Forty Sermons

THE PREFACE.

IN all endeavors of persuasion, the credit of the Speaker being of as great moment as the inherent truth and evidence of what is spoke, it will be reasonable that there should go along with this large collection of Sermons, some account of the Person who was the Author of them; for if it be made out, that they came from one of integrity and knowledge, who neither would deceive others, nor was likely to be deceived himself; one who practic'd what he taught, and preached to his own soul what he delivered to his Auditory, his discourses must carry with them a proportionable weight and value. That this narrative may be the more satisfactory, by being entire and particular, it shall take the Author from his infancy, and bring him to his grave, without the vain additions of flattery and ostentation, which he abhor'd while alive, and therefore needs not being dead.

He was the Son of Robert Allestree, a Gentleman of an ancient family in Darbyshire, who being decai'd in his fortune by the profuseness of his Predecessors, retained unto S ^r . Richard Newport, afterward created Lord Newport Baron of high Arcol, in the quality of his Steward; and being married, settled himself at Uppington near the Wreken in Shropshire, where Richard Allestree, the person of whom we write, was born, in March An. 1619. He being grown up to be capable of institution, was sent to a neighbouring country free Schole, and from thence to another somewhat more celebrated, at Coventree, where he remained till he became fit for the University. In the year 1636 he was brought to Oxford by his Father, and placed a Commoner in Christ-Church, having for his Tutor M ^r . Richard Busby, who since is D ^r . Busby the eminent Master of Westminster Schole, and Prebend of that Church. Six months after his settlement in the University, D ^r . Samuel Fell the Dean observing his parts and industry, made him Student of the College, which title he really answered by great and happy application to study, wherein he made remarkable emprovements; as a testimony and encouragement of which, so soon as he had taken the degree of Bachelor of Arts, he was chose Moderator in Philosophy, and had the employment renewed year by year, till the disturbances of the Kingdom interrupted the studies and repose of the University, putting them into Arms.

His Majesty in the year 1641 being by tumults driven from London, and issuing out his Commission of Aray into the several parts of the Nation, did also direct it to the University of Oxford, where it found an active and a ready obedience, as by the generality of the members of that place, so particularly by M ^r . Allestree, who engaged in the service, and continued in it till S ^r . John Biron, afterwards the Lord Biron, (who was sent with a party of horse to support and countenance the Scholars in arms there,) withdrew from thence; He after a short stay was called off to join with Prince Rupert, and by the assistance of the loial Gentlemen of Worcestershire was received into that City, where he was pressed by the Rebels forces; but the Prince came up seasonably to reinforce him, and thereupon followed the sharp fight in Poyick field near the aforesaid City, the unexpected success of which gave great consternation to the Rebels, who being Masters of the Money, Forts and Magazeens of the Kingdom, hoped to have carried all without a stroke. As many of the Scholars as could furnish themselves for a sudden march, went along with S ^r . John Biron from Oxford; the others, among whom was M ^r . Allestree, stayed behind, and returned to their Gowns and Studies.

Soon after this, the Lord Say with a party of the Rebels forces drew into Oxford, and plundered the Colleges of such plate as had not been before sent to his Majesty, making enquiry after those who had been forward to promote the King's service; on which occasion, and also a particular accident that then happened, M ^r . Allestree was called in question. The occasion was this: at Christ-Church some of the Rebels attempted to break into the Treasury, and after a days labor forced a passage into it; but met with nothing, except a single groat and a halter in the bottom of a large iron chest: enraged with that disappointment, they went to the Deanery, where having ransacked what they thought fit, they put it altogether in a chamber, locked it up, and retired to their quarters, intending the next morning to return and dispose of their prize. But when they came, they found themselves defeated, and every thing removed to their hand. Upon examination it was discovered that M ^r . Allestree had a key of the Lodgings, the Dean and his family being withdrawn, and that M ^r . Allestree 's key had been made use of in this enterprize: hereupon he was seized, and notwithstanding all the defense he could make, had been severely handled, but that the Earl of Essex called away the forces on the sudden, and so redeemed him from their fury.

In October following, the King having strengthened himself at Shrewsbury with the supplies that came from the North, and Wales, and the Loial Gentlemen of other parts of the Nation, began his march towards London, and was met by the army of the Rebels, commanded by the Earl of Essex, in Keinton field in Warwickshire, where both armies engaged: at this battle M ^r . Allestree was present; after which, understanding that the King designed immediately to march to Oxford, and make his Court at the accustomed place, the Deanery at Christ-Church, which was in part left to his care in the absence of the Dean, hasting thither he was taken Prisoner by a party from Broughton house, which was garrison'd by the Lord Say for the Parliament. His confinement here was very short, the Garrison surrendering itself to the King's forces, who summoned it in their passage.

The war being now formed, and the King being returned from the fight at Brainford, having made Oxford his head quarter, M ^r . Allestree settled himself again to his study, and in the next Spring took his degree of Master of Arts; after which he was in great hazard of his life, being seized by the pestilential disease which rag'd in the Garrison, and which was fatal to very many eminent men of all employments and conditions; and fell more severely upon him by reason of a relapse, which doubled the calamity and danger.

Having recovered a little strength, he was engaged to employ it in military service, the exigence of his Majesty's affairs calling for the aid of all his Loial Subjects, and in particular the Scholars: and accordingly a Regiment of them was raised, who served as Volunteers without any pay or reward, and performed all duties not only in the Garrison, and sallies for the defense of it in case of attacques and sieges; but were also commanded upon parties abroad, and endured the fatigue of marches, and ill treatment of mean quarters, differing in nothing from the poor mercenary Soldier, besides their civility and justice to the country people while they staid with them, and paying them at departure: things so unusual, that when at their going off from quarters they offered their Landlords money, they imagined it don in jest and abuse, and at last by finding it left with them, were convinced that it was don in earnest. In this Regiment M ^r . Allestree, though a Master of Arts and fellow of the College, thought it no disgrace to carry a musket, and perform all duties of a common Soldier, forward upon all occasions to put himself into action. And in this service he continued till the unhappy end of the war, gaining still what time was left from military duties, to the prosecution of his studies: nay joining both together, frequently holding his musket in one hand and book in the other, and making the watchings of a Soldier the lucubrations of a Student.

But then when carnal weapons proved frustrate, and Divine Providence called his servants to the more Christian exercises of prayers and tears for the defense of the King and the Church, M ^r . Allestree wholly betook himself to these, and put himself into that warfare, to which his former education had designed him: entering into Holy Orders, at a time when there was no prospect of temporal advantage; and his being in the service of God threatened no less danger, than his having been in the service of his Prince.

In that little interval of safety, which the Articles of Oxford gave, and was for some time continued, while the two factions of the Rebels were in contest who should divide the spoil of the Nation, and enjoy the price of blood; M ^r . Allestree with great sedulity addicted himself unto his studies, and became a Tutor of many young Gentlemen and other Students; which trust he discharged with great sufficiency, as he did also the office of Censor in the College: moreover he bore a part in the signal test of the Loialty of the University of Oxford, possibly the greatest that has been given by any society of men; I mean the passing of the solemn Decree and Judgment of theirs against the Covenant and Rebellion enflamed and fomented by it, performed in Convocation, when the City was held by a Garrison of the Rebels, whose swords were at the throats of those Confessors, and yet the decree was carried by a most unanimous suffrage of the whole body, there being but one dissenter in that numerous Senate, and he a person who had absented himself from the University during the war, and taken part with the Rebels.

Soon after which great performance, the Visitors of the pretended Parliament being at last come with a second Commission to kill and take possession, having lost their first by outstaying in a long prayer and sermon the time assigned for the opening of it, began their enquiry, and did it not as one would have expected from men of Zeal and Godliness, with an inspection into vice and immorality, but set their whole affair upon the short issue of submitting to the Authority of the pretended Parliament; and they who could prostitute their allegiance to their Prince, and oaths to the University, and their local Visitors, and comply with the lust of these Usurpers, though never so flagitious, were immediately received to favor: all others, however meriting, were without farther regard proscrib'd, the method whereof was, to write the names of as many as they thought fit to sacrifice at once in paper, and affix it upon the door of St. Mary's Church, wherein 'twas signified, that the persons there named were by the Authority of the Visitors banished the University, and required to depart the precincts thereof within three days, upon pain of being taken for spies of war, and accordingly proceeded against. By which practice often repeated, the men of greatest hopes and merit in the University were spoiled of all things, and not suffered to breath the common air; so that within the compass of few weeks an almost general riddance was made of the loial University of Oxford; in whose room succeeded an illiterate rabble, swept up from the plough tail, from shops and grammar Schools, and the dregs of the neighbor University. Tho in that scandalous number, some few there were, who notwithstanding they had parts and learning, were preferred upon the account of their Relations; who merited a better title to the places they possessed, and have since proved useful men in the Church and State. Those of the ancient stock who were spared upon this trial, were afterwards cast off upon the second test of the engagement, till in the end there were left very few legitimate members in any of the Colleges.

In this diffusive ruin M ^r . Allestree had an early share, being proscrib'd about the middle of July in the year 1648. And though he had the care of several persons of quality his Pupils, and accounts of his own and theirs to make up; he with difficulty obtained from the Governor of the town Lieut. Coll. Kelsey a little respite, for his settling his affairs, and doing justice to those for whom he was concerned; the Visitors utterly refusing his request, for this reason, as D ^r . Rogers, one of their number was pleased to word it, because he was an eminent man.

M ^r . Allestree being thus driven from Oxford, retired into Shropshire, and was entertained as Chaplain to the Honorable Francis Newport Esquire, now Viscount Newport, where he continued till such time as Richard Lord Newport the father died in France, whither he had some time before retired to avoid the insolence of the conquering Rebels. On this occasion M ^r . Allestree was sent over to clear accounts, and see if anything could be preserved from the inhospitable pretence of the droit d'Aubeine, which pillages those Strangers who happen to die in the French Dominions. M ^r . Allestree having dispatched this affair with good success, came back to his employment, and continued in it till his Majesty's march into England with the Scotch Army, and his miraculous escape at Worcester; at which time the Managers of the King's affairs wanting an intelligent and faithful person to send over to his Majesty, desired M ^r . Allestree to undertake the journey, which accordingly he did, and having attended the King at Roan and received his dispatches, he came back into England.

At his return he found his friends M ^r . Dolben and M ^r . Fell, the present Archbishop of York and Bishop of Oxford, who had likewise been banished the University, adventuring to sojourn privately there, and serve the uses of those who adhered to the Church of England in performing Religious offices according to the order of the Church; whereupon he joined himself to their assistance, and continued with them till such time as S ^r . Antony Cope a loial young Gentleman of considerable quality and fortune in the County of Oxford, prevailed upon him to live in his family; which he did for several years, having liberty to go or stay as his occasions required, whereby he was enabled to step aside without notice upon messages from the King's friends; which service he managed with great courage and dexterity.

After several difficult journeys successfully performed, in the Winter before his Majesty's happy restauration he was sent over into Flanders, from whence returning with letters, he upon his landing at Dover, was seized by a party of Soldiers, who waited for him. The Rebel's Spie, who was employed by them in his Majesty's Court, having given notice of his dispatch; and described particularly his person and his habit. But notwithstanding this diligence of the Rebels, M ^r . Allestree had so much presence of mind, to secure his letters, and shift them into a faithful hand, who took care of them.

The Soldiers according to their orders guarded him to London, where he was examined by a Committee of the Council of Safety, and charged with having correspondence with the King, and having brought letters from him, which they backed with several circumstances of his journey, and threats of utmost severity in case he should persist in contumacy, and not confess the truth. But they not being able by questions to entrap, nor menaces to fright M ^r . Allestree to betray either himself or others, he was sent Prisoner to Lambeth house, which was then made a goal for the King's friends, where by ill usage he contracted a sickness which was like to have cost him his life. After the durance of about six or eight weeks, his friends made means for his enlargement, which was the easier obtained, for that some of the Leaders of the Party, seeing things move towards his Majesty's restoration, were willing by kindnesses to recommend themselves in case of a revolution; among whom was the late Earl of Shaftsbury, who was used to value himself, that M ^r . Allestree owed his preservation to him. M ^r . Allestree having obtained liberty, returned to Oxfordshire, from whence after a short stay he went into Shropshire to see his Relations; in his return from thence designing in his way to visit his excellent friend D ^r . Hammond at Westwood near Worcester, he at the gate met the body of that great man carrying to his burial; which circumstance is therefore mentioned, because that eminent Light of the English Church, at his death gave this testimony not only of his kindness to M ^r . Allestree, but also of his esteem of his parts and learning, that he left to him his Library of books as a Legacy, well knowing that in his hands they would be useful weapons for the defense of that cause he had during life so vigorously asserted.

The King being happily returned, M ^r . Allestree was soon after made Canon of Christ-Church, where he cheerfully concur'd to the attempt, which was set on foot there for the repairing of those decays and ruins which had been made by the late Usurpers; for however those Godly Robbers who had invaded that Church and College, suffered them both almost to drop upon their heads, and without shame sawed down for firing the timber work of the North side of the great Quadrangle: the legitimate Children were concerned first to cloth their Mother's nakedness, and not till that was provided for, consider their own.

M ^r . Allestree at the same time undertook one of the Lectures of the City, thinking it might be a service to instill principles of Loialty there after the contrary infusions of schismatical rebel Teachers, which for so many years had been the Gospel of that place, discountenanc'd by none of the Parochial Ministers, besides M ^r . Lamplugh the now Reverend Bishop of Exeter, who had the courage and loialty there to own the Doctrines of the Church of England in the worst of times. This Lecture M ^r . Allestree continued for several years, never receiving any part of the Salary belonging to it, but ordering that it should be distributed among the poor.

While he employed himself in popular preaching, he was also called to the service of the Court being the King's Chaplain, and also to the severer studies of Scholastical Learning, in his exercise for the degree of Doctor, and Moderator-ship in Divinity in the College; and soon after upon the vacancy of the chair of that faculty, to the laborious employment of Regius Professor in the University.

In the year 1665 the Provost-ship of Eton falling void, that honorable and beneficial employment was by his Majesty's especial grace and favor confer'd upon him, to the acceptance whereof he was not without difficulty induced; and particularly the consideration that a great interest was made by a Lay man, who probably might succeed upon the advantage of his refusal, notwithstanding that the Provost there be actually the Parson of Eton Parish, and presented to the Cure, and instituted by the Bishop of Lincoln the Diocesan, as all other parish Priests are: so that as nothing could be more plainly sacrilegious and irregular in itself, than such an usurpation by a Lay person; so nothing could be a greater disservice to the Church, than by an unseasonable modesty to make way for it. Upon these motives it was, that D ^r . Allestree became Provost of Eton; and for the same reason it was, that during his life he continued so, never hearkening to any offer of preferment, which might make a vacancy, and repeat the former hazar • d. And it may be truly said that this was the greatest secular care that he carried with him into another world, it being his dying request unto his friends, to interpose with his sacred Majesty, that he might have a Successor lawfully capable, and who would promote the welfare of the College.

The Succession in the Chair he more timely secured, for finding his health, and particularly his eye sight exceedingly empair'd by the toil of that employment, he resigned it in the year 1679, and had the satisfaction to be succeeded by his friend D ^r . Jane, of whose abilities he had perfect knowledge.

But diseases are not cured by the removal of the causes which first occasioned them, and though by the use of mineral waters in the Summer season, and the taking of journeys in the Autumn, he for some time supported himself, the decay continued and encreast upon him, till it was formed into a Dropsy; the prevalence of which was so great and sudden, that his Physicians advised him by all means to come up to London, where he might be near their inspection and care; in compliance with whose desires more than from an expectation of cure, he went thither, and having taken a private lodging, submitted himself to the methods they proposed: in the mean time settling his little temporal concerns; but was more intent upon his everlasting interests, employing those vacancies which his sickness gave, in attending the offices of the Church constantly read to him, and his private devotions; and when he saw his end approaching, in receiving the great Viaticum of the holy Sacrament: in reference whereto having desired those friends of his who happened to be in Town to communicate with him, the present Lord Archishop of York, the Lord Bishop of London, the Lord Bishop of Lincoln, the Lord Bishop of Exeter, the Lord Bishop of St. Asaph, the Reverend D ^r . Busby, M ^r . Fell one of the Fellows of Eton who continued with him the whole time of his sickness: he afterwards took his last leave of them with great equanimity and constancy of mind, and waited for the hour of his release.

Having hitherto drawn together the series of actions and employments which made up our Authors life, it will not be amiss to set him in another light, and take a prospect of his mind and personal qualifications. As to his bodily appearance and outward features, as they are of less importance, so are they in recent memory, and by sculpture and other delineations are so generally known, that there will be no need they should be expressed by words.

His mind, that nobler part of him, was composed by an extraordinary indulgence of nature, those faculties which in others use to be single, and are thought necessarily to be so, as excluding each the other, were united in him. Memory, Phancy, Judgment, Elocution, great Modesty and no less Assurance, a comprehension of things, and fluency of words; an aptness for the pleasant, and sufficiency for the rugged parts of knowledge; a courage to encounter, and an industry to master all things, make up the Character of his happy genius. Which felicity of temper was seconded by the circumstances of the times in which he lived, which engaged him severally to exert and cultivate his faculties. Before the national calamity of the civil war, he had secured the foundations of the whole circle of learning, by his own indefatigable study, as also the indulgent care of his Tutor D ^r . Busby, than whom no person is more happy in the Arts of transfusing his knowledge into others; and the particular encouragement of D ^r Fell the Dean, who always looked upon him as a part of his family, and treated him with the same concern as his own children.

When the war broke out, he had the benefit of being, instead of one, in several Universities; Oxford was then an Epitome of the whole Nation, and all the business of it: there was here the Court, the Garrison, the Flower of the Nobility and Gentry, Lawyers and Divines of all England. And times of action have somewhat peculiar in them to ferment and envigorat the mind, which is enervated by the softness of peace. The calamitous times which succeeded, as they engaged him to the exercise of popular preaching, a talent which nothing besides necessity and practice can cultivate; so they led him out into foreign parts, entered him into the managery of business of greatest trust and hazard, and made him as well read in Men, as in Books. After all this, it was no small advantage to be returned by the King's happy restauration to the University, and to the opportunities of reading and conversation with learned men, and in that conspicuous Theater, to have the obligation of a public employment to exert all his faculties, and with utmost endeavor to improve and communicate his knowledge. And we may say it without envy, that few of his time had either a greater compass, or a deeper insight into all the parts of Learning; the modern and learned Languages, Rhetoric, Philosophy, Mathematics, History, Antiquity, Moral and Polemical Divinity, all which was not to be pumpt up, or ransacked out of common place books; but was ready at hand, digested for his own use, and communication in discourse to others.

From his first child-hood he had a strong impression of Piety, and the Duties owed to God and Men, which next to Divine Grace may be ascribed to the strict and severe education which he had from his Father; a blessing that cannot be sufficiently valued, and on which he often reflected with a great sense of gratitude. Hereby notwithstanding the license of war, and incitations of youth, he preserved his innocence, and love of God and virtue, till he made the more immediate service of them his profession. In his constitution he had a great deal of warmth and vigor, which made him apt to take fire upon provocation; but he was well aware of it, and kept a peculiar guard upon that weak part: so that his heat was reserved for the great concerns of the honor of God, and the service of his Prince and Country, wherein he was altogether indefatigable, and in the most dismal appearances of affairs would never desert them, nor despair of their restauration. There was not in the world a man of clearer Honesty and Courage; no temptation could bribe him to do a base thing, or terror affright him from the doing of a good one.

This made his friendships as lasting and inviolable as his life, without the dirty considerations of profit, or sly reserves of craft; not the pageantry of ceremonious address, or cold civility: much less the servile falseness of obsequious flattery. It was a solid and masculine kindness, a perfect coalition of affections and minds: so that there was nothing he possessed, but it was his friend's as absolutely as it was his own; and it became a general observation, that he and they had all things in common.

This temper of his directed him to live with great kindness with his Neighbors and acquaintance, so that Eton College, while he lived there, was but one family, his lodging being every Fellow's chamber, and they as much at home with him as in their own apartment: And in the University, though his station and parts might object him to envy, he had no competition or difference with any person; so that no man ever lived with a more universal good will of all that knew him, or died with a more general sorrow at his loss.

His conversation was always cheerful and entertaining, especially in the reception of his acquaintance at his table, and friendly visits; and in the evening after he had wearied himself with the studies of the day, which he generally continued till eight of the clock at night, during the many years he held the Chair, soon after which he was to be called away to the night prayers of the College; this short interval he made as easy as he could to himself and those that were with him: and he had great reason to relax his mind at this time with a little cheerful discourse, there being no person who more literally verified the saying of the wise Man, that much study was a weariness to the flesh. After his days work he was used to be as faint and spent, as if he had been laboring all the time with the sithe or flail; and his intention of thought made such wast upon his spirits, that he was frequently in hazard, while at study, to fall into a swoun, and forced to rise from his seat, and walk about his room for some time, before he could recover himself.

To render secure from the inordination of intemperance, he frequently abstained from lawful satisfactions, by the stated returns of fasting and abstinence; and continuance in celibacy during his whole life. Nor had his singular abilities and endowments the usual effect to make him proud and contemtuous; all his discourses were with deference and respect, and were spoke with weight becoming a Professor, but the softness of a Learner.

In his conversation he was exceedingly tender of saying any thing that might administer offense, or reflect upon any ones reputation; and most ready, in case of resentment, to give the person aggriev'd, whoever he happened to be, the utmost satisfaction. A remarkable proof hereof is his dealing with one who had taken part with the Rebels in the late war, and who was said to have don an act of cruelty therein, which D ^r . Allestree in a private discourse had chanced to mention. The party concerned hearing hereof, wrote to the Doctor, professing his innocence, and charging him with uncharitableness in believing, and injustice in reporting such an untruth. Hereupon, notwithstanding that the matter of fact had for about thirty years gone on as common fame, and also had been charged in print, and that collateral evidence by a person now alive and a sufferer from the same hand, had been produced to enforce the probability, and that here nothing was asserted but on the credit of what had been formerly heard; yet D ^r . Allestree by letter desired the said Complainant's pardon: who, without regard to the laws of civility, printed it as a vindication of his innocence, when indeed it was rather a proof of the Doctor's candor, and an evidence that the Complainant wanted better arguments for his defense. But it were to be wisht that they who were in their youth so unhappy to be engaged in an ill cause, would spend their old age, which God's and the King's mercy has given them, rather in repenting of what they have don amiss, than in contesting what they have not don; and would more busy themselves in humble retractations, than passionate Apologies.

His contempt of the world was very extraordinary, as in his large and constant charities, both by settled Pensions to indigent persons and families, and occasional Alms; so also his bounteous hospitality, which will need no attestation, being performed in so conspicuous a Scene as Eton, and in the view of Windsor, which for several years his Majesty has favored with his Court and Presence. Yet a higher instance hereof will be his giving away a fixed and constant revenue that he might have fairly retained, to the value of above three hundred pounds by the year; the particulars whereof are thus.

At his Majesty's return, as we have intimated, he was made Canon of Christ-Church in Oxford, and soon after King's Professor in the Chair of Divinity, to which employment a Canonry in the said Church, and the Rectory of Ewe Elm in the said County and Diocese are annexed, so that the profit of two Canonries and the Rectory belonged to him, and being earn'd with the labor of that weighty charge, no one who made a just estimate of things, would have envied it to him; but he regretted it to himself, and for several years gave the whole profit of one of his Canonries to the repairs of the College: and afterwards being moved by the right reverend Father in God the Lord Bishop of Winchester, in the behalf of an ancient Student of the College, who was destitute of a suitable support, he entirely quitted the advantage of the aforesaid Canonry to him. And as to the Living, he never received a penny from it, but left it to a friend, whose circumstances required such an accession.

The revenue of Eton had a suitable disposal, the west side of the outward court of the College being built from the ground and finished at his single expense. And whereas at his coming to Eton, he found the Society dipt in a great debt, by an ill custom brought in by the pretended godly men of the late times, who at the year's end divided what ever money remained after the ordinary payments were discharged, incidental ones and debts contracted being still thrown off to the future year; which in time grew to a bulk, that endangered the College's becoming bankrupt. To remedy this he by an exemplary retrenchment of his own dues, prevailed on the Society to do the like, so that within few years the College has paid above a thousand pound debt, expended above two thousand pound in repairs, and every day goes on to do things honorable and beneficial to the Society.

It may not here be omitted, though it be an instance of lesser moment, that the Edition of the first Volume of these Sermons was entirely upon an account of Charity. For his ingenious Kinsman M ^r . James Allestree the Book-seller, from a plentiful fortune being by the fire of London reduced to great poverty, D ^r . Allestree, besides other assistances, bestowed upon him the copies of eighteen of his Sermons, to make some reparation to his losses.

But the uncontrollable proof of contempt of the world, is the dying poor, and not to have collected anything against the hazards of fortune, and commonly pretended exigencies of old age and sickness; which was in a remarkable manner D ^r . Allestree 's case, he having never during his life purchased an inch of ground, nor any annuity or lease to the value of a penny; nor did he take care to renew the patrimonial estate which he held by a lease for life, though it were the place of his birth, which generally gives an endearment, and a desire to continue the possession. Thereby, as the Author to the Hebrews expresses it, sojourning in the earth as in a strange country, and showing plainly that he looked for a better one, and a city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God.

His greatest treasure was his Library, which was indeed a considerable one, both for the number of Books and choice of them; but these he disposed of by deed before his death to the University of Oxford for the use of his Successors in the Chair. So that his Executors had only his personal estate to share among them, which he took to be so inconsiderable, that he thought it not worth the formality of a Will; but designing, after the distributing some little remembrances among his friends, that small pittance which remained to his Relations, conceived that the Law by an Administration would of course divide it among them. But being told by his Friend, to whom he communicated this purpose of his, that in this malicious world the dying intestate would be a thing of ill fame, and interpreted the product of an unwillingness to think of death, or part with what he had: and that what he so left would come less obligingly to his Relations, and probably would occasion contention among them: he took the advice, and by Will disposed of such Legacies as he thought fit to leave to the poor and to his friends, and gave the remainder among his sisters and their children.

Tho he hung thus loose from the world, he neither was negligent in secular affairs, nor unskillful in the managery of them; which was made manifest by his dextrous discharge of the private trusts committed to him in behalf of his dead friends, and the administration of his public employments. He was for several years Tresurer of Christ-Church, in a busy time of their repairing of the ruins made by the entruding Usurpers; and amidst the necessary avocations of study, found leisure for a full discharge of that troublesome employment.

The College of Eton, as I intimated before, he found in a very ill condition as to its revenue and fabric, and what was no less a mischief, unstatutable and unreasonable grants of Leases; to all which, excepting one, whose reduction must be the work of time, he applied effectual remedies. The Schole he found in a low condition, but by his prudence in the choice of a learned, discreet and diligent Master; by his interest, in bringing young Gentlemen and Persons of Quality thither, and by his great kindness to them when there; and taking care for the building fit accommodation for their reception within the precincts of the College, in few years the Schole grew into that great reputation and credit which it yet maintains.

And here we may not pass by another considerable service don in behalf of the said Schole, and also King's College in Cambridge, whose Seminary it is: that whereas both those Societies were formerly under the discouragement, that the Fellowships of Eton were generally disposed of to persons of foreign education; by the vigorous interposition of D ^r . Allestree added to the petition of the Provost and Fellows of King's College, his sacred Majesty was pleased to pass a grant under the broad Seal, that in all future times five of the seven Fellows should be such as had been bred in Eton Schole, and were Fellows of King's College, which has ever since took place, and will be a perpetual incitement to diligent study, and virtuous endeavor in both those royal foundations.

In the managery of the business of the Chair of Divinity, as he performed the Scholastic part with great sufficiency in exact and dextrous untying the knots of argument, and solid determination of controverted points, so that he was not oppressed by the fame of any of his most eminent Predecessors: his prudence was very remarkable in the choice of subjects to be treated on; for he wasted not time and opportunity in the barren insignificant parts of Schole Divinity, but insisted on the fundamental grounds of controversy, between the Church of England, and the most formidable Enemies thereof. With an equal steddiness he asserted the Gospel truth, against the usurpations of Rome, the innovations of Geneva, the blasphemies of Cracow, and the monsters of our own Malmesbury, never intermeddling with the un • athomable abyss of God's decrees, the indeterminable five points; which in all times and in all countries wherever they have happened to be debated, past from the Schools to the State, and shock'd the government and public peace. By his judicious care herein, though he found the University in a ferment, and a great part of its growing hopes sufficiently seasoned with ill prepossessions, he so brought it to pass, that during the whole tract of seventeen years that he held the Chair, there was no factious bandying of opinions, nor petulant sidings on the account of them; which thing disturbed the peace of the last age, and helped forward to inflame those animosities, which ended in the execrable mischiefs of the civil war.

There is nothing at this day which learned men more desire or call for, than the publishing of those Lectures, which were heard, when first read, with the greatest satisfaction of the Auditory; it may therefore be fit to give some account of the reason why those expectations are defeated, which in short is this. D ^r . Allestree a little before his death having communicated to the Bishop of Oxford several particulars concerning his intentions for the disposal of his goods and papers, the Bishop observed that there was no mention made of his Lectures, and knowing how his modesty had during his life resisted all importunities for the publishing of them, suspected that the same motive might be more prevalent at his death; therefore he wrote to him thereupon, desiring him that his Lectures might be preserved, which had cost him so much study and labor, and would be useful proportionably to others. His answer by letter bearing date Jan. 19. 1680. was, that having not had opportunity to revise what he had written, which was not everywhere consistent with his present imaginations, though in nothing material, yet in some particulars which he should have better examined; especially diverse of the Act Lectures, which being upon the same head, the thread of them was not right nor didactical, and Nectarius 's Penitentiary not expounded the same way in one place as in another, and the first blundering and not true: therefore he adds, that if the Bishop had not writ, and for that he himself would not go out of the world without satisfying him in every thing, he had resolved to have sent for his papers and burnt them; but now he gave them up all to the Bishop upon this inviolable trust, that nothing of them should be published as a Scheme of his, but to be made use of to serve any other design the Bishop should think fit. D ^r . Allestree 's words are here transcribed, for that the plainest account of things is always the most satisfactory.

His Sermons not lying under the same interdict, so many of them as were thought needful to make up a Volume, are here published. The variety of Auditors for whom they were first designed, makes them not to be all of the same finess of spinning and closeness of texture: but in them all there will appear the same spirit of persuasive Rhetoric and ardent piety, whereby though dead he yet speaketh.

Upon the 28th. day of January in the year 1680. this excellent person after a life spent in indefatigable studies, and faithful endeavors for his Religion, his King and Country, and after the patient sufferance of a long and painful sickness, with Christian resignation and full assurance, rendered his soul into the hands of God; and on the first of February was decently interred in the Chore of the Collegiat Church at Eton, where his Executors erected to his memory a Monument of white Marble with the following inscription.

TABLE of the First VOLUME.

• 
  1 Pet. 4. 1. He that hath suffered in the flesh, hath ceased from sin. Pag. 1.
• 
  Psalm 7 • . 1. Truly God is loving to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. 15.
• 
  Levite. 16. 31. Ye shall afflict your soul by a statute forever. 29.
• 
  John 15. 14. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. 43.
• 
  Ezek. 33. 2. Why will ye die? 57.
• 
  Psalm 73. 25. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee. 69.
• 
  Mark 1. 3. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. 81.
• 
  1 John 5. 4. This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. 95.
• 
  Gal. 2. 20. I am crucified with Christ. 109.
• 
  Luke 9. 55. Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. 123.
• 
  Luke 16. 30, 31.

  Nay, father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.

  And he said unto him, if they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. 137.

• 
  Luke 2. 34. Behold this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be spoken against. Pag. 151.
• 
  James 4. 7. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. 165.
• 
  Phil. 3. 18. 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. 181.
• 
  Mark 10. 15. Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. 195.
• 
  Acts 13. 2. The Holy Ghost said, separate me Barnabas and Saul, for the work whereunto I have called them. 209.
• 
  Hos. 3. 9. Afterwards shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and shall fear the Lord and his goodness. 227.
• 
  Matt. 5. 44. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. 243.

TABLE of the Second VOLUME.

• 
  2 Tim. 3. 15. And that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, thro faith which is in Christ Jesus. Pag. 1.
• 
  Rom. 6. 3. Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death? 21.
• 
  Matt. 9. 13. Go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. Pag. 36.
• 
  Psalm 102. 13, 14.

  Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion, for the time to favor her, yea the set time is come.

  For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favor the dust thereof. 50.

• 
  Acts 24. 16. And herein I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offense, towards God and towards man. 65.
• 
  Matt. 5. 4. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. 79.
• 
  1 John 3. 3. Every man that has this hope in him, purifies himself as he is pure. 93.
• 
  Isaiah 26. 20. Come my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee, hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. 107.
• 
  Matt. 11. 28. Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 118.
• 
  1 Cor. 15. 57. Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory thro our Lord Jesus Christ. 133.
• 
  Psalm 17. 15. As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied when, I awake, with thy likeness. 143.
• 
  John 20. 28. My Lord, and my God. 157.
• 
  Mark 9. 24. Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief. 170.
• 
  Matt. 5. 16. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your father which is in heaven. 191.
• 
  2 Cor. 6. 2. Behold now is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation. 201.
• 
  2 Tim. 1. 12. I know whom I have believed. 215.
• 
  Luke 16. 8. The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. 230.
• 
  Matt. 6. 22, 23.

  The light of the body is the eye, if therefore thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

  But if thy eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness; if therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness? 247.

• Serm. 2. 261.
• Serm. 3. 272.
• Serm. 4. 284.
• Serm. 5. 296.

THE Divine Authority AND USEFULNESS OF THE Holy Scripture ASSERTED IN A SERMON

THE words are part of St. Paul's reasoning, by which he presseth Timothy to hold fast the truth he had received, and not let evil men, seducers, work him out of what he had been taught: urging to this end both the authority of the Teacher himself, who had secured the truth of his doctrine by infallible evidence; and beyond that, as if that were a more effectual enforcement, pressing him with his own education in the Scriptures; how he had been nursed up in that faith, sucked the Religion with his milk, that it was grown the very habit of his mind, that which would strengthen him into a perfect man in Christ, and make him wise unto salvation if he did continue in the faith and practice of it; which he proves in the remaining verses of the Chapter.

In the words read there are three things observable.

1. Here is a state supposed, Salvation; and put too as of such concernment, that attaining it is looked upon as wisdom; wise unto salvation.

Now since true wisdom must express itself both in the end that it proposeth, and the means it chooseth for that end to be pursued with and attained by, and take care both these have all conditions that can justify the undertaking, and secure the prudence of it, and this wisdom to salvation therefore must suppose both the • e; in order to them both we have here

2. That which with all divine advantage does propose this end, and also does prescribe most perfect means for the attaining it; and that is Holy Scripture through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Thou hast known the holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Holy Scripture probably of the Old Testament; for there was hardly any other Timothy could know from a child, scarce any other being written then. The faith of that then through the faith which is in Christ Jesus, that is, together with the faith of all things necessary to be known concerning Christ, is meant. Now since St. John, after the view of all that the other three Evangelists had wrote concerning Christ, adding his story also says, that Christ did and spoke more than what is written, yet affirms most positively that those things were written that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing might have life through his name; and so enough is written for that faith which is in Jesus that is necessary to eternal life: therefore the Holy Scripture of the Old Testament, together with the faith of what is written in the New, is that which St. Paul affirms is able to make us wise unto Salvation.

3. Here is the advantage Timothy had above others as to Faith in these, and consequently the far greater obligation to continue in it. He had known them from a child. And that from a child thou hast known the holy Scripture, &c.

The first thing that doth offer itself to our consideration is the state supposed, Salvation. But because my Text supposes it, I shall do so too, nor shall think it needful to prove here, that there is such a state, nor consequently that all those are stupid who propose not to themselves this everlasting safety for their main end, and by strict care in the duties of Religion and God's service aim at it: for if that state be granted, nay if it be but possible, it must be granted, that there can be no security but in doing so, nor consequently any wisdom without being wise thus unto salvation.

But then if this were granted, that the wisest thing man could propose to himself, were by strict care in all the duties of Religion to design God's honor and his own salvation; still, as to the other part of prudence which consists in the choice of means, we are to seek for that Religion we are to pursue this end by and attain it; since there are so many and so opposite Religions in the world, that tis not easier to reconcile them, then to make peace between enemies and contradictions. And it always was so; for excepting that mankind agreed still in the notion of the necessity of Religion, that all had apprehensions of invisible powers above us, and differed not much in the rules of Justice and Morality, in other things there was no nearness. Almost from the beginning there was more variety of God's then Nations, I had almost said then Worshippers. Beasts were their sacrifices and their Deities, and therefore their Votaries were certainly no better. Vices also were their worships; things which their Cities and their Camps would not endure, found Sanctuary in their Temples; and the actions which were whipt in the Judgment-hall, were their piety in the holy places. And though some wise men among them found good reason to decry this, yet they knew not what to take up in the stead. I need not add the present differences of the world, even that called Christian too, great part of which as heretofore they sealed their faith with their own blood, now seal it in the blood of all that differ from them; and by their persecutions hope to merit Heaven more, then those did hope to gain it by their Martyrdoms. But these I need not add to make up this into a demonstration, that it is impossible for lapsed men, so far as they are left to themselves, and have no other guide to follow but their reason, to find out what they are to believe of God, and how to serve him, and save themselves. The Fathers and Philosophers too, conclude that we can learn from none but God, what we must understand of God; who must be known only as he himself is pleased to revele himself. His worship also, how he will be served, and what observances he does require, or will admit, since it depends on his own good pleasure, therefore without his directions tis in vain to hope to please him with our Religious service whatever it be, and by consequence impossible without his guidance and assistance to acquire the end of all our Service and Religion, the salvation of our souls. So that how wise soever he be who does propose this blessed end to himself, if yet withal he be not some way from the Lord instructed by what means he must pursue that end, and do not make choice of, and use those means, it is impossible he can be wise unto salvation. Now for this St. Paul assures us most expressly, here we may be furnished: For he says, The Holy Scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. And he does assert this on the very ground we mentioned, for they are 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , inspired by God; they come from him. All which must be made out in the next place.

That those Holy Scriptures which St. Paul first mentions, those of the Old Testament were so, and did contain sufficient revelation both of God, and of the way of worship of the Jews, that Nation did so perfectly believe, that neither Sufferings nor Miracles could persuade the contrary; neither the Roman persecutors that destroyed their worship, nor the Son of God that changed it, could yet take them off from Moses and his Scriptures. Now that this Moses led that Nation out of Egypt with an high hand, and made himself their Prince and Law-giver, multitudes of foreign Histories of the first times, and the best account assure us: whose relations we cannot question as derived from themselves, because they hated Jews beyond all possibility of such compliance. But the Scriptures also tell us, how in Egypt by strange wonders, (such as their Magicians could not imitate nor bear, who though they had permission to do some, it was that so they might appear to be outdon the more miraculously, themselves confessing God's hand in those prodigies) Moses wrought on the Egyptians to give leave the people should depart: and how when yet notwithstanding that leave given they were pursued, he made way for them through the Sea by Miracles, which was a rampart and defense to them, a ruin to their enemies: How they were fed for forty years with Manna raining down from Heaven in the wilderness: and that they might depend on Providence for their daily provision, when he forbad them to take care or gather for the morrow, whatsoever their greediness or want of faith provided, strait bred worms and stank, except that on the Sabbath eve, to keep off such cares from the day of their Religion, they gathered double which corrupted not: How when they mutined for flesh, would have variety, Paradise in the desert, such great plenty of Quails flew to them as fed the whole Nation till their very lust was surfeited; and they had no more will then hunger to them; How Moses Rod did strike a living stream, a River that suffic'd that people and their cattle out of a Rock: How in the midst of lightning and thunder God himself promulgated his Law to the whole Nation audibly at once: How his glorious presence showed itself in all necessities upon the Ark, in which the Tables of the Law were laid up: How the waters of the river Jordan fled from that Ark both ways, flowed upwards to give passage to the people into Canaan: How the walls of Jericho without any other battery, any other force but that the Ark was there, fell down before it.

But to name no more, If these be true; that power by which these were wrought, was great enough to give that Law, require obedience to it, and reward it, and to punish all transgression according to the tenor of these Scriptures: that is, it was God; and he that wrote those Scriptures must have had communication with, and been inspired from, God to write them. But,

2. whether they were true or no according as they are recorded in those Scriptures, that whole people from the greatest almost to the least must know; because they are recorded as all don, not only in the presence of them all, but as the objects and the entertainments of their senses, everyone; so that if they were forged, not one of the whole Nation could be ignorant of it. And then,

3. If they knew them forged all; that 600000. men, besides their wives and families, should endure this Moses, having brought them forth only into a wilderness, there to lay such a heavy Law, and so severe a yoke upon them, with such penalties annexed to every least transgression, and adjure them to observe it on account of all those prodigies that had been wrought among them, and upbraid them with stiffneckedness, rebellion, and appeal to their own senses for the truth of all this, and record all to posterity in this Scripture, cause all to be read before them; and that they should bear all this from him they knew so impudent a deceiver, and convey that Scripture and the faith of it to their posterity, ground their so strict, so chargeable Religion on that book, which they were certain had no word of truth in it: this sure transcends belief and possibility.

It is certain therefore, since the Jews of that age did perform the services required, and in performing them according as that book directs, did teach their children the great works that God had don in their sight, therefore they believed those Miracles and Scriptures. And since it was impossible that they should be deceived; if they believed them, they were true: & their posterity received from them the faith of this, and so derived it on, that neither God's dread judgments, nor man's cruelty can yet shake it. Now had they not been don, and on that account conveyed; when ever they were broached, and that book first appeared, the men of that age must needs know their Fathers never had performed such services, had such a book read to them constantly, nor told them of such Miracles that had been wrought: and therefore it was impossible that they could have believed it had been so from Moses, if it had been true that it had first begun to be taught in their own time, or in theirs with whom they lived. And this discourse must be of force concerning every age, if we ascend until we come to that of Moses wherein all was effected. Yet besides this, they had also that perpetual Miracle in the High Priests Pectoral, the Oracle of Vrim and Thummim, that did keep alive their faith and strengthen it: and they had Prophets constantly foretelling, as from God, things that were sometimes suddenly to come to pass, and sometimes not till many ages after, the event of which depended often on the will of those that would not of some hundred years be born; others on God's own immediate will and hand: and therefore none but God could look into, foretell, and bring to pass all those events. Now such were Jeremiah's predictions of the taking of Jerusalem, and the captivity of the people, and the express number of years it would continue; Esays naming Cyrus, who was to release it, near two hundred years e're he was born; All Daniel's prophecies, particularly that must eminent one of the Messiah this Christ Jesus, of whose Scriptures we are next to speak.

That that Jesus, whom Cornelius Tacitus the heathen historian in the fifteenth book of his Annals, calls Christiani dogmatis autorem, the Author of the Christian Doctrine, did work Miracles, and prophesy, both Jews and learned Heathens do confess. But these Books tell us, when he first began to preach, he publicly cast out a Devil in the Synagogue on the Sabbath day; and at even, when the whole City was assembled, he healed all their sick, and cast out many Devils, which confessed before all, that he was the Son of God. Then he cast out a Legion of such mischievous malign Spirits, as having got license, drove two thousand Swine headlong into the Sea and choked them, which was known to the whole Country of the Gadarenes. Before the Pharisees and Doctors, that came out of all the Cities both of Galilee, and Jewry, and Jerusalem, and so great a crowd as forced them to unroof the house to come to him, he freed one from his palsy and his sins. A multitude was witness of the death of Jairus 's daughter, and bewailing her laughed him to scorn that undertook to raise her, yet he called her into life. And on a feast day in the Temple, before all the people, he recovered one that had lain lame eight and thirty years: and when a widows son was carried to his funeral, and all the City followed him, he only touched the bier, and bid him live. With two fishes and five loaves he fed 5000 men besides women and children, and with what they left they filled twelve baskets, when one basket carried all before they ate; so that they were convinced, he was that Prophet that was to come into the world: and with seven loaves he filled 4000 afterwards and seven baskets. He commanded a dumb spirit out of him that had been Lunatic, vext with a Devil from his infancy, before the people and the Scribes, whom his Disciples could not cast out. And when Lazarus had been dead four days, and buried till he stank, yet at his call, altho bound hand and foot with grave clothes, he came forth, all the multitude beholding. From so many more I chose out these, because they are reported don before the people, and the Scribes, and Pharisees, and Doctors. I might name his Prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem, and of the propagation and continuance of his Religion; even of the woman's box of Spikenard, which event hath made notorious to the world. But his death was so even at the present: when if the rending of the veil of the Temple was apparent Miracle to all Jerusalem, the suns prodigious Eclipse, when it was impossible by nature he should be eclipsed (it being then full moon,) was so to the whole Hemisphere. It serves the use I am to make of this, that 'tis here recorded, but withal Heathen Historians and Chronologes bear witness to it: for when they relate that in the 4 ^th year of the 202 Olympiad, the year that is assigned to Christ 's death, there was such a great Eclipse as never had been, day at noon turned into night, t • e stars appearing, and earthquakes as far as Bythyma, since 'tis apparent by the motions of the Heavens and the calculations of Astronomy, there could be none such then according to the course of nature, it must be this the • ospel speaks of. But beyond all this, 'tis registered here, that according as he had foretold, he raised himself from death the 3 ^d day; yea and many bodies of the Saints that had been buried, long it may be some of them, he raised with him. That notwithstanding all the art and treachery of the Cheif Priests to conceal it, yet that very day he appeared First to Mary Magdalene, 2 ^dly the Women, 3 ^dly Peter, 4 ^thly to them that went to Emmaus, last of all on that day to the eleven except Thomas, being seen and handled by and eating with them; 6 ^thly eight days after to the same eleven with Thomas; 7 ^thly at the sea of Galilee appearing in a miracle of fishes; 8 ^thly to all his Disciples and 500 Brethren more in Galilee, then to James, then to all his Apostles, promising them the Holy Ghost; and lastly all of them beholding he ascended into Heaven, and ten days after as he promised sent the Holy Ghost upon them in the shape of fiery tongues, so as that they spoke all Languages immediately, to the amazement of the Jews of every Nation under Heaven to which they were scattered, that the Miracle might spread as far.

Now if all this be true, he that did these must have communication with a power above all that we account the powers of Nature; such an one most certainly as can perform whatsoever he in this book promises, inflict what e're he threatens; such as is Divine. And since he wrought all these, on purpose to evince he came commissioned from that Divine power, brought these Miracles as seals of that commission, that we might believe him, therefore whatsoever he delivers must be embracit by us, as we hope for those blessed rewards that he proposeth, and on pain of those eternal torments if we do not; of both which it is not possible to doubt if these accounts be true.

2d ^lie . Since the most and greatest of these must be don but once; he could not be incarnated, and born, and live, and preach, and die, and rise again, and go to Heaven every day, of every age, in every place, to convince every man by his own senses; to all those that did not see the matter of fact, therefore faith of all these must be made by witnesses. And

3 ^dly , If we can be sure the witnesses that do assert a fact understand it exactly, if the things be palpable, and they must certainly know whether they were really don or no; and if we can be sure too, that they are sincere, will not affirm that which they do not know, and do not lie, their testimony of it must be most infallible: because it is impossible such witnesses can be deceived, or will deceive.

4 ^thly . The witnesses in this case, the Apostles and the 70 Disciples (for I will name no more) must needs know most perfectly: for they not only saw the Miracles, but were instruments & parties in some of them; sent to cure diseases, cast out Devils, and knew whether all this were in earnest. And most certainly they saw (as all the Jews did too) Christ crucified, his heart pierced with a spear, and his body buried; and whether they did see him risen, handle him, eat with him they knew. And if they might mistake in his Ascension, yet the fiery tongues, if such did light on them, they must needs see; and whether they themselves, who spoke no Languages, could then speak Tongues, it cannot be but they must know. In these there is no possibility they could err, unless they did it willfully: but then 'tis as impossible that they could do it willfully, if they were sincere and honest, such as would not lie.

Now that they were such, I might urge their simplicity and openness, without disguise, not covering their own errors; men who seemed to live as well as preach against all artifice, and to have no design on anything but the amendment and salvation of mankind. For he that can suppose it possible that they were otherwise, men of art and finess, that they contrived the story, must needs know; First, that such would not seal their falsehood with their blood; design no recompense to all their travels but contempt, and hatred, persecutions, prisons, whippings, wounds and death, to be the scum and the off-scouring of the world; lay out their lives against their conscience to preach that Jesus, who did only call them out to be a spectacle to all the world, just such as Malefactors when exposed to fight with, and to be devoured of wild beasts. Their sufferings are too known to stay upon: S ^t Paul's own catalogue of his for five whole verses 2 Cor. 11. is such, that to sustain them only for this end, to put a cheat on mankind; count a so laborious, vext, torn, miserable life and an infamous death gain, so the fable might be believed: to think they could do this, is sure as great a madness as to do it. But yet I will suppose that possible; that those who wove the fable pleased themselves so infinitely with the expectations of imposing on mankind, as that those hopes could make misery and death itself look lovely to them. But

Then 2 ^dly that all and every of them should be of that mind, that amongst so many that bare witness of Christ's Miracles and resurrection not a man should discover the cheat; that when their persecutors did with arts of torment as it were examine them upon the rack, they should work not one single confession out of them; that no ones courage should be broke, nor have a qualm so far as to acknowledge how it was, disclose the plot, lay open the confederacy, the whole mystery and the contrivance of it: When of twelve Disciples one was so false to betray his Masters person at a vile rate, yet that all of them, and many more, in a feigned story of his Miracles should be so true to one another, that no engin of man's cruelty ever could screw out the sacret, not one should betray the forgery and be a Judas where he ought to be: no not that Judas, whose concern it was, whose treason to his Master had been justified had he been an impostor: yet that he should stir no least suspicion of it, but should burst, choked with his grief because he had betrayed innocent blood: This, if he knew it had all been imposture, must be most stupendous.

But yet we will give them this too, that vainglorious hopes of drawing in the world to follow them, might make all of them obstinate in secresy against all attempts of cruelty; or if some weak brethren did perchance discover, we may not have heard of it. But

For them 3 ^dly to begin their preaching at Jerusalem is yet more strange. To hope to draw men into a persuasion, and to bottom that persuasion upon Miracles, and a Resurrection don amongst them there; where if discovery were made it must be made, and where it could not but be made if there were fraud. For to relate and write those works with every circumstance of persons, place, and time, where they not only could examine every circumstance, but where they rather then their lives would find them false, if nothing else would, this must needs discover it. They preach them to the face of the whole multitude and of the Pharisees, and tell them they were don before their eyes, sometimes 500 and sometimes 5000 being by and the chief Priests and Pharisees and Doctors: so that 'twas most impossible they should not know if they were true or false, as sure as there was never a Jew in all the Land, but knew whether there were a darkness over all the land when Christ was crucified. Now if these were forged to hope to draw Jews out of their Religion with apparent forgeries, which they knew such, speaks these Apostles men so far from art to manage a design of changing the Religion of the world, that they were mad beyond recovery and president.

But let us give them that too. Yet 'tis certain 4 ^thly that the Jews, if any such were wrought on by them, must be much more stupid to believe them upon the account of such things don in all the country, in their Cities, and the Temple, before all the Nation, when they could not choose but know they were not don, if they were not don, but were feigned all. For what ever might be motive to Christ's Followers and his Apostles, with the certain danger of their lives to forge the cheat, what possible temptation could there be so great to incline Jews, the most stiffnecked people, the most stubborn in Religion in the world, to embrace a faith which nothing but the Cross and shame and misery attended, and which they must know false too? Had they so great lust to die, as for that to bid farewell to their Moses, their Religion and their Law? It is impossible had they not known the truth of those things, that in waters of affliction, in Jerusalem, ipsis persecutionum fontibus, in that Fountain, that spring-head of persecutions, as the Fathers call it, they would ever have been baptized into Christ.

Yet suddenly in one day at one sermon of S ^t Peter we read near 3000 were baptized Acts 2. at another strait 5000 Acts 4. and such beginnings, such sums are required to make good what the Governor of Palestine Tiberianus tells the Emperor, that he was not sufficient to put to death all those that confessed themselves Christians. All which must needs have either been, convinced those things were true, or else as well against their conscience as against the powers, thus embracit that faith and death together.

Neither was this a first surprise of Christianity, as it had seized men's minds at unawares; for it went on conquering till the world came into it, receiving the Religion with the loss of all that was dear to them in this world. For in one age from Christ's death, what with the Apostles sermons, miracles, and writings also to confirm and keep men in the truth, and to convey it better to posterity, and their Disciples after them, who went forth delivering those writings, preaching on, and doing wonders also, very many Nations are recorded by Historians as converted almost wholly. And the truth of it is evident, since nothing but almost whole Nations, nor yet they but as buoy'd up by the wonders and the graces of God's spirit, ever could be able to endure, or be sufficient to employ the Swords, the Flames, the Lions, and the other numberless tortures which the Jews and Nero and Domitian, and above all Trajan in that first age rag'd with, till they made their Cities, villages and provinces so desolate, that the Proconsul Pliny, being frighted with the multitude of murdered Christians, did advise with him about relaxing his edicts, as he himself assures us.

It was the same the next age, when the power of Miracles yet lived, and those which Christ himself wrought were scarce all dead, (some lived till near that time, who rose up with him at his resurrection;) when these books, (writ by the will of God to be the pillar and foundation of men's faith in after ages, as saith Irenaeus in that age,) were also read in the assemblies weekly; when not only those that did assemble were by Hadrian martyred, but they put men to their oaths, to find out whether they were Christians, that they might massacre them.

And in the third it was the like, when Miracles they say were not yet ceased, yet sure the greatest was the constancy of Christians in adhering to this book and patience in suffering for it. For they report the sands on the sea shore almost as easy to be numbered as the Martyrs of that age; what by Valerian, Decius, Maximinus and Severus, but especially by Dioclesian, who put so many men to death for not delivering up their Bibles to be burnt, and refusing to Sacrifice to his God's, as if he meant to have depopulated the whole earth. And this is as notorious as that men do now profess that they are Christians, and that these are holy Scriptures. Therefore I shall need to go no further.

Now among so many myriads who on the account of all these Miracles (whate're they were) suffered themselves to be converted to the faith of Christ, and then as if they cared for nothing but Religion and their Bibles, for them bore the loss of goods, and life itself, and engaged their posterity to do so also; that not one of these should know whether indeed any such miracles were wrought, if any were restored to life or no: (for if they knew, then they were true:) and that among so numberless a crowd of teachers, who by assuming to speak languages, raise the dead, work signs, drew in those Myriads to Religion and the stake, and went before them, gave them an example both in faith and death; that not one of all those should believe either the Miracles or himself that did them: for if any one that did them did believe them, since he knew who did them, they must needs be certain: but not one of them to know it, sure is such a thing as neither could be don nor be imagined.

He therefore that requires strict evidence in things of faith which cannot bear it, he that calls for Mathematical demonstration, nor will believe on easier terms, yet is so credulous and so unwary, that he can believe so many things which by the nature and the disposition of mankind I have demonstrated not possible, which yet must be true, unless these Scriptures be from God: 'tis plain he does not seek for certainty, but for a pretence of not believing; would fain have his Infidelity and Atheism look more excusable, and is not fit to be disputed with but to be exploded.

But if these Scriptures be from God, then whatsoever they affirm (with modesty I may conclude) is true. And therefore when S ^t Luke Acts 1. 1. declares his former treatise contained all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up: since Christ before he did ascend taught everything that was required to be believed and don in order to salvation, and more too; therefore if his Gospel did contain all that he taught, and did, since it did not contain all absolutely, it must needs mean it contained all that was necessary, or it must mean nothing. And since the same S ^t Luke in the beginning of that Gospel does affirm he wrote it, that Theophilus might know the certainty of those things wherein he had been instructed; 'It is plain he avers that the certain knowledge of all those things wherein the having been instructed made Theophilus a Christian, might be had out of the Gospel: and when S ^t Paul says here, that the Holy Scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus, and S ^t John in his 20 chap. v. 31. that though he had not wrote all the things that Jesus did, yet those that he had wrote were written, that we might believe that Jesus was the Christ the son of God, and that believing we might have life through his name; 'It is evident the Scriptures say that what was written was sufficient to work that belief which was sufficient to life and salvation, as far as the credenda do concur to it. And when S ^t Paul in that verse that succeeds my text, in most express particular words sets down the usefulness of Scripture in each several duty of a man of God, or Preacher of the Gospel, both for Doctrine of faith, for reproof or correction of manners, and instruction unto righteousness, and tells you God's express end in inspiring it, and consequently its ability when so inspired was, that the man of God might be made perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work that belongs to his whole office; 'tis most certain that what is sufficient for that office to instruct, reprove, correct and teach in, must needs be sufficient to believe and practice in for all men: i. e. what my text affirms, they are able to make us wise unto salvation.

I might call in Tradition universal to bear witness to this truth for holy Scriptures, if having once demonstrated that they are God's word, when that does affirm it, and bears witness to it, there were need of any other. And this I dare boldly say, that if the Scripture did say as expressly, that the Pope had a supremacy or sovereignty over the whole Church, or that he or the Roman Church were infallible; their definition, or the living voice of their present Church, a most sure rule of faith, as it doth say Scripture is able to make us wise unto salvation, those Articles would suffer no dispute, it would be blasphemy or sacrilege to limit or explain them by distinctions, when those sayings of the perfectness of Scriptures are forced to bear many. Then we should have no complaints of the obscurity of those books; if those articles were either in the Greek or Hebrew, they would never say the Bible were not fit to be a Rule of Faith, because the Language were unknown to the unlearned, and they could not be infallibly secure of the Translation; were they there they would account them sure enough, who think them plain enough already there, and that we must believe them because, Thou art Peter, Feed my sheep, and Tell the Church, are there.

And for him that shall affirm, all necessaries that must make us wise unto salvation are not in the Scripture, 'tis impossible to give a rational account how it should come to pass that some are there, the rest are not.

It must be either on design, or else by chance. Now 1. That God should design, when very many things that were not necessary were to be written, that the main and fundamental ones should be omitted: and when of the necessaries most he did design for Scripture, then He should not suffer the Apostles to write the remainder of them: and yet what he would not suffer them to write, designed that the Trent Fathers (who I hope have perfected the Catalogue) should write all: of these since 'tis not possible to give a reason, 'tis not therefore rational to affirm it was upon design. But

2. If he shall say it only happened so by chance, he does affront both Scriptures and God's Holy Spirit, who, as they affirm, inspired them for this very end, to bring men to the faith and to salvation. But there is no place for chance in those things that are don in order to an end, by the design, impulse and motion of the infinite wisdom of God's Holy Spirit. He certainly does most unworthily reproach his Maker, who can think it possible, that what he did design expressly and on that account alone to attain such an end by (namely that men should believe and be saved) and inspire it for that purpose, should yet fail, not be sufficient for that purpose. And sure if it be sufficient it contains all necessaries, otherwise it were deficient in the main; yea so clearly also, as that they, for whose salvation they are intended, may with use of such methods, as are obvious and agreed upon by all men, understand them: for otherwise they could not be sufficient: if men could not be instructed by them in things necessary both to faith and life, they could not make them wise unto salvation.

I must confess the Scripture labors under a great prejudice against this doctrine, from the different sense and interpretations that are made of it, even in the most fundamental points, by them that grant it is the word of God; when yet all use the same means to find out the meaning, and no doubt they seek sincerely after it. But yet I think it evident this happens not from the obscurity of Scripture, since it is not only in the most express texts; but also if you should suppose the doctrines were as plain set down there as words can express them, yet there are such principles assumed into the faith of different sects, as must oblige them to interpret diversely the same plain words. I am not so vain as to imagine that no places are obscure in Scripture, and I know that learned men have arts by obscure places to confound the plainest, just as the Philosopher did motion. Neither am I so perverse and singular not to think that universal practice and profession of the Church does much assure and confirm explications of Scriptures, whether obscure or plain. But this I say, that the diversities of explication come, as I now said, from the diversity of principles or rather prejudices, and that this only is the cause of it I thus demonstrate.

First in the Socinian, who interprets all those Scriptures, which the Catholic world hath still applied to the Divinity and satisfaction of Christ, that I name no more points, otherwise then the Church did always; and I affirm he does it, not because he thinks the words do favor his interpretation, but because his principle requires it; namely this, To admit nothing into his faith but what agrees with that which he counts reason, which in a Socinians faith is judge of all points in the last resort. And I mean reason upon natural principles, and thus I prove it. Socinus speaking of Christ's satisfaction, says the word is not in Scripture, yet if it were there very often I would not believe it, because it does not consist with right reason, that is, with the arguments that he had brought against it drawn from human principles. And therefore he there adds; those things which 'tis apparent cannot be, ( i. e. that appear such to him who judges by the principles of natural reason, which yet cannot judge of supernatural and infinite beings,) though the Holy Scripture does expressly say they are, yet must not be admitted; & idcirco sacra verba in alium sensum quam ipsa sonant per inusitatos etiam tropos quandoque explicantur: and for this reason we make use of even unusual tropes, strained figures to explain the words of Holy writ to other senses then the words themselves import. And so he therefore serves that great variety of words by which the Scripture does express Christ's suffering for our sins, in our stead, as our sacrifice; against the universal notions of those words, not only which the Church of Christ, but which the Jews and which the heathen world had of them. And when his reason told him that Christ could not be God one with his Father, that he was so far from having any being from eternity, as that he was not at all, till he had a being from the Blessed Virgin; Therefore when the Scripture says directly I and the Father are one, he must strain it to this meaning, are of one mind, we agree in one: altho S ^t John avert that, by distinguishing those two expressly. Yea worse, when to prove that Christ had a being e're the world was made, we urge from the first Chap. to the Hebr. what S ^t Paul produces from the Psalms, and does apply to him most particularly. Thou Lord in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth and the Heavens are the works of thine hands; they shall perish, but thou remainest, and they all shall wax old as does a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. They explain it thus: that God by Christ will at last destroy these Heavens, and this Earth, and change them, according to that saying in the Psalms; which altho the Apostle produce at length, as it stood there, both concerning the Creation and destruction of the world, yet he intended only to apply this last to Christ. And though he say as well of the same Lord, Thou Lord in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thine hands, as, thou shalt change them; yet he meant no more but that this change God would effect by Christ. It is not possible that the text can give any the least countenance to this interpretation. The different explication of this Scripture does not come from the obscurity of any words in it; for in the Psalm they and we understand the same words in the same sense exactly: therefore that we differ here, is not from anything in the words quoted, but is wholly from the Principle. And we may not wonder, for the plain sense will not suit with their Hypothesis.

There are no other that are instanced in as differing from us in points of faith but the Romanist. I know not whether they account those differences to be in things necessary to salvation. If that be true that they allow (for what cause they know best,) some that are reconciled to their Church to communicate with ours, that is, join in our worship, and by doing so own the profession of our faith in distinction to that of others, or at least espouse the scandal of the owning it; Then one would think they must account that there is nothing in our worship don that is unlawful, nor omitted that is necessary, nor anything Heretical professed, at least that there's no scandal in the owning that profession. For if there were, they did allow them only to profess and act gross sin, which certainly they would not do. So that poor Protestants when they are pleased to give leave may be no Heretics, and therefore there is nothing of itself in that profession faulty. But yet on the other side since we see they call us Heretics, and when they have no power over us, damn us to Hell fires, and when they have had power, damned us to the fire and fagot also; sure they think the differences to be in things necessary. But yet the account is easy, how not the obscurity of Scripture, but a Principle or prejudice does cause this. For we are bound in conscience to grant they believe their own Principles. Now 'tis a Principle with them, that their Church cannot err, and therefore that their present faith and consequent depending practice was their faith and practice always. That it may appear so, they must seek for countenance from Scripture: and if anything there seem to thwart their faith or practice, they must smooth and disguise it, that it may look friendly. And 'tis most certain if the Scripture should be never so express against them, whilst they think it is not possible that they can err, they cannot think it possible Scripture can mean what it pretends to speak. 'Twere easy to make instances. As first for invocation of the Saints departed, which with them is a point of faith, Bellar. and Cochleus produce that of the Psalms, I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. Psalm 121. 1. and altho the text directs that looking up expressly to the Lord that made heaven and earth. v. 2. and though it be a Principle with them, that on those everlasting hills there were no Saints in David's time that could be invocated, they were all in limbo then they say; yet as I said, they would have countenance from Scripture, and for want of better they are therefore forced to interpret those words, I will lift up mine eyes unto the Hills, thus, I will invocate the Saints. Now will any say 'tis the obscurity of this Scripture that does hinder Protestants from seeing the bright evidence of this argument, and not rather that it is the weak foundation of this practice that does make the Romanists seek to build it on those mountains? So among those several texts which in the 2 ^d Nicene general Council are producit for adoration of the images of Christ and of the Saints, and are expounded to evince it, none is plainer then that which I produced now from Bellarmine. I shall give one or two examples from the Psalms: Thy face, Lord, will I seek: and, Lord, list thou up the light of thy countenance upon us: and again, the rich among the people shall entreat thy face: therefore David thought the picture of Christ was to be adored. It is their own conclusion from these texts, and they have no better for it. Yet they saw the doctrine in these so apparently, as that with great opposition to great Councils, and more bood-shed I think then yet ever any doctrine hath been settled with, it was imposed. Yea more, the first experiment of the Popes power over Sovereign Princes was on the account of this same doctrine: when for opposing Image-worship Gregory the 26d excommunicated the Greek Emperor. Pope Constantine for the same cause indeed had 14 years before don so to Philippicus, but he did not go much further, whereas Gregory absolved the Emperor's subjects in the Roman Duchy from their Allegiance; commanded them not to pay him any tribute, nor in any wise obey him; whereupon they killed their Governors, and swore obedience to the Pope. And this was the beginning of S ^t Peters patrimony, and it was thus gotten by this doctrine, which they saw so clearly in these Scriptures; when they cannot see the contrary in those plain words, Thou shalt not make to thyself any whether Graven image or idol it matters not, since it follows, nor the likeness of anything which is heaven above, &c. nor in those where God takes care expressly that himself be not worshipit by an image Deut. 4. 15. and then judge if 'tis obscurity or plainness that makes them see or not see doctrines in the Scripture: rather if it be not merely the necessity of prejudice. So again we differ in the meaning of the 14th chap. of the 1. of Cor. where we think S ^t Paul asserts and argues, yea and chides against all service in an unknown tongue in the public assemblies saying all must be don there so as it may be understood, and to edification. But that which is performed there in an unknown tongue does not edify says he there: yet to justify this practice they must make it have a different meaning, which no Fathers countenance, but which several expound as we do, yea and diverse of their own do so too, particularly their Pope John 8 ^th in his 247 ^th Epistle writing expressly on that Subject. Once more, so their half communion, that it may be reconciled with that express command Drink ye all of it: and this do, obliges them to find another meaning: drink ye all must be directed to them only as Apostles; and do this must signify consecrate the Elements, altho S ^t Paul apply it most directly to the drinking, and the drinking to his lay Corinthians. Nor dare they say in truth it means the other, for S ^t Paul when he does say do this, did not intend to make his Lay Corinthians male and female all priests, and give them power to consecrate. The words are plain, there's nothing in the text obscure that makes us differ, but the practice had by little and little grown upon them, till it became Universal, and so grew into their faith: and then since they believe they cannot err, they must expound Christ's words so as they may not contradict their practice; because that would overthrow their Principle.

But the Church that builds upon no Principle but God's word, can have no temptation to pervert or strain it, since what ever does appear to be the meaning of it, that their Principle must needs engage them to believe. And therefore if it say This is my body, we believe it; if it says too after consecration it is bread, we believe that also: and because it therefore says 'tis both, we so believe it one that it may be the other: which since both say it is impossible that it can be substantially, neither hath God in express words told us which it is substantially; therefore seeing when he calls it body, he is instituting his Sacrament, there's all reason in the world he should mean Sacramentally; since 'tis the most proper meaning: and by consequence 'tis bread substantially, as all ways of judging in the world assure us. Here's no stress on Scripture, as there is no Principle to serve; when as the other makes us differ, not in Scripture only, even where 'tis plainest; but tradition too. For the most express and evident sayings of the primitive Fathers are on every head of difference, as much the matter of contention as the texts of Scripture are; as it were easy to demonstrate if that were my business. So that it is mere deceit to lay our quarrels to defects in God's word, and particularly to its obscurity, which a man would think were evident enough from this that Children knew it. The last thing I am to speak to.

And that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

I cannot pass this, that it is S ^t Chrysostom's observation, that Timothy was nursed up in the Scriptures from his childhood. Yea and since his Father was an Heathen, he must have been taught them by his Grandmother Lois, and his Mother Eunice, whose faith S ^t Paul speaks of 2 Tim. 1. 5. Children therefore then, and Women, and they sure are Laics, read the Bible. Yea and since they knew it, they must read it in a language which they understood: and we know where that is unlawful now. If we consider the first prohibition that appeared in that Church with Synodical authority against such men's having any Bibles in their own tongue, we shall find it was immediately upon the preaching of the Waldenses, one of whose doctrines it was, that the Scripture was the rule to judge of faith by: so that whatsoever was not consonant to that must be refused. This they preached in France and over Europe in the latter end of the twelf Century: and that Council which forbad their having of the Bible, we find lately put forth by the frier D. Achery as held at Toulouse in the beginning of the 13 ^th Century. It seems they apprehended then their doctrines hardly would abide that touchstone: and they therefore had no surer, more compendious way for its security then to prevent such trial, taking care men should not know what was or what was not in Scripture. And it is not possible for me to give account why in their catechizing they leave out all that part of the commandments, Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, &c. but this only, that they dare not let the laity compare their doctrine and their practice with that Scripture. But though it is possible they might conceive some danger if the whole Scripture should be exposed, yet in those portions which the Church itself chose out for her own offices, the little Lessons, and Epistles, and Gospels, those sure one would think were safe: no, not their Psalter, Breviary, nor their Hours of the Blessed Virgin must they have translated in their own tongue; as that Council did determine. And truly when the Roman Missal was turned lately into French, and had been allowed to be so by the general Assembly of the Clergy in the year 1650. and when it was don it had the usual approbation of the Doctors and some Bishops, and then was printed at Paris with the license of the Vicars general of their Archbishop. Yet another general Assembly of the Clergy the year 1660, whereat there were 36 Bishops, upon pain of excommunication forbid any one to read it, and condemn not only that present traduction, but the thing in general as poisonous, in an Encyclical Epistle to all the Prelates of the Kingdom: and in another they say of him that did translate it, and the Vicars general that did defend him in it, that by doing so they did take arms against the Church, attaquing their own Mother (namely by that version) at the Altar, in that sanctuary, that closet of her spouses mysteries to prostitute them: and in another Epistle they beseech his Holiness Pope Alexander 7 ^th to damn it not in France alone but the whole Church; which he then did by his Bull, forever interdicting that or any other Version of that book, forbidding all to read or keep it on severest pains; commanding any one that had it to deliver it immediately to the Inquisitor or Ordinary that it might be burnt forthwith. Now thus (whatever it be otherwise) the Mass is certainly a sacrifice when 'tis made a burnt offering to appease his Holiness's indignation: when that ver • Memorial of Christ's passion again suffers, and their sacred offices are martyred. To see the difference of times; 'twas heretofore a Pagan Dioclesian, a strange prodigy of cruelty, who by his edict did command all Christians to deliver up their Bibles or their bodies to be burnt: 'Twas here his Holiness, Christ's Vicar, who by his Bull orders all to give up theirs, that is, all of it that they will allow them, and their prayers also, that they may be forthwith burnt, or themselves to be excommunicated, that is, their souls to be devoted to eternal flames. And whereas then those only that did give theirs up were excommunicate, all Christians shunned them as they would the plague; and multitudes, whole regions rather gave themselves up to the fire to preserve their Bibles: now those only that have none, or that deliver up theirs, are the true obedient sons of that Church, and the thorough Catholics. I know men plead great danger in that book: it is represented as the source of monstrous doctrines and rebellions. I will not say these men are bold that take upon them to be wiser then Almighty God, and to see dangers he foresaw not, and to prevent them by such methods as thwart his appointments; but I will say that those who talk thus certainly despise their hearers; as if we knew not Heresies were hatched by those that understood the Bible untranslated: and as if we never heard there were rebellions among them that were forbid to read the Bible. For if there were a Covenant among them that had it in their own tongue, so there was an Holy League amongst those men that were denied it. While those that had the guidance of the subjects conscience were themselves subject to a foreign power, as all Priests of that communion are. How many Kings and Emperors have there been that did keep the Scriptures from their people, but yet could not keep their people from sedition, nor themselves from ruin by it? In fine when God himself for his own people caused his Scripture to be written in their own tongue, to be weekly read in public too, and day and night in private by the people; and when the Apostles by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost indicted Scripture for the world, they did it in the language that was then most vulgar to the world: what God and the Holy Spirit thus appointed as the fittest means for the Salvation of the world, to define not expedient, as the Holy Fathers of Trent did, looks like blasphemy against God and the Holy Spirit. But blasphemies of this kind are not to be wondr'd at from that kind of men, that call the Scripture a dumb judge, a black Gospel, inken Divinity, written not that they should be the rule of our faith and Religion, but that they should be regulated by, submitted to our faith; that the authority of the Church hath given canonical authority to Scriptures, and those the chief, which otherwise they had not, neither from themselves nor from their authors; and, that if the Scriptures were not sustained by the authority of the Church they would be of no more value then Aesop's fables. And lastly, that the people are permitted to read the Bible was the invention of the Devil.

But to leave the controversy and speak to the advantages which may be had from early institution in the Scripture; 'tis so evident that I need not observe how 'tis for want of principles imprest and wrought into the mind in Childhood, that our youth is so licentious. And 'tis not possible it can be otherwise, when they have nothing to oppose to constitution, when 'tis growing, and to all the temptations both of objects and example; no strict sense of duty planted in them, no such notions as would make resistance to the risings of their inclination, and seducements of ill company: and they therefore follow and indulge to all of them. And in God's name why do parents give their Children up to God in their first infancy, deliver him so early a possession of them? as if they would have Religion to take seizure on them strait, as if by their baptizing them so soon, they meant to consecrate their whole lives to God's service, make them his as soon as they were theirs, as if they had been given them merely for God's uses? And they therefore enter them into a vow of Religion almost as soon as they have them: why all this? if accordingly they do not season and prepare them as they shall grow capable. Why when they are but newly born their children, do they take care they shall be regenerate and born again God's Children? if they do not furnish them with necessaries, educate them into all the qualities and hopes that appertain to the condition of God's children, as well as they do to that of their own. That parent which not only, like some delicate ones refuses her own breasts to her own infant, but provides no other to sustain it; that does only wash her babe from it's first blood and uncleanness to expose it the more handsome prey to wolves and tigers in the desert, is more savage then those tigers: even the sea monsters draw out the breasts, they give suck to their young ones, saith lamenting Jeremy, but he adds the daughter of my people is cruel like the Ostrich in the wilderness, which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them, she is hardened against her young ones: such are they who when their children are so born again to God, yet as they shall wax capable provide not that which S ^t Peter calls the sincere milk of the word that they may grow thereby: but from their being washed so in the laver of regeneration, take no more care, but expose them forthwith to such lusts and conversations, as are much more wild and savage then those beasts in the comparison; to which they cannot choose but be a prey. They strive indeed, they say, to educate them into men betime, that is, make them conversible and bold: and since for that they must engage them into frequent company, where they see and hear men's follies, that I say no worse; by that means they come to have their understandings stored with nothing but the Modes, and sins of conversation; filled with froth and puddle; men betimes only thus, as they have forwarded their inclinations to, and got an early understanding and experience of, those vices, which one would think men only could be equal for. But by this means the mind, that only part that makes us be men, is not only not improved, but dwarft. They do not only still continue children in their understanding as to anything that's real and solid; but the hopes of reason are destroyed in them, and its growth killed, by turning all its nourishment to feed the beast part; and the Christian is quite starved. There needs no other cause be given for the most part, why so many men have no Religion, own being Liberti • es, and profess vice; for want of education they have nothing in them that does check this, for they had no principles of a Religion instill'd into them. And if at any time it comes to pass that they think it is their interest to take upon them the profession of some Religion, they therefore, since they have no Principles nor rules to judge by, are most apt to choose to profess that Religion, which is like to be most gentle to the courses they have steered, and are engaged in. Now that men hope to find such an one, (whether by its constitution I shall not inquire but,) by its practice is but too apparent. Accordingly when they go over to it, they carry with them, and preserve in it the vices of their no Religion; and by consequence they went not over seriously for Religion: and are therefore so much worse now then when they owned no Religion, that they do their wickednesses with certainty of easy absolution, and so hopes of salvation; and by this are likely to be made twofold more children of Hell then before: and let them triumph in such conquests. There's nothing in the world that contributes so much to this as men's being not acquainted early with, instructed in, those Divine rules and obligations to piety and virtue, which this book the Bible does afford. If men had been seasoned first with the knowledge and the sense of duty, with the comforts that are in it, with the apprehensions of great blessings that attend it; and the mischiefs that are consequent, indeed essential to impiety and vice here▪ and their minds were furnished with examples of both, which this book abounds with; and their hearts too raised with expectations of far greater blessedness in a life hereafter, and with the belief that both that blessedness and life shall have no end: and were made sensible also of strange dreadful torments that await the breach of duty, which shall also last forever: if these impressions I say, did prevent all other, and take up the mind, and had in them the stamp and character of God, and so there were a reverence and awe of him wrought in them, and they looked upon him as concerned in all this; how it was his word that said it; and these sentiments were grown into the very habit of their mind; as it would not be easy to corrupt or soften such, so 'twould be much more difficult to shake them, since their faith is founded on the rock of ages. Besides the Holy Scriptures carry in them such an obligation of adhering to them, and to them alone, since they are sufficient to make us wise unto salvation, and are God's word, that men would not be apt to exchange them for Legends, pious forgeries, for things that can make good no certain title from the Lord: for let them show an equal derivation of it, bring it down through all the ages as we have don the Scripture's title to him. Otherwise it justly may provoke God's exclamation in the Prophet Jeremy: Be astonished, O ye Heavens, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate; saith the Lord, for my people have committed two evils, they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hew'd them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water: cisterns therefore that may leave them in a state to want a drop of water, when their tongue shall be horribly tormented: whereas he that drinks that living water which Christ gives, his word, shall never thirst, but it shall be a well of water in him springing up to everlasting life.

A SERMON OF THE OBLIGATION OF BAPTISM.

THE Ancient Severities of this season, by which men strove (as if they had designed a fellowship with him in sufferings) to celebrate Christ's death in mortifying Rigors and Austerities, at least to use the body of Sin as cruelly as his was used: these, I say, were not only for the discipline of Penitents, of Christians that had sinned against their solemn undertaking and profession, so to actuate their Repentance and to mortify their lusts and inclinations, and by that prepare them for an Absolution on Good-friday Eve: but they also were much earlier employed upon the Catechumens, that were Candidates of Christianity, as by which they did express their sorrow for, and detestation of their former lives, and so prepared themselves for Baptism on Easter Eve: for that was their most solemn time, as Tertullian do's assure us in the 2 ^d Century, just when that death and passion into which they were baptized was celebrated, Diem Baptismo solenniorem Pascha praestat, cum & Passio Domini in qua tinguimur odimpleta est▪ And that they did prepare for it with watchings, fastings, weepings, and all rigid mortifying discipline: and before him Justin M. And they had in the Greek Church their forty days for these severities: and a while too in the Roman in S ^t Jerome's time, and Pope Siricius it was so, but quickly sunk into this single weeks performances. But in all those times they had their scrutinies, their strict examinations to try whether their performances were real and sincere. So nice and so severe a thing they thought it to become a Christian. The man was to be mortifi'd and die into the very name. But now, God knows, as for the former discipline for Penitents one Church hath lost it, and the other hath debauched it into Pageantry, and taught it to countenance and bolster men's continuance in Sin, and minister to vice. So for the other discipline too, if that did import that Baptism hath such engagements in it, men in every Church live now as if they either never had been Christian'd, or had never known, or had perfectly forgot the obligations of that Sacrament; the thing which S ^t Paul reproves here by his question, Know you not &c. And which therefore 'tis impossible there can be a more proper time to call to your Remembrance then this is, before you are to celebrate that death you were baptized into. Now to inform such he disputes here very closely. The sum is this: They that are dead to Sin cannot live any longer in it. Now as Christ's Death was a death to Sin, for in that he died, he died unto Sin once v. 10. i. e. there was an efficacy in that death of his to put an end to all the powers of Sin: which being so, it was impossible he could die more then once; but must be alive always afterwards to God. So in like manner whoever is baptized, he is baptized into the likeness of that death v. 5. namely into a death to Sin; inasmuch as by solemn profession and express undertaking he do's die to it, for he renounces it; and if he answer that his undertaking, do's so really: and really as Christ died once, so as to live always afterwards to God; engaging himself to keep God's holy will and commandments and to walk in the same all the days of his life. So that the words suggest these things to be discoursed of. 1. Christ's death was a death to Sin. 2 ^lie They that are baptized are baptized into that death, namely into a death to Sin. 3 ^lie They that are baptized into that death are to die as Christ did, i. e. to die to Sin once, so as to live always afterwards to God.

1. Christ's death was a death to Sin, i. e. there was an efficacy in Christ's death to put an end to all the powers of Sin. And here I mean not that extrinsic efficacy of his death, as it confirmed the Covenant of the Gospel, whose rewards and punishments engage us against all those powers; nor as his blood did also purchase grace whereby we are enabled to resist them, but the direct influence of that death tends to destroy all the power that the Devil, World, or Flesh had either to command us or condemn us. The Scripture tells us that by Death he destroyed him that had the power of Death, i. e. the Devil Heb. 2. 14. Christ tells us he hath overcome the world for us John 16. 23. and S ^t Paul says by his Cross the World is crucified to us, and assures us that God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and a Sacrifice for Sin condemned Sin in the flesh that the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us Rom. 8. 3. Which place discovers how all was effected, namely as he was a Sacrifice for Sin: and that not only as that Sacrifice did consecrate him to, and install him in a power to pardon Sins upon Repentance, and so whomsoever by virtue of that motive he took off from serving Sin, from them he took away the guilt of it: but as that Sacrifice did take away the guilt of Sin from us by bearing it in his own body on the tree, the direct consequence of which as to its tendency and efficacy is, that we being dead to sin might live to righteousness. And in both these manners by his stripes we are healed.

I do not mean to entertain you with the controversy that there is on the account of these two Schemes, concerning the effects and uses of the death of Christ. Only I cannot choose but wonder why it should be said to be unjust in God to lay upon him the iniquity of us all: so as that he bore death as the punishment due to sin by making satisfaction for us Sinners. For I would gladly know to whom the wrong were don in this, that makes the injustice, and on whose part it was unjust: not on his part that made the satisfaction sure. For whether it be wrong to force an innocent person without his consent to suffer for the guilty I shall not dispute. But here Christ gave himself for us Tit. 2. 14. and had power to do so John 10. 18. And having power to lay down his life, and power to take it up again, if he had so much love and pity for lost mankind, as to lay it down for three days to prevent their everlasting death and misery; no justice certainly, nay no self-love forbids this. Much less was there wrong don to them, for whom the satisfaction was made; unless eternal redemption and eternal blessedness purchased at such dear rates with such infinite kindness be accounted injuries. Nor yet was it unjust in him that did receive it: for none charge it upon that account. That death which all confess Christ did justly submit to, God most justly might accept; since he could so dispose it, as not only by it to work the Salvation of those whom it was undertaken for, but also the advancement of his human Nature, that did undergo it, to the highest pitch of glory, to all power in heaven and earth Phil. 2. 9. and withal thereby declare his own Righteousness Rom. 3. 26. and work the honor also of his other glorious attributes. And therefore if there had been no injustice (as they say) altho Sin had been pardoned without any Satisfaction; much less could the receiving this be a wrong to him. Indeed it seems as if there had been no right don him by it, because he furnished all that makes the satisfaction, and he could not receive it therefore, since he gave the value to it. And 'tis most true in compensation of rights of real possessions, and such as can be satisfied no otherwise then by that which we call restitution. As for example in a debt, be I never so willing, 'tis impossible I can truly restore or satisfy a debt in any part with what the creditor do's furnish me to do it with: for that is really his extinguishing and forgiving it, and not my payment. But 'tis not so in compensation of the rights of estimation, or of honor, which are satisfied by that which we call reparation. The man that had brought up a false report of me, and lessened my just reputation and esteem, but yet repents upon his death bed, and would fain repair my honor, sign a recantation, but hath nothing then to make it with, nor strength nor skill it may be to subscribe it: though I furnish paper pen and ink, write the form and hold and guide his hand to sign it, and explain the marks too of the witnesses, and publish it, which makes the very matter of the Satisfaction; yet he truly satisfy's. The case here also was a case of honor; there was no restitution to be made to God, from whom it was impossible we could take anything, or make him sustain any real loss: but we had don that which tended to his dishonor infinitely. For when God had made man in his Image, righteous, and Lord of all his creatures, built for immortality of happiness; and as in order to his Government of the whole Universe he put rules into them to guide their workings, so he gave man laws to direct him how to use the other creatures regularly, and to steer himself in order to attaining his own ends of blessedness: so least he should transgress those laws, and so disorder and deprave himself, and the whole Government indeed, if there were neither check nor fear upon him; he did therefore add a Sanction to his Laws, decreed death the penalty of each transgression, and God knows that could not be but death eternal; for it was not possible we could recover and rescue ourselves out of it if dead once. Now if notwithstanding men did slight this mound, and broke out into all excess of licences, so as to discompose and vitiate the order, the whole frame of things, not only using other creatures to irregular ends, and so abusing them, but themselves also, disturbing the whole kind; their vices forced them to invade other men's proprieties and and liberty and life, and consequently to expose their own; no one thing could be safe, their coffers, and their beds, and their breasts too were broke into and thrown open, and having broke the Government thus far, they also set up other Governors, framed new God's, and forgot him that made them, and gave all their service to those forged usurping Deities, and worshipit them with villainy and vices; so far as that they lost the very rules of virtue, and the principles of honesty were quite debauchit. Things being thus, it is impossible that anything in the world can be more reproachful to one then this is to God: for what can so much tend to the disgrace of an Artificer, as that his workmanship should by no means serve those ends, which it was made for; but the direct contrary to all: designed to work the glory of their Maker, and their own Eternal happiness; and instead of that they work out nothing but their own destruction and eternal misery, and their Makers disservice: and what could more reproach the wisdom of the Maker? Or what can so much tend to the dishonor of a Supreme Governor, as to have his Authority slighted, his laws broken, trampled on, and for any trifling, least occasion, as if it were don contemtuosly, his threatenings all despised, his person libel'd, and before his face his homage, worship, Throne given to the meanest, vilest of his creatures, to his basest Rebels? If God suffer this and cannot help it, where is then his power? If he can, and will not, where his holiness? how do's it appear he is displeased at Sin, or do's indeed not like it? He is aware the Sinner cannot choose but make such Judgments of him, for he told him long since, these things hast thou don, and I kept silence, and thou thoughtest wickedly, that I was such an one as thyself. At least as S ^t Paul asks the wicked Jew, thro breaking the Law dishonorest thou God? For so it is: the name of God among the Gentiles is blasphemed thro you that pretend to his service, but live wickedly, which makes them think your God is not a God that do's require good life. Now if he do not vindicate himself from these aspersions, and his laws from violation, his authority from contempt, how is he just to himself? or how a righteous Governor? 'It is true he knows to vindicate himself, and make appear he is an holy God, a righteous Governor; namely if he but execute his laws. But then alas, mankind must perish for evermore, and so the whole design of the creation, (which was made for man to serve God with it, and to praise him for it, to be religious, and be happy,) had been lost, and still the wisdom of the Maker had been questioned. Hereupon the Son, who is the wisdom of the Father, is to take flesh, and be made man to teach virtue once more, and assure immortal blessed recompenses to it, and then suffer death, the dire expresses of God's detestation and abhorrence of Sin, what ever he should think fit for vindication of his laws and his authority, his righteousness and holiness; and upon condition that he would receive to favor and to blessedness those that sincerely would believe, repent of all their evil deeds, renounce them heartily, and faithfully endeavor to obey him, he would fully satisfy for the dishonor man had don him.

And truly when he bore the sharp inflictions of the wrath God had for Sin, as certainly he did, for otherwise scarce any malefactor but did meet death with more alacrity and courage. The two Thieves, that suffered with him, did not entertain the apprehensions of it with such agonies, nor cry out so with the pain of it, nor so soon sink under it. It was the sense of this which made his blood run out in clots as it were flying from that sense: it was the apprehensions of the guilt imputed to him, and the wrath which he knew was due to it, and did apprehend must fall on him in such degrees and by such measures, as might show how God detested Sin; it was this that did make him apprehend his God, who was himself, was gone from him, since he left him so long lying under it, as if he had not yet expressed that detestation full enough. Now if we consider that it was the Son of God that did and suffered all this, we must see more of God's attributes exalted to a greater height of honor, then by mankind's either suffering or performing what the Law required. We see his Justice satiate itself in infinitely richer blood then man's, the blood of God: but we see Mercy triumph against Judgment in that very blood. He could have show'n his detestation of Sin otherwise, even in the Sinners punishment, and so demonstrated his holiness and justice; but it was impossible that he should otherwise show mercy at these rates, by crucifying his Son who was himself, that he might spare Sinners. Meer pardon had been no such kindness, as to let us see, that God would do all this and suffer so that he might pardon us. So that mankind forgiven and in glory had not been so great an evidence of his compassion, nor in torments so great an evidence of his holiness and detestation of iniquity. He had such compassion of us as inclined him to deliver up his Son to torment, that he might show mercy to us; yet all that compassion, though his bowels yern'd so over us that he would shed his blood for us, could not incline him to forgive Sin without such an instance of his detestation of it; nor yet with it but to such as will forsake their Sins. For how should he appear by those inflictions to detest Sin, if he should accept the Sinner that amends not? give his pardons and rewards to one that will not part with his iniquities? To such Christ's sufferings are the Copy of their expectations; he do's let them see how he detests, and will forever plague Sin unrepented of, who thus torments the imputation of it on the innocent the blessed Son of God. So that Christ's sufferings not only are a perfect vindication of the honor of God's person, and his Government as to Sins committed, but the most astonishing caution against committing them, that can be imagined. With us the Law is satisfied by the offenders suffering, sometimes in effigie, if we execute his picture, anything that by the fright of the example helps to guard the Law from being broken. But see here an example, which to make, cost God the life of his own Son, which to make dreadful he provided all the Agonies imaginable, to assure us, he that spared not his own Son, will not spare the guilty: neither can the Sinner possibly be able to endure that to Eternity, which his Son, the Son of God sunk under presently. 'It is not a satisfaction that will give us leave to enjoy our vices, and atone for us; a price that will buy off the guilt of all our Sins, and let us have them. The satisfaction of this infinite value looks at vindication of God's Honor, and his Laws, and serves the ends of Government, and assures the Sinner, which amends not, that he must forever perish. And thus this Sacrifice for Sin condemned Sin to death by his own death. Which death, that we would imitate, we did engage in Baptism: which brings me to the second thing, Whosoever are baptized into Christ Jesus, are baptized into his death: (i. e.) that which the efficacy of his death did work to, that by Baptism we did engage ourselves to. Now as to this.

1. Christ's death was, as we have now seen, undertaken for the death of Sin. Now Baptism imports the undertaking the same thing; it being as Oecumenius upon this place do's say, a Baptism unto that death 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 &c. Because when we are baptized, we do most solemnly profess and undertake to die to Sin, renounce the Devil &c. and put upon ourselves the strictest obligations in the world to do this. That Baptism from its institution was administered with express engagements to this in the very form of it, I could prove out of that office in all ages that have any extant of it, in the rest out of express testimony of Fathers thro everyone to the Apostles. Which so universal practice makes S ^t Jerome's, Primas. and others explication not seem strange, when they expound that good profession Timothy professed before many witnesses 1 Tim. 6. 12. to be that in Baptism. However 'tis sufficient evidence that S ^t Peter, when he says that the Baptism that saves us, is the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the whether question in S ^t Cyprian, or the Answer in Tertullian; or indeed the stipulation (which is both) of a good conscience towards God, do's as much as say there was in Baptism an obligation entered in that form of Law, that stipulation was, with questions an answers to them. For they were asked, and they did answer: Dost thou renounce? I do renounce. Dost thou forsake? I do, &c. And he that at Sacrament says that he do's this with a good, sincere, and upright Conscience, hath the Baptism that saves. But the importance of the Rite may be best known from them that used it first, and whence it was derived, even from the Jews: who when they did initiate a Proselyte into their Covenant, did it with that Ceremony in this manner; when any man desired to be of their Religion, and they had by several scrutinies examined what the motives were of his conversion, what his aims; if they were hopes of anything of this world, they refused him; least his conversion should die or change as quickly as his worldly hopes or desires. But if they saw all reason to believe he was sincere, then they expounded to him all the Commandments, laid before him the difficulty in keeping them: if this did not affright him, they explained to him the mysteries of their faith, and the Commandments again, together with the punishments that were allotted to transgression, the Rewards to them that did observe them. After all which if the man continued steadfast in his purpose, they circumcised him, sprinkling his own blood on him as a ceremony to affright him into the Observance. And one would think it were sufficient engagement to have signed his resolutions in his blood, and sealed to them with Circumcision, as the Targum words it 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and carried the impression of his promise in his flesh to his life's end. But as if Baptism had obligation beyond that (and it hath most certainly with those that are baptized into the death of Christ; for there the blood of sprinkling is Christ's blood, the blood of God:) but with them also: after they had don this to the man, he was no sooner cured of the wound of his circumcision, but they put him (having by him three Witnesses) into the water, and as he was there in it, read to him once again all the Commandments, and if he did profess his resolutions still to keep them, they baptized him, and he was admitted thus into their Covenant, the Conditions, and the Hopes of it. And by Baptism they did admit the children also, if the three Magistrates of the place would undertake for them, they should be brought up in the Jews Religion. And this lets us see 'tis the assuming to keep God's Commandments, to give over sinning, to die to that, and to live to righteousness, to all holiness and virtue. And with what strength of obligation this was understood to be performed by the Ancients, we may perceive in that, as if there either really were, or at least analogically, whatsoever gives solemnity or force in Law to an engagement, so as that it may become inviolable; that they word this with. They seem to think it was an oath; Tertullian calls the Answers Verba Sacramenti. So they might call a vow made with hands lift up, as that was. They were to do it before many Witnesses for more assurance, in the face of the whole Church. Yea that profession too was registered in the Church records always: and S ^t Austin says it was in heaven too, Deo & Angels ejus conscribentibus dixisti, Renuncio. And though there were not really in fact, what Vicecomes dreamed, a signing and sealing this their compact with Almighty God meant, when Cyril says 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and in Tertullian's ring Signaculo lavacri—quo fidei pactionem interrogatus obsignat: yet the mere allusion does assure us, they intended to convince us, that as in Covenants amongst men, when there's no one Ceremony wanting of all the formalities and ties of Law to make a compact sure and not to be rescinded or avoided, then performance of Conditions only will serve turn, and is necessary; so this Sacrament puts all the same necessities upon the baptized. And it is no wonder therefore if the same Tertullian word that men are intinctione alligati, tied from Sin by it. Nay more S ^t Paul says, we are held from it by the bonds of Death, for here he says, we are baptized into Death to Sin, as if he did suppose us no more able to have any motion to it, then a carcass hath; yea shut up sequestered from the practice of it as it were in the grave, buried with Christ, or as Christ was in that Death.

'It is plain this Scripture does suppose a baptized person dead to Sin, as truly as they are supposed dead, who are buried: for the Ceremony represents a burial upon that account, and signifies the bonds or obligations, that by Baptism are put upon a Christian to restrain him from Sin, are in moral speaking of like force as those bonds and swaths, in which they wind up dead men, grave-clothes that do bind them hand and foot in natural speaking, are of, to restrain from motion; and a Christian, that hath burst all these engagements, and walks in the way of Sinners, that courts pleasures, and embraces lusts, pursues the world, or runs to the excess of riots, is a great prodigy in manners, as a corps that had broke his coffin, thrust away his grave-stone, and that lapped up in his winding-sheet should yet come and converse, and practice all the offices of life, would be a prodigy in nature. And therefore 'tis not strange, if our Apostle press hard and suppose that they never do again return to live to Sin, to which they were already dead and buried with Christ, (for they that are baptized into the death of Christ, are:) they were so to die as Christ, that is, to die to Sin once, so as to live always afterwards to God, having engaged to keep God's holy will and commandments, and to walk in the same all the days of their life: the 3 ^d thing that I was to speak to,

That Baptism does bind us so to die to Sin, as that we never live to it again, i. e. be given up to it, so that it come to have dominion of us, and that we obey it in fulfilling of its lusts, and go on in a known deliberate habit, in a course of its repeated acts, is the thing my text is brought to prove: for in the verse before he says, We that are dead to Sin, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , How shall we yet again live to it? That cannot be: for they that are baptized, are baptized into the death of Christ, a death like his, who in that he died to Sin, died but once, v. 10. but ever afterwards he lives to God, and cannot die again: So also reckon ye yourselves to be dead to Sin, v. 11. He therefore that is truly dead to Sin, must be so dead as that he cannot live to it, for then there would be a necessity that he should die to it again, which can no more be, it should seem, by the importances of Baptism, then that Christ can die again. We read indeed of those that crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, Heb. 6. 6. but he dies not for them again, there remains no more sacrifice for sin; which words being said of those who being once by Baptism enlightened fall away, and do not persevere to their lives end, makes it look fearfully, as if it were meant of everyone, that after having undertaken this in earnest do's relapse to Sin so far, as that it lives in him, and reigns over him again. In the race that is set before us he that runs with all his might and heart may stumble and fall, but 'tis impossible that he can willfully turn back again, walk contrary in full cariere. Our Savior seems to state the question perfectly John 13. v. 8, 9, 10. where he tells S ^t Peter and the rest of the Apostles, that they that were washed, were clean wholly, save their feet, need only have them afterwards washed; but they had so much need of that, otherwise they had no part in him. The Traveler that had cleansed himself, and had preserved his body carefully from all defilements, let him do his best, his journey yet must needs foul his feet, and therefore 'twas the custom always there to wash them. So in your Pilgrimage here, those that have by Baptism been cleansed (for so the Author in S ^t Cyprian expounds it, and Tertullian from this verse proves the Apostles had been baptized) and according to the vow there made renounced sincerely, rid themselves of all the gross unclean habitual courses of their life, yet their conversing with this Earth will certainly contract such sullages, that if that which is typ'd and meant here by my washing of your feet, be not don to them, however they have been baptized into me, they can have no part in me, no benefit from me. All of you, my Apostles, must be cleansed from your ambitions, your contentious pride, which puts you upon frequent strifes whi • h of you shall be greatest, Math. 20. &c. Some of you from the fury of your passion and revengeful heats, that would needs call for fire from heaven, Luke 9. 54. Peter in one night (some think in this that he was washed) did also find there was occasion that his arrogant presumption of his own strength, how though all should be offended, he would not; but would die for his Master Math. 26. 33. should be washed away: his negligence and carelessness in duty also, watching not even in temptation, when he saw his Master by him in an Agony, v. 40: his wrath so great as that it made him draw his sword and wound without authority: and beyond all, that evil temper of his mind, that made him thrice deny his Master, Savior, God, for fear of danger; all these must be washed away. In fine, whatever passions or affections to ill things, or single acts that do surprise men in their course, all these, though only he that washed us in his own blood, can wash away and cleanse us from; yet these evidently may be in the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , in the baptized: but continuance, life, dominion cannot, he supposeth. If these be, the washing of the feet does not cleanse these, and there's no other after-washing: for he that is washed must not need, save to have his feet washed. So that he that is washed, however carefully he walk, he will contract some dust and some foul spots it may be, but he will not roll himself, nor wallow in the mire. At least Christ seems to think they would not; he would not imagine men would live in constant opposition to such obligations of eternal consequence, and of their own assuming; and after they had tied themselves with their own vows, yet live most dissolutely, letting loose themselves to all the things they had so solemnly abjured: indeed pursuing them as if the vow were on the other side, as if they had renounced Religion and the God of it, and by their actions did all they could to exorcize and conjure out of them the holy Spirit and the whole Trinity, into whose possession they were given in their Baptism: As if indeed their bodies were sprinkled to those purposes the Heathens bodies were in the Solemnities of the infernal God's; to consecrate and devote them to those foul Fiends, and their fouler deeds. And where it is not thus, yet those divine engagements are not half so sacred with them as the promises of their debauched converses, or the assignations of their folly: they break them without any least reluctancy in sport, in the intemperances of their mirth they drown them; and with the least puff of scoffing or blaspheming breath blow of all those necessities this Sacrament does put upon them; and however S ^t Paul call it death and burial, their Sin lives and conquers all God's obligations to piety, and triumphs over vows and oaths, and murders resurrection to new life. I must confess I know not what it is, but it is plain nowadays few men seem to consider there is such a binding sacredness in Baptism, such things they believe were promised in their names when they were Infants by their Sureties, who, they think, may be concerned to mind them that they take good courses: but sure this cannot be interpreted their own act so formally as to expose them to such dismal guilts, as breach of vows and perjury, with all aggravations possible, when e're they fail. They cannot think it the same thing as in the Christians of the first ages, who had first perfect conviction of the everlasting miserable state of Sinners, and that out of that there was no refuge but in Christianity, which not only offered to relieve, but make them blessed to Eternity, upon which assurance they repented, wept, and begged to be admitted into it, and took upon them all the Rules of it with all obligations to keep them; and this out of perfect understanding and deliberate choice, full resolution. Such was the case of the first Christians, but theirs does not look so sacredly.

Indeed if any do believe they can come off from all as from engagements put upon them under age, that those vows were but promises made for them in minority, and will not hold against them: then they might do well to be ingenuous and plead this, to renounce the renunciations that were made for them, cancel and disown all. So we read the men of Congo (when their land was first discovered by the Portuguez ) were easily persuaded into Christianity, and baptized in great abundance; but when they found it did require some strictnesses, they had no mind to bear, that they must leave their Heathen practices, particularly their multitude of women, they came back to the Church, renounced what they had don, and returned back to their indulgent Heathenism. For why, they knew not how to reconcile the Christian vow with living in the open breach of it, they were too honest for such practices. Now such an obligation is most certainly Essential to Baptism in what age soever 'tis administered. For that being the rite of entering the new Covenant, and a Covenant being a mutual contract, something agreed on and contracted for on both the parties that do covenant, of which that Sacrament is the Seal, it is impossible, but from the nature of the thing it must oblige them that receive it to the performance of all that the Covenant does require on their part. And this obligation was still entered even when Infants were admitted in the way of vow or solemn promise. 'It is not S ^t Austin's age alone which calls that custom ancient: but Tertullian in the second Century assures us, Infants promised by Sureties; and we saw the children of the Jewish Proselytes had undertakers. And evidently by God's own prescription children entered Covenant with him; for they were circumcised at eight days old, and that is called so Gen. 17. 14. and that by that rite they did undertake to keep their whole Law, is most certain: for S ^t Paul assures us 5. Gal. v. 3. I testify to every man that is circumcised, that he makes himself a debtor to do the whole Law. So here the rite hath that importance; the Sureties do but answer what it stands for, and if the infant does not understand the vow at present, so he is not to perform it for the present, it is an obligation in relation to future life, then he will understand it, when he is to keep it. After the leisures of Nature, when the Age of temptation and knowledge are come, then it will be of force upon him when it is of use to him; but 'tis entered at the present.

And that none may think its being made for them by others in their name, and their consent not had, lessens the engagement, give me leave to call to your remembrance 2 ^lie , how that was made up and supplied with all solemnity of obligation possible in Confirmation. For as from the beginning upon those that were baptized when they were of Age, the Apostles, and then afterwards their Successors, by solemn laying on of hands and praying did invite, call down the H. Ghost, who hover'd there over the laver of Regeneration to hatch the new creature, as he once moved on the face of the waters to warm them into the first creation; that so his strengths and graces might be added to their vows: so when infants were baptized, this was defer'd for this end, as our Church declares, that when they come to years of discretion, and have learnt what was promised for them in Baptism, they may themselves, with their own mouth and with their own consent, openly before the Church, ratify and confirm the same, and also promise, that by the grace of God they will evermore endeavor themselves faithfully to observe and keep them; which they do there upon their knees: whereupon that grace is prayed for for them, and they blest by those, whom God hath appointed to bless in his name; that so they who just then are grown able to be taught all the debaucheries of youth, warmed into the desires and the strengths of vice, might have not only this check of their own vows fresh upon them, but the effusions of the H. Spirit, those living Rivers in the inwards, as S ^t John expresses, that may quench and wash away those unclean heats.

3. To express more the inviolable Sacredness of those obligations, which in Baptism were entered, and to let us see they were baptized into the Death of Christ, from the first times, they did immediately make them, that were baptized, partakers of the Symbols of that Death. For from that Sacrament they proceeded directly to the other, the Lord's Supper: of those that were baptized after they were of age we can derive that practice quite from Justin Martyr; which being don so universally to them, no question gave occasion to the doing it to Infants after Baptism, and then they found a text for it, and made that universal also. But though that be justly changed, yet after Confirmation we proceed to that; and often we repeat the use of it: now that we renew in the Lord's Supper what we did engage in Baptism, when we entered the new Covenant, is evident. Christ calls the cup there in S ^t Luke the new Covenant in his blood, and in S ^t Mark, this is my blood 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that blood of the new Covenant. The words relate to those Exod. 24. 8. where it is also said this is the blood of the Covenant; for God dd seal his Covenants still with blood. Whereupon neither was the first Covenant dedicated without blood. Heb. 9. 18. that was its Sanction. Now the Sanction of a Covenant is some Rite, which being celebrated in the name of those that covenant, does oblige them to stand to, not to rescind the agreement; which that Rite was contrived to do (supposing that the most effectual way) by imprecating mischief on the person that did break it. The usual way was either killing of a beast, the blood of which they poured out, or in some Nations drank, or else they did dissect and tear the victime and either swear over, or pass thro between the parts; by one of these significative Ceremonies implying a severe commination, So be it don to him that breaks this vow. And all these the Heathen, who are full of the Examples, seem to have derived from God's own practice, who appointed Abraham to do so, when he went to make a Covenant with him Gen. 15. and his meaning in such Rites he hath reveled by Jer. 34. 18, 19. the men that have transgressed my Covenant, even the Princes, Priests, and all the People that have past between the parts of the Calf 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , I will make those men that Calf, or as that Calf, which they did cut in twain, and pass between the parts thereof, i. e. I will divide and separate them among the Nations. For the wishes of all this that Ceremony did import. But more expressly there in Exod. 24. 6. And Moses took the half of the blood and put it in the Basins, for the Peoples part, and half of the blood he sprinkled on the Altar, as on God's part, and then he took the book of the Covenant, v. 7. and read it in the audience of the People. Now that Book, especially in the four foregoing chapters said on God's part what he required of them and what he would do for them: and the People said on their part, All that the Lord hath said we will do, and be obedient, v. 7. Upon which undertaking on both sides Moses took the blood and sprinkled both the book and all the people, Heb. 9. 19. saying, this is the blood of the Covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning these words i. e. thus both parts of you oblige yourselves in figure to make good your Articles, In shedding this blood on the Book the Lord's indenture, he, for whom it is impossible to fail his word, yet condescends to use this rite, by which those men that covenant devote their own blood to be shed, if they should fail: and in its sprinkling on you all, you also wish, if you perform not your part, which you promised, that your own be so poured out. This is shed as your type, and 'tis your giving earnest that your own is forfeit, when you fail in your Conditions. For that these wishes were implied all in that Ceremony, and not only at the first sealing of the Covenant, but mere Repetition of it, when 'twas only read again before and to them and their children, Moses tells them; All you are here this day 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 to pass, alluding to divided Sacrifices, to pass, I say, into the Covenant 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 and into the execratory oath, into the imprecations which are signified in those divided Sacrifices and that Blood-shedding, the Sanctions of that Covenant.

Now what that Blood and those divided Sacrifices were to that Covenant, that Christ sacrificed, his body broken and his blood shed was to ours: and is therefore called, Heb. c. 10. the Blood of the Covenant ( 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , with which it was ratified and hallowed) God no more engaged in faint types, in the blood of goats and calves, but in the blood of God, with that he ratified, hallowed the new Covenant. And when our Savior calls the Sacramental cup the new Covenant in his blood, and the blood of the new Covenant, it must have the like importance, the broken bread must be as the divided Sacrifice; the wine poured out, the Covenant Blood: by taking which we much more properly may be said to pass into the Covenant, and into the oath and curses of it, then the Jews were said by Moses to do so at the mere Repetition of theirs, or indeed at the first making. For that blood was not sprinkled on us as theirs was, but drunk in; we thus by our own act and deed devoting ourselves to those curses if we fail, yea taking earnest of them into us.

The sum is this: Our Saviors words of this cup being the very same with those in Exodus, demonstrate that this Sacrament is a renewing of our Gospel Covenant with Sacrifice. The doing that is the assuming to endeavor to observe all the conditions of that Covenant with a most solemn vow or oath, and under curses; the tenor of those curses is, Let that light on me if I fail, which was inflicted on the federal Sacrifice. Now that Sacrifice was Christ himself, the ceremony of it was his body torn and his blood poured out, in a word, all those bitter agonies which we there commemorate, and which that Sacrament does represent. It signifies therefore that we there renew our vow of Baptism, assume faithful Evangelical Obedience to all the Gospel do's require: which if we do not faithfully endeavor, and where we transgress repent, but fail willfully, we wish that all the agonies of Christ may be our portion. This is the Tenor of those our performances.

And now consider, I beseech you in the fear of God, with what strange multiplied arts of managery Almighty God pursued you thro all the stages of your life to seize on you, & scare you, that you might not be a prey to vice and to the Devil. How in your first Infancy he took early possession, and in the soft tenderness of that age (a temper the most capable of impression) set his seal upon you, marked you for his own, that so the first thing you should come to understand might be, that you already were engaged to him and to his service, not only Sanctitatis designati in Tertullian, designed and set apart for, consecrate to holiness; but in a solemn vow of it, sworn to Religion and the keeping of God's Commandments. So that the sense of these great obligations might prevent not only any first essays of vice, but even the first inclinations of the appetite or body. We know whose fault it is, if children be not seasoned in this manner. Now when by means of careful education pious principles have taken up their yet untainted understandings, when their minds are stored with images of good things, and their apprehensions wrought into an awe of God and reverence for Religion, and to an abhorrency of vice; least constitution ripening, curiosity inciting, edging it, example drawing in, encouraging, and conversation pushing forwards, Youth that is not settled steady, hath not firmness nor experience, might yield to, at least not break the first assaults, which for the most part are the most impetuous: that age was called upon to come, and solemnly upon their knees before the Congregation to renew their vows. Which could not but refresh the sense of all their obligations, and make new and strong impressions of their great concern of fearing God and being cautious of all Sin, and more and more excite and actuate their care in the performances of dutiful obedience. And truly besides those assistances and blessings we might hopefully expect to reap in that rite from the prayers and benedictions of God's Officers of blessing; besides this, at that time when the mind had not been yet deflowered, the mere shame of violating what we had so publicly, so holily resolved and sworn, must needs be a strong curb to rein us in from evil. Our heart would have failed us, if we had attempted any; for our very blushes must have called away the blood from thence to rise against the thing we had so solemnly renounced and bid defiance to. Yet more to strengthen us we were thenceforwards yearly called upon at frequent solemn seasons to renew all in a more engaging Ceremony, in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, where with deliberated preparation in the most tremendous Symbols we again made oath, that we would not deceive, wrong, or oppress any, bear false witness, kill, commit adultery, or steal, or covet: and all this with the most astonishing circumstances possible, doing it in the blood of Christ that was shed for Sin, as it were showing to our selves the cursed consequences of it, how it tore his body, spilled his blood, and could have no less expiation: so to make it look more dreadful to us. And having don so, taking in those pledges of that expiation into us, as it were expressing we received them on those terms we had resolved there; and no otherwise expected that they should be salutary to us, then as we endeavored to observe them. And to do thus hath been our constant practice, and this I must suppose we are designing now, preparing for, and the more to affect our own selves with a real intimate sense of all this, that Passion of our Savior must be represented to us; Christ crucified before our eyes. We consecrate a day to show ourselves that infinite indignation God Almighty hath to Sin, which could not express itself in softer easier ways, then in the Agonies and bloody sweat, the Cross and Passion of the Son of God: and show ourselves that infinite love of his to Sinners, that inclined him to do all this for, accept it in the stead of those that faithfully would cleave to him and leave their sins: and to give more pungency to all this, that it may touch livelier and pierce deeper, we intend to entertain the celebration with the humbling and afflicting of our own souls; and all this to actuate, give life and vigor to the resolutions that we are to take upon it. For while our hearts will be yet wreaking with the apprehensions, we intend in that blood to renew again our vows, and this we do from year to year, and mean to do now. Now sure we think we are in earnest when we do thus: we do not tie these sacred bonds upon ourselves, as Samson did teach Delilah to do on him, only to try our own strengths on them, and to serve us to break thro. And therefore in God's name that we would now begin to try in earnest whether we could keep them, and that whosoever vows thus would first set himself against that Sin, which constitution or his custom makes his sorest enemy, that if he chance to come near an occasion of it, he consider, I have deeply sworn against thee, I have made a Covenant with my God and with my eyes, and with my ears, and bound them from pursuing their careers over the invitations, that have hitherto crept in at them, and betrai'd me; and whensoever a temptation do's come towards thee, bethink thyself, that 'tis the Devils harbinger, and that he himself is not far off, but is there laying trains for thee, and however kind his address be, he hath a dagger at thy heart, and a chain at thy feet, which he is then come from below to get thee into out of all thy vows; and a dungeon in Hell for thee. Do not therefore treat with it, but call up all thy resolution and thy oaths; for otherwise thou dost betray thyself, and it is plain thou hast no mind to keep them, that thou didst not take them with that meaning. And truly any one would think so, that considered but men's vows and conversations: how they first vow cleanness in the Laver, which the Holy Ghost did hallow, and then make their whole lives to be but wallowing in uncleanness, and make that filthy, which that vow had cleansed. And then they swear amendment at the Altar, dip those oaths in blood to make them solemn; and strait mind and contrive nothing else but how to vomit up those Oaths and that Blood. They seem before a Sacrament to have some sorrow, or at least some thoughtfulness about their Sins; but yet not resolving perfectly to part with them, they bring them with them to that Sacrament, set them at Christ's table, as it were to feed on that body which they crucified, make them imbrue their hands in that blood which they shed. And this is the return they make to that blood shed for them. They bring them and their vows against them both together to the Altar, and they leave their vows there, but they take their Sins back with them, and serve them still. Now does eternal ruin look so lovely to us, as that we will break thro all oaths to get at it? Isit worth the while to be at once false to God and our own blessedness? Do vows so straiten us, that we cannot endure the obligations to be happy? In God's name be at last more true to your own Souls: consider what I say, and the Lord give you understanding.

A SERMON OF THE PREROGATIVE OF MERCY, in being the best SACRIFICE.

THE words are part of a reply of our Saviors to a cavilling question of the Scribes and Pharisees, who seeing him converse familiarly, accept the friendship of an invitation, sit and eat with open noted Sinners, and (which was as bad a name amongst them) Publicans, ask his Disciples why they and their Master do what they know was forbidden and unlawful? To whom having answered, that he did converse with them only in order to their cure, (now a Physician, that goes to visit his sick Patients, is not therefore blamed for going to them because they are sick,) he further justifies himself by an account of God's own mind and dealing set down in the Scripture, of whose meaning, if they had not taken notice hitherto, he bids them now go learn it. For God tells them by his Prophet Hosea, that he prefers acts of mercy, doing good to others, before any Ceremonies of his Worship, though himself ordained them, whether Sacrifices or whatever others. For I will, says he, have mercy and not sacrifice. Therefore Christ did but comply with God's own will, when he accepted of an invitation from such sinners, merely to have the better opportunity to invite them to repentance and to heaven; and in doing so did but prefer the acts of highest mercy in the world, the doing everlasting blessed good to souls, before obedience to such ritual precepts, as forbad converse with the unclean and sinful.

I need not here observe, that the negation is but comparative, and means, I will not have Sacrifice, but Mercy rather, yea I will have Mercy and not Sacrifice, where I cannot have both; or that by Sacrifice also is meant all Ceremonies of God's Worship, altho instituted by himself, and those not taken by themselves and merely external Acts and void of the inward zeal and devotion that should spirit them, but taken in their best states; yet God will have works of Mercy rather. And that doctrine is, it seems, worth learning and attending to: for so in the text there is besides the proposition itself I will have mercy and not sacrifice, also the insinuation of its usefulness in those words, go and learn what that means.

I shall not break these into other parts, but raise some Propositions for the subjects of my discourse. And

First since God compares two sorts of things here in the text, and says he will have, or is pleased with one and not the other, which other yet 'tis plain that he was pleased with and would have, for he commanded them; 'tis evident he does imply, that as these, called here Sacrifices, were grateful to him, as they were obedience to his precepts; so the other therefore, which he does prefer to those, they must be good and acceptable to him in themselves, not only as they are commanded. Some actions therefore have an intrinsic honesty, are of themselves, in their own nature morally good and well-pleasing to God, as some also are the contrary.

2 ^dly Of all that are so in that manner good, those of Mercy are in an especial manner such, I will have mercy.

3 ^dly Of all acts of mercy those are best and most well-pleasing in God's sight, which are employed in reducing Sinners from their evil ways: those were such our Savior is here pleading for. And

4 ^thly 'It is only the opportunity and the design and hope of doing good to Sinners by reforming them, that can make familiar converse with them excusable and lawful: I mean, where no duty of a relation do's oblige to it. Christ himself had no other plea to justify his eating with them, but that he intended it as a mercy to them, as his opportunity to call them to repentance, All these we see flow naturally from the words.

First, some actions have an intrinsic honesty, are of themselves, in their own nature morally good and well-pleasing to God, as some are the contrary. When I say they have an intrinsic honesty and are in nature good, I mean the rule of them is intrinsic and essential to the agent, is indeed his nature, and by consequence their goodness is as universal and eternal as that nature. Now it is a doctrine that hath had Advocates as ancient as the great Carneades and the Sect of the Pyrrhonians, that in nature antecedent to all laws and constitutions there is no rule of unjust or just, good or evil, honest or dishonest; and that nothing of itself is one or other, but as our concerns or interests do make it to ourselves, to prosecute which is the only inclination and the only rule that nature gives us: or else, as the public interests incline superior powers to prescribe them, whom it is our interest also to obey. Accordingly we find • this saying in Thucydides, that to them that are in power 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , nothing is unreasonable that is useful. And the Athenians being stronger tell the Melii, that by rules of human reason things are just in that degree that they are necessary. And then as necessities and interests do chance to vary, good and just must change into their contrary; and as different countries and persons cannot but have opposite rules and measures of necessity and usefulness, so they must of just and honest: thus the laws of Virtue serve, like Almanacs, but for such a latitude, and a different elevation of the Pole quite alters them, and makes them good for nothing. A pleasant sort of good and honest this, which any wall or dike, that divides Provinces or Countries, can give boundaries, lines, and rules to, so as that it shall be virtue and right on one side, vice and error on the other: as if those principles of good and evil, which seem planted in us, and the world calls natural, were nothing else but prejudices taken in from early conversation; as dogs learn (they say) the skill of chase. And it were great pity, if this age, which so much needs the patronage of such a principle to give countenance to their licentious practices, had not also found out some, that reestablish and plead for this. But I shall not give you or my self the trouble to advert to them, but shall only briefly lay the grounds of the contrary truth, which is so plainly set down here in the text: for if God himself though he had constituted both the acts of Mercy and the acts of Worship, so that whatsoever goodness law or constitution (though divine) could give, both had, if yet he shall prefer, and will have one much, rather then the other, 'tis because there is some difference in the things themselves. For he that sees and judges as things are, if he shall judge one better, then it is so, and that by some rule antecedent to that judgment, that is, from the nature of the thing itself, which is the reason why he judges of them diversely, and constitutes, and wills them differently. So that God supposeth, that there are some actions of themselves, and in their own nature morally good; neither is it hard to prove it. And though, if we but viewed man's nature in itself, whether made by God or chance and atoms it matters not, we should see sufficient grounds to count his actions laudable or blame-worthy, as being morally good or bad, according as they are directed by, or deviate from that rule: yet in my first proposal of the thing, I shall make bold to take in God as the contriver of man's nature, and all other. Now when the great Creator of the Universe had made it up of infinite variety of beings in an excellent order, 'tis most certain that He being a most wise agent made each being for some end, which it was to attain, unless it were made in vain: but ends are not attainable but by operations suited and proportioned to those ends. The operations of a simple element will not reach the ends of life, or sense, or reason; as in artificial things we cannot use a ball to cut, or Coulander to carry water in, and therefore as it is the business of each art to take care, that their tools and all their productions be wrought so, that their very make may fit them to work out these uses they are made for: so in Nature, God's art, it was therefore necessary he should frame each several being so, as that the nature of it should be as it were a rule to it, to regulate the manner and the measures of its workings, that so they might tend orderly and constantly towards those ends, which he designed their operations to work out, and in their courses might comport with one another's motions; and by doing so contribute to the ends and uses of the whole. For if the nature of each being were not such a principle, causing some to move in one way, some another, fitting this for one use, that for others: or if in their motions, or their other actings they should deviate from the rule of nature, they could neither be said to be those beings, neither would they make a world, but Chaos, routing always and confounding one another. But while they do observe that rule, act and are moved according to their nature, and by doing so fulfil their uses, and work out the ends of their creation. So we see they are the preservation of the world, and consequently they must needs be truly, what God saw they were, when He had made them all, very good. Those of them indeed that are determined by their nature to one course, which they can neither err from, nor discern that they observe, not morally good; because there is no place for virtue, since there is none for choice in such determinations. But then there is a creature that hath faculties to understand and choose, and which hath principles imprest upon him, that enable him for apprehension, judgment, and discourse of reason, and by consequence who is only able, as to understand himself, so also to find out the nature and the uses of the rest, and therefore who alone is capable and fit to be the Lord of them, and was made so, and hath therefore ends above the ends of all the rest; whose nature also, as the others were, (there being the same reason of them all) was a law to itself, to regulate his actings, even all his apprehensions, judgings, reasonings, and his choices. Now if he also do not turn aside from the line of direction, which his being do's incline him unto, in pursuance of the aims of a nature that is rational and was made for society, his actings must be good, that is, fit for the uses, which he was designed for, and it is not possible that they can fail his Makers ends, and consequently must be well pleasing to his great and wise and good Artificer, since so they justify the goodness of the workmanship. But yet if he neglect and violate the laws of his own being, and as he corrupts himself, so also being Lord of other creatures, if he employ them not to their own uses, but abuse them, make them serve irregular and vitiated purposes, this male-administration cannot but renverse the state of things. Thus acting he not only puts himself by those ends he was made for; but defeats God of his aims in the creation of the rest, by putting them to uses that despite him merely, stand in perfect opposition to his wisdom, holiness, and goodness, all his attributes, and work out nothing but disorder and destruction, and by consequence are bad and most displeasing to their Maker, and since these (as the other good ones were) are don discernedly and with deliberation and choice, they are therefore morally so. So that actions of men in themselves, and by the rules of nature, may be morally good and well pleasing in God's sight, or the contrary.

Yea which will follow from the premises, and which I only touched before, altho there were no law of a superior being, which required that man should live conformable to his own nature, and to those impressions and notices, which in his making have been stamped upon him, to direct and regulate his actings, yet his very nature, howsoever made or happening, being such a rule to all his works, would have the reason of a law to him: for as with them that grant such a Superior and Creator, that very supreme being, though he be Almighty, can do all things, yet there are such things, that 'tis impossible for him to do, they are so bad, and all his actions are most infinitely good, not by reason of a conformity to the precepts or prohibitions of a law; for none such can be set to God, but merely as they are conformable to the most infinite perfection of his nature. So abstracting from all law of a superior being, and considering man in his own nature as a rational sociable creature, and relating to the place and station he fills in the Universe, his actions would be good or bad by disagreeing or conformity to that; and he that acts in opposition to it, is as mischievous, yea as unnatural a thing as if one of the Elements of the world, or any chief ingredient of its making, should have changed its operations, and by consequence not be itself, but the disorder and the pest of all the other. We seem indeed astonished seeing heavy bodies to put off their nature and ascend, and we rack principles to find out causes: when the vicious man, that acts daily against his reason, is the same constant prodigy: the man, that pours down streams of intemperance, until they mount into the throne of reason and quench the little spark that's seated there, is as unnatural a thing as a stream climbing up a wall, and every Sinner is as much a monster as a stone falling upwards, do's as much against his nature, reason; is indeed a greater monster. For when those other things do leave their nature, 'tis either from some violence in the efficient; if water mount, 'tis by the force of engine or some other pressure, or, as some say, from violent impulses of a final cause: 'tis for the preservation of the whole community of natures; for if it be to avoid vacuities, it is so, and it do's against its own inclination, only for the strong concern there is for the benefit of the Universe: but the wicked man, that lives against the dictates of right reason, his own nature, is urged to it by no violences but those of willfulness, is pushed on by no engine but a naughty heart, nor hath he any higher ends that make impulse upon him, but he is only passionate for unworthy ruin, violent for an unreasonable destruction.

The Heathens were so sensible of Natures obligation in man to live virtuously according to reason, that they called the doing so 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , as if there had been an engagement to it in his very constitution and being: and his principles and frame did promise for him he should live so: and therefore Arian upon Epict, tells a man that did a thing injuriously or with passion and impetuosity, or but without consideration, or to gratify his lower appetites, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , thou hast destroyed the man in thee in having not kept nature's word, but broke the promise, which thy very being made for thee. As if man's nature undertook as solemnly he would be virtuous, as the fire's nature does assure that it will burn.

But we who profess also to believe, that God made man in his own image, consequently must needs grant, that so far as he imprest on him the likeness of that nature, whose perfections, as they are most infinite and immutable, so they are a necessary and unchangeable rule of goodness to those beings that are transcripts of his being, so far therefore he hath planted in us rules of good, which since they are derived from our supreme Lord and Creator, must have the force of law to us, and are that which the Scripture calls the Law written in our hearts, whose dictates (howsoever slightly vain men think of virtue, that it is but an empty name, or at the best but politic contrivance without any real grounds in nature) have yet their causes as eternal, are themselves as immutable, not only as man's nature, but as God's, of which man's is the draught and image, and are justly called participations of those form of goodness that are in God, of which they are the prints; and amongst them none more lively then the rule of Mercy, the thing that God do's prefer here, when he sais, I will have Mercy and not Sacrifice. Whence we observed, that amongst all those actions, which have an intrinsic honesty, and are of their own nature in themselves morally good, and well-pleasing to God, those of Mercy are in an especial manner such; the second thing I was to speak to, for I will, saith he, have Mercy.

The word here 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 signifies benignity, and by it is meant all love and kindness, the exercise of the habit of mind, that disposeth a man to do all the good he can to every man, in what condition soever. Now to prove that human nature hath implanted in it principles of universal kindness, and propensions to have friendship to, have pity on, do good to one another, I shall not urge what S ^t Paul saith, that God made of one blood all the nations of the earth, though certainly in that one kindred there be an obligation to the dear affections of near relatives. But if all would grant that one blood, it would, I fear, prevail not much, for nowadays nearness of kindred is not apt to make close friendships and concerns for one another, if an interest chance to interpose: however one blood, when it is divided so and scattered, hath not force to warm and spirit strong affections or to cement much.

But this I will take confidence to urge, that in the latitude of creatures none is born with so much need of mercy, as a man: none wants so many helps to be brought forth, none leaves the parent, that did bear it and should nourish it, in so weak and helpless a condition, (I speak as to the generality,) 'tis merely others pity and assistance that they live: and then if mercy, others help be the most pressing and the first necessity of human nature, the return of mercy, pitying and helping others is the first and the most pressing obligation on that nature. To go forward; as this state of infancy demonstrates nature did intend him for society, since without that 'tis not only most impossible that he can be that rational creature, ever can exert the faculties of speech and the discourse of reason, which yet 'tis plain nature hath fitted him for; but also most impossible that he can be brought up to be so, when he is so, 'tis society alone that still preserves him, and 'tis only mutual good offices that preserve society. Nam quo alio tuti sumus quam quod mutuis juvamur officiis, saith Seneca l. 4. de Benef. c. 18. and man's life subsists, is furnished and rose only by commerce of kindnesses, by helping one another: take him single, and what is he but the prey of any beast almost? vilissimus & facillimus sanguis, the cheapest blood and easiest to be spilled. Those creatures that are born in deserts, and born for them, are all armed, but nature gave no strength to man besides the kindness and assistances of other men; take away them, by which alone it do's subsist, and the whole kind must perish. But so far you labor to take them away, as you believe not to be good, kind, merciful, and assisting is not a thing of itself ill and unnatural, which it must needs be; and the contrary most natural, when as nature hath provided only that, as instrument of its security and preservation. So far is the accursed principle of self interest and of man's just right to do what e're he lists to others, howsoever mischievous it be, if he conceive the doing of it useful to himself, from being any principle of nature, that the first voice of nature teacheth us the direct contrary. And whosoever he be that is, I will not say unjust to others, but not kind, friendly, and apt to do good to them; he that hath regard for only self, and measures all by his own inclinations and interests, is such a thing, if nature only judge of him, as ought to have been exposed when he was born, and to have no pity showed him, when in tears and in his blood he cried for it; he should be still abstained and separated from, as one whom Nature herself excommunicates, as one who is no part of human society, but the proper native and inhabitant of the desert. But he that is unrighteous, who by worng whether of violence or fraud or but of debt makes his own satisfactions, that to serve his uses and occasions dares take, or but detain from others what is due to them, and supports his pomp and plenty with that, which of right ought to cloth and feed others; and so eats the bread and drinks the tears, and, may be, blood of Creditors; he that is so unmerciful as to be thus cruel, though Almighty God were silent, even Nature would herself prosecute such a person with her out-cries, as we do fire, when 'tis broke out and rages, for he is all one; fire also spreads and seises all it can come near, whether man's or God's house, to make fuel for itself and to increase its blaze: so that the other should be looked upon with the same dreads and abhorrency, for he is the same disorder in the frame of Nature, and in this the voice of Nature is the voice of God, which is our other medium to discover what is natural. Now since we have declared, that natural virtue is in man the imitation of God, is as it were the workings off of those forms of goodness that are in him, and the lines and rules of it are but the lineaments of his perfection, 〈◊〉 will be easy to evince, that the rule for mercy is a most important law of Nature, since the practice of it is so natural to God himself. Now to prove this, passing by all other methods of probation, I shall content myself with that one declaration of himself he made, when he proclaimed himself the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity transgression and sin, and that will by no means utterly cut off the guilty, (so I understand it out of Jer. 46. 28.) will not make a full end, a clear riddance of them, when I visit. God seems here to have taken flesh in his expressions e're he was incarnate, that he might have words to phrase his goodness in: and he had bowels of mercy before he was made man, and yet all this, he says, are but the back parts of his goodness Exod. 33. v. ult. but that of it which we meet with in his dealings with the Sons of men, as we see it à posteriori, and in its effects here: but the face and glory of it was so bright and dazzling, that he tells his friend there Moses, that 'twas not possible for him to see it and live. Yet now S ^t Paul saith, God hath given us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, 2 Cor. 4. 6. Indeed there was Divinity of mercy, and more too; humanity was taken in, that God Almighty might be able to bestow more then himself, and all that he might show compassion on us men. It seems, O Lord, thou wilt have Mercy, yea and Sacrifice too. If thou require such an offering, as the Sacrifice of thine own blood and of thine own Son, that thou mightest have mercy on us; and then let men dispute, that vindicative justice is essential to God, that sin and its punishment are annexed by as unchangeable necessity as God's Attributes are to his being, and that by the express exigence of his nature he no less necessarily executes it, then the fire burns: we may well be content it should be so, when this strict necessity, if such there were, did but make way for, was subservient to the ends of infinite Mercy, and by that demonstrates, that benignity, compassion and forgiveness are much more the inclinations of his nature, and if he intended man in anything his image, sure he did in mercy; therefore do's our Savior charge us, be ye merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful, who as he had no other reason to create the world, so 'tis most certain, that he had no other reason to redeem it. That Economy was intended as the means of mercy to poor Sinners in reducing them, which is the Mercy my third observation speaks of, which was this; that of all acts of Mercy those are best and most well-pleasing in God's sight, which are emploi'd in the conversion of Sinners: that was such, for which our Savior is here pleading, when he saith, I will have Mercy.

But here I mean not such conversions as they are emploi'd about, who compass sea and land, not so much to convert men from the evil of their ways, to the true real practice of Christianity, as to convert them to their Church: to which men would not go so fast, but that by the debauch of all good Christian discipline, there are such easy absolutions to be had, though men be not converted from their evil ways; for it is impossible to find a Church or a Religion in the world, which men may sin so hopefully and comfortably in, as that of Rome, as it now stands. But these busy Agitators of conversion, besides that they convert not men to Catholic Christianity, but to a name, and indeed faction, have made Catholic a word of party: if they should multiply, we should soon find, they would have Sacrifice, not Mercy. I do not mean their Host, that Sacrificium incruentum, bloody Sacrifices, we know, are a main part of their doctrine and their practice, who have used to turn whole Nations into shambles for their Church's sake, and make bonfires with burnt-offerings of their fellow Christians. But waving these Conversions, those the proposition speaks of, are such, as reduce Sinners from their evil doings, to the universal faithful practice of all virtue and all piety.

Now of all acts of Mercy, that those, which endeavor this, are best, Nature herself would judge: since they do aim at reinstating man, the crown of all her workmanship, in the integrity and rectitude of Nature, which is his own true perfect state, and is therefore the most proper and best for him, as relating to that state. But God, who beyond that designed to make man, who had fallen from his own nature, to partake of the Divine Nature, as S ^t Peter saith 2. Pet. 1. 4. and in order to it called us to glory and virtue, v. 3. cannot but account that kindness, which endeavors the recovery of Sinners from corruption and misery, to the state of virtue, and so on to glory, and to be partakers of his Nature, as a kindness that is in great degree Divine. And certainly, if acts of Mercy be, as we have seen, so well pleasing to God, 'tis certain, that the acts of greatest Mercy must be most well-pleasing; and it is as certain, that those Mercies are the greatest, which relieve from greatest miseries, and invest with highest blessedness: but the eternal happy preparations for the Penitent, and the as infinite and immortal torments, that await the Sinner, transcend all comparison with other things. Both of them indeed were proposed in Mercy, Hell itself was threatened merely in compassion, to affright our passage, and to make our entry inaccessible. 'It is true it must be executed on the final impenitent, that God may be true; he is engaged in his veracity to inflict it, and yet he scarce knows how to do it, or to punish: How shall I give thee up, O Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, O Israel? My heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together, Hos. 11. 8. Since thou wilt not do it, not turn, not repent, sure I must, for how shall I give thee up? Yea he does it till that he be weary with repenting Jer. 15. 6. till he be in passion, so as that with oaths he does expostulate as I live, saith the Lord, I would not the death of the wicked,—turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die: yea more he sent his Son out of his bosom to prevent it. Would you know the value of that kindness, that endeavors to reform such Sinners, it was worth the Incarnation of the Son of God, the Word was made flesh purposely to call such to repentance: so my text saith, I came to call Sinners to repentance. But to call them to it, Lord! out of thine own mouth we will challenge more from thee; for thou didst answer to this very same reproach of being a guest to one that was a Sinner, The Son of man came to seek and to save that which is lost Luke 19. 10. not to call only, but to seek; and how, he shows you in the Parable, chap. 15. v. 4, 5. What man of you having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? and when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing.

The Sinner he hath straid into by paths, gone away from the Shepherd of his soul, is a lost sheep; but yet when he is gone his farthest, is in mazes, knows not which way to betake himself, then this good Shepherd do's not only call, invite to a return, or (as the Father in the Parable) run to meet him in his coming back, but goes himself to seek him, seems to mind the recovery of each single one that's lost, and contributes as carefully to his return, as if that one were all his charge, and the whole flock not dearer to him then that sheep, he leaves the ninety and nine to seek that one, and he seeks till he finds it, and then lays it on his shoulders: the wandering sheep it seems had strai'd till it was weary, and had tired itself with running from its Shepherd, so as that it neither could come nor be driven home; but that too is provided for, for therefore he is carried: that none, how far soever he hath gone away, may yet despair of coming back. This sheep had wandered to so great a distance, and to so much weariness, that he was fain to be born back, when he was found. Yea and the burden was most acceptable, for he laid it on his shoulders rejoicing: assure thyself he will refuse no burden for thy sake, who was willing to bear the Cross for thee; be but contented to be found by him, and he will carry thee with gladness, & the joy will spread itself to Heaven also, v. 7. There is joy in heaven over one Sinner, that repenteth. The kindness, that effects this, is worth a triumph in God's presence among all, God, Angels; it is worth a passion of the Son of God, it is fit to make a joy in Heaven, and fit to make the Lord of Heaven descend to earth, and to the grave for it. Nor yet content with having don all this himself, he gave his Spirit to ordain and qualify a state of men to agitate this only work to the worlds end. For saith S ^t Paul, we are Ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.

I know not whether the Ambassadors are likely to prevail, in what the Son himself hath failed; and whether God's beseeching us will do that, which his dying for us hath not yet been able to effect; or whether they that come with the same Ambassy, have not reason to expect the same unkind reception: for it is no wonder, if that Message, which did cause Christ to be crucified and his Heralds martyred, which was so unwelcome, that they shed the blood of entire. Nations almost to extinguish it, and laid wast whole Regions to extirpate it, should not now be any whit more grateful: for without all doubt men love their vices now as well as ever, and indeed 'tis hard to love the men, that come to tear their bosom inclinations from their heart, whose words are corrosives and caustics, lances, sawes, and whatsoever other instruments, that serve to mortify and to cut off; men that design to sower all their satisfactions they have in the world, by throwing in the thoughts of present guilt and after torments, whom if they believe not, they must needs despise, and hate them for assuming so to check and censure, lay such black dooms on their actions; if they do believe them, they must needs be tortured by them, feel convulsions, wracks within at their discourses, and by consequence cannot much affect them. 'It is hard not to be enemies to them, who, though they say they come to treat a reconciliation, are Ambassadors of war, and whose commission 'tis to cry aloud, not spare, but lift up their voice like a trumpet to proclaim defiance, sound a charge against them, and to show the people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins. Now to be told of faults, to have ones bosom ripped up, and the guilt displai'd, was hardly ever acceptable; good counsel, admonitions and reproofs never have been welcome, and then how should they be so, whose office 'tis to bring them, and who are, as the Wise Man saith, Ordain'd to reproving. But 'tis as unhappy sure, as 'tis unreasonable to dislike the greatest kindnesses for being such; if mercy shall be thought to merit hate, because it is the highest mercy, what then shall oblige? The poor man does not scorn the garment that is sent to cloth his nakedness, or the food that is bestowed upon his croaking, clinging bowels, though the very alms betoken and discover the necessity, he hath yet no malice to his Benefactor therefore: but the perishing naked soul thinks, he that labors to relieve her wants, upbraids her with them, and the invitations therefore to the Supper of the Lamb, the offers of the wedding garment, of the robe of Immortality provoke her. Men allow the Physician yet to tell them of those maladies, that have guilt in them, and receive prescriptions from him of such methods of severity and discipline, as few would go thro to Heaven, and all this endears the man: but he that shall attempt an application to the vice, which is the cause of all this, to remove which is the only possible way to secure from relapses, and the certain way to health and life eternal, he is judged a mortal enemy, as if there were nothing in the world so dear to men as their sins are, no kindnesses, but what are showed to those, are grateful; that were true love that would see them, let them perish everlastingly, and not speak to them to direct them; as if all benefaction to the soul were injury, and the mercies, that have in them Heaven and Eternity, were mere defiances.

But how irksome however such conversations are, as by admonitions, or whatever other methods aim at the recovery of Sinners, they are the only conversations with them that can be justified. For, which is the fourth and last thing that I am to speak to,

'It is only the opportunity and the design and hope of doing good to Sinners, by reforming them, that can make familiar converse with them excusable and lawful; I mean where the duty of a Relation does not oblige to it.

And first, I will not give myself the trouble to find out a law of God among the Jews forbidding to converse at all with Heathens, and by consequence with open Sinners, which might give occasion to this question of the Pharisees, since S ^t Peter tells Cornelius Acts 10. 28. Ye know, that it is an unlawful thing for a man, that is a Jew, to keep company, or come unto one of another Nation: and our Savior, when he would prescribe the distance, which his censures were to make men keep, from any refractory Sinner, words it, let him be unto thee as an Heathen or a Publican, as supposing they were not to company with those; and in the Text he also reckons the observance of that distance from all Sinners as a duty, calls it Sacrifice, and justifies his doing otherwise by this plea only, that he came to them to call them to repentance. But if a command be called for, we have several, 1 Cor. 5. 11. Now I have written to you, not to company, if any man, that is called a brother, i. e. professeth himself a Christian, be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such a one no not to eat, and the like: 2 Thess. c. 3. v. 14. If any man obey not our word, note that man, and have no company with him; adding v. 15. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. The Converse is therefore lawful only, as an opportunity of admonition. For

Secondly, if it be lawful otherwise, I might ask, for whom? not for the Clergy-man most certainly, whose calling it is to admonish, and he is false and treacherous to his office, as well as his company, if he do not, who is set God's Watchman, to give notice of approaching dangers, & who is responsible for every soul that perisheth for want of warning; nor the Magistrate, who if he see vice, by his office is as much obliged to punish it, as the Clergy-man to preach against it. He also is the Minister of God to execute wrath, as the other is to denounce it, whose easiness is much more baneful then the others silence, and makes all those faults, which by not punishing it does encourage, and by that is more unmerciful to the community then arbitrary tyranny, and is guilty of that blood it does forbear to shed; and as not for these, so not for any one, since reproofs and admonitions have been the duty of every person from the beginnings of Religion Lev. 19. 17. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him. Silence then in God's esteem is enmity, not to reprove perfect hatred; and indeed to labor to preserve a man from perishing eternally does look like kindness: but if this kindness be too sower, and sullen for this present age that will not bear correption, and in opposition to God's judgment calls that hatred, looks upon it as a provocation and affront, and answers it with a defy, and with the retributions of a mortal injury; yet there are commands

Thirdly, which God hath made as fences merely to secure our virtue, charging both in general of Sinners: My son, walk not thou in the way with them, refrain thy foot from their path Prov. 1. 15. and also in particular of almost every sin: Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man thou shalt not go; least thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul, Prov. 22. 24, 25. and look not upon the wine when it sparkles: and sit not by a woman &c. so that merely to converse with these solicitations to sin is the breach of commands, which commands if they should be only methods of security, not rules of express duty, yet not to observe them is to slight the only Antidote God's wisdom could prescribe against contagion, and that man, that do's so, do's assume to guard himself, and so devests himself of the protection of God's Grace and Holy Spirit; and then, if he fall, he is not only guilty of the fault that he commits, but of willful contemtuous refusal of the means of preservation from it, of design indeed to make the sin unavoidably to himself: for such familiarities express, that he desires to be engaged in the necessity of sinning. For he that does invite the danger, and converse, and play with the temptation, can have no other ends, but to be ensnar'd and taken.

Now judge of yourselves, I pray you, whether he that do's require to pluck out the right eye, if it offend, and cut off the right hand and foot, that with such torment to ourselves we should bereave ourselves of those so useful organs, whether for the ornament or the necessities of our being, if we find that we shall be betrai'd by them, and who requires it on this penalty, that otherwise we shall be cast with both ours eyes, and hands, and feet into Hell fire; whether he be likely to excuse the conversation with those objects, that engage our eyes, and poison our souls thro them; or else will allow me, by thrusting myself thus into temptations, to lay violent hands upon sin and destruction, who commands me to cut off my hand rather then touch vice. Or else will he give me leave to run into the snare, who bids me cut my foot off rather then be taken; sure he supposed we would be willing of ourselves to divorce and tear ourselves from the allurements and occasions, who thought it unnecessary to prescribe such easy remedies as to avoid them, and requires of us, that when the allurements shall surprise, or force themselves upon our senses, we tear out the organ rather then yield and be overcome. Or he thought at least, that altho the companions of my vices are grown dearer to me then mine own eyes, their converse more useful and more necessary to my satisfaction then my hand or foot is to me, yet to pluck out, cut off, and cast all from me.

But were I proof against temptation, and perfectly secure from the contagion of such conversation, yet 'tis

Fourthly, less excusable in respect to God's concern then any other. To sit and see virtue not only violated and deflour'd with loose unclean discourses, but like Tamar then thrust out of doors, despised, Religion scoffed, and turned in ridicule; all that is Holy laughed at and profaned, and God's Laws vilifi'd, his Word burlesqu'd and droll'd upon, his Name blasphemed and himself raill'd, cursed, renouncit, yea and denied a being; and hearing this, I do not say to find delight and entertainment in this sort of company; for none, but those that are of reprobate minds, can do that possibly, take pleasure in that which hath nothing in the world to recommend it, but the boldness of the villainy: but to sit patient without any least sense of resentment, as one that had not any least concern for God Almighty's honor or his being, is ingratitude to such a bulk and brutishness of guilt, as is beyond the power and art of aggravation, or indeed expression. It was not only death by God's Law to dishonor or blaspheme his Name, but at the hearing it, though but in repetition by a Witness, all the Jews that were in hearing were obliged to rent their garments, as their Laws assure us in their Talmud. Yea we find the Courtiers in Isaiah 36. 22. coming with their cloths rent to King Hezekiah, to report the words of Rabshakeh an Alien, who but in a message from his own King had spoken slightly of their God; and the High Priest, whom it was forbid to in most cases, in such did it. And one would think that it should rent our hearts, of which the other was but a Symbolic Ceremony, and implied that duty. To hear one slight though but by inadvertency a person, whom someone or other of the company hath the least relation, or but any little obligation to, requires that person by the laws of honor indispensably to call for reparation. To touch the reputation of a Mistress, or what's worse, and owned to be so, ought, they say, to be no otherwise then fatally resented: and these are accounted such just causes of men's indignation, that a man that's unconcerned, will take it for a glory to be second in them, and he that never had the honor to be drunk in the man's company, will venture to be killed and to be damned for him in such a quarrel: Therefore every man, unless he do design to quarrel purposely, does think himself bound to forbear offenses of such kind in company, where any one's obliged in honor, or by rules that men have set it, to take notice of it. Now though it were prodigious insolence to urge in parallel to this, that it should seem that God Almighty is not thought so much a friend to any, none have such relation to him, nor on any account have reason to be so concerned for him, or for his honor, that men should forbear him in their company: yet it seems dreadful after such plenties of his blessings, Miracles of kindness in stupendous rescues and deliverances; where, to pass by all those Mercies that concern Eternity, his temporal preservations have contested with our provocations, and overcome them, and so often that they have out numbered all our hours, and all other numbers, but our sins: that these endearments should not yet be able to oblige us so far, as to move us, when we hear his Laws or his Religion, or his Word and Name, or himself dishonored, to desire them to forbear that God, that hath been so kind to us; or if that be judged unmannerly by the Sword-men, yet at leastwise by uneasiness and by withdrawing to assure them, that we cannot bear the hearing it. God did once say in a severe threatening determination, Those that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Go ye and learn, what that means; consider, I say, and the Lord give you understanding in all things.

SERMON IV. Of God's method in giving Deliverance.

THE address of this text is not ordinary; they use to be directed to men for their instruction and practice: but this do's treat with God, seems to prescribe to and appoint him: and now not to excuse this by a plea, that since men have been deaf to all addresses from this place, that have been made unto them, 'tis time to change the method; and seeing we cannot persuade men, try if we can in that sense of St Paul 's words persuade God: but to say for ourselves when human wisdom cannot find expedients for us, and our distresses are beyond the succors of their power or their counsel, 'tis fit then to betake ourselves to God, to plead with the Lord, and never let him rest; and when the help of man is vain, to to cry out, O be thou our help; and with holy confidence, thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion.

Indeed addresses to God use to be made otherwise, in a petitionary form at least; and it would seem much more to become us, if we humbly begged, Arise, O God, have mercy upon Zion: yet this here in the Text is such a form as does need nothing else, but faith in the Petitioner to make it acceptable. There is some difference in the reading of the latter verse, the one version rendering, for why? thy servants think upon her stones, and it pitieth them to see her in the dust: the other thus, for thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favor the dust thereof: yet this is easily reconciled, they think upon her stones, indeed with sorrow for, acknowledgments of their demerits, which did call down this calamitous condition, and being passionately thus affected with the sense of it, they willingly receive, contentedly and cheerfully accept this punishment of their iniquity, this return of their demerits 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 : and since it is on their account, namely thro their demerit that she is so low, since they are sensible themselves did make her fall into the dust, they cannot choose but be more tender; love and pity her the more, and be more willing to do what they can to raise her up, pulverem ejus evehere cupiunt.

In the words there is an holy confidence, that God will grant the thing they long for, mercy to Zion: thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion.

2 ^dly A Reason of that Confidence; for the time of showing favor, the appointed time for it is come.

3 ^dy A ground for that, because thy servants think upon her stones, and it pitieth them to see her in the dust. In handling which I shall consider

1. The Stones of Zion, and those in the dust, or at least in great danger of impendent ruin.

2. That though God is not always minded to succor his own Zion, yet he hath set appointed times for that.

3. That when the Sons of Zion are affected towards her as the Text expresses, then is usually God's season for deliverance, his time of mercy and of showing favor, then the appointed time for it is come; and then we may take holy confidence, and in full assurance of faith say, Thou shalt arise.

First of the Stones of Zion, and those in the dust. Zion was, we know, either the City of the King, where there was the seat of Judgment, the thrones of the house of David, Psalm 122. 5. or else it was the mountain of the Lord's house; and so the stones of Zion are either the stones of the seat of Judgment, of the Throne in the dust, or the stones of the Lord's house, the Sanctuary there. Both these therefore might be treated of, and I shall speak to both, but more particularly to the later. And those stones may be either taken naturally, as they are the stones of a material Sanctuary; or else mystically, in that sense they often have in Scripture, which sais, we as lively stones are all built up a Spiritual house. 1 Pet. 2. 5.

1. The stones of Zion the material Sanctuary in the dust the Psalmist thought an object for so much pity, that some Psalms are but the Liturgies of his pious resentments upon that occasion. Psalm 74. is full herein, Think upon Mount Zion, where thou hast dwelt; lift up thy feet, that thou mayest utterly destroy every Enimy, which hath don evil in thy Sanctuary, Thine Adversaries roar in the midst of thy Congregations, and set up their banners for tokens: they break down all the carved work thereof with axes and hammers, they have set fire upon thy holy Places, and have defiled the dwelling place of thy name even unto the ground; yea they said in their hearts, let us make havoc of them all together. It is not many years since this was our complaint, concerning both the house of God and of the King, the Church and Monarchy, as if the life of one were bound up in the others life. We saw God's honor, at least the place where his honor dwelt, laid in the dust; nor was it suffered to stay there, the stones of Zion not allowed to find a place for burial in that dust, which is the common grave: the Church itself had not a Monument, nor the tombs a sepulcher; but the very ruins were disquieted, the rubbish troubled, and the stones and dust suffered a deportation, used as if men thought with them to build a Sanctuary for those Sins that demolisht them, and make a Refuge for their Sacrilege. 'It is true, to many this seemed no sad spectacle, nor would it now to such, as think any occasional room, of the lowest name and usage, might do as well for the uses of God's service. Strange! when there was never a Religion in the world, that did acknowledge any sort of God, but would allot some place peculiar to his worship: with them whose deities were Sicknesses, the Feaver had its Temple. Yea and stranger, in a world that does devote set rooms to every use of nature, of convenience, and of pleasure; the recreations have a place made for them, and the meanest instruments of sport have so; meals have one, and feasts have another, luxury hath its offices, State hath many; chambers, antichambers, and withdrawing places, merely because there may be so many rooms of which there is no use, for that is Pomp: if God should not have one too, for all uses that relate to him, to meet us in with all his train of Angels, and to bless us, and to entertain us with the food of heaven, with himself. But whether men desire it so again, yet so it lately was; and when his table was removed, his entertainment too was laid aside, and the Sacrament become as desolate as the Altar, God's houses & his mysteries too in the dust, God did arise. I cannot choose but see that we have no such object of resentment now, but how much farther off it is from being thus at this time, and how much less apposite to our condition at this present, the discourse is so much greater demonstration of what my Text affirms, that when God's honor is affronted thus, and his house vilified and ruined, then the time for favor, the appointed time is come; and when the stones of Zion are thrown down into the dust, his Servants humbled too into the dust with sorrow and resentments, then God shall arise; for so he did.

It was so also, if we look upon the Stones of Zion in their mystical and figurative sense. Now altho every sincere Christian, everyone in whom, on the foundation of a true sound faith, an holy life is superstructed, be not only in S ^t Peters words a lively stone, but in S ^t Paul's a Temple, yet more properly the whole community of Christians is in Scripture represented to us as the body of a building. S ^t Peter tells them, ye are built up a Spiritual house, 1 Pet. 2. 5. and S ^t Paul saith, built upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles. Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth up a holy Temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are built up together for an habitation of God thro the Spirit. Eph. 2. 20, 21, 22. The ends for which 'tis called so, seem indeed more lively represented in the parallel resemblance of a natural body Rom. 12. 1 Cor. 12. 12. and that body the body of Christ Eph. 1. 23. or that of which he is the head Col. 1. 18. from which all Christians do receive their life and motion, their increase and strength, no otherwise then as they are united and tied by joints and nerves to one another and that head Eph. 4. 16. and have all one Spirit also 1 Cor. 12. 13. Of all which expressions as one end is to enforce such unity in the profession of their faith, and communion in God's public worship among Christians, as there is unity and communion between the several parts of one same person, that their union in it should be so strict, that all their assemblies for it should make but one body with one spirit; so another end is to assure that as in one same body there are several parts for several uses, without which it could not be an organized, complete animal body, so in the one body of Christ the Church too there are several ministries, offices, and powers, some more noble, others more inferior; and the whole body may as well be all eye, as each member in the Church a Seer, every part be tongue, as every man a Teacher: S ^t Paul from that Analogy deducing a necessity of several parts, and their subordination also in that 1 Cor. 12. v. 28. and accordingly, saith he, God hath set several orders, first Apostles, after Prophets, Teachers, helps or ministerial offices, and governments; without which governments and which diversity 'tis as impossible it can subsist, as for a body to see without an eye, or speak without a tongue, consult, direct and call itself without a brain or understanding. Yet this same is expressed all in the other body of a building, which my text relates to; for Eph. 4. 11. Christ gave also some Apostles, and some Prophets, some Evangelists, some Pastors, and some Teachers, for the perfecting the Saints, compacting & holding Christians together in assemblies for God's public worship; for the work of the ministry, for the edifying, or building up of the body of Christ. Now this emblem to the body of a building (as the other) is a type of Unity, but yet of several and subordinate stations in the Churches unity. For stones however excellently squar'd & fitted, are yet no parts of the structure, till they be cemented to the rest that lean on the foundation; the number possibly may make a heap, but not a frame until they be disposed and ordered in their several stations; for there are such in this body also, every hewn stone cannot be a pinnacle nor corner stone: so in the Church all are not capable of the same ministries, offices, or powers. And yet we may remember when it was so; all assumed all, seized the offices, usurped the powers, executed all the ministries, all subordination was demolisht, order broken, Governments underfoot, the stones of the Sanctuary poured out in the top of every street, as Jeremy laments; the Vrim and the Thummim, stones that gave the heavenly Oracles, lost in ruins. Now then God to make good the promised method of his Providential mercies, when it was thus, when these stones of Zion were in the dust, the Ephod and the Priests thrown into it, and the Priesthood and the Fathers of it, the the whole life, with all its offices and powers dying, almost all that could continue it being laid in the dust, and Zion's Enimies expecting the expiring of the Order: then the appointed time was come, and God not only did himself arise, but made a resurrection of the Church too, and from the dust these stones were again most miraculously built into a Spiritual House.

I cannot but acknowledge that the breaches which this desolation made were not wholly made up, nor were well cemented, and as uncemented breaches use to do, decai'd more and more daily; what arts were used to keep them open, yea to widen them, by whom, for what ends too, is so evident I shall not touch it. But 'tis sure we had not much face, had no great appearance of the bodies, that the Scripture represents the Church by: for in those that were before broke off from her, there was no subordination, nor no order, nor no unity; every broken & divided piece of ruin took upon itself to be the entire building, the whole body; every Faction was Christ's Church, each Assembly was his flock, his Congregation, when indeed it was only a Spiritual riot. And when things were disposed thus, then at once to break down all the poor remainders, he that takes his place to whom Christ said, Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, who yet, as not content to thrust Christ out from being the alone foundation, then which none can lay another true one 1 Cor. 3. 11. would be the chief head stone in the corner also, on which whosoever should fall, shall be broken; but on whosoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder Matth. 21. 44. He, I say, in confifidence of that success attempts this on the Reformation, and particularly on this, as they thought, tottering Church, to lay her stones all in the dust. And truly such the instruments emploi'd are, that humanely speaking it must seem impossible to be avoided. For in God's name, under the Authority of Religion, with the greatest Sacredness that can be, they contrive the bloodiest, most irreligious, most inhumane murders, treasons & assassinations imaginable, make the holy Eucharist the bond of their confederacy in those so tremendous villainies, Christ's blood becomes the very obligation both to commit, & not confess them; for which end they say and swear even at the point of death, and upon their Salvation proved and confessed falsehoods. Now what security or guard can mankind have against such, whom no ties of Religion or humanity have any force on? Whether these be the doctrines of their Church, though that be true in most part, yet it matters not to them who are to be massacred, if they be the constant practices, and if they have such guides of conscience as can satisfy, and thereupon engage the instruments that must effect them to those practices. How they do that, I must confess, seems strange; for they yet look upon those actions, as for which they would have absolution, therefore sins. For though there have been dispensations sent from Rome, permitting them to promise, swear, subscribe, and do what else should be required of them, so as in mind they did continue firm, and used their diligence to advance the Roman faith in secret; yet such dispensations might be intercepted, as those were in 1580. and brought to King James in Scotland, and so might discover plots if they were used to give them in all such occasions: besides that they would stare the head of that Church in the face, betray his being privy to, and abetting those designs of blood, which now, if they miscarry, they can cast at first upon some private Desperado's, and then after lie & laugh them out of men's belief. Such dispensations therefore being not to be expected still, they took other ways. For seven years after, Sextus V. offering by the Bishop of Dunblain to that King a marriage with the Infanta of Spain, if he would become a Catholic, as he called it, and join with them against the English; and this being mightily resisted by the then Lord Chancellor, which made that ineffectual, and who was their constant adversary, Father William Chrichton, who had sometime been the Rector of the Jesuits at Lions and came thither with Dunblain, solicited one Bruce, who also had been brought up by the Jesuits, and who was the Spanish Agent then imploi'd for ships there (which that Duke intended should be joined with, and assist in their Armada) solicited him very oft for money to procure the murder of the Chancellor, which he had contrived by several ways; but being still denied, at first because his money was not trusted to him for those purposes, he could not justify such disbursment; another time because, as to the sin, it was all one to kill a man with his own hands, or to give money to procure it; and that he for his part was a private person, and had no Authority over the life of any man, and less over that of the Chancellor, who was a chief man in the execution of the Justice of the Land: and afterwards because the question was about advancement of Christian Religion; now this, he thought, would ruinate the same, in as much as men went about to promote it by murder to the great scandal of all. But finding himself still importuned more, he demanded of the Father, whether in good conscience he might consent to that enterprize, or whether he could dispense therewithal; to which the Jesuit replied, that he could not, but that the murder being committed, and he coming to confess himself unto him, he would absolve him of it. It seems they thought they had no further power then. Now Bruce 's answer, though not much concerning my part in this subject, yet it was so honest, and the consequence so strange, that I shall not pass it. He replied, since your Reverence acknowledgeth that I must confess myself of it, you also thereby acknowledge that I should commit a sin; and I for my part know not whether, when I have don it, God would give me grace and enable me to confess it: Besides I verily believe, that the confession of a sin, which a man hath don of set purpose intending to confess himself thereof, and to have absolution for it, is not greatly available; and therefore the surest way for me is not to put myself into such hazard: so it ended. But he ran into another hazard; for the Duke of Parma dying, and the Count Fuentes Nephew to the Duke of Alva in his place, Chrichton accused Bruce before him, that he was a Traitor, because he would not disburse money to cause the Lord Chancellor to be slain, and the process had its course, he not denying the thing, and after fourteen months affliction was at last only released, without repair of his good name or damages.

But passing by this, it seems they had no other snare to draw them in, could give them no assurance then, but in that hopes of after absolution, which proved insufficient; for they found themselves engaged in, and must willfully commit crimes at the point of death, of which they could not live to be absolved. I do not instance in the perjuries of Father Garnet, though with horrible execrations. He cried mercy after; saying, that he had not thought they could have proved the contrary: and he might have absolution. But Tresham, just when dying, did deny on his Salvation things concerning Garnet, which he had confessed before, and Garnet did himself confess too after, yea and several others of their own persuasion unexceptionable persons also swore. The same words are now current in the mouths of those that suffer, notwithstanding the express Oaths of their Complices: as if they thought the virtue of their Sacrament were such, as that when men confessed themselves of their intended villainies, it absolved them of them e're they did them, and of all the sins they should think needful to commit in the effecting them. Yea more, if they should discover or confess ought though dying, then that virtue of the Sacrament retired, the absolution became void & unuseful, the Sins recoil'd upon them, of which otherwise it made them innocent, which gives them confidence on their Salvation at the point of death to deny matters of known fact, which 'tis not imaginable that they could do on any other, save on that account. And that it is so, I have one irrefragable instance of one executed lately for a murder of that kind in Ireland, which is assured by persons of best credit in that Nation, who though upon flagrant evidence condemned, denied the fact at his death on his Salvation with deep execrations as he at the place of execution went to be turned off; but it pleased God that the rope brake presently, and he soon revived, but in the greatest horror in the world; for having with such desperate execrations denied his own deliberate fact, and renounced his Salvation, he openly acknowledged the falsity of his former asseverations, and owned his being really guilty of what was charged upon him; and blessing God for giving him those moments by so strange a way to disburthen himself of such deliberate willful perjury, declared that his Confessor, when he absolved him, told him, if he did discover it, that absolution would not profit him, & that he should be damned; but if he did not, then he was forgiven. Such monstrous practices are made good & sanctified, as they contribute to the laying our poor Zion in the dust; for we have ever been the mark of all their mischiefs. Since Pius the V. Bull, it was observed there never past four years all Queen Elizabeth's reign without a most pernicious plot for the subversion of the State and Church; and in the first years of King James not four months without Treason: & they go now by the same rules, & in the same methods, with the same Oaths, & the same Sacraments administered to the same purposes. And just as they, sometimes designing open force, & sometimes private treasons & assassinations; sometimes trying by the softer pleas of Liberty of Conscience, toleration to do it, yea altho it be but partial, an Indulgence to our own Sects, anything that may contribute to the breaches of our Zion, & may keep them open: which 'tis said (whether in earnest or to color Blacker purposes, & hide designs more violent) is now spoken of, and they hope for, and hath still been pleaded for, as the birthright of each Christian, as instated on them in the very charter of their Christianity. But yet to speak to that too, I neither find the word in Scripture, nor the thing, as most men take it, for the Liberty of Action: and besides this, whatever Arguments there are that press it, they can be no Arguments for the Romanist, who never grants it; for either they conclude or they do not; if not, why do they urge them? if they do, why do they not allow them? if they can see no force in them, then they must not use them; if they can, they must be wrought on by them: unless to be the only men that may do wrong and resist reason, be their grant and Charter. But not to evade only, I allow

1. That Christ came down to settle his Religion, plant the Christian Faith without a grant from, or the leave of Secular Powers; when he commissioned his Apostles to convey the Gospel thro the world, they did expect or ask no Pass-port from the several Princes, but in opposition to the Magistrates and Governors and Kings, against whom he promised them to justify and bear them out, they preached it. I allow too

2. That he autoriz'd and gave right to Christians, as such, to assemble for God's Worship and Service according to the rule of his Religion, whatever prohibition, threats, or persecution they should meet from Secular powers on account of doing so. Accordingly the Apostles and their Converts did so, and S ^t Paul gives it in charge to the Hebrews not to forbear doing so for any fear or suffering whatsoever, not forsaking the assembling of your selves together, as the manner of some is. Now he that does require that they shall do so, notwithstanding any opposition from the Secular Powers, gives them right to do so, though in opposition to those Powers: for all must have a right to do their duty, and accordingly the Christians of the first Ages did meet for God's Worship against all the edicts, all the persecutions of the Heathen Emperors. But

3. Tho our Savior by this grant seems to pass by those Powers unregarded, or at least not taken notice of, when he gives their Subjects Privilege to meet in public full assemblies (such as those of Christians ought to be) without their leave, yea and against their orders, yet does not this grant diminish or intrench upon their safety in the least: because the only men he gives it to are such, as can design or do no hurt to any Government. For Christ confer'd this privilege merely on the account of that Religion which he instituted, and to men as his Disciples and Followers in it. Now himself so renounced all pretence to any Secular interest or power, practice • d such obedience to his Governors though most unjust, taught such subjection to all in Authority whether good or bad, Patrons or Enemies to the Religion, nursing Fathers to his Followers or Slaughtermen and Executioners; and hath made all this so much the temper and the constitution of Christianity, which condemns all enterprising upon any rights of others, and much more of Princes, that it is impossible that companies of such men, that is, of such Christians, such to whom alone Christ gives the privilege of meeting, can create a danger or a jealousy in any State: men that must indeed assemble, but must not resist, act, or contrive against their Governors, but die, if they and laws will have it so, for that their meeting. So the Primitive Christians did: so 20000 in one day at Nicomedia for assembling. But men whose Principles or former practices upon their principles have anything that tends to sedition in them, especially if they have used such meetings to foment it; or though they did not that, the other also, till they can give such security as will satisfy the state, of which the State is to judge, can no more by their Christian birth-right, by Christ's whether grant or injunction of assembling for God's Worship, claim a privilege of such assemblies, then notoriously sinful, scandalous Christians, or then open Heretics can by virtue of that same injunction claim the privilege of the public Assemblies till they satisfy the Church: for the Church may excommunicate these, and the State may restrain those others, and they have no right or plea in conscience against it. The rights he gave were given to men so far, as they should follow the Religion which he instituted; he gave no more privilege to the seditious, then the scandalous. He did not by requiring such assemblies for religious Worship mean to weaken the security of Governments, which his Religion is above all other institutions framed to settle and establish: which therefore by the grant of Christ's Religion, as well as by a right inherent in their office, Governors may take care to provide for by restraints of that kind, not at all examining men's pretension, whether their Religion or their Principles be true or false; for that were endless and to no effect, every man's Religion and his Principles are true to himself; but only if they tend towards commotions, or give cause of jealousy, which still Governors must judge of. Which if they cannot satisfy, they can plead no Privilege, to which they have no further right, then as they free themselves from such suspicions. In fine they cannot claim this on account of Christianity, since Christianity admits of nothing, that is prejudicial or gives fear to Governments; but is the basis of Obedience, the cement of Society, Ecclesiastical and secular, it compacts all the Stones of Zion, of the House of God, and of the seat of David, of the Sanctuary, and the Throne.

And therefore in the 4 ^th place Romanists (and 'tis the same of every other Sect of men, so far as they abet such Principles, or have ever showed themselves in prosecution of them,) but Romanists for instance at the present, who by all ways of assurance have convinced the world, the most destructive Tenets, to government most abhorrent from the state of Christianity, are their Principles, & their Faith; as namely by the general dictates of their Schole-men, their allowed Theology of their Canonists: their allowed Laws of a shole of particular Councils and some general their allowed Rule of Faith: of their Popes their infallible Judge; and what's worse by multitudes of practices the most inhumane that were ever heard of, and would never yet, however called on or accused, retract or sentence; but still justify and practice them. Since they therefore know themselves incapable of claming Toleration by the Laws of Christianity, we can interpret them to mean no other thing by claming and endeavoring it, but to get more opportunities to destroy the Government both of Church and State, to widen and to make more breaches in the gaping, tottering walls of