Prov. iii. 17.

Her ways are ways of pleasantness.

THE text relating to something going before, must carry our eye back to the thirteenth verse, where we shall find, that the thing, of which these words are affirmed, is wisdom: a name by which the Spirit of God was here pleased to express to us religion, and thereby to tell the world, what before it was not aware of, and perhaps will not yet believe, that those two great things that so engross the desires and designs of both the nobler and ignobler sort of mankind, are to be found in religion; namely, wisdom and pleasure; and that the former is the direct way to the latter, as religion is to both.

That pleasure is man’s chiefest good, (because in deed it is the perception of good that is properly pleasure,) is an assertion most certainly true, though under the common acceptance of it, not only false, but odious: for according to this, pleasure and sensuality pass for terms equivalent; and therefore he that takes it in this sense, alters the subject of the discourse. Sensuality is indeed a part, or rather one kind of pleasure, such an one as it is: for plea sure in general is the consequent apprehension of a suitable object, suitably applied to a rightly disposed faculty; and so must be conversant both about the faculties of the body and of the soul respectively; as being the result of the fruitions belonging to both.

Now amongst those many arguments used to press upon men the exercise of religion, I know none that are like to be so successful, as those that answer and remove the prejudices that generally possess and bar up the hearts of men against it: amongst which, there is none so prevalent in truth, though so little owned in pretence, as that it is an enemy to men’s pleasures, that it bereaves them of all the sweets of converse, dooms them to an absurd and perpetual melancholy, designing to make the world nothing else but a great monastery. With which notion of religion, nature and reason seems to have great -cause to be dissatisfied. For since God never created any faculty, either in soul or body, but withal prepared for it a suitable object, and that in order to its gratification; can we think that religion was designed only for a contradiction to nature? and with the greatest and most irrational tyranny in the world to tantalize and tie men up from enjoyment, in the midst of all the opportunities of enjoyment? To place men with the furious affections of hunger and thirst in the very bosom of plenty; and then to tell them, that the envy of providence has sealed up every thing that is suitable under the character of unlawful? For certainly, first to frame appetites fit to receive pleasure, and then to interdict them with a touch not, taste not, can be nothing else, than only to give them occasion to devour and prey upon themselves; and so to keep men under the perpetual torment of an unsatisfied desire: a thing hugely contrary to the natural felicity of the creature, and consequently to the wisdom and goodness of the great Creator.

He therefore that would persuade men to religion, both with art and efficacy, must found the persuasion of it upon this, that it interferes not with any rational pleasure, that it bids nobody quit the enjoyment of any one thing that his reason can prove to him ought to be enjoyed. It is confessed, when, through the cross circumstances of a man’s temper or condition, the enjoyment of a pleasure would certainly expose him to a greater inconvenience, then religion bids him quit it; that is, it bids him prefer the endurance of a lesser evil before a greater, and nature itself does no less. Religion therefore intrenches upon none of our privileges, invades none of our pleasures; it may indeed some times command us to change, but never totally to abjure them.

But it is easily foreseen, that this discourse will in the very beginning of it be encountered by an argument from experience, and therefore not more obvious than strong; namely, that it cannot but be the greatest trouble in the world for a man thus (as it were) even to shake off himself, and to defy his nature, by a perpetual thwarting of his innate appetites and desires; which yet is absolutely necessary to a severe and impartial prosecution of a course of piety: nay, and we have this asserted also, by the verdict of Christ himself, who still makes the disciplines of self-denial and the cross, those terrible blows to flesh and blood, the indispensable requisites to the being of his disciples. All which being so, would not he that should be so hardy as to attempt to persuade men to piety from the pleasures of it, be liable to that invective taunt from all mankind, that the Israelites gave to Moses; Wilt thou put out the eyes of this people? Wilt thou persuade us out of our first notions? Wilt thou demonstrate, that there is any delight in a cross, any comfort in violent abridgments, and, which is the greatest paradox of all, that the highest pleasure is to abstain from it?

For answer to which, it must be confessed, that all arguments whatsoever against experience are fallacious; and therefore, in order to the clearing of the assertion laid down, I shall premise these two considerations.

1. That pleasure is in the nature of it a relative thing, and so imports a peculiar relation and correspondence to the state and condition of the person to whom it is a pleasure. For as those who discourse of atoms, affirm, that there are atoms of all forms, some round, some triangular, some square, and the like; all which are continually in motion, and never settle till they fall into a fit circumscription or place of the same figure: so there are the like great diversities of minds and objects. Whence it is, that this object striking upon a mind thus or thus disposed, flies off, and rebounds without making any impression; but the same luckily happening upon another, of a disposition as it were framed for it, is presently catched at, and greedily clasped into the nearest unions and embraces.

2. The other thing to be considered is this: that the estate of all men by nature is more or less different from that estate, into which the same persons do or may pass, by the exercise of that which the philosophers called virtue, and into which men are much more effectually and sublimely translated by that which we call grace; that is, by the super natural, overpowering operation of God’s Spirit. The difference of which two estates consists in this; that in the former the sensitive appetites rule and domineer; in the latter, the supreme faculty of the soul, called reason, sways the sceptre, and acts the whole man above the irregular demands of appetite and affection.

That the distinction between these two is not a mere figment, framed only to serve an hypothesis in divinity; and that there is no man but is really under one, before he is under the other, I shall prove, by shewing a reason why it is so, or rather indeed why it cannot but be so. And it is this: because every man in the beginning of his life, for several years is capable only of exercising his sensitive faculties and desires, the use of reason not shewing itself till about the seventh year of his age; and then at length but (as it were) dawning in very imperfect essays and discoveries. Now it being most undeniably evident, that every faculty and power grows stronger and stronger by exercise; is it any wonder at all, when a man for the space of his first six years, and those the years of ductility and impression, has been wholly ruled by the propensions of sense, at that age very eager and impetuous; that then after all, his reason beginning to exert and put forth itself, finds the man prepossessed, and under another power? So that it has much ado, by many little steps and gradual conquests, to recover its prerogative from the usurpations of appetite, and so to subject the whole man to its dictates: the difficulty of which is not conquered by some men all their days. And this is one true ground of the difference between a state of nature and a state of grace, which some are pleased to scoff at in divinity, who think that they confute all that they laugh at, not knowing that it may be solidly evinced by mere reason and philosophy.

These two considerations being premised, namely, that pleasure implies a proportion and agreement to the respective states and conditions of men; and that the state of men by nature is vastly different from the estate into which grace or virtue transplants them; all that objection levelled against the foregoing assertion is very easily resolvable.

For there is no doubt, but a man, while he resigns himself up to the brutish guidance of sense and appetite, has no relish at all for the spiritual, refined delights of a soul clarified by grace and virtue. The pleasures of an angel can never be the pleasures of a hog. But this is the thing that we contend for; that a man having once advanced himself to a state of superiority over the control of his inferior appetites, finds an infinitely more solid and sublime pleasure in the delights proper to his reason, than the same person had ever conveyed to him by the bare ministry of his senses. His taste is absolutely changed, and therefore that which pleased him formerly, becomes flat and insipid to his appetite, now grown more masculine and severe. For as age and maturity passes a real and a marvellous change upon the diet and recreations of the same person; so that no man at the years and vigour of thirty is either fond of sugar-plumbs or rattles: in like manner, when reason, by the assistance of grace, has prevailed over, and outgrown the encroachments of sense, the delights of sensuality are to such an one but as an hobby-horse would be to a counsellor of state, or as tasteless as a bundle of hay to an hungry lion. Every alteration of a man’s condition infallibly infers an alteration of his pleasures.

The Athenians laughed the physiognomist to scorn, who, pretending to read men’s minds in their foreheads, described Socrates for a crabbed, lustful, proud, ill-natured person; they knowing how directly contrary he was to that dirty character. But Socrates bid them forbear laughing at the man, for that he had given them a most exact account of his nature; but what they saw in him so contrary at the present, was from the conquest that he had got over his natural disposition by philosophy. And now let any one consider, whether that anger, that revenge, that wantonness and ambition, that were the proper pleasures of Socrates, under his natural temper of crabbed, lustful, and proud, could have at all affected or enamoured the mind of the same So crates, made gentle, chaste, and humble by philosophy.

Aristotle says, that were it possible to put a young man’s eye into an old man’s head, he would see as plainly and clearly as the other: so could we infuse the inclinations and principles of a virtuous person into him that prosecutes his debauches with the greatest keenness of desire and sense of delight, he would loathe and reject them as heartily as he now pursues them. Diogenes, being asked at a feast, why he did not continue eating as the rest did, answered him that asked him with another question, Pray why do you eat? Why, says he, for my pleasure. Why so, says Diogenes, do I abstain for my pleasure. And therefore the vain, the vicious, and luxurious person argues at an high rate of inconsequence, when he makes his particular desires the general measure of other men’s delights. But the case is so plain, that I shall not upbraid any man’s understanding, by endeavouring to give it any farther illustration.

But still, after all, I must not deny, that the change and passage from a state of nature to a state of virtue is laborious, and consequently irksome and unpleasant: and to this it is, that all the forementioned expressions of our Saviour do allude. But surely the baseness of one condition, and the generous excellency of the other, is a sufficient argument to induce any one to a change. For as no man would think it a desirable thing, to preserve the itch upon himself, only for the pleasure of scratching, that attends that loathsome distemper: so neither can any man, that would be faithful to his reason, yield his ear to be bored through by his domineering appetites, and so choose to serve them for ever, only for those poor, thin gratifications of sensuality that they are able to reward him with. The ascent up the hill is hard and tedious, but the serenity and fair prospect at the top is sufficient to in cite the labour of undertaking it, and to reward it, being undertook. But the difference of these two conditions of men, as the foundation of their different pleasures, being thus made out, to press men with arguments to pass from one to the other, is not directly in the way or design of this discourse.

Yet before I come to declare positively the pleasures that are to be found in the ways of religion, one of the grand duties of which is stated upon repentance; a thing expressed to us by the grim names of mortification, crucifixion, and the like: and that I may not proceed only upon absolute negations, without some concessions; we will see, whether this so harsh, dismal, and affrighting duty of repentance is so entirely gall, as to admit of no mixture, no allay of sweetness, to reconcile it to the apprehensions of reason and nature.

Now repentance consists properly of two things:

1. Sorrow for sin.

2. Change of life.

A word briefly of them both.

1. And first for sorrow for sin: usually, the sting of sorrow is this, that it neither removes nor alters the thing we sorrow for; and so is but a kind of reproach to our reason, which will be sure to accost us with this dilemma. Either the thing we sorrow for, is to be remedied, or it is not: if it is, why then do we spend the time in mourning, which should be spent in an active applying of remedies? But if it is not, then is our sorrow vain and superfluous, as tending to no real effect. For no man can weep his father or his friend out of the grave, or mourn himself out of a bankrupt condition. But this spiritual sorrow is effectual to one of the greatest and highest purposes, that mankind can be concerned in. It is a means to avert an impendent wrath, to disarm an offended omnipotence, and even to fetch a soul out of the very jaws of hell. So that the end and consequence of this sorrow sweetens the sorrow itself: and as Solomon says, In the midst of laugh ter, the heart is sorrowful; so in the midst of sorrow here, the heart may rejoice: for while it mourns, it reads, that those that mourn shall be comforted; and so while the penitent weeps with one eye, he views his deliverance with the other. But then for the external expressions, and vent of sorrow; we know that there is a certain pleasure in weeping; it is the discharge of a big and a swelling grief; of a full and a strangling discontent; and therefore, he that never had such a burden upon his heart, as to give him opportunity thus to ease it, has one plea sure in this world yet to come.

2. As for the other part of repentance, which is change of life, this indeed may be troublesome in the entrance; but it is but the first bold onset, the first resolute violence and invasion upon a vicious habit, that is so sharp and afflicting. Every impression of the lancet cuts, but it is the first only that smarts. Besides, it is an argument hugely unreasonable, to plead the pain of passing from a vicious estate, unless it were proved, that there was none in the continuance under it: but surely, when we read of the service, the bondage, and the captivity of sinners, we are not entertained only with the air of words and metaphors, and, instead of truth, put off with similitudes. Let him that says it is a trouble to refrain from a debauch, convince us, that it is not a greater to undergo one; and that the confessor did not impose a shrewd penance upon the drunken man, by bidding him go and be drunk again; and that lisping, raging, redness of eyes, and what is not fit to be named in such an audience, is not more toil some, than to be clean, and quiet, and discreet, and respected for being so. All the trouble that is in it, is the trouble of being sound, being cured, and being recovered. But if there be great arguments for health, then certainly there are the same for the obtaining of it; and so keeping a due proportion between spirituals and temporals, we neither have, nor pretend to greater arguments for repentance.

Having thus now cleared off all, that by way of objection can He against the truth asserted, by shewing the proper qualification of the subject, to whom only the ways of wisdom can be ways of pleasantness; for the further prosecution of the matter in hand, I shall shew what are those properties that so peculiarly set off and enhance the excellency of this pleasure.

1. The first is, That it is the proper pleasure of that part of man, which is the largest and most comprehensive of pleasure, and that is his mind: a substance of a boundless comprehension. The mind of man is an image, not only of God’s spirituality, but of his infinity. It is not like any of the senses, limited to this or that kind of object: as the sight intermeddles not with that which affects the smell; but with an universal superintendence, it arbitrates upon and takes them in all. It is (as I may so say) an ocean, into which all the little rivulets of sensation, both external and internal, discharge themselves. It is framed by God to receive all, and more than nature can afford it; and so to be its own motive to seek for something above nature. Now this is that part of man to which the pleasures of religion properly belong: and that in a double respect.

1. In reference to speculation, as it sustains the name of understanding.

2. In reference to practice, as it sustains the name of conscience.

1. And first for speculation: the pleasures of which have been sometimes so great, so intense, so ingrossing of all the powers of the soul, that there has been no room left for any other pleasure. It has so called together all the spirits to that one work, that there has been no supply to carry on the inferior operations of nature. Contemplation feels no hunger, nor is sensible of any thirst, but of that after knowledge. How frequent and exalted a pleasure did David find from his meditation in the divine law! All the day long it was the theme of his thoughts. The affairs of state, the government of his kingdom, might indeed employ, but it was this only that refreshed his mind.

How short of this are the delights of the epicure! How vastly disproportionate are the pleasures of the eating and of the thinking man! Indeed as different as the silence of an Archimedes in the study of a problem, and the stillness of a sow at her wash. Nothing is comparable to the pleasure of an active and a prevailing thought: a thought prevailing over the difficulty and obscurity of the object, and refreshing the soul with new discoveries and images of things; and thereby extending the bounds of apprehension, and (as it were) enlarging the territories of reason.

Now this pleasure of the speculation of divine things is advanced upon a double account.

(1.) The greatness.

(2.) The newness of the object.

(1.) And first for the greatness of it. It is no less than the great God himself, and that both in his nature and his works. For the eye of reason, like that of the eagle, directs itself chiefly to the sun, to a glory that neither admits of a superior nor an equal. Religion carries the soul to the study of every divine attribute.

It poses it with the amazing thoughts of omnipotence; of a power able to fetch up such a glorious fabric, as this of the world, out of the abyss of vanity and nothing, and able to throw it back into the same original nothing again. It drowns us in the speculation of the divine omniscience; that can maintain a steady infallible comprehension of all events in themselves contingent and accidental; and certainly know that, which does not certainly exist. It confounds the greatest subtilties of speculation, with the riddles of God’s omnipresence; that can spread a single individual substance through all spaces; and yet without any commensuration of parts to any, or circumscription within any, though totally in every one. And then for his eternity; which nonpluses the strongest and clearest conception, to comprehend how one single act of duration should measure all periods and portions of time, without any of the distinguishing parts of succession. Likewise for his justice; which shall prey upon the sinner for ever, satisfying itself by a perpetual miracle, rendering the creature immortal in the midst of the flames; always consuming, but never consumed. With the like wonders we may entertain our speculations from his mercy; his beloved, his triumphant attribute; an attribute, if it were possible, something more than infinite; for even his justice is so, and his mercy transcends that. Lastly, we may contemplate upon his supernatural, astonishing works: particularly in the resurrection, and reparation of the same numerical body, by a reunion of all the scattered parts, to be at length disposed of into an estate of eternal woe or bliss; as also the greatness and strangeness of the beatifick vision; how a created eye should be so fortified, as to bear all those glories that stream from the fountain of uncreated light, the meanest expression of which light is, that it is unexpressible. Now what great and high objects are these, for a rational contemplation to busy itself upon! Heights that scorn the reach of our prospect; and depths in which the tallest reason will never touch the bottom: yet surely the pleasure arising from thence is great and noble; forasmuch as they afford perpetual matter and employment to the inquisitiveness of human reason; and so are large enough for it to take its full scope and range in: which when it has sucked and drained the utmost of an object, naturally lays it aside, and neglects it as a dry and an empty thing.

(2.) As the things belonging to religion entertain our speculation with great objects, so they entertain it also with new: and novelty, we know, is the great parent of pleasure; upon which account it is that men are so much pleased with variety, and variety is nothing else but a continued novelty. The Athenians, who were the professed and most diligent improvers of their reason, made it their whole business to hear or to tell some new thing: for the truth is, newness especially in great matters, was a worthy entertainment for a searching mind; it was (as I may so say) an high taste, fit for the relish of an Athenian reason. And thereupon the mere unheard of strangeness of Jesus and the resurrection, made them desirous to hear it discoursed of to them again, Acts xvii. 23. But how would it have employed their searching faculties, had the mystery of the Trinity, and the incarnation of the Son of God, and the whole economy of man’s redemption been explained to them! For how could it ever enter into the thoughts of reason, that a satisfaction could be paid to an infinite justice? Or, that two natures so unconceivably different as the human and divine, could unite into one person? The knowledge of these things could derive from nothing else but pure revelation, and consequently must be purely new to the highest discourses of mere nature. Now that the newness of an object so exceedingly pleases and strikes the mind, appears from this one consideration; that every thing pleases more in expectation than fruition: and expectation supposes a thing as yet new, the hoped for discovery of which is the pleasure that entertains the expecting and inquiring mind: whereas actual discovery (as it were) rifles and deflowers the newness and freshness of the object, and so for the most part makes it cheap, familiar, and contemptible.

It is clear therefore, that, if there be any pleasure to the mind from speculation, and if this pleasure of speculation be advanced by the greatness and newness of the things contemplated upon, all this is to be found in the ways of religion.

2. In the next place, religion is a pleasure to the mind, as it respects practice, and so sustains the name of conscience. And conscience undoubtedly is the great repository and magazine of all those pleasures that can afford any solid refreshment to the soul. For when this is calm, and serene, and absolving, then properly a man enjoys all things, and what is more, himself; for that he must do, before he can enjoy any thing else. But it is only a pious life, led exactly by the rules of a severe religion, that can authorize a man’s conscience to speak comfortably to him: it is this that must word the sentence, before the conscience can pronounce it, and then it will do it with majesty and authority: it will not whisper, but proclaim a jubilee to the mind; it will not drop, but pour in oil upon the wounded heart. And is there any pleasure comparable to that which springs from hence? The pleasure of conscience is not only greater than all other pleasures, but may also serve instead of them: for they only please and affect the mind in transitu, in the pitiful narrow compass of actual fruition; whereas that of conscience entertains and feeds it a long time after with durable, lasting reflections.

And thus much for the first ennobling property of the pleasure belonging to religion; namely, That it is the pleasure of the mind, and that both as it relates to speculation, and is called the understanding, and as it relates to practice, and is called the conscience.

II. The second ennobling property of it is, That it is such a pleasure as never satiates or wearies: for it properly affects the spirit, and a spirit feels no weariness, as being privileged from the causes of it. But can the epicure say so of any of the pleasures that he so much dotes upon? Do they not expire, while they satisfy? And after a few minutes refreshment, determine in loathing and unquietness? How short is the interval between a pleasure and a burden? How undiscernible the transition from one to the other? Pleasure dwells no longer upon the appetite, than the necessities of nature, which are quickly and easily provided for; and then all that follows is a load and an oppression. Every morsel to a satisfied hunger, is only a new labour to a tired digestion. Every draught to him that has quenched his thirst, is but a farther quenching of nature; a provision for rheum and diseases, a drowning of the quickness and activity of the spirits.

He that prolongs his meals, and sacrifices his time, as well as his other conveniences, to his luxury, how quickly does he out-sit his pleasure! And then, how is all the following time bestowed upon ceremony and surfeit! till at length, after a long fatigue of eating, and drinking, and babbling, he concludes the great work of dining genteelly, and so makes a shift to rise from table, that he may He down upon his bed: where, after he has slept himself into some use of himself, by much ado he staggers to his table again, and there acts over the same brutish scene: so that he passes his whole life in a dozed condition between sleeping and waking, with a kind of drowsiness and confusion upon his senses; which, what pleasure it can be, is hard to conceive; all that is of it, dwells upon the tip of his tongue, and within the compass of his palate: a worthy prize for a man to purchase with the loss of his time, his reason, and himself.

Nor is that man less deceived, that thinks to maintain a constant tenure of pleasure, by a continual pursuit of sports and recreations: for it is most certainly true of all these things, that as they refresh a man when he is weary, so they weary him when he is refreshed; which is an evident demonstration that God never designed the use of them to be continual; by putting such an emptiness in them, as should so quickly fail and lurch expectation.

The most voluptuous and loose person breathing, were he but tied to follow his hawks and his hounds, his dice and his courtships every day, would find it the greatest torment and calamity that could befall him; he would fly to the mines and the gal leys for his recreation, and to the spade and the mattock for a diversion from the misery of a continual unintermitted pleasure.

But on the contrary, the providence of God has so ordered the course of things, that there is no action, the usefulness of which has made it the matter of duty, and of a profession, but a man may bear the continual pursuit of it, without loathing or satiety. The same shop and trade that employs a man in his youth, employs him also in his age. Every morning he rises fresh to his hammer and his anvil; he passes the day singing: custom has naturalized his labour to him: his shop is his element, and he cannot with any enjoyment of himself live out of it. Whereas no custom can make the painfulness of a debauch easy or pleasing to a man; since nothing can be pleasant that is unnatural. But now, if God has interwoven such a pleasure with the works of our ordinary calling; how much superior and more refined must that be, that arises from the survey of a pious and well governed life! Surely, as much as Christianity is nobler than a trade.

And then, for the constant freshness of it; it is such a pleasure as can never cloy or overwork the mind: for surely no man was ever weary of thinking, much less of thinking that he had done well or virtuously, that he had conquered such and such a temptation, or offered violence to any of his exorbitant desires. This is a delight that grows and improves under thought and reflection: and while it exercises, does also endear itself to the mind; at the same time employing and inflaming the meditations. All pleasures that affect the body, must needs weary, because they transport; and all transportation is a violence; and no violence can be lasting, but determines upon the falling of the spirits, which are not able to keep up that height of motion that the pleasure of the senses raises them to: and therefore how inevitably does an immoderate laughter end in a sigh! which is only nature’s recovering itself after a force done to it. But the religious pleasure of a well disposed mind moves gently, and therefore constantly: it does not affect by rapture and ecstasy; but is like the pleasure of health, which is still and sober, yet greater and stronger than those that call up the senses with grosser and more affecting impressions. God has given no man a body as strong as his appetites; but has corrected the boundlesness of his voluptuous desires, by stinting his strengths, and contracting his capacities.

But to look upon those pleasures also that have an higher object than the body; as those that spring from honour and grandeur of condition; yet we shall find, that even these are not so fresh and constant, but the mind can nauseate them, and quickly feel the thinness of a popular breath. Those that are so fond of applause while they pursue it, how little do they taste it when they have it! Like lightning, it only flashes upon the face, and is gone; and it is well if it does not hurt the man. But for greatness of place, though it is fit and necessary that some persons in the world should be in love with a splendid servitude; yet certainly they must be much beholding to their own fancy, that they can be pleased at it. For he that rises up early, and goes to bed late, only to receive addresses, to read and answer petitions, is really as much tied and abridged in his freedom, as he that waits all that time to present one. And what pleasure can it be to be incumbered with dependences, thronged and surrounded with petitioners? And those perhaps sometimes all suitors for the same thing: where upon all but one will be sure to depart grumbling, because they miss of what they think their due: and even that one scarce thankful, because he thinks he has no more than his due. In a word, if it is a pleasure to be envied and shot at, to be maligned standing, and to be despised falling, to endeavour that which is impossible, which is to please all, and to suffer for not doing it; then is it a pleasure to be great, and to be able to dispose of men’s for tunes and preferments.

But farther, to proceed from hence to yet an higher degree of pleasure, indeed the highest on this side that of religion; which is the pleasure of friendship and conversation. Friendship must confessedly be allowed the top, the flower, and crown of all temporal enjoyments. Yet has not this also its flaws and its dark side? For is not my friend a man; and is not friendship subject to the same mortality and change that men are? And in case a man loves, and is not loved again, does he not think that he has cause to hate as heartily, and ten times more eagerly than ever he loved? And then to be an enemy, and once to have been a friend, does it not embitter the rupture, and aggravate the calamity? But admitting that my friend continues so to the end; yet in the mean time, is he all perfection, all virtue and discretion? Has he not humours to be endured, as well as kindnesses to be enjoyed? And am I sure to smell the rose, without sometimes feeling the thorn?

And then lastly for company; though it may reprieve a man from his melancholy, yet it cannot secure him from his conscience, nor from sometimes being alone. And what is all that a man enjoys, from a week’s, a month’s, or a year’s converse, comparable to what he feels for one hour, when his conscience shall take him aside, and rate him by himself?

In short, run over the whole circle of ah 1 earthly pleasures, and I dare affirm, that had not God secured a man a solid pleasure from his own actions, after he had rolled from one to another, and enjoyed them all, he would be forced to complain, that either they were not indeed pleasures, or that plea sure was not satisfaction.

III. The third ennobling property of the pleasure that accrues to a man from religion, is, that it is such an one as is in nobody’s power, but only in his that has it; so that he that has the property may be also sure of the perpetuity. And tell me so of any outward enjoyment that mortality is capable of. We are generally at the mercy of men’s rapine, avarice, and violence, whether we shall be happy or no. For if I build my felicity upon my estate or reputation, I am happy as long as the tyrant or the railer will give me leave to be so. But when my concernment takes up no more room or compass than myself; then so long as I know where to breathe and to exist, I know also where to be happy: for I know I may be so in my own breast, in the court of my own conscience; where, if I can but prevail with myself to be innocent, I need bribe neither judge nor officer to be pronounced so. The plea sure of the religious man is an easy and a portable pleasure, such an one as he carries about in his bosom, without alarming either the eye or envy of the world. A man putting all his pleasures into this one, is like a traveller’s putting all his goods into one jewel; the value is the same, and the convenience greater.

There is nothing that can raise a man to that generous absoluteness of condition, as neither to cringe, to fawn, or to depend meanly; but that which gives him that happiness within himself, for which men depend upon others. For surely I need salute no great man’s threshold, sneak to none of his friends or servants, to speak a good word for me to my conscience. It is a noble and a sure defiance of a great malice, backed with a great interest; which yet can have no advantage of a man, but from his own expectations of something that is without himself. But if I can make my duty my delight; if I can feast, and please, and caress my mind with the pleasures of worthy speculations or virtuous practices; let greatness and malice vex and abridge me if they can: my pleasures are as free as my will; no more to be controlled than my choice, or the unlimited range of my thoughts and my desires.

Nor is this kind of pleasure only out of the reach of any outward violence, but even those things also that make a much closer impression upon us, which are the irresistible decays of nature, have yet no influence at all upon this. For when age itself, which of all things in the world will not be baffled or defied, shall begin to arrest, seize, and remind us of our mortality, by pains, aches, deadness of limbs, and dulness of senses; yet then the pleasure of the mind shall be in its full youth, vigour, and freshness. A palsy may as well shake an oak, or a fever dry up a fountain, as either of them shake, dry up, or impair the delight of conscience. For it lies within, it centers in the heart, it grows into the very substance of the soul, so that it accompanies a man to his grave; he never outlives it, and that for this cause only, because he cannot outlive himself.

And thus I have endeavoured to describe the excellency of that pleasure that is to be found in the ways of a religious wisdom, by those excellent properties that do attend it; which, whether they reach the description that has been given them, or no, every man may convince himself, by the best of demonstrations, which is his own trial.

Now from all this discourse, this I am sure is a most natural and direct consequence, that if the ways of religion are ways of pleasantness, then such as are not ways of pleasantness are not truly and properly ways of religion. Upon which ground, it is easy to see what judgment is to be passed upon all those affected, uncommanded, absurd austerities, so much prized and exercised by some of the Romish profession. Pilgrimages, going barefoot, hair-shirts, and whips, with other such gospel artillery, are their only helps to devotion: things never enjoined, either by the prophets under the Jewish, or by the apostles under the Christian economy; who yet surely understood the proper and the most efficacious instruments of piety, as well as any confessor or friar of all the order of St. Francis, or any casuist whatsoever.

It seems, that with them a man sometimes can not be a penitent, unless he also turns vagabond, and foots it to Jerusalem; or wanders over this or that part of the world to visit the shrine of such or such a pretended saint; though perhaps, in his life, ten times more ridiculous than themselves: thus, that which was Cain’s curse is become their religion. He that thinks to expiate a sin by going barefoot, does the penance of a goose, and only makes one folly the atonement of another. Paul in deed was scourged and beaten by the Jews, but we never read that he beat or scourged himself: and if they think that his keeping under of his body imports so much, they must first prove that the body cannot be kept under by a virtuous mind, and that the mind cannot be made virtuous but by a scourge; and consequently, that thongs and whipcord are means of grace, and things necessary to salvation. The truth is, if men’s religion lies no deeper than their skin, it is possible that they may scourge themselves into very great improvements.

But they will find that bodily exercise touches not the soul; and that neither pride, nor lust, nor covetousness, nor any other vice, was ever mortified by corporal disciplines: it is not the back, but the heart that must bleed for sin: and consequently, that in this whole course they are like men out of their way; let them lash on never so fast, they are not at all the nearer to their journey’s end: and howsoever they deceive themselves and others, they may as well expect to bring a cart as a soul to heaven by such means. What arguments they have to beguile poor, simple, unstable souls with, I know not; but surely the practical, casuistical, that is, the principal, vital part of their religion savours very little of spirituality.

And now upon the result of all, I suppose, that to exhort men to be religious, is only in other words to exhort them to take their pleasure. A pleasure, high, rational, and angelical; a pleasure embased with no appendant sting, no consequent loathing, no remorses or bitter farewells: but such an. one, as being honey in the mouth, never turns to gall or gravel in the belly. A pleasure made for the soul, and the soul for that; suitable to its spirituality, and equal to all its capacities. Such an one as grows fresher upon enjoyment, and though continually fed upon, yet is never devoured. A pleasure that a man may can as properly his own, as his soul and his conscience; neither liable to accident, nor exposed to injury. It is the foretaste of heaven, and the earnest of eternity. In a word, it is such an one, as being begun in grace, passes into glory, blessedness, and immortality, and those pleasures that neither eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man to conceive.

To which God of his mercy vouchsafe to bring us to whom he rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both, now and for evermore. Amen.

Genesis i. 27.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.

HOW hard it is for natural reason to discover a creation before revealed, or being revealed to believe it, the strange opinions of the old philosophers, and the infidelity of modern atheists, is too sad a demonstration. To run the world back to its first original and infancy, and (as it were) to view nature in its cradle, to trace the outgoings of the Ancient of days in the first instance and specimen of his creative power, is a research too great for any mortal inquiry: and we might continue our scrutiny to the end of the world, before natural reason would be able to find out when it begun.

Epicurus’s discourse concerning the original of the world is so fabulous and ridiculously merry, that we may well judge the design of his philosophy to have been pleasure, and not instruction.

Aristotle held, that it streamed by connatural result and emanation from God, the infinite and eternal mind, as the light issues from the sun; so that there was no instant of duration assignable of God’s eternal existence, in which the world did not also coexist.

Others held a fortuitous concourse of atoms; but all seem jointly to explode a creation; still beating upon this ground, that to produce something out of nothing is impossible and incomprehensible: incomprehensible indeed I grant, but not therefore impossible. There is not the least transaction of sense and motion in the whole man, but philosophers are at a loss to comprehend, I am sure they are to explain it. Wherefore it is not always rational to measure the truth of an assertion by the standard of our apprehension.

But to bring things even to the bare perceptions of reason, I appeal to any one, who shall impartially reflect upon the ideas and conceptions of his own mind, whether he doth not find it as easy and suit able to his natural notions, to conceive that an infinite almighty power might produce a thing out of nothing, and make that to exist de novo, which did not exist before; as to conceive the world to have had no beginning, but to have existed from eternity: which, were it so proper for this place and exercise, I could easily demonstrate to be attended with no small train of absurdities. But then, besides that the acknowledging of a creation is safe, and the denial of it dangerous and irreligious, and yet not more (perhaps much less) demonstrable than the affirmative; so, over and above, it gives me this advantage, that, let it seem never so strange, uncouth, and impossible, the nonplus of my reason will yield a fairer opportunity to my faith.

In this chapter, we have God surveying the works of the creation, and leaving this general impress or character upon them, that they were exceeding good. What an omnipotence wrought, we have an omniscience to approve. But as it is reasonable to imagine that there is more of design, and consequently more of perfection, in the last work, we have God here giving his last stroke, and summing up all into man, the whole into a part, the universe into an individual: so that, whereas in other creatures we have but the trace of his footsteps, in man we have the draught of his hand. In him were united all the scattered perfections of the creature; all the graces and ornaments, all the airs and features of being, were abridged into this small, yet full system of nature and divinity: as we might well imagine that the great artificer would be more than ordinarily exact in drawing his own picture.

The work that I shall undertake from these words, shall be to shew what this image of God in man is, and wherein it doth consist. Which I shall do these two ways: 1. Negatively, by shewing wherein it does not consist. 2. Positively, by shewing wherein it does.

For the first of these, we are to remove the erroneous opinion of the Socinians. They deny that the image of God consisted in any habitual perfections that adorned the soul of Adam: but as to his understanding bring him in void of all notion, a rude unwritten blank; making him to be created as much an infant as others are born; sent into the world only to read and spell out a God in the works of creation, to learn by degrees, till at length his understanding grew up to the stature of his body. Also without any inherent habits of virtue in his will; thus divesting him of all, and stripping him to his bare essence; so that all the perfection they allowed his understanding was aptness and docility; and all that they attributed to his will was a possibility to be virtuous.

But wherein then, according to their opinion, did this image of God consist? Why, in that power and dominion that God gave Adam over the creatures: in that he was vouched his immediate deputy upon earth, the viceroy of the creation, and lord-lieu tenant of the world. But that this power and dominion is not adequately and formally the image of God, but only a part of it, is clear from hence; be cause then he that had most of this, would have most of God’s image: and consequently Nimrod had more of it than Noah, Saul than Samuel, the persecutors than the martyrs, and Caesar than Christ himself, which to assert is a blasphemous paradox. And if the image of God is only grandeur, power, and sovereignty, certainly we have been hitherto much mistaken in our duty: and hereafter are by all means to beware of making ourselves unlike God, by too much self-denial and humility. I am not ignorant that some may distinguish between ἐξουσία and δύναμις, between a lawful authority and an actual power: and affirm, that God’s image consists only in the former; which wicked princes, such as Saul and Nimrod, have not, though they possess the latter. But to this I answer,

1. That the scripture neither makes nor owns such a distinction; nor any where asserts, that when princes begin to be wicked, they cease of right to be governors. Add to this, that when God renewed this charter of man’s sovereignty over the creatures to Noah and his family, we find no exception at all, but that Cham stood as fully invested with this right as any of his brethren.

2. But secondly; this savours of something ranker than Socinianism, even the tenents of the fifth monarchy, and of sovereignty founded only upon saintship; and therefore fitter to be answered by the judge, than by the divine; and to receive its confutation at the bar of justice, than from the pulpit.

Matthew x. 33.

But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.

AS the great comprehensive gospel duty is the denial of self, so the grand gospel sin that confronts it is the denial of Christ. These two are both the commanding and the dividing principles of all our actions: for whosoever acts in opposition to one, does it always in behalf of the other. None ever op posed Christ, but it was to gratify self: none ever renounced the interest of self, but from a prevailing love to the interest of Christ. The subject I have here pitched upon may seem improper in these times, and in this place, where the number of professors and of men is the same; where the cause and interest of Christ has been so cried up; and Christ’s personal reign and kingdom so called for and expected. But since it has been still preached up, but acted down; and dealt with, as the eagle in the fable did with the oyster, carrying it up on high, that by letting it fall he might dash it in pieces: I say, since Christ must reign, but his truths be made to serve; I suppose it is but reason to distinguish between profession and pretence, and to conclude, that men’s present crying, Hail king, and bending the knee to Christ, are only in order to his future crucifixion.

For the discovery of the sense of the words, I shall inquire into their occasion. From the very beginning of the chapter we have Christ consulting the propagation of the gospel; and in order to it (being the only way that he knew to effect it) sending forth a ministry; and giving them a commission, together with instructions for the execution of it. He would have them fully acquainted with the nature and extent of their office; and so he joins commission with instruction; by one he conveys power, by the other knowledge. Supposing (I conceive) that upon such an undertaking, the more learned his ministers were, they would prove never the less faithful.

In the parliament 1653, it being put to the vote, whether they should support and encourage a godly and learned ministry, the latter word was rejected, and the vote passed for a godly and faithful ministry.

Ecclesiastical Policy the best Policy:

OR

RELIGION THE BEST REASON OF STATE:

IN A

SERMON

PREACHED

BEFORE THE HONOURABLE SOCIETY OF LINCOLN’S INN.

1 Kings xiii. 33, 34.

After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way, but made again of the lowest of the people priests of the high places: whosoever would, he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests of the high places. And this thing became sin unto the house of Jeroboam, even to cut it off, and to destroy it from off the face of the earth.

JEROBOAM (from the name of a person become the character of impiety) is reported to posterity eminent, or rather infamous, for two things; usurpation of government, and innovation of religion. It is confessed, the former is expressly said to have been from God; but since God may order and dispose what he does not approve, and use the wickedness of men while he forbids it, the design of the first cause does not excuse the malignity of the second: and therefore, the advancement and sceptre of Jeroboam was in that sense only the work of God, in which it is said, Amos iii. 6. that there is no evil in the city which the Lord hath not done. But from his attempts upon the civil power, he proceeds to innovate God’s worship; and from the subjection of men’s bodies and estates, to enslave their consciences, as knowing that true religion is no friend to an unjust title. Such was afterwards the way of Mahomet, to the tyrant to join the impostor, and what he had got by the sword to confirm by the Alcoran; raising his empire upon two pillars, conquest and inspiration. Jeroboam being thus advanced, and thinking policy the best piety, though indeed in nothing ever more befooled, the nature of sin being not only to defile, but to infatuate; in the xiith chapter, and the 27th verse, he thus argues; If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again unto Rehoboam king of Judah. As if he should have said; The true worship of God, and the converse of those that use it, dispose men to a considerate lawful subjection. And therefore I must take another course: my practice must not be better than my title; what was won by force, must be continued by delusion. Thus sin is usually seconded with sin; and a man seldom commits one sin to please, but he commits another to defend himself: as it is frequent for the adulterer to commit murder, to conceal the shame of his adultery. But let us see Jeroboam’s politic procedure in the next verse. Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel. As if he had made such an edict: I Jeroboam, by the advice of my council, considering the great distance of the temple, and the great charges that poor people are put to in going thither; as also the intolerable burden of paying the first-fruits and tithes to the priest, have considered of a way that may be more easy, and less burdensome to the people, as also more comfortable to the priests themselves; and therefore strictly enjoin, that none henceforth presume to repair to the temple at Jerusalem, especially since God is not tied to any place or form of worship; as also because the devotion of men is apt to be clogged by such ceremonies; therefore, both for the ease of the people, as well as for the advancement of religion, we require and command, that all henceforth forbear going up to Jerusalem. Questionless these and such other reasons the impostor used, to insinuate his devout idolatry. And thus the calves were set up, to which oxen must be sacrificed; the god and the sacrifice out of the same herd. And because Israel was not to return to Egypt, Egypt was brought back to them: that is, the Egyptian way of worship, the Apis, or Serapis, which was nothing but the image of a calf or ox, as is clear from most historians. Thus Jeroboam having procured his people gods, the next thing was to provide priests. Hereupon to the calves he adds a commission for the approving, trying, and admitting the rascality and lowest of the people to minister in that service: such as kept cattle, with a little change of their office, were admitted to make oblations to them. And doubtless, besides the approbation of these, there was a commission also to eject such of the priests and Levites of God, as being too ceremoniously addicted to the temple, would not serve Jeroboam before God, nor worship his calves for their gold, nor approve those two glittering sins for any reason of state whatsoever. Having now perfected divine worship, and prepared both gods and priests; in the next place, that he might the better teach his false priests the way of their new worship, he begins the service himself, and so countenances by his example what he had enjoined by his command, in the 11th verse of this chapter; and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. Burning of in cense was then the ministerial office amongst them, as preaching is now amongst us. So that to represent to you the nature of Jeroboam’s action; it was, as if in a Christian nation the chief governor should authorize and encourage all the scum and refuse of the people to preach, and call them to the ministry by using to preach,

Cromwell (a lively copy of Jeroboam) did so.

Titus ii. 15.

These things speak and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.

IT may possibly be expected, that the very taking of my text out of this epistle to Titus, may engage me in a discourse about the nature, original, and divine right of episcopacy; and if it should, it were no more than what some of the greatest and the learnedest persons in the world (when men served truth instead of design) had done before: for I must profess, that I cannot look upon Titus as so far unbishoped yet, but that he still exhibits to us all the essentials of that jurisdiction, which to this day is claimed for episcopal. We are told in the fifth verse of the first chapter, that he was left in Crete to set things in order, and to ordain elders in every city; which text one would think were sufficiently clear and full, and too big with evidence to be perverted: but when we have seen rebellion commented out of the thirteenth of the Romans; and since there are few things but admit of gloss and probability, and consequently may be expounded as well as disputed on both sides; it is no such wonder, that some would bear the world in hand, that the apostle’s design and meaning is for presbytery, though his words are all the time for episcopacy: no wonder, I say, to us at least, who have conversed with too many strange unparalleled actions, occurrences, and events, now to wonder at any thing: wonder is from surprise; and surprise ceases upon experience.

I am not so much a friend to the stale starched formality of preambles, as to detain so great an audience with any previous discourse extrinsick to the subject matter and design of the text; and therefore I shall fall directly upon the words, which run in the form of an exhortation, though in appearance a very strange one; for the matter of an exhortation should be something naturally in the power of him to whom the exhortation is directed. For no man exhorts another to be strong, beautiful, witty, or the like; these are the felicities of some conditions, the object of more wishes, but the effects of no man’s choice. Nor seems there any greater reason for the apostle’s exhorting Titus, that no man should despise him; for how could another man’s action be his duty? Was it in his power that men should not be wicked and injurious; and if such persons would despise him, could any thing pass an obligation upon him not to be despised? No, this cannot be the meaning; and therefore it is clear that the exhortation lies not against the action itself, which is only in the despiser’s power, but against the just occasion of it, which is in the will and power of him that is despised: it was not in Titus’s power that men should not despise him, but it was in his power to bereave them of all just cause of doing so; it was not in his power not to be derided, but it was in his power not to be ridiculous.

In all this epistle it is evident that St. Paul looks upon Titus as advanced to the dignity of a prime ruler of the church, and intrusted with a large diocese, containing many particular churches under the immediate government of their respective elders; and those deriving authority from his ordination, as was specified in the fifth verse of the first chapter. And now looking upon Titus under this qualification, he addresses a long advice and instruction to him, for the discharge of so important a function, all along the first and second chapters; but sums up all in the last verse, which is the subject of the ensuing discourse, and contains in it these two things.

I. An account of the duties of his place or office.

II. Of the means to facilitate and make effectual their execution.

I. The duties of his place were two. 1. To teach. 2. To rule. Both comprised in these words; These things speak and exhort, and rebuke with all authority.

And then the means, the only means to make him successful, bright, and victorious in the performance of these great works, was to be above contempt, to shine like the Baptist, with a clear and a triumphant light. In a word, it is every bishop’s duty to teach and to govern; and his way to do it is not to be despised.

We will discourse of each respectively in their order.

1. And first, for the first branch of the great work incumbent upon a church ruler, which is to teach. A work that none is too great or too high for; it is a work of charity, and charity is the work of heaven, which is always laying itself out upon the needy and the impotent: nay, and it is a work of the highest and the noblest charity; for he that teacheth an other, gives an alms to his soul; he clothes the nakedness of his understanding, and relieves the wants of his impoverished reason: he indeed that governs well, leads the blind; but he that teaches, gives him eyes: and it is a glorious thing to have been the repairer of a decayed intellect, and a sub-worker to grace, in freeing it from some of the inconveniences of original sin. It is a benefaction that gives a man a kind of prerogative; for even in the common dialect of the world every teacher is called a master: it is the property of instruction to descend, and upon that very account, it supposes him that instructs, the superior, or at least makes him so.

To say a man is advanced too high to condescend to teach the ignorant, is as much as to say, that the sun is in too high a place to shine upon what is be low it. The sun is said to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night: but do they not rule them only by enlightening them? Doctrine is that, that must prepare men for discipline; and men never go on so cheerfully, as when they see where they go.

Nor is the dulness of the scholar to extinguish, but rather to inflame the charity of the teacher: for since it is not in men as in vessels, that the smallest capacity is the soonest filled; where the labour is doubled, the value of the work is enhanced; for it is a sowing where a man never expects to reap any thing but the comfort and conscience of having done virtuously. And yet we know moreover, that God sometimes converts even the dull and the slow, turning very stones into sons of Abraham; where besides that the difficulty of the conquest advances the trophy of the conqueror; it often falls out, that the backward learner makes amends another way, recompensing sure for sudden, expiating his want of docility with a deeper and a more rooted retention: which alone were argument sufficient to enforce the apostle’s injunction of being instant in season and out of season, even upon the highest and most exalted ruler in the church. He that sits in Moses’s chair, sits there to instruct, as well as to rule: and a general’s office engages him to lead, as well as to command his army. In the first of Ecclesiastes, Solomon represents himself both as preacher and king of Israel: and every soul that a bishop gains is a new accession to the extent of his power; he preaches his jurisdiction wider, and enlarges his spiritual diocese, as he enlarges men’s apprehensions.

The teaching part indeed of a Romish bishop is easy enough, whose grand business is only to teach men to be ignorant, to instruct them how to know nothing, or, which is all one, to know upon trust, to believe implicitly, and in a word, to see with other men’s eyes, till they come to be lost in their own souls. But our religion is a religion that dares to be understood; that offers itself to the search of the inquisitive, to the inspection of the severest and the most awakened reason: for being secure of her substantial truth and purity, she knows, that for her to be seen and looked into, is to be embraced and admired: as there needs no greater argument for men to love the light, than to see it. It needs no legends, no service in an unknown tongue, no inquisition against scripture, no purging out the heart and sense of authors, no altering or bribing the voice of antiquity to speak for it; it needs none of all these laborious artifices of ignorance; none of all these cloaks and coverings. The Romish faith indeed must be covered, or it cannot be kept warm, and their clergy deal with their religion as with a great crime; if it is discovered, they are undone. But there is no bishop of the church of England, but accounts it his interest, as well as his duty, to comply with this precept of the apostle Paul to Titus, These things teach and exhort.

Now this teaching may be effected two ways:

(1.) Immediately by himself.

(2.) Mediately by others.

And first, immediately by himself. Where God gives a talent, the episcopal robe can be no napkin to hide it in. Change of condition changes not the abilities of nature, but makes them more illustrious in their exercise; and the episcopal dignity added to a good preaching faculty, is like the erecting of a stately fountain upon a spring, which still, for all that, remains as much a spring as it was before, and flows as plentifully, only it flows with the circumstance of greater state and magnificence. Height of place is intended only to stamp the endowments of a private condition with lustre and authority: and, thanks be to God, neither the church’s professed enemies, nor her pretended friends, have any cause to asperse her in this respect, as having over her such bishops as are able to silence the factious, no less by their preaching than by their authority.

But then, on the other hand, let me add also, that this is not so absolutely necessary, as to be of the vital constitution of this function. He may teach his diocese, who ceases to be able to preach to it: for he may do it by appointing teachers, and by a vigilant exacting from them the care and the instruction of their respective flocks. He is the spiritual father of his diocese; and a father may see his children taught, though he himself does not turn schoolmaster. It is not the gift of every person nor of every age, to harangue the multitude, to voice it high and loud, et dominari in concionibus. And since experience fits for government, and age usually brings experience, perhaps the most governing years are the least preaching years.

(2.) In the second place therefore, there is a teaching mediately, by the subordinate ministration of others; in which, since the action of the instrumental agent is, upon all grounds of reason, to be ascribed to the principal, he, who ordains and furnishes all his churches with able preachers, is an universal teacher; he instructs where he cannot be present; he speaks in every mouth of his diocese; and every congregation of it every Sunday feels his influence, though it hears not his voice. That master deprives not his family of their food, who orders a faithful steward to dispense it. Teaching is not a flow of words, nor the draining of an hour glass, but an effectual procuring, that a man comes to know something which he knew not before, or to know it better. And therefore eloquence and ability of speech is to a church governor, as Tully said it was to a philosopher; Si afferatur, non repudianda; si absit, non magnopere desideranda: and to find fault with such an one for not being a popular speaker, is to blame a painter for not being a good musician.

To teach indeed must be confessed his duty, but then there is a teaching by example, by authority, by restraining seducers, and so removing the hinderances of knowledge. And a bishop does his church, his prince and country, more service by ruling other men’s tongues, than he can by employing his own. And thus much for the first branch of the great work belonging to a pastor of the church, which was to teach and to exhort.

Psalm lxxxvii. 2.

God hath loved the gates of Sion, more than all the dwellings of Jacob.

THE comparison here exhibited between the love God bore to Sion, the great place of his solemn worship, and that which he bore to the other dwellings of Israel, imports, as all other comparisons do in the superior part of them, two things; difference and preeminence: and accordingly I cannot more commodiously and naturally contrive the prosecution of these words, than by casting the sense of them into these two propositions.

I. That God bears a different respect to places set apart and consecrated to his worship, from what he bears to all other places designed to the uses of common life.

II. That God prefers the worship paid him in such places, above that which is offered him in any other places whatsoever.

I. As to the former of these, this difference of respect, borne by God to such places, from what he bears to others, may be evinced these three several ways.

1. By those eminent interposals of Providence, for the erecting and preserving of such places.

2. By those notable judgments shewn by God upon the violators of them.

3. Lastly, by declaring the ground and reason, why God shews such a different respect to those places, from what he manifests to others. Of all which in their order.

Prov. x. 9.

He that walketh uprightly walketh surely.

As it were easy to evince, both from reason and experience, that there is a strange, restless activity in the soul of man, continually disposing it to operate, and exert its faculties; so the phrase of scripture still expresses the life of man by walking; that is, it represents an active principle in an active posture. And because the nature of man carries him thus out to action, it is no wonder if the same nature equally renders him solicitous about the issue and event of his actions: for every one, by reflecting upon the way and method of his own workings, will find that he is still determined in them by a respect to the consequence of what he does; always proceeding upon this argumentation; If I do such a thing, such an advantage will follow from it, and therefore I will do it. And if I do this, such a mischief will ensue thereupon, and therefore I will for bear. Every one, I say, is concluded by this practical discourse; and for a man to bring his actions to the event proposed and designed by him, is to walk surely. But since the event of an action usually follows the nature or quality of it, and the quality follows the rule directing it, it concerns a man, by all means, in the framing of his actions, not to be deceived in the rule which he proposes for the mea sure of them; which, without great and exact caution, he may be these two ways:

1. By laying false and deceitful principles.

2. In case he lays right principles, yet by mistaking in the consequences which he draws from them.

An error in either of which is equally dangerous; for if a man is to draw a line, it is all one whether he does it by a crooked rule, or by a straight one misapplied. He who fixes upon false principles treads upon infirm ground, and so sinks; and he who fails in his deductions from right principles, stumbles upon firm ground, and so falls; the disaster is not of the same kind, but of the same mischief in both.

It must be confessed, that it is sometimes very hard to judge of the truth or goodness of principles, considered barely in themselves, and abstracted from their consequences. But certainly he acts upon the surest and most prudential grounds in the world, who, whether the principles which he acts upon prove true or false, yet secures an happy issue to his actions.

Now he who guides his actions by the rules of piety and religion, lays these two principles as the great ground of all that he does:

1. That there is an infinite, eternal, all-wise mind governing the affairs of the world, and taking such an account of the actions of men, as, according to the quality of them, to punish or reward them.

2dly, That there is an estate of happiness or misery after this life, allotted to every man, according to the quality of his actions here. These, I say, are the principles which every religious man proposes to himself; and the deduction which he makes from them is this: That it is his grand interest and concern so to act and behave himself in this world, as to secure himself from an estate of misery in the other. And thus to act, is, in the phrase of scripture, to walk uprightly; and it is my business to prove, that he who acts in the strength of this conclusion, drawn from the two forementioned principles, walks surely, or secures an happy event to his actions, against all contingencies whatsoever.

And to demonstrate this, I shall consider the said principles under a threefold supposition:

1st, As certainly true;

2dly, As probable; and,

3dly, As false.

And if the pious man brings his actions to an happy end, which soever of these suppositions his principles, fall under, then certainly, there is none who walks so surely, and upon such irrefragable grounds of prudence, as he who is religious.

1. First of all therefore we will take these principles (as we may very well do) under the hypothesis of certainly true: where, though the method of the ratiocination which I have cast the present discourse into, does not naturally engage me to prove them so, but only to shew what directly and necessarily follows upon a supposal that they are so; yet to give the greater perspicuity and clearness to the prosecution of the subject in hand, I shall briefly demonstrate them thus.

It is necessary, that there should be some first mover; and, if so, a first being; and the first being must infer an infinite, unlimited perfection in the said being: forasmuch as if it were finite or limited, that limitation must have been either from itself or from something else. But not from itself, since it is contrary to reason and nature, that any being should limit its own perfection; nor yet from something else, since then it should not have been the first, as supposing some other thing coevous to it; which is against the present supposition. So that it being clear, that there must be a first being, and that in finitely perfect, it will follow, that all other perfection that is, must be derived from it; and so we infer the creation of the world: and then supposing the world created by God, (since it is no ways reconcileable to God’s wisdom, that he should not also govern it,) creation must needs infer providence: and then it being granted, that God governs the world, it will follow also, that he does it by means suitable to the natures of the things he governs, and to the attainment of the proper ends of government: and moreover, man being by nature a free, moral agent, and so, capable of deviating from his duty, as well as performing it, it is necessary that he should be governed by laws: and since laws require that they be enforced with the sanction of rewards and punishments, sufficient to sway and work upon the minds of such as are to be governed by them; and lastly, since experience shews that rewards and punishments, terminated only within this life, are not sufficient for that purpose, it fairly and rationally follows, that the rewards and punishments, which God governs mankind by, do and must look beyond it.

And thus I have given a brief proof of the certainty of these principles; namely, that there is a supreme governor of the world; and that there is a future estate of happiness or misery for men after this life: which principles, while a man steers his course by, if he acts piously, soberly, and temperately, I suppose there needs no further arguments to evince, that he acts prudentially and safely. For he acts as under the eye of his just and severe Judge, who reaches to his creature a command with one hand, and a reward with the other. He spends as a person who knows that he must come to a reckoning. He sees an eternal happiness or misery suspended upon a few days behaviour; and therefore he lives every hour as for eternity. His future condition has such a powerful influence upon his present practice, because he entertains a continual apprehension and a firm persuasion of it. If a man walks over a narrow bridge when he is drunk, it is no wonder that he forgets his caution, while he over looks his danger. But he who is sober, and views that nice separation between himself and the devouring deep, so that if he should slip, he sees his grave gaping under him, surely must needs take every step with horror, and the utmost caution and solicitude.

But for a man to believe it as the most undoubted certainty in the world, that he shall be judged according to the quality of his actions here, and after judgment receive an eternal recompence, and yet to take his full swing in all the pleasures of sin, is it not a greater phrensy, than for a man to take a purse at Tyburn, while he is actually seeing another hanged for the same fact? It is really to dare and defy the justice of Heaven, to laugh at right-aiming thunderbolts, to puff at damnation, and, in a word, to bid Omnipotence do its worst. He indeed who thus walks, walks surely; but it is because he is sure to be damned.

I confess it is hard to reconcile such a stupid course to the natural way of the soul’s acting; according to which, the will moves according to the proposals of good and evil, made by the understanding: and therefore for a man to run headlong into the bottomless pit, while the eye of a seeing conscience assures him that it is bottomless and open, and all return from it desperate and impossible; while his ruin stares him in the face, and the sword of vengeance points directly at his heart, still to press on to the embraces of his sin, is a problem unresolvable upon any other ground, but that sin infatuates before it destroys. For Judas to receive and swallow the sop, when his master gave it him seasoned with those terrible words, It had been good for that man that he had never been born; surely this argued a furious appetite and a strong stomach, that could thus catch at a morsel with the fire and brimstone all flaming about it, and, as it were, digest death itself, and make a meal upon perdition.

I could wish that every bold sinner, when he is about to engage in the commission of any known sin, would arrest his confidence, and for a while stop the execution of his purpose, with this short question, Do I believe that it is really true, that God has denounced death to such a practice, or do I not? If he does not, let him renounce his Christianity, and surrender back his baptism, the water of which might better serve him to cool his tongue in hell, than only to consign him over to the capacity of so black an apostasy. But if he does believe it, how will he acquit himself upon the accounts of bare reason? For does he think, that if he pursues the means of death, they will not bring him to that fatal end? Or does he think that he can grapple with divine vengeance, and endure the everlasting burnings, or arm himself against the bites of the never-dying worm? No, surely, these are things not to be imagined; and therefore I cannot conceive what security the presuming sinner can promise himself, but upon these two following accounts.

1. That God is merciful, and will not be so severe as his word; and that his threatenings of eternal torments are not so decretory and absolute, but that there is a very comfortable latitude left in them for men of skill to creep out at. And here it must in deed be confessed, that Origen, and some others, not long since, who have been so officious as to furbish up and reprint his old errors, hold, that the sufferings of the damned are not to be, in a strict sense, eternal; but that, after a certain revolution and period of time, there shall be a general gaol-delivery of the souls in prison, and that not for a further execution, but a final release. And it must be further acknowledged, that some of the ancients, like kind-hearted men, have talked much of annual refrigeriums, respites, or intervals of punishment to the damned, as particularly on the great festivals of the resurrection, ascension, pentecost, and the like. In which, as these good men are more to be commended for their kindness and compassion, than to be followed in their opinion; (which may be much better argued by wishes than demonstrations;) so, admitting that it were true, yet what a pitiful, slender comfort would this amount to! much like the Jews abating the punishment of malefactors from forty stripes to forty save one. A great indulgence indeed, even as great as the difference between forty and thirty-nine; and yet much less considerable would that indulgence be of a few holydays in the measures of eternity, of some hours’ ease, compared with infinite ages of torment.

Supposing therefore, that few sinners relieve themselves with such groundless, trifling considerations as these, yet may they not however fasten a rational hope upon the boundless mercy of God, that this may induce him to spare his poor creature, though by sin become obnoxious to his wrath? To this I answer, that the divine mercy is indeed large, and far surpassing all created measures, yet nevertheless it has its proper time; and after this life it is the time of justice; and to hope for the favours of mercy then, is to expect an harvest in the dead of winter. God has cast all his works into a certain, inviolable order; according to which, there is a time to pardon and a time to punish; and the time of one is not the time of the other. When corn has once felt the sickle, it has no more benefit from the sunshine. But,

2dly, If the conscience be too apprehensive (as for the most part it is) to venture the final issue of things upon a fond persuasion, that the great Judge of the world will relent, and not execute the sentence pronounced by him; as if he had threatened men with hell rather to fright them from sin, than with an intent to punish them for it; I say, if the conscience cannot find any satisfaction or support from such reasonings as these, yet may it not, at least, relieve itself with the purposes of a future repentance, notwithstanding its present actual violations of the law? I answer, that this certainly is a confidence of all others the most ungrounded and irrational. For upon what ground can a man promise himself a future repentance, who cannot promise himself a futurity? whose life depends upon his breath, and is so restrained to the present, that it cannot secure to itself the reversion of the very next minute. Have not many died with the guilt of impenitence and the designs of repentance together? If a man dies to day, by the prevalence of some ill humours, will it avail him, that he intended to have bled and purged tomorrow?

But how dares sinful dust and ashes invade the prerogative of Providence, and carve out to himself the seasons and issues of life and death, which the Father keeps wholly within his own power? How does that man, who thinks he sins securely under the shelter of some remote purposes of amendment, know, but that the decree above may be already passed against him, and his allowance of mercy spent; so that the bow in the clouds is now drawn, and the arrow levelled at his head: and not many days like to pass, but perhaps an apoplexy, or an imposthume, or some sudden, disaster, may stop his breath, and reap him down as a sinner ripe for destruction.

I conclude therefore, that, upon supposition of the certain truth of the principles of religion, he who walks not uprightly has neither from the presumption of God’s mercy reversing the decree of his justice, nor from his own purposes of future repentance, any sure ground to set his foot upon; but in this whole course acts as directly in contradiction to nature, as he does in defiance of grace. In a word, he is besotted, and has lost his reason; and what then can there be for religion to take hold of him by? Come we now to the

2d supposition, under which we shew, That the principles of religion laid clown by us might be considered, and that is, as only probable. Where we must observe, that probability does not properly make any alteration, either in the truth or falsity of things; but only imports a different degree of their clearness or appearance to the understanding. So that that is to be accounted probable, which has more and better arguments producible for it, than can be brought against it; and surely such a thing at least is religion. For certain it is, that religion is universal, I mean the first rudiments and general notions of religion, called natural religion, and consisting in the acknowledgment of a Deity, and of the common principles of morality, and a future estate of souls after death, (in which also we have all that some reformers and refiners amongst us would reduce Christianity itself to.) This notion of religion, I say, has diffused itself in some degree or other, greater or less, as far as human nature extends. So that there is no nation in the world, though plunged into never such gross and absurd idolatry, but has some awful sense of a Deity, and a persuasion of a state of retribution to men after this life.

But now, if there are really no such things, but all is a mere lie and a fable, contrived only to chain up the liberty of man’s nature from a freer enjoyment of those things, which otherwise it would have as full a right to enjoy as to breathe, I demand whence this persuasion could thus come to be universal? For was it ever known, in any other instance, that the whole world was brought to conspire in the belief of a lie? Nay, and of such a lie, as should lay upon men such unpleasing abridgments, tying them up from a full gratification of those lusts and appetites which they so impatiently desire to satisfy, and consequently, by all means, to remove those impediments that might any way obstruct their satisfaction? Since therefore it cannot be made out upon any principle of reason, how all the nations in the world, otherwise so distant in situation, manners, interests, and inclinations, should, by design or combination, meet in one persuasion; and withal that men, who so mortally hate to be deceived and imposed upon, should yet suffer themselves to be deceived by such a persuasion as is false; and not only false, but also cross and contrary to their strongest desires; so that if it were false, they would set the utmost force of their reason on work to discover that falsity, and thereby disinthrall themselves; and further, since there is nothing false, but what may be proved to be so; and yet, lastly, since all the power and industry of man’s mind has not been hitherto able to prove a falsity in the principles of religion, it irrefragably follows, (and that, I suppose, without gathering any more into the conclusion than has been made good in the premises,) that religion is at least a very high probability.

And this is that which I here contend for, That it is not necessary to the obliging men to believe religion to be true, that this truth be made out to their reason by arguments demonstratively certain; but that it is sufficient to render their unbelief unexcusable, even upon the account of bare reason, if so be the truth of religion carry in it a much greater probability, than any of those ratiocinations that pretend the contrary: and this I prove in the strength of these two considerations.

1st, That no man, in matters of this life, requires an assurance either of the good which he designs, or of the evil which he avoids, from arguments demonstratively certain; but judges himself to have sufficient ground to act upon, from a probable persuasion of the event of things. No man who first trafficks into a foreign country has any scientific evidence that there is such a country, but by report, which can produce no more than a moral certainty; that is, a very high probability, and such as there can be no reason to except against. He who has a probable belief, that he shall meet with thieves in such a road, thinks himself to have reason enough to decline it, albeit he is sure to sustain some less (though yet considerable) inconvenience by his so doing. But perhaps it may be replied, (and it is all that can be replied,) that a greater assurance and evidence is required of the things and concerns of the other world, than of the interests of this. To which I answer, that assurance and evidence (terms, by the way, extremely different; the first, respecting properly the ground of our assenting to a thing; and the other, the clearness of the thing or object assented to) have no place at all here, as being contrary to our present supposition; according to which, we are now treating of the practical principles of religion only as probable, and falling under a probable persuasion. And for this I affirm, that where the case is about the hazarding an eternal or a temporal concern, there a less degree of probability ought to engage our caution against the loss of the former, than is necessary to engage it about preventing the loss of the latter. Forasmuch as where things are least to be put to the venture, as the eternal interests of the other world ought to be; there every, even the least, probability or likelihood of danger, should be provided against; but where the loss can be but temporal, every small probability of it need not put us so anxiously to prevent it, since, though it should happen, the loss might be repaired again; or if not, could not however destroy us, by reaching us in our greatest and highest concern; which no temporal thing whatsoever is or can be. And this directly introduces the

2d consideration or argument, viz. That bare reason, discoursing upon a principle of self-preservation, (which surely is the fundamental principle which nature proceeds by,) will oblige a man voluntarily and by choice to undergo any less evil to secure himself but from the probability of an evil incomparably greater, and that also such an one, as, if that probability passes into a certain event, admits of no reparation by any after-remedy that can be applied to it.

Now, that religion, teaching a future estate of souls, is a probability, and that its contrary cannot with equal probability be proved, we have already evinced. This therefore being supposed, we will suppose yet further, that for a man to abridge himself in the full satisfaction of his appetites and inclinations, is an evil, because a present pain and trouble: but then it must likewise be granted, that nature must needs abhor a state of eternal pain and misery much more; and that if a man does not undergo the former less evil, it is highly probable that such an eternal estate of misery will be his portion; and if so, I would fain know whether that man takes a rational course to preserve himself, who refuses the endurance of these lesser troubles, to secure himself from a condition infinitely and inconceivably more miserable.

But since probability, in the nature of it, supposes that a thing may or may not be so, for any thing that yet appears, or is certainly determined on either side, we will here consider both sides of this probability: as,

1st, That it is one way possible, that there may be no such thing as a future estate of happiness or misery for those who have lived well or ill here; and then he who, upon the strength of a contrary belief, abridged himself in the gratification of his appetites, sustains only this evil; viz. That he did not please his senses and unbounded desires, so much as otherwise he might and would have done, had he not lived under the captivity and check of such a belief. This is the utmost which he suffers: but whether this be a real evil or no, (whatsoever vulgar minds may commonly think it,) shall be discoursed of afterwards.

2. But then again, on the other side, it is probable that there will be such a future estate; and then how miserably is the voluptuous, sensual unbeliever left in the lurch! For there can be no retreat for him then, no mending of his choice in the other world, no after-game to be played in hell. It fares with men, in reference to their future estate, and the condition upon which they must pass to it, much as it does with a merchant having a vessel richly fraught at sea in a storm: the storm grows higher and higher, and threatens the utter loss of the ship: but there is one, and but one certain way to save it, which is, by throwing its rich lading overboard; yet still, for all this, the man knows not but possibly the storm may cease, and so all be preserved. However, in the mean time, there is little or no probability that it will do so; and in case it should not, he is then assured, that he must lay his life, as well as his rich commodities, in the cruel deep. Now in this case, would this man, think we, act rationally, should he, upon the slender possibility of escaping otherwise, neglect the sure, infallible preservation of his life, by casting away his rich goods? No certainly, it would be so far from it, that should the storm, by a strange hap, cease immediately after he had thus thrown away his riches, yet the throwing them away was infinitely more rational and eligible, than the retaining or keeping them could have been.

For a man, while he lives here in the world, to doubt whether there be any hell or no; and there upon to live so, as if absolutely there were none; but when he dies, to find himself confuted in the flames; this, surely, must be the height of woe and disappointment, and a bitter conviction of an irrational venture and an absurd choice. In doubtful cases, reason still determines for the safer side; especially if the case be not only doubtful, but also highly concerning, and the venture be of a soul and an eternity.

He who sat at a table, richly and deliciously furnished, but with a sword hanging over his head by one single thread or hair, surely had enough to check his appetite, even against all the ragings of hunger and temptations of sensuality. The only argument that could any way encourage his appetite was, that possibly the sword might not fall; but when his reason should encounter it with another question, What if it should fall? and moreover, that pitiful stay by which it hung should oppose the likelihood that it would, to a mere possibility that it might not; what could the man enjoy or taste of his rich banquet, with all this doubt and horror working in his mind?

Though a man’s condition should be really in itself never so safe, yet an apprehension and surmise that it is not safe, is enough to make a quick and a tender reason sufficiently miserable. Let the most acute and learned unbeliever demonstrate that there is no hell: and if he can, he sins so much the more rationally; otherwise, if he cannot, the case remains doubtful at least: but he who sins obstinately, does not act as if it were so much as doubtful; for if it were certain and evident to sense, he could do no more; but for a man to found a confident practice upon a disputable principle, is brutishly to outrun his reason, and to build ten times wider than his foundation. In a word, I look upon this one short consideration, were there no more, as a sufficient ground for any rational man to take up his religion upon, and which I defy the subtlest atheist in the world solidly to answer or confute; namely, That it is good to be sure. And so I proceed to the

Third and last supposition, under which the principles of religion may, for argument sake, be considered; and that is, as false; which surely must reach the utmost thoughts of any atheist whatsoever. Nevertheless even upon this account also, I doubt not but to evince, that he who walks up rightly walks much more surely than the wicked and profane liver; and that with reference to the most valued temporal enjoyments, such as are reputation, quietness, health, and the like, which are the greatest which this life affords, or is desirable for. And,

1st, For reputation or credit. Is any one had in greater esteem than the just person; who has given the world an assurance, by the constant tenor of his practice, that he makes a conscience of his ways; that he scorns to do an unworthy or a base thing; to lie, to defraud, to undermine another’s interest, by any sinister and inferior arts? And is there any thing which reflects a greater lustre upon a man’s person, than a severe temperance, and a restraint of himself from vicious and unlawful pleasures? Does any thing shine so bright as virtue, and that even in the eyes of those who are void of it? For hardly shall you find any one so bad, but he desires the credit of being thought what his vice will not let him be; so great a pleasure and convenience is it, to live with honour and a fair acceptance amongst those whom we converse with; and a being without it is not life, but rather the skeleton or caput mortuum of life; like time without day, or day itself with out the shining of the sun to enliven it.

On the other side, is there any thing that more embitters all the enjoyments of this life than shame and reproach? Yet this is generally the lot and portion of the impious and irreligious; and of some of them more especially.

For how infamous, in the first place, is the false, fraudulent, and unconscionable person! and how quickly is his character known! For hardly ever did any man of no conscience continue a man of any credit long. Likewise, how odious, as well as infamous, is such an one! Especially if he be arrived at that consummate and robust degree of falsehood, as to play in and out, and shew tricks with oaths, the sacredest bonds which the conscience of man can be bound with; how is such an one shunned and dreaded, like a walking pest! What volleys of scoffs, curses, and satires, are discharged at him! so that let never so much honour be placed upon him, it cleaves not to him, but forthwith ceases to be honour, by being so placed; no preferment can sweeten him, but the higher he stands, the farther and wider he stinks.

In like manner for the drinker and debauched person: is any thing more the object of scorn and contempt than such an one? His company is justly looked upon as a disgrace: and nobody can own a friendship for him without being an enemy to himself. A drunkard is, as it were, outlawed from all worthy and creditable converse. Men abhor, loathe, and despise him, and would even spit at him as they meet him, were it not for fear that a stomach so charged should something more than spit at them.

But not to go over all the several kinds of vice and wickedness, should we set aside the consideration of the glories of a better world, and allow this life for the only place and scene of man’s happiness, yet surely Cato will be always more honourable than Clodius, and Cicero than Catiline. Fidelity, justice, and temperance will always draw their own reward after them, or rather carry it with them, in those marks of honour which they fix upon the persons who practise and pursue them. It is said of David in 1 Chron. xxix. 28. that he died full of days, riches, and honour: and there was no need of an heaven, to render him in all respects a much happier man than Saul. But in the

2d place, The virtuous and religious person walks upon surer grounds than the vicious and irreligious, in respect of the ease, peace, and quietness which he enjoys in this world; and which certainly make no small part of human felicity. For anxiety and labour are great ingredients of that curse which sin has entailed upon fallen man. Care and toil came into the world with sin, and remain ever since inseparable from it, both as to its punishment and effect.

The service of sin is perfect slavery; and he who will pay obedience to the commands of it shall find it an unreasonable taskmaster, and an unmeasurable exactor.

And to represent the case in some particulars. The ambitious person must rise early and sit up late, and pursue his design with a constant, indefatigable attendance; he must be infinitely patient and servile, and obnoxious to all the cross humours of those whom he expects to rise by; he must endure and digest all sorts of affronts; adore the foot that kicks him, and kiss the hand that strikes him: while, in the mean time, the humble and contented man is virtuous at a much easier rate: his virtue bids him sleep, and take his rest, while the other’s restless sin bids him sit up and watch. He pleases himself innocently and easily, while the ambitious man at tempts to please others sinfully and difficultly, and perhaps in the issue unsuccessfully too.

The robber, and man of rapine, must run, and ride, and use all the dangerous and even desperate ways of escape; and probably, after all, his sin be trays him to a gaol, and from thence advances him to the gibbet: but let him carry off his booty with as much safety and success as he can wish, yet the innocent person, with never so little of his own, envies him not, and, if he has nothing, fears him not.

Likewise the cheat and fraudulent person is put to a thousand shifts to palliate his fraud, and to be thought an honest man: but surely there can be no greater labour than to be always dissembling, and forced to maintain a constant disguise, there being so many ways by which a smothered truth is apt to blaze and break out; the very nature of things making it not more natural for them to be, than to appear as they be. But he who will be really honest, just, and sincere in his dealings, needs take no pains to be thought so; no more than the sun needs take any pains to shine, or, when he is up, to convince the world that it is day.

And here again to bring in the man of luxury and intemperance for his share in the pain and trouble, as well as in the forementioned shame and infamy of his vice. Can any toil or day-labour equal the fatigue or drudgery which such an one under goes, while he is continually pouring in draught after draught, and cramming in morsel after morsel, and that in spite of appetite and nature, till he be comes a burden to the very earth that bears him; though not so great an one to that, but that (if possible) he is yet a greater to himself?

See above, p. 19, 20.

And now, in the last place, to mention one sinner more, and him a notable, leading sinner indeed, to wit, the rebel. Can any thing have more of trouble, hazard, and anxiety in it, than the course which he takes? For, in the first place, all the evils of war must unavoidably be endured, as the necessary means and instruments to compass and give success to his traitorous designs. In which, if it is his lot to be conquered, he must expect that vengeance that justly attends a conquered, disarmed villain; for when such an one is vanquished, his sins are always upon him. But if, on the contrary, he proves victorious, he will yet find misery enough in the distracting cares of settling an ungrounded, odious, detestable interest, so heartily, and so justly maligned, abhorred, and oftentimes plotted against; so that, in effect, he is still in war, though he has quitted the field. The torment of his suspicion is great, and the courses he must take to quiet his jealous, suspicious mind, infinitely troublesome and vexatious.

But in the mean time, the labour of obedience, loyalty, and subjection, is no more, but for a man honestly and discreetly to sit still, and to enjoy what he has, under the protection of the laws. And when such an one is in his lowest condition, he is yet high and happy enough to despise and pity the most prosperous rebel in the world: even those famous ones of forty-one (with all due respect to their flourishing relations be it spoke) not excepted. In the

Third and last place, the religious person walks upon surer grounds than the irreligious, in respect of the very health of his body. Virtue is a friend and an help to nature; but it is vice and luxury that destroys it, and the diseases of intemperance are the natural product of the sins of intemperance. Where as, on the other side, a temperate, innocent use of the creature, never casts any one into a fever or a surfeit. Chastity makes no work for a chirurgeon, nor ever ends in rottenness of bones. Sin is the fruitful parent of distempers, and ill lives occasion good physicians. Seldom shall one see in cities, courts, and rich families, (where men live plentifully, and eat and drink freely,) that perfect health, that athletic soundness and vigour of constitution, which is commonly seen in the country, in poor houses and cottages, where nature is their cook, and necessity their caterer, and where they have no other doctor, but the sun and the fresh air, and that such an one, as never sends them to the apothecary. It has been observed in the earlier ages of the church, that none lived such healthful and long lives, as monks and hermits, who had sequestered themselves from the pleasures and plenties of the world, to a constant ascetic course, of the severest abstinence and devotion.

Nor is excess the only thing by which sin mauls and breaks men in their health, and the comfortable enjoyment of themselves thereby, but many are also brought to a very ill and languishing habit of body, by mere idleness; and idleness is both itself a great sin, and the cause of many more. The husband man returns from the field, and from manuring his ground, strong and healthy, because innocent and laborious; you will find no diet-drinks, no boxes of pills, nor galley-pots, amongst his provisions; no, he neither speaks nor lives French, he is not so much a gentleman, forsooth. His meals are coarse and short, his employment warrantable, his sleep certain and refreshing, neither interrupted with the lashes of a guilty mind, nor the aches of a crazy body. And when old age comes upon him, it comes alone, bringing no other evil with it but itself: but when it comes to wait upon a great and worshipful sinner, (who for many years together has had the reputation of eating well and doing ill,) it comes (as it ought to do, to a person of such quality) attended with a long train and retinue of rheums, coughs, catarrhs, and dropsies, together with many painful girds and achings, which are at least called the gout. How does such an one go about, or is carried rather, with his body bending inward, his head shaking, and his eyes always watering (instead of weeping) for the sins of his ill-spent youth. In a word, old age seizes upon such a person, like fire upon a rotten house; it was rotten before, and must have fallen of itself; so that it is no more but one ruin preventing another.

And thus I have shewn the fruits and effects of sin upon men in this world. But peradventure it will be replied, that there are many sinners who escape all these calamities, and neither labour under any shame or disrepute, any unquietness of condition, or more than ordinary distemper of body, but pass their days with as great a portion of honour, ease, and health, as any other men whatsoever. But to this I answer,

First, That those sinners who are in such a temporally happy condition, owe it not to their sins, but wholly to their luck, and a benign chance that they are so. Providence often disposes of things by a method beside and above the discourses of man’s reason.

Secondly, That the number of those sinners, who by their sins have been directly plunged into all the forementioned evils, is incomparably greater than the number of those, who, by the singular favour of providence, have escaped them. And,

Thirdly and lastly, That notwithstanding all this, sin has yet in itself a natural tendency to bring men under all these evils; and, if persisted in, will infallibly end in them, unless hindered by some unusual accident or other, which no man, acting rationally, can steadily build upon. It is not impossible but a man may practise a sin secretly, to his dying day; but it is ten thousand to one, if the practice be constant, but that some time or other it will be discovered; and then the effect of sin discovered, must be shame and confusion to the sinner. It is possible also, that a man may be an old healthful epicure; but I affirm also, that it is next to a miracle, if he be so, and the like is to be said of the several instances of sin, hitherto produced by us. In short, nothing can step between them and misery in this world, but a very great, strange, and unusual chance, which none will presume of who walks surely.

And so, I suppose, that religion cannot possibly be enforced (even in the judgment of its best friends and most professed enemies) by any further arguments than what have been produced, (how much better soever the said arguments may be managed by abler hands.) For I have shewn and proved, that whether the principles of it be certain, or but probable, nay, though supposed absolutely false; yet a man is sure of that happiness in the practice, which he cannot be in the neglect of it; and consequently, that though he were really a speculative atheist, (which there is great reason to believe that none perfectly are,) yet if he would but proceed rationally, that is, if (according to his own measures of reason) he would but love himself, he could not however be a practical atheist; nor live without God in this world, whether or no he expected to be rewarded by him in another.

And now, to make some application of the foregoing discourse, we may, by an easy but sure deduction, conclude and gather from it these two things:

First, That that profane, atheistical, epicurean rabble, whom the whole nation so rings of, and who have lived so much to the defiance of God, the dishonour of mankind, and the disgrace of the age which they are cast upon, are not indeed (what they are pleased to think and vote themselves) the wisest men in the world; for in matters of choice, no man can be wise in any course or practice, in which he is not safe too. But can these high assumers, and pretenders to reason, prove themselves so, amidst all those liberties and latitudes of practice which they take? Can they make it out against the common sense and opinion of all mankind, that there is no such thing as a future estate of misery for such as have lived ill here? Or can they persuade themselves, that their own particular reason, denying or doubting of it, ought to be relied upon as a surer argument of truth, than the universal, united reason of all the world besides affirming it? Every fool may believe and pronounce confidently; but wise men will, in matters of discourse, conclude firmly, and, in matters of practice, act surely: and if these will do so too in the case now before us, they must prove it, not only probable, (which yet they can never do,) but also certain, and past all doubt, that there is no hell, nor place of torment for the wicked; or at least, that they themselves, not withstanding all their villainous and licentious practices, are not to be reckoned of that number and character, but, that with a non obstante to all their revels, their profaneness, and scandalous debaucheries of all sorts, they continue virtuosoes still; and are that in truth, which the world in favour and fashion (or rather by an antiphrasis) is pleased to call them.

In the meantime, it cannot but be matter of just indignation to all knowing and good men, to see a company of lewd, shallow-brained huffs, making atheism and contempt of religion, the sole badge and character of wit, gallantry, and true discretion; and then over their pots and pipes, claiming and engrossing all these wholly to themselves; magisterially censuring the wisdom of all antiquity, scoffing at all piety, and, as it were, new modelling the whole world. When yet, such as have had opportunity to sound these braggers throughly, by having some times endured the penance of their sottish company, have found them in converse so empty and insipid, in discourse so trifling and contemptible, that it is impossible but that they should give a credit and an honour to whatsoever and whomsoever they speak against: they are indeed such as seem wholly incapable of entertaining any design above the present gratification of their palates, and whose very souls and thoughts rise no higher than their throats; but yet withal, of such a clamorous and provoking impiety, that they are enough to make the nation like Sodom and Gomorrah in their punishment, as they have already made it too like them in their sins. Certain it is, that blasphemy and irreligion have grown to that daring height here of late years, that had men in any sober civilized heathen nation spoke or done half so much in contempt of their false gods and religion, as some in our days and nation, wearing the name of Christians, have spoke and done against God and Christ, they would have been infallibly burnt at a stake, as monsters and public enemies of society.

The truth is, the persons here reflected upon are of such a peculiar stamp of impiety, that they seem to be a set of fellows got together, and formed into a kind of diabolical society, for the finding out new experiments in vice; and therefore they laugh at the dull, unexperienced, obsolete sinners of former times; and scorning to keep themselves within the common, beaten, broad way to hell, by being vicious only at the low rate of example and imitation, they are for searching out other ways and latitudes, and obliging posterity with unheard of inventions and discoveries in sin; resolving herein to admit of no other mea sure of good and evil, but the judgment of sensuality, as those who prepare matters to their hands, allow no other measure of the philosophy and truth of things, but the sole judgment of sense. And these, forsooth, are our great sages, and those who must pass for the only shrewd, thinking, and inquisitive men of the age; and such,, as by a long, severe, and profound speculation of nature, have redeemed themselves from the pedantry of being conscientious, and living virtuously, and from such old fashioned principles and creeds, as tie up the minds of some narrow-spirited, uncomprehensive zealots, who know not the world, nor understand that he only is the truly wise man, who, per fas et nefas, gets as much as he can.

But, for all this, let atheists and sensualists satisfy themselves as they are able. The former of which will find, that as long as reason keeps her ground, religion neither can nor will lose hers. And for the sensual epicure, he also will find, that there is a certain living spark within him, which all the drink he can pour in will never be able to quench or put out; nor will his rotten abused body have it in its power to convey any putrefying, consuming, rotting quality to the soul: no, there is no drinking, or swearing, or ranting, or fluxing a soul out of its immortality. But that must and will survive and abide, in spite of death and the grave; and live for ever to convince such wretches to their eternal woe, that the so much repeated ornament and flourish of their former speeches, (God damn ’em,) was commonly the truest word they spoke, though least believed by them while they spoke it.

2dly, The other thing deducible from the foregoing particulars, shall be to inform us of the way of attaining to that excellent privilege, so justly valued by those who have it, and so much talked of by those who have it not; which is assurance. Assurance is properly that persuasion or confidence, which a man takes up of the pardon of his sins, and his interest in God’s favour, upon such grounds and terms as the scripture lays down. But now. since the scripture promises eternal happiness and pardon of sin, upon the sole condition of faith and sincere obedience, it is evident, that he only can plead a title to such a pardon, whose conscience impartially tells him, that he has performed the required condition. And this is the only rational assurance, which a man can with any safety rely or rest himself upon.

He who in this case would believe surely, must first walk surely; and to do so, is to walk uprightly. And what that is, we have sufficiently marked out to us in those plain and legible lines of duty, requiring us to demean ourselves to God humbly and devoutly; to our governors obediently; and to our neighbours justly; and to ourselves soberly and temperately. All other pretences being infinitely vain in themselves, and fatal in their consequences.

It was indeed the way of many in the late times, to bolster up their crazy, doating consciences, with (I know not what) odd confidences, founded upon inward whispers of the Spirit, stories of something which they called conversion and marks of predestination: all of them (as they understood them) mere delusions, trifles, and fig-leaves; and such as would be sure to fall off and leave them naked, before that fiery tribunal, which knows no other way of judging men, but according to their works.

Obedience and upright walking are such substantial, vital parts of religion, as, if they be wanting, can never be made up, or commuted for, by any formalities of fantastic looks or language. And the great question when we come hereafter to be judged, will not be, How demurely have you looked? or. How boldly have you believed? With what length have you prayed? and, With what loudness and vehemence have you preached? But, How holily have you lived? and, How uprightly have you walked? For this, and this only (with the merits of Christ’s righteousness) will come into account before that great Judge, who will pass sentence upon every man according to what he has done here in the flesh, whether it be good, or whether it be evil; and there is no respect of persons with him.

To whom therefore be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.