tience is known to the Lord, and how ye cannot bear them which
are evil, but have tried them which say they speak from the
Lord, and are apostles, and are not, and have found them liars ;
even the woman Jezebel, that is suffered to teach and seduce
the people, calling herself a prophetess, who shall be cast into
a bed of tribulation, and all that commit adultery with her, ex-
cept they repent ; and her children shall be killed with death ;
and all the churches shall know that Christ is he who searcheth
the reins and hearts, and will give to every one according to
their work. As for yourselves, we put upon you no other burden
but that which you have already ; hold fast till the Lord come.
(Rev. ii.) Be watchful that ye fall not from your first love.
And if any have declined, and grown remiss, remember how you
have received, and heard, and hold fast, and repent, and
strengthen the things that remain, which are ready to die, lest
your candlestick should be removed/' (Uev. iii. 2, 3, &c.) And
" beware, lest ye also, being led away with the error of the
wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace,
and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ/'
(2 Pet. iii. 17, 18.) And I beseech you, brethren, " do all things
without murmurings and disputings : that ye may be blameless
and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of
a crooked and perverse nation, amongst whom you and your
brethren shine as lights in the world." (Phil. ii. 14, 15.) And
if in well-doing you suffer, think it not strange, but rejoice
that ye are partakers of the sufferings of Christ, that when his
glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.
If ye be reproached for the name of Christ happy are ye, for
the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you, being glorified
on your part, while he is evil spoken of on theirs." (1 Pet. iv.
12—14.)
2. To the second sort, inclinable to divisions, let me tender
the counsel of the Holy Ghost. " My brethren, be not many
masters (or teachers), knowing that ye shall receive the greater
THE DEDICATION. 515
condemnation. The wisdom that is from above, is first pure,
and then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of
mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy;
and the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that
make peace. " (Jam. iii. 1, 17, 18.) "Who is a wise man and
endued with knowledge among you, let him show out of a good con-
versation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if ye have bitter
envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against
the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is
earthly, sensual, devilish, — for where envying and strife is, there
is confusion, and every evil work." (Jam. iii. 13 — 16.) Look
on those assemblies where the people, possessing the fear of
God, are of one heart and mind, and walk together in love and
holy order, and people give due honour and obedience to their
faithful guides, and compare them with the congregations where
professors are self-conceited, unruly, proud, and addicted to
ostentation of themselves, and to divisions ; and see which is
likest to the primitive pattern, and in which it is that the
power of godliness prospereth best, and the beauty of religion
most appears, and Christians walk as Christians indeed. If
pride had not brought the heavy judgment of infatuation or
insensibility on many, the too clear discoveries of the fruits of
divisions, in the numerous and sad experiences of this age,
would have caused them to be abhorred as odious and destruc-
tive, by those that now think they do but transcend their lower
brethren in holiness and zeal. " Now I beseech you, brethren,
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same
thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye
be perfectly joined together, in the same mind, and in the same
judgment." (1 Cor. i. 10.) " The God of patience and con-
solation grant you to be like-minded one toward another, ac-
cording to Christ Jesus ; that ye may with one mind and one
mouth glorify God. " (Rom. xv. 5, 6.) "And I beseech you,
brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over
you in the Lord, and admonish you ; and esteem them very
highly in love for their works' sake, and be at peace among
yourselves." (I Thess. v. 12, 13.) And " mark them that cause
divisions and offences, contrary to the doctrine which ye have
learned, and avoid them." (Rom. xvi. 17.) And " if there be
any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellow-
ship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfil ye our joy,
that ye be like-minded, having the same love, being of one
L L 2
516 THE DEDICATION.
accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or
vain-glory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better
than themselves. Look not every man on his own things (his
own gifts and graces), but every man also on the things (the
graces and gifts) of others ; let this mind be in you which was
also in Christ Jesus ; who, being in the form of God, thought
it not robbery to be equal with God ; but made himself of no
reputation, (or emptied himself of all worldly glory." (Phil. ii.
1 — 70 As if he had had no form or comeliness, and no beauty
to the eye, for which we should desire him ; but was despised
and rejected of men, and not esteemed. (Isa. liii. 2 — 4.) It is
not (as you imagine) your extraordinary knowledge, zeal, and
holiness, that inclineth you to divisions, and to censuring of
your brethren : but it is pride and ignorance, and want of love.
And if you grow to any ripeness in knowledge, humility,
self-denial, and charity, you will bewail your dividing inclina-
tions and courses, and reckon them among the greater and
grievous of your sins, and cry out against them as much as your
more charitable and experienced brethren do.
3. To the third sort (the papists) I shall say nothing here,
because I cannot expect they should read it and consider it :
and because we are so far disagreed in our principles, that we
cannot treat with them on those rational terms as we may do
with the rest of the inhabitants of the world, whether Chris-
tians^ infidels, or heathens. As long as they build their faith
and salvation on this supposition, that the eyes, and taste, and
feeling of all the sound men in the world are deceived, in
judging of bread and wine; and as long as they deny the cer-
tain experience of true believers, (telling us that we are void of
charity and unjustified, because we are not of their church ;)
and as long as they fly from the judgment and tradition of the
ancient and present church, (unless their small part may be
taken for the whole, or the major vote ;) and as long as they
reject our appeal to the holy Scriptures ; I know not well what
we can say to them, which we can expect they should regard,
any more than music is regarded by the deaf, or light by the
blind, or argument by the distracted. If they had the modera-
tion and charity impartially to peruse our writings, I durst
confidently promise the recovery of multitudes of them, by the
three writings which I have already published, and the more
that others have said against them.
4. And for the fourth sort (the hiders and the quakers), I
THE DEDICATION. 517
have said enough to them already in my hook against infidelity,
and those against popery and quakers ; but in vain to those
that have sinned unto death.
5. It is the fifth sort, therefore, that I shall chiefly address
my speech to, who, I fear, are not the smallest part. It is an
astonishing consideration to men that are awake, to observe the
unreasonableness and stupidity of the ignorant, careless, sensual
part of men, how little they love or fear the God whom their
tongues confess ; how little they value, or mind, or seek the
everlasting glory which they take on them to believe ; how little
they fear and shun those flames which must feed for ever on
the impenitent and unholy; how little they care or labour for
their immortal souls, as if they were of the religion of their
beasts ; how bitterly many of them hate the holy ways com-
manded by the Lord, while yet they pretend to be themselves
his servants, and to take the Scriptures to be his word ; how
sottishly and contemptuously they neglect and slight the holi-
ness, without which there is no salvation; (Heb. xii. 14;)
how eagerly they desire and seek the pleasing of their flesh, and
the matters of this transitory life, while they call them vanity
and vexation ; how madly they will fall out with their own sal-
vation, and, from the errors and sins of hypocrites or others,
will pick quarrels against the doctrine, and ordinances, and
ways of God ; as if other men's faults should be exceeded by
vou, while you pretend to loathe them. If it be a sin to crack
our faith by some particular error, what is it to dash it all to
pieces ? If it be odious in your eyes to deny some particular
ordinance of God, what is it to neglect or profane them all ?
If it be their sin that quarrel in the way to heaven, and walk
not in company, as love requireth them, what is it in you to
run towards hell, and turn your backs on the holy laws and
wavs of God ? H it be so lamentable to the nation and them-
selves, that so manv have fallen into schism and disorder, what
is it, then, that so many are ungodly, sensual, and worldly, and
have no true religion at all in sincerity, and life, and power?
Ungodliness is all heresy transcendently in the lump, and that
in practice. A man that is so foolish as to plead, that arsenic
is better than bread, may yet live himself, if he do not take it ;
but so cannot he, that eateth it instead of bread. Heretics only
in speculation may be saved, but practical heretics cannot.
You think it heinous to deny with the mouth, that there is a
God, who made us, and is our only Lord and happiness, (and
5 18 THE DEDICATION.
so it is ;) and is it not heinous, then, to deny him with the heart
and life, and to deny him the love and obedience that is pro-
perly due to God ? It is odious idolatry to bow to a creature
as to God ; and is it not odious to love, and honour, and obey
a creature before him, and to seek it more eagerly, and mind
it more seriously than God ? If it be damnable infidelity to
deny Christ to be the Redeemer, is it much less to turn away
from him, and make light of him, and refuse his grace, while
you seem to honour him ? If it be damnable blasphemy to deny
the Holy Ghost, what is it to resist and refuse him when he
would sanctify you, and, perhaps, to make a scorn of holiness ?
If it be heresy to deny the holy catholic church, and the com-
munion of saints, what is it to hate the holy members of the
church, and to avoid, if not deride, the communion of saints ?
Be not deceived; God is not mocked; a mock religion and the
name of Christianity will never save you. Do you know how
near you are to judgment? and will you fearlessly thus heap up
wrath, and lay in fuel for the everlasting flames ? Do you know
how speedily you shall wish, in the bitterness of your souls, that
you had heard, and prayed, and laboured as for your lives, and
redeemed your time, and obeyed your teachers ? and yet will you
now stand loitering, and quarrelling, and jesting and dallying in
the matters of salvation ? and will you live as if you had nothing
but the world to mind, when you are even ready to step into the
endless world ? O sirs, do you know what you are doing ?
you are abusing the living God, and wronging the Lord Jesus,
and trampling upon that mercy which would comfort you in
your extremity, a drop of which you would be glad of: you are
grieving your poor friends and teachers, and preparing for your
endless grief. Alas ! what should a faithful minister do for the
saving of your souls ? He seeth you befooled in your security,
and carelessly passing on towards hell, and cannot help it : he
sees you posting to your misery, where you will be out of the
reach of all our exhortations, and where mercy will not follow
you to be accepted or rejected : and though he see you almost
past remedy, he cannot help you. He knoweth not, when he
speaks to you, whether ever he shall speak unto you more, and
whether ever you shall have another call and offer ; and, there-
fore, he would fain speak effectually if he could; but it is not in
his power. He knows that the matter sticks all at your own
wills ; and that if he could but procure your own consent to
the most reasonable and necessary business in the world, the
THE DEDICATION. 519
work were done, and you might escape the everlasting flames ;
and yet this is it that he cannot procure. Oh ! wonderful, that
any man should be damned ; yea, that many men, and most
men, should be damned, when they might be saved if they
would, and will not. Yea, that no saying will serve to procure
their consent, and make them willing. That we must look on
our poor miserable neighbours in hell, and say, 4 They might
have been saved once, but would not : they had time and leave
to turn to Gcd, and to be holy and happy as well as others; but
we could never prevail with them to consent, and know the
day of their visitation.' Oh ! what should we do for the saving
of careless, senseless souls ? Must we let them go ? Is there
no remedy ? Shall ministers study to meet with their necessi-
ties, and tell them, with all possible plainness and compassion,
of the evil that is a little before them, and teach them how they
may escape it? WI13 7 , this they do from day to day, and some
will not hear them, but are tippling or idling, or making a jest
of the preacher at home; and others are hearing with prejudice
and contempt ; and most are hardened into a senseless dead-
ness ; and all seems to them but an empty sound : and they are so
used to hear of heaven and hell, that they make as light of
them, as if there were no such states. Alas ! that while millions
are weeping and wailing in utter desperation for the neglecting
of their day of grace, and turning away from him that called
them ; our poor hearers at the same time should wilfully follow
them, when they are told from God what others suffer. Alas !
that you should be sleepy and dead under those means that
should waken you to prevent eternal death ; and that ever you
should make merry so near damnation, and be sporting your-
selves with the same kind of sins, that others at the same hour
are tormented for. And is such madness as this remediless in
people that seem as wise as others for worldly things ? Alas !
for any thing that we can do, experience tells us, that with the
most it is remediless. Could we remedy it, our poor people
should not wilfully run from Christ, and lie in the flames of hell
for ever : could our persuasions and entreaties help it, they
should not for ever be shut out of heaven, when it is offered to
them as well as others. We bewail it from our hearts before
the Lord, that we can entreat them no more earnestly, and beg
not of them, as for our lives, to look before them, and hearken
to the voice of grace, that they may be saved ; and a thousand
times, in secret, we call ourselves hard-hearted, unmerciful; and
520 THE DEDICATION.
unfaithful (in too great a 'measure) that speak no more im-
portunately for the saving of men's souls, when we know not
whether we shall ever speak to them any more. Is this all
that we can say or do in so terrible a case, and in a matter of
such weight as men's salvation ? The Lord forgive our great
insensibility, and awaken us, that we maybe fit to waken others.
But yet for all this, with grief, we most complain, that our people
feel not when we feel, and that they are senseless or asleep when
we speak to them as seriously as we can ; and that tears and
moans do not prevail ; but they go home and live as stupid, in
an unconverted state, as if all were well with them, and they
were not the men we speak to.
Oh I that you knew what a fearful judgment it is to be for-
saken of God, because you would have none of him, and to be
given up to your hearts' lust, to walk in your own counsels, be-
cause you would not hearken to his voice ; (Psalm lxxxi.
\\ — 13 •) and to have God say, ' Let those wretches be igno-
rant, and careless, and fleshly and worldly, and filthy still.
(Rev. xxii. 11.) Oh! that you knew (but not by experience)
what a heavy plague it is to be so forsaken, as to have eyes
that see not, or seeing, do not perceive ; and to have ears that
hear not, or to hear, and not understand ; and so to be uncon-
verted and unhealed; (Mark iv. 12;) and to be hardened and
condemned by the word, and patience, and mercies, that do
soften and save others, and should have saved you. Take heed
lest Christ say, c I have sent them my messenger long enough
in vain ; from henceforth never fruit grow on them ; because
thev would not be converted, they shall not/ Take heed, lest
he take you away from means, and quickly put an end to your
opportunities. You see how fast men pass away, but little do
you know how many are lamenting that they made no better
use of time, and helps, and mercies, while they had them. Oh !
hear while you may hear, for it will not be long ; read while
you may read, and pray while you may pray, and turn while
you may turn ; and go to your Christian friends and teachers,
and inquire of them, what you must do to be saved, before in-
quiring be too late. Spend the Lord's-day, £nd what other
time you can redeem, in holy preparations for your endless rest,
while you have such a happy day to spend, Oh ! sleep no longer
in your sins, while God stands over you, lest, before you are
aware, you awake in hell. Patience and mercy have their ap-
pointed time, and will not always wait and be despised. Oh !
THE DEDICATION. 521
let not your teachers be forced to say, ( We would have taught
them publicly and privately, but they would not. We would
have catechised the ignorant, and exhorted the negligent, but
some of them would not come near us, and others of them gave
us but the hearing, and went awav such as they came/ If
once, by forfeiting the gospel, the teachers whom you slight
be taken from you, you may then sin on and take your course,
till time, and help, and hope, are past.
The Providence that called me to this work was some warn-
ing to you. Though it was a removing of his helper, a pattern
of meekness, and godliness, and charity, and he is left the more
disconsolate in the prosecution of his work. God hath made
him faithful to your souls, and careful for your happiness: he
walks before you in humility, and self-denial, and patience, and
peaceableness, and inoffensive life ; he is wiliing to teach you
publicly and privately in season ; he manage th the work of
God with prudence and moderation, and yet with zeal ; care-
fully avoiding ungodliness and schism, or the countenancing of
either of them. Were he not of eminent wisdom and integrity,
his name would not be unspotted in a place where dividers and
disputers, papists and Quakers, and so many bitter enemies of
godliness, do watch for matter of accusation and reproach
against the faithful ministers of Christ. As you love the safety
and happiness of your city, and of your souls, undervalue not
such mercies, nor think it enough to put them off with your
commendations and good word; it is not that which they live, and
preach, and labour for ; but for the conversion, edification, and
salvation of vour souls. Let them have this or thev have
nothing, if you should give them all you have. The enemies of
the Gospel have no wiser cavil against the painful labourers of
the Lord, than to call them hirelings, and blame them for look-
ing after tithes, and great matters in the world. But as among
all the faithful ministers of this country, through the great
mercy of God, these adversaries are now almost ashamed to
open their mouths with an accusation of covetousness, so this
your reverend, faithful teacher hath stopped the mouth of all
such calumnv, as to him. When I invited him from a place of
less work, and a competent maintenance, to accept of
less than half that maintenance, with a far greater burden
of work among you? he never stuck at it, as thinking he
might be more serviceable to God, and win that which is better
than the riches of this world. And if now you will frustrate his
522 THE DEDICATION.
expectations, and disappoint his labours and hopes of your salva-
tion, it will be easier for Sodom in the day of judgment than
for you. Alas ! how sad it is to see a faithful minister longing
and labouring for men's salvation, and manv of them neglect
him, and others picking groundless quarrels ; and the proud,
unruly, selfish part rebelling, and turning their backs upon their
teachers whenever they will not humour them in their own
ways, or when they deal but faithfully with their souls ! Some,
even of those that speak against disobedience, conventicles, and
schism, turn away in disdain, if their children may not be need-
lessly baptised in private houses, and if that solemn ordinance
may not be celebrated in a parlour conventicle. How many
refuse to come to the minister in private to be instructed or
catechised, or to confer with him about their necessary prepara-
tion for death and judgment ! Is not this the case of many
among you? Must not your teachers say he sent to you, and
was willing to have done his part, and you refused ? Little will
ye now believe how heavy this will lie upon you one day, and
how dear you shall pay for the causeless grieving and disap-
pointment of your guides. It is not your surliness and passions
that will then serve turn to answer God. Nor shall it save you
to say, that ministers were of so many minds and ways that
you knew not which of them to regard ; for it was but one way
that God in the holy Scripture did prescribe you ; and all faith-
ful ministers were agreed in the things which you reject, and in
which you practically differ from them all. What ! are we not
all agreed that God is to be preferred before the world ? and
that you must first seek the kingdom of God, and his righteous-
ness ? and that no man can be saved except he be converted
and born again ? and that he that hath not the Spirit of Christ
is none of his; (Matt. vi. 33; John iii. 3,5; Matt, xviii.3 ;
Rom. viii. 9 ;) and that you and your households should serve
the Lord ? (Josh. xxiv. 15.) Are we not all agreed that the
law of the Lord must be your delight, and that you must medi-
tate in it day and night ? (Psalm i. 2, 3 ;) and that you must be
constant and fervent in prayer? (1 Thess. v. 17 ; Luke xviii. 1,
&c.;) and that all that name the name of Christ must depart from
iniquity ; and that if ye live after the flesh ye shall die ? (2 Tim.
ii. 19; Rom. viii. 13.) You shall find one day that it was you
only, and such as you, that practically differed from us in these
points ; but we differed not in these, or such as these, among
ourselves. 1 never read that a man shall not see God because
THE DEDICATION.
523
he is episcopal, presbyterian, independent, no, nor anabaptist;
or because he readeth not his prayers, or such like ; but
I read that no man shall see God without holiness. (Heb.
xii. 14.)
It will not serve your turn in judgment to say that you were
for this side, or that side, and, therefore, you hearkened not to
the other side, as long as all those sides agree in the necessity
of holiness, which you neglect. Why did you not learn of your
own side, at least to forsake your tippling, and swearing, and
worldly-niindedness, and to make it the daily trade of your lives
to provide for life everlasting, and make sure work in the matter
of your salvation ? W you had learnt but this much of any side,
you would cast away your siding more, and have loved and
honoured them that feared the Lord, of what side soever,
(Psalm xv. 4,) and have contemned the ungodly as vile persons,
though they had been of your side. The Catholic church is
one, and containeth all that heartily and practically believe in
God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Creator, Redeemer,
and Sanctifier, and live a holy, heavenly life. Leave off your
siding, and keep this blessed, simple unity, and you will then
be wiser than in a passion,to cast yourselves into hell, because
some fall out in the way to heaven.
Nor will it serve your turn at the bar of God to talk of the
miscarriages or scandals of some that took on them to be godly,
no more than to run out of the ark for the sake of Ham, or out
of Christ's family for the sake of Judas. Whatever men are,
God is just, and will do you no wrong; and you are called to
believe in God, and to serve him, and not to believe in men.
Nothing but wickedness could so far blind men as to make them
think they may cast off their love and service to the Lord, be-
cause some others have dishonoured him ; or that they may
cast away their souls by carelessness, because some others have
wounded their souls by particular sins. Do you dislike the sins
of professors of godliness ? So much the better. We desire
you not to agree with them in sinning. Join with them in a
holy life, and imitate them so far as they obey the Lord ; and
go as far beyond them in avoiding the sins that you are offended
at as vou can ; and this it is that we desire. Suppose they were
covetous, or liars, or schismatical, imitate them in holy duties,
and fly as far from covetousness, lying, and schism, as you will.
You have had learned and godly bishops of this city ; search
524 THE DEDICATION.
the writings of those of them that have left any of their labours
to posterity, and see whether they speak for the same substan-
tiate of faith and godliness, which are now preached to you by
those that you set so light by. Bishops Latimer, Parrey, Bab-
ington, &c, while they were bishops ; and Robert Abbot, Hall,
&c, before they were bishops, all excellent, learned, godly men,
have here been preachers to your ancestors. Read their books,
and you will find that they call men to that strictness and holi-
ness of life which you cannot abide. Read your Bishop Babing-
ton on the Commandments, and see there how zealously he
condemneth the profaners of the Lord's- day, and those that
make it a day of idleness or sports. And what if one man
think that one bishop should have hundreds of churches under
his sole jurisdiction, and another man think that every full
parish- church should have a bishop of their own, and that one
parish will find him work enough, be he what he will (which
is the difference now amongst us,) is this so heinous a disagree-
ment as should frighten you from a holy life, which all agree
for?
To conclude, remember, this is the day of your salvation.
Ministers are your helpers; Christ and holiness are your way;
Scripture is your rule ; the godly must be your company ; and
the communion of saints your desire. If now any scandals,
divisions, displeasures, or any seducements of secret or open ad-
versaries of the truth, or temptations of Satan, the world, or
flesh whatsoever, shall prevail with you to lose your day, to re-
fuse your mercies, and to neglect Christ and your immortal
souls, you are conquered and undone, and your enemy hath his
will ; and the more confidently and fearlessly you brave it out,
the more is your misery, for the harder are your hearts,
and the harder is your cure, and the surer and sorer
will be your damnation. I have purposely avoided the
enticing words of worldly wisdom, and a style that tends
to claw your ears, and gain applause with airy wits, and
have chosen these familiar words, and deal thus plainly and freely
with you, because the greatness of the cause persuaded me I
could not be too serious. Whether many of you will read it,
and what success it shall have upon them, or how those that
read it will take it, I cannot tell; but I know that I intended it
for your good; and that whether you will hear, or whether you
will forbear, the ministers of Christ must not forbear to do their
THE DKD1 CATION. 525
duty, nor be rebellious themselves ; but our labours shall be ac-
ceptable with our Lord, and you shall know that his ministers
were among you. (Ezek. ii.3 — 8.) "Yet a little while is the
light with you : walk while ye have the light, lest darkness
come upon you ; for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not
whither hegoeth." (John xii. 35.) Oh, take this warning from
Christ, and from
An earnest desirer of your everlasting peace,
RICHARD BAXTER.
TREATISE OF DEATH,
THE
LAST ENEMY TO BE DESTROYED.
1 CORINTHIANS xv. 2€.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
Death is the occasion of this day's meeting ; and death
must be the subject of our present meditations. I must speak of
that which will shortly silence me, and you must hear of that
which will speedily stop your ears : and we must spend
this hour on that which waits to cut our thread, and take down
our glass, and end our time, and tell us we have spent our last.
But as it hath now done good by doing hurt, so we are to consi-
der of the accidental benefits, as well as of the natural evil,
from which the heavenly wisdom doth extract them. Death
hath now bereaved a body of its soul, but thereby it hath sent
that soul to Christ, where it hath now experience how good it
is to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.
(2 Cor. v. 8.) It hath separated a faithful wife from a beloved
husband ; but it hath sent her to a husband more dearly be-
loved, and taught her now, by experience, to say, that to be
with Christ is best of ail. (Phil. i. 23.) It hath deprived a sor-
rowful husband of a wife, and deprived us of a faithful friend :
but it hath thereby brought us to the house of mourning, which
is better for us than the house of feasting; (a paradox to the
flesh, but an undoubted truth ;) for here we may see the end of
all men, and we who are yet living may lay it to our hearts.
(Eccles. vii. 2, 3.) Yea, it hath brought us to the house of
God, and occasioned this serious address to his holiness, that
we may be instructed by his word, as we are warned by his
works ; and that we may be wise to understand, and to con-
sider our latter end. (Deut, xxxii. 29.)
528 A TREATISE
It is like you will think, to tell men of the evil or enmity of
death is as needless a discourse as any could he chosen ; for who
is there that is not naturally too sensible of this, and who doth
not dread the name, or, at least, the face of death ? But there
is accidentally a greater evil in it than that which nature teacheth
men to fear : and while it is the king of terrors to the world,
the most are ignorant of the greatest hurt that it doth them, or
can do them ; or, at least, it is but little thought on ; which
hath made me think it a needful work to tell you yet of much
more evil in that which you abhor as the greatest evil : but so
as withal to magnify our Redeemer, who overshooteth death
in its own bow ; and causeth it, when it aims at the mark, to
miss it ; and which causeth health by loathsome medicines ;
and, by the dung of our bodily corruption, manureth his church
to the greater felicity.
Such excellent skill of our wise physician we find expressed
and exercised in this chapter, where an unhappy error against
the resurrection hath happily occasioned an excellent discourse
on that weighty subject, which may establish many a thousand
souls, and serve to shame and destroy such heresies, till the re-
surrection come and prove itself. The great argument which
the apostle most insisteth on to prove the resurrection, is
Christ's own resurrection, where he entereth into a comparison
between Christ and Adam ; showing that, as Adam first brought
death upon himself, and then upon his posterity, so Christ, who
was " made a quickening Spirit," did first rise himself as the
first-fruits, and then at his coming will raise his own ; and " as
in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive." And
this Christ will do as our victorious king, and the captain of
our salvation, who, when he hath subdued every enemy, will
then deliver up the kingdom to the Father ; and the last enemy
which he will subdue is death, and therefore our resurrection is
his final conquest.
The terms of the text have no difficulty in them. The doc-
trine which they express must be thus unfolded :
I. I must show you that death is an enemv, and what is
meant by this expression, and wherein its enmity doth consist.
II. I shall show you that it is an enemy to be destroyed,
though last, and how, and by what degrees it is destroyed. And
then we shall make application of it to your further instruction
and edification.
I, That you may know what is meant by an enemy here, you
OF DEATH 529
must observe that man, being* fallen into sin and misery, and
Christ having undertaken the work of our redemption, the Scrip-
ture oft speaketh of our misery and recovery metaphorically in
military terms : and so Satan is said to take us captive, and we
to be his slaves, and Christ to be the captain of our salvation,
and to redeem us from our bondage ; and thus our sin and
misery, and all that hindereth the blessed ends of his under-
taking, are called enemies. Death, therefore, is called an
enemy to be destroyed, that is, a penal evil to be removed
by the Redeemer, in order to our recovery, and the glory of his
grace. 1. It is an evil. 2. A punishment procured by our
sin, and executed by God's justice. 3. It is an evil that
hindereth our felicity. These three things are included in
the enmity.
That death is an enemy to nature is a thing that all under-
stand : but all consider not how it is an enemy to our souls, to
the exercise of grace/ and, consequently, to the attainment of
glory. I shall, therefore, having first spoken briefly of the
former, insist a little longer upon the latter.
1. How great an enemy death is unto nature doth easily ap-
pear, in that, 1. It is the dissolution of the man. It maketh
a man to become no man, by separating the soul from the body,
and dissolving the body into its principles. It pulls down in a
moment a curious frame that nature was long building and ten-
derly cherishing and preserving. The mother long nourisheth it
in her bowels, and painfully brings it forth, and carefully brings
it up. What labour doth it cost our parents and ourselves to
make provision for this life, and death in a moment cuts it off.
How careful are we to keep in these lamps, and to maintain the
oil, and death extinguisheth them at a blast. How noble a
creature doth it destroy ! To-day our parts are all in order,
and busy about their several tasks ; our hearts are moving, our
lungs are breathing, our stomachs are digesting, our blood and
spirits by assimilation making more; and to-morrow death
takes off the poise, and all stands still, or draws the pins, and
all the frame doth fall to pieces. We shall breathe no more,
nor speak, nor think, nor walk no more : our pulse will beat no
more ; our eyes shall see the light no more; our ears shall hear
the voice of man, delightful sounds, and melody, no more; we
shall taste no more our meat or drink; our appetite is gone;
our strength is gone ; our natural warmth is turned into an
VOL. XVII, M M
530
A TREATISE
earthy cold ; our comeliness and beauty is turned into a ghastly,
loathsome deformity; our white and red doth soon turn into
horrid blackness ; our tender flesh hath lost its feeling, and is
become a senseless lump which feeleth not whither it is carried,
nor how it is used ; that must be hidden in the earth, lest it
annoy the living, that turns to loathsome putrefaction, and after
that to common earth. Were all the once comely bodies which
are now rotting in one churchyard uncovered, and here pre-
sented to your view, the sight would tell you, more effectually
than my words do, what an enemy death is to our nature. When
corruption hath finished its work, you see the earth which once
was flesh ; you see the bones ; you see the skulls ; you see the
holes where once were brains, and eyes, and mouth. This
change death makes, and that universally and unavoidablv. The
prince cannot resist it by his majesty, for he hath sinned against
the highest Majesty; the strong cannot resist it by their
strength, for it is the messenger of the Almighty. The com-
manders must obey it; the conquerors must be conquered by
it. The rich cannot bribe it; the learned orator cannot per-
suade it to pass him by; the skilful physician cannot save him-
self from the mortal stroke. Neither fields, nor gardens, earth,
or sea, affordeth any medicine to prevent it. All have sinned,
and all must die; "Dust we are, and to dust we must return t"
(Gen. iii. 19:) and thus should we remain if the Lord of life
should not revive us.
2. And it is not only to the body, but to the soul also, that
death is naturally an enemy. The soul hath naturally a love
and inclination to its body, and therefore it feareth a separation
before, and desireth a restoration afterward. Abstracting joy
and torment, heaven and hell ? in our consideration, the state of
separation as such is a natural evil : even to the human soul of
Christ it was so, while his body remained in the grave. Which
separated state is the hades, which our English calleth hell, that
Christ is said to have gone into. And though (the soul of Christ,
and) the souls of those that die in him, do pass into a far more
happy state than they had in the flesh, yet that is accidentally,
from rewarding justice and the bounty of the Lord, and not at
all from death as death. The separation as such is still an evil ;
and therefore the soul is still desirous of the body's resurrection,
and knoweth that its felicity will then be greater, when the re-
union and glorification hath perfected the whole man : so that
OF DEATH. 531
death as death is unwelcome to the soul itself, though death, as
accidentally gainful, may be desired.
3. And to the unpardoned, unrenewed soul, death is the
passage to everlasting misery, and in this regard is far more
terrible than in all that hitherto hath been spoken. Oh ! could
the guilty soul be sure that there is no justice to take hold on it
after death, and no more pain and sorrow to be felt, but that
man died as a beast which hath no more to feel, or lose, then
death would seem a tolerable evil 5 but it is the living death,
the dying life, the endless wo, to which death leads the guilty
soul, which makes it to be unspeakably terrible. The utter
darkness, the unquenchable fire, the worm that dieth not, the
everlasting flames of the wrath of God ; these are the chief
horror and sting of death to the ungodly. Oh ! were it but to be
turned into trees, or stones, or earth, or nothing, it were no-
thing, in comparison of this. But I pass by this, because it is
not directly intended in my text.
4. The saints themselves being sanctified but in part, are
but imperfectly assured of their salvation ; and therefore, in
that measure, as they remain in doubt, or unassured, death
may be a double terror to them. They believe the threatenings,
and know more than unbelievers do, what an insufferable loss it
is to be deprived of the celestial glory ; and what an unspeak-
able misery it is to bear the endless wrath of God : and there-
fore, so far as they have such fears, it must needs make death
a terror to them.
5. But if there were nothing but death itself to be our
enemy, the foreknowledge of it would increase the misery. A
beast that knoweth not that he must die, is not tormented
with the fears of death, though nature hath possessed them
with a self-preserving fear, for the avoiding of an invading evil:
but man foreknoweth that he must die; he hath still occasion
to anticipate his terrors. That which will be, and certainly and
shortly will be, is, in a manner, as if it were already : and, there-
fore, foreknowledge makes us as if we were always dying. We
see our graves, our weeping friends, our fore- described corrup-
tion and dismal state, and so our life is a continual death. And
thus death is an enemy to nature.
2. But this is not all, nor the greatest enmity that death hath
to the godly. It is a lamentable hinderance to the work of
grace, as I shall show you next in ten particulars.
1. The fears of death do much abate our desires after
M M 2
>32
A TREATISE
God, as he is to be enjoyed by the separated soul. Though
every believing, holy soul do love God above all, and take heaven
for his home, and therefore sincerely longeth after it, yet when
we know that death stands in the way, and that there is no
coming thither but through this dreadful, narrow passage, this
stoppeth, and lamentably dulleth our desires ; and so the natural
enmity turneth to a spiritual sorer enmity. For let a man be
never so much a saint, he will still be a man, and therefore, as
death will still be death, so nature will still be nature, and there-
fore, death, as death, will be abhorred. And we are such
timorous sluggards, that we are easily discouraged by this lion
in the way. The ugly porter affrighted us from those grateful
thoughts of the New Jerusalem, the city of God, the heavenly
inheritance, which otherwise the blessed object would produce.
Our sanctified affections would be mounting upwards, and holy
love would be working towards its blessed object, but death,
standing in the way, suppresseth our desires, and turns us back,
and frighteneth us from our Father's presence. We look up
to Christ and the holy city as to a precious pearl in the bottom
of the sea, or as to some dear and faithful friend, that is beyond
some dreadful gulf. Fain would we enjoy him, but we dare not
venture; we fear this dismal enemy in the way. He that can
recover his health by a pleasant medicine, doth take it without
any great reluctancy, but if a leg or an arm must be cut off, or
a stone cut out by a painful, dangerous incision, what a striving
doth it cause between the contrary passions ? The love
of life, and the love of ease, the fear of death, and the fear of
suffering.
Could we but come to heaven as easily as innocent Adam
might have done if he had conquered, what wings would it add
to our desires ! Might we .be translated as Enoch, or con-
veyed thither in the chariot of Elias, what saint is there that
would not long to see the face and glory of the Lord ? Were
it but to go to the top of a mountain, and there see Christ with
Moses and Elias, in a glimpse of glory, as did the three dis-
ciples, who would not make haste, and say, " It is good for us
to be here?" (Matt. xvii. 1 — 4.) But to travel so cheerfully
with Abraham to the mount of Moriah, to sacrifice an only son,
or with a martyr to the flames, is a harder task. This is the
principal enmity of death ; it deterreth our desires and thoughts
from heaven, and maketh it a far harder matter to us to long
after God than otherwise it would be, Yea ; it causeth us to
OF DEATH. 533
fly from him, oven when we truly love him, and where faith and
love do work so strongly as to overcome these fears, yet do they
meet with them as an enemy, and must fight before they
overcome.
2. And as this enemy dulleth our desires, so doth it conse-
quently cool our love, as to the exercise, and it hindereth our
hope, and much abateth the complacency and joy that we
should have in the believing thoughts of heaven, when we should
be rejoicing in hope of the glory of God ; (Rom. v. 2j;) the
face of death appearing to our thoughts, is naturally an enemy
to our joy. When we think of the grave, and of dissolution,
and corruption, and of our long abode in the places of darkness,
of our contemned dust, and scattered bones, this damps our
joyful thoughts of heaven, if supernatural grace do not make us
conquerors.
But if we might pass from earth to heaven, as from one room
to another, what haste should we make in our desires ! How
joyfully should we think and speak of heaven ! Then we might
live in the joy of the Holy Ghost, and easily delight ourselves
in God, and comfort would be our daily food.
3. Moreover, as our natural enemy doth thus occasion the
abatement of desire, and love, and joy, so also of our thankful-
ness for the glory that is promised us. God would have more
praise from us, if we had more pleasing, joyful thoughts of our
inheritance. We should magnify him from day to day, when
we remember how we shall magnify him for ever. Our hearts
would, be turned into thankfulness, and our tongues would be
extolling our dear Redeemer, and sounding forth his praise
whom we must praise for ever, if dreadful death did not draw a
veil to hide the heavenly glory from us.
4. And thus the dismal face of death doth hinder the heaven-
liness of our conversation. Our thoughts will be diverted when
our complacency and desire is abated ; our minds be willinger
to grow strange to heaven, when death still mingleth terror in
our meditations. Whereas if we could have come to God in
the way that was first appointed us, and could be clothed with
glory, without being stripped of our present clothing by this
terrible hand, how familiarly should we then converse above!
How readily would our thoughts run out to Christ 1 Meditation
of that glory would not be then so hard a work; our hearts
would not be so backward to it as now they are.
5. Faith is much hindered, and infidelity much advantaged,
534 A TREATISE
by death. Look either to the state of soul or body, and you
will easily perceive the truth of this. The state of a soul incor-
porated we know by long experience. What kind of apprehen-
sions, volitions, and affections belong to a soul while it acteth
in the body, we feel or understand, but what manner of know-
ledge, will, or love, what joy, what sorrow, belong to souls that
are separated from the bodies, it is not possible for us now dis-
tinctly and formally to conceive. And when men find themselves
at a loss about the manner, they are tempted to doubt of the
thing itself. The swarms of irreligious infidels that have denied
the immortality and separated existence of the soul, are too full
a proof of this, and good men have been haunted with this hor-
rible temptation. Had there been no death, we had not been
liable to this dangerous assault. The opinion of the sleeping
of the soul till the resurrection is but a step to flat infidelity, and
both of them hence receive their life, because a soul in flesh,
when it cannot conceive to its satisfaction of the being, state,
or action of a separated soul, is the easier drawn to question t)r
deny it.
And in regard of the body, the difficulty and trial is as great.
That a corpse resolved into dust, and perhaps first devoured by
some other body, and turned into its substance, should be re-
united to its soul, and so become a glorified body, is a point not
easy for unsanctified nature to believe. When Paul preached of
the resurrection to the learned Athenians, some mocked, and
others turned off that discourse. (Acts xvii. 32.) It is no easier
to believe the resurrection of the body, than the immortality
or separated existence of the soul. Most of the world, even
heathens and infidels, do confess the latter, but few of them
comparatively believe the former. And if sin had not let in
death upon our nature, this perilous difficulty had been pre-
vented. Then we should not have been puzzled with the thoughts
of either a corrupted body, or a separated soul.
6. And consequently, by all this already mentioned, our en-
deavours meet with a great impediment. If death weaken faith,
desire, and hope, it must needs dull our endeavours. The
deterred, discouraged soul moves slowly in the way of life,
whereas, if death were not in our way, how cheerfully should we
run towards heaven ! Our thoughts of it w r ould be still sweet,
and these would be a powerful spring to action. When the
will goes with full sails, the commanded faculty will the more
easily follow. We should long so earnestly to be in heaven, if
OF PEATH.
535
death were not in the way, that nothing could easily stop us in
our course. How earnestly should we pray ! How seriously
should we meditate and confer of heaven, and part with any
thing to attain it. But that which dulls our desires of the end,
must needs be an enemy to holy diligence, and dull us in the
use of means.
7. This enemy also doth dangerously tempt us to fall in love
with present things, and to take up the miserable portion of the
worldling. When it hath weakened faith,, and cooled our desires
to the life to come, we shall be tempted to think that it is best
to take such pleasure as may here be had, and feed on that
where a sensual mind hath less discouragement. Whereas, if
death did not stand in the way, and darken heaven to us, and
turn back our desires, how easily should we get above these
trifles, and perceive the vanity of all below, and how unworthy
they are to be once regarded.
8. Moreover, it is much along of this last enemv that God is
so dishonoured by the fears and droopings of believers. They
are but imperfectly yet freed from this bondage, and accordingly
thev walk. Whereas, if the king of terrors were removed, we
should have less of fear, and more of love, as living more in the
sight and sense of love. And then we should glorify the God
of love, and appear to the world as men of another world, and
show them the faith and hope of saints in the heavenly cheer-
fulness of our lives, and no more dishonour the Lord and our
profession by our uncomfortable despondencies, as we do.
9. Moreover, it is much along of this last enemy that many
true Christians cannot perceive their own sincerity, but are over-
whelmed with doubts and troublesome fears, lest they have not
the faith and hope of saints, and lest the love of God abide not
in them, and lest their hearts are more on earth than heaven.
When they find themselves afraid of dying, and to have dark,
amazing thoughts about eternity, and to think with less trouble
and fear of earth than of the life to come, this makes them
think that they are yet but worldlings, and have not placed
their happiness with God, when perhaps it is but the fear of
death that causeth these unjust conclusions. Christian, I shall
tell thee more anon, that God may be truly loved and desired
by thee, and heaven may be much more valued than earth, and
yet the natural fears of death that standeth in thy way may
much perplex thee, and make thee think that thou art averse
526
A TREATISE
from God, when indeed thou art but averse from death, because
yet this enemy is not overcome.
10. Lastly, this enemy is not the smallest cause of many of
our particular sins, and of the apostasy of many hypocrites.
Indeed it is one of the strongest of our temptations. Before man
sinned, none could take away his life but God, and God would
not have done it for any thing but sin. So that man had no
temptations from the malice of enemies, or the pride of conque-
rors, or the fury of the passionate, or the power of tyrants, to
be afraid of death, and to use any unlawful means to escape it.
An avoidable death from the hand of God he was obliged mo-
derately to fear, that is, to be afraid of sinning lest he die, else
God would not have threatened him, if he would not have had
him make use of a preventing fear. But now we have an un-
avoidable death to fear, and also an untimely death from the
hand of man by God's permission. And the fear of these is a
powerful temptation, otherwise Abraham would not have dis-
trustively equivocated as he did to save his life, (Gen. xx. 11,)
and Isaac after him do the same, when he sojourned in the
same place. (Gen. xxvi. 7.) If the fear of death were not a
strong temptation, Peter would not have thrice denied Christ,
and that after so late a warning and engagement. Nor would
all his disciples have forsaken him and fled. (Matt. xxvi. 5 (J.)
Nor would martyrs have a special reward, nor would Christ
have been put to call upon his disciples, that they fear not
them that can kill the body, (Luke xii. 4,) and to declare to
men the necessity of self-denial in this point of life, and that
none can be his disciple that loves his life before him. (Matt.
xvi. 25 ; Luke xiv. 26.) He is a Christian indeed that so loveth
God that he will not sin to save his life. But what is it that an
hypocrite will not do to escape death ? He will equivocate and
forswear himself with the Jesuit and familist; he will forsake
not only his dearest friend, but Christ also and his conscience.
What a multitude of the most heinous sins are daily committed
through the fears of death. Thousands where the inquisition
ruleth are kept in popery by it, and thousands are kept in ma-
hometanism by it. Thousands are drawn by it to betray their
countries ; to deny the truth ; to betray the church and cause of
Christ, and, finally, to betray their souls unto perdition. Some
of them presume to deny Christ wilfully, because that Peter
had pardon that denied him through surprise, and through in-
OF DEATH. 537
firmity, but they will not repent with Peter, and die for him
after their repentance. He that hath the power of an hypo-
crite's life, may prescribe him what he shall believe and do ;
may write him down the rule of his religion, and tell him what
changes he shall make, what oaths he shall take, what party he
shall side with, and command him so many sins a day as you
make your horse go so many miles. Satan, no doubt, had
much experience of the power of this temptation when he
boasted so confidently of it against Job, (ii. 4,) " Skin for skin,
yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life." And it is
true, no doubt, of those that love nothing better than their lives.
Satan thought that the fear of death would make a man do any
thing, and of too many he may boldly make this boast, c Let
me but have power of their lives, and I will make them say any
thing, and swear any thing, and be for any cause or party, and
do any thing against God or man/ When lesser matters can
do so much, as common, sad experience showeth us, no wonder
if the fear of death can do it.
3. In brief, you may see by what is said that death is become
an enemy to our souls, by being first the enemy of our natures.
The interest of our bodies works much on our souls, much more
the interest of the whole man. The principle of self-love was
planted in nature in order to self-preservation, and the govern-
ment of the world. Nature doth necessarily abhor its own de-
struction. And therefore this destruction standing in the way,
is become an exceeding great hinderance to our affections,
which takes them off from the life to come.
1. It is a very great hinderance to the conversion of those
that are yet carnal, imprisoned in their unbelief. It is hard to
win their hearts to such a state of happiness that cannot be ob~
tained but by yielding unto death.
2. And to the truly godly it is naturally an impediment, and
a great temptation in the points before expressed. And though
it prevail not against them, it exceedingly hindereth them. And
thus I have showed you that death is an enemy, further than, I
doubt, the most consider of.
If the unbeliever shall here tell me that death is not the fruit
of sin, but natural to man, though he had never sinned, and
therefore that I lay all this on God, I answer him, that mortality,
as it signifieth a posse mori, a natural capacity of dving, was
natural to us in our innocency, or else death could not be threat-
ened as a penalty. And if I grant as much of a natural dispo-
538 A TREATISE
sition in the body to a dissolution, if not prevented by a glori-
fying change, it will no whit advantage their impious cause.
But withal, man was then so far immortal, as that he had a
posse non mori, a natural capacity of not dying, and the mori-
etur velnon morietur, the actual event of life or death, was hud
by the Lord of life and death upon his obedience or disobe-
dience. And man having sinned, justice must be done, and so
we came under a non posse non mori, an impossibility of escaping
death, (ordinarily,) because of the peremptory sentence of our
Judge. But the day of our deliverance is at hand, when we
shall attain a non posse mori, a certain consummate immortality,
when the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed, and how that
is done, I shall next inquire.
You have seen the ugly face of death ; you are next to
see a little of the love of our great Redeemer. You have heard
what sin hath done ; you are next to hear what grace hath
done, and what it will do. You have seen the strength of the
enemy ; you are now to take notice of the victory of the Re-
deemer, and see how he conquereth all this strength.
1. The beginning of the conquest is in this world. 2. The
perfection will not be till the day of resurrection, when this last
enemy shall be destroyed.
1. Meritoriously death is conquered by death. The death of
sinners by the Mediator's death. Not that he intended in his
meritorious work to save us from the stroke of death by a pre-
vention, but to deliver us from it after by a resurrection. " For
since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection
from the dead." ( I Cor. xv. 21.) " Forasmuch as the children
are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took
part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that
had the power of death, that is, the devil ; and deliver them
who, through fear of death, were all their life-time subject to
bondage." (Heb. ii. 14, 15.) Satan, as God's executioner,
and as the prosperous tempter, is said to have had the power of
death. The fears of this dreadful executioner are a continual
bondage, which we are liable to, through all our lives, till we
perceive the deliverance which the death of the Lord of life
hath purchased us. 1st. By death, Christ hath satisfied the
justice that was armed by sin against us. 2nd. By death he
hath showed us, that death is a tolerable evil, and to be yielded
to in hope of following life.
2. Actually he conquered death by his resurrection. This
OF DEATH* 539
was the clay of grace's triumph : this day he showed to heaven,
to hell, and to earth, that death was conquerable ; yea, that this
personal death was actually overcome. The blessed souls be-
held it to their joy, beholding in the resurrection of their Head,
a virtual resurrection of their own bodies. The devils saw it,
and therefore saw that they had no hopes of holding the bodies
of the saints in the power of the grave. The damned souls
were acquainted with it, and therefore knew that their sinful
bodies must be restored to bear their part in suffering. The
believing saints on earth perceive it, and therefore see that their
bonds are broken, and that to the righteous there is hope in
death ; and that our head being actually risen, assureth us that
we shall also rise. " For if we believe that Jesus died and rose
again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring
with him:" (1 Thess. iv. 14:) and as " Christ being raised
from the dead, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion
over him;" (Rom. vi. 9 ;) so shall we rise and die no more.
This was the beginning of the church's triumph. "This is the
day that the Lord hath made, (even the day which the church
on earth must celebrate with joy and praise, till the day of our
resurrection;) we will rejoice and be glad in it." (Psalm cxviii.
24.) The resurrection of our Lord hath, 1st, assured us of the
consummation of his satisfaction ; 2d, of the truth of all his
word, and so of his promises of our resurrection ; 3d, that
death is actually conquered, and a resurrection possible ; 4th,
that believers shall certainly rise when their head and Saviour
is risen to prepare them an everlasting kingdom, and to assure
them that thus he will raise them at the last. A bare promise
would not have been so strong a help to faith, as to the actual
rising of Christ, as a pledge of the performance. " But now
Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of
them that slept :" (1 Cor. xv. 20 :) " for because he liveth, we
shall live also." (John xiv. 19.)
3. The next degree of destruction to this enemy was by
the gift of his justifying and sanctifying grace. Four special
benefits were then bestowed on us, which are antidotes against
the enmity of death. 1 . One is the gift of saving faith, by
which we look beyond the grave, as far as to eternity. And
this doth most powerfully disable death to terrify and dis-
courage us, and raiseth us above our natural fears, and showeth
us (though but in a glass) the exceeding eternal weight of
glory which churlish death shall help us to. So that when the
540 A TREATISE
eye of the unbeliever looketh no further than the grave, be-
lieving souls can enter into heaven and see their glorified Lord,
and thence fetch love, and hope, and joy, notwithstanding the
terrors of interposing death. The eye of faith foreseeth the
i( salvation ready to be revealed in the last time, and causeth
us therein greatly to rejoice, though now for a season, (if need
be,) we are in heaviness through manifold temptations." (1
Peter i. 5, 6.) And so victorious is this faith against all the
storms that do assault us, " That the trial of it, though with
fire, doth but discover that it is much more precious than gold
that perisheth, and it shall be found unto praise, and honour,
and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ, whom having never
seen in the flesh, we love ; and though now we see him not, yet
believing we rejoice with unspeakable glorious joy ; and shall
shortly receive the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls. "
(1 Peter i. 7 — 9.) Thus faith, though it destroy not death
itself, destroyeth the malignity and enmity of death ; while it
seeth the things that are beyond it, and the time when death
shall be destroyed, and the life where death shall be no more.
Faith is like David's three mighty men that brake through the
host of the Philistines to fetch him the waters of Bethlehem,
for which he longed. (2 Sam. xxiii. 15, 16.) When the
thirsty soul saith, ' Oh, that one would give me drink of the
waters of salvation ! ' faith breaks through death which
standeth in the way, and fetcheth these living waters to the
soul. We may say of death as it is said of the world : " What-
soever is born of God overcometh the world : and this is the
victory that overcometh the world, even our faith : who is he
that overcometh the world; but he that believeth ? " &c. (1
John v. 4, 5.) " For greater is he that is in you, than he that
is in the world." (I John iv. 4.) The believing soul, foreseeing
the dav when death shall be swallowed up in victory, may sing
beforehand, the triumphing song," O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?" (1 Cor. xv. 54, 55.) " For which
cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the
inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction
(though it reach to death) which is but for a moment, worketh
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while
we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which
are not seen : for the things which are seen are temporal, (and
therefore noteworthy to be looked at,) but the things which are
not seen are eternal, " and therefore more prevalent with a
OF DEATH. 5-11
believing soul, than either the enticing pleasures of sin for a
season, or the light and short afflictions, or the death that
standeth in our way. (2 Cor. iv. 1(3 — IS ; Heb. ii. 24 — 26.)
2. A second antidote against the enmity of death, that is
given us at the time of our conversion, is, the pardon of our sins,
and justification of our persons by the blood and merits of
Jesus Christ. When once we are forgiven, we are out of the
reach of the greatest terror, being saved from the second death.
Though we must feel the killing stroke, we are. delivered from
the damning stroke. Yea, more than so, it shall save us by de-
stroying us ; it shall let us into the glorious presence of our
Lord, by taking us from the presence of our mortal friends; it
shall help us into eternity, by cutting off our time. For in the
hour that we were justified and made the adopted sons of God,
we were also made the heirs of heaven, even co-heirs with Christ,
and shall be glorified with him, when we have suffered with him.
(Rom.viii. 17-) As death was promoting the life of the world
when it was killing the Lord of life himself, so is it hastening
the deliverance of believers when it seems to be undoing them.
No wonder if death be that man's terror that must be conveved
by it into hell, or that imagineth that he shall perish as the
beast. But to him that knows it will be his passage into rest,
and that angels shall convey his soul to Christ, what an antidote
is there ready for his faith to use against the enmity and excess
of fears. Hence faith proceedeth in its triumph ; " The sting
of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks
be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ." (1 Cor. xv. 56, 57.) Let him inordinately fear death
that is loth to be with Christ, or that is yet the heir of death
eternal. Let him fear that is yet in the bondage of his sin, and
in the power of the prince of darkness, and is not by justifica-
tion delivered from the curse. But joy and holy triumph are
more seemly for the justified.
3. A third antidote against the enmity of death is, the holi-
ness of the soul. By this the power of sin is mortified ; and,
therefore, the fears of death cannot actuate and use it, as, in
others they may do. By this, the interest of the flesh is cast
aside as nothing, and the flesh itself is crucified with Christ :
and, therefore, the destruction of the flesh will seem the more
tolerable, and the fears of it will be a less temptation to the
soul. By this we are already crucified to the world, and the
world to us ; and therefore we can more easily leave the world.
542 A TREATISE
We now live by another life than we did before ; being dead in
ourselves, our life is hid with Christ in God ; and being cruci-
fied with Christ, we now so live, as that it is not we, but Christ
liveth in us: the life which we live in the flesh, is by the faith of
the Son of God that hath loved us. (Gal. ii. 20.) The things
that made this life too dear to us are now, as it were, annihilated
to us ; and when we see they are nothing, they can do nothing
with us. Sanctification also maketh us so weary of sin, as being
our hated enemy, that we are the more willing to die, that it
may die that causeth us to die: and especially the Holy Ghost,
which we then receive, is in us a divine and heavenly nature,
and so inclineth us to God and heaven. This nature principally
consisteth in the superlative love of God. And love carrieth
out the soul to the beloved. As the nature of a prisoner in a
dungeon carrieth him to desire liberty and light ; so the nature
of a holv soul in flesh inclineth it to desire to be with Christ.
As love maketh husband, and wife, and dearest friends to think
the time long while they are asunder; so doth the love of the
soul to God. How fain would the holy, loving soul behold the
pleased face of God, and be glorified in the beholding of his
glory, and live under the fullest influences of his love. This is
our conquest over the enmity of death. As strong as death is,
love is stronger. " Love is strong as death, — the coals thereof
are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame (which will
not, by the terrible face of death, be hindered from ascending up
to God). Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the
floods drown it : if a man would give all the substance of his
house for love, (that is, to bribe it, and divert it from its ob-
ject,) it would utterly be contemned." (Sol. Song viii. 6, 7.)
If the love of David could carry Jonathan to -hazard his life,
and deny a kingdom for him, and the love of David to Absalom
made him wish that he had died for him, and the love of
friends, (yea, lustful love,) hath carried many to cast away
their lives ; no wonder if the love -of God in his saints prevail
against the fear of death. The power of holy love made
Moses say, " Else let my name be blotted out of the book of
life." And it made Paul say, that he could wish that he were
accursed from Christ for his brethren and kindred according to
the flesh. (Rom. ix. 3.) And, doubtless, he felt the fire burn-
ing in his breast when he broke out into that triumphant chal-
lenge, " Who shalL separate us from the love of Christ ? shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness^
of DEATH. 543
or peril, or sword ? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed
all the day long ; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through
him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death,
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any
other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. viii. 35 — 39.) You
see here what it is that conquereth the enmity of death in our
sanctification ; even that powerful love of God that is then given
us, which will go to him through the most cruel death.
4. A fourth antidote that is given us by Christ against the
enmity of death, is the Holy Ghost, as he is the comforter of
the saints. He makes it his work to corroborate and confirm
them. As sin hath woven calamities into our lives, and filled
us with troubles, and griefs, and fears ; so Christ doth send his
Spirit to undo these works of Satan, and to be a comforter, as
well as a sanctifier to his members. As the sanctifying Spirit
striveth against the enticing, sinful flesh, so the comforting Spirit
striveth against the troubling flesh ; as also against the perse-
cuting, as well as the tempting world, and the vexing, as well
as the tempting devil. u And greater is he that is in you,
than he that is in the world." (1 John iv. 4.) The Spirit of
Christ overcomes the disquieting, as well as the tempting spirit ;
but with some difference ; because our comforts are not in this
life so necessary to us as our holiness. Joy being part of our
reward, is not to be expected certainly or constantly, in any
high degree, till we come to the state of our reward : and,
therefore, though the Holy Ghost will carry on the work- of
sanctification, universally, constantly, and certainly in the elect ;
yet, in many of them, his comforting work is more obscure and
interrupted. And yet he is a conqueror here : for his works
must be judged of in reference to their ends : and our comfort
on earth is given us for our encouragement in holy ways, that
we be not stopped or diverted by the fear of enemies ; and also
to help on our love to God, and to quicken us in thanks and
praise, and draw up our hearts to the life to come, and make
us more serviceable to jthers. And such a measure of comfort
we shall have as conduceth to these ends, and is suitable to our
present state, and the employment God hath for us in the world
if we do not wilfully grieve our Comforter, and quench our joys.
So that when death and the grave appear before, and our
544 A TREATISE
flesh is terrified with the sight of these Anakims, and we say, c We
are notable to overcome them,' and so brings up an evil report
upon the promised land, and casts us sometimes into murmur-
ing, lamentation, and weakening discouragements, yet does the
Holy Ghost cause faith and hope (as Caleb and Joshua) to still
the soul, (Numb, xiii.,) and causeth us to contemn these giants,
and say " Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well
able to overcome it." (Ver. 30.) The comforting Spirit showeth 119
his death that conquered death, (Heb. ii. 14, 15,) even the cross
on which he triumphed openly when he seemed to be conquered.
(Col. ii. 15.) He showeth us the glorious resurrection of our
Head, and his promise of our own resurrection. He showeth us
our glorified Lord, to whom we may boldly and confidently
commend our departing souls. (Acts vii. 59.) And he showeth
us the angels that are ready to be their convoy. And he maketh
all these considerations effectual, and inwardly exciteth our love
and heavenly desires, and giveth us a triumphing courage and
consolation. So that death doth not encounter us alone, and in
our own strength, but finds us armed and led on by the Lord of
life, who helps us by a sling and stone to conquer this Goliah.
If a draught of wine, or some spiritful reviving liquor can take
off fears and make men bold, what then may the Spirit of Christ
do by his powerful encouragements and comforts on the soul.
Did we but see Christ or an angel standing by our sick-beds,
and saying ' Fear not, I will convoy thy soul to God ; this day
shalt thou be with me in paradise/ what an unspeakable com-
fort would this be to a dying man ? Why, the Spirit is Christ's
agent here on earth ; and what the Spirit speaks, Christ speaks ;
and, therefore, we may take its comforting words as spoken to
us by Christ himself; who spoke the like to the penitent thief,
to show believers the virtue of his cross, and what they also
may expect from him in their extremity. And our Physician is
most wise, and keeps his cordials for a fainting time. The
Spirit useth to sustain and comfort us most in our greatest neces-
sities. We need not comforts against death so much in the
time of prosperity and health as when death draws near. Jn
health we have ordinarily more need of quickening than of com-
forting ; and more need to be awakened from security to a due
preparation for death, than to be freed from the terrible fore-
thoughts of it ; though inordinate fears of death be hurtful to
us, security and deadness hurts us more ; and therefore the
Spirit worketh according to our necessities, And when death
OF DEATH. 545
is nearest, and like to be most dreadful, he usually giveth the
liveliest sense of the joys beyond it, to abate the enmity, and en-
courage the departing soul. And if the comfort be but small, it
is precious, because it is most pure, as being then mixed with
no carnal joys ; and because it is most seasonable in so great a
strait. If we have no more but mere support, it will be yet a
precious mercy. And thus 1 have done with the third degree
of the destruction of death's enmity, by these four antidotes,
which we receive at our conversion, and the consequents
thereof.
4. The fourth degree of this enemy's destruction is by itself, or
rather by Christ at the time, and by the means of death, which,
contrary to its nature, shall advantage our felicity. When death
hath done its worst, it hath half killed itself in killing us. It
hath then dismissed our imprisoned souls, and ended even our
fears of death, and our fears of all the evils of this life. It hath
ended our cares, and griefs, and groans. It hath finished our
work, and ended all our weariness and trouble. And more than
this it ends our sinning, and so destroyeth that which caused it,
and that which the inordinate fears of itself had caused in us. It
is the time when sin shall gasp its last, and so far our physician
will perfect the cure ; and our greatest enemy shall follow us no
further. It is the door by which the soul must pass to Christ
in paradise.
If any papist shall hence plead that therefore all men must
be perfect without sin before death, or else go to purgatory to
be cleansed, because as we die, so Christ will find us ; or if they
ask how death can perfect us ? I answer them, l It is Christ
our physician that finisheth the cure, and death is the time in
which he doeth it.' And if he undertake then to do it, it con-
cerns not us to be too inquisitive how he doeth it. What if the
patient understand not how blood-letting cureth the infected
blood that is left behind ? Must he therefore plead against his
physician ? and say, ( It will not be done/ because he knoweth
not how it is done ? We feel that here we have our sinful imper-
fections. We have for all that a promise that we shall be with
Christ when death hath made its separation; and we are assured
that no sin doth enter there. And is not this enough for us
to know.
But yet I see not why the difficulty of the objection should
trouble us at all. Death doth remove us from this sinful flesh,
and admits the soul into the sight of God. And in the very in-
YOL. XVfJ. N N
546 A TREATISE
stant of its remove it must needs be perfected, even by that re-
move, and by the first appearance of his blessed face. If you
bring a candle into a dark room, the access of the light ex-
pelleth the darkness at the same instant ; and you cannot say
that they consist together one moment of time. So cold is ex-
pelled by the approach of heat. And thus when death hath
opened the door, and let us into the immortal light, neither be-
fore nor after, but 111 that instant, all the darkness and sinful
imperfections of our souls are dissipated. Throw an empty
bottle into the sea, and the emptiness ceaseth by the filling of
the water, neither before nor after, but in that instant.
If this should not satisfy any. let it satisfy them, that the Holy
Ghost in the instant of death can perfect his work.
So that we need not assert a perfection on earth, (which on
their grounds must be the case of all that will escape hell and
purgatory,) nor yet any purgatory torments after death, for the
deliverance 01 the soul from the relics of sin ; seeing, at the
instant of death, by the Spirit, or by the deposition of the flesh,
or by the sight of God, or by the sight of our glorified Redeemer,
or by all, this work will be easily and infallibly accomplished.
5. The last degree and perfect conquest will be at the resur-
rection. And this is the victory that is mentioned in my text.
All that is fore-mentioned doth abate the enmity, and conquer
death in some degree ; but the enmity, and the enemy itself, is
conquered at the resurrection, and not till then. And therefore
death is the last enemy to be destroyed. The body lieth under
the penal effects of sin until the resurrection. And it is penal
to the soul to be in a state of separation from the body, though
it be a state of glory that it is in with Christ : for it is deprived
of the fulness of glory, which it shall attain at the resurrection,
when the whole man shall be perfected and glorified together.
Then it is that the Mediator's work will be accomplished ; and
all things shall be restored ; and all that are in the graves shall
hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth. (John
v. 28.) "For this is the Father's will that sent him, that of all
that he hath given him, he should lose nothing, but should raise
it up again at the last day." (John vi. 39, 40.) We " have
hope towards God, that there shall be a resurrection of the
dead, both of the just and unjust." (Acts xxiv. 15.) "As by
man came death, so by man came also the resurrection from the
dead." (1 Cor. xv. 21.) " And there shall be no more death, nor
sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." (Rev.
OF DEATH. 547
xxi. 4.) No more diseases, or fears of death, or grave, or of
corruption. No terrible enemy shall stand betwixt us and our
Lord, to frighten our hearts from looking towards him. O
what a birth-day will that be, when graves shall bring forth so
many millions of sons for glory ! How joyful will the soul and
body meet that were separated so long ! Then sin hath done its
worst, and can do no more. Then Christ hath done all and
hath no more to do as our Redeemer, but to justify us in judg-
ment, and give us possession of the joy that he is preparing.
And then he will deliver up the kingdom to the Father.
if you expect now that I should give you reasons why death
is the last enemy to be destroyed, though much might be said
from the nature of the matter, the wisdom and will of God shall
be to me instead of all other reasons, being the fountain and the
sum of all. He knows best the order that is agreeable to
his works and ends, to his honour, and to our good. And there-
fore to his wisdom we submit, in the patient expectance of the
accomplishment of his promises.
Use. 1. I now come to show you the usefulness of this
doctrine, for the further information of our understandings, the
well-ordering of our hearts, and the reforming of our lives. And
first, you may hence be easily resolved, whether death be truly
penal to the godly ? Which some have been pleased to make
a controversy of late. Though I am past doubt but the hearts
of those men do apprehend it as a punishment whose tongues
and pens do plead for the contrary. " Dust thou art, and to
dust shalt thou return," was part of the sentence passed on Adam
and all his posterity ; which then proved its punishment, and
it was not remitted to Adam, that at the same time had the
promise of a Redeemer, nor is it remitted to any of us all.
Were it not for sin, God would not inflict it ', who hath sworn
that he takes " no pleasure in the death of sinners ;" and that
he " afflicts not willingly, nor grieves the sons of men." But my
text itself decides the controversy : sin and punishment are the
evils that Christ removeth ; and if death were no punishment,
(as it is no sin,) how could it be an enemy, and the last enemy
to be destroyed by the Redeemer ? When we feel the enmity
before described against our souls, and also know its enmity to
our bodies, we cannot think that God would do all this, were it
not for sin. Especially when we read that " death passeth upon
all men, for that all have sinned." (Rom. v. 12.) And that " the
wages of sin is death." (Rom. vi. 23.) Though Christ do us
N N 2
548
A TREATISE
good by it, that proveth it not to be no punishment ; for casti-
gatory punishments are purposely to do good to the chastised.
Indeed we may say, u O death, where is thy sting?" Because
that the mortal evil to the soul is taken out ; and because
we foresee the resurrection by faith, when we shall have the
victory by Christ. But thence to conclude that death hath no
sting now to a believer, is not only besides, but against the text ;
which, telling us that the sting of death is sin, and that the
strength of sin is the law, doth inform us, that death could not
kill us, and be death to us, if sin gave it not a sting to do it
with. As sin could not oblige us to this punishment, if the
threatening of the law were not its strength. But Christ hath
begun the conquest, and will finish it.
Use 2. From all this enmity in death, we may see what
it is that sin hath done ; and, consequently, how vile and odious
it is, and how we should esteem and use it. Sin hath not only
forfeited our happiness, but laid those impediments in the way
of our recovery, which will find us work, and cause our danger
and sorrow while we live. And death is not the least of these
impediments. O foolish man, that still will love such a mortal
enemy ! If another would rob them but of a groat, or defame
them, or deprive them of any accommodation, how easily can
they hate them, and how hardly are they reconciled to them.
But sin depriveth them of their lives, and separates the soul
and body asunder, and forfeiteth their everlasting happiness,
and sets death betwixt them and the glory that is purchased by
Christ, and yet they love it, and will not leave it. Though God
has made them, and sustains them, and provides for them, and
all their hope and help is in him, they are not so easily drawn
to love him ; and yet they can love the sin that would undo
them. Though Christ would deliver them, and bring them to
everlasting blessedness, and hath assumed flesh, and laid down
his life to testify his love to them, yet are they not easily
brought to love him ; but the sin that made them enemies to
God, and hath brought them so near to everlasting misery, this
they can love, that deserves no love. A minister, or other
friend, that would draw them from their sin to God, and help
to save them, they quarrel against, as if he were their enemy;
but their foolish companions, that can laugh and jest with them
at the door of hell, and clap them on the back, and drive away
the care of their salvation, and harden them against the fear of
God, these are the only acceptable men to them. O Christians !
OF DEATH. 549
leave this folly to the world, and do you judge of sin by its sad
effects. You feel, (if you have any feeling in you,) in some
measure, what it hath done against your souls. The weakness
of your faith and love, the distance of your hearts from God,
your doubts and troubles, tell you that it is not your friend ; you
must shortly know what it will do to your bodies. As it keeps
them in pain, and weariness, and weakness, so it will, ere long,
deliver them up to the jaws of death, which will spare them no
more than the beasts that perish. Had it not been for sin we
should have had no cause to fear a dissolution ; nor have had
any use for a coffin or a winding-sheet ; nor have been beholden
to a grave, to hide our carcasses from the sight and smell of the
living. But as Enoch and Elias were translated when they
had walked with God, even so should we : as those that are
alive, and remain at the coming of Christ, shall be caught up
together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air : and so shall
they ever be with the Lord. (1 Thess. iv. 17.)
Use sin, therefore, as it will use you. Spare it not, for it will
not spare you. It is your murderer, and the murderer of the
world. Use it therefore as a murderer should be used. Kill it
before it kills you ; and then, though it kill your bodies, it shall
not be able to kill your souls ; and though it bring you to the
grave, as it did your head, it shall not be able to keep you there.
If the thoughts of death, and the grave, and rottenness, be not
pleasant to you, let not the thoughts of sin be pleasant. Hearken
to every temptation to sin, as you would hearken to a tempta-
tion to self-murder ; and as you would do if the devil brought
you a knife, and tempted you to cut your throat with it ; so do
when he offereth you the bait of sin. You love not death, love
not the cause of death. Be ashamed to stand weeping over
a buried friend, and never to weep over a sinning or ungodly
friend, nor once to give them a compassionate, earnest ex-
hortation to save their souls. Is it nothing to be " dead in
trespasses and sins?" (Eph. ii. 1, 5; Col. ii. 13.) Yea, it is a
worse death than this, that is the wages of sin, and the
fruit which it brings forth. (Rom. vi. 21, 23, and vii. 5.)
Surely God would never thus use men's bodies, and forsake them
soul and body for ever, if sin were not a most odious thing. What
a poison is this that kills so many millions, and damneth so
many millions, and cannot be cured but by the blood of Christ !
That killed our physician that never tasted it, because he came
550 A TREATISE
so near to us ! O unbelieving, stupid souls ! that smart and
sin, and groan and sin, and Aveep and lament our bodily suffer-
ings, and yet sin still ! that fear a grave, and fear not sin !
that have heard, and seen, and felt so much of the sad effects,
and yet sin still ! (Psalm lxxviii. 32.) Alas ! that murderers
should be so common, and that we should be no wiser, when we
have paid so dear a price for wisdom !
Use 3. From the enmity of death we may further learn,
that man hath now a need of grace for such exceeding diffi-
culties which were not before him in his state of innocencv.
Though Adam was able to have obeyed perfectly without sin,
and had grace sufficient to have upheld him, and conquered
temptations, if he had done his part, which by that grace he
might have done ; yet whether that grace was sufficient to the
works that we are called to, is a doubt that many have been
much troubled with. It is certain that he was able to have
done any thing that was suitable to his present state, if it were
commanded him ; and it is certain that much that is now our
duty, would have been unsuitable to his state. But whether it
belonged to his perfection, to be able and fit for such duties,
(that were then unsuitable to him,) on supposition they had been
suitable and duties, this is the difficulty which some make to
prove that such works cannot now be required of us without
suitable help, because we lost no such grace in Adam. But
this need not trouble us ; for, first, though Adam was put on
no such difficulty in particular as to encounter death, yet the
perfect obedience to the whole law required a great degree of
internal, habitual holiness ; and, to determine the case, whether
our particular difficulties, or his sinless, perfect obedience, re-
quired greater strength and help, is a matter of more difficulty
than use. For, secondly, it is but about the degrees of holiness
in him and us, and not about the kind, that the difficulty lieth.
For it is the same end that he was created for, and disposed
to by nature, and that we are redeemed for, and disposed to
supernaturally.
But yet it is worthy our observation what a difficultv sin hath
cast before us in the way of life, which Adam was unacquainted
with ; that so we may see the nature of our works, and the
excellency of the Redeemer's grace. Adam was but to seek the
continuance of his life, and a translation to glory, without the
terrors of interposing death ; he was never called to prepare to
OV DEATH. 551
die, nor to think of the state of a separated soul ; nor to mind,
and love/and seek a glory to which there is no (ordinary) pass-
age but by death. This is the difficulty thats in hath caused,
against which we have need of the special assistance of the
example, and doctrine, and promise, and Spirit of the Redeemer.
Adam was never put to study how to get over this dreadful
gulf. The threatening of death was to raise such a fear in
him as was necessary to prevent it; but those fears did rather
hold him closer to the way of life, than stand between him and
life, to his discouragement. But we have a death to fear which
must be suffered, that cannot be avoided. The strange con-
dition of a separated soul (so unlike to its state while resident in
tjie body) doth require in us a special faith to apprehend it, and
a special revelation to discover it. To desire, and love, and long
for, and labour after such a time as this, when one part of us
must lie rotting in the grave, and the separated soul must be
with Christ alone till the resurrection, and to believe and hope for
that resurrection, and to deny ourselves, and forsake all the
world, and lay down our lives when Christ requireth it, by the
power of this faith and hope, this is a work that innocent Adam
never knew ; this is the high employment of a Christian. To
have our hearts and conversations in heaven, (Matt. vi. 21;
Phil. iii. 20,) when death must first dissolve us before we can
possess it, here is the noble work of faith.
Use 4. Moreover, this enmity of death may help us to
understand the reason of the sufferings and death of Christ.
That he gave his life a ransom for us, and a sacrifice for sin,
and so to make satisfaction to the offended Majesty, is a truth
that every Christian doth believe. But there was another
reason of his death that all of us do not duly consider of, and
improve, to the promoting of our sanctineation as we ought.
Death is so great an enemy, as you have heard, and so power-
ful to deter our hearts from God, and dull our desires to the
heavenly felicity, that Christ was fain to go before us, to em-
bolden the hearts of believers to follow him. He suffered death
(with the rest of his afflictions) to show us that it is a
tolerable evil. Had he not gone before and overcome it, it would
Jiave detained us its captives. Had he not merited and pur-
chased us a blessed resurrection, and opened heaven to all be-
lievers, and by death overcome him that had the power of death,
(as God's executioner,) that is, the devil, we should, all our life-
time, have been still subjected unto bondage, by the fears
552 A TREATISE
of death. (Heb. ii. 14.) But when we see that Christ hath led
the way, as the victorious Captain of our salvation, and that he
is made perfect by sufferings, (in his advancement unto glory,)
and that, for the sufferings of death (which by the grace of God
he tasted for every man), he is crowned with glory and honour.
(Heb. ii. 9, 10.) This puts a holy valour into the soul, and
causeth us cheerfully to follow him. Had we gone first, and
the task of conquering death been ours, we had been overcome.
But he that hath led us on, hath hewed down the enemy before
him, and first prepared us the way, and then called us to follow him,
and to pass the way that he hath first made safe, and also showed
ns, by his example, that it is now made passable. For it was one
in our nature, that calleth us his brethren, that took not the
nature of angels, but of the seed of Abraham, that is one with
us, as the Sanctifier and the sanctified are, and to whom as
children we are given, who hath passed through death and the
grave before us, and therefore we may the boldlier follow him.
(Heb. ii. 11 — 13, 16.) " Being found in fashion as a man, he
humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the
death of the cross, wherefore God also hath highly exalted him,
and given him a name, which is above every name." (Phil, ii.8, 9.)
Hereby he hath showed us that death is not so dreadful a thing,
but that voluntary obedience may and must submit unto it. As
Abraham's faith and obedience were tried in the offering up of
his son to death at God's command, so the children of
Abraham, and the heirs of the promise, must follow him in
offering up themselves, if God require it, and in submitting to
our natural death (for that he doth require of all). Examples
work more than bare precepts ; and the experiments of others
do take more with us than mere directions. It satisfieth a sick
man more to read a book of medicinal observations, where he
meets with many that were in his own case, and finds what
cured them, than to read the praxis or medicinal recipes alone.
It encourageth the patient much, when the physician tells him,
c I have cured many of your disease by such a medicine ; nay,
I was cured thus of the same myself.' So doth it embolden a
believer to lay down his life, when he hath not only a promise
of a better life, but seeth that the promiser went that way to
heaven before him. Oh, therefore, let us learn and use this
choice remedy, against the immoderate fear of death. Let
faith take a view of him that was dead and is alive, that was
buried and is risen, and was humbled and is now exalted. Think
OF DEATH. 553
with yourselves, when you must think of dying, that you are but
following your conquering Lord, and going the way that he hath
gone before you, and suffering what he underwent and con-
quered. And, therefore, though you walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, resolve that you will fear no evil. (Psalm
xxiii. 4.) And if he call you after him, follow him with a
christian boldness. As Peter cast himself into the sea, and
walked on the waters, when he saw Christ walk there, and had
his command ; so let us venture on the jaws of death, while we
trace his steps, and hear his encouraging commands and pro-
mises. (John xxi. 7 ; Matt. xiv. 28, 29.)
Use 5. Moreover, from this doctrine we may be in-
formed of the mistakes of many Christians, that think they have
no saving grace because they are afraid of dying, and because
these fears deter their souls from desiring to be with Christ.
And hence they may perceive that there is another cause of
these distempers, even the enmity of death that standeth in the
way. You think that if you had any love to Christ you should
more desire to be with him, and that if your treasure were in
heaven, your hearts would be more there, and that if you truly
took it for your felicity, you could not be so unwilling to be re-
moved to it, for no man is unwilling to be happy, or to attain his
end. But stay a little, and better consider of your case. Is it
Christ that your heart is thus averse to ? Or is it only death
that standeth in the way ? You are not, I hope, unwilling to
see the face of God, nor unwilling to be translated from earth
to heaven, but unwilling to die. It is not because you love the
creature better than the Creator, but because you are afraid of
death. You may love God, and long to be perfected in ho-
liness, and to see his glory, and to have the most near commu-
nion with him, and yet at the same time you may fear this
enemy that standeth in your way, I mean, not only the pain of
death, but principally the dissolution of our natures, and the
separation of the soul from the body, and its abode in a sepa-
rated state, and the body's abode in dust and darkness. Grace
itself is not given us to reconcile us to corruption, and make
death, as death, to seem desirable, but to cause us patiently to
bear the evil, because of the good that is beyond it. It is not
our duty to love death as death. Had it not been naturally an
evil to be dreaded and avoided, God would not have made it
the matter of his threatening, nor would it have been a fit means
to restrain men from transgression. To threaten a man with
554 A TREATISE
a benefit, as such, is a contradiction. Inquire, therefore, into
your hearts, whether there be not a belief of heaven, a love to
God, a desire to enjoy and please him, even while you draw
back, and seem to be averse ; and whether it be not only a
lothness to die, and not a lothness to be with Christ,
For the fuller discovery of this, (because I find that our
comfort much dependeth on it,) I shall try you by these follow-
ing questions.
Quest. 1. What is it that is ungrateful to you in your me-
ditations of your change ? Is it God and heaven, or is it death ?'
If it be only death, it seems it is not the want of love to God
and heaven that causeth your averseness. If it be God himself
that is ungrateful to your thoughts, it is because you desire not
his nearer presence, or communion with him in the state of
glory. Or is it only because you fear lest you have no interest
in his love, and shall not attain the blessedness which you
desire ? If it be the first, I must confess it proves a graceless
soul, and signifieth the want of love to G*od. But if it be the
latter only, it may stand with grace, for desire is a true signifi-
cation of love, though there be doubts and fears lest we shall
miss the attainment of those desires.
Quest. 2. Would you not gladly hear the news of your re-
moval, if you might be changed without death, and translated
to heaven as Enoch and Elias were, and as Christ at his ascen-
sion ? Had you not far rather be thus changed than abide on
earth ? If so, then it seems it is not God and heaven that you
are against, but death. Nay, if you could reach heaven by tra-
velling a thousand miles, would you not gladly take the journey
as soon as you had got assurance of your title to it, and done
the work of God on earth ? If it were but as Peter, James, and
John, to go with Christ into an exceeding high mountain, and
there to see him in glory, (Matt. xvii. 1,) would you not gladly
do it? It seems that thou desirest to see the Lord, and thy
love is to him, though thou be afraid of death.
Quest. 3. Consider of the nature of the heavenly felicity, and
try whether thou love it in the several parts. One part is our
personal perfection, that our souls shall be free from ignorance,
and error, and sin, and sorrow, and enlarged for the perfect love
of God, and our bodies at the resurrection made like the glo-
rious body of our Lord, (Phil. iii. 21,) and wouldest thou not
be thus perfected in soul and body ? Another part is, that
we should live with the societv of angels and glorified saints.
OF DEATH. 555
And wouldest thou not rather have such society than the company
of sinners, and enemies, and imperfect saints on earth ? Another
part is, we shall see our glorified Head, and be with him where
he is, that we may behold his glory. And doth not thy heart
desire this ? But the perfection of our happiness is, that we
shall see the face of the glory of God, which is the light of that
world, as truly as the sun is the light of this ; and that we shall
he filled up with the feeling of his love, and abound with love
to him again, and perfectly delighted in this communion of love,
and express in the praises of the Lord, and thus make up the
new Jerusalem, where God will place his glorious presence, and
in which he will for evermore take pleasure. And is there
anything in this that thy soul is against, and which thou dost not
value above this world ? If thou find that all the parts are sweet,
and the description of heaven is most grateful to thee, and that
this is the state that thou wouldest be in, it seems then it is not
heaven, but death, that thou art averse from, and that maketh
thee so loth to hear the tidings of thy change.
Quest. 4. Couldest thou not joyfully see the coming of Christ,
if it were this day, if thou have done thy work, and art assured
of his love ? The apostle hath told us by the word of the Lord,
that " the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,
with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.
And the dead in Christ shall rise first, and then we which are
alive, and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with
the Lord." (1 Thess. iv. 16, 17.) And this is the doctrine
that comforteth believers. (Verse 18.) Would it not rejoice
your hearts if you were sure to live to see the coming of the
Lord, and to see his glorious appearing and retinue ? If you
were not to die, but to be caught up thus to meet the Lord, and
to be changed immediately into an immortal, incorruptible,
glorious state, would you be averse to this ? Would it not be
the greatest joy that you could desire? For my own part, I
must confess to you, that death, as death, appeareth to me as an
enemv, and my nature doth abhor and fear it. But the thoughts
of the coming of the Lord are most sweet and joyful to me ; so
that if I were but sure that I should live to see it, and that the
trumpet should sound, and the dead should rise, and the Lord
appear before the period of my age, it would be the joyfullest
tidings to me in the world. Oh, that 1 might see his kingdom
come ! it is the character of his saints to love his appearing,
i)56 A TREATISE
(2 Tim. iv. 8,) and to look " for that blessed hope, and the glo-
rious appearing of the great God, and our Saviour, Jesus Christ."
(Tit. ii. 13.) "The Spirit and the bride say, Come : even so,
come, Lord Jesus," (Rev. xxii. 17 3 20,) come quickly, is the voice
of faith, and hope, and love. But I find not that his servants
are thus characterized by their desires to die. It is, therefore,
the presence of their Lord that they desire ; but it is death that
they abhor. And, therefore, though they can submit to death,
it is the coming of Christ that they love and long for ; and it is
interposing death that causeth them to draw back. Let not
Christians be discouraged by mistakes, and think that they love
not God and glory, because they love not this enemy in the way,
nor think that they are graceless or unbelieving worldlings,
because they are afraid of death, as death.
But perhaps you will say, that if grace prevail not against the
fears of death, then fear is predominant, and we are not sincere.
To which I answer, that you must distinguish between such
a prevailing as maintained! our sincerity, and such a prevailing
as also procureth our fortitude and joy. If grace prevail not to
keep us upright in a holy life, renouncing the world, and cru-
cifying the flesh, and devoting ourselves entirely to God, though
the fear of death would draw us from it, then it is a sign that we
are not sincere. But if grace do this much, and yet prevail not
against all fears and unwillingness to die, but leave us under
uncomfortable, hideous thoughts of death, this proves us not to
be unsound. For the soul may savingly love God that is afraid
of death, and he may truly love the end, that fears this dark and
dismal way. Yet must there be so much to prove our upright-
ness, as that in our deliberate choice we will rather voluntarily
pass through death, either natural or violent, than lose the happi-
ness beyond it. Though we love not death, yet we love God and
heaven so well that we will submit to it. And though we fear it and
abhor it, yet not so much as we fear and abhor the loss of heaven.
Let not poor Christians therefore wrong themselves, and deny the
graces of the Spirit, as if they had more mind of earth than
heaven, and of things temporal than of things eternal, because
they are afraid to die. All suffering is grievous, and not joyous
to our nature. Paul himself desired not to be unclothed, but
" clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven, that mor-
tality might be swallowed up of life," (2 Cor. v. 2, 4,) it being-
better to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord.
Even Christ himself had a will that desired that the cup might
OF DEATH. 557
have passed from him, if it had been agreeable to his Father's
will, and the ends of his undertaken office. (Matt. xxvi. 41, 42.)
Raise therefore no unjust conclusions from these natural fears,
nor from the imperfection of our conquest ; but praise him that
relieveth us, and abateth the enmity of death, and furnisheth us
with his antidotes, and will destroy his enemy at last.
Use 6. From thee nmity of death we may further learn
to study and magnify the victorious grace of our Redeemer,
which overcometh the enemy, and turneth our hurt into our
benefit, and maketh death a door of life. Though death be the
enemy that seemeth to conquer us, and to destroy and utterly
undo us, yet being conquered itself by Christ, it is used by him
to our great advantage, and sanctified to be a very great help to
our salvation. The suffering of Christ himself was in the hour
of his enemies, and the power of darkness, (Luke xxii. 53,)
which seemed to have prevailed against him 3 when yet it was but
a destroying of death by death, and the purchasing of life and sal-
vation for the world. So also in our death, though sin and Satan
seem to conquer, it is they that are conquered, and not we, who
are supervictors through him that hath loved us. (Rom. viii. 37.)
They destroy themselves when they seem to have destroyed
us. As the serpent bruised but the heel of Christ, who bruised
his head ; so doth he bruise but our heel, who, in that conflict,
and by the means of his own execution through the strength of
Christ, do bruise his head. (Gen. iii. 15.) And this is the up-
shot of all his enmity against the woman's holy seed. Though
death was unsuitable to innocent man, and is still a natural
enemy to us all ; yet unto sinners it is an evil that is suitable
and fit to destroy the greater evil that did cause it, and to prevent
the everlasting evil. The foreknowledge of our certain death
is a very great help to keep us humble, and disgrace all the
seducing pleasures of the flesh, and all the profits and honours
of the world, and so to enervate all temptations. It is a singular
help to quicken a stupid, careless sinner, and to awaken men to
prepare for the life to come, and to excite them to seek first the
kingdom of God, and to give all diligence to make their calling
and* election sure 3 and to consider, seeing all these things must
be dissolved, what manner of persons they ought to be, in all
holy conversation and godliness, looking for, and hastening to
the coining of the day of God. (2 Pet. iii. 11, 12.) When we
drop asleep, the remembrance of death may quickly awake us ;
when we grow slack, it is our spur to put us on, to mend our
558 A TREATISE
pace. Who is so mad as wilfully to sin with death in his eye ?
Or who so dead as, with death in his eye, to refuse to live a
godly life, if he have any spiritual light and feeling ? Experience
tellet'h us, that when health and folly cause us to promise our-
selves long life, and think that death is a great way off, it lament-
ably cools our zeal, and strengthens our temptations, anddulls
our souls to holy operations. And the approach of death puts
life into all our apprehensions and affections. It is a wonderful
hard thing to maintain our lively apprehensions, and strong
affections, and tenderness of conscience, and self-denial, and
easy contempt of earthly things, when we put far from us the day
of death. We see what a stir men make for the profits and honours
of this world, and how fast they hold their fleshly pleasures,
while they are in health, and how contemptuously they speak of
all, and bitterly complain of the vanity and vexation when they
come to die. And if our lives and the world be brought hereby
into such disorders, when men live so short a time on earth, what
monsters of ambition, and covetousness, and luxury would men
be, if they lived as long as before the flood, even to eight hundred
or nine hundred years of age ? Doubtless long life was so great
a temptation then to man (in his corrupt state), that it is no
wonder if his wickedness was great upon the earth ; and if it
prepared for that great destruction of the universal deluge.
Should men live now but to the age of three hundred or four
hundred years, I fear it would so tempt them to overvalue the
world, and so embolden them to delay repentance, that one
would be as a wolf to another, and the weak but be a prey to the
strong, and wickedness would overwhelm the world, despising
the reins, and bearing down religious and civil opposition. But
when we stand over the grave, and see our friends laid in the
dust, how mortified do we seem ? How do we even shake the head
at the folly of ambitious and covetous worldlings, and are asham-
ed to think of fleshly lusts ! So far are men from owning their
vanities, when that silent teacher standeth by. It is death that
helps to humble the proud, and abate the arrogancyand obstinacy
of the wicked, and make them regard the messengers of Christ,
that before despised them and their message. It is death that
allayeth the ebullition of distracting thoughts and passions, and
helpeth to bring men to themselves, and fixeth giddy, discom-
posed minds, and helps to settle the light and the unsettled, and
to restrain the worst. As we are beholden to the gallows for
our purses and our lives, so are we to the grave and hell for much
OF DEATH. 559
of the order that is in the world, and our peace and freedom
procured thereby. But it is a greater good that it procureth to
believers.
If you ask, how is all this to be ascribed to Christ ? I answer,
many " 7 ays. 1. It is he that hath now the keys or power of
death and hell, even he that liveth and was dead, and that liv-
eth for evermore, (Rev. i. IS,) and therefore is to be feared by
the world. 2. It is he that hath bv his blood and Covenant
brought us the hope of everlasting life, which is it that giveth
the efficacy to death. Without this, men would be but despe-
rate, and think that it is better have a little pleasure than none
at all ; and so would give up themselves to sin, and despe-
rately gratify their flesh by all the wickedness they could devise.
3. And it is Christ that teacheth men the right use of death, by
his holy doctrine, having brought life and immortality to light
by his gospel. 4. And it is Christ that sendeth forth the holy
Spirit, which only doth so illuminate the mind, and quicken and
dispose the heart, that death may be savingly improved. . The
poison is our own, but it is his skill and love that hath made a
sovereign antidote of it. And let our bodies die, so our sin may
die. If the foresight of death destroy our sin, and further our
sanctification, and the hour of death doth end our fears, and
enter us into the state of glory ; though we will love death as
death never the better for this, much less the sin that caused it,
vet must we admire the love of our Redeemer.
And it is not only the peril but also the terror of death that
we are in part delivered from. Though Christ himself was in a
bloody sweat in his agony before his death, and cried out on the
cross, " My God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" because he bore
the sins of the world; yet death is welcome to many of his fol-
lowers, that drink of his cup, and are baptised with his baptism j
for they taste not of these dregs which he drank up, and they
are strengthened by his supporting grace. He that doth com-
fort them against sin and hell, doth also comfort them against
death. So grekt is the glory that he hath promised them,
and so great is his comforting, confirming grace, that
dreadful death is \iot great enough to prevail against them.
As it was too weak to conquer Christ ; so is it too weak to con-
quer his Spirit in his people's souls. Without Christ we could
not live, and we durst not die \ but through him we can do and suf-
fer all things, and can boldly pass through this dark and shady
vale of death ; yea, we can desire to depart and to be with
560 A TREATISE
Christ as best for us : for to live is Christ and to die is gain.
(Phil. i. 21, 23.) For we know that if our earthly house of this
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. And therefore
sometimes we can groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon
with our house which is from heaven. And we are always con-
fident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are
absent from the Lord ; we are confident, I say, and willing
rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord ;
and therefore labour, that whether present or absent, we may
be accepted of him : for we walk by faith and not by sight :
and it is God that hath wrought us for the self-same thing, who
also hath given us the earnest of the Spirit. (2 Cor. v. 1 — 10.)
Though we long not to die, yet we long to see the face of God.
And though we lay down our bodies with natural unwillingness,
yet we lay down our sin and sorrows with gladness and spiritual
delight. And though our hearts are ready to faint, as Peter's
when he walked to Christ upon the waters, yet Christ puts forth
his hand of love, and soon recovereth us from our fear and danger.
Melancholy and impatience may make men weary of their
lives, and rush upon death with a false conceit that it will end
their sorrows ; but this is not to conquer death, but to be con-
quered by a lesser evil ; and it is not an effect of fortitude, but
of an imbecility and impotency of mind. And if a Brutus, a
Cato, or a Seneca, be his own executioner, they do but choose a
lesser evil, (in their conceits,) even a death which they account
honourable, before a more ignominious death, or a life of shame,
and scorn, and miserv. But the true believer is raised above
the fears of death by the love of God, and the hopes of glory ;
and death (though ungrateful in itself) is welcome to him, as
the way to his felicity.
Let tyrants and soldiers take it for their glory, that they can
take away men's lives, (that is, they have the pow^r of a serpent,
or of ratsbane,) as if it were their honour to bn their country's
pestilence, and a ruler and a dose of poison were things of equal
strength and use. But it is the glory of Christ to enable his
disciples to conquer death, and bear the fury of the most cruel
persecutors. The martyrs have been more joyful in their suffer-
ings, than the judges that condemned them in their pomp and
glory. When we are pressed above strength, and despair of life,
and have the sentence of death in ourselves, we are then taught
to trust in the living God that raiseth the dead. (2 Cor. i. 8 — 10.)
OF DEATH. 561
The saints by faith have been " tortured, not accepting deliver-
ance ; that they might obtain a better resurrection :" they have
" had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings ; yea, moreover of
bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, they were sawn
asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword." (Heb. xi.
35 — 37.) "Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ ;" (1 Cor. xv. 57 5) " They over-
come by the blood of the Lamb, and love not their lives unto the
death." (Rev. xii. 11.) They "fear not them that kill
the body, and after that have no more that they can do."
(Luke xii. 4.) They trust upon his promise that hath said, " I
will ransom them from the power of the grave ; I will redeem
them from death. O death, I will be thy plagues: O grave, I
will be thy destruction." (Hos. xiii. 14.) "Precious in the
sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." (Psalm cxvi. 15.)
" Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth ;
yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours ; and
their works do follow them." (Rev. xiv. 13.)
Use 7. Moreover, from the enmity of death we may be
directed which way to bend our cares : and seeing where our
difficulty most lieth, we may see which way our most diligent
preparations must be turned. Death cannot be prevented, but
the malignant influence of it on our souls may be much abated.
Jf you let it work without an antidote, it will make you live like
unbelieving worldlings ; it will deter your hearts from heaven,
and dull your love to God himself, and make your meditations
of him, and of your everlasting rest, to be seldom, and ungrate-
ful to you ; and it will make you say, " It is good to be here;"
and have sweeter thoughts of this present life, than of your in-
heritance : it will rob you of much of your heavenly delights, and
fill you with slavish fears of death, and subject you unto bondage
all your lives, and make you die with agony and horror, so that
your lives and deaths will be dishonourable to your holy faith,
and to your Lord. If it were merely our own suffering by fears
and horrors, or merely our loss of spiritual delights, the matter
were great, but not so great. But it is more than this. For
when our joys are overwhelmed with the fears of death, and
turned into sorrows, our love to God will be abated, and we
shall deny him the thanks and cheerful praises, which should be
much of the employment of our lives. And we shall be much
discomposed and unfitted for his service, and shall much dis-
honour him in the world ; and shall strengthen our temptations
vol, xvii. o o
562 A TREATISE
to the overvaluing of earthly things. Think it not therefore a
small, or an indifferent matter, to fortify your souls against these
malignant fears of death. Make this your daily care and work ;
your peace, your safety, your innocency, and usefulness, and
the honour of God, do much lie on it. And it is a work of such
exceeding difficulty that it requireth the best of your skill and
diligence ; and when all is done, it must be the illuminating,
quickening beams of grace, and the shining face of the eternal
love that must do the work ; though yet your diligence is neces-
sary to attend the Spirit, and use the means in subservience to
grace, and in expectation of these celestial rays.
And above all, take heed lest you should think that carnal
mirth, or mere security, and casting away the thoughts of
death, will serve to overcome these fears ; or that it is enough
that you resolve against them. For it is your safety that must
be looked to, as well as your present ease and peace ; and fear
must be so overcome, as that a greater misery may not follow:
presumption and security will be of very short continuance. To
die without fear, and pass into endless desperation, which fear
should have wakened you to prevent, is no desirable kind of dy-
ing. And besides, resolving against the terrors of death will not
prevent them. When death draws near, it will amaze you in de-
spite of all your resolutions, if you are not furnished with a bet-
ter antidote. The more jocund you have been in carnal mirth,
and the more you have presumptuously slighted death, it is likely
your horror will be the greater when it comes. And therefore
see that you make a wise and safe preparation, and that
you groundedly and methodically cure these fears, and
not securely cast them away. Though I have given you, to this
end, some directions in other writings, (in The Saint's Rest, and
in the Treatise of Self-denial, and that of Crucifying the World,)
yet I shall add here these following helps, which, faithfully ob-
served and practised, will much promote your victory over death,
which conquereth all the strength of flesh, and glory of this
world.
Direct. 1. If you would overcome the danger and the fears
of death, make sure of your conversion that it is sound : and see
that you be absolutely devoted unto God without reserves.
Should you be deceived in your foundations, your life, and
hopes, and joys, would all be delusory things. Till sin be morti-
fied, and your souls reconciled to God in Christ, you are still in
danger of worse than death, and it is but the senselessness of your
OF DEATH. 563
dead condition that keepeth you from the terrors of damnation.
But if you are sure that you are quickened by renewing grace,
and possessed by the sanctifying Spirit, and made partakers of
the divine nature, you have then the earnest of your inheritance,
(Eph. i. 14 ; 2 Cor. i. 22, and v. 5,) and the fire is kindled in
your breast, that in despite of death will mount you up to God.
Direct. 2. To conquer the enmity of death you must live
by faith in Jesus Christ ; as men that are emptied of them-
selves, and ransomed from his hands that had the power of
death, and as men that are redeemed from the curse, and are
now made heirs of the grace of life, being made his members,
who is the Lord of life, even the second Adam, who is a quick-
ening Spirit. The serious, believing study of his design and
office, (to destroy sin and death, and to bring many sons to
glory,) and also of his voluntary suffering, and his obedience to
the death of the cross, may raise us above the fears of death.
When we live by faith as branches of this blessed vine, and are
righteous with his righteousness, justified by his blood and
merits, and sanctified by his word and Spirit, and find that we
are united to him, we may then be sure that death cannot conquer
us, and nothing can take us out of his hands, for our life being
hid with Christ in God, we know that we shall live, because he
liveth, (Col. iii. 3; John xiv. 19,) and that when Christ, who
is our life, appeareth, we shall also appear with him in glory,
(Col. iii. 4,) and that he will " change our vile bodies, and
make them like unto his glorious body, by his mighty
power by which he is able even to subdue all things unto
himself." (Phil. iii. 21.) In our own strength we dare not stand
the charge of death, and with it the charge of the law, and of
our consciences. How dreadfully should we then be foiled and
nonplussed if we must be found in no other righteousness but
what we have received from the first Adam, and have wrought
by the strength received from him. But being gathered under
the wings of Christ, as the chickens under the wings of the hen,
(Matt, xxiii. 37,) and being found then in him, having the
righteousness which is through the faith of Christ, the righte-
ousness which is of God by faith, we may boldly answer to all
that can be charged on us to our terror. If we " know him,
and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his
sufferings and are made conformable unto his death j" (Phil. iii.
10 ;) if we are dead with him to the world, and risen with him
to a holy life ; if we have believingly traced him in his sufferings
o o 2
564
A TREATISE
and conquest, and perceive by faith how we participate in his
victories, we shall then be able to grapple with the hands of
death, and though we know the grave must be for awhile the
prison of our flesh, we can by faith foresee the opening of our
prison doors, and the loosing of our bonds, and the day of our
last and full redemption. It strengthened! us exceedingly to
look " unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for
the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the
shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."
When we consider what he endured against himself, we shall
not be weary, nor faint in our minds. (Heb. xii. 2, 3.)
Direct. 3. Live also by faith on the heavenly glory. As one
eye of fa ; th must be on an humbled, crucified Christ, so must
the other be on heaven, on a glorified Christ, and on the glory
and everlasting love of God, which we shall there enjoy. This
is it that conquereth the fears of death when we believe that
we shall pass through it into everlasting life. If a man for
health will take the most ungrateful potion, (the bitterness
being short, and the benefit long,) and if he will suffer the sur-
geon to let out his blood, and in case of necessity to cut off a
member, how light should we make of death, that have the as-
sured hopes of glory to encourage us ! What door so strait that
we would not pass through if we could to our dearest friend !
What way so foul that we would not travel to our beloved
home ! And shall death seem intolerable to us, that letteth in
our souls to Christ ? Well might Paul say, " To die is gain."
(Phil. i. 21.) When we gain deliverance from all those sins
that did here beset us, and all those sorrows that sin had bred,
we gain the accomplishment of our desires, and the end of our
faith, the salvation of our souls. We gain the crown that fadeth
not away 5 a place before the throne of Christ, in the temple of
God, in the city of God, the new Jerusalem ; to eat of the
hidden manna, and of the tree of life w T hich is in the midst of
the paradise of God (Rev. ii. 3.) We gain the place prepared
for us by Christ in his Father's house. (John xiv. 1, 2.) For
we shall be with him where he is, that we may behold his glory.
(John xvii. 24.) We shall gain the sight of the glory of God,
and the feeling of his most precious love, and the fulness of joy
that is in his presence, and the everlasting pleasures at his right
hand. (Psalm xvi. 11.) And shall we think much to die for
such a gain ? We will put off our clothes, and welcome sleep,
which is the image of death, that our bodies may have rest, and
OF DEATH. 565
refuse not thus to die every night, that we may rise more re-
freshed for our employments in the morning. And shall we
stick at the unclothing of our souls in order to their everlasting
rest ? Set hut the eye of faith to the prospective of the promise,
and take a serious, frequent view of the promised land, and this,
if any thing, will make death more welcome than physic to the
sick, than unclothing to a heggar that puts on new, or better
clothes. Shall a poor man cheerfully ply his labour all day in
hope of a little wages at night, and shall not a believer cheer-
fully yield to death in hope of everlasting glory ? So far as heaven
is soundly believed, and our conversations and hearts are there,
the fears of death will be assuaged, and nothing else will well
assuage them.
Direct. 4. Moreover, if you will conquer the enmity of
death, do all that you can to increase and exercise the love of
God in you. For love will so incline you to the blessed object
of it, that death will not be able to keep down the flame.
Were God set as a seal upon our hearts, we should find that
" Love is as strong as death, the coals thereof are coals of fire,
which hath a most vehement flame ; many waters cannot quench
it, neither can the floods drown it." (Sol. Song viii. 6, 7.) If
carnal love have made the amorous to choose death that they
might passionately express it, especially when they have heard
of the death of their beloved ; and if natural fortitude and love
to their country have made many valiant men, though heathens,
to contemn death, and readily lay down their lives ; and if the
love of fame and vainglory in a surviving name have caused
manv to die through pride; how much more will the powerful
love of God put on the soul to leave this flesh and pass through
death, that we may see his face, and fully enjoy the object of
our love. So much as you love God, so much will you be
above the terrors of the grave, and passed through death for the
enjovment of your beloved. " Perfect love casteth out fear,"
and " he that feareth is not made perfect in love." In death and
judgment we shall have boldness if our love be perfect. (1
John iv. 17, 18.) This maketh the martyrs cheerfully lay down
their lives for Christ ; and love is glad of so precious an oppor-
tunity for its exercise and manifestation. Love is a restless
working thing, that will give you no rest till your desires are
attained, and you be with God. Nothing is so valiant as love.
It rejoiceth when it meeteth with difficulties, which it may en-
counter for the sake of our beloved : it contemneth dangers; it
566 A TREATISE
glorieth in sufferings ; though it be humble, and layeth by all
thoughts of merit, yet it rejoiceth in sufferings for Christ, and
glorieth in the cross, and in the participation of his sufferings,
and in the honourable wounds and scars which we receive for
him that died for us.
Direct. 5. To overcome the terrors and enmity of death, it
is necessary that we keep the conscience clear from the guilt of
wilful sin, and of impenitency. If it may be, see that you wound
it not ; if you have wounded it, presently seek a cure, and live
not in a wounded state. The face of death will waken con-
science, and cause it to speak much louder than it did in health
and in prosperity ; and then sin will seem another thing, and
wrath more terrible than it did in your security. Con-
science will do much to make your burden light or heavy. If
conscience groundedly speak peace, and all be sound and well
at home, death will be less terrible, the heart being fortified
against its enmity. But to have a pained body and a pained
soul ; a dying body, and a scorched conscience, that is afraid of
everlasting death, this is a terrible case indeed. Speedily,
therefore, get rid of sin, and get your consciences thoroughly
cleansed by sound repentance and the blood of Christ. For so
much sin as you bring to your death-bed, so much bitterness will
there be in death. Away then with that sin that conscience
tells you of, and touch the forbidden fruit no more, and kindle
not the sparks of hell in your souls to make the sting of death
more venomous. As it will quiet a believing soul through Christ,
when he can say with Hezekiah, " Remember now, O Lord, I
beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth, and with
a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight."
(Isa. xxxviii. 3.) And it will be our rejoicing if we have " the
testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sin-
cerity we have had our conversation in the world/' (2 Cor. i.
12.) So will it be most terrible to die in the fears of unpar-
doned sin, and to have conscience scourging us with the re-
membrance of our folly, when God is afflicting us, and we have
need of a well-composed mind to bear the troubles of our flesh.
A little from without is grievous, when any thing is amiss within.
Get home, therefore, to Christ without delay \ and cease not till
youhave peace in him,that death may find your consciences whole.
Direct. 6. Redeeming time is another means to prevent the
hurtful fears of death. When we foreknow that it will shortly
end our time, let us make the best of time while we have it.
OF DEATH. 567
And then when we find that our work is done, and that we did
not loiter nor lose the time that God vouchsafed us, the end of
it will he less grievous to us. A man that studieth his duty,
and spareth for no cost or pains, and is as loth to lose an hour's
time, as a covetous man is to lose an hundred pounds, will look
hack on his life, and look hefore him to his death, with greater
peace, and less perplexity, than another man ; but the thoughts
of death must needs be terrible to a man that hath trifled away
his life, and been an unthrift of his time. To think when you
must die, that now you are at your last day or hour ; and withal,
to think how many hours you vainly lost, and that you knew not
the worth of time till it was gone, will make death more bitter
than now you can imagine. What else is death but the ending
of our time ? And what can be more necessary to a comfort-
able end, than faithfully to use it while we have it ?
Direct. 7« Another help against the enmity of death is, the
crucifying of the flesh, with its affections and lusts ; and the con-
quest of the world by the life of faith, and crucifying it by the
cross of Christ, and dying daily by the patient suffering of the
cross ourselves. When we are loose from all things under the
sun, and there is nothing that entangleth our affections on
earth, a great part of the difficulty is then removed ; but death
will tear the heart that is glued to any thing in this world. Pos-
sess, therefore, as if you possessed not, and rejoice as if you
rejoiced not, and use the world as not abusing it: for the
fashion of this world doth pass away. (1 Cor. vii. 29 — 31.)
It is much for the sake of our flesh that must perish, that death
doth seem so bitter to us. If, therefore,, we can thoroughly
subdue the flesh and live above its pleasures and desires, we shall
the more easily bear its dissolution. Set up your senses then a
little more, and let your hearts grow stranger to this world ;
and if vou have known any persons, relations, accommodations
after the flesh, from henceforth know them so no more. How
terrible is death to an earthly-minded man, that had neglected
his soul for a treasure here, which must then be dissipated in a
moment. How easy is death to a heavenly mind, that is tho-
roughly weaned from this world, and taketh it but for his pil-
grimage or passage unto life ; and hath made it the business
of his days to lay up for himself a treasure in heaven. He that
hath unfeignedly made heaven his end in the course of his life,
will most readily pass to it on the hardest terms, for every man
is willing to attain his end,
568 A TREATISE
Direct. 8. It will much help us against the enmity of death
to he duly conformed to the image of God in'the hatred of sin and
love of holiness \ and especially in the point of justice. When
we hate sin thoroughly, and find it so incorporated into our
flesh, that they must live and die together, it will make death
the more easy to us, because it will be the death of sin; even of
that sin which we most hate, and that God hateth, and that
hath cost us so dear as it hath done. When we are in love with
holiness, and know that we shall never be perfect in it till after
deaths it will make death the more welcome, as the passage to
our desired life. When the justice, even the castigatory and
vindictive justice of God, is more amiable in our eyes, and we
are not blinded by self-love, to judge of God and of his ways,
according to the interest of our flesh, we shall then consent to
his dissolving stroke, and then see the bitterness of death pro-
ceeded from that which is good in God, though from that
which is evil in ourselves. Doubtless, as justice is one of the
blessed attributes of God, so should it be amiable to man, there
being nothing in God but what is lovely. It is the prevalency
of self-love that makes men so insensible of the excellency of
divine justice, while they speak so respectfully of his mercy.
So far as men are carnal and selfish, they cannot love that by
which they smart 5 or of which they are in danger ; but the soul
that is got above itself, and is united unto God in Christ, and
hath that image of God which containeth the impress and effect
of all his attributes, hath such an habit of impartial justice in
himself, and such a hatred of sin, and such a desire that the
honour of God should be vindicated and maintained, and such
an approbation of the justice of God, that he can the more
easily consent or submit to the dissolving stroke of death ; he
hateth his own sin, and loatheth himself for all his abominations,
and is possessed with that justice that provoketh him to self-
revenge in an ordinate sort, and therefore doth love and honour
that justice that inflicteth on him the penalty of death, (espe-
cially since mercy hath made it a useful castigation,) as some
penitent malefactors have been so sensible of their crimes, that
thev have not deprecated death, but consented to it as a needful
work of justice (as it is written of the penitent murderer lately
hanged at London). So holiness doth contain such a hatred of
our own sins, and such impartial justice on God's behalf, that it
will cause us to subscribe to the righteousness of his sentence,
and the more quietly to yield to the stroke of death.
OF DEATH. 569
Direct. 9. It will somewhat abate the fears of death, to con-
sider the restlessness and troubles of this life, and the manifold
evils that end at death. And because this consideration is little
available with men in prosperity, it pleaseth God to exercise us
with adversity, that when we find there is no hope of rest on
earth, we may look after it where it is, and venture on death
by the impulse of necessity. Here we are continually burdened
with ourselves, annoyed by our corruptions, and pained by the
diseases of our souls ; or endangered most when pained least.
And would we be thus still ? We live in the continual smart
of the fruit of our own folly, and the hurts that we catch by our
careless or inconsiderate walking, like children that often fall
and cry ; and would we still live such a life as this ? The weak-
ness of our faith, the darkness of our minds, the distance and
strangeness of our souls to God, are a continual languishing and
trouble to our hearts. How grievous is it to us that we can
Jove him no more, nor be more assured of his love to us ; that
we find continually so much of the creature, and so little o.
God upon our hearts; that carnal affections are so easily kindled
in us, and the love of God will scarce be kept in any life by
the richest mercies, the most powerful means, and by our
greatest diligence. Oh ! what a death is it to our hearts that
so many odious temptations should have such free access, such
ready entertainment, such small resistance, and so great suc-
cess : that such horrid thoughts of unbelief should look into our
minds, and stay so long, and be so familiar with us, that the
blessed mysteries of the gospel, and the state of separated souls,
and the happiness of the life to come, are known so slightly,
and believed so weakly and imperfectly, and meet with so many
carnal questionings and doubts ; that when we should be solac-
ing our souls in the forethoughts of heaven, we look toward it
with such strangeness and amazement, as if we staggered at the
promise of God through unbelief; and there is so much atheism
in our affections, God being almost as no God to them some-
times, and heaven almost as no heaven to them, that it shows
there is too much in our understandings. Oh ! what a death is it
to our minds, that when we should live in the love of infinite
goodness, we find such a remnant of carnal enmity, and God
hath such resistance, and so narrow, so short, so cold, so un-
kind entertainment in those hearts that were made to love him,
and that should know and own no love but his. What a bond-
570 A TREATISE
age is it that our souls are so entangled with the creatures, and
so detained from the love of God; and that we draggle on this
earth, and can reach no higher ; and the delightful communion
with God and a conversation in heaven, are things that we have
so small experience of. Alas ! that we that are made for God,
and should live to him, and he still upon his work, and know no
other, should be so biassed by the flesh, and captivated by self-
love, and lost at home, that our affections and intentions do
hardly get above ourselves ; but there we are too prone to ter-
minate them all, and lose our God, even in a seeming religious-
ness, while we will be. Gods to ourselves. How grievous is it
that such wonders and glorious appearances of God, as are con-
tained in the incarnation, life, and death of Christ, and in all
the parts of the work of our redemption, should no more affect
us than they do, nor take up our souls in more thankful admira-
tion, nor ravish us into higher joys. Alas ! that heaven com-
mands our souls no more from earth. That such an infinite
glory is so near to us, and we enjoy so little of it, and have no
more savour of it upon our souls. That in the hands of God ?
and before his face, we do no more regard him. That the
great and wonderful matters of our faith do so little affect us,
that we are tempted thereby to question the sincerity of our
faith, if not the reality of the things believed ; and that so little
of these great and wondrous things appeareth in our lives, that
we tempt the world to think our faith is but a fancy. Is not
all this grievous to an honest heart ? And should we not be so
far weary of such a life as this, as to be willing to depart and
be with Christ.
If it would so much rejoice a gracious soul to have a stronger
faith, a more lively hope, a more tender conscience, a more
humble, self- abhorring heart, to be more fervent in prayer, more
resolute against temptations, and more successfully to fight
against them ; with what desiie and joy then should we look to-
wards heaven, where we shall be above our strongest faith and
hope, and have no more need of the healing graces or the heal-
ing ordinances, nor be put upon self-arrlicting work, nor troubled
with the temptations, nor terrified by the face of any enemy.
Now, if we will vigorously appear for God against a sinful
generation, how many will appear against us ? How bitterly
will they reproach us ; how falsely will they slander us ; and
say all manner of evil against us ? and it is well if we escape
OF DEATH. 571
the violence of their hands. And what should be our joy in all
these sufferings, but that "great is our reward in heaven/'
(Matt. v. 12.)
Alas ! how are we continually here annoyed by the presence,
and the motions, and the success of sin in ourselves and others.
It dwelleth in us night and day ; we cannot get it to stay be-
hind ; no, not when we address ourselves to God ; not in our
public worship, or our secret prayers ; not for the space of one
Lord's day, or one sermon, or one sacrament, in ordinary or
extraordinary duty. O, what a blessed day and duty would
it be, in which we could leave our sin behind us, and converse
with God in spotless innocency, and worship and adore him
without that darkness, and strangeness, and unbelief, and dul-
ness, and doublings, and distractions, that are now our daily
miseries. Can we have grace, and not be weary of these cor-
ruptions ? Can we have life, and not be pained with these dis-
eases ? And can we live in daily pain and weariness, and not
be willing of release ? Is there a gracious soul that groaneth
not under the burden of these miseries ? Yea, in every prayer,
what do we else but confess them, and lament them, and groan
for help and for deliverance ? And yet shall we fear our day of
freedom, and be loth that death should bring us news that our
prayers are heard, and our groans have reached up to heaven; and
that the bonds of flesh and sin shall be dissolved, and we shall
have need to watch, and strive, and fear, and complain, and sigh,
and weep no more ? Shall the face of death discourage us from
desiring such a blessed day, when we have so full assurance that,
at last, this enemy also shall be destroyed ? The Lord heal and
pardon the hypocrisy of our complaints, together with the un-
belief and cowardliness of our souls. Do we speak so much,
and hear so much, and seem to do so much against sin, and yet
had we rather keep it still than be stripped of it, together with
the rags of our mortality ? And yet had we rather dwell with
sin, in tempting, troubling, corruptible flesh, than lay them by,
and dwell with Christ ? O Lord, how lamentably have we lost
our wisdom, and drowned our minds in flesh and folly, by for-
saking thee our light and life ! How come our reasonable souls
to be so bewitched, as, after all our convictions, complaints, and
prayers, to be still more willing of our sickness than of the re-
medy, and more afraid of this bitter cup than of the poison that
lodgeth in our bowels, which it would expel 5 and that after all
the labour we have used, we had yet rather dwell with our greatest
572 A TREATISE
enemy* than, by a less, to be transmitted to our dearest friend ;
and had rather continue in a troublesome, weary, restless life,
than by the sleep of death to pass to rest.
And this sin, in others also, is our trouble, though not so
much as in ourselves. It maketh those our bitter enemies, whose
good we most desire and endeavour, and causeth the unthankful
world to requite us with malicious usage, for telling them the
ungrateful truth, and seeking their salvation ; it makes our
friends to be but half friends, and some of them too like our
enemies. It puts a sting into the sweetest friendship, and
mixeth smart with all our pleasures ; it worketh us grief from
precious mercies, and abateth the comfort of our near relations $
so that our smart by the pricks is often greater than our plea-
sure in the sweetness of the rose. No friend is so smoothed
and squared to the temper and interest of another, but that
some inequality and unevenness doth remain, which makes the
closure to be less near and steadfast. Even family relations are
usually so imperfectly jointed and cemented, that when the
winds of trial are anything high, they shake the frame ; and
though they are but low, they find an entrance, and cause such
a coldness of affections as is contrary to the nature and duty of
the relations. Either a contrariety of opinions, or of natural
temperature and humours, or else of the dispositions of the
mind. Sometimes cross interests, and sometimes passions and
cross words, do cause such discontents and sourness, such
frowns, or jealousies, or distances, that our nearest friends are
but as sackcloth on our skins, and as a shoe too strait for us,
or as a garment that is unmeet, which pinch and trouble us in
their use ; and those that should be to us as the apple of our
eyes, are as the dust or smoke to them that vex or blind them :
and the more we love them, the more it grieveth us to be crossed
in our love. There is scarce any friend so wise, so good, so
suitable to us, or so near, that we can always please. And the
displeasure of a friend is as gravel in our shoes, or as nettles in
our bed, ofttimes more grievous than the malice of an enemy.
There is no such doing as this in heaven, because there is no
such guest as sin. We shall love each other far more than we
do here, and yet that love shall never be inordinate, nor in the
least divert our love from God, but every saint and angel in the
society shall be loved with the most chaste and pure affections,
in a perfect subordination to the love of God, and so as that God
himself in them shall be the chiefest object of that love. It is
OF DEATH. 5/3
there that our friends, being freed from all their imperfections,
do neither tempt us to a carnal love, nor have any thing in them
to discourage the love that is spiritual and pure. We have here
our passionate friends, our self-conceited friends, our unkind,
unthankful, selfish friends, our mutable and unfaithful friends,
our contentious friends, that are like to enemies. And who
have used us more hardly than our friends ? But when we come
to God, we shall have friends that are like God, that are wholly
good, and are participatively turned into love ; and having left
behind them all that was unclean, and noisome, and trouble-
some to themselves, they have also cast off all that could be
troublesome to us. Our love will be there without suspicions,
without interruptions, unkindnesses, and discontents, without
disappointments, frustrations, and dissatisfactions : for God him-
self will fully satisfy us ; and we shall love his goodness and
glory in his saints, as well as immediately in himself. Our friends
are now lost at the turning of a straw. The change of their
interest, their company, their opinions, the slanders of back-
biters, and misrepresentations of malicious men, can cool their
love, and kill their friendship. But heaven is a place of con-
stant love. The love of saints, as all things else, is there eter-
nal, and yet it declineth not with age. It is a world of love
that we are hastening to; it is a life of love that we must there
live ; and a work of love, and perfect love, that we must be
there employed in for ever. If here we have a pure, a dear, a
faithful friend, that is without false-heartedness aud deceit, that
loveth us as his own soul, how quickly is he snatched away by
death, and leaves us melted into tears, and mourning over his
earthly relics, and looking upward with grieved hearts, as the
disciples did after their ascending Lord. (Acts i. 9 — 11.) We
are left almost as lifeless by such friends, as the body is left by
the departed soul. We have nothing but grief to tell us that
we live, and that our souls are not departed with them. We
are left in greater lamentation than if we had never known
faithful friends. And, alas ! how quickly are they gone when
once God sees them ripe for heaven, when drones and dullards
live much longer. If we see a saint that is clear of judgment,
and low in humility, and naked-hearted in sincerity, and that
abounds in love to God and man, that is faithful and constant to
his friend, and is above the pride and vanities of this world, and
doth converse by a life of faith above, and is useful and exem-
plary in his generation, Alas ! how soon is he snatched away ;
574 A TREATISE
and we are left in our temptations, repining and murmuring at
God, as Jonah, when his gourd was withered, as if the Lord
had destinated this world to be the dwelling of unfaithful, worth-
less men, and envied us the presence of one eminent saint, one
faithful friend, and one that (as Moses when he had talked with
God) hath a face that shineth with the reflected rays of the hea-
venly glory, when, indeed, it is because this world is unworthy of
them, (Heb. xi. 38,) not knowing their worth, nor how to use
them, nor how to make use of them for their good. And be-
cause, when they are ripe and mellow for eternity, it is fit that
God be served before us, and that heaven have the best, and that
be left on earth that is earthly. Must heaven be deprived of its
inhabitants ? Must a saint that is ripe be kept from Christ, and
so long kept from his inheritance, from the company of angels
and the face of God, and all, lest we should be displeased, and
grudge at God for glorifying those whom he destined to glory
before the foundations of the world, and whom he purchased
and prepared for glory ? Must there be a place empty, and a
voice be wanting in the heavenly choir, lest we should miss our
friends on earth ? Are we not hastening after them at the heels ;
and do we not hope to live with them for ever ; and shall we
grudge that they are gone a day, or week, or year, before us ?
O foolish, unbelieving souls ! We mourn for them who are past
mourning, and lament for our friends that are gone to rest, when
we are left ourselves in a vexatious, restless, howling wilder-
ness, as if it were better to be here. We mourn and weep for
the souls that are triumphing in their Master's joy; and yet we
say we believe, and hope, and labour, and wait for the same
felicity. Shall the happiness of our friends be our sorrow and
lamentation ? O, did we but see these blessed souls, and where
they are, and what they are enjoying, and what they are doing,
we should be ashamed to mourn thus for their change ! Do you
think they would wish themselves again to be on earth ? Or
would they take it kindly of you if you could bring them down
again into this world, though it were to reign in wealth and
honour? O! how would they disdain or abhor the motion,
unless the commanding will of God did make it a part of their
obedience. And shall we grieve that they are not here, when to
be here would be their grief?
But thus our lives are filled with griefs. Thus smiles and
frowns, desires and denials, hopes and frustrations, endeavours
and disappointments, do make a quotidian ague of our lives.
OF DEATH. 5/5
The persons and the things we love do contribute to our sor-
rows, as well as those we hate. If our friends are bad, or prove
unkind, they gall and grieve us while they live : if they excel in
holiness, fidelity, and suitableness, the dart that kills them deeply
woundeth us ; and the sweeter they were to us in their lives, the
bitterer to us is their death. We cannot keep mercy, but sin
is ready to take it from us, or else to mar it, and turn it into
vinegar and gall. And doth not death (accidentally) befriend
us, that puts an end to all these troubles, and lands us safe on
the celestial shore, and puts us into the bosom of perpetual
rest, where all is calm, and the storms and billows that tossed us
here shall fear or trouble us no more ? And thus death shall
make us some recompense at last for the wrong it did us ; and
the mortal blow shall hurt us less than did the dreadful appari-
tion of it in our forethoughts. Let not our fears, then, exceed
the cause : though we fear the pangs and throes of travail, let
us withal remember that we shall presently rejoice, and all the
holy angels with us, that a soul is born into the world of glory,
and death shall gain us much more than it deprived us of.
Direct. 10. The last direction that I shall give you to con-
quer the enmity of death is this : give up your wills entirely
to the will of God, as knowing that his will is your beginning
and your end, your safety, your felicity, and rest, in which you
should gladly acquiesce. When you think of death, remember
who it is that sends it ; it is our Father's messenger, and is sent
but to execute his will. And can there be any thing in the will
of God that his servants should inordinately fear ? Doubtless,
his will is much safer and better for us than our own : and if, in
general, it were offered to our choice, whether all particulars of
our lives should be disposed of by God's will, or by ours, com-
mon reason might teach us to desire to be rather in God's hands
than our own. The fulfilling of his will is the care and busi-
ness of our lives ; and therefore it should be a support and
satisfaction to us at our death that it is but the fulfilling of his
will. His justice and punishing will is good, though selfishness
maketh it ungraceful to the offender. But his children that are
dear to him, and taste no evil but that which worketh for their
good, have no cause to quarrel at his will. Whatsoever our
surest, dearest friends would have us take, or do, or suffer, we
are ready to submit to, as being confident they will do nothing
for our hurt (if they do but know what is for our good). And
shall we not more boldly trust the will of God than of our dear-
576 A TREATISE
est friend ? He knows what he hath to do with us, and how he
will dispose of us, and whither he will bring us, and his interest
in us is more than ours in ourselves ; and shall we then disturb
him, as if we had to do with an enemy, or one that were evil,
and not with love and infinite goodness ? It is the will of God
that must be the everlasting rest, the heaven, the pleasure of our
souls ; and shall we now so fear it, and fly from it, as if it were
our ruin ? Look which way you will through all the world, your
souls will never find repose, nor satisfying quietness and content,
but in the will of God. Let us, therefore, commit our souls to
him, as to a faithful Creator, and desire unfeignedly the fulfilling
of his will, and believe that there is no ground of confidence
more firm. Abraham may boldly trust his son, his only son, on
the will of God ; and Christ himself, when he was to drink the
bitter cup, submitted his own natural love of life to his Father's
will saying, "Not my will, but thine be done." It is a most
unworthy abuse of God, that we could be quiet, and rejoice, if
our own wills, or our dearest friends, might dispose of our lives,
and yet are distressed when they are at the dispose of the will
of God.
But, perhaps, you will say, ' It is the error of my own will
that hath procured my death : if it had been merely the fruit of
the will of God, I could be easily satisfied/ Answ. Wo to us
if we had not ground of comfort against the errors of our own
wills. When our destruction is of ourselves, our help is of
God. So much as is of ourselves in it is evil, but so much as
is of God is good. I do not say that you should rest in your
own wills, nor in your own ways, but in the will and ways of
God. The rod is good, though the fault that makes it neces-
sary be bad. The chastising will is good, though the sinning
will be evil ; and it is good that is intended to us, and shall be
performed in the event.
Object. But how can we rest in the angry, afflicting will of
God, when it is this that we must be humbled under; and it is
the will of God that is the condemnation of the wicked ?
Answ. The effect being from a twofold cause (the sinning will
of man, and the punishing will of God) is accordingly good as
from the latter, and so far should be loved and consented to by
all ; and evil as from the former, and so may be abhorred. But
to the saints there is yet greater consolation. Though affliction
is their grief, as it signifieth God's displeasure, and causeth the
smart or destruction of the flesh 5 yet it is their mercy, as it
OF DEATH. 577
proceedeth from the love of God, and prepareth them for the
greatest mercies. And therefore, seeing- God never bringeth
evil on them that love him, but what is preparatory to a far
greater good, we may well take comfort in our death, that it is
our Father's will it should be so.
Use 8. If death shall be conquered as the last enemy, from
hence Christians may receive exceeding consolation, as know-
ing that they have no enemy to their happiness, but such as
shall be conquered by Christ ; sooner or later he will overcome
them all. Let faith, therefore, foresee the conquest in the con-
flict ; and let us not, with too much despondency, hang down
our heads before any enemy that we know shall be trodden
down at last. We have burdensome corruptions, that exercise
our graces, and grieve the Spirit, and wrong our Lord ; but all
these shall be overcome. Though we have heard, and read,
and prayed, and meditated, and yet our sins remain alive, they
shall be conquered at last. Our love, and joy, and praise,
shall be everlasting ; but our ignorauce, and unbelief, and
pride, and passion, shall not be everlasting. Our holiness shall
be perfected, and have no end ; but our sin shall be abo-
lished, and have an end. Our friends shall abide with us for
ever, and the holy love and communion of saints shall be per-
fected in heaven ; but our enemies shall not abide with us for
ever, nor malice follow us to our rest. The wicked have no
comforts but what will have an end ; and the forethought of
that is sufficient to embitter even the present sweetness. And
the godly have no sorrows but such as are of short continu-
ance 5 and methinks the foresight of their end should sweeten
the present bitter cup, and make our sorrows next to none.
We sit weeping now in the Amidst of manifold afflictions; but
we foresee the day when we shall weep no more, but all tears
shall be wiped from our eyes by the tender hand of our merci-
ful Redeemer. We are now afraid of love itself, even of our
dear and blessed Father, lest he should hate us, or be angry
with us for ever ; but heaven will banish all these fears, when
the perfect fruition of the eternal love hath perfected our love.
Our doubtings and perplexities of mind are many and grievous,
but they will be but short. When we have full possession we
shall be past our doubts. Our work is now to pour out our
grieved souls into the bosom of some faithful friend, or ease our
troubled minds by complaining of our miseries to our faithful
pastors, that from them we may have some words of direction
VOL. XVII. P P
57S A TREATISE
and consolation; but, oh ! how different a work is it that we shall
have in heaven, where no more complainings shall he heard
from our mouths, nor no more sorrow shall possess our hearts?
Aud we shall have no need of men to comfort us ; but shall
have comfort as naturally from the face of God, as we have
light and heat, in the summer, from the sun. When we all
make one celestial choir, to sing the praises of the King of
Saints, how unlike will that melody be to the broken music of
sighs, and groans, and lamentations, which we now take to be
almost our best ! We are now glad when we can find but
words, and groans, and tears, to lament our sin and misery ;
but then our joy shall know no sorrow, nor our voice any sad
and mournful tune. And may we not bear a while the sorrows
that shall have so good an end ? We shall shortly have laid
by the hard, unprofitable, barren hearts, that are now our con-
tinual burden and disease. Love not your corruptions, Chris-
tians; but yet be patient under the unavoidable relics that
offend you ; remembering that your conflict will end in con-
quest, and your faith, and watchfulness, and patience will be
put to it but a little while. Who would not enter willingly
into the fight, when he may, beforehand, be assured that the
field shall be cleared of every enemy ? All this must- be
ascribed to our dear Redeemer. Had not he wrought the
conquest, the enemies that vex us would have destroyed us,
and the serpent that now doth but bruise our heel, would have
bruised our head ; [and the sorrows that are wholesome, sancti-
fied, and short, would have been mortal, venomous, and
endless.
What suffering, then, can be so great in which a believer
should not rejoice, when he is, beforehand, promised a gracious
end? What though at the present it be not joyous, but griev-
ous (in itself) ? We should bear it with patience, when we
know that at last it shall bring forth the peaceable fruit of
righteousness to all them that are exercised thereby. (Heb. xii.
11.) If we should be always abused, and always unthankfully
and unkindly dealt with^ or always under the scorns, or slan-
ders, or persecutions of unreasonable men, or always under our
poverty and toilsome labours, or always under our pains and
pining sicknesses, we might then, indeed, dismiss our comforts.
But when we know that it will be but a little while, and that
all will end in rest and joy, and that our sorrows are but pre-
paring for those joys ; even reason itself is taught by faith
OF DEATH. 5/9
to bid us rejoice in all our tribulations, and to lift up the hands
that hang down, and the feeble knees. (Heb. xii. 12.) We
make nothing to endure a sudden prick, that by blood-letting
we may prevent a long disease. The short pain of pulling out
a tooth is ordinarily endured to prevent a longer. A woman
doth bear the pains of her travail because it is short, and tends
to the bringing of a child into the world. Who would not
submit to any labour or toil for a day, that he might win a life
of plenty and delight by it ? Who would not be spit upon,
and made the scorn of the world for a day, if he might have
his will for it as long as he liveth on earth ? And should we
not then cheerfully submit to our momentary afflictions, and
the troubles of a few days, (which are light, and mixed with a
world of mercies,) when we know that they are working for us
a far more exceeding, eternal weight of glory ? (2 Cor. iv. 170
Our clamorous and malicious enemies, our quarrelsome bre-
thren, our peevish friends, our burdensome corruptions and im-
perfections, will shortly trouble us no more. As our life is
short, and but a dream and shadow, and therefore the plea-
sures of this world are no better ; so our troubles also will be
no longer, and are but sad dreams, and dark shadows, that
quickly pass away. Our Lord that hath begun, and gone on
so far, will finish his victories, and the last enemy shall shortly
be destroyed.
And if the fearful doubting soul shall say, * I know this
is comfort to them that are in Christ, but what is it to me,
that .know not whether I have any part in him ?' I answer,
1. The foundation of God still standeth sure ; the Lord knoweth
his own, even when some of them know not that they are his
own. He knoweth his mark upon his sheep, when they know
it not themselves. God doubteth not of his interest in thee,
though thou doubt of thy interest in him. And thou art faster
in the arms of his love, than by the arms of thy own faith ; as
the child is surer in the mother's arms than by its holding of
the mother. And, moreover, your doubts and fears are part
of the evil that shall be removed, and your bitterest sorrows
that hence proceed shall with the rest of the enemies be de-
stroyed.
2. But yet take heed that you unthankfully plead not against
the mercies which you have received, and be not friends to
those doubts and fears which are your enemies, and that you
take not part with the enemy of your comforts. Why dost
pr2
580 a TREATrsn:
thou doubt, poor humbled soul, of thy interest in Christ, that
must make the conquest ? Answer me but these few questions
from thy heart.
Quest. 1 . Did Christ ever show himself unkind to thee ?
or unwilling to receive thee, and have mercy on thee ? Did
he ever give thee cause to think so poorly of his love and grace
as thy doubts do intimate thou dost ? Hast thou not found
him kind when thou wast unkind ? and that he thought on thee
when thou didst not think on him ? And will he now forget
thee, and end in wrath that begun in love ? He desired thee
when thou didst not desire him, and gave thee all thy desires
after him : and will he now cross and deny the desires which
he hath caused ? He was found of thee, (or rather found thee,)
when thou soughtest not after him ; and can he reject thee
now thou criest and callest for his grace ? O think not hardly
of his wondrous grace till he give thee cause. Let thy sweet
experiences be remembered, to the shame of thy causeless
doubts and fears ; and let him that hath loved thee to the death
be thought on as he is, and not as the unbelieving flesh would
misrepresent him.
Quest. 2. If thou say that it is not his unkindness, but thy
own, that feeds thy doubts, I further ask thee, is he not kind
to the unkind, especially when they lament their own unkind-
ness ? Thou art not so unkind as thou wast in thy unconverted
state, and yet he then expressed his love in thy conversion. He
then sought thee when thou wentest astray, and brought thee care-
fully home into his fold, and there he hath kept thee ever since ;
and is he less kind now when thou art returned home ? Dost thou
not know that all his children have their frowardness, and are
guilty of their unkindnesses to him ? And yet he doth not
therefore disown them, and turn them out of his family ; but is
tender of them in their froward weakness, because they are his
own. How dealt he with the peevish prophet Jonah, that was
" exceedingly displeased, and very angry," that God spared
Nineveh, lest it should be a dishonour to his prophecy, inso-
much, that he wished that he might die, and not live ; and
after repined at the withering of his gourd, and the scorching
of the sun that beat upon him ? The Lord doth gently question
him, " Dost thou well to be angry ?" and after hence convinces
him that the mercy which he valued to himself he should not
envy to so many. (Jonah, iv.) How dealt he with the disciples
that fell asleep, when they should have watched with Christ in
OF DEA'IH. 581
the night of his great agony ? He doth not tell them, c You
are none of mine, because you could not watch with me
one hour/ but tenderly excuseth that which they durst not
excuse themselves. " The spirit is willing, but the flesh is
weak." When he was on the cross, though u they all
forsook him and fled," he was then so far from forsaking them,
that he was manifesting to admiration that exceeding love
that never would forsake them. And knowest thou not,
poor, complaining soul ! that the kindness of Christ overcometh
all the unkindness of his children ? And that his blood and
grace is sufficient to save thee from greater sins than those that
trouble thee ? If thou hadst no sin, what use hadst thou for a
Saviour ? Will thy physician, therefore, cast thee off because
thou art sick ?
Quest. 3. Yea, hath not Christ already subdued so many of
thy enemies as may assure thee he will subdue the rest ? and
begun that life in thee which may assure thee of eternal life ?
Once thou wast a despiser of God and his holy ways ; but now
it is far otherwise with thee. Hath he not broken the heart
of thy pride, and worldliness, and sensuality, and made thee a
new creature ? And is not this a pledge that he will do the
rest ? Tell me plainly, hadst thou rather keep thy sin, or leave
it ? Hadst thou rather have liberty to commit it, or be delivered
from it ? Dost thou not hate it, and set thyself against it as
thy enemy ? Art thou not delivered from the reign and tyranny
of it, which thou wast once under ? And will he not perfect the
conquest which he hath begun ? He that hath thus far delivered
thee from sin, thy greatest enemy, will deliver thee from all the
sad effects of it. The blessed work of the Spirit in thy con-
version did deliver thee from the bondage of the devil, from the
power of darkness, and translated thee into the kingdom of
Jesus Christ 3 then didst thou enter the holy warfare under his
banners that was never overcome, in the victorious army that
shall shortly begin their everlasting triumph. The sin which
thou hatest, and longest to be delivered from, and art willing to
use God's means against it, is the conquered enemy, which may
assure thee of a full and final conquest, supposing that thy
hatred is against all known sin, and that there is none so sweet
or profitable in thy account which thou hadst not far rather
leave than keep.
Quest. 4. Moreover, art thou not truly willing to yield to all
the terms of grace ? Thou hast heard of the yoke and burden
582 A TREATISE
of Christ, and of the conditions of the gospel, on which peace
is offered to the sinful world, and what Christ requireth of such
as will be his disciples. What saith thy heart now to those
terms ? Do they seem so hard and grievous to thee, that thou
wilt venture thy soul in thy state of sin, rather than accept of
them ? If this were so, thou hadst yet no part in Christ indeed.
But if there he nothing that Christ requireth of thee that is not
desirable in thy eyes, or which thou dost not stick at, so far as
to turn away from him, and forsake him, and refuse his covenant
and grace, rather than submit to such conditions, thou art then
in covenant with him, and the blessings of the covenant belong
to thee. Canst thou think that Christ hath purchased, and
offered, and promised that which he will not give ? Hath he
sent forth his ministers, and commanded them to make the
motion in his name, and to invite and compel men to come
in, and to beseech them to be reconciled to God, and that yet
he is unwilling to accept thee when thou dost consent? If Christ
had been unwilling, he had not so dearly made the way, nor
begun as a suitor to thy soul, nor so diligently sought thee as
he hath done. If the blessings of the covenant are thine, then
heaven is thine, which is the chiefest blessing? And if they be
not thine, it is not because Christ is unwilling, but because
thou art unwilling of his blessings on his terms. Nothing can
deprive thee of them but thy refusal. Know, therefore, assuredly
whether thou dost consent thyself to the terms of Christ, and
whether thou art truly willing that he be thy Saviour ; and if
thy conscience bear thee faithful witness that it is so, dishonour
not Christ, then, so far as to question whether he be willing,
who hath done so much to put it out of doubt. The stop is at
thy will, and not at his. If thou know that thou art willing,
thou mayest know that Christ and his benefits are thine ; and
if thou be not willing, what makes thee wish, and groan, and
pray, and labour in the use of means ? Is it not for Christ and
his benefits that thy heart thus worketh, and thou dost all this ?
Fear not, then, if thy own hand be to the covenant, it is most
certain that the hand of Christ is at it.
Quest. 5. Moreover, I would ask thee, whether thou see not
a beauty in holiness, which is the image of Christ, and whether
thy soul do not desire it even in perfection ? So that thou
hadst rather, if thou hadst thy choice, be more holy than more
rich or honourable in the world. If so, be assured that it is not
without holiness that thou choosest and preferrest holiness.
OF DEATH. 583
Hadst thou not rather have more faith, and hope, and love to
God, and patience and contentment, and communion with Christ,
than have more of the favour and applause of man, or of the.
riches or pleasures of this world ? If so, I would know of thee
whether this be not from the Spirit of Christ within thee; and
be not his image itself upon thee ? And the motions of the
new and heavenly nature, which is begotten in thee by the Holy
Ghost ? Undoubtedly it is. And the Spirit of Christ thus
dwelling in thee is the earnest of thy inheritance. Dost thou
find the Spirit of Christ thus working in thee, causing thee to
love holiness, and hate all sin, and yet canst thou doubt of thy
part in Christ ?
Quest. 6. Moreover, canst thou not truly say, that Christ's
friends so far as thou knowest them, are thy friends, and that
which is against him thou takest as against thyself? If so, un-
doubtedly thy enemies also are to him as his enemies, and he will
lay them at thy feet. Thy troubles are as his troubles ; and in
all thy afflictions he is as careful of thy good as if he
himself were thereby afflicted. Fear not those enemies that
Christ takes as his own. It is he that is engaged to overcome
them.
And now when conscience itself beareth witness that thus it
is with thy sou^ and that thou wouldest fain be what God
would have thee be, and desirest nothing than to be more like
him, and nearer to him, and desirest no kind of life so much
as that in which thou mayest be most serviceable to him ;
consider what a wrong it is, then, to Christ, and to the honour
of his covenant and grace, and to thy poor, dejected soul,
that thou shouldest lie questioning his love, and thy part in
him, and looking about for matter of accusation, or causeless
suspicion, against his Spirit working in thee ; and that thou
shouldest cast away the joy of the Lord, which is thy strength,
and gratifv the enemy of thy peace. When sickness is upon
thee, and death draws nigh, thou shouldest then, with joy, lift
up thy head, because thy warfare is almost accomplished, and
thy Saviour ready to deliver thee the crown, h this a time
to fear and mourn, when thou art entering into endless
jov ? Is it a time of lamentation, when thou art almost at thy
journey's end, ready to see thy Saviour's face, and to take
thy place in the heavenly Jerusalem, amongst those millions of
holy souls that are gone before thee ? Is it seemly for thee to
lament thus at the door, when they are feasted with such
584 A TREATISE
inconceivable joys within ? Dost thou know what thy brethren
are now enjoying, and what the heavenly host are doing?
How full they are of God, and how they are ravished with his
light and love? And canst thou think it seemly to be so unlike
them that are passing to them ? I know there is such difference
between imperfection and perfection, and between earth and
heaven, that it justifieth our moderate sorrows, and com-
mandeth us to take up infinitely short of their delights, till we
are with them. But yet let there not be too great a dis-
proportion between the members of Jesus Christ. We have
the same Lord, and the same Spirit ; and all that is theirs in
possession is, in right and title, ours. They are our elder
brethren, and, being at age, have possession of the inheritance ;
but we that are yet in the lap of the church on earth, our
mother, and in the arms of our father's grace, are of the
same family, and have the same nature in our low degree.
They were once on earth as low as we, and we shall be shortly
in heaven as high as they : am I now in flesh, in fears, in
griefs ? So was David, and Paul, and all the saints, a while
ago; yea, and Christ himself. Am I beset with sin, and
compassed with infirmities, and racked by my own distempered
passion ? So were the many saints now glorified ; but the
other day, " Elias was a man subject to like passions as we
are." (James v. 17.) Am I maliced by dissenting adversaries ?
Do they privily lay snares for me, and watch my halting,
and seek advantage against my name, and liberty, and life ?
So did they by David, and many others, now with Christ.
But now these enemies are overcome. Art thou under pains,
and consuming sicknesses ? Are thine eyes held waking; and
doth trouble and sorrow waste thy spirits ? Doth thy flesh and
thy heart fail thee, and thy friends prove silly comforters to
thee ? So was it with those thousands that are now in heaven,
where the night of calamities is past, and the just have
dominion in the morning ; and glory hath banished all their
griefs, and joys have made them forget their sorrows ; unless
as the remembrance of them doth promote these joys. Are
thy friends lamenting thee, and grieved to see the signs of thy
approaching death ? Do they weep when they see thy pale
face, and consumed body, and when they hear thy sighs and
groans ? Why thus it was once with the millions that are
now triumphing with their Lord ? They lay in sickness, and
underwent the pains, and were lamented by their friends, as
OF DEATH. 585
thou art now. Even Christ himself was once in his agony,
and some shook the head at him, and others pitied him, who
should rather have wept for themselves, than for him. This
is but the passage from the womb of mortality into the life
of immortality, which all the saints have passed before thee
that are now with Christ. Dost thou fear the dreadful face of
death ? Must thy tender flesh be turned to rottenness and
dust? And must thou lie in darkness till the resurrection,
and thy body remain as the common earth ? And is not this
the case of all those millions, whose souls now see the face of
Christ ? Did they not lie as thou must, and die as thou must,
and pass by death to the life which they have now attained ?
Oh ! then commit thy soul to Christ, and be quiet and comforted
in his care and love. Trust him as the midwife of thy
departing soul, who shall bring it safe into the light and life
which thou art yet such a stranger to. But it is not strange
to him, though it be strange to thee.
What was it that rejoiced thee all thy life, in thy prayers,
and sufferings, and labours ? Was it not the hopes of heaven ?
And was heaven the spring and motive of thy obedience, and
the comfort of thy life ? And yet wilt thou pass into it with
heaviness ? And shall thy approaches to it be thy sorrows ?
Didst thou pray for that which thou wouldest not have ?
Hast thou laboured for it, and denied thyself the pleasures of
the world for it, and now art thou afraid to enter in ? Fear
not, poor soul ! Thy Lord is there ; thy husband, and thy
head, and life is there, thou hast more there, a thousand-fold
more, than thou hast here. Here thou must leave poor
mourning friends, that languish in their own infirmities, and
troubled thee as well as comforted thee while thou wast with
them, and that are hastening after thee, and will shortly
overtake thee. But there thou shalt find the souls of all
the blessed saints that have lived since the creation till this age.
That are all unclothed of the rags of their mortality, and have
laid by their frailties with their flesh, and are made up of
holiness, and prepared for joy, and will be suitable com-
panions for thee in thy joys. Why shouldest thou be afraid
to go the way that all the saints have gone before thee ? Where
there is one on earth, how many are there in heaven i And
one of them is worth many of us. Art thou better than Noah,
and Abraham, and David ? than Peter, and Paul, and all the
saints ? Or dost thou not love their names, and wouldest thou
586 A TREAT ESE
not be with them ? Art thou loth to leave thy friends on
earth ? and hast thou not far better and more in heaven ?
Why then art thou not as loth to stay from them ? Suppose
that J, and such as I, were the friends that thou art loth
to leave ; what if we had died long before thee ? If it be our
company that thou lovest, thou shouldest then be willing to
die, that thou mayest be with us. And if so, why then
shouldest thou not be more willing to die, and be with Christ,
and all his holy ones, that are so much more excellent than
we ? Wouldest thou have our company ? Remove, then, will-
ingly to that place where thou shalt have it to everlasting ;
and be not so loth to go from hence, where neither thou nor
we can stay. Hadst thou rather travel with us, than dwell
here with us ? And rather here suffer with us, than reign in
heaven with Christ and us ?
Oh ! what a brutish thing is flesh ! What an unreasonable
thing is unbelief! Shall we believe, and fly from the end of
our belief? Shall we hope, and be loth to enjoy our hopes ?
Shall we desire and pray, and be afraid of attaining our
desires, and lest our prayers should be heard ? Shall we spend
our lives in labour and travel, and be afraid of coming to our
journey's end ? Do you love life, or do you not ? If not, why
are you afraid of death ? If you do, why then are you loth to
pass into everlasting life ? You know there is no hope of
immortality on earth. Hence you must pass whether you will
or not, as all your fathers have done before you ; it is therefore
in heaven, or nowhere, that endless life is to be had. If you
can live here for ever, do. Hope for it, if any have done
so before you. Go to some man of a thousand years old, and
ask him how he made shift to draw out his life so long. But
if you know that man walketh here in a vain show, and that
his life is a shadow, a dream, a post ; and that all these things
shall be dissolved, and the fashion of them passeth away; is
it not more reasonable that we should set our hearts on the
place where there is hopes of our continuance, than where
there is none ? And where we must live for ever, than where
we must be but for so short a time ?
Alas ! poor darkened, troubled soul ! Is the presence of Christ
less desirable in thv eyes than the presence of such sinful
worms as we, whom thou art loth to part with ? Is it more
grievous to thee to be absent from us, than from thy Lord ?
from earth, than from heaven j from sinners, than from blessed
OF DEATH. 587
saints ; from trouble and frailty, than from glory ? Hast thou
any thing here that thou shall want in heaven ? Alas, that
we should thus draw back from happiness, and follow Christ
so heavily and sadly into life ! But all this is along of the
enemies that now molest our peace. Indwelling sin, and a
flattering world, and a brutish flesh, and interposing death,
are our discouragements that drive us back. But all these
enemies shall shortly be overcome.
Fear not death, then, let it do its worst. It can give thee
but one deadly gripe that shall kill itself, and prove thy life;
as the wasp that leaves its sting behind, and can sting no more.
It shall but snuff the candle of thy life, and make it shine
brighter when it seems to be put out; it is but an undressing,
and a gentle sleep. That which thou couldest not here attain
by all our preaching, and all thy prayers, and cares, and pains,
thou shalt speedily attain by the help of death. It is but the
messenger of thy gracious Lord, and calleth thee to him, to the
place that he hath prepared.
Hearken not now to the great deceiver that would draw thee
to unbelief, and cause thee to stagger at the promises of God,
when thou hast followed him so far, and they are near to the
full performance. Believe it as sure as thou believest that the
sun doth shine upon thee, that God cannot lie : he is no de-
ceiver. It was his mere love and bounty that caused him to
make the promises, when he had no need for himself to make
them. And shall he be then unfaithful, and not fulfil the pro-
mises which he hath freely made ? Believe it, faith is no delu-
sion : it may be folly to trust man; but it is worse than folly
not to trust God. Believe it, heaven is not a shadow, nor the
life of faith and holiness a dream. These sensible things have
least reality; these grosser substances are most drossy, delusory,
and base. God is a spirit, who is the prime being, and the
cause of all created beings : and the angels, and other celestial
inhabitants that are nearest to him, are furthest from corporeity,
and are spirits likest unto God. The further any thing is from
spirituality, the further from that excellency and perfection
which the creatures nearest God partake of; the earth is baser
than the air and fire ; the drossy flesh is baser than the soul ; and
this lumpish, dirty, visible world, is incomparably below that
spiritual world which we believe and wait for. And though thy
conceptions of spirits, and the spiritual world, are low and dark,
and much unsatisfying, remember still that thy Head is there ;
588 A TREATISE
and it belongeth to him to know what thou shalt be, till thou
art fit to know it, which will not be till thou art fit to enjoy it.
Be satisfied that thy Father is in heaven, and that thy Lord is
there; and that the Spirit that hath been so long at work within
thee, preparing thee for it, dwelleth there. And let it suffice
thee, that Christ knoweth what he will do with thee, and how
he will employ thee to all eternity. And thou shalt very shortly
see his face, and in his light thou shalt behold that light that
shall fully satisfy thee, and shame all thy present doubts and
fears ; and if there were shame in heaven, would shame thee for
them.
Use 9. From the enmity of death, and the necessity of a con-
quest, we may see what a wonderful mercy the resurrection of
Christ himself was to the church, and what use we should make
of it for the strengthening of our faith. It was not only impos-
sible to man to conquer death by his own strength, and there-
fore it must be conquered by Christ ; but it was also beyond
our power to believe it, that ever the dead should rise to life, if
Christ had not risen as the first-fruits, and convinced man, by
eyesight, or certain testimony, that the thing is possible, and
already done. But now what a pillar is here for faith : what a
word of hope and joy is this, that Christ is risen. With this we
will answer a thousand cavils of the tempter, and stop the mouth
of the enemies of our faith, and put to flight our infidelity.
As unlikely as it seems to flesh and blood, shall we ever doubt
whether we shall rise again, when the Lord came down in flesh
among us, that he might die and rise again himself, to show us
as to our faces that we shall rise ? This is the very gospel which
we preach, and by which we must be saved ; u That Christ died
for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried,
and that he rose again the third day according to the Scrip-
tures; and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve; after
that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of
whom the greater part remained alive" when Paul wrote this,
who was the last that saw him. (1 Cor. xv. 1 — 6.) Read
over this chapter again and again, where our resurrection is
proved by the resurrection of Christ.
No wonder, therefore, that the church, in all ages, ever since
the very day of Christ's resurrection, hath kept the first day of
the week as a holy festival in remembrance of it. Wherein,
though they commemorated the whole work of our redemption,
yet was it from the resurrection as the most glorious part that
OF DEATH, 589
the Spirit of Christ did choose the day. This hath been the
joyful day to the church this 1625 years, or thereabouts;
in which the ancient Christians would assemble themselves
together, saluting one another with this joyful word, " The
Lord is risen." And this is the day that the Lord hath blessed
with the new birth and resurrection of millions of souls; so that
it is most probable that all the six days of the week have not
begot half so many souls for heaven, as this blessed day of the
Lord's resurrection hath done. Let infidels, then, despise it,
that believe not Christ's resurrection ; but let it still be the
church's joyful day. This is the Lord's doing ; it is marvellous
in our eyes : this is the day which the Lord hath made, we will
rejoice and be glad in it, (Psalm cxviii. 23, 24.) In it " Let
us sing unto the Lord ; let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of
our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanks-
giving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms." (Psalm
xcv. 1, 2.) Every day let us remember the Lord's resurrec-
tion ; but on this day let the joyful commemoration of it be our
work.
We may see by the witness of the apostles, and their frequent
preaching the resurrection of Christ, as if it were the sum of
all the gospel, that this is a point that faith must especially build
and feed upon, and that we must make the matter of our most
frequent meditations. Oh, what vigour it addeth to our faith,
when we are encountered by the sight of death, and of a grave,
to remember seriously that " Christ is risen." Did he take flesh
purposely that he might die and rise, and show us how he will
raise his members ? And will he, after all this, break his pro-
mise, and leave us in the dust for ever ? It cannot be. Hath
he conquered death for himself alone, and not for us ? Hath
he taken our nature into heaven, to be there alone, and will he
not have all his members with him ? Remember, then, Christian,
when thou lookest on thy grave, that Christ was buried, and
hath made the grave a bed of rest, that shall give up her trust
when his trumpet sounds; and that his resurrection is the
pledge of ours. Keep, therefore, thy rising and glorified Lord
continually in thy eye. If Christ were not risen, our preaching
were vain, and your faith were vain, and all men were miserable,
but we most miserable that suffer so much for a life which we
had no ground to hope for. (I Cor. xv. 14, 17, 10.) But now
we have an argument that infidelity itself is ashamed to en-
counter with ; that hath been the means of the conversion of
590 A TREA'IISE
the nations unto Christ; by which we may put even death itself
to a defiance, as knowing it is now a conquered thing. If it
could have held Christ captive, it might also have held us. But
he being risen, we shall surely rise. Write it, therefore, Chris-
tians, upon your hearts ; mention it more in your conference
for the encouragement of your faith ; write it on the grave-
stones of your friends that " Christ is risen," and that
" BECAUSE HE LIVKTH, WE SHALL LIVE ALSO," and that " OUR
life is hid with Christ in God," though we are dead, and
when he shall appear who is our life, we shall also appear with
him in glory. (John xiv. 19 ; Col. iii. 3,4.) Though we must
he sown in corruption, in weakness, and dishonour, we shall be
raised in incorruption, strength, and honour. ( 1 Cor. xv. 42, 43.)
While our souls behold the Lord in glory, we may bear with
the winter that befals our flesh till the spring of resurrection
come. u Knowing that he that raised up the Lord Jesus, shall
raise up us also by Jesus — for which cause we faint not ; but
though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed
day by day — while we look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are
seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eter-
nal." (2 Cor. iv. 14, 16, 18.) As we are risen with Christ to
newness of life, so we shall rise with him to glory.
Use 10. Lastly, if death be the last enemy to be destroyed
at the resurrection, we may learn hence how earnestly be-
lievers should long and pray for the second coming of Christ,
when this full and final conquest shall be made. Death shall
do much for us, but the resurrection shall do more. Death
sends the separated soul to Christ, but at his coming both soul
and body shall be glorified. There is somewhat in death that
is penal, even to believers, but in the coming of Christ, and
their resurrection, there is nothing but glorifying grace. Death
is the effect of sin, and of the first sentence passed upon sin-
ners, but the resurrection of the just is the final destruction of
the effects of sin. .And, therefore, though the fears of death
may perplex us, methinks we should long for the coming of
Christ, there being nothing in that but what tends to the de-
liverance and glory of the saints. Whether he will come be-
fore the general resurrection, and reign on earth a thousand
years, which some expect, I shall not presume to pass my de-
termination. But sure J am, it is the work of faith, and cha-
racter of his people, to " love his appearing," (2 Tim. iv. 8,)
OF DEATH. 591
" and to wait for the Son of God from heaven, whom he. raised
from the dead, even Jesus who delivered us from the wrath to
come." (1 Thess. i. 10.) And to wait " for the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Cor. i. 7-) And to wait " for the adop-
tion, the redemption of our bodies," with inward groanings.
(Rom. viii. 23.) Oh ! therefore, let us pray more earnestly for the
coming of our Lord ! And that " the Lord would direct our
hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for
Christ." (2 Thess* iii. 5.) O blessed day, when that glorious
appearing of our Lord shall put away all his servants* shame,
and shall communicate glory to his members, even to the
bodies that had lain so long in dust, that to the eye of flesh
there seemed to be no hope. Though the majesty and glory
will cause our reverence, yet it will not be our terror, to the
diminution of our joy. It is his enemies that would not have
him rule over them, whom he cometh to destroy. (Luke xix.
2/.) " Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his
saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that
are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which
they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches
which ungodly sinners have spoken against him ;" as Enoch,
the seventh from Adam, prophesied. (Jude, verses 14, 15.)
But the precious faith of the saints shall " be found to praise,
and honour, and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ."
(1 Pet. i. 7.) " When the chief Shepherd shall appear, we shall
receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away." (1 jget. v. 4.)
He that was once offered to bear the sins of many, and now
appeareth for us in the presence of God, shall, unto them that
look for him, appear the second time, without sin, to salvation.
(Heb. ix. 24, 28.) And " when Christ, who is our life, shall
appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory." (Col. iii.
4.) The Lord shall then " come to be glorified in his saints,
and to be admired in all them that believe in that day."
(2 Thess, i. 10.) This is the day that all believers should long,
and hope, and wait for, as being the accomplishment of all the
work of their redemption, and all the desires and endeavours of
their souls. It is the hope of this day that animateth the holy
diligence of our lives, and makes us turn from the carelessness
and sensuality of the world. " For the grace of God that
bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men ; teaching us, that
denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly,
righteously, and godly in this present world : looking for that
592 A TREATISE
blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of our great God, and
our Saviour Jesus Christ." (Tit. ii. 11 — 13.) " The heavens
and the earth, which are now, by the same word, reserved unto
fire against the day of judgment, and perdition of ungodly
men." And though the Lord seem to delay, he is not slack
concerning his promise, as some men count slackness : for a
day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years
as one day. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in
the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with a
great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the
earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up.
Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what man-
ner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and god-
liness, looking for, and hasting unto, the coming of the day of
God, wherein the heavens being on fire, shall be dissolved, and
the elements shall melt with fervent heat ? Nevertheless we,
according to his promise, look for new heavens, and a new
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." (2 Pet. iii. 7 — 13.)
Beza marvelleth at Tertullian for saying that the Christians
in their holy assemblies prayed pro mora finis, (Apologet. c.
39 ;) and so he might well enough, if it were not that to Chris-
tians the glory of God is dearer than their own felicity, and the
salvation of millions more precious than the mere hastening of
their own ; and the glory of the church more desirable than our
personal glory, and the hallowing of God's name were not to
be prayed for before the coming of his kingdom, and the king-
dom of grace must not necessarily go before the kingdom of
glory. But as much as we long for the coming of our Lord,
we are content to wait till the elect be gathered ; and can pray
that he will delay it, till the universal body be made up, and all
are called that shall be glorified. But to ourselves that are
brought out of Egypt into the wilderness, how desirable is the
promised land. When we think on our own interest, we cry,
" Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly." The sooner the better.
Then shall our eyes behold him, in whom we have believed :
not as he was beheld on earth in his despised state ; but as the
glorious King of Saints, accompanied with the celestial host,
coming in flaming fire to render vengeance to the rebellious,
and rest and joy to believing souls, that waited for this day of
his appearance. Then faith and patience shall give up their
work; and sight, and fruition, and perfect love, shall everlast-
ingly succeed them. The rage of persecutors shall no more
OF DEATH. 593
affright us; the folly of the multitude shall no more annoy us; the
falseness of our seeming, selfish friends shall no more betray
us ; the pride of self-conceited men shall no more disturb us ;
the turbuleney of men distracted by ambition shall cast us no
more into confusions ; the kingdom that we shall possess shall
not be liable to mutations, nor be tossed with pride and faction
as are these below. There is no monthly (or annual) change of
governors and laws, as is in lunatic commonwealths ; but there
will be the same Lord and King, and the same laws and go-
vernment, and the same subjects and obedience, without any
mutinies, rebellions, or discontents, to all eternity. The church
of which we shall then be members, shall not be divided into
parties and factions, nor the members look strangely at each
other, because of difference of opinions, or distance of affec-
tions, as now we find it, to our daily grief, in the militant
church. We shall then need no tedious debates to reconcile
us. Unity will be then quickly and easily procured. There
will be no falling out in the presence of our Lord. There will
be none of that darkness, uncharitableness, selfishness, or pas-
sion left, that now causeth our dissensions. \Vhen we have
perfect light, and perfect love, the perfect peace will be easily
attained, which here we labour for in vain. Now there is no
peace in church or state, in cities or countries, in families, or
scarce in our own souls. But when the glorious King of Peace
hath put all his enemies under his feet, what then is left to
make disturbance ? Our enemies can injure us no more, for it
is then their portion to suffer for all their former injuries to
Christ and us : our friends will not injure us, (as here they do,)
because their corruption and weakness is put off, and the relics
of sin that caused the trouble are left behind. Oh, that is the
sight that faith prepareth for, that is the day, the blessed day,
that all our days are spent in seeking, and waiting, and pray-
ing for ; then shall the glory of holiness appear, and the wis-
dom of the saints be justified by all, that now is justified by her
children. Then it shall be known, whether faith or unbelief,
whether a heavenly or earthly mind and life was the wiser and
more justifiable course. Then shall all the world "discern be-
tween the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth
God, and him that serveth him not." (Mai. iii. 18.) Then sin
(that is now so obstinately defended and justified by such foolish
cunning) shall never more find a tongue to plead for it, or a
patron to defend it more. Then where is the man that will
vol.. xvii. Q Q
594 A TREATISE
stand forth and break a jest at godliness, or make a scorn of
the holy diligence of believers ? Jiow pale then will those
faces look that here were wont to jeer at piety ! What terror
will seize upon those hearts that here were wont to make them-
selves sport at the weaknesses of the upright servants of the
Lord ! That is the day that shall rectify all judgments, and
cure the errors and contemptuous thoughts of an holy life,
which no persuasions now can cure ; that is the day that shall
set all straight that now seems crooked ; and shall satisfy us to
the full that God was just, even when he prospered his ene-
mies, and afflicted the souls that loved him, and walked in their
integrity before him. We shall then see that which shall fully
satisfy us of the reason and equity of all our sufferings which
here we underwent ; we shall marvel no more that God lets us
weep, and groan, and pray, and turns away his face, and seems
not to regard us. We shall then find that all our groans were
heard, and all our tears and prayers did succeed, which we
suspected had been lost. We shall then find that a duty per-
formed in sincerity, through all our lives, was never lost; no,
nor a holy thought, nor a " cup of cold water," that, from holy
love, we gave to a disciple. We shall then see that our mur-
murings, and discontents, and jealous, unbelieving thoughts of
God, which sickness, or poverty, or crosses did occasion, were
all injurious to the Lord, and the fruit of infirmity ; and that
when we questioned his love on such accounts we knew not
what we said. We shall then see that death, and grave, and
devils, were all but matter for the glorifying of grace, and for
the triumph of our Lord and us.
Up, then, my soul, and shake off thy unbelief and dulness.
Look up, and long, and meet thy Lord. The more thou art
afraid of death, the more desire that blessed day, when mor-
tality shall be swallowed up of life, and the name of death shall
be terrible no more. Though death be thy enemy, there is no-
thing but friendly in the coming of thy Lord. Though death
dissolve thy nature, the resurrection shall restore k, and make
thee full reparation, with advantage.
How glad would I have been to have seen Christ but with the
wise men in the manger, or to have seen hifti disputing with the
doctors in his childhood in the temple, or to have seen him do
his miracles, or heard him preach, much more to have seen him
as the three disciples, in his transfiguration, or to have seen him
after his resurrection, and when he ascended up to heaven. But
OF DEATH. 595
how far is all this below the sight that we shall have of him
when he conies in glory; when the brightness of his shining
face shall make us think the sun was in darkness, and the glory
of his attendants shall make us think what a sordid thing, and
childish foolery was all the glory of this world. The face of
love shall be then unveiled, and ravish us into the highest love
and joy that our natures are capable of. Then doubt, and fear,
and grieve, if thou canst ! What, then, wilt thou think of all
these disquieting, distrustful thoughts that now so wrong thy
Lord and thee ? If going into the sanctuary, and foreseeing
the end, can cure our brutish misapprehensions of God's provi-
dences, (Psalm Ixxiii. 17,) how perfectly will they be cured
when we see the glorious face of Christ, and behold the new
Jerusalem in its glory, and when we are numbered with the
saints that judge the world. We shall never more be tempted,
then, to condemn the generation of the just, nor to think it
vain to serve the Lord, nor to envy the prosperity of the wicked,
nor to stagger at the promise through unbelief, nor to think
that our sickness, death, and grave, were any signs of unkind-
ness or unmercifulness in God. We shall then be convinced
that sight and flesh were unfit to censure the ways of God, or
to be our guides.
Hasten, O Lord, this blessed day ! Stay not till faith have
left the earth, and infidelity, and impiety, and tyranny have con-
quered the rest of thine inheritance ! Stay not till selfish, un-
charitable pride hath vanquished love and self-denial, and
planted its colonies of heresy, confusion, and cruelty, in thy
dominions, and earth and hell be turned into one. Stay not till
the eyes of thy servants fail, and their hearts and hopes do faint
and languish with looking and waiting for thy salvation. But
if yet the day be not at hand, oh, keep up faith, and hope, and
love, till the sun of perfect love arise, and time hath prepared
us for eternity, and grace for glory.
Q Q 2
590 A TREATISE
SOME IMITABLE PASSAGES
OF THE
Life of Elizabeth , late wife of Mr. Joseph Baker.
Though I spoke so little as was next to nothing, of our dear
deceased friend, it was not because I wanted matter, or thought
it unmeet ; but I use it but seldom, lest I raise expectations of
the like, where I cannot conscionably perform it. But he that
hath promised to honour those that serve and honour him,
(John xii. 26 ; 1 Sam. ii. 30,) and will come at last u to be glori-
fied in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe,"
(2 Thess. i. 10,) I know will take it as a great and acceptable
act of service, to proclaim the honour of his grace, and to give
his servants their due on earth, whose souls are glorified with
Christ in heaven, though serpentine enmity will repine, and
the envious accuser.
It is not the history of the life of this precious servant of the
Lord which I intend to give you, (for I was not many years ac-
quainted with her,) but only some passages, which, either upon
my certain knowledge, or her own diurnal of her course, or the
most credible testimony of her most intimate, judicious, godly
friends, I may boldly publish as true and iinitable in this unto-
ward, distempered generation.
She was born November, 1634, in Southwark, near London,
the only child of Mr. John Godcschalk, alias Godscall. Her
father dying in her childhood, she was left an orphan to the
Chamber of London. Her mother after married Mr. Isaac
Barton, with whom she had the benefit of religious education :
but between sixteen and seventeen years of age, by the serious
reading of the book called u The Saints' Everlasting Rest," she
was more thoroughly awakened, and brought to set her heart
on God, and to seek salvation with her chiefest care. From
that time forward she was a more constant, diligent, serious hearer
of the ablest ministers in London, rising early, and going far to
hear them on the week days ; waiting on God for his confirming
OF DEATH. 597
grace in the use of those ordinances, which empty, inexperienced
hypocrites are easily tempted to despise. The sermons, which
she constantly wrote,, she diligently repeated at home, for the
benefit of others ; and every week read over some of those that
she had heard long before, that the fruit of them might be re-
tained and renewed ; it being not novelty that she minded.
In the year 1654, being near one- and- twenty years of age,
after seeking God, and waiting for his resolving, satisfying
directions, she consented to be joined in marriage to Mr.
Joseph Baker, by the approbation of her nearest friends, God
having taken away her mother the year before. With him she
approved herself, indeed, such a wife as Paul (no papist) de-
scribeth as meet for a bishop or pastor of the church 3 " even
so must their wives be grave, not slanderers,- sober, faithful in
all things." (1 Tim. iii. 1 1.) Some instances I shall give for the
imitation of others.
I. She was very exemplary in self-denial and humility : and
having said thus much, what abundance have I comprehended !
Oh, what a beauty doth self-denial and humility put on souls !
Nay, what a treasure of everlasting consequence doth these
two words express ! I shall give you a few of the discoveries.
1. It appeared in her accompanying in London with the holi-
est, how mean soever, avoiding them that were proud, and
vain, and carnal. She desired most to be acquainted with those
that she perceived were best acquainted with God, neglecting
the pomp and vain-glory of the world.
2. When she was called to a married state, though her por-
tion, and other advantages, invited persons of greater estates in
the world, she chose rather to marry a minister of known in-
tegrity, that might be a near and constant guide, stay, and com-
fort to her in the matters which she valued more than riches.
And she missed not of her expectations for the few years that
she lived with him. Even in this age, when the serpent is hiss-
ing in every corner at faithful ministers, and they are contemned
both by profane and heretical malignants, she preferred a
mean life with such a one, for her spiritual safety and solace,
before the grandeur of the world.
3. When some inhabitants of the city of Worcester were
earnest with me to help them to an able minister, Mr. Baker,
then living in Kent, had about a hundred pounds per annum :
and when, at my motion, he was readily willing to take a great
charge in Worcester, upon a promise from two men to make the
598 A TREATISE
maintenance fifty pounds a year, by a voluntary contribution, of
the continuance of which he had no security, his wife was the
promoter, and no discourager, of his self-denial, and never
tempted him to look after greater things. And afterward, when
I was afraid lest the smallness and uncertainty of the means,
together with his discouragements from some of his people,
might have occasioned his remove, and have heard of richer
places mentioned to him, as he still answered that he had
enough, and minded not removing without necessity, so was she
ever of the same mind, and still seconded and confirmed him in
such resolutions, even to follow God's work while they had a
competency of their own, and to mind no more.
4. Her very speech and behaviour did so manifest meekness
and humility, that, in a little converse with her, it might easily
be discerned.
5. She thought nothing too mean for her that belonged to her
in her family and relation, no employment, food, &c, saying
often, that ' What God had made her duty was not too low a
work for her.' And, indeed, when we know once that it is a
work that God sets us upon, it signifieth much forgetfulness of
him and ourselves, if we think it too base, or think ourselves too
good to stoop to it.
6. No neighbour did seem too mean or poor for her familiar
converse, if they were but willing.
7. She had a true esteem and cheerful love for the meanest
of her husband's relations, and much rejoiced in her comfort
in his kindred, recording it among her experienced mercies.
II. She was very constant and diligent in doing her part of
family duties ; teaching all the inferiors of her family, and
labouring to season them with principles of holiness, and admo-
nishing them of their sin and danger : never failing, on the
Lord's day at night, to hear them read the Scriptures and recite
their catechisms, when public duty, and all other family duty,
was ended, and, in her husband's absence, praying with them.
How much the imitation of such examples would conduce to the
sanctifying of families is easy to be apprehended.
III. In secret duty she was very constant, and lived much in
those two great soul-auvancing works, meditation and prayer, in
which she would not admit of interruptions. This inward, holy
diligence was it that maintained spiritual life within, which is
the spring of outward acceptable works. When communion
with God, and dailo labour upon our own hearts, is laid aside, or
OF DEATH 599
negligently and remissly followed, grace languisheth first within,
and then unfruitfulness, if not disorders and scandals, appear
without.
IV. Her love to the Lord Jesus was evidenced by her great
affection to his ordinances, and ways, and servants. A very
hearty love she manifested to those on whom the image of God
did appear, even the poorest and meanest, as well as the rich or
eminent in the world. Nor did a difference in lesser matters, or
any tolerable mistakes, alienate her affections from them.
V. She was a Christian of much plainness, simplicity, and
singleness of heart. Far from a subtle, crafty, dissembling frame,
and also from loquacity, or ostentation. And the world was
very low in her eyes, to which she was long crucified, and on
which she looked as a lifeless thing. Sensuality? and pamper-
ing the flesh, she much loathed. When she was invited to feasts
she would oft complain that they occasioned a difficulty in main-
taining a sense of the presence of God, whose company in all
her company she preferred.
VI. She was a very careful esteemer and redeemer of her
time. At home in her family the works of her general and par-
ticular calling took her up. When necessary business, and
greater duties, gave way, she was seldom without a book in her
hand, or some edifying discourse in her mouth, if there were op-
portunity. And abroad she was very weary of barren companv,
that spent the time in common chat, and dry discourses.
VII. She used good company practically and profitably,
making use of what she heard for her own spiritual advantage.
When I understood, out of her diary, that she wrote down some
of my familiar discourses, with serious application to herself, it
struck exceedingly deep to my heart, how much I have sinned
all my days, since I undertook the person of a minister of Christ,
by the slightness and unprofitableness of my discourse ; and how
careful ministers should be of their words, and how deliberately,
wisely, and seriously they should speak about the things of God,
and how diligently they should take all fit opportunities to that
end, when we know not how silent hearers are affected with
what we say. For aught we know, there may be some that will
write down what we say in their books, or hearts, or both. And
God and conscience write down all.
VIII. In her course of reading she was still laying in for use
and practice. Her course was, when she read the Scriptures, to
gather out passages, and sort and refer them to their several
600 A TREATISK
uses, as some that were fit subjects for her meditations. Some
for encouragement to prayer, and other duties. Promises suited
to various conditions and wants, as her papers show.
And for other books, she would meddle with none but the
sound and practical, and had no itch after the empty books,
which make ostentation of novelty, and which opinionists are
now so taken with ; nor did she like writing or preaching in envy
and strife. And of good books she chose to read but few, and
those very often over, that all might be well digested. Which
is a course (for private Christians) that tends to avoid luxuriancy,
and make them sincere, and solid, and established.
IX. She had the great blessing of a tender conscience. She
did not slightly pass over small sins without penitent observa-
tion. Her diary records her trouble when causelessly she had
neglected any ordinance ; or was hindered by rain, or small
occasions : or if she had overslept herself, and lost a morning
exercise in London, or came too late j or if she were distracted in
secret duty. And if she missed of a fast through misinformation
and disappointments, and found not her heart duly sensible of the
loss, that also she recorded. So did she her stirrings of anger,
and her very angry looks, resolving to take more heed against
them. Though all ought not to spend so much time in writing
down their failings, yet all should watch and renew repentance.
X. She was very solicitous for the souls of her friends. As,
for instance, her brothers-in-law, over whom she exercised a
motherly care, instructing them, and watching over them, and
telling them of miscarriages, and counselling them. Causing
them to keep a constant course of reading the holy Scriptures,
and meditating on it (as far as she could) : causing them to
learn many chapters without book, and to read other good
books in season ; earnestly praying for them in particular; much
desiring one or both should be ministers : and when her father-
in-law appointed the eldest to go to France, she was much
troubled for fear of his miscarriage among strangers, especially
those of the Romish way.
XL She was a serious mourner for the sins of the time and
place she lived in.
XII. In sum, for strict, close, watchful, holy walking with
God, even her husband professeth that she was a pattern to him.
As I hinted before, she kept a daily account in writing (which is
now to be seen, from the beginning of the year 1654), especially
of these particulars :
OF DEATH. 601
1 . Of the frame of her heart in every day's duty ; in medita-
tion, prayer, hearing, reading, &c, whether lively or dull, &c.
2. Of those sins which she had especially to repent of, and
watch against.
3. Of her resolutions and promises, and how she kept them.
4. Of all special providences to herself, husband, brothers, and
others, and the improvement of them. As at the death of her son,
who died with great sighs and groans, she recorded her sense of
the special necessity of holy armour, and great preparation, for
encounter, when her turn should come to be so removed to the
everlasting habitation.
5. Of her returns of prayer, what answers, and grant of them
she found.
6. Of the state of her soul upon examination ; how she found
it, and what was the issue of her examination ; and in this it
seems she was very exact and punctual. In which, though
many times fears and doubtings did arise, yet hath she frequent
records of the discovery of evidences, and comfortable assurance
of sincerity. Sometimes when she hath heard sermons in Lon-
don, that helped her in her search, and sometimes when she had
been reading writings that tended that way, she recorded what
evidences she found, and in what degree the discovery was ; if
imperfect, resolving to take it up, and follow the search further.
And if she had much joy, she received it with jealousy, and ex-
pectation of some humbling consequent. When any grace
languished, she presently turned to some apt remedy. As, for
instance, it is one of her notes, November, 1658, C I found
thoughts of eternity slight and strange, and ordinary employ-
ments very desirable ; at which 1 read Mr. B.'s Crucifixion, and
was awakened to mortification and humiliation,' &c.
The last time that she had opportunity for this work, wa
two or three days before her delivery in childbearing, where she
finally recorded the apprehensions she had, both of her bodily
and spiritual state, in these words, ' Drawing near the time of my
delivery, 1 am fallen into such weakness that my life is in hazard.
I find some fears of death, but not very great, hoping, through
grace, 1 die in the Lord.' i only mention these hints to show
the method she used in her daily accounts. To those Christians
that have full leisure, this course is good ; but I urge it not upon
all. Those that have so great duties to take up that time, that
they cannot spare so much to record their ordinary passages,
such must remember what others record, and daily renew
602 A TREATISE
repentance for their daily failings, and record onlv the extra-
ordinary, observable, and more remarkable and memorable
passages of their lives, lest they lose time for works of greater
moment. But this excellent work of watchfulness must be per-
formed by all.
And I think it was a considerable expression of her true
wisdom, and care of her immortal soul, that when any extra-
ordinary necessity required it, and she found such doubts, as of
herself she was not able to deal with, she would go to some
able, experienced minister to open her ease, and seek as-
sistance, (as she did, more than once, to my dear and ancient
friend, Mr. Cross, who, in full age, is since gone after her to
Christ,) and, therefore, chose a minister in marriage, that he
might be a ready assistant in such cases of necessity, as well
as a continual help.
At last came that death to summon her soul away to Christ,
for which she had so seriously been preparing, and which she
oft called a ■ dark entry to her Father's palace/ After the
death of her children, when she seemed to be somewhat repaired,
after her last delivery, a violent convulsion suddenly surprised
her, which, in a few days, brought her to her end. Her under-
standing, by the fits, being at last debilitated, she finding it
somewhat hard to speak sensibly, excused it, and said, c I shall,
ere long speak another language,' which were the last words
which she spake with a tongue of flesh, and laying speechless
eighteen hours after, she departed, Aug. 17, 1659. "Blessed
are the dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth ; yea, saith
the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their
works do follow them." (Rev. xiv. 13.)
Our turn is coming. Shortly we shall also lay by flesh. This
is our day of preparation ; there is no preparing time but this.
Did men but know the difference between the death of the
holy and the unholy, which doth not appear to fleshly eyes, how
speedily would they turn ! how seriously would they meditate !
how fervently would they pray ! how carefully would they
live ! how constantly, painfully, and resolvedly would they
labour ! Did they well consider the difference between dying
prepared and unprepared, and of what difficulty, and yet ever-
lasting consequence, it is to die well ; oh ! then, what manner of
persons would men be, in all manner of holy conversation and
godliness, and all their lives would then be a continued prepara-
tion for death, as all their lives are hastening towards it.
OF DEATH. (}()3
I shall only desire you, for the r ; g i lt „ l( j erst m( i lng
»f i that I have here said, and to prevent i| le cavils of blinds 1
malice, to observe these three or four particui arSt
1. That though I knew so much of her as c as | V make^th me
believe tin re v u so sure a testimony, anq 8aw ,, ,
yet the most of this history of her life is the Cl \\
observation of such faithful witnesses as had much. \ )e i
tunity than I to know the secrets of her soul and lifo
That it is no wonder if many, that knew her, perceived
not all this by her that is here expressed ; for that: khowled
of our OUtward carriage at a distance will not tell oW? neighs
boms what we do in our closets, where God hath * .om naaded
us to shul: our door upon us, that our Father which seto^ ] n
secret, may reward us openly. And many of the most hu ni
and sincere servants of the Lord are so afraid of hypocrisy, ^ m \
hate ostentation, that their justification and glory is nlv .->
be expected from the Searcher of hearts, and a few >f tin
more intimate acquaintance; though this was not tin h
fore us, the example described being more con s.
3. That 1 over-p Ue large expressions of her eharit/.
which you may hear from the poor, and her intimate acquaint-
ani ••• have done ; that I may not grate upon the mod©
of hei ng friends, who must participate in the eo-
lations
Scripture itacii is wmieu muen in nistory, that we may have
matter of imitation before our eyes.
5. If any say that here is no mention of her faults, I answer,
Though I had acquaintance wkh her, I knew them not, nor
ever heard from any other so rauch as might enable me to
accuse her, if I were her enemy. Yet I doubt not but she was
imperfect, and had faults, though inknown to me. The ex-
ample of holiness I have briefly pi posed. They that would
see examples of iniquity, may look abroad in the world, and
find enough ; I need not be the accuser of the saints to furnish
them. And I think if they inquire hereof any thing notable,
they will be hard put to it to find enough 10 cover the accuser's
shame.
6. It is the honour of Christ anri grace in Ids mpmbpr* moro
than the honour of his servant -, that I •
/. And I would not speak " n comn n of the living
which I do of the dead, who an out h
I RBATltE OV DEATH.
if i, e j nc . lifted up with pride hereby ; unless it be
reputa*^ 011 the in{ { ' [ Christ and the gospel
01 eth me r° vindicate.
[ a m so far from lifting up one above e i ^t of
rht members ^ Christ l)y these commendations, am:
•asitiff other?' whose names I m iti< n net, that I intend I
nour of all ,n (,ne ? an ^ think th t in the substance i describe
all saints * iJ describing one. i a out a popish work, of
makim Aider of a saint, as : phoenix, or >me rare,
unusual t\^ n S' Saints with them • ! be canonized, and the
names m j! ~ m the calendar 5 and yet their blind malice tells
the vvc r ld that there are no such things as saints among irs.
| rejoice in the many that 1 have communion v ith, and the
that have lately stepped before me into n, and are
sa ft out of the reach of malice, and of sin, and all the
emies of their peace ; and have left me mourning, and yet I
mg; fearing, and yet hoping ; ar<d ; with, ome desires, look-
1 here behind ; an •.; the faster Christ calls away
1ns chosen ones, whose graces were amiable in mine eyes, the
e willing he maketh me to follow them, and to leave this
Id of darkness, confusion, wickedness, danger, vanity, and
iticn, and to meet these precious souls in life, where we
■joice that we are past this howling wilderness, and shall
for ev jord.
END OF THE SEVENTEENTH VOLUME.
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