ROM. xi. 33.

How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! P. 1.

The methods of divine Providence, whereof king Charles’s return (the subject of this day’s commemoration) is an eminent instance, surpass all human apprehension, 1. and the most advanced wisdom is an incompetent judge of the ways of God, with respect,

1st, To the reason or cause of them, 4. For men are prone to assign such causes as are either false, as that the happy in this life are the proper objects of God’s love; the miserable, of his hatred, 5. and that prosperity always at tends innocence, and sufferings, guilt, 9. or imperfect, 17.

2dly, To the event or issue of them, 18. For men usually prognosticate the event of an action, according to the measure of the ability of second agents, 18. or from success formerly gained under the same, or less probable circumstances, 19. or according to the preparations made for it, and the power employed in it, 21 .

Hence we may infer,

1. The folly of making success the rule of our actions, 24.

2. The necessity of depending upon Providence, 26.

3. The impossibility of a rational dependence, but in the way of lawful courses, 28.

ROMANS xi. 33.

—How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

THAT which first brought both a present guilt, and entailed a future curse upon mankind, was an inordinate desire of knowledge. And from the fall of Adam to this very day, this fatal itch has stuck so close to our nature, that every one of his succeeding race is infinitely eager, inquisitive, and desirous to know and judge, where he is called only to adore and to obey. By which we see, that it was this restless appetite of knowing, which made the earliest and boldest encroachment upon the divine prerogative; setting man up, not only as a rebel, but also as a rival to his Maker, and from behaving himself as his creature, encouraging him to become his competitor. For there appears not the least inducement to the breach of this command of God, from any pretence of the unreasonableness or difficulty of it, but merely because it was a command; it obliged, and therefore was to be broken or shook off. So that upon the whole matter, it was not so much the taking beauties of the forbidden tree, as its being for bidden, which stirred the unruly humour, gave relish to the fruit, and force to the temptation. And could there be an higher and more direct defiance of the Almighty, under the peculiar character of Lord and Governor of the universe, than to have the very reason of his subject’s obedience turned into an argument for his rebellion? to see a pitiful, short sighted creature prying into the reserves of Heaven; and one who was but dust in his constitution, and of a day’s standing at most, aspiring to an equality with his Creator in one of his divinest perfections? All know, that even in human governments there is hardly any one of them but must have its arcana imperii, its hidden rules and maxims, which the subjects of it must by no means be acquainted with, but yield to their force, without examining their contrivance, (the very ignorance of them being the chief cause that the generality are governed by them.) And if so, how much a more unpardonable absurdity, as well as insolence, must it needs be for those who commonly stand at so great a distance, even from the little intrigues and mysteries of human policies, to say, like their grand exemplar and counsellor Lucifer, I will ascend and look into the secrets of the Most High, rip up and unravel all the designs and arts of Providence in the government of the world; as if, forsooth, they were of the cabinet to the Almighty, were privy to all his decrees, and, in a word, held intelligence with his omniscience. For no less than all this was or could be implied in our first parents affecting to be as gods; the main thing which, by the advice of the serpent, they were then so set upon and so furiously desirous of.

Whereas on the contrary, that great repository of all truth and wisdom, the scripture, is in nothing more full and frequent, than in representing the in finite transcendency of God’s ways and actings above all created intellectuals. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, says David, Psalm cxxxix. 6. And, Thy judgments are a great deep, Psalm xxxvi. 6. And, God has put darkness under his feet, Psalm xviii. 9. And, His ways are in the great waters, and his footsteps are not known, Psalm lxxvii. 19. In all which passages could any thing be expressed with more life and emphasis? For he who treads upon the waters leaves no impression; and he who walks in the dark falls under no inspection. There is still a cloud, a thick cloud, about God’s greatest and most important works; and a cloud, we know, is both high and dark, it surpasses our reach, and determines our sight; we may look upon it, but it is impossible for us to look through it. In a word, if we consult either the reports of scripture or of our own experience, about the wonderful, amazing events of Providence, especially in the setting up or pulling down of kings and kingdoms, transplanting churches, destroying nations, and the like; we shall find the result of our closest reasonings and most exact inquiries concluding in an humble nonplus, and silent submission to the overpowering truth of this exclamation of our apostle; How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

The glorious subject of this day’s commemoration is an eminent and bright instance of the methods of Providence surpassing all human apprehension or conceit: and as it is a very great one itself, so was it brought forth by a numerous train of other providential passages, altogether as great, whether we respect the quality of the actions themselves, or the strangeness of the effects. My business therefore shall be, from so notable a theme, to read men a lecture of humility; and that in a case in which they seldom do (and yet have all the reason in the world to) shew it; to wit, in taking a due estimate of the proceedings of Almighty God, especially in his winding and turning about the great affairs of states and nations; and therein to demonstrate, what weak, purblind expositors we are of what is above us; how unfit to arraign and pass sentence upon that Providence that overrules us in all our concerns; and in a word, to turn interpreters where we understand not the original. It is, no doubt, an easy matter to gaze upon the surface and outside of things. But few who see the hand of the clock or dial can give a reason of its motion; nor can the case of the watch (though never so finely wrought) be any rule to judge of the artificial composure and exact order of the work within.

Now he who would pass a clear, firm, and thorough judgment upon any action, must be able to give an account of these two things belonging to it; viz.

1. From what cause or reason it proceeds.

2. To what event or issue it tends.

In both which respects I shall demonstrate, that the sublimest and most advanced wisdom of man is an incompetent judge of the ways of God. And,

1. For the reason or cause of them. Men are so far from judging rightly of the passages of Providence, that the causes they assign of them are for the most part false, but always imperfect.

And first for the false ones; these (or some of them at least) are such as follow.

1. That the prosperous and happy in this life are the proper objects of God’s love; and the miserable and calamitous, of his hatred: a blessed doctrine doubtless, and exactly according to that of Mahomet, even the very marrow and spirit of the Alcoran, and the prime and topping article, or rather sum total of the Ottoman divinity. But such, we see, is the natural aptness of men to bring down God to their own measures, and to ascribe only those methods to him, which they first transcribe and copy from themselves. For they know well enough how they treat one another, and that all the hostility of a man’s actions presupposes and results from a much greater in his affections; so that the hand is never lifted up to strike, but as it is commanded by the heart, that hates. And accordingly let any notable calamity or distress befall any one, (and especially if maligned by us,) and then how naturally do there start up, in the minds of such Mahometan Christians, such reasonings as these: “Can so beneficent a being as God be imagined to torment in love? to kill with kindness? Or does the noise of his blows and the sounding of his bowels speak the same thing?” No, by no means; and therefore, when any one chances to be cut off by the stroke of some severe providence, no sooner has God done execution, but the malice of men presently passes sentence, and, by a preposterous proceeding, the man is first executed, and afterwards condemned, and so dies not for being a criminal, but passes for a criminal for being put to death.

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

THERE is that known averseness in the nature of man (as now it stands) to all acts of virtue, (especially such as are of an higher strain,) and withal that deplorable impotence and inability to go through with them, whensoever it undertakes them, that not only in the Christian, but also in all other religions, men have found it necessary, in every great action, to engage some other agent and principle besides the man himself. So that amongst the heathens, who acknowledged a plurality of gods, you will hardly find any noble or heroic achievement done by any of them, but you will find some one or other of their gods made a coadjutor in the case. Thus Homer brings in Diomedes and Ulysses assisted by Mars and Pallas, (one notable for acts of valour, and the other for those of counsel and wisdom;) and the like is said of many others. All which was but a kind of tacit acknowledgment of that weakness and decay upon man’s nature, which has been ever since the fall. For they found, it seems, within themselves an experience of the thing itself, though they could give no account of its cause. And accordingly, being ignorant of the source of the malady, it could not be expected but that they should be as much out in the remedies they applied for relief against it. Only thus much is deducible from the whole matter, that they clearly saw themselves concerned to do many worthy things, which they found themselves wholly unable to do without the help of divine power, or at least some power much superior to their own.

Now what these ignorant heathens blundered about, touching this great debilitation of human nature to great and good actions, (a thing owned and agreed to by the common experience of the most considering part of mankind,) having been first taught the world (though more obscurely) by Moses, has been since more fully and clearly declared to the Christian church (and that above all Pelagian or Socinian opposition whatsoever) by our blessed Saviour himself. For as the books of Moses and of the prophets do assure us, that man was at the first created perfect in all his faculties, and strong in his inclinations to good; and that by the fall of our first pa rents the entireness of these perfections was lost, both to themselves and to their posterity; so the gospel (like a tabula post naufragium) informs us, that the great design of the Redeemer of the world was to repair these sad breaches made upon man’s nature; (so far as it was necessary to the grand purposes of man’s salvation;) and that to effect this, (amongst other things which he purchased of his Father by his meritorious death,) he procured the assistance and abode of his Spirit to be in us, as it is in John xiv. 17; and to dwell in us, Rom. viii. 9; and to help our infirmities, as in Rom. viii. 26; and, in a word, to lead us into all truth, in John xvi. 13; and so to be, as it were, an universal assisting genius more or less to all mankind.

It being clear, therefore, from these and the like places of scripture, that the Spirit of God, in some degree, leads and helps all men, though more eminently and peculiarly some; I shall cast the prosecution of the words under these four heads. As,

I. I shall shew how the Spirit is said to be in men.

II. I shall shew how men are led by the Spirit.

III. I shall shew what is here meant by being the sons of God.

IV. And lastly, I shall gather some conclusions by way of use and information from the whole. And first,

For the first of these. The Spirit may be said to be in men two ways.

1. Substantially, as he is God filling all things; and by reason of the infinity and indivisibility of his nature, being wholly every where and in every thing. For his nature being infinite, he can be excluded from no place or thing whatsoever; and being also indivisible, wheresoever he is, he is and must be totally. Forasmuch as his simplicity and indivisibility render him without parts or quantity; the only things that make a being so present to a place by one of its parts, as not to be present to the same place at the same time by another. And according to this sense the Spirit of God is equally in all men, and indeed in all things, and that essentially and necessarily by the omnipresence and unlimited expansion of his divine nature. And therefore this cannot be the thing we are now inquiring after.

2. The Spirit may be said to be in men, in respect of the effects he produces in them. And thus God is said to be in heaven, and sometimes in one place more than in another, because of some notable operation which he exerts in that place and not in another. In like manner the Spirit of God is said to be in that man, whom, by any immediate impulse or motion, he causes to do a thing; or in whom he creates those habits or dispositions to action, by which he is enabled to act with more proneness and facility one way than another; and that, whether those habits relate to matters of morality, as those graces of the Spirit, with which the hearts of believers are sanctified, certainly do; or whether they refer only to matters of a civil import, as the arts of working infused into Bezaleel and Aholiab; or of governing infused into Saul; or of wisdom into Solomon; all of them, no doubt, wrought and produced in those persons by the Spirit of God.

These, I say, are the two allowed ways by which the Spirit or Holy Ghost may be said to be in men; and besides these two, I know no other possible; though there are some who assign a third, namely, the personal indwelling of the Spirit in believers, (as they call it,) and that wholly different from his being in any other persons or things, by either of those ways before mentioned by us. This, I find, has been confidently asserted by some, and particularly by those called Familists; but before it be admitted, it is fit it should be examined; and that upon terms of reason and scripture: for by one or both of these it must be proved, or not at all.

1. And first, upon grounds of reason, I affirm, that it is impossible for the person of the Holy Ghost, by any other and different way from the two former, to be more in one man than in another. Forasmuch as his nature or essence being equally diffused through all things, and that nature or essence being likewise included in, and inseparable from, his person; it carries in it a manifest contradiction, for the nature to be any where, and the person including it, and inseparably united to it, not to be there also. Add to this, that if the person of the Holy Ghost should substantially reside or inhabit more in one man than in another, it must needs be because he is freely pleased so to do: but the manner of the divine existence is an attribute of his nature, and so cannot be an effect of his will; since what is purely natural, is also necessary, and so far cannot be free. For it is not free to God, whether he will be present to all and every part of the universe, or no: but it is as necessary for him to be so, as omnipresence is a necessary result of infinity. And infinity is the first and grand thing included in the very nature and notion of a Deity. Reason therefore has nothing to say for this personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost in some certain men more than in others; but explodes it as a mere figment and paradox, contrary to all the principles of natural theology.

2. In the next place, therefore, we are to see what the assertors of this personal indwelling of the Spirit in believers are able to produce for it from scripture. And here we shall find nothing but arguments drawn from some scripture expressions, in which we are either said to be the temples of the Holy Ghost, as in 1 Cor. vi. 19, or that the Spirit dwells in us, as in Rom. viii. 11, with other such like phrase importing inhabitation: which way of inexistence, they say, cannot properly be applied to accidents; such as are the sanctifying graces wrought in us by the Spirit; but only to persons, who alone can be properly said to be in places or temples. And this is all that they argue from scripture.

But metaphors, we know, are but weak mediums to prove any thing. And I refer it to any one of a clear impartial reason, to judge, whether, when the Spirit is said to be in us as in a temple, this does not, at the very first sight, appear to be a metaphorical expression; the words importing no more, than that we should be as wholly devoted to God’s use and service as a temple is: and that, as it is sacrilegious to alienate a temple to other worldly and profane uses; so is it a piece of no less sacrilege and impiety, after we have consigned over, and, in a manner, dedicated ourselves to the Spirit, to make ourselves servants to sin, Satan, or the world. According to which way of speaking also, in Jer. iv. 14, vain thoughts are said to lodge in men’s hearts. And in Coloss. iii. 16, the apostle speaks of the word of Christ dwelling richly in them. Both which expressions of lodging and dwelling, strictly taken, indeed import only a local presence, but yet are elegantly applied to thoughts, and such other things as are no more than mere accidents existing in the soul: the meaning of the words being this; that these things reside as constantly and familiarly there, as an inhabitant does in the house where he dwells. And he that would strain any more from such texts, may sooner fetch blood than any sound sense out of them; it being not always the way of scripture to speak according to the philosophical exactness of things, but in a familiar known latitude of expression. Nor indeed is any thing more usual in the word of God, than to find actions proper to persons ascribed to qualities. As wisdom is said to build her an house, Prov. ix. 1; and charity to think no evil, to hope all things, and to suffer all things, in 1 Cor. xiii. 7; with innumerable the like instances. And therefore such places are manifestly short of proving the thing they are here alleged for.

And thus having shewn in what sense the Spirit of God may be said to be in men, I come now to the

Second general thing proposed, which was to shew, what it is for men to be led by the Spirit. Concerning which we must observe, that the word leading, taken by itself alone, without the addition of any particular term, to which we are said to be led, (as Jesus was said to be led by the Spirit into the wilderness, Matt. iv. 1,) naturally and properly signifies a guidance of us, not in respect of any one particular action or passage of our lives, but in respect of the whole course of them. And consequently, under this leading of the Spirit, we are not to consider those particular transports and ecstasies, whether by prophecy or vision, which the Spirit of God has, at several times, raised some persons to. For these were sudden, transient beams, or flashes, upon extraordinary occasions, and not constant light to live and walk by. As, therefore, the Spirit’s leading us imports a continued steady direction of us in the whole course of our lives or actions, so it imports in it these two things.

1. His prescribing rules and laws to us, to which we are to conform our actions; and so he leads us by those excellent precepts held forth to mankind both in the law and gospel; both of which were dictated by the same eternal Spirit of truth.

2. His enlightening the understanding to discern, and his bending the wills and affections of men to comply with those rules and precepts so held forth to them. The first way he leads us by providing us a path to walk in; and the second, by giving us legs to walk with. For (as I said at first) there is since, and by the fall of man, that innate darkness in his understanding, that it is of itself unable spiritually to perceive the things of God; and that obliquity and rebelliousness in his will, that it cannot heartily choose and embrace them. And therefore, though the Spirit should lead us never so much by the former way, that is, by proposing to us rules and precepts to act by; yet it is impossible that we should follow till those indispositions are in some measure removed; and this is to be done only by the Spirit.

But since some there are so hardy (or profane rather) as to affirm, that to assert that the Spirit imprints upon or creates in any faculty of the soul any disposition or habit that shall give it a facility in its actings, is enthusiasm; and that, I suppose, because they may account every thing enthusiasm which is not Pelagianism: I answer, that if these persons will but own original sin, and a general depravation of man’s nature consequent thereupon, (as they are hardly Christians if they do not,) I would fain learn how nature shall be able to rid itself from the effects of this depravation or corruption, which has so universally seized all the powers of it, but by some certain principle distinct from and greater than itself. And I would fain know further, why the almighty power of God’s Spirit may not work in any faculty of the soul the same readiness or permanent facility of acting (commonly by another word called an habit) which that faculty can produce, or acquire to itself, by a frequent repetition of its own actions; especially since there is nothing which the first cause produces by the mediation of the second, but what it can and sometimes does produce solely by itself, (except the vital acts issuing from and denominating their respective powers or principles,) in the number of which, habits cannot be reckoned, but are qualities abiding in the soul, even while there is a total cessation from acting, and may be lost again; whereas the power or faculty, wherein they are vested, cannot. But as for those who deny the immediate infusion of habits into the soul, they should do well to try their strength, and shew some principle of reason or scripture contradicted by it; and I dare undertake to allege that from both, which shall bid fair for the proof of it.

And thus much for the two ways by which the Spirit leads men; namely, 1. outwardly, by the written word; and, 2. inwardly, by his illumination of the judgment, and bending of the will. Concerning which this must carefully be observed, that though the Spirit frequently, nay ordinarily leads men the former way without this latter; as being indeed rather a direction, or bare pointing out, whither we should go, than a leading us, (forasmuch as many are so led or directed who never follow,) yet now-a-days the Spirit never leads men the latter way, namely, by his effectual inward operation upon the soul, but he does it in conjunction with the former; that is, first holding forth a rule in the word written or preached, and then working those gracious dispositions, abilities, or fitnesses in the soul, which shall cause it actually to comply with and square its actions to the same.

And these are all the ways by which the Spirit of God leads the church now. But as I shew concerning the Spirit’s being in men, that there were some who, besides his being in them by his essential omnipresence, and by those effects which he works within them, held a third distinct way, namely, his personal indwelling in believers; so there are some likewise, who, besides the Spirit’s leading men by the written word, and by his enlightening the understanding, and bending the will, assert yet another way, namely, the Spirit’s speaking inwardly to them, and directing them by a secret, uttered (as they pretend) intelligibly enough to the soul of him to whom it is spoke, though unknown to any person besides. And if we will give things their right names, this is truly and properly enthusiasm, that pestilent and vile thing, which, wheresoever it has had its full course, has thrown both church and state into confusion. For if men may be admitted to plead, that the Spirit leads them by an inward voice speaking to them, and known only to themselves, it is impossible that they should acknowledge any rule or governor of their actions but themselves. The folly and mischief of which pretence, therefore, I shall endeavour to make appear (which is the principal design of this discourse) from several considerations. But before I come to mention particulars, I shall give you one remarkable instance, and home to the subject now before us. And it is this; that the main instrument and engine which that grand and vilest of impostors, Mahomet, first set up with, in the venting and offering his blasphemous impostures to the world, was this secret, inward voice of the Spirit conversing with him, and revealing to him the several heads of his detestable religion: which as nobody did or could pretend to be conscious to but himself, so I will maintain, that upon this principle of the inward voice of the Spirit, there is nobody since. Mahomet (no not the Whigs’ demigod Oliver himself ) but might (had he met with such an amazing torrent of success as Mahomet found) have carried on any enthusiastic design as effectually as ever that monster did. But now to pass to those particular considerations, before promised by us, for the beating down and exploding this secret voice of the Spirit, which such hypocrites so confidently pretend to be led by, you may observe as follows.

1. That the word of God in scripture is proposed and declared by the Spirit itself speaking in the same as a rule both necessary and sufficient for men to be led and acted by in all their spiritual concerns; and consequently no such inward word or voice from the same Spirit to the soul of any particular person whatsoever can be proved or allowed to be such a rule. For if this inward word pretends to reveal the very same things which are actually revealed in the said scripture already, in that case such revelation being but the bare repetition of truths both already revealed and sufficiently confirmed, it cannot pass for a rule really necessary; nor, on the other side, if it speaks things different from (and much more contrary to) what the written word speaks, (supposing the said written word to be a full and sufficient rule both for belief and practice, as all who receive it must hold it to be,) can this inward voice and word then, in the proper notion of a rule, be so much as allowable. For does not the scripture stand vouched by apostolical and divine authority, as able to make the man of God perfect? and to furnish him to every good work? And will not all this satisfy? or would these men have any more? But alas! as good works (especially in the matter of justification) use to be accounted dangerous things; so whatsoever these men’s new faith in the inward word or voice of the Spirit may do for them this way, I dare say, that their good works are never like to justify or sanctify either them or their religion; as will appear from the

Second and next consideration; which is the great and just suspiciousness of the forementioned pretence, that the inward word or voice of the Spirit is the rule which it leads men by, in that it is seldom or never alleged, but for the patronage of such actions as cannot be warranted or defended upon any other account whatsoever. For you shall never hear such men pleading, that the Spirit tells them they must obey their governors, reverence the church and the ministers of it, be charitable to the poor, behave themselves justly to all, injure nobody, defraud nobody, and the like; which duties both reason and the written word of God so much press and inculcate. But when the yoke of government begins to sit uneasy upon their unruly necks, or when they have run themselves out of their estates, and so come to cast a longing eye upon the revenues of the church, or of their rich neighbours about them; why then the word, that commands obedience, and forbids all violence and injustice, presently becomes not only a dead, but a killing letter, and a beggarly rudiment, and in comes the Spirit with a mighty controlling force to relieve and set them at liberty, teaching them to bind kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; assuring them withal, that the godly only have any right to possess the earth. And if so, then let them alone to persuade themselves, (and others too if they can,) that they only are the godly; and that by rules and arguments which the scripture is wholly a stranger to. For the scripture, all know, is looked upon by these seraphic pretenders as a very mean insignificant thing; and never made nor intended to direct such sons of perfection, but to be directed and overruled by them. And now let any one judge, whether that inward voice or word can proceed from the Spirit, which is still urged in justification of those actions and opinions, which neither law nor gospel (though both of them infallibly dictated by that very Spirit) can speak one word for.

3. A third argument against the same pretence is, that such a pretence is contrary to the experience of the generality of Christians, and those also the most pious, humble, and best exercised in the ways of God of any others. For did the apostles themselves pretend to any such thing? Or did the primitive professors of Christianity, and the martyrs of the church, own any thing but the written word of God, as that which they were to believe and practise by? Or did they acknowledge, that the Spirit whispered any thing to their souls by any immediate voice distinct from the scripture? Which yet they would certainly have found, had this been the way by which the Spirit of God led believers. For there is no question, but that as all of them were still led by the same Spirit, and that to the same great end, so they were led also by the same way: there being but one way to heaven and happiness, both then and now established by God; the same things being to be believed, and the same things to be practised, and those also generally the same way to be learned, in order to men’s salvation.

4. A fourth argument against this pretence of an inward word or voice being the rule which the Spirit leads men by, is, that such a pretence directly opens a door to all profaneness and licentiousness of living. For the Spirit of God being God, who gave mankind the laws which they are to live by; and it being clear, that the same power that gave or enacted the law, can dispense with its obligation in any particular instance of duty; let a man but persuade himself, that the Spirit dwells personally in him, and speaks upon all occasions to him; how easily and readily may he plead, that the Spirit tells him he may kill his enemy, plunder his neighbour, cast off all obedience to his governors? And if the written law of God commanding the contrary be alleged to such an one, he may presently reply, that the same God that made that law, does, by an inward voice speaking to him, exempt him from the obliging power of it in such and such actions. Upon which account, let a man be never so much a villain, provided he be so in a godly sort, and will patronize all his lewd practices by the authority of the Spirit, it is impossible that that man should sin; forasmuch as the Spirit takes off the obligation of the law to his hand, so that though it may bind the rest of man kind, yet he is dispensed with, and stands particularly excepted from that common rule.

Thus the late rebel army having conquered and imprisoned their consciences as well as their prince, completed all by bringing the Spirit to their lure, and reducing enthusiasm to an act; still governing all their transactions with their abused sovereign by this invincible principle, which enabled them with so much ease to charge through the obligation of all laws, oaths, and promises whatsoever. So that in their several treatings with the king, being asked by him, whether they would stand to such and such agreements and promises, they still answered him, that they would do as the Spirit should direct them. Whereupon that blessed prince would frequently condole his hard fate, that he had to deal with persons to whom the Spirit dictated one thing one day, and commanded the clean contrary the next. In the strength of this almighty principle also, they would openly and professedly call their seizing upon the goods, lands, and estates of the royalists, a robbing of the Egyptians; affirming, that the Spirit had clearly revealed to them, that God had alienated the right and property of those estates from the other, and transferred it to them; so that they held what they had took from their neighbours, by immediate donation from God himself; which, could it have been proved, was undoubtedly the surest and the best title in the world. Upon the same principle also was it, that some of their factious preachers, having first fired their fellow citizens into a rage against their king, did, the next day, upon their going to that holy war, come personally amongst them, and, in the name of God, pronounce them absolved, and free from all former oaths and promises; such as those of supremacy, allegiance, and the like, whereby they might otherwise think themselves obliged not to fight against their sovereign, whom they had so solemnly sworn obedience to: and lastly, upon the stock of the same principle was it, that one of their prime leading doctors,

Dr. O.

A SERMON

ON

ROMANS VIII. 14.

DISC. II.

ROMANS viii. 14.

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

HAVING, I presume, in my first discourse upon this important subject, sufficiently exploded the bold fancies and extravagant pretences of these sons of novelty and inspiration, by the foregoing reasons there produced against them; I shall now proceed to an examination of what they yet plead more for themselves, and this their daring but absurd hypothesis. For these pretenders to an immediate impulse and inward leading voice of the Spirit, will not rest satisfied so, but, for their further defence, plead the example of several eminent saints and worthies of the church, doing several things (as they would persuade us) contrary to the express written word, and yet with sufficient evidence of the divine approbation: the reason of which seems not possible to be stated upon any thing but this, that the Spirit of God did by an inward voice raise them to, and consequently warrant them in those actions, notwithstanding any prohibition lying against them in the written letter of the word. Such, for instance, were Abraham’s attempting to sacrifice his son Isaac. Jacob’s deceiving his father, and defrauding and supplanting his brother Esau with a lie. Also the Egyptian midwives saving the Hebrew children; and Rahab the harlot’s saving the spies of Canaan by lies and false affirmations. Likewise Moses’s killing the Egyptian, while he was but a private person in Pharaoh’s court. And Phinehas’s killing of Zimri and Cozbi after the same manner. Of the like nature was the Israelites robbing or spoiling of the Egyptians. Samson’s killing of himself, that he might be revenged on the Philistines. Ehud’s killing of Eglon, king of Moab, to whom, with the rest of the children of Israel, he was at this time subject. Jael’s killing Sisera, though he was in league with her husband, and upon that account was induced to take shelter in her house. Add to these, Elijah’s killing the prophets of Baal, though, being no magistrate, he had no right, against the magistrate’s will, to execute justice upon his fellow-subjects, though never so worthy of death by law. With these, I say, and such other scripture examples, these pretenders to the inward voice of the Spirit, in opposition to his written word, use to defend themselves. In order to the examination of which instances, before I survey them severally and apart, I shall premise these four general observations.

1. That the actions of persons recorded in scripture are not proposed to us as rules of direction to live or act by: laws and precepts are the only things intended for that purpose, and consequently are of an universal aspect and obligation, and respect the actions of all mankind. But examples and instances, as they are personal, so they are also particular, and exhibit to us matter of fact, what has been done, but not matter of duty, what ought or ought not to be done. For certain it is, that no contrary practices, though never so much allowed, even by divine approbation, do or can cancel any law made by God; but at the most declare, that some persons have been dispensed with, in some things enjoined by law. And therefore as God’s will to oblige men in general, where he makes no exception, and his will not to oblige some particulars, whom he is pleased to except, do no ways clash or contradict, but very fairly accord with one another; so those examples, which declare where he has actually thus used his prerogative, do no ways abrogate or repeal the standing obligation of those laws, which otherwise certainly bind mankind, where such exceptions have not interposed. And God might have many reasons, why he thought fit to deliver down to us, in sacred history, an account of such extraordinary actions and passages of men’s lives, without ever intending them as rules or patterns for us to measure our actions by. As for instance; partly to manifest the absoluteness of his prerogative and dominion even over his own laws; partly to magnify the admirable contrivances of his providence, bringing about strange and great events by such unusual actions; partly also to declare and shew the necessity of his grace, and withal the deplorable weakness even of the best of men, when he is pleased at any time to leave them to themselves: besides other reasons best known to his infinite wisdom, and therefore such as may well be come ours not to inquire into. And so much for the first observation.

A SERMON

PREACHED AT WESTMINSTER-ABBEY,

NOVEMBER 5, 1688.

ISAIAH v. 4.

What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?

I CANNOT think it the chief, much less the sole business of this day, to declaim and make invectives against the persons whose villainy occasioned the solemnity of it. Their action was indeed bad enough, had we not lived to see it transcended by many worse; so that were not Protestantism in itself a better religion than Popery, it would have but little advantage from most of the persons who profess it. For are we less proud, covetous, or rebellious, than the Papists? I am sure, if many that call themselves Protestants were so, we must make our reckoning from before six hundred and forty, or despair of finding them so since. All the wicked arts of the Jesuits have been first sanctified, and then acted under the splendid names of the power of godliness, Christian liberty, and the sceptre and kingdom of Jesus Christ, with other such words as have writ their meaning with the sword’s point, and now stand legible to posterity in letters of blood. Nor ought any to wonder that I ascribe these reformers’ practices to Jesuitish principles; it being so well known, that the Jesuit never acts himself more than under another person, name, and profession.

Declamatory satires may indeed seem useless to all purposes whatsoever; it being impossible to revile away a distemper, or to cure a disease by an invective. But were they never so proper, though the church of England, whose principles and practices breathe nothing but loyalty to princes, may justify any hard speeches against the sons of Rome, yet surely the Papists are not fit to be reviled by, nor indeed before many amongst us, who have acted worse things, and that with the aggravation of acting them under a better religion; unless it could be fit to arraign one malefactor before another, who is himself a greater. I wish that, while we speak loud against those of the Romish church, we could at the same time inwardly abhor and detest their impieties, and yet imitate their discretion, and be ashamed that those sons of darkness should be so much wiser in their generation, than we that account ourselves such children of light. For be they what they will, it is evident that they manage things at an higher rate of prudence than to fear a change in their church-government every six months, or to be persuaded by any arguments to cut their throats with their own hands, or, amongst all their indulgences, to afford any to their implacable enemies.

My business at this time shall be to make the mercy of the present day an occasion of declaring our great unworthiness not of this only, but of all other mercies; and that by a parallel instance; if so be our wickedness proves not too big for a parallel, and of that bulk, as to laugh at examples, and baffle all comparisons. For indeed our sins seem as much to surpass those of the Jews, the persons here up braided by God, as all men would judge it more monstrous and intolerable for a vineyard to answer the dresser’s labour and expectation with a crop of thorns than with a vintage of wild grapes. The words that I have here fixed upon are a vehement complaint of God, uttered against the Jewish church and nation, his peculiar and most endeared people; and accordingly offer these two things to our consideration.

I. The form and manner of the complaint.

II. The complaint itself.

I. And first for the form and manner of it. It runs in a pathetical, interrogatory exclamation; which way of expression, naturally and amongst men, importing in it surprise, and a kind of confusion in the thoughts of him who utters it, must needs be grounded upon that which is the ground and foundation of all surprise, which, I conceive, is reducible to these two heads:

1. The strangeness. 2. The indignity of any thing, when it first occurs to our apprehensions.

1. And first for the strangeness of it. Whatsoever falls out either above or beside the common trace of human observation, and so puts the reason upon new methods of discourse, is that which we call strange, and such as causes surprise; which is nothing else but a disturbance of the mind upon its inability to give a present account of the reason of what it sees first offered to it; from whence it is, that as a man comes still to know more, the strangeness of things to him grows less; and consequently nothing can be strange to him to whom nothing is unknown. But how then come we here to find God himself under a surprise, and omniscience, as it were, brought to a nonplus? Surely it could be no ordinary thing that should thus put an infinite wisdom upon making inquiries. Nor indeed was it. For could any thing be imagined more monstrous, and by all rational principles unresolvable, than upon a most rich and fertile soil, fenced and enclosed against all injuries from abroad, dressed and manured by the finger of God himself, and watered with all the influences of a propitious heaven; I say, could any thing be more prodigious, than in such a place to see a figtree bear a thistle, or the fruit of the bramble load the branches of the vine? This is a thing directly against all the principles of mere nature, though not encouraged by the assistance of art: and therefore even the God of nature seems to stand amazed at the unnatural irregularity of such a monstrous event. But,

2. The other ground of such interrogatory exclamations is the unusual indignity of a thing: this being as great an anomaly in the morality of actions, as the former was in the nature of things; and therefore as that passion of the mind, raised by the strangeness of a thing, is properly called wonder, so that which commences upon this, is properly indignation. It being a great trespass upon decency and ingenuity, and all those rules that ought to govern those intercourses of rational beings; which are all crossed, and even dissolved, by that one grand fundamental destroyer of society and morality, which is ingratitude. For society subsists by the mutual interchange of good offices, by which the wants and concerns of men are mutually supplied and served; that being the only thing that unites and keeps men together in civilized societies, who otherwise would range and ravin like bears or wolves, and never but to seize a greater prey.

Now ingratitude is the thing here exclaimed against with so much abhorrence; a passion that has all in it that wonder has, with the addition of some thing more; wonder resting merely in the speculation of things, this proceeding also to a practical aversation and flight from them. But since a sinner is no strange sight, nor can it pass for a wonder to see men wicked, what cannot be found in the bare nature of things must be sought for in their degree; and therefore it must needs be some superlative height of wickedness which drew from God this loud exclamation. What that is, will appear in the prosecution of the next thing, which is the complaint itself; for which there are these things to be considered.

1. The person complaining, who was God himself.

2. The persons complained of, which were his peculiar church and people.

3. The ground of this complaint, which was their unworthy and unsuitable returns made to the dealings of God with them.

4thly and lastly, The issue and consequent of it; which was the confusion and destruction of the persons so graciously dealt with, and so justly complained of.

Of each of which briefly in their order.

1. And first for the person complaining, God himself. It must be confessed, that according to the strict nature and reason of things, as he who knows all things cannot wonder, so neither can he who can do all things properly complain; weakness being cause of complaining, as ignorance is of wonder. Yet God is here pleased to assume the posture of both; and therefore the case must needs be extra ordinary. But how possible soever it may be for in finite power to complain, it is certainly impossible for infinite goodness to complain without a cause. So that we read the indubitable justness of the complaint in the condition of the person who makes it; a person transcendently wise, just, and merciful, who cannot be deceived in the measures he takes of things and persons, nor prevaricate with those measures, by speaking beside the proportion of what he judges. And after all, he it is that complains who has power enough to render all complaint needless; who has an omnipotence to repair to, and an outstretched arm to plead his cause in an higher dialect than that of words and fair expostulations. We see therefore the person here complaining, even the great and omni potent God; and we may be sure, that where God is the plaintiff, no creature can, with either sense or safety, be the defendant.

The next thing to be considered are the persons here complained of; and they were the Jews, the peculiar and select people of God; a people that had no cause to complain, and therefore the more unfit to give any to be complained of. From the beginning of God’s taking them into his care and patronage, they were fed and maintained at the immediate cost and charges of Heaven; they were dieted with miracles, with new inventions and acts of Providence, the course of nature itself still veiling to their necessities; the heaven, the sea, and all things, dispensing with the standing laws of their creation to do them service, m order to their serving of God. But it seems it was easier to fetch honey out of the bowels of the earth, to broach the rock, or draw rivers from a flint, than to draw obedience from them.

They were persons who wore all the marks of the particular, incommunicable kindnesses of Heaven: God had not dealt so with any nation, says David, Psalm cxlvii. 20. They seemed as an exception from (or rather above) the common rule of Providence; a people whom God courted, espoused, and married, and, by a yet greater wonder, continued to court them even after marriage. God thought nothing too good for them to enjoy, nor thought they any thing too bad for themselves to commit. They were a people culled and chose out of the rest of the world; in short, they were, in some sense, a gathered congregation, whom God thus horribly complains of.

3. The third thing to be considered is the ground of this complaint raised against them; which was their unworthy, unsuitable returns made to the dealings of God with them. Which will appear, first, by considering God’s dealing with them; and secondly, their dealing with God; and so, by confronting them both together, we shall give them all the advantage of contraries set off by nearness and comparison. We will begin with God’s dealing with them, which consists of these three things.

1. That he committed his sacred word and oracles to them; so that when all the world round about them had no other religion than what they either derived from their own errors, or at best from their conjectures, these were taught by immediate and infallible revelation; neither confounding themselves in the notion of God’s nature, so as to own a multiplicity of deities; nor yet of his worship, so as to serve him by absurd, and, what is worse, by impious practices, which yet the best and the most reputed of the gentiles placed all their devotion in. In sum, they had that sure word of prophecy, which was able to make them wise to salvation; while the neighbouring nations had such a religion, as neither represented them wise in this world, nor like to be saved in the next.

And yet, as pure and as divine as the Jewish worship was, it had many more ceremonies than ours; nor do we find any proviso for the abatement of the least of them, to gratify any tender conscience whatsoever; though yet the nature of God, who was to be worshipped, and of the souls of men, who were to pay him that worship, were the same then that they are now, and consequently apt to be helped or hindered by the same means: which one consideration is enough to cut the sinews of all the pitiful arguments that the nonconforming comprehensive sages did, or do, or ever will produce. But we understand the men; they strike indeed at the church, but their aim is further, and, if God prevents not, their blow will follow it.

How this profane, atheistical age may rate things, I know not; but believe it, the accounts of England run high in the books of Heaven, for the religion which God has planted amongst us. A religion refined from all that superfluous dross which the Romish is generally and justly charged with; and yet so prudent in its economy and constitution, as not to leave itself wholly unprovided of decency in circumstantials, which are the necessary appendants of all human actions; and consequently being left to the arbitrement of every man’s various fancy, would be so differing, loose, and extravagant, that should but a sober heathen view such a divine worship, he would certainly say, (as St. Paul speaks,) were we not mad? while with amazement he beheld one man paying his reverence to an infinite Majesty sit ting, another expressing the same reverence (forsooth) with his hat on his head; postures which pass for affront and contumely even in our addresses to an earthly superior.

But let the doctrine, discipline, and rituals of the church of England be searched to the bottom by rational and impartial heads, and then let them, if they please, produce any thing justly offensive to a conscience tender not to the degree of rebellion. God will one day reckon with us for the church privileges we enjoy, and for our religion, which is unquestionably the best, the purest, and the most primitive in the world; how ill soever it has been used by some, who were concerned upon more accounts than one to encourage it. In this respect therefore our case falls in with the Jews, that God has vouchsafed both them and us the greatest of blessings, the richest and most improveable of talents, even a pure, a clear, and an uncorrupted religion. God’s regard to which (for ought I know) was the chief, if not the only cause of the mercy we commemorate this day.

2. As God planted his vineyard with this so generous a plant, so he was not wanting to refresh and influence it with the continual dews of his mercy, and the showers of his choicest blessings. The miracles of Egypt and the Red sea, the Jews’ frequent deliverances from captivity, from the insolence of the Philistines and the Midianites, and from that scourge of nations, the Assyrians, were enough, not only to have argued, but even to have shamed them into the highest returns of gratitude and obedience.

And has not God dealt as mercifully and as gloriously with these three nations? So that we are an island, not only encompassed with a sea of waters, but also surrounded with an ocean of mercies. From the day that God first vouchsafed us the settlement of the reformed religion under the reign of queen Elizabeth, how has he been like a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, both to guide and protect us in the profession of it? For can we forget the deliverance of eighty-eight, and those victorious mercies, more invincible than the armada designed to invade and enslave us; when the seas and winds had a command from Heaven to fight under the English colours, and to manifest the strength of God in our weakness? Or can we pass over that never to be forgot blessing of this day, which brought to light those hidden and fatal works of darkness, that would have ruined both king and church, and the three estates at a blow; when that God, who humbles himself enough in be holding what is done upon the earth, was pleased to stoop yet lower, and to behold what was doing under it too; and so, by a mature providence, stepping in between the match and the fatal train, to catch us as it were a brand out of the fire, or rather, by the greater mercy of prevention, to keep the destructive element from kindling upon us; and thereby to give us both an opportunity and obligation of eternally celebrating the mercy of such a glorious rescue from a plot in all the parts of it so black and hideous, that the sober Papists themselves ever did, and do, and, I believe, ever will profess an utter abhorrence of it, how ready soever they may be to repeat it.

But the divine mercy has not took up here; it has delivered us from a blacker and a greater calamity; a calamity, the memory of which has even blown up the gunpowder treason itself; I mean the late horrid and for ever accursed rebellion, contrived, acted, and carried on by persons and principles worse, and more destructive to monarchy, than those of the Papists. For the crowns of Spain and of France thrive and flourish, for all the Popish religion settled in those kingdoms; but the sanctified actors of our late confusions were such as tore the crown from the king’s head, and his head from his shoulders, and would, upon the same advantages, undoubtedly do the same again. The least finger of fanaticism bearing harder and heavier upon monarchy, than the whole loins of Popery: God deliver us from them both.

Now surely, by these miraculous instances of mercy, God would fain provoke us to such a degree of piety, as might prevent his justice from consigning us over to a relapse into the same sad effects of the same sins. For can we think that God detected and dashed the conspiracy of this day, only to enable the sons of luxury and ingratitude perpetually to conspire against him? Did he break the neck of the late rebellion, that we might transcribe their actings towards their king into our behaviour towards God? Did he deliver the sword into our hands, that we might thrust it into the bowels of his church? Did he scatter all those antimonarchical sects of presbytery, independency, and anabaptism, and other fanatics, by whatsoever names they stand distinguished, and (such is their good fortune) in a fair way dignified too? I say, did he scatter all these locusts, that we might court their return, recall our old plagues, and fall back into our former Cromwellian confusions? If this be our lot, we must charge our misery upon none but ourselves: for God would have delivered, nay, actually has delivered us; but it seems, even in spite of providence and mercy itself, we are resolved not to be delivered.

3. The third course of God’s dealing with the persons here complained of in the text was by judgments. It is possible that the most generous of plants, fixed in the richest soil, and visited with the kindest and most benign influence of sun and weather, may yet not fructify, till they are pruned and cut, and rid of those superfluous branches and suckers which steal and intercept that juice and sap, which, according to the prime intention of nature, should pass into fruit. And therefore the great husbandman of souls takes this course with his spiritual vines, to add the pruning-hook of his judgments to the more gentle manurings of his mercy; and when watering will not do, to dig about them. And it is his last course; after which, if they still continue barren, comes the sentence of extirpation, positive and irreversible, Cut them down, why cumber they the ground?

Now that God has not been wanting to endeavour our reduction and fertility by these means also, we can call in many great and sad experiences to attest. For not to mention the sun of mercy, almost as soon as risen in the first reformation of religion, presently setting again in blood in the cruel reign of queen Mary; nor yet to mention the festivity of almost every succeeding prince’s coronation, presently followed by a dismal sweeping plague, as if sent purposely to upbraid us with the mortality of our joys, by casting so sudden a cloud over our triumphs, and dashing our wine with our own tears: I say, not to insist upon these more remote instances of the divine judgments, let us cast our eyes upon those latter ones, much surpassing all the former. And here we shall see three kingdoms for some years bleeding by an unnatural civil war, weltering in their own blood, and wasted and spoiled by the fury of their own inhabitants; a calamity so universal, that, like a deluge, it involved all sorts, estates, and conditions of men; from the prince to the peasant; from him that wielded the sceptre, to him that held the plough. And this war we shall find concluded with the success of the rebel cause and army; which in the midst of peace continued upon the kingdom all the miseries of war; acting all the cruelties of banishments, imprisonments, sequestrations, and decimations upon all those that durst own the least loyalty to their prince or affection to the church.

And when it pleased Providence to blow over this storm in the happy restoration of both, it was not long before the destroying angel stretched forth his hand over us in that woful mortality, caused by a spreading devouring sickness, that ceased not to destroy and mow down thousands before it, without stay or stop; till at length it gave over, as it were, out of very weariness with killing.

And when we were still unconcerned, after all these blows falling so thick and heavy upon us, a fire, more dreadful than all, breaks forth upon the metropolis and glory of our nation, the great magazine of our strength and riches, and makes as great a mortality of houses, as the sickness had made of inhabitants.

And, lastly, when the growing impiety of the nation had baffled this judgment also, and brought us out of this fiery furnace with all our dross still about us, God commissions the enemy, the enemy whom he had so often delivered into our hands, to come and outbrave us at our very doors, and to fire those ornaments and bulwarks of our English nation even under our noses: a disgrace and a blot upon us not to be fetched out by the fire that burnt them, nor to be washed off by the whole ocean that carried them; and it is well that there followed not a destruction greater than the disgrace.

We have seen and felt what an angry God can do; and if we still sin on, and make new judgments necessary, so that God can neither fire, nor plague, nor fight us by sea or land out of our sins, what can be expected, but that he, who hitherto has been only a correcting, should, in the next place, be a consuming fire?

Having thus shewn how God dealt with his people, his vineyard, and his beloved inheritance, namely, by instruction, by mercies, and by judgments, (so that he might well make good this his saying, What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done?) and withal having shewn how parallel to those his proceedings with us have been, let us now come to see how both of us have dealt with God by way of return.

Three things the text remarks of them.

1. Great injustice and oppression, in verse 7.

2. Great rapacity and covetousness, in verse 8.

A SERMON

ON

JAMES III. 16.

For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.

OF the sins and ill qualities that the corruption of man’s nature has poisoned and polluted his mind with, there is none of greater malignity and baseness than envy. For the condemnation of which, we need not bring it to the bar of religion and Christianity; there being enough to sentence and condemn it from bare reason and philosophy.

For the prosecution of the words I shall do these four things.

I. I shall shew what envy is, and wherein the nature of it does consist.

II. What are the grounds and causes of it.

III. What are its effects and consequences. And

IV. And lastly, make some use and improvement of the whole.

And first for the first of these; what envy is, and wherein the nature of it does consist. And for this we shall find, that moralists generally give us this description of it; that it is a depraved affection or passion of the mind, disposing a man to hate or malign another for some good or excellency belonging to him, which the envious person judges him unworthy of, and which for the most part he wants himself. Or yet more briefly; envy is a certain grief of mind conceived upon the sight of another’s felicity, whether real or supposed: so that we see that it consists partly of hatred and partly of grief. In respect of which two passions, and the proper actings of both, we are to observe, that as it shews itself in hatred, it strikes at the person envied; but as it affects a man in the nature of grief, it recoils, and does execution upon the envier; both of them are hostile affections, and vexatious to the breast which harbours them. Acts of love indeed have naturally something of pleasure still attending them, and please the mind, while they proceed from it. But no man perfectly enjoys himself while he hates another; hatred being a quality that sours the whole soul, and puts all the faculties of it, as it were, into a posture of offence. It is really war begun, and commonly so, before it is proclaimed; it gives the first charge, and strikes the first stroke in all acts of hostility. And can there be any thing of enjoyment in all this? A battle certainly can be no present pleasure, though it should end in a victory. And during a man’s actual pursuit of his hatred, he is much in the same condition, restless and unquiet; his head contriving, and his hands laying about them to do the hated person all the mischief he can: in a word, he lives in the fire, fighting and fencing, and forced to carry on a constant opposition. For hatred being too active and mercurial a passion to lie still, never takes up with the bare theory of mischief, with sluggish thoughts and secret grudges, but, as opportunity serves, will certainly be doing; and till such opportunity falls in with it, which frequently it does not, it must needs afflict, and grate, and feed upon the man himself, and make him as miserable as he wishes others.

And thus hatred having done its part towards the disturbance of the mind in which it is, the other passion of grief is hereupon presently set on work: for when any of the other passions are defeated about their respective objects or operations, then this passion immediately comes upon the stage, and takes its turn to act. So that, when a man cannot vent his rage outwardly, he is sure to grieve and mourn, and bleed inwardly; like a wretch falling on his own sword, because he cannot thrust it into the body of his enemy. This is the nature of envy, always exerting itself in and by these two afflicting passions; first, in the way of hatred carrying its mischievous influence abroad, and then in the way of grief playing the tyrant at home; but whether in the one or in the other, guilt and sadness are its inseparable companions: it being utterly impossible upon all principles, both of nature and religion, for an envious person to have either a good conscience or a cheerful mind.

But to shew the malignity of this ill quality yet further, it is observable, that in all or most of the other passions of the mind, there is, as to the general nature of them, an indifference to good or evil; as being, under that consideration, determined to neither. Thus, for instance, we find it, in the forementioned affections of grief and hatred, taken singly and by themselves, and likewise in fear, anger, despair, and the like; of all which there is none but what may be lawful in the respective actings of each, provided they pitch upon right objects, and proceed in a due manner: for a man may grieve, hate, fear, be angry, and despair of the accomplishment of this or that design, without transgressing any of the rules of morality. So that there may be such things as an honest grief, hatred, fear, anger, and despondency, as we have said, if duly placed and directed; but notwithstanding all this, there can be no such thing in nature as an honest and a lawful envy; but it is intrinsically evil, and imports in it an essential obliquity, not to be taken off or separated from it. For though I have shewn, that envy was made up of hatred and grief, and have since also affirmed, that these two affections may be good and lawful in their respective actings; yet we are to remember, that this is so only when they act singly, and withal upon due objects; but (when by being combined together, and pitched upon a wrong object, they both make up the passion of envy,) they then receive thereby such a different formality and nature, as stamps them absolutely evil, and that so unchangeably such, as no consideration or circumstances whatsoever can possibly render them otherwise; which shews, and proves too, an original necessary disagreeableness between envy and the soul of man: for nothing can agree with this, which consists not with its innocence; and for a man to be envious and innocent too, is contradictious and impossible. And this, by the way, will serve also to demonstrate to us what affections or passions are natural to the soul of man, and what is unnatural. And thus much for the nature of envy, shewing what it is, and wherein it does consist. I proceed now to the

Second thing proposed, viz. to shew what are the grounds and causes of envy; and these are two fold.

1. Either on the part of the person envying; or,

2. On the part of the person envied.

And first for those of the first sort, we may reckon these.

1. Great malice and baseness of nature. In which I am forced to use a general word, not being able to give it a particular and more expressive name. But the thing which I mean and design by it, is such a temper of mind, as makes men for the most part love mischief for mischiefs sake; and though they serve no real interest, and reap no advantage by the hurt they do, yet it is so peculiarly suitable to their ill nature and constitution to do and to wish it, that the work itself is its own wages and reward. Just as it is observed in some beasts of prey; which, having filled their ravenous appetites, so that hunger can prompt them to no further cruelty, yet out of mere savageness shall tear and destroy whatsoever they meet with, and take pains to kill, though they leave it presently, when they have done.

It is a common saying, that there is no disputing of the reason of facts; forasmuch as each man’s particular fancy and humour determine him to like this and dislike that: and so it is in the pleasures of the mind; some men affect this, and wonder that others hate it; and they on the other side wonder as much, that any one can hate what they so much love. But as philosophy teaches that all wonder springs from an ignorance of the causes of things; so this proceeds from a particular inexperience, and want of observing matters of daily occurrence. In which we shall see many things, of which we can give no clear account, or reason, from the common principles of human nature: but they seem to be some of those irregular, monstrous productions, which the general corruption of it preternaturally shoots out into; and which, not keeping the stated course and road of human nature, must not be measured by the usual actings and inclinations of it. Which being so, why should he, whose temper inclines him to be gentle, candid, and beneficial to all who come within his converse, be at all surprised to find another fierce, malicious, and shrewd to every one whom he has to do with; any more than a dove, which feeds upon corn and other seeds, should wonder that a crow or a raven can feed so heartily upon carrion? For every particular temperament has its particular pleasure. And the mind of a Nero will make him hiss, and sing, and play, and enjoy himself as much in beholding the bravest city in the world all in a flame, as others could rejoice at the sight of a triumph and the glories of a victory.

Now this is the reason that some dispositions do really delight themselves in mischief; and love to see all men about them miserable. It is that ἐπιχαιρεκακία, as the Greeks call it, that vile quality that makes them laugh at a cross accident, and feast their eyes and their thoughts with the sight of any great calamity: and indeed, morally speaking, they cannot do otherwise. It is meat and drink to them to see others starve; and their own clothes seem then to sit warmest upon them, when they behold others ready to perish with nakedness and cold; like Ætna, never hotter, than when surrounded with snow. Now this disposition, this blessed, human, Christian disposition, (to express a thing contrary to nature by words as contrary to itself,) is the very groundwork and first foundation-stone of envy.

2. The second ground or cause of envy is an unreasonable grasping ambition. For the design of the envious person is not only to obtain, but to engross all honour and greatness to himself. He thinks he can never trade to his advantage, unless he can have the monopoly of every thing he values. Other kinds of ambition indeed will hardly brook any thing above them, but this envious ambition will endure nothing considerable about it. It is remarked of Alexander as a very great fault, and, in truth, of that nature, that one would wonder how it could fall upon so great a spirit; namely, that he would sometimes carp at the valorous achievements of his own captains. Suae demptum laudi existimans, quicquid cessisset alienae, says the historian: because he thought, that whatsoever praise was be stowed upon another, was took from him. A great meanness certainly; and enough to make the conqueror himself as much the object of men’s pity, as his conquests could be of their envy.

Now this is directly the temper of the envious person, whose ambition is not merely ambition, but an odd compound of ambition and covetousness too: for he would have all to himself, and not so much as a good word must fall beside him; so that whatsoever commendation is given to another, is looked upon as an invasion of his property, and a reproach to his person: and to do any thing excellent or praiseworthy, is to pass an affront upon him not to be put up. And therefore he bids the whole world, as it were, stand off, while he alone puts himself upon every public performance, catches at every occasion of popularity, and thrusts himself into every man’s business; he puffs, and he blows, and he swells, as if the whole world were not enough to afford him elbow-room; for it will not content such an one to be the prime, unless he be also the only man. In a word, he would needs be every thing, did not the same ill quality certainly make him fit for nothing.

But then, if this temper comes also to be backed with interest and power, and the favour of great ones, how grievous and intolerable is it to all persons of modesty and sobriety? What a bluster does it make in all places? Such an one lives in the world like a continual storm, blowing down all before him: and men (better than himself) must be willing to lie prostrate under his feet, and account it an honour (forsooth) to be trampled upon, and made a pedestal only for him to get up by and ride.

But surely it concerns all wellwishers to society to oppose and pursue such an one, as they would a wild boar, for his design is the same, which is to waste and spoil and forage all that is about him. Society neither shall nor can be saved by the parts and virtues of others, till such an obstacle to both be stript of all power, and removed out of the way; who is to the body politic like an enormous excrescence or great wen to the natural; drawing the proper aliment and juice of all the parts to itself, and so feeding upon and supporting itself by the bane and ruin of the whole. Now this disposition may pass for a second ground of envy.

3. Another cause of envy is an inward sense of a man’s own weakness and inability to attain what he desires and would aspire to. I do not say, that envy universally and always proceeds from hence, or supposes this for the cause of it, but generally and for the most part it does: nor does this carry in it the least contrariety to what I said before, in making ambition one of the causes of envy; for upon a due estimate of the qualities that affect the mind of man, we shall find that no minds are weaker than the haughty and ambitious; much like the uppermost branches of trees, lofty but slight, and much more easily broke, than those which they overtop.

Now nothing stirs up envy more than a despair of being what the envied person is; and that despair is founded upon a man’s consciousness of his not being able to reach the same pitch of perfection: and this consciousness sticks so close to the mind, that for all a man’s flattering himself, and his boasting to others, yet he can neither boast nor flatter it away; but that it is a perpetual check to his spirits, and will be sure to keep him under in the inmost judgment he passes upon himself. Some have observed, that there is no creature whatsoever but by a kind of natural instinct knows its match; and no doubt, by consequence, its superior and overmatch too. And when a man knows this by an impartial comparison of himself with his rival, (the inward apprehensions of the soul being generally impartial and true, what disguise soever they may put on in men’s carriage and expressions,) upon such a comparison, I say, he sinks and sneaks inwardly; and weighing himself in the balance with the other, quickly sees which scale rises and which falls. Sight and sense are his conviction; and in such cases men seldom or never dissemble with themselves. And this inward intimate sense of a man’s own impotence, I affirm to be one ground of envy, and a principal one too. In a word, a man is envious, because his desires are vast and immoderate, and he finds them cramped and stinted by the bounds which nature has put to his abilities. He would fain rise, but he finds something within that pulls him back, and stakes him down; and therefore he casts an evil eye upon others, because he finds such poor entertainment for it in himself.

4. The fourth and last cause of envy that I shall assign, is idleness; for this often makes men envy the high offices, honours, and accomplishments of others. They will not be at the pains to fit themselves for preferment, and yet malign those who have it for their fitness, and owe that fitness to their pains. No, they would lie still and be great, sleep or play and be learned. Honours and dignities must come to their bedside, wait the time of their rising, (forsooth,) and even court their acceptance. But nature and providence has cast the course of things much otherwise; and honour and greatness will wait upon none but such as first wait upon them; which men must not think to do by lazing and sleeping; for as wisdom generally brings men to honour, so study and labour must bring them to wisdom, and the way to be wise is to consult their pillow less. Industry, for the most part, opens the way to preferment, but always to improvement; and it is the sweat of the brow that entitles it to the laurel. And therefore Caius Marius, a person of a plebeian extraction, but one who by his valour and labour had made himself the envy of the Roman nobility, defends himself against them in his speech to the people with great reason. Invident, says he, honori meo; ergo invideant labori, innocentiae, periculis etiam meis, quoniam per haec illum cepi. In like manner one man perhaps envies another’s greatness or reputation; but why then does he not also envy his labour, his abstinence, his night-watches, and all his other severities, which were the proper ways and means by which he acquired it? If men would be but true to themselves, in employing their parts, their time, and opportunities, they would probably have no provocation to envy their superiors; for this would be the direct way to keep them from having any, and to make them as great and eminent as the greatest. But their idle hours, or rather years, their cups and their sports, their gossipping visits and vain courtships, not suffering them to exert those faculties which God and nature had endowed them with, are the only things that keep them low; and being so, they look upon such as ascend, and get into a region above them, like so many black clouds riding over their heads, and by a dark malign shade always obscuring and eclipsing them; though the true cause of all such eclipses is from men themselves standing in their own light.

But because I have stated envy upon idleness as one cause of it, we ought by all means to note the difference between envy and emulation; which latter is a brave and a noble thing, and quite of another nature, as consisting only in a generous imitation of something excellent; and that such an imitation as scorns to fall short of its copy, but strives, if possible, to outdo it. The emulator is impatient of a superior, not by depressing or maligning another, but by perfecting himself. So that while that sottish thing envy sometimes fills the whole soul, as a great dull fog does the air; this on the contrary inspires it with a new life and vigour, whets and stirs up all the powers of it to action. And surely that which does so, (if we also abstract it from those heats and sharpnesses that sometimes by accident may attend it,) must needs be in the same degree lawful and laudable too, that it is for a man to make himself as useful and accomplished as he can.

Having thus shewn the causes of envy on the part of him that envies, let us in the next place see the causes of it on his part also that is envied. Where in the first place we are to observe, that it is always caused by something either good or great; for no man is envied for his failures, but his perfections. Envy sucks poison out of the fairest and the sweetest flowers, and, like an ill stomach, converts the best nutriment into the worst and rankest humours. So that if we would give in an exact catalogue of all the motives of envy, we must reckon up all the several virtues, ornaments, and perfections, both internal and external, that the nature of man is capable of being ennobled with. But I shall only mention some of the principal: as,

1. Great abilities and endowments of nature.

2. The favour of princes and great persons.

3. Wealth, riches, and prosperity. And

4. And lastly, a fair credit, esteem, and reputation in the world. And,

First, for the first of these; great natural parts and abilities usually provoke men’s envy. God is pleased to send some into the world better furnished and more liberally endowed with the gifts of nature than others, with a quicker apprehension, a further and a deeper reach, and generally a greater fitness for business and weighty affairs than others; which qualifications, as they set them above the common level of mankind, so they make them to be maligned and struck at by most below them; for let a man stand never so low, he can yet shoot at him that stands higher; much as it is with the lower parts of the world, the earth and the sea, which, not being able to vie with the upper and nobler parts of it, the heavens, for brightness, quit scores with them at least by obscuring them with mists and exhalations.

Envy makes a man think another of greater faculties only a continual blemish to himself. He thinks his candle cannot shine in the presence of the other’s sun; that is, in truth, he is angry with God for not making him better, and wiser, and stronger. He expostulates the supposed injuries of his creation, and questions his Maker for not coming up to his measures. For while envy spits its venom directly at men, much of it falls obliquely upon God himself; and while it quarrels with the effects of his goodness towards others, does by consequence blaspheme the cause.

So that we see how it strikes both at God and man with the same blow; in which, though God will be sure to maintain his own honour, yet it is seldom in the power of men to secure theirs; many having had but too frequent and sad cause to complain of the very bounties of nature towards them, that it made them too excellent to be safe and happy; so hard is it for any one to keep what another thinks it his interest to take away; according to that man’s case, who, while he was rescuing from being drowned, had a ring spied upon his finger, which quickly procured him another death.

2. A .second provocative of men’s envy is the favour of princes and great persons; which yet, one would think, no envy should presume to control: for the grace of God and the favour of princes are absolute and unaccountable, and so far from being founded upon merit, that for the most part they serve instead of it, and are never more liberal than where they find none at all. Princes claim a sovereignty in their affection, as well as in their office and condition.

Nevertheless envy will be interposing its thwarting, countermanding power even here also, shutting up the breasts, and tying up the hands of princes, so that they must neither give nor do any thing but by law; and envy must give that law. Whereupon, if a prince casts an eye of favour upon any person of worth, and parts, and fitness for public service, if such an one commences favourite one day, envy shall vote him an evil counsellor the next; and then the public good and the rights of the subject run all presently to wreck, till the envious person steps into his place. Merit is an unpardonable piece of popery, with respect to men as well as to God, and to the rewards of this world as well as of the next.

But if, on the other side, a prince shall think fit to cast his eye downwards, and by the shine and warmth of his favour draw up some earthly, ignoble vapour to the upper region, and there make it glister like a star, envy shall never cease till it brings this down also; and then, though it is a pleasure to most eyes to view a star falling, yet none look after it when it is fallen.

So that we see, that whether sovereignty would serve itself by preferring men of sufficiency, or divert and sport itself by advancing men of none, envy equally protests and plants its engines against both; neither allowing sovereign rulers (who yet are men, and sometimes not without the infirmities of men) meet helps and ministers to govern by, nor so much as an illustrious simpleton sometimes to refresh themselves with; which is very hard and severe usage certainly, especially since it has been always looked upon as one of the most allowed, uncontested royalties of princes, to make their will the sole rule and reason of their kindness, to dispense their benefactions as they please, and, in a word, to be as free and arbitrary as fortune herself, by bestowing their favours upon such as she usually bestows hers; not the wisest always in the world.

3. A third ground or motive of envy is from the wealth, riches, or plenties of another. No man willingly would be poor, and no envious person would have another rich; every one who is remarkably so being commonly looked upon but as a kind of injury to all the poor ones about him; not that he does or ever did them any injury, but that by being rich, he is reckoned one himself. For whosoever has a great deal to lay up, will be always an intolerable grievance to him who has nothing to spend; and to look upon a full bag, and to have nothing to do with it, is no small mortification to such a one. The learned Verulam observes, that diseases arising from emptiness are generally the most dangerous, and most hardly cured; and amongst the diseases of the mind, envy, grounded upon domestic penury, is certainly of the same nature; especially where a neighbouring opulence shews what the remedy is, but not how it may be had; like the thirst of Tantalus, where the thing thirsted for was near enough, and yet out of reach too. And in such a case envy will be sure to work and boil up to a more than ordinary height, while the envious person frets, and raves, and swells at the plenties and affluence of his abounding neighbour, and (as I may so express it) is even ready to burst with another’s fulness.

What made the Devil (the grand exemplar of envy) so much malign Job, but the bounties of Providence to him in a large estate, great revenues, and a flourishing family; and all of them watched over and guarded by the wakeful eye and the powerful hand of him who gave them? And no doubt the Sabeans and Chaldeans, with the rest of his good neighbours, (who did such terrible execution upon all that be longed to him,) were acted and led on by the same spirit. They could not brook the splendour and greatness of so potent and (as they thought) overgrown a neighbour. He was an eyesore to them upon the throne, but (for all his noisome ulcers) none at all when they saw him upon the dunghill.

What made that wretch Ziba accuse his lord and master to David, (a judge after Ziba’s own heart?) The accusation indeed charged treason upon Mephibosheth; but whatsoever the treason was, it was only his land which was the traitor: for when his envious accuser had once swallowed that, the accusation was at an end presently, and poor Mephibosheth quickly became innocent Mephibosheth.

In fine, if the envious person be poor and beggarly, he would have all about him as arrant beggars as himself; but if rich, he would have all beggars but himself; like Gideon’s fleece, filled with the dew of heaven, and every thing else dry about it; so that wheresoever you see any one of a plentiful fortune and large possessions, you are not at all to wonder, if you also see such an one maligned, envied, and pursued with all imaginable spite and rancour by some pitiful malecontent or other, who perhaps could never call so much land his own as might serve to bury him when dead, and much less suffice to maintain him while alive. And it is too well known to all the world, not to be justly detested by it, that there is a certain profession of men who shall never cease to be maligned and persecuted, while there is any thing of revenue either to support the dignity of their function, or procure a common respect to their persons; but they shall be followed with all the odious, false, and base imputations of pride, covetousness, and luxury, still rattling about their ears, and whatsoever else the envy of a gaging avarice and a domineering insolence can belch out against them. But after all, I would gladly learn wherein this monstrous pride and covetousness of the church shews itself. Why, in this, that the ministers of it are not yet clothed in rags or sackcloth; that the church itself is neither for naked gospels

See a vile book so entitled, and reflecting upon the clergy, though (to the shame of the author) written by a clergyman.

A SERMON

PREACHED AT CHRIST-CHURCH, OXON,

ON THE 30th OF APRIL, 1668,

BEING ASCENSION-DAY.

LUKE xxi. 15.

For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.

IT being the great design of our Saviour’s coming into the world to declare and prove himself the Messias, and to establish a church upon that belief, we have him here encouraging the ministers of it with this notable promise, left them as a kind of legacy not long before his death; together with a prediction of what should befall them after it; which was so dreadful and discouraging, that nothing but such a promise could support them against the terrors of such a prediction. And therefore, as a tender master, all made up of goodness and compassion, while he delivers them this bitter cup with one hand, he reaches them as great a cordial with the other; all that he here promised, or said to them, being but a pledge of what he would more abundantly do for them after his ascension: when having finished his dolorous course here, and triumphantly sat down at the right hand of his Father, his glorious employment ever after should be, as a king to make good, what as a prophet he had foretold. And this he did with so exact a conformity of his actions to his words, that no instance can be given through all the records of time, where there is so perfect and punctual a correspondence between past and present, as we see and find in the predictions and promises of our Saviour in his life, and the completion of them since his death. A most clear and full proof doubtless of his doctrine, and consequently as infallible a demonstration of the divinity of his person, and the authentic truth of his commission.

In the words we have these two things considerable.

I. Something implied by way of prediction, viz. that the apostles should be sure to meet with adversaries, who would both gainsay and resist them in the discharge of their apostolic function .

II. Something declared by way of promise, viz. that they should find such succour and assistance from their Lord and Master, after the resumption of his glory, as should make and overcome all this op position.

Which two heads comprehend all that is in the text, and accordingly I shall give some brief account of both. And,

I. For the first of these, the prediction here implied, viz. that the apostles should not fail of adversaries to oppose them. This indeed was to be no small argument of their apostolic mission, though by no means to be reckoned amongst miracles, it being so far from having any thing of miracle or wonder in it, that nothing can be more frequent, usual, and indeed fashionable, than for the generality of men to malign a preacher, and persecute an apostle. For such as engage themselves in the service of that grating, displeasing thing to the world, called truth, must expect the natural issue and consequent of truth, which is, a mortal hatred of those who speak it. The Christian ministry is a troublesome and a disgusted institution, and as little regarded by men as they regard their souls, but rather hated as much as they love their sins. The church is every one’s prey, and the shepherds are pilled, and polled, and fleeced by none more than by their own flocks. A prophet is sure to be without honour, not only in his own country, but almost in every one else. I scarce ever knew any ecclesiastic but was treated with scorn and distance; and the only peculiar respect I have observed shewn such persons in this nation (which yet I dare say they could willingly enough dispense with) is, that sometimes a clergyman of an hundred pound a-year has the honour to be taxed equal to a layman of ten thousand. Even those who pretend most respect to the church and churchmen, will yet be found rather to use than to respect them; and if at any time they do ought for them, or give any thing to them, it is not because they are really lovers of the church, but to serve some turn by being thought so. As some keep chaplains, not out of any concern for religion, but as it is a piece of grandeur something above keeping a coach; it looks creditable and great in the eyes of the world; though in such cases he who serves at the altar has generally as much contempt and disdain passed upon him, as he who serves in the kitchen, though perhaps not in the same way: if any regard be had to him, it is commonly such an one as men have for a garment (or rather a pair of shoes) which fits them, viz. to wear him and wear him, till he is worn out, and then to lay him aside. For be the grandee he depends upon never so powerful, he must not expect that he will do any thing for him, till it is scandalous not to do it. If a first or second-rate living chance to fall in his gift, let not the poor domestic think either learning, or piety, or long ser vice a sufficient pretence to it; but let him consider with himself rather, whether he can answer that difficult question, Who was Melchizedek’s father?

A question very hardly solvible by a poor clergyman, though never so good a divine.

In short, every thing is thought too much for persons of this profession. Though one would think, that as they are men, and men who have been at the charge of an expenseful and laborious education, as much or more than most others, they ought, upon the very right of nature and justice, to expect a return, in some degree (at least) proportionable to such cost and labour, as well as men of any other profession whatsoever; yet here, it seems, religion must supersede the rule of justice and the course of nature; and the ministers of it must be required to live, not only as spiritual persons, but as spirits; that is, with out those common accommodations of life, which God and nature have made necessary to all who are yet in the body, and freely reach out to the whole race of mankind; and upon no other ground in the world it is, but men’s envying the church a competent share of these, that all those virulent, but senseless clamours of the pride, covetousness, and luxury of the clergy have been raised; so that when their insolent domineering enemies cannot get them under their feet, as they desire, then presently the clergy are too high and proud. And when avarice disposes men to be rapacious and sacrilegious, then forthwith the church is too rich. And lastly, when, with whoring, and gaming, and revelling, they have disabled themselves from paying their butchers, their brewers, and their vintners, then immediately they are all thunder and lightning against the intemperance and luxury of the clergy, (forsooth,) and high time it is for a thorough reformation.

But to disabuse the world, and to answer the several branches of the imputation; the true account of the pride of the clergy is, that they are able to clothe themselves with something better than rags; or rather, that they have any thing to clothe them at all, and that the church of England would (by its good will) neither have naked gospels nor naked evangelists. And then in the next place, the covetousness of the clergy is, that they can and do find wherewithal to pay taxes, and just enough to keep them from begging afterwards. And lastly, their luxury and intemperance lies in this, that they had rather eat at their own poor home, than lick up the crumbs at the end of their haughty neighbour’s table, and much less under it; that they scorn to sneak here and there for a dinner, or beg their daily bread of any but of God himself. The world in the mean time proceeding by no other measure with the clergy than this, viz. to exact of them hospitality to others, and to grudge them bread for themselves. And this is the true account of the pride, covetousness, and luxury of the clergy, which, by the mouths of puritans and republicans, have made such a noise in these deluded kingdoms.

But it is the church’s lot to be defamed, libelled, and persecuted on all hands; and may our blessed Lord, who found the same usage before us, give us grace and courage to bear it: even I myself have heard it said, and that with no ordinary acceptance and pleasure to the rest of the company who heard it, that a divine was to be spit upon by his place. And be it so, since it must be so. Nevertheless it is the comfort of such, that Christ was spit upon before them, though he had not indeed the honour to be spit upon by Christians; in which respect it must be confessed, that the servants are preferred before their master. And I have heard it said also, that the church and clergy of England have an interest opposite to the rest of the nation; that is, in other words, that the whole nation ought to rise up (as one man) against them with staves and clubs, and knock out their brains, as vermin and public nuisances; and withal, that there ought to be no church or clergy for the future, if the nation will but mind its own interest. This is the proper sense and interpretation of these words; and I hope all the impartial world (which bear and deserve the name of Christians) will consider and remember them.

Nevertheless, to dispute this point a little, I would fain know how the English clergy come to have an interest opposite to the English nation; for we are both English men, and the sons of English men, (till of late at least,) and own no dependence upon any foreign power, (as the papists do,) and consequently have a claim to a support and maintenance from our country, while we serve it in a profession useful to the exigences of it. And whether those, whose profession obliges them to be still pressing obedience upon their fellow-subjects to their sovereign, and just and amicable dealing with one another, together with an universal regulation of men’s manners, serve the public by a profession useful to the exigences thereof, we appeal to the public, and to all men of sense and conscience, to judge. But if, because the clergy will never attempt, by cheating and pimping, to raise themselves from beggary to great estates and high stations, and have not forty, or fifty, or perhaps an hundred thousand pounds ready at every hand for a purchase, they must therefore have an interest opposite to the rest of the nation; this op position, for ought I see, is like to continue as long as the honesty and poverty of the clergy (for the most part accompanying it) is like to do. But whether those, who avow such an implacable enmity against the ministry, will be able to preserve this or any other government, so much as one poor minute, from the ruin which their own detestable lives, principles, and vices, threaten it with, is very much to be questioned; or rather indeed it is past all question, that they tend directly, and operate strongly, to wards its utter ruin and destruction.

Upon the whole matter, if we consider the treatment of the clergy in these nations, since popery was driven out, both as to the language and usage which they find from most about them; I do, from all that I have read, heard, or seen, confidently aver, (and I wish I could speak it loud enough to reach all the corners and quarters of the whole world,) that there is no nation or people under heaven, Christian or not Christian, which despise, hate, and trample upon their clergy or priesthood comparably to the English. So that (as matters have been carried) it is really no small argument of the predominance of conscience over interest, that there are yet parents who can be willing to breed up any of their sons (if hopefully endowed) to so discouraged and discouraging a profession.

We see then, according to the prediction in the text, how, from the apostolic age, down all along to the present, the ministers of Christ were sure to meet with enemies; and that, whether they were professedly such, or pretendedly friends, their enmity was still the same, and perhaps much more fatal in the effects of it, acting under this latter guise than under the former; as the thief never does his business so effectually as when he robs under a vizard. After which, the next thing offering itself to our consideration is, how this enmity (especially in the apostles time, which the words chiefly point at) was to exert itself; and that, the text tells us, was to be two ways, viz. by word and deed; by gainsaying and resisting; and these two certainly could not but afford scope and compass enough for all the malice of man to employ and spend itself in.

And accordingly we will speak distinctly of both of them. And,

1. For gainsaying; the word in the Greek is ἀντειπεῖν, importing opposition in disputation, with an endeavour to refel or confute what is alleged by another; and the design of it is redargution, called by Aristotle ἔλεγχος, or ἐλέγχειν; that is, a concluding of something contradictory to the proposition asserted. And thus we find the apostles frequently and fiercely encountered by adversaries of very different persuasions, by Jews and Gentiles, and the several sects belonging to both. As for our Saviour himself, who led the way, and was first engaged in such conflicts, we know the constant issue of all the disputes the Jews had with him was, that he silenced them by an absolute confutation. So that the end of all these contests was, that they durst not ask him any more questions; shewing hereby so much discretion at least, as to know when they were baffled, and to say no more. And this mighty force in arguing he was pleased to transmit to his apostles after him, as it was highly requisite that he should. Whereupon we see how Peter and John (as illiterate as they were) nonplused the whole council of the priests and elders, giving such an edge to the truth they spoke, that the text tells us it cut them to the heart, Acts v. And in the next place we read how St. Stephen confounded the synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, together with them of Cilicia and of Asia, disputing with him; so that the text remarkably notes, that they were not able to withstand the wisdom and spirit by which he spake. Acts vi. 10. Truth, it seems, with that one single weapon of wisdom to defend it, being an over match to never so many tongues opposing it. Like wise we find how Apollos triumphed over his Jewish opponents, mightily convincing them that Jesus was Christ, Acts xviii. 28. And the same overpowering spirit we find conjuring down Elymas the sorcerer, opposing St. Paul’s doctrine, Acts xiii. 8, 9, &c. The like opposition also the same apostle complains of from Alexander the coppersmith, greatly with standing the gospel taught by him, 2 Tim. iv. 14. And it was well the coppersmith did not out of spite turn preacher, and so disgrace it more.

But this gainsaying humour stopped not in the doctrine preached, but overflowed and worked over also upon the preachers themselves; and that in calumnies and slanders of all sorts; sometimes reproaching them as drunkards, in Acts ii. 13, and thereby shewing us, that the charge of intemperance upon the clergy was as early as the apostles, who had a liberal share of it; and not only so, but it began even upon Christ himself, who was taxed for a glutton and a wine-bibber long before them: though, methinks, it looks something odd and unaccountable, that those should make the lame walk, and restore to others the use of their legs, who had drunk themselves off their own. They were traduced also as public incendiaries, and such as turned the world upside down, Acts xvii. 6; which yet (as the world then stood, with idolatry at the head of it, and truth under foot) was perhaps the only way to restore it to its right posture. They were also jeered and flouted at, as fools and babblers; Acts xvii. 18. But why then did not those profound rabbies amongst the Jews, and the Stoicks and Epicureans (those oracles of reason) amongst the philosophers, baffle and refel these babblers, and so dashing their absurd doctrine in its first rise, prevent its spreading, by a mature and thorough confutation? But it was ever an easier work to contradict than to confute. From reproaching them as fools, they proceeded to represent them also as mad men; Acts xxvi. 24. 2 Cor. v. 13. Though this, I confess, seems not so much a wonder to me, since I doubt not but the clergy in all ages, (if but well beneficed) would be accused for lunaticks, if for so doing their accusers might be their guardians. But since it would be endless to traverse all particulars, let it suffice us to have observed, that as in the forecited Acts xvii. 32, we find the Athenians mocking, and in Acts xviii. 6, the Jews opposing themselves and blaspheming; so let us take the sum total of all from that one place in Acts xxviii. 22. As for this sect, we know that it is every where spoken against. In fine, the apostles and ministers of Christ were looked upon as the very offals and offscouring of the world, and were trampled upon accordingly. They were scarce ever mentioned but with slander; or so much as spoken to, but with sarcasm and invective. They were perpetually railed at as deceivers and impostors, even while they were endeavouring to undeceive the world from those wretched impostures and delusions which had so long and so miserably bewitched it. In a word, they were like physicians exchanging cures for curses, and reviled and abused by their froward patients, while they were doing all they could for their health and recovery. But,

2. The other branch of the opposition designed against the apostles and ministers of Christ is expressed by resisting; a word importing a much more substantial kind of enmity, than that which only spends at the mouth, and shews itself in froth and noise; an enmity which, instead of scoffs and verbal assaults, should encounter them with all that art could contrive or violence execute; with whips and scourges, cross and gibbet, swords and axes; and though bare words draw no blood, yet these, to be sure, would. And such were the weapons with which they were to act their butcheries upon the Christians; till at length, through all the sorts and degrees of cruelty, the same martyrdom should both crown and conclude their sufferings together. Nor were these persecutions more terrible for their sharpness than for their frequency, and sometimes their continuance also: ten persecutions in the space of the three first centuries, and the last of them of ten years duration. They came so fast upon the Christians, that all the intermission they had from one persecution was but a kind of pause or breathing time, (a short parenthesis of ease,) to enable them for another. So that notwithstanding those short intervals, it was really and indeed a persecution still; and the work went on, though the workmen might sometimes sleep or stand still a little, to gather more strength. For the persecuting spirit seemed to shake the primitive church like a mighty ague; and it held it for a long time; the disease continuing, when the fits were gone off. This was the miserable condition which Christianity was then in; the whole world rising up in arms, and combining in a common association against the professors and preachers of it; a forlorn company, God knows, of helpless, defenceless men, without any thing but truth and innocence to stand by them: idolatry in the mean while sitting in the thrones of emperors, marching in the head of armies, and commanding the joint assistance of all that was worldly, wise, or mighty, to secure it in the possession of the so long captivated and deluded universe. So that no wonder, armed with all this power, persecution raged with a vengeance. And yet by all the terrible massacres and executions done by it, it neither did nor could prevail. Forasmuch as that which kills the person does not therefore destroy the cause, especially a cause designed to teach sufferings, to be carried on by suffering, and lastly to conquer and command the world by suffering. In a word, a religion founded in the cross (as that of Christianity eminently was) could not surely be extinguished or suppressed by it.

But some may possibly here object and say, that all that has been hitherto spoken by us of this gainsaying and resisting the apostles, seems a direct contradiction to the text, which positively affirms, that their adversaries should not be able to gainsay or resist them. But this difficulty is small, or rather indeed none at all, and consequently the solution very easy and obvious; for the gainsaying and resisting mentioned in the text, may either signify the bare acts of gainsaying or resisting, or the success and prevalence of the said acts against the persons so gainsaid and resisted: and accordingly the full drift and meaning of the text is, that the apostles’ adversaries, by all the virulence of words and violence of actions which they could and would use, should not be able to prevail over them, or run them down; howbeit they would not fail with all their might to attempt it, and to that purpose to gainsay and resist them to the utmost, though in the issue all to little or no effect, unless perhaps to their own confusion. In fine, that, as long as the world stands, Christianity shall be sure to be opposed; and as long as it is opposed, shall certainly overcome.

And so from the thing supposed or implied in the text, I now proceed to the other and next thing positively declared in the same, to wit, Christ’s promise to his apostles of such an assistance from above, as should overcome and master all their adversaries opposition: which promise we will consider two ways, 1. According to its form and coherence with the context. And 2. According to the subject-matter of it. And,

1. For the first of these. The words being introduced by the causal particle for, shew, that they stand as a reason here assigned of something going before; which we shall find to have been a warning given by Christ to his disciples against those fears and misgiving apprehensions, which he foresaw would be apt to seize and work upon their spirits, when they should find themselves so fiercely and universally opposed on all sides: in which case, though he allowed of caution, yet he was for taking off the fright: nothing considerable being ever achieved by a mind damped and surprised with fear; a passion which will be sure to betray a man in the exercise of all his faculties. For he who fears his enemy, fights for him; or, which is worse, gives him the victory without the trouble of a battle.

Nor can any thing more peculiarly unqualify a man for the office of an apostle or preacher of the gospel, than this degenerous quality: for it makes him unable to look a bold sinner in the face, to assert a disgusted truth, or to own his commission, when power and interest shall frown him into silence and mean compliances.

Nevertheless, since fear itself may plead reason, when it meets with objects and motives every way equal to the natural workings of it; our Saviour never forbids the passion, till he first removes the reason of it, as he does here by opposing the success of omnipotence to the assaults of a mortal force; thereby owning the danger, but overmatching it with the deliverance.

Nor was it a bare deliverance, but a conquest, which Christ designed the first champions of the Christian cause; not merely to bring them off safe from their enemies, but to carry them victorious over them. And conquering, doubtless, is more glorious than not fighting, and to see an enemy fall or fly before one, than to have none at all. All which the great captain of our salvation designed and did for his apostles; and certainly he never exerted his power more to the proof of his godhead, than when he made such worms to thresh the mountains, fishermen to silence philosophers, weakness and poverty to brave it over the whole Roman empire, the counsels of senates, and the force of legions, and that with the fairest sort of violence imaginable, viz. binding their hands by sliding into their hearts.

And thus having given an account of the form and scheme of the promise with reference to the context, and what followed, and what went before it, I come now to the other thing to be considered in it, viz. the subject-matter of it, which represents to us these three things.

1. The thing itself promised, viz. a mouth and wisdom.

2. The person who promised it, which was Christ himself; I will give you a mouth and wisdom.

3. The way by which Christ performed this promise; not indeed here expressed in the text, but fully inferred from several other texts treating of the same subject, to wit, the effusion of the Holy Ghost upon the apostles presently after Christ’s ascension into glory, when, and by virtue whereof, this great promise was made good to them. And here,

1. For the thing promised; a mouth and wisdom, that is, an ability of speaking, joined with an equal prudence in action and behaviour. Which things we will consider first singly, and then in conjunction. And,

1. For the ability of speaking conferred upon the apostles. It was highly requisite, that those, who were to be the interpreters and spokesmen of heaven, should have a rhetoric taught them from thence too; and as much beyond any that could be taught them by human rules and art, as the subjects they were to speak of surpassed the subject of all human eloquence.

Now this ability of speech, I conceive, was to be attended with these three properties of it.

1. Great clearness and perspicuity.

2. An unaffected plainness and simplicity. And,

3. A suitable and becoming zeal or fervour. And,

1. For its perspicuity: Christ and his apostles well knew, that the great truth delivered by them would support itself, and that barely to deliver it, would be abundantly sufficient to enforce it; nakedness (of all things) being never able to make truth ashamed. There was nothing false, faulty, or suspicious in it, and therefore they were not afraid to venture it in the plainest and most intelligible language. Where indeed the thing to be spoken is unwarrantable, and the design of the speaker as bad, or worse, there, I confess, every word may need a cloak of obscurity both to cover and protect it too: but truth and worth neither need nor affect to keep out of sight, nor the lights of the world to wrap themselves in a cloud. The apostles never taught men to preach or pray in an unknown tongue ; nor valued such devotion as had ignorance for its parent. Christ still closed his instructions to his disciples with this question, Do ye understand these things? And we find no parable, but the rear of it is brought up with an explication. For even when Christ and his apostles preached the most mysterious truths of religion, yet then, though the thing uttered might nonplus their reason, the way and manner of their uttering it was plain, easy, and familiar ; and the hearer never put to study, when it was his business only to hear and understand. The oracles of Christ were not like those of Apollo, doubtful and ambiguous, always made to deceive, and commonly to destroy; but on the contrary, as the grand business of our Saviour, and his apostles after him, was to teach, and that chiefly in order to persuade; so they well knew, that there could be no effectual passage into the will, but through the judgment; nor any free admission into the former, but by a full passport from the latter. And therefore we find not, that in their sermons they were for amusing or astonishing their auditory with difficult nothings, rabbinical whimsies, and remote allusions, which no man of sense and solid reason can hear without weariness and contempt.

Besides that, if we look into the reason of the thing itself, it will be found, that all obscurity of speech is resolvable into the confusion and disorder of the speaker’s thoughts; for as thoughts are properly the images and representations of objects to the mind, and words the representations of our thoughts to others, it must needs follow, that all faults or defects in a man’s expressions must presuppose the same in his notions first.

In short, nothing in nature can be imagined more absurd, irrational, and contrary to the very design and end of speaking, than an obscure discourse; for in that case, the preacher may as well leave his tongue, and his auditors their ears behind them, as neither he communicate, nor they understand any more of his mind and meaning, after he has spoken to them, than they did before.

And yet, as ridiculous as such fustian bombast from the pulpit is, none are so transported and pleased with it as those who least understand it. For still the greatest admirers of it are the grossest, the most ignorant, and illiterate country people, who, of all men, are the fondest of highflown metaphors and allegories, attended and set off with scraps of Greek and Latin, though not able even to read so much of the latter, as might save their necks upon occasion.

But laying aside all such studied insignificant trifles, it was the clearness of the apostles’ preaching which rendered it victorious and irresistible. And this we may rest upon as certain, that he is still the powerfullest preacher, and the best orator, who can make himself best understood. But,

2. A second property of the ability of speech, conferred by Christ upon his apostles, was its unaffected plainness and simplicity; it was to be easy, obvious, and familiar; with nothing in it strained or far-fetched: no affected scheme, or airy fancies, above the reach or relish of an ordinary apprehension; no, nothing of all this; but their grand subject was truth, and consequently above all these petty arts and poor additions; as not being capable of any greater lustre or advantage, than to appear just as it is. For there is a certain majesty in plainness; as the proclamation of a prince never frisks it in tropes or fine conceits, in numerous and well turned periods, but commands in sober, natural expressions. A substantial beauty, as it comes out of the hands of nature, needs neither paint nor patch; things never made to adorn, but to cover something that would be hid. It is with expression, and the clothing of a man’s conceptions, as with the clothing of a man’s body. All dress and ornament supposes imperfection, as designed only to supply the body with something from without, which it wanted, but had not of its own. Gaudery is a pitiful and a mean thing, not extending further than the surface of the body; nor is the highest gallantry considerable to any, but to those who would hardly be considered without it: for in that case indeed there may be great need of an outside, where there is little or nothing within.

And thus also it is with the most necessary and important truths; to adorn and clothe them is to cover them, and that to obscure them. The eternal salvation and damnation of souls are not things to be treated of with jests and witticisms. And he who thinks to furnish himself out of plays and romances with language for the pulpit, shews himself much fitter to act a part in the revels, than for a cure of souls.

I speak the words of soberness, said St. Paul, Acts xxvi. 25; and I preach the gospel not with the enticing words of man’s wisdom, 1 Cor. ii. 4. This was the way of the apostles’ discoursing of things sacred. Nothing here of the fringes of the north-star; nothing of nature’s becoming unnatural; no thing of the down of angels’ wings, or the beautiful locks of cherubims: no starched similitudes introduced with a “ Thus have I seen a cloud rolling in “its airy mansion,” and the like. No, these were sublimities above the rise of the apostolick spirit. For the apostles, poor mortals, were content to take lower steps, and to tell the world in plain terms, that he who believed should be saved, and that he who believed not should be damned. And this was the dialect which pierced the conscience, and made the hearers cry out, Men and brethren, what shall we do? It tickled not the ear, but sunk into the heart: and when men came from such sermons, they never commended the preacher for his taking voice or gesture; for the fineness of such a simile, or the quaintness of such a sentence; but they spoke like men conquered with the overpowering force and evidence of the most concerning truths; much in the words of the two disciples going to Emmaus; Did not our hearts burn within us, while he opened to us the scriptures?

In a word, the apostles’ preaching was therefore mighty and successful, because plain, natural, and familiar, and by no means above the capacity of their hearers: nothing being more preposterous, than for those who were professedly aiming at men’s hearts, to miss the mark, by shooting over their heads.

3. The gift of preaching, conferred by Christ upon his apostles, required a suitable zeal and fervour to attend it; for without this, as high and important a truth as the gospel preached by them was, none would have believed that it had any powerful effect upon the preacher’s own affections, nor consequently, that it could have wrought at all more upon other men’s; this is most certain. So true is it, that the same things, differently expressed, as to the proper effects of persuasion, are indeed not the same. A cold indifference dispirits a discourse; but a due fervour gives it life and authority, and sends it home to the inmost powers of the soul, with an easy insinuation and a deep impression.

But then I do by no means place this zeal in speaking loud, in sweating, or in a boisterous motion or agitation of the body, for all this looks rather like the preacher’s wrestling with his auditory, than instructing it; but I place it in his shewing a warm and sensible apprehension on his part of the things uttered by him; so that the very manner of his speaking shall demonstrate the real inward sense he has of what he speaks, and that in the judgment of all who hear him.

Thus when Christ accosted Jerusalem with that melting exprobration in Matt, xxiii. 37, 38, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. Now what a relenting strain of tenderness was there in this reproof from the great doctor as well as saviour of souls, and how infinitely more moving than if he had said only, O ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, how wicked and barbarous is it in you thus to persecute and stone God’s prophets! And how can you but expect some severe judgment from God upon you for it? Who, I say, sees not the vast difference in these two ways of address, as to the vigour and winning compassion of the one, and the low dispirited flatness of the other in comparison? Likewise for St. Paul, observe how he uttered himself in his excellent farewell discourse to the elders of Ephesus, Acts xx. from verse 18 to the end of the chapter, and particularly in verse 31. Remember, says he, how that for the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears. These were the arguments here used by this great apostle, arguments, in comparison of which he knew that the most flowing rhetoric of words would be but a poor and faint persuasive. And then again, in 2 Cor. xi. 29, with what a true and tender passion does he lay forth his fatherly care and concern for all the churches of Christ? Who, say he, is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not? Than which words nothing doubtless could have issued from the tongue or heart of man more endearing, more pathetical and affectionate.

And thus much for the ability or gift of speaking, the first member of the promise made by Christ here to his disciples. The other and next is that of wisdom, the noblest endowment of the mind of man of all others, of an endless extent, and of a boundless comprehension, and, in a word, the liveliest representation that a created nature can afford of the infinity of its Maker. And this, as it is in men, is properly the great principle, directing them how to demean themselves in all the particular passages, accidents, and occasions of human life, which being in the full compass of them indeed innumerable, to recount and treat of them all here would be next to impossible; but as that wisdom which most peculiarly belonged to the first dispensers and ministers of the gospel, I shall only mention two instances in which it most remarkably shews itself; namely,

1. That they opposed neither things nor persons, any further than they stood in their way in the ministry of it. On the contrary, I am become all things to all men, says St. Paul, and that neither to gain favour nor interest, but only converts to Christianity, 1 Cor. ix. 22. And again, he owned the very sect of the Pharisees, so far as they owned and contended for the grand article of the resurrection, in Acts xxiii. 6. In like manner he quoted also and approved several things out of some of the heathen poets, as in Acts xvii. 28, and Titus i. 12. In a word, he never rejected any real solid truth, whether spoken by Jew or heathen, or whatsoever the design of either of them might be in the speaking of it. For as right reason most certainly lies at the foundation of all true religion, so the apostles embraced all that which by genuine consequence was deduced from thence by any sort or sect of men whatsoever, forasmuch as they made not those deductions under the formal notion of such a sect or party, but as they were rational men, arguing rightly upon the general received principles of nature. And accordingly the apostles countenanced and fell in with truth so offered them, wheresoever they found it; they valued a pearl, though took up from a dunghill. And to have done otherwise, had neither been zeal nor discretion, but a kind of ridiculous and morose partiality. But,

2. The other instance of the wisdom given by our Saviour to his apostles, was their resolute opposing all doctrines and interests whatsoever, so far as they stood in opposition to the gospel. They would not so much as hold their peace in such a case, but their proceeding was absolute and peremptory, Acts v. 29, We ought to obey God rather than men. And when a point of Christian liberty was endangered by the judaizing brethren in Gal. ii. 5, We gave place to them, (says the blessed St. Paul,) no, not for an hour. And we know how he withstood St. Peter himself to the face upon the like occasion. We read also how the same apostle preached of justice and temperance before Felix, who he notoriously knew lived in a lewd, incestuous marriage, and was equally infamous for bribery and extortion.

And this undoubtedly was his wisdom, his high and apostolic wisdom; though had he indeed lived in such an age as measures conscience by latitude, and compliance and wisdom by what a man can get, much another kind of character would no doubt have attended him, and he would have been taxed as a weak, hasty, and inconsiderate person, for reflecting upon and provoking the governor, who had used him fairly and civilly; so that if he had been but less free of his tongue, and a little more free of his purse, he might in all likelihood have been very easily released, and perhaps preferred too; but now, poor man, he has quite lost himself.

Such would have been the descants of our modern politics upon this occasion; but after all, if the word of truth itself may be heard, that, we shall find, knows no wisdom in an apostle, but what makes him bold and fearless in the cause of the church and of religion, and ready to discharge a rebuke upon any of the highest rank of right worshipful or right honourable sinners, where a scandalous guilt shall call for, or make it necessary; the contrary practice being incomparably the grossest of follies, and such as will be sure to lay a man low enough in the next world, whatsoever preferment it may raise him to in this.

And thus we have seen here the full compass of our Saviour’s promise to his ministers and disciples, even the two most valuable perfections of man’s nature, and the very top of the wisest of the heathens wish, sapere et fari, a mouth and wisdom, a sagacity of mind, and a command of speech. And he bestows them also in their proper lustre and great est advantage, that is to say, united, and like two stars in conjunction; many indeed being able to bring mouth enough to the ministry, though as for wisdom, that may even shift for itself: but still those two stand best by mutual support and communication, elocution without wisdom being empty and irrational, and wisdom without elocution barren and unprofitable. Praestat eloqui, modo cum prudentia, quam sine eloquio acutissime cogitare, said the great master of eloquence. A faculty to speak properly, and to act wisely, was a legacy fit to be left by the Saviour of the world to those, by whom he intended to instruct the world. And so much for the first general thing proposed from the words, to wit, the thing promised; I proceed now to the

2. The person promising, who was Christ himself; I will give you a mouth and wisdom. I lay a peculiar stress and remark upon this, because Christ seems by this very thing to give his disciples an assurance of his resurrection. He knew that it would not be long before they should see him crucified, killed, and laid in the grave, and so under all the umbrages of weakness and mortality that human nature could undergo; but when again, in the midst of all this, they should remember, that there was still a promise in store, not yet fulfilled, and withal not capable of being fulfilled by a person dead and extinct, they must needs from thence have concluded that he could not abide in that condition, but must irresistibly triumph over the grave, ascend and enter into a state of sovereignty and glory. Every tongue which sat upon the apostles at the day of pentecost, spoke aloud the resurrection and ascension of him who had promised, and then gave the same. For surely they could not expect to receive gifts from above, while the giver of them was under ground. And so I proceed to the

3. And last thing proposed from the text, which was, to shew by what means Christ conferred those gifts upon his disciples and apostles; and that, we find, was by the effusion of the Holy Ghost, the author and giver of every good and perfect gift, ministerial gifts more especially. Those were endowments too great to spring either from the strength of nature or the force of industry. The conferring of which we have eminently set forth in Matt. x. 19, 20. Take no thought (says our Saviour) what ye shall .speak: for it shall he given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. They were surely the first, and perhaps will be the last, who ever did or are like to speak so much sense and reason ex tempore. But the cause is assigned in the next verse, for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of the Father which speaketh in you. And this glorious day, we know, informs us, that it spoke at length with a witness, with fiery tongues, and a flaming eloquence, and such an one as bore down all contradiction before it. This was the inspiration which filled and raised them so much above themselves, for their work was too big for a mere mortal strength; and therefore, as God himself was to send, so he was also to furnish out his own ambassadors at the cost of heaven, (as I may with reverence express it.) The apostles we find were not (and that by our Saviour’s particular order) to stir out of Jerusalem till the Holy Ghost was come upon them, and then they went forth armed at all points, to encounter either Jew or Gentile, and they did it both with courage and wisdom, and consequently with triumph and success.

And accordingly we are to carry it in perpetual remembrance, that while the work of preaching the gospel continues in the world, (as he, who is truth itself, has assured us it ever will,) the Spirit will never be wanting to the faithful preachers of it in a suitable assistance of them, though not in the same measure, we own, in which the apostles were assisted by it, whose work being peculiar and extraordinary, their assistance was to be so too. Infallibility was in the apostles a real privilege, but nowadays an insolent, or rather impudent pretence. And yet nothing is more confidently and constantly laid claim to, both by the papist and the enthusiast, than the Spirit; but none certainly ever yet ventured to speak lies and nonsense by the Spirit but themselves. To some of which persons indeed the world may allow a sort of wisdom, but far from the wisdom which is from above; and a mouth too they are well known to have, but a mouth never so open to speak as to devour. Christ defend his church from such inspired impostors, and vouchsafe his mighty presence to all the true (though too much despised) ministers of it, according to the measure of that glorious promise, and the last uttered by him here on earth at his victorious ascension into heaven. Go, teach all nations; and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

To whom therefore, with the Father, and the Holy Ghost, three persons and one God, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

The false methods of governing and establishing the church of England exploded, &c.

IN

A DISCOURSE

UPON

GALATIANS II. 5.

To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.

IF in the compass of so small a space as from the first entrance of Christianity into the world to the times of the apostle Paul, the church of Galatia (then but newly planted) could pass into so corrupt and degenerate a condition as this epistle represents it in, let none be surprised to find the very grossest errors sometimes got into the very best and purest churches, but wonder rather, that, after so many centuries since passed, there should still be (what our Saviour foretold there should scarce be at his second coming) such a thing as faith upon earth, or indeed any church at all.

As for that of Galatia, the subject of the text before us, and consisting of great numbers both of Jews and Gentiles, just converted to Christianity, there arose a very early and fierce dispute amongst them, whether the Jewish customs and ceremonies were to be joined with and adopted into the Christian profession; and consequently, whether the converted Gentiles ought not to be circumcised according to the law of Moses, as well as they had been baptized according to the institution of Christ? The Jewish converts, whose education had made them infinitely fond of the Mosaic rites, and who, though they had the substance, still doted upon the shadow, even after they had given up their names to Christ, eagerly contended for the continuance of circumcision, and that not amongst themselves only, but for obliging the converted Gentiles also to the same. And in this their error they chanced unhappily to be the more confirmed by a temporizing practice of St. Peter himself, the great apostle of the circumcision; who yet, (as great as he was,) by judaizing in some things, and that even contrary to his own judgment, .as well as to the truth of the gospel, (the text itself telling us, in verses 12, 13 of this chapter, that it was indeed no better than downright dissimulation,) he spread and carried the infection much further by the authority of his example; so that, by this his in sincere dealing and compliance, he mightily fixed these half Christian Jews, not only in a confident persistance in their error, but gave them heart also to expostulate the matter very insolently even with St. Paul himself, who, being by divine commission no less the apostle of the Gentiles than St. Peter was of the Jews, with a courage equal to his sincerity, both taught and practised quite otherwise than that his brother apostle. Nay, so high did their judaizing impudence work, that they began to question the very truth of his doctrine, as St. Paul not obscurely intimates in chap. 1 of this epistle, verse 9. To all which they add their no less rude reflections upon his apostleship, extolling St. Peter and others as pillars, but undervaluing St. Paul, as nothing in comparison of them. And lastly, to complete these scurrilities, we have their vilifying reproaches of his person, their ridiculing his bodily presence as mean, and his speech as contemptible; and, in a word, himself also as by no means so gifted a brother, forsooth, so powerful an holderforth, nor of such edifying lungs and loudness, as some of their own schismatical tribe.

This, I say, was the language of a set of schismatics in the church of Corinth, mentioned in 2 Cor. x. 10, and the like, no doubt, of the brotherhood in Galatia; and not of them only, but so long as there shall be governors and government in the church, the same, we may be sure, will be naturally the cry and virulence against them of all schismatics, sectaries, and dissenters whatsoever.

But as to St. Paul’s case now before us, he, in his apostolic circuit or visitation, coming to visit these hopeful converts in Galatia, accompanied with his beloved Titus, (not indeed then circumcised,) finds himself very vehemently pressed by them, and that with an importunity next to compulsion, to have him circumcised also, according to the false persuasion they had conceived of the necessary and perpetual use of circumcision. Nevertheless, as false and confident as this persuasion of theirs was, and as positively as it stood condemned by St. Paul, it wanted not for several arguments, and those, seemingly at least, not inconsiderable, to give colour to the defence of it. As, to instance in some of them, might not these Galatians have pleaded for the continuance of circumcision, that Christ himself declared, that he came not to destroy the law of Moses, but to fulfil it; and if so, was not circumcision one of the most considerable parts of that law? and indeed so considerable, as to be the grand obligation to bind men to all the rest? Did not also Christ command his own disciples to hear and to do whatsoever the Scribes taught them out of Moses’s chair? And did those Scribes teach or own any thing as more necessary than circumcision? Moreover, did not St. Peter, who was the, proper apostle of the circumcision, (as we have shewn,) agree and concur with these men in this practice, or, at least, not dissuade them from it? Nay, and did not St. Paul himself cause his beloved Timothy to be circumcised? And if in this matter there should be any difference between these two apostles, would not the advantage be clearly on St. Peter’s side, who, having conversed with Christ in the flesh, might rationally be presumed to know the true sense and design of the gospel more exactly than St. Paul, who had not so conversed with him; and consequently, that it must be much safer to adhere to the former, in this controversy, than to the latter? And, lastly, besides, and above all this, might they not plead themselves extremely scandalized, grieved, and offended at the practice of such brethren as should lay aside circumcision, which they were sure was at first commanded, and never since (for what they could learn) forbidden by Christ; but rather so much the contrary, that to countenance, and, as it were, even christen this ceremony, Christ submitted to be circumcised himself?

Now surely these things could not but carry some more than ordinary shew of reason with them; and I frankly declare, that I cannot but own them for arguments much more forcible against the abrogation of circumcision, than any that I could ever yet find our nonconformists were able to bring for the abrogation of the ceremonies of our church. And yet, as forcible as they were, or seemed to be, they had no other effect upon St. Paul, than that with an in flexible steadiness he rejects both the arguments themselves, and those who urged them; and upon a full cognizance of the merits of the whole cause, he peremptorily withstands those judaizing trimmers, and without the least regard either to the occasional communion which St. Peter himself had lately vouchsafed them, or fear of his depriving power for doing so, (if he had any,) this high-church apostle (as we may worthily call him) resolves neither to give place to him nor them., no, not for an hour.

This historical account of the occasion of the words here pitched upon by me for my text, I thought necessary to premise, for the better clearing and hand ling of them; in order to which I shall consider in them these five particulars.

1. A fierce opposition made by some erroneous Christians in the church of Galatia against St. Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, and consequently of prime authority in that church.

2. The cause of this opposition; which was their importunate and unreasonable pressing of him to the practice of a thing as necessary, which neither was in itself necessary, nor so accounted by him.

3. The way of their managing this opposition, which was by bespattering his doctrine, and detracting from the credit and authority of his person, for withstanding these their encroaching demands.

4. The way which the apostle took to deal with such violent encroachers, and that was by not yielding, or giving place to them, no, not for an hour.

5. And lastly, the end and design driven at by the apostle in this his method of dealing with them; and that was no less than the very preservation of the gospel itself, in the truth and purity of it, in those words, that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.

The sum of all which five particulars I shall gather into this one proposition, which shall be the subject of the following discourse; namely, That the best and most apostolical way to establish a church, and secure to it a lasting continuance of the truth and purity of the gospel, is, for the governors and ministers thereof not to give place at all, or yield up the least lawful, received constitution of it, to the demands or pretences of such as dissent or separate from it, though never so urging and importunate.

This, I say, is a most plain, natural, undeniable inference, from the words and practice of St. Paul himself; and that in a case so like ours in the church of England, that a liker can hardly be imagined. And accordingly I shall manage the prosecution of this proposition under these three general heads.

1. I shall examine and consider the pretences alleged by dissenters for our quitting, or yielding up, any of the rites, ceremonies, or orders of our church.

2. I shall shew what are naturally like to be the consequences of such a yielding, or giving them up. And,

3. And lastly, I shall shew what influence and efficacy a strict adherence to the constitutions of our church, and an absolute refusal to part with any of them, is like to have towards a lasting settlement of the same, and of the truth and purity of the gospel amongst us.

But before I enter upon a more particular discussion of any of these, I must premise this observation, as the ground and rule of all that I shall say upon this subject; namely, that the case is altogether the same of requiring, upon the account of conscience, the forbearance of practices in themselves lawful, out of a pretence of their unlawfulness; and of imposing upon the conscience practices in themselves not necessary, upon an allegation and pretence of their necessity: which latter was heretofore the case between St. Paul and those judaizing Galatians, as the former has been, and still is, between the church of England and the nonconformists. Now both of these courses are really and equally superstitious: for though amongst us loudness and ignorance have still carried the charge and cry against the ceremonies of our church, yet (as a very learned divine

Bishop Sanderson.

THE

SECOND DISCOURSE

The first sermon upon this text is in vol. ii. p. 108.

ON

ISAIAH V. 20.

Shewing the first grand instance of the fatal influence of words and
names falsely applied, in the late subversion of the church of
England by the malicious calumnies of the fanatic party,
charging her with Popery and Superstition.

ISAIAH v. 20.

Wo unto them that call evil good, and good evil, &c.

I FORMERLY made an entrance upon this text in a discourse by itself; and after some short explication of the terms, and something premised by way of introduction to the main design and further drift of the words, I cast the whole prosecution of them under these three heads.

First, To give some general account of the nature of good and evil, and of the reason upon which they are founded.

Secondly, To shew that the way by which good and evil commonly operate upon the mind of man, is by those respective names and appellations by which they are notified and conveyed to the mind.

Thirdly, To shew the mischief which directly, naturally, and unavoidably follows from the misapplication and confusion of these names.

The second grand instance of the mischievous influence of words and names falsely applied, in the late overthrow of the English monarchy, compassed chiefly hereby, in the reign of king Charles I. and attempted again in the reign of king Charles II. being the third Discourse from those words in Isaiah v. 20.

ISAIAH v. 20.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil, &c.

I FORMERLY discoursed twice upon these words, the whole prosecution of which I cast under these four heads.

First, To give some general account of the nature of good and evil, and of the reason upon which they are founded.

Secondly, To shew, that the way by which good and evil commonly operate upon the mind of man, is by those respective names and appellations, by which they are notified and conveyed to the mind.

Thirdly, To shew the mischief which directly, naturally, and unavoidably follows from the misapplication and confusion of these names.

Fourthly, and lastly, To shew the grand and principal instances in which the abuse or misapplication of those names has so fatal and pernicious an effect.

The three first of these I despatched in my first discourse, and in my second made some entrance upon the fourth, to wit, the assignation of those in stances, &c. concerning which I shewed, that if we should consider them in their utmost compass and comprehension, they would carry as large a circumference as the world itself, and grasp in the concerns of all mankind put together, being in their full latitude as numberless, various, and unconceivable, as all the particular ways and means by which men are capable of being miserable. And therefore, since to reckon up all particulars would be endless, and to rest only in universals would be equally fruitless, I chose to reduce the forementioned fatal effects of the misapplication of those great governing names of good and evil to certain heads, and those such as should take in the principal things which the happiness or misery of human societies depends upon.

Now those heads were three.

1st, Religion, and the concerns of the church.

2dly, Civil government. And,

3dly, The private interests of particular persons.

The first of which three, relating to religion and the church, I have fully treated of already in my last discourse, and shall now proceed to the

Second, Which is, to shew the direful and mischievous influence which the abuse or misapplication of those mighty operative names of good and evil has upon civil government, or the political state of the world.

In treating of which I will not be so arrogant and impertinent as to presume to discourse of the rules and arts of government, or to prescribe to those whom I am called to obey, government being the greatest, the noblest, and most mysterious of all arts, and consequently very unfit for those to talk magisterially of, who never bore nor affected to bear any share in it.

For though some have had the face and confidence to be meddling with religion, and reforming the \church, reversing her canons, and new forming her liturgy, who were much fitter to have been learning their catechism at home, and dealing with their tenants in the country, if they had any; I say, though religion and divinity have the ill luck to be so meanly thought of, that every half-witted corporation blockhead thinks himself a competent judge of the deepest points of its doctrine, and the reason of its discipline, so as to be new modelling of both at his insolent but senseless pleasure; yet the learning which qualifies for the pulpit teaches more sense and better manners.

But though it be above our sphere to teach the rules and arts of governing, and to direct those how to steer who sit at the helm; yet I am sure it is not above us to help and assist them in their government, by declaring the villainy of those practices which would subvert it. Any one may kill wasps and hornets, and other vermin which infest a gar den, without pretending to the skill and art of a gardener; and a watchman may do much towards the defence of a city, though he offers not to govern it. In like manner, for a preacher of the word to denounce the wrath of God against faction and sedition, and by all the spiritual artillery of the word, (as I may so call it) to prosecute and run down those sins which both disturb government and destroy souls, cannot justly or properly be called his meddling with matters of state. And therefore when some very gravely tell us, that the sole or chief business of a preacher is to preach up a good life, and to preach down sin, I heartily assent to them, but withal must tell them, that I take obedience to government to be a principal part of a good life, and faction and rebellion to be some of the worst, the blackest, and most damning sins that men can be guilty of; and consequently, that it is the direct, unquestionable duty and business of a preacher, with all imaginable zeal, to testify against crimes of so high and clamorous a guilt, wheresoever he finds them; since the same divine commission which commands him to instruct, equally empowers him to reprove; and I know no privilege or condition under heaven which can warrant a man to sin without reproof or control. This indeed is the proper post in which every preacher and spiritual person ought to serve the government; and how much soever such men may be despised, I am sure no sort of men are able to serve or disserve it more; the infamous pulpits between the years forty and sixty having been but too convincing a demonstration of the one, and the loyal clergy ever since sixty as effectual a proof of the other.

This I thought fit to note briefly beforehand, to obviate that insolent objection of some irreconcileable haters of the ministry, who still call the preaching of obedience to government, the ripping up of faction and sedition, a meddling with matters of state; as I question not but St. Paul himself would have incurred the very same censure from the same sort of persons, for what he says and teaches in the 13th chapter to the Romans, about the necessity of every soul’s being subject to the higher powers, and that there is no power but from God, and that such as resist shall receive to themselves damnation. Would not such as we have to deal with nowadays have cried out against him, What ails this pragmatical pulpiteer, thus to talk of government and obedience? Shall he presume to teach the commons of Rome how to behave themselves to their prince? Does he understand their privileges, which pass all understanding but their own? Trounce him, gaol him, and bring him upon his knees, and declare him a reproach and scandal to his profession, that so he may learn for the future (as one wisely advised upon the like occasion) to preach and to say nothing. For what has he to do to lay the law of subjection and loyalty to the freeborn people of Rome, when, for reason of state, the wisdom of the nation shall think fit to take their prince by the throat with one hand, and to wrest his sceptre from him with the other?

Nor is St. Paul the only troublesome person in this case, but we shall find that St. Peter also will needs be meddling with matters of state, 1 Pet. ii. 13, 14, 15, where he presses all, without exception, to submit themselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him, &c. together with an earnest exhortation, in five or six verses together, to the now antiquated duty of passive obedience. For though the duty of patience and subjection, where men suffer wrong fully, might possibly be of some force in those times of primitive darkness and imperfection, yet in times of light and revelation those beggarly elements of loyalty and subjection vanish; and Buchanan’s modern and more improved Christianity teaches, that then only men are bound to suffer, when they are not able to resist: a worthy doctrine, no doubt, and such as none but rebels were ever the better for, and none but such as love rebellion ever approved of.

The third grand instance of the same mischievous influence of words and names falsely applied, with reference to the interests and concerns of private persons in common conversation; being the fourth and last Discourse from those words in Isaiah v. 20.

ISAIAH v. 20.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil, &c.

I MUST beg your pardon that I here resume the prosecution of a subject, which I have formerly discoursed of in this place, and for some reasons since intermitted, in the courses immediately following.

The discussion of these words I first cast under these four heads.

First, To give some general account of the nature of good and evil, and of the reasons upon which they are founded.

Secondly, To shew, that the way by which good and evil commonly operate upon the mind of man, is by those respective names and appellations, by which they are notified and conveyed to the mind.

Thirdly, To shew the mischief which directly, naturally, and unavoidably follows, from the misapplication and confusion of these names. And,

Fourthly and lastly, To shew the grand and principal instances, in which the abuse or misapplication of those names has such a fatal and pernicious effect.

The three first of these I despatched in my first discourse upon the words, and in my second made some entrance upon the fourth and last, to wit, the assignation of those instances, which I shew spread as far and wide as the universe itself, and were as infinite and numberless as all those various ways and accidents, by which a man is capable of being miserable. To recount all which in particular, since it was impossible, and yet to rest in universals equally unprofitable, I found it necessary to reduce those fatal effects of the misapplication of these great governing names of good and evil to certain heads, and those such as should comprehend and take in the principal things, upon the good or bad estate of which the happiness or misery of human societies must needs depend.

Which heads were three.

1st, Religion, and the concerns of the church.

2dly, Civil government. And,

3dly, The private interests of particular persons.

Now the first of these three, to wit, the concerns of religion and the church, I fully treated of in my second discourse, and that with particular reference to the state of both amongst ourselves, where I shew, that our excellent church had been once ruined, and was like to have been so again, only by the mischievous cant and gibberish of a few paltry misapplied words and phrases; five of which I then instanced in. As,

1st, A malicious calling the rites, ceremonies, and religion of the church of England, popery.

2dly, A calling the schismatical deserters of it, true protestants.

3dly, A calling the late subversion and dissolution of our church, reformation.

A DISCOURSE

CONCERNING

TEMPTATION.

PART I.

2 PETER ii. 9.

The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations.

I DO not know a greater and a juster ground of discouragement to wise and thinking men, with reference to the high concerns of their immortal souls, than to consider, that, over and above that innate corruption brought with them into the world, and so mightily strengthened and improved by the continual restless working of the same in the actual commission of sin ever since, that there should, I say, besides this, be an external agent and evil spirit incessantly blowing up this fire within us, exasperating, stirring up, and drawing forth this active quality in the several mischievous actings thereof: and this evil spirit, withal, of such force, such sagacity, and such unspeakable vigilance for the compassing of men’s destruction, as far surpass all that men themselves can be brought to do even for their own salvation. A sad case certainly, and such as must needs cast the issue of the war between them upon very unequal terms; where the superior in malice is as much the superior in strength too; and where (to make the odds yet greater) man on the one side must venture all, and the tempter on the other has nothing to lose.

It is true indeed, that the will of man can never be forced by any created or finite spirit, good or bad, but may still stand its ground against all attacks from without. Nevertheless, there are so many ways to allure, inveigle, and persuade it, by ill, but suitable objects from abroad, that this bare natural power, or rather possibility, of resisting them, in the issue of the matter, proves but a very poor security to it, being so often urged and overborne (as it is) by the powerful impressions which such objects are almost continually, and with so much success, still making upon it.

Nor is it only the present state of corrupt nature which gives force and efficacy to these importunate assaults; but it is altogether as manifest, that the forementioned qualifications of this subtle agent, even in the state of innocence itself, made him so much too hard for our first parents, that, under all the advantages of that blessed estate, he got ground of them so speedily and so effectually, that he made a shift to out them of paradise and their innocence too, before they had passed one whole day in either.

Whereupon an universal contagion seizing the whole mass of human nature, and all mankind (the second Adam only, by his miraculous conception, excepted) being ever since born in sin, and not only born, but fatally grown up in it, and made slaves to it too; how almost could it be imagined, that there should be so much as room for any further addition to the forlorn and miserable estate of a creature so weak, so wretched, and so wholly biased to his own ruin, as man, upon this account, undeniably is? Indeed, with so mighty a bias is he now earned on to wards it, that (one would have thought) it might have given even this restless and malicious spirit himself (were he capable of it) his quietus est: it being hard to judge, to what purpose so skilful an artist (and so perfectly acquainted with his business) should employ himself in planting engines and laying trains to blow up one, who, by the freest choice of his own will, and in spite of all the principles of self-preservation, is upon every turn so ready to destroy himself. He who will needs venture into the deep, with neither strength nor skill to encounter the boisterous element, will quickly find the stream alone more than sufficient to bear him down and sink him, without the concurrence of either wind or tide to speed his destruction.

And this, God knows, is but too much our case. Every one of us, from the bare sway of his own inherent corruption, carrying enough and enough about him to assure his final doom, without any further impulse from without, to push home and finish the killing stroke. He who is ready to breathe his last by a fever, surely needs not to be despatched with a sword.

But this is not the worst nor saddest of a man’s condition, with reference to temptation, neither: for though it be too certain, that the corruption of man’s nature is such, that it is sufficient to destroy him without the tempter’s doing any thing towards it, yet it is as certain also, that it never actually destroys him, but the tempter has an hand in that fatal work. Such an adversary have we, the sons of Adam, to contend with; an adversary, who, in conjunction with his two grand allies, the world and the flesh, will be always carrying on an implacable war against souls. For God has declared so much, and men have found and felt it; and (whatsoever atheism or infidelity may object) neither must the justice of the one be disputed, nor the experience of the other be denied. Nevertheless, from what has been said, this, I think, may very rationally be inferred, that there cannot be a stronger argument to evince the necessity of a superior good spirit to assist and bear men through the difficulties of a Christian course, than this one consideration, that, besides a man’s own natural corruption, there is an evil spirit continually active and intent to seduce and draw him from it. Upon which account most certainly it is, that the heart of man, so weak in itself within, and so assaulted from without, if not borne up and assisted by something mightier than itself, is by no means an equal match for the tempter.

In the prosecution of the words, I shall consider these two things.

1st, Who are here to be understood by the godly. And,

2dly, What is here meant by temptation.

And here,

First, for the first of these: we may take this for a certain, though perhaps an obvious direction of our inquiries in this matter, viz. that we are not to look or seek for the godly, here spoken of by the apostle, where we may be sure beforehand not to find them; that is to say, amongst such as, with the highest confidence, or rather impudence, not only arrogate, but engross this great character to themselves; such as measure their godliness by looks, postures, and phrases, by a jargon of scriptural cant, and a flow of some warm, rapturous, and fantastic expressions; all according to the sanctified whine and peculiar dialect of those times of infatuation, when noise and nonsense so mightily bore down sense and reason, and the godliness then in vogue turned religion quite out of doors. It was the very shibboleth of the party; nothing being so much in fashion with them as the name, nor more out of fashion, and out of sight too, than the thing itself.

But godliness (blessed be God) is not a mere word or pretence, a trick of state, or political engine to support a party or serve a turn, and much less an occasional cover for a stated hypocrisy. No, it springs from a nobler soil and a deeper root, and, like the great object of it, God himself, is the same yester-day, to-day, and for ever; in its original, divine; in its rule, unchangeable.

And therefore, since bare negatives are not to be rested in, where so high a perfection is to be accounted for, (a perfection comprehending in it all the graces of a Christian, and no less than the image of God himself new stamped upon the soul,) he and he only can lay claim to so glorious a qualification, who is actually in covenant with God, and that not only by external profession, but by real relation; a relation entitling him to all the benefits of a federal estate, by coming up to the conditions of it; or, to be yet more particular, he who with a full and fixed resolution of heart has took the whole law of Christ in the several precepts of it, with the utmost hardships attending them, for his portion in this world, and the promises of it for his inheritance in the next: he who rules his appetites by his reason, and both by his religion: he who makes his duty his business, till at length he comes to make it his delight too: he whose sole design is to be pious, without affecting to be thought so: he who lives and acts by a mighty principle within, which the world about him neither sees nor understands; a principle respecting all God’s commands without reserve; a principle carrying a man out to a course of obedience, for the duration of it constant, and for the extent of it universal: and lastly, in a word, he and he only ought to pass for godly, according to the stated, unalterable rules and measures of Christianity, who allows not himself in the omission of any known duty, or the commission of the least known sin. And this certainly will, and nothing less, that I know of, can, either secure a man from falling into temptation, or (which is yet a greater happiness) from falling by it. All other measures not coming up to this standard are vain, trifling, and fallacious, and to all the real purposes of religion wholly ineffectual. They give us but a godliness of a man’s own making, and consequently of his own rewarding too, if ever it be rewarded at all. And thus much for the explication of the first thing; namely, who and what the godly are, to whom the text promises so great a privilege, as to be delivered from temptation.

2dly, The other thing to be inquired into and explained by us is, what is here meant by temptation; a thing better known by its ill effects, than by the best description. The Greek word is πειρασμὸς, which signifies trial, and so imports not so much the matter, as the end of the dispensation. So that any thing whatsoever which tends to try and discover what is in the heart or will of man, is and may be (in one respect or other) called a temptation. In which sense, outward crosses and afflictions are so called, and the people of God are bidden by the apostle to rejoice, when they fall into divers temptations, James i. 2. And according to the several ways and methods, whereby God draws forth and discovers what is lodged in the hearts of men, good or bad, God himself is said to tempt them, that is, to try or prove them. In which respect he was said to have tempted Abraham, in Gen. xxii. 1. But (the common and most received use of the word having added something of malignity to its first and native signification) generally in scripture it denotes not only a bare trial, but such an one as is attended with a design to hurt or mischieve the people so tried. In which sense the scribes and pharisees are so often brought in by the evangelists tempting our Saviour; that is, they were still trying him with captious, ensnaring questions, as we find in Luke xi. 54, and elsewhere, to get something out of his mouth to accuse and destroy him. But chiefly and most frequently the scripture means by it such a trial, as is intended to supplant and ruin a man in his spiritual concerns, by inducing him to sin, and so subjecting him to the fatal effects and consequents thereof. And thus, on the contrary, it is said of God, that he tempts no man, in James i. 13. This sort of temptation always proceeding from a man’s own inherent corruption and concupiscence, set on work by their trusty confederate and co-worker the Devil, whose peculiar province and perpetual business being to tempt men this way, he has accordingly, by way of eminence, appropriated the odious name of tempter to himself. And therefore, to give a full account of this whole matter in short; any thing or object whatsoever, whereby a man, either through the instigation of the Devil or his agents, or the corruption of his own heart, or the particular circumstances of his condition, or all of them together, is apt to be drawn or disposed to some sinful action or omission, is that which the scripture principally and most properly calls a temptation.

And this, I conceive, gives us so true and full an account of the general nature of temptation, that no particular sort of it can be assigned, but what is directly comprehended in it, or fairly reducible to it.

As for the sense in which the word ought to be taken here, it may be, and no doubt with great truth is, in the full latitude of it, applicable to both sorts of temptation: it being no less the prerogative of God’s goodness and power to deliver men from such trials as afflict them, than from such as are designed to corrupt them. Nevertheless, I think it also as little to be doubted, that the text chiefly respects this latter signification, and accordingly speaks here most designedly of such a deliverance as breaks the snares, and defeats the stratagems, by which the great and mortal enemy of mankind is so infinitely busy, first to debauch, and then to destroy souls.

Nor can the very reason of the words (so far as I can judge) infer any thing else; forasmuch as all the instances here given by the apostle in the fore going part of this chapter, as first, of persons seduced and drawn aside by false prophets and teachers, bringing in damnable doctrines amongst them, in the first verse; and then of Noah delivered from that general inundation of sin, by which, one deluge (as I may so express it) brought upon the world another, in the fifth verse; and lastly, of righteous Lot’s deliverance from the filthy conversation of the Sodomites, in the seventh verse, are all of them but so many notable examples of several persons, some delivered to, and others delivered from, such a sort of temptation, as, without affecting the outward man, were to shoot their poison and pollution only into the inmost powers of the soul or spirit, wounding and working upon that by secret and more killing impressions.

Add to this, that the deliverance from temptation here insisted upon, is set forth as a singular privilege and special act of favour vouchsafed by God to the righteous, and that in a very distinguishing way, (as shall be shewn presently;) whereas a deliverance from temporal crosses and calamities can hardly, with any congruity to other places and pas sages of scripture, be termed so; since such crosses, for the most part, are there declared to be the lot and portion of the godly in this world, the known mark of their calling, a proof of their saintship, and the very badge of their profession.

Nevertheless, allowing this sense of the word not to be wholly excluded here, the argument we may draw from thence, for our present assertion, will run, a fortiore, thus: That if it be so signal a mercy for God to deliver the saints from the mere outside and surface of misery, in those temporal pressures and adversities, which, though possibly they may sometimes incommode the man, yet can never reach the saint, and though they break the casket, can never come at the jewel, certainly it must needs be a mercy of a much higher rate, to deliver them from such temptations as carry nothing but hell and death along with them, and are of so strong, so malign, and so fatal an influence upon the soul, as to drive at nothing less than its utter ruin and damnation.

And now, if upon what has been said it be here inquired, whether they are the righteous only whom God delivers from temptation, and that no such deliverances are ever vouchsafed by him to any of the contrary character?

I answer, that I can find nothing in scripture or reason to found such a doctrine upon; but that such deliverances both may be and sometimes are vouchsafed to persons, far enough from being reckoned godly, either in the accounts of God or man. And first, that they may be so, we need no other reason to evince it than this, that God, in these cases, may very well restrain the actions, without working any change upon the will or affections. And this, both with reference to the evil spirit himself, whom he may control, and keep from tempting; as likewise with reference to wicked men, from whom he may, in several instances, cut off the opportunities of sinning, or complying with the tempter, and yet leave them as habitually wicked as they were before: God’s restraining grace often extending itself to such as his sanctifying grace never reaches. And in the next place, that such deliverances not only may be, but sometimes actually are afforded to persons represented under no note of piety or virtue, but much otherwise, those three memorable examples of Abimelech, Esau, and Balaam, the first in the 20th of Genesis, the second in the 33d of Genesis, and the other in the 22d of Numbers, sufficiently demonstrate.

So that we may rationally conclude, that even wicked persons also are sometimes sharers in such deliverances; but still so, that this by all means ought to be observed withal, that the said deliverances are dealt forth to these two different sorts of men upon very different grounds; viz. to the former upon the stock of covenant or promises; to the latter upon the stock of uncovenanted mercy, and the free, overflowing egress of the divine benignity, often exerting itself upon such as have no claim to it at all. The sovereign Author of all good, in this, as in innumerable other cases, scattering some of the bounties of his common grace, as well as those of nature, amongst the sons of men, for the wise and just ends of his providence in the government of the world; which would quickly dissolve and sink into confusion, should even the wickedest of men be always as wicked as the tempter (if he had his will) would assuredly make them.

Now this exposition of the words thus premised, I shall cast the prosecution of them under these three particulars.

1st, To shew how far God delivers persons truly pious out of temptation.

2dly, To shew what is the grand motive or impulsive cause inducing God thus to deliver them. And,

3dly and lastly, To shew why and upon what grounds this is to be reputed so great a mercy and so transcendent a privilege.

And first for the first of these, namely, how far God delivers persons truly pious from temptation. This I shall endeavour to shew, by considering them with reference to temptation these three ways.

1st, As before they enter into it.

2dly, As they are actually entered into it. And,

3dly and lastly, As they are in some degree prevailed upon by it.

All ways of deliverance from it being accordingly reducible to, and comprehensive within the compass of these three, viz.

1st, Of being kept from it; as the church of Philadelphia was, in the third of Revel, ver. 10.

2dly, Of being supported under it; as Joseph in the 39th of Genesis, and St. Paul in the 2d of Corinthians, 12th chap. and 9th ver. (we read) were. And,

3dly and lastly, Of being brought out of it, as in Luke xxii. 31 we find St. Peter to have been, and as all true penitents and sincere converts never fail to be.

Each of which particular heads shall be distinctly considered by us. And,

First of all; God delivers by way of prevention, or keeping off the temptation; which of all other ways is doubtless the surest, as the surest is unquestionably the best. For by this is set a mighty barrier between the soul and the earliest approaches of its mortal enemy. Whereas, on the contrary, the first step in any destructive course still prepares for the second, and the second for the third; after which there is no stop, but the progress is infinite; forasmuch as the third more powerfully disposes to the fourth, than the first to the second; and so the advance proportionably goes on.

Which being so, and the soul no less than the body, being subject to so many distempers, too likely to prove fatal to it, must not preventing remedies in all reason be both the gentlest and the safest for it too? Distance from danger is the strongest fence against it: and that man needs not fear burning, (be the fire never so fierce,) who keeps himself from being so much as scorched.

If we consider the sin of the fallen angels themselves, there might, without dispute, have been a prevention of it, though no recovery after it; and a keeping of their first station, (as the apostle expresses it,) though, when once quitted, no postliminious return to it, no retrieving of a lost innocence or a forfeited felicity.

For which causes the preventing methods of grace may deservedly pass for some of the prime instances of the divine mercy to men in this world. For though it ought to be owned for an eminent act of grace to restore one actually fallen, yet there are not wanting arguments to persuade, that it is a greater to keep one from falling. Not to break a limb is more desirable, than to have it set and healed, though never so skilfully and well. Preservation in this, as in many other cases, being better a great deal than restoration; since, after all is done, it is odds but the scar will remain when the wound is cured, and the danger over.

See the sermon in vol. ii. p. 139-162, concerning prevention of sin, upon 1 Sam. xxv. 32, 33.

And therefore happy, no doubt, by a distinguished sort of happiness, are those favourites of Heaven, who have both omnipotence and omniscience, infinite power and infinite wisdom, jointly engaged by infinite mercy, so to guard and wake over them through all the various turns and hazardous encounters in their Christian course, as to bring them off from the enemy safe and untouched, and to work their deliverance rather by rescue than recovery. It is a work in which God, as I may so speak, shews his art and skill. God knows how to deliver the godly, says the text. The whole action is carried on by preventing grace, under the conduct of that high attribute of God’s knowledge; and especially that noble branch of it, his foreknowledge, by which he has the remotest futurities and the loosest contingencies under a certain and exact view. For though indeed the divine knowledge (as all other knowledge) be of itself unoperative; (the proper nature of knowledge being only to apprehend and judge of what comes before it, and rather to suppose than to work upon its object;) yet if the divine knowledge did not certainly and infallibly foresee and comprehend every turn, motion, and foredetermination of man’s will, with reference to every object or motive that can possibly be presented to it, how could God so steadily and effectually ward off all those evils and temptations, which the several events, accidents, and occasions of our lives (all of them variously affecting our wills) would from time to time expose us to? Omnipotence itself could not certainly prevent a danger, if omniscience did not foresee it. For where there is no prescience there can be no prevention. And this is a demonstration that all such preventive deliverances are so peculiarly and wholly from God, that, for want of this perfection, no man living can possibly thus deliver himself. I will guide thee with mine eye, says God, Psalm xxxii. 8. Next to the protecting shelter of God’s wing is the securing prospect of his eye.

Numerous are the deliverances that God works for us, which we see, but infinitely more those which we do not see, but he does. For how often is the scene of our destruction contrived and laid by the tempter! how often are his nets spread for us, and those of too curious and fine a thread to be discernible by our eye, and we go securely treading on to our own ruin, when suddenly the mercy of a preventing Providence stops us in our walk, and pulls back our foot from the fatal snare!

Unspeakable are the advantages vouchsafed to mankind by God’s preventing grace; if we consider how apt a temptation is to diffuse, and how prone our nature is to receive an infection. It is dangerous dwelling even in the suburbs of an infected city. Not only the touches, but also the very breath of a temptation is poisonous; and there is sometimes (if I may so express it) a contagion even without a contact.

And if the conscience has not wholly lost its native tenderness, it will not only dread the infection of a wound, but also the aspersion of a blot. For though the soul be not actually corrupted and debauched by a temptation, yet it is something to be sullied and blown upon by it, to have been in the dangerous familiarities of sin, and in the next approach and neighbourhood of destruction. Such being the nature of man, that it is hardly possible for him to be near an ill thing, and not the worse for it.

For if we accurately observe the inward movings and actions of the heart, we shall find that temptation wins upon it by very small, secret, and almost insensible gradations. Perhaps in its first converse with a tempting object, it is not presently surprised with a desire of it; but does it not hereby come to lose some of its former averseness to it? Possibly, at first view, it may not esteem it amiable, but does it not begin to think it less ugly? Its love may not be yet kindled, but is not its former loathing some thing abated? The encroaches of a temptation are so strangely insinuating, that no security under it can be comparable to a being remote from it: and therefore, if we hate its friendship, let us dread its acquaintance, shun its converse, and keep aloof off from its company. For he who would gain a complete triumph over it, must know, that to grapple with it is at best a venture, but to fly from it is certain victory.

And if so, where can a man be so safe as in the arms of sin-preventing grace? the sovereign influence of which will appear, not only from those peculiar effects of it upon the pious and the virtuous, but also from those great things done by it even for the worst and wickedest part of mankind, (as we hinted before,) and those indeed so great, (how little soever taken notice of,) that without them common society could not possibly subsist; but the moral and political frame of the world would fall back into a fouler and more deformed chaos than that out of which this material one was first produced. For how come men generally, and that so extremely against the bent of nature, to submit to laws; laws which for the most part lay a restraint upon their strongest appetites, and which, if they would but generally agree to break and to throw off, could signify no thing? How comes the multitude to have such an awe upon their spirits for governors and magistrates, though they know themselves so vastly superior in strength to those who govern them? And why rather is not all order and government upon these terms utterly confounded and turned topsyturvy, by thefts, rapes, incests, perjuries, and murders, and irresistibly borne down by an overflowing torrent of all kinds of villainy, forcing its way through the very bowels of it? Is it because there is not corruption enough in man’s nature to prompt and carry him out to all these enormities? or because there are not sinful objects enough to inflame and draw forth this corruption? No, it is but too sadly manifest that there is too plentiful a stock of both to suffer the world to be quiet one moment, if they could but once, like two mighty seas, meet and join, and flow in together.

But all the stop is from an infinitely wise, preventing power, which keeps all in order here below, by separating between ill objects and worse appetites, by cutting off the opportunities of sin, and so both diverting and defeating the temptation. For how many might, and without doubt would have stolen, as Achan did, had the same allurement been played before them! How many might have committed David’s murder and adultery, had they been under David’s circumstances! How many might have denied and forsworn Christ with St. Peter, had they been surprised with the same danger! How great a part of the innocence of the world is nothing else but want of opportunity to do the wickedness they have a mind to! And how many forbear sinning, not because God’s grace has wrought upon their wills, but because a merciful Providence has kept off the occasion.

And thus much for the first degree of God’s delivering men from temptation; a benefit, which, for the common ends of his providence, he sometimes vouchsafes to all sorts of men promiscuously, but most eminently and frequently to the good and pious, whom for higher and better ends he often rescues and preserves from the first offers and approaches of sinful objects and occasions, and thereby gives his first answer to that most important and divine petition in the Lord’s prayer; Lead us not into temptation.

2dly, We are now in the next place to consider such persons as advanced a step further, and as they are actually entered into temptation; and so also God is at hand for their deliverance. But here we must first premise, what it is to enter into temptation. And that in one word is, for a man to meet with such objects, to converse with such occasions, and to be brought under such circumstances of life, as have in them a peculiar fitness to provoke and draw forth the working of his corruption, whatsoever it be; but especially of that particular corruption which is strongest and most predominant in him. So that a man finds something ready to take hold of his heart and affections, which he cannot easily keep off, or disengage himself from. Thus when a covetous man meets with opportunities of gain, fit to feed and gratify his covetousness; or a proud aspiring man with honours and preferments, suited to his pride and ambition; or lastly, a lustful man with objects or incentives apt to kindle and inflame his lust, with other the like provisions for the several sinful appetites of man’s corrupt nature, such an one must know that he is entered into temptation; his standing is slippery, and his retreat doubtful, and what the issue will be in his final coming off, God alone knows, in whose sole power it is to fetch him out of the jaws of death, and to work his deliverance.

It is possible indeed, that, by the peculiar and extraordinary favours of divine mercy, a person so engaged may come off clear and entire, so that the temptation shall not be able so much as to fasten, or make the least impression upon him; but then this is very rare, and no more than possible, and not to be effected but by a power infinite and divine. For as it was God who suspended the natural force of that material fire from acting upon the bodies of the three children mentioned in Daniel iii. so it is God alone who must control the fury of this spiritual flame from seizing upon the soul, having always so much fuel and fit matter there for it to prey upon.

And for an eternal monument of his goodness, he has not left us without some such heroic instances as these upon record in his word, that so the saints may receive double courage and confidence, having their deliverance not only sealed and secured to them by promise, but also that promise ratified and made good to them by precedents and examples, like so many stars appearing, both to direct and to comfort the benighted traveller.

And here, first of all, we have Joseph brought under as fierce a trial as the wit and malice of hell could contrive, being tempted to a vile action by two of the most staggering inducements that could well work upon the mind of man, to wit, power and favour in his lord’s family, if he complied with the temptation; and the shame, infamy, and reproach of the very villainy he was tempted to, in case he refused it. And no doubt so long as the slander was believed of him, he lay in prison under as black a note of ingratitude and baseness, and with as great an abhorrence of all good men, as the charge of so foul a crime, if true, must deservedly have branded him with. And now, could any thing be imagined so grievous and intolerable to a virtuous mind, as to bear the infamy of a lewd and base act, only for refusing to commit it? Yet this was the plunge and temptation which he was brought into, but God brought him out of it, and that without the least spot or sully, but with a mind as clear, and a conscience as unblemished, as the reputation it has given his immortal name to all posterity.

In the next place let us cast our eye upon Moses in the court of Pharaoh, that is, in the shop of the Devil, the school of vice, the scene and sink of all lust and impurity, and the very high road to perdition; so that perhaps the court of Egypt was a greater plague than any that afterwards befell Egypt; a place in which he was to converse with all sorts of allurement, to walk upon traps and snares, to have all his senses accosted with continual messages from the Devil; and in a word, to see, hear, and taste nothing but the pleasures of sin, and scarce to be able to look off from a temptation. This was his condition, and thus was he bred and trained up, as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, a candidate for hell, and a probationer for damnation. And yet even here, as it were, in the very bosom of sin and death, God preserved him innocent and untouched, and, like Gideon’s fleece, clean and dry, while all was drenched with a foul and a killing dew round about him. Nor did God preserve him only from ill things, but prepared him also for great, and perhaps the greatest that Providence ever thought fit to achieve by the hand of a mere man.

Again, Such another instance have we in David, encountered with a temptation which seldom hap pens, and is seldomer resisted; to wit, an offer to make his way to a promised throne and sceptre by the blood of his bitter and avowed enemy, then perfectly at his mercy; and a greater temptation certainly could hardly befall a man, than that which should promise him with one stroke both to gratify his ambition, and to satisfy his revenge; to put a crown upon his head, and his mortal enemy under his feet. And yet, as dazzling and alluring as this offer was, David had something within him stronger than the strongest assaults of those two violent and transporting affections; something that would not suffer him to be disloyal to gain a crown, nor receive possession of that kingdom from the Devil, of which God himself had given him the reversion. No temptation could make him snatch God’s work out of his own hands, whose sole prerogative it is to dispose of crowns and kingdoms, to appoint, and to exclude, and to hasten as well as alter successions.

But now, may there not be yet a greater temptation than either of these? something more glistering than a crown? and more luscious than revenge? If there may, surely it was that which St. Paul and Barnabas met with in Acts xiv. the offer of divine worship and adoration. For to be like God was the first temptation, which robbed man of his innocence; and so pertinaciously was this urged upon these two apostles by the men of Lystra, that it is said, verse 18, that Paul and Barnabas could hardly restrain them from doing sacrifice to them; for the oxen, the garlands, and the priest of Jupiter, were all ready for that purpose. But now, how did this strange ἀποθέωσις, think we, affect and work upon these holy men? Why, to be sure, not as it would have worked upon a Simon Magus, whose whole heart, soul, and study, was set upon being canonized and worshipped by the sottish Samaritans for a kind of demi-god, Acts viii. 10; nor yet as it would have affected an Herod, who would needs be a god too, though of the rabble’s and the Devil’s making, Acts xii. 22. But these men, whose hearts God had touched with a true and tender sense of religion, were so far from being exalted, that they were cast down, humbled, and astonished at such impious and extravagant honours; and no doubt rejected them with so great an horror and detestation, that they would much rather have been sacrificed themselves, than have endured any to sacrifice to them.

Now in all these notable instances of success against temptation we must observe this; that the tempting object was brought home and close to them, and laid directly before them, and that with all imaginable advantages of allurement, together with full opportunity and power to commit the sin which they were tempted to; and yet the persons so tempted came off (as we have shewn) not in the least tainted or prevailed upon. From all which it is evident, that God secures his saints against temptation, not only by antecedent preventions keeping them from it, but also by his subsequent grace supporting them under it, and bringing them victorious out of it; which is the second degree of deliverance.

3dly and lastly, We are to consider the persons hitherto spoken of, as not only entered into temptation, but also as in some measure prevailed upon by it. For that a person truly pious, sincere, and sound at the heart towards God, may through the inveiglements of the world, and the frailty of his own nature, be sometimes surprised, and for a while drawn into the ways of sin, I do no more doubt or question, than that a sound and healthful constitution may some times be disordered with heats and colds, battered with wounds and bruises, and indisposed by swellings and breakings-out; and yet all this without destroying the main, substantial health and habit of the body. And he who asserts the contrary, and acknowledges no holiness but what is perfection, will upon trial find it a much easier matter, by the faulty passages of his life, to prove himself sinful and unholy, than by the very best and holiest of them to prove himself perfect.

But that I may give some light and resolution to this great and weighty case of conscience, how far a person truly godly and regenerate may, without ceasing to be so, be prevailed upon by temptation, I will here set down the several degrees, steps, and advances, by which a temptation or sinful proposal gradually wins and gains upon the soul, and those all of them comprised in St. James i. 14, 15. Every man, says the apostle, is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, if bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. I say, in these words we have a full and distinct account of five several steps or gradations, by which a temptation grows upon, and at length prevails over, the souls of men.

1st, The first of which we may call seduction. As when the mind, being surprised, or suddenly struck with the taking representation of some sinful act or object, begins to think of it, so as by such thoughts to be for the present drawn aside from its duty. For seduction literally and properly signifies a man’s being drawn away, or drawn aside. As the Greek word here has it. He is ὑπὸ τῆς ἐπιθυμίας ἐξελκόμενος, drawn off, or drawn away by his concupiscence. As for instance; when a man is intent upon the honest works of his calling, and two or three lewd companions come, and desire his company to a debauch; here he first begins to hearken to the proposal, and to think with himself of the pleasure and satisfaction which he might find by complying with it. During which thought he ceases for that time to intend the business he was upon before, or to employ his mind about it. And this is seduction, the first invading step of a temptation, whereby it seizes a man’s thoughts, and actually draws him off from his duty, by diverting the intention of his mind from that to something else; much like the first unbending of a bow, which though it does not spoil it, yet for the present renders it unserviceable.

2dly, The second degree of temptation may be called enticement or allurement. As when a man does not only think upon a sinful object or proposal, but also suffers his thoughts to dwell, and, as it were, to brood upon it with delight, pleasing his imagination by frequent reflections upon it, and representing it to himself under its most advantageous colours and circumstances, while he thus turns and rolls it about in his fancy. And this is expressed here by the next Greek word, δελεαζόμενος, which the translation renders enticed, and imports in it a metaphor taken from the practice of such as cast or lay some bait before any fish or fowl; which, as soon as they spy it, do for a while view and look upon it with appetite and pleasure, before they are brought to take it in, or swallow it. Now if a temptation chance to be stopped here, the main and principal drift of it is defeated: nevertheless this is a great and a dangerous step; for when it comes so far, it rarely happens but it proceeds farther. And therefore,

3dly, The third degree is, when, after such possession had of the thoughts and fancy, the temptation comes to make its way into the consent of the will, and to gain that great fort also; so that the mind begins to purpose, and accordingly to contrive the commission of the sin proposed to it; and this the Greek text here calls συλλαμβάνειν, to conceive; εἶτα δὲ ἡ ἐπιθυμία συλλαβοῦσα, when lust, or concupiscence, has conceived; so that the soul hereby grows, as it were, big and impregnate with a temptation. In which case, as all immoderate fulness naturally endeavours after evacuation and vent; so the soul now becomes restless, and, as it were, in labour, till it disburdens itself, and discharges what it has thus conceived, by some sinful act or commission. And this directly introduces and brings in,

4thly, The fourth degree of prevalence which a temptation gets over the soul; and that is, the actual eruption of it in the perpetration or commission of the sin suggested to it; and this in the forementioned place of St. James is called τίκτει ἁμαρτίαν, to bring forth sin; when lust or concupiscence in the heart sends forth a cursed brood or litter in the actions: like a fountain, which having been for some time imprisoned and pent up in the bowels of the earth, at length forces its way through, and casts forth its streams with a violent, uncontrolled effusion.

5thly, The fifth and last degree, completing the victory which temptation obtains over a man, is, when sin comes to that pitch, as to reign, and, by a frequent habitual commission of it, to domineer and lord it in a man’s conversation; in respect of which we are said, Rom. vi. 17, to be the servants of sin, as not being in our own power, nor having the disposal and command of our own faculties, but upon all occasions being turned and carried about by the tyrannical impure dictates of an overruling corruption; in which respect also we are said, Rom. vii. 23, to be led captive by sin, as being conquered and over-mastered by the violent assaults of it, and then, as it were, pinioned and fettered, (as slaves and conquered persons use to be,) and so by consequence put out of all possibility either of resistance or escape.

And this the apostle St. James in the forecited place calls τελεῖν ἁμαρτίαν, the finishing of sin; ἡ δὲ ἁμαρτία ἀποτελεσθεῖσα ἀποκύει θάνατον, when sin is finished, it brings forth death. And it is frequency and continuance in sin which properly finishes it; for it is this which gives it its full maturity and utmost perfection, which habituates, and even turns it into another nature, which a single act or commission of sin cannot do. And when a man comes once in this manner, not only to act sin, but even to be acted and possessed by it, as an absolute slave to all its commands, he is then ripe for hell and perdition, and fit only to be sent thither by the next destroying providence.

These are the several degrees by which a temptation grows and prevails upon the hearts of men; which that I may the better represent and set before you at one view, I shall gather and sum them up all into one instance; and it shall be that of Demas, mentioned by the apostle, 2 Tim. iv. 10, Demas hath forsaken us, having loved this present world.

Here we will first consider Demas in full communion with the church, and a zealous professor of Christianity; during which strict and self-denying profession it is suggested to his mind (by the Devil, we may be sure) what profit and advantage he might reap by relinquishing this severe course, and swimming with the common stream of the world. And this thought prevails so far with him, as to take him off from his accustomed strictness in the actual pursuit of his duty. And this is the first degree of temptation, which is called seduction. From this he proceeds to entertain and feed his mind with frequent thoughts of those worldly gains and emoluments, reflecting upon them with much pleasure and complacency. And this is the second degree of temptation, which the scripture calls a being enticed or beguiled. From this he goes on, and, from the pleasure of these thoughts, begins to purpose and intend to put them in execution. And this is that third degree of temptation, by which sin is said to conceive. From hence he makes a step further, and actually lays down the profession of Christianity, and so, striking off to the world, fully executes those purposes and intentions. Which is the fourth degree of temptation, by which sin is said to bring forth. And lastly, having come so far, he adds the concluding cast, and continues and perseveres in the sinful pursuit of his worldly advantages, never returning, nor recovering himself by repentance, to his former profession. And thus at length we see him got to the top of his sin, which, by this perseverance in it, he properly finishes and completes, and so stands registered in the black roll of final apostates.

Having thus reckoned up the several degrees of temptation, and set before you the fatal round and series of the Devil’s methods for destroying souls, let us now in the next place inquire, how far God vouchsafes to deliver the pious and sincere out of them.

In answer to which I first of all affirm, that God’s methods in this case are very various, and not to be determined or declared by any one standing or universal assertion.

Sometimes, by a total and entire deliverance, he delivers them from every degree and encroach of a temptation.

Sometimes he lets them fall into the first degree of it, and receive it into their thoughts; but then delivers them from the second, which is, to cherish and continue it there by frequent pleasing reflections upon it.

Sometimes he gives way to this too, but then hinders it from coming to a full purpose and consent of will.

Sometimes he lets it go thus far also, and suffers sin to conceive by such a purpose or consent; but then, by a kind of spiritual abortion, stifles it in the very birth, and so keeps it from breaking forth into actual commission.

And fourthly, for reasons best known to his most wise providence, he sometimes permits a temptation to grow so powerful, as to have strength to bring forth, and to defile the soul with one or more gross actual eruptions.

But then, in the last place, by a mighty, over powering grace, he very often (as some assert) or always (as others affirm) keeps it from an absolute, entire, and final conquest. So that sin never comes to that height, as to reign in the godly, to bear sway, and become habitual. But though its endeavours are not always extinguished, nor its sallyings out wholly stopped, yet its dominion is broke. It may sometimes bruise and wound, but it shall never kill. It may possibly be committed, but it shall never come so far as to be finished. But the Spirit of God will interpose, and cut it short in its progress.

Memorand. That there are some remarks of the same nature, concerning the steps and progress of sin, in vol. ii. p. 146, 147, 148.

Now the foregoing particulars, upon a due improvement of them, will naturally teach us these two great and important lessons.

1st, Concerning the singular goodness as well as wisdom of our great Lawgiver, even in the strictest and severest precepts of our religion.

2dly, The other concerning the best and surest method of dealing with the tempter and his temptations.

Of each of which very briefly.

And first for the first of them. The severest precepts of Christianity seem to be those which abridge men in the very first motions and desires of their corrupt affections; such as are delivered in the fifth chapter of St. Matthew. According to which, anger passes, in the gospel account, for murder; and looking and lusting, for adultery. Which are hard lessons, you will say; and indeed, considered barely in themselves, cannot well appear otherwise. But then, if you consider withal, that the just reward of murder and adultery, without repentance, (which is not so easy a work as some imagine,) is certain and eternal damnation, and that lust and anger directly lead to them; is it not the height of wisdom and goodness too, to hinder the consummation of those soul-wasting sins, by obliging us to withstand them in their first infancy and beginnings? For then it is certain that they may be dealt with and suppressed with much more ease, than when, by several degrees of lust and desire cherished and allowed, they are ready to break forth, and, as it were, even force their way into actual commission. Is it not a much safer and surer way to victory, to attack an enemy in his weakness, than in his full strength; while he is yet levying his forces, than when he has actually taken the field? to crush the cockatrice in the egg, than to grapple with it when it is grown a serpent? Is it not much easier to prevent the conception of sin, than to suffer it to conceive, and then to forbid it to bring forth? to suffer lust and anger to boil, and rage, and ferment in a man’s breast without control, and then to damn him for a lustful or revengeful act, which perhaps, after such a progress made by those sins in his desires, it is scarce morally in his power to forbear?

Certainly it is a much greater mercy and tenderness to the souls of men, to represent the first movings of the heart towards any forbidden object as unlawful in themselves, and destructive in their consequence, and thereby to incite the soul to a vigorous resistance of them while they may be mastered, and with ten times less trouble extinguished, than, after they are once actually committed, they can be repented of? No doubt sin is both more easily and effectually kept from beginning, than, being once begun, it can be stopped from going on. For every, even the least motion towards sin, not immediately checked, (though it be but in the thoughts,) is a certain step to a further degree, and consequently a dangerous preparative to the very last completion of it. And therefore all those precepts of Christ, which seem at first view to carry with them so much of rigour and severity, are indeed quite contrary, and nothing else but the gracious and benign contrivances of a superlative wisdom and mercy combining to do us good; of wisdom, as suggesting the best course to prevent sin; and of mercy, as prescribing the surest way to save the soul.

2dly, The other great lesson which we may learn from the foregoing particulars is, concerning the most effectual method of dealing with the tempter and his temptations; and that is, to follow the method of their dealing with us. A temptation never begins where it intends to make an end.

Would the Devil tempt a man to rebellion? He will not persuade him to set up his standard, to take up arms, and declare himself immediately, unless he have to deal with one who is as much fool as knave, (a very unfit composition to make a rebel of;) but he will first tempt him to ambition, then to discontent, then to murmuring or libeling against his superiors, and from that to caballing with factious and seditious malecontents like himself, and by these several ascents and degrees the tempter will effectually form and fashion him into a perfect Absalom, a Catiline, or a Cromwell, in time.

Or would he work a man up to the height of debauchery or uncleanness? Why, in such a case it would be too black and impudent a proposal to bid him leap into his neighbour’s bed presently. And therefore he will make his approaches like a more experienced artist, first inveigling him with loose thoughts; from thence leading him to impure desires; and from such desires to the further incentives of lewd, lustful, and licentious conversation: and by these several stages of filth and folly he shall at length arrive at such a pitch of guilt and infamy, as shall render him a public nuisance, a very pest and infection, and able to give the very air he breathes in the plague, or something worse.

These are some of the Devil’s methods by which he tempts and destroys souls; and such as are spiritually wise will take the very same course to preserve them. So that, would a man keep the Devil out of his life and actions? let him keep him out of his thoughts and desires. And so long as he observes this way of dealing with him, that man surely can be in no danger of the guilt of murder, who makes a conscience of the first sallies of an angry thought or an abusive word; nor is he under any likelihood of being ever brought to defile his neighbour’s bed, who dares not allow himself in a wanton look or a lewd desire.

But on the contrary, can any one in his wits think to secure himself from the practice of any vice, after he has suffered it to fix and seat itself in his affections? Will he let the Devil (the most expert of wrestlers) get within him, and then expect that he should not throw him? The divine wisdom, I am sure, prescribes us quite other methods for our spiritual security, even the sure and sovereign methods of prevention. God’s prescription is, that we bestir ourselves betimes; that we nip sin when it begins to bud in the thoughts, and crop it off as soon as it shoots forth in the desires. And though possibly such severe disciplines and restraints of our selves may look but like chimeras or romances to persons immersed in their sensuality, and enslaved to their vice, yet they are really great and necessary duties, and such as must be practised, and therefore certainly may.

And the better to convince us that they are so, let this one consideration always dwell upon our minds; that there is no man so far hardened by and over grown with sin at present, but there was a time of his life once, in which his heart could have served him to have done all this. And if, by a long, inveterate course of sinning, he has since (in effect) sinned away his liberty and his conscience so far, as to become insensible and inflexible, and unable to be wrought upon by that which would both have wrought and prevailed upon him heretofore, such a moral, acquired impotence ought, in all reason, to lie at his own door; for it is certain that he can not charge it upon God, whose wisdom, justice, and goodness is such, that he never fails those, who are not first failing to themselves.

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

A DISCOURSE

CONCERNING

TEMPTATION.

PART II.

2 PETER ii. 9.

The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations.

I HAVE formerly made some entrance into these words, in which, after a short explication and account given of these two things, viz.

1st, Who are here to be understood by the godly; And,

2dly, What is here meant by temptation;

I cast the further prosecution of the words under these following particulars.

1st, To shew how far God delivers persons truly pious out of temptation.

2dly, To shew what is the grand motive or impulsive cause, inducing God thus to deliver them. And,

3dly and lastly, To shew why and upon what grounds this is to be reputed so great a mercy and so transcendent a privilege.

The first of these three I have already despatched, and proceed now to the

Second, namely, to shew what is the prime motive, or grand impulsive cause, inducing God to deliver persons truly pious out of temptation.

Now this is twofold.

1st, The free mercy of God. And,

2dly, The prevailing intercession of Christ.

And first for the first of these; the free, sovereign inclination of divine mercy. Concerning which, if we duly and exactly consider the absoluteness and simplicity of the divine nature, nothing can be more agreeable to the conceptions which we form of it, and consequently more rational, than to state the first reason or impulsive cause of all God’s actings within himself. So that, as we must acknowledge the different issue and success of persons brought into the same condition of danger or distress, to depend wholly upon the exercise or suspension of the divine mercy towards such persons; in like manner are we to resolve the exercise or suspension of this mercy into the divine will.

Thus in the present case: that one man is delivered out of the plunges of temptation, and another suffered to sink and perish under them; it is from an act of mercy vouchsafed to the one, and not to the other; and that this is not equally vouchsafed to both, it is from the free resolution of that sovereign, supreme will, which has mercy upon whom it will have mercy, and is by no means bound to save or deliver those who have freely destroyed themselves.

And that this is so is evident: for if the first motives or impulsive cause of this deliverance were not wholly from God himself, then it must proceed from something in the person who is to be delivered; and if so, it must be either from the necessity of his condition needing such a deliverance, or from the worth and goodness of his person deserving it. But it will appear to be from neither. Not from the necessity of his condition in the first place: for if this were the first and chief cause inducing God to deliver men, then it would equally do the same for all in the same condition. But the contrary is too manifest; for some under the same circumstances of temptation are delivered, while others are suffered to perish by it. Nor yet, in the next place, can the cause of this deliverance be stated upon the goodness or piety of the person delivered. For certain it is, that no degree of piety whatsoever could ever yet absolutely privilege the very best of men from being tempted, that is to say, either from first entering into, or for some time continuing under a temptation; as several in all ages, who have been most remarkably pious, have found and felt by sad experience. Nor is it less certain, that it is not a man’s piety which is the cause inducing God to vouchsafe him a final deliverance out of temptation, forasmuch as it could not antecedently induce God at first to rescue or keep him from it, when yet it is manifest, that the piety of the said person must needs have been at that time greater and more untainted, than after the temptation had made some breach upon it, as it always in some measure does, before the tempted person comes to be perfectly conquered by it. As, for instance, it must of necessity bring him to the commission of it; and (if it were no more) this must needs degrade his piety to a lower pitch than it was at before the temptation began. And then if an higher degree of piety could not obtain so much of God as to keep the man from first entering into the snare, surely it cannot be imagined, that after he had lost some degrees of that piety by being taken and held in it, it should, under those disadvantages, be more prevalent with God to deliver him out of it, than at first to keep him from it; which experience shews it did not.

And therefore it is clear, that the first grand motive or impulsive cause of this deliverance is not to be sought for in any thing inherent in the person delivered, but in the sole and sovereign good-will and pleasure of his great deliverer.

But you will say, Does not the text itself state the cause and reason of this deliverance, upon the godliness of the persons delivered? For does not the apostle here expressly tell us, that they are the godly whom God delivers out of temptation?

To this I answer, that in all the actings of divine mercy we must distinguish between the first impulsive cause of the act, and the proper qualification of the object upon which that act is exerted: the confusion of which two, frequently occasions no small mistakes and blunders in discoursing about these matters.

God promises deliverance out of temptation to the godly, and yet their godliness is not the cause of this deliverance, any more than of God’s making such a promise. It is indeed the qualification of the person who is to be delivered; so that without it the deliverance (upon a federal account, as was said before) would not be; but still the cause of it is quite another thing.

A prince, for instance, has an hundred of his subjects in captivity, and makes a declaration that he will redeem so many of them as are of such a certain age, taking no notice of the rest. Now, in this case, we cannot say that their being of such an age was the first impulsive cause inducing their prince to redeem them; but his own good pleasure, which first made him take up a resolution to redeem such persons, and to make this the condition of it. Their being indeed of such an age is the qualifying condition, rendering them the proper objects of such a redemption; so that such, and none but such, are redeemed. But the cause of that redemption it is not, that being (as we have shewn) to be sought for elsewhere.

Now the case is much the same, where God vouchsafes to deliver men out of temptation. Whence is it, that, upon such trials befalling men, some few escape, and in the issue are brought off without ruin, while thousands fall at their right hand and at their left? Is it the extreme misery of their condition moving God’s compassion, or the worthiness of their persons requiring this of his justice, which causes their deliverance? No; these are not, cannot be the cause, for the reasons before mentioned; they are indeed the proper qualifications rendering them fit to be delivered, but the free mercy or good pleasure of God is the main, leading, impulsive cause that actually they are delivered.

The thing, therefore, which is eminent from first to last in this whole transaction is mercy; mercy, which is its own argument; mercy, the first and grand motive of which is itself. For if it were not so, what could there be in a sinful, polluted creature to engage it? There is indeed enough to need, but nothing to deserve it. But the divine compassion, wheresoever it fixes, removes all obstacles, answers all objections, and needs no other reason of its actings, but its own sovereign, absolute, unaccountable freedom.

2dly, The other impulsive cause of God’s delivering the saints out of temptation, is the intercession of Christ on their behalf. And this does not in the least derogate from, or contradict our first assertion, ascribing this great work and benefit only to divine mercy: forasmuch as it is the sole effect of mercy, that we have such an intercessor; and there is no opposition in subordination.

Now the two great parts of Christ’s priestly office are his meritorious satisfaction, and continual intercession. By the first of which he purchased for us all spiritual blessings, and by the latter he actually applies them. The first he perfected here on earth upon the cross, and the latter he now performs in heaven.

And with what efficacy and success he discharges this great work of intercession there, sufficiently appears from that constant, never-failing prevalence which still attended his prayers here. For he himself expressly tells us, that the Father always heard him, John xi. 42. Heaven was always open to his prayers, and they could not but enter, where he, who made them, did command. There could be no frustration or denial where every request had the force of a claim, and every petition was founded in a purchase.

The divinity of Christ’s person, and the surpassing value of his merits, put a commanding sovereignty into all his desires; so that every thing which he asked of his Father was indeed a petition of right; and since his divinity made him able to give, it was one part of his humiliation that he vouchsafed to ask. And for this reason, some of his requests run stylo imperatorio, in a kingly dialect; and we some times find him not only preaching, but also praying, as one having authority; John xvii. 24, Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me be with me, to behold my glory. It was not a mere prayer, but a kind of compound address, made up of petition and demand.

And now this way of asking, as high and as efficacious as it is, is wholly employed by Christ for delivering the saints out of temptation. Judas, we know, was tempted, and fell without recovery. Peter also was tempted, and fell, but rose again. Now, whence was this difference in the issue of the temptation? Why, those words of our Saviour will in form us, Luke xxii. 31, Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have thee, that he may sift thee as wheat. And according to his desire he had him, and sifted him to the utmost, and discovered how much chaff and foul stuff was lodged in his heart, which he himself knew not of. Yet still for all this, the wheat was but sifted only, not destroyed; and Christ gives us the reason of it in the next words, I have prayed that thy faith fail not. And if Christ had not prayed for him in that wretched condition, it is to be feared that he would scarce have prayed for himself.

For though indeed the spirit of prayer and fervent supplication be one of the most effectual means to bring a man out of temptation, yet sometimes the temptation is so far beforehand with a man, that it prevents him, seizing and prepossessing his will and affections; and that to such a degree, that he has no heart to pray against it; but, like a thief, it steals upon him, and then binds his hands and stops his mouth, so that he can neither lift up heart nor hand to call in aid from Heaven. In which forlorn estate, if Christ prays not in his stead, and solicits his Father for the succours of recovering grace, the sinner is left remediless in the cruel grasp of his insulting enemy, to be crushed and devoured by him at his pleasure.

And now, what Christ did for Peter and other of his saints, while he was here upon earth, the same he still does, and that with advantage, for all believers know that he is in heaven; where he has changed his place indeed, but not his office; his condition, but not his affection .

What it was to be tempted, our Saviour knew of old, by the sure, but sharp convictions of his own experience; and therefore treats such as are tempted with all the sympathizing tenderness, that fellow ship in suffering can produce in a mind infinitely merciful of itself; as it is expressly affirmed, Heb. ii. 18, For in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to succour those also who are tempted. To which we may add those words, Heb. vii. 25, That he liveth for ever, to make intercession for us. And from both together we have all that comfort, that a boundless compassion, supported by an infinite power, and an endless duration, can afford.

And this is that unvaluable advantage which we reap from having such an high priest, as can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. For as he who has broke a limb, having his choice of several chirurgeons equally skilful, would much rather choose one who had not only cured many others, but had also suffered the same disaster, and felt the same pain and anguish of a broken limb himself: for that from such a hand he might rationally expect not only a sound, but a gentle cure; a cure in which compassion should combine with skill, and make one ingredient in every application.

In like manner it is not so much the greatness, the power, and majesty of our intercessor, that should animate persons under a temptation to address to him, as his having drank of the same cup, and passed through the same furnace himself. From which one endearing consideration it is, that the prayers of such persons find stronger arguments to enforce them in the breast of him who hears, than they can derive from the heart of him who makes them.

For as it is commonly, and perhaps very truly said, that none knows the heart of a father, but he who has been a father; so none knows what it is to be pursued and worried with the restless buffets of an impure spirit, but he who has endured the same terrible conflict himself. Christ has endured it, and his experience moves his compassion, and his compassion engages his prayers; and where he has promised us his prayers, we may promise ourselves the success.

And thus I have shewn, that the great impulsive cause of the saints’ deliverance out of temptation, is partly the free, sovereign, distinguishing mercy of God, and partly the mediatorial intercession of Christ: that is, they have a gracious Father, and a powerful Advocate; and therefore, being assaulted, they are not conquered, and being tempted, are not destroyed.

But now, by way of objection to the foregoing particulars, you will say; Does not this doctrine open a door to presumption, and naturally encourage men to venture themselves into temptation, by giving them such assurances of an after-deliverance from it? Does it not tend to lessen the awe and dread they should have of their spiritual danger, by telling them that the mercy of God and the intercession of Christ are engaged for their recovery?

I answer, No; for as the persons who are here said to be delivered are persons truly sanctified, and regenerate by a principle of grace, which has wrought upon and changed their nature, (so much being implied in the very name and character of the godly,) so it is utterly against the very nature of such a principle, to draw such consequences from the mercy of God and the intercession of Christ. For moral ingenuity could not do so, and therefore grace much less. The love of God, says the apostle, 2 Cor. v. 14, constraineth us. And as it is impossible for a principle of love to exert acts of hatred, so it is equally impossible for a principle of holiness to suggest to the heart such villainous deductions, as to make the very mercy of God an argument to offend him. Every faculty or principle is carried by its own nature, as by a strong bias, to act suitably to itself; and you may as well expect that the fire should cool, or the water dry, or a false proposition issue from a true, as that a principle of grace should argue or discourse in this manner. He who is born of God, says the apostle, 1 John iii. 9, cannot sin, because he is born of God. That is, the principle which constitutes a man a new creature, cannot incline or induce him to sin. And therefore, how did Joseph answer and repel the temptation which accosted him? Why, he neither pleaded the disgrace nor danger that might ensue upon it, but the utter inconsistency of that principle which he both acted, and was acted by, with the commission of so vile a fact. How can I do this great wickedness, says he, Gen. xxxix. 9. Not only, how shall I, but, how can I do it. As if he had said, There is something within me so utterly contrary to, and so wholly averse from this wicked proposal, that I cannot comply with it, I cannot frame or bring my will to it.

In like manner, for persons regenerate, acting by that principle which makes them so, to take confidence to venture upon a temptation, from an assurance of God’s mercy or Christ’s intercession, is a thing absolutely unnatural, and consequently impossible.

But you will say, How then can a person, endued with this mighty and divine principle, come ever to be prevailed upon by a temptation?

Why, the reason of this is, because such an one does not always act according to this principle, but sometimes, either through surprise, or neglect of his duty, or remissness in it, or want of watchfulness over himself, the working force and energy of this mighty principle comes for a while to suspend its actings, and to lie, as it were, stupified, or in a trance; the giant is asleep, and the sword of the Spirit is not drawn, during which fatal interval or cessation, the flesh and the Devil take their advantage to assault, and get ground even of the best of men.

Nevertheless, the case is surely very different, when a man, thus overtaken with a kind of spiritual slumber, drops into a temptation; and when, with his eyes open, and all the powers of his soul awake, he argues and debates the matter with himself for and against the temptation; and in the issue of that debate comes at length to a formed resolution to venture upon it from a confidence, that after he has took his fill of his sin, the divine mercy will deliver him out of it: this, I say, is a case so vastly different from the former, that though the former may very well consist with a habit of piety and sincerity, yet this latter looks so very ill, and has in it something so desperately wicked, that I very much question whether it be, or can be, incident to the heart of a person truly regenerate.

But because this is so great a mystery of iniquity, and apt to work so fatally upon the minds of such as think themselves sincere and regenerate, but indeed not so; I think it may be of no small use to look into and resolve this case of conscience, namely, whether a regenerate, a godly, or sincere person, (which are all but several words for the same thing,) can have any rational assurance, before he enters into a temptation, that being once prevailed upon by it, he shall in the issue be delivered out of it.

To which I answer in these two propositions.

1st, That a person under such circumstances can have no antecedent assurance one way or other, either that he shall or shall not be delivered. And,

2dly, That it is more probable, and that he has greater reason to believe, that he shall not be delivered, than that he shall.

Of both of which propositions with as much brevity as the thing will bear.

And first, for the first of them, I affirm, that such an one cannot certainly and positively conclude that he shall not be delivered; forasmuch as this would be a bold, unwarranted intrusion into the counsels of God, and a limitation of that mercy, the precise measures of which are determined by bounds known only to God himself. But this, I must confess, is an error of such a nature, that men need not be much cautioned against it, as being still more apt, in all their expectations of mercy, to conclude too much for, than at all against themselves.

And therefore I affirm also on the other side, that much less can a person thus offering himself to temptation have any ground of assurance, that he shall in the issue be brought out of it.

For the clearing of which matter we must observe, that the temptations here spoken of are generally such as lead to great sins; great, I say, either for the matter of them, such as are blasphemies, perjuries, rebellions, murders, adulteries, thefts, extortions, and the like; or great for the manner of committing them, as being committed against the clear light and conviction of conscience, or, as the scripture sometimes expresses it, presumptuously, and with an high hand, and with full deliberation. All which kind of sins wound and waste the conscience, grieve the Holy Spirit, hazard a man’s final and eternal estate, and, in a word, make a very great and dangerous alteration in his spiritual condition.

Those, I say, are the sins which we are now treating of; for such, and such only, the Devil drives at in most of his temptations, whether he effects them or no; but still the malignity of a temptation is to be measured by the greatness of the sin, which it designs to bring a man to. And concerning these sins I affirm, that when any man is tempted to them, he can have no sufficient assurance, that, in case he should be prevailed upon by them, God will deliver him out of them. And the full, serious, thorough consideration of this is that flaming sword, which God has placed before the door and entrance of every such temptation, to warn all who value the present peace and future happiness of their souls, to fly from it, as they would from the regions of death and the mansions of the damned.

But you will say; Have there not been several in stances of persons whom God has delivered out of temptation, after they have been prevailed upon by it? And if so, may not others in following times, of the same qualifications, and under the same circumstances, antecedently assure themselves of the same deliverance?

To this I answer, first, that of all persons whom God has at any time delivered out of temptation, I believe it will be hard to produce any one who ever entered into it with such a presumption. But 2dly, I add moreover, that it is hardly possible for any man to assure himself, that his qualifications and circumstances are exactly the same with those who have been delivered. Besides that, in the last place, there is nothing to oblige God to vouchsafe the same mercy to persons under the same circumstances.

But you will urge further, that there are not only instances and examples, but also promises of such a performance in several places of the scripture, and particularly in the text, where, by God’s knowing how to deliver, the apostle no doubt meant his will and purpose to deliver the godly out of temptation. And if so, may not such persons be beforehand sure of their deliverance? since where there is a promise on God’s part, there may and ought to be an assurance on ours.

To this also I answer; that we are still to remember, that neither this nor any other the like promises are made immediately to any particular person, but only in general to the godly and regenerate; amongst which no man can with any rational evidence account himself, while he is either actually committing, or at least purposing to commit some great sin; as every man under the power of such temptations (as we have mentioned) certainly is. And consequently, while he cannot be sure of his regeneracy, neither can he be sure, that a promise made only to the regenerate does at all belong to him.

But you may yet say; Suppose that such an one had a former assurance of his regenerate state, may he not now, from his remembrance of that, draw a present assurance that he shall be delivered out of all temptations?

For the clearing of which, I observe, that there are two sorts of assurance.

1. The first consisting in such a certain persuasion of a man’s regenerate estate, as is subject to no mistake about it.

2. The second consisting in such a persuasion, as excludes all actual doubting of it.

Which two sorts of assurance differ as much from one another, as a man’s being sure of a thing differs from his being only confident of it; which latter he may very easily be, and yet be far enough from the former. Accordingly in the case now before us, I shall not consider that first sort of assurance, consisting in an infallible persuasion of a man’s regenerate estate; it being much questioned by many, whether such an assurance be attainable in this life, unless by the special and immediate gift of God: albeit all confess, that in case he should vouchsafe to any one so high a privilege, it would certainly be at tended with such a confirmed habit of holiness, as would effectually keep him who had it from all gross and deliberate sins.

But then as for the other sort of assurance, which only excludes all actual doubting of a man’s regenerate estate, it is much another thing; for being raised chiefly upon the stock of a forward confidence, and not supported with an equal measure of grace, it may rise and fall, ebb and flow, and in many cases, and with several persons, come at length totally to be lost.

Which being premised, I answer to the foregoing question in the negative, and that upon the ground of a double hypothesis. As,

1st, Of that which holds, that a person truly regenerate may fall from his regeneracy, and through his sin cease to be what he was. According to which opinion the person here spoken of, who is either actually committing, or fully proposing to commit some great sin, has no small reason to suspect the case wholly altered with him as to his regeneracy, and that, whatsoever he was before, he is now fallen from it; and consequently, notwithstanding any former assurance of it, can at present lay no claim to a promise, made only to persons continuing under that estate.

A DISCOURSE

CONCERNING

TEMPTATION.

PART III.

2 PETER ii. 9.

The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations.

I HAVE twice already discoursed upon this text, in which, after some short explication and account given, both of the sense and design of the words, I cast the further prosecution of them under these following particulars.

1st, To shew how far God delivers persons truly pious out of temptation.

2dly, To shew what is the grand motive or impulsive cause inducing God thus to deliver them. And,

3dly and lastly, To shew why and upon what grounds this is to be reputed so great a mercy and so transcendent a privilege.

The two first of these I have formerly treated of, and proceed now to the third and last, which is to shew, why and upon what grounds deliverance out of temptation is to be reputed so great a mercy and so transcendent a privilege.

In order to which, as all deliverance, in the very nature and notion of it, imports a relation to some evil from which a man is delivered, so in this deliverance out of temptation, the surpassing greatness of it, and the sovereign mercy shewn in it, will appear from those intolerable evils and mischiefs which are always intended by and naturally consequent upon a prevailing temptation. To give some account of which shall be the business of our present discourse.

And for this we shall first in general lay down this as a certain truth: That all the mischief that sin can possibly do a man, temptation designs him. All that is valuable, either in this world or the next, it would rob him of; and all that can be called misery, either here or hereafter, it would subject him to. All that a man can enjoy is struck at, and all that he can suffer is intended; and if the tempter allows him the quiet enjoyment of any thing desirable in this life, it is only to bereave him of that which is infinitely more so in the other.

Which being so, as to that high concern in debate between the Devil and the souls of men; since his malice is such, that he cannot but tempt, it is an in finite mercy that he can do no more than tempt, and that a man’s own consent must be had to his own destruction. For if the tempter could have his will upon the person tempted, he would scorn to court where he could compel. He would make directly at his head, and not come stealing upon his heel. He would break in upon him with open force, and not stand poorly waiting at his elbow with a temptation.

But to come to particulars. Four things more especially are designed, and driven at by the tempter in all his temptations. As,

1st, To begin with the greatest, and that which is always first intended, though last accomplished, the utter loss and damnation of the soul. For this is the grand mark which the tempter shoots at, this the beloved prize which he contends so hard for.

And as two enemies may be really as much enemies while they are treating as when they are fighting, so the Devil bears the same malice to a man while he tempts him, as when he actually torments him. Temptation is the way to torment, and torment the end of temptation.

When men first venture upon sinful objects, lewd converse, and occasions of life suitable to their corrupt humours, the face of the temptation looks fair and harmless, the first proposals of it plausible and modest, and the last and dismal issue of things is with great art and care kept out of their sight; so that they shall not perceive that their enemy is so much as about to strike, till the final and fatal stroke is effectually given.

The Devil, perhaps, offers thee pleasure; but, poor creature! it is thy life which he aims at, thy darling life which he is driving a base bargain for. Or he may lay wealth and riches before thee, but be assured that he will have something for his money, some thing of more value to thee than both the Indies, and the whole world besides. Sometimes he courts with honour and greatness, but still expects to be well paid for both. And as great a prince as he is, he never knights any one, but he expects more than knight’s service from him in return. In a word, he will have thy conscience and thy religion by way of earnest here, and thy soul in full payment for it hereafter. There is not the least thing in the world which the tempter offers a man for nothing; not so much as a pitiful mess or morsel to relieve thy craving, starving appetites, but he will, if he can, have thy birthright, thy immortal birthright in exchange for it.

Could we but look into those mansions of horror, where he has lodged so many millions of lost souls, the cruel monuments of his victorious delusions, and whom almost amongst them all might we not hear charging his coming into that woful estate upon the overreaching arts of this great impostor! Some we should hear cursing those false and fallacious pleasures which had baited and beguiled, befooled and drawn them into those direful pains, from which there is neither respite nor redemption. Others we should hear raving and crying out of those guilty gains, those ill filled bags and deluding heaps, which served only to treasure up wrath to the owners of them, and at length sink them into a bottomless pit, deeper, and more insatiable, if possible, than their own covetousness. Others again we should hear, with the height of rage and bitterness, reflecting upon those treacherous, dear-bought honours, the unconscionable price of their wretched souls, by which the tempter hooked them into his clutches, blinding the judgment and blasting their innocence, till, by several steps of guilt and greatness, he preferred them downwards, to the place prepared for such forlorn grandees, where they are like to lie for ever, cursing themselves as much as formerly they were cursed by others,

A DISCOURSE

CONCERNING

TEMPTATION.

PART IV.

REVELATION iii. 10.

Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, therefore will I keep thee from the hour of temptation, which is coming upon all the world, to try the inhabitants of the earth.

AS deliverance out of temptation is undoubtedly one of the greatest mercies that God vouchsafes his people in this world, so there is nothing that more enhances and sets off the greatness of the mercy, than the critical time of God’s vouchsafing it. The wise man assures us, that there is a time for every thing and purpose under heaven; a time which gives it a peculiar and proper advantage above what it has at other times. And therefore, since the said advantage is universal, and extends to all kinds of action, we must not wonder if the great enemy of souls has his time also; his particular, advantageous time to tempt and destroy, as God has his time to rescue and deliver. But as, in the vicissitudes of night and day, the darkness of one recommends the returns of the other, adding a kind of lustre even to light itself, so it is the hour of danger which sets a price and a value upon the hour of deliverance, and makes it more properly in season. It shall be given you, says our Saviour to his disciples, in that very hour, Matth. x. 19, in the very point and crisis of their extremity; like a pardon intervening just as the fatal arm is lifting up, a pardon sent in the very instant of execution. And certainly next to life from the dead, is to be near the killing stroke, and yet snatched away from it; to see death brought to our very doors, and yet prevented from coming in.

The occasion of the words is indeed particular, as containing in them a prediction of the sad and calamitous estate of the church under the approaching reign of Trajan the Roman emperor; but I shall not consider them under any such particular respect or limitation, but as they hold forth a general import ant lesson or admonition, of equal and perpetual use to all men, with reference to those spiritual trials, conflicts, and temptations, which will be sure to exercise and engage them in the course of their Christian warfare; and accordingly I shall cast the prosecution of the words under these four particulars.

1st, I shall shew, that there is a certain proper season or hour, which gives a peculiar force and efficacy to temptation.

2dly, I shall shew, by what means, helps, and advantages, a temptation attains its proper season or hour.

3dly, I shall shew some signs, marks, or diagnostics, whereby we may discern when it has actually attained it.

4thly and lastly, draw some useful inferences from the whole. And,

First, for the first of these; that there is a certain proper season or hour, which gives a peculiar force, strength, and efficacy to temptation. It is observed in all those actions or passages which cause any great and notable change, either in the mind or life of man, that they do not constantly operate at the same rate of efficacy, but that there is a certain crisis, or particular season, which strangely provokes and draws forth the activity and force of every agent, raising it to effects much greater and higher than the common measure of its actings is observed to carry it to.

So that if we would take a true estimate of the full power of any operative principle, we must consider it under its proper advantages of working, and in those critical seasons which will be sure to employ, heighten, and call forth the utmost strength and energy that it is naturally possessed of. Every fit of a burning fever is not equally dangerous to the sick person, nor are all hours during the distemper equally fatal. But we usually say, that if the man passes such a day, or such a turn of the moon, the danger is over; forasmuch as at those particular sea sons the distemper rallies together all its malignity, and vents the height of its rage; after which it breaks and declines, and nature begins to recover itself.

In like manner there is a determinate proper time, sometimes called in scripture the day of temptation, Psalm xcv. 8; sometimes the evil day, Ephes. vi. 13; and sometimes (as here in the text, and elsewhere) remarkably, the hour of temptation; a time in which temptation is infinitely more fierce and daring, more urgent and impetuous, than at other times; a time in which with all its might it comes rushing in upon the soul, like the fluctus decumanus upon the labouring ship or vessel, which always gives it the greatest and most dangerous shock.

We know our Saviour conversed freely and safely with the Jews for a considerable time, coming into the temple, and teaching in their synagogues, and they stretched forth no hands against him, as he himself tell us, Luke xxii. 53; and yet all this while, as quiet as they held their hands, they had malice enough working in their hearts, and opportunity enough to have exerted that malice in their actions. Nevertheless for that time they touched him not.

But how then came the Devil and his instruments to have so much power at length, as to apprehend, and seize, and put him to a cruel, ignominious death? Why, our Saviour gives us the reason of it in the next words. This, says he, is their hour, and the power of darkness. Accordingly, Mark xiv. 35, we have him praying, that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And again, ver. 41, The hour is come, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

And it is worth observing, that though our Saviour began his great office and ministry with temptations, (Matt. iv. 1,) and carried it on under temptations, (Ye are those, says he to his disciples, who have continued with me in my temptations, Luke xxii. 28,) yet the scripture records not his praying in his own person against any temptation, but only this last and great one, this hour of temptation, this terrible and critical hour, in which it pleased the all-wise God to let loose all the powers of hell upon him, and in which they spit the utmost of their venom, and summoned all their hellish arts and forces to give one mighty push for all. And it was the behaviour of Christ at this hour, upon which depended the eternal happiness or misery of mankind, and the vast moments of the world’s redemption.

And as it was with Christ himself, who did and suffered every thing as a public person, and consequently was tempted as well as crucified for us, so it will be with every Christian in the world. Christ vouchsafed to be like us in most things, and we shall certainly be like him in this.

And from this consideration no doubt it is, that we must gather the true sense and exposition of that noted place, James iv. 7, in which the apostle bids us resist the Devil, and he will fly from us. But experience sufficiently shews, that upon every act of resistance he does not fly, but that his assaults are frequent, and oftentimes continue very long; nay, the frequency of the onset and the length of the siege are usually some of the principal methods by which he conquers, and brings the soul to a surrender. And if so, what can that particular kind of resistance be, which proves so victorious, and sends him going like a vanquished person? Why, no question, it must be eminently that which withstands and encounters him at that particular hour or season, in which the temptation is come to an head, and in which it has all the helps and advantages for conquest imaginable.

For if the tempter miscarries in this his highest, his sharpest, and most violent attack, it is natural to conceive, that lie must surcease the conflict, draw off, and give it over for that time at least. For if his twenty thousands prevail not, to what purpose can it be for him to carry on the war with ten? Or what should an enemy do more, who has already done his utmost? And thus much for the first thing proposed; which was to shew, that there is a certain proper season or hour, which gives a peculiar force, strength, and efficacy to temptation. I proceed now to the second, which is to shew by what means, helps, and advantages, a temptation attains its proper season or hour. And for this I shall mention seven, beginning at the more remote, and so proceeding to such as bring it still nearer and nearer to an head. And,

1st, For that which is most remote, but yet the very source and groundwork of all the mischief which the Devil either does or can do to the souls of men; namely, that original, universal corruption of man’s nature, that fomes peccati, containing in it the seeds and first principles of all sins whatsoever, and more or less disposing a man to the commission of them. For it is this which administers the first materials for the tempter to work upon, and without which it is certain that he could do nothing. For when he set upon our Saviour with all his rage and subtilty, yet still he was worsted, and beaten off; and the reason of it is assigned by our Saviour himself, in those words in John xiv. 30, The prince of this world, says he, cometh, and hath nothing in me; that is, nothing for any of his temptations to fasten upon. The infinite purity of his nature, free from the least inherent filth, afforded no handle for the tempter to lay hold of him by. He was like pure fountain-water in a glass, which you may shake and shake, as much and as often as you will, but no shaking of it can ever foul it. On the contrary, let a liquor in any vessel look never so clear and transparent upwards, yet if there be the least settlement or heterogeneous matter in any part of it, shake it thoroughly, and it will be sure to shew itself.

In like manner when the tempter comes to any of us, he knows that there is something lurking in the heart of the very best of men, which he can make foul work with, if the particular grace of God does not prevent him, as it is certain that in many cases it does not. Temptation first finds a man evil, and then makes him worse.

And thus much for the first advantage which a temptation has towards the attainment of its hour; namely, the general corruption of man’s nature, suiting it to all the proposals of the tempter, and rendering it always ready both to invite him and to be invited by him.

2dly, The next advantage is from that particular corruption, or sort of sin, which a man is most peculiarly prone and inclined to. And this is one step and advance beyond the former. For though every man, as we have shewn, has the root and seeds of all sins virtually in him, yet, through the good providence of God, (setting bounds to the extravagance of nature,) no man is equally inclined or carried out to all sorts of sin, for that would quickly throw the whole world into confusion. But there is a particular bent of constitution, which derives and contracts the general stream of natural corruption into a much narrower channel, by that special propensity which every man finds in himself to some one kind of vice or sinful passion more than to any other. Such a thing there is certainly in all men, and being founded in nature, it sticks closely, and operates strongly.

And so advantageous a ground does this afford the tempter to plant his batteries upon, when he would assault us, that he never overlooks it, but observes it exactly, and studies it throughly, and will be sure to nick this governing inclination (as I may so express it) with some suitable temptation. So that whereas by virtue of this some men are naturally choleric and impatient, some proud and ambitious, some lustful, some covetous, some intemperate, and some revengeful, and the like; this the Devil knows better than any man knows himself. He understands the crasis and temperament of his body, and the peculiar turns and motions of his mind and fancy, better than any physician can judge of one, or any philosopher can give an account of the other; and accordingly, a man shall be sure to hear from him, and receive many a terrible blow and buffet on his blind side.

He is not such a bungler at his art as to use the same nets or baits indifferently for all sorts of game. He will not tempt a shrewd, designing, active, aspiring mind, with the gross and low pleasures of wine or women; nor a sot or an epicure with the more refined allurements of power or high place. But still suiting his proposals to the temper of the person whom he addresses them to, he strikes for the most part home and sure, and it is seldom but he speeds. And therefore let a man look to it, and before he enters the combat with so experienced an enemy, who will assuredly find him out, and fight him (if possible) to his disadvantage, let him view and review himself all over, and consider where he lies most opportune and open to a fatal thrust, and be sure to guard himself there, where he is most liable to be mortally struck.

A DISCOURSE

CONCERNING

TEMPTATION.

PART V.

1 CORINTHIANS x. 13.

—God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

THERE is nothing in itself more irrational, nor yet (as the state of nature now is) more natural, than for men to govern their hopes and their fears wholly by their present apprehensions; so that where they see a danger manifestly threatening them, there they will fear; and where, on the other hand, the means of their deliverance are obvious to the view of sense, there they will hope; that is, in other words, they will hope and fear just as far as they can see, and trust God so far as they can trust their eyes, and no further.

A temper of mind utterly contrary to that heroic nature of faith, the noblest property of which is to give light and evidence to things not seen, and being and subsistence to things before they are; and by so doing, to render its object then more credible, when most invisible; and this (if throughly considered) with the highest reason imaginable; for as such a short and limited faith, as ties itself wholly to the measures of sense, can proceed from nothing else but a man’s not considering how many ways he may be attacked and ruined, even in his highest security; and how many ways again he may be delivered, even in his deepest distress, which he cannot possibly comprehend nor pierce into, and upon that account presumes in one case, and despairs in another; and this only from a peremptory persuasion founded upon a gross ignorance of both; so, on the contrary, that generous confidence of faith, which carries it above all these low phenomena of sense and matter, is bottomed upon the truest and strictest philosophy discoursing about God’s wisdom and power; which being confessedly infinite, must needs upon that score, even in the very judgment of bare reason, have unconceivably more ways to deliver from temptation, than there can be temptations for any one to be delivered from. And therefore, where the utmost reach of created wit and power ends, then and there these two mighty attributes begin; this being the proper, eminent, and peculiar season for their working wonders; that so by this means a man may see his pitiful, narrow reason nonplused and outdone, before he sees his wants answered; and the proud nothing own himself baffled, while, in spite of his despair, he finds himself delivered.

Now of all the evils incident to man, there is none from which an escape is both so difficult and so desirable as from temptations. For as all escape, in the very notion and nature of it, imports in it these three things; 1st, Some precedent danger threatening; and, 2dly, The difficulty of getting through it; and yet, 3dly, A final deliverance from it: so in this business of temptation, the danger threatening is no less than damnation; the difficulty of escaping it is founded partly upon the importunity, vigilance, and power of a spirit inexpressibly strong, subtle, and malicious, and partly upon a furious, inbred inclination to sin in the tempted person himself; and this both heightened by inveterate custom, and inflamed by circumstances continually pushing it on to action. All which represents to us such a scene of opposition, such a combination of craft and force together, as must needs overmatch all the strength of nature, all the poor auxiliaries which flesh and blood can bring into the field against so mighty an enemy.

And therefore nothing less than a Being infinitely wise, and thereby able to sound all the depths, and to outreach and defeat all the finesses and intrigues of this tempting spirit; and withal, of an infinite, irresistible power, to support the weaknesses and supply the defects of a poor sorry mortal engaged against him, and ready to fall under him; nothing, I say, but that almighty Being which can do all this, can break the bonds and loose the cords which the tempter holds the tempted person by, and so give him a full and absolute deliverance.

Now how and by what ways God does this, shall be our present business to inquire. In which, though (as I shew before) it would be a great vanity, and as great an absurdity, to offer to reduce omniscience to our methods, or to confine omnipotence to our measures, and consequently to give a full and distinct account of those innumerable ways by which the great ruler of the world brings about his designs, especially in his dealing with the souls of men, (which ever was and will be strange, secret, and unaccountable,) yet I shall venture to assign four several ways, and those very intelligible to any considering mind, by which God is pleased, in the course of his providence, to deliver men out of temptation. As,

1st, If the force of the temptation be chiefly from the vehement, restless, and incessant importunities of the evil spirit, God often puts an issue to the temptation by rebuking and commanding down the tempter himself. For we must know, that although the Devil, in his dealings with men, acts the part of an enemy, yet still, in respect of God, he does the work of a servant, even in his greatest fury, and operates but as an instrument; that is, both with dependence and limitation. He is in a chain, and that chain is in God’s hand; and consequently, notwithstanding his utmost spite, he cannot be more malicious than he is obnoxious. And therefore, being under such an absolute control, all that he does must be by address and art; he must persuade us to be damned, cajole and court us to destruction. He must use tricks and stratagems, urge us with importunity, surprise us with subtilty, till at length we enter upon death by choice, and by our own act put ourselves into the fatal noose.

For certain it is, that God has not put it into the power of any created being to make a man do an ill thing against his will, but has committed the great portal and passage into his soul, to wit, the freedom of his will, to his own keeping; and it is not all that the Devil can do, that can force the key of it out of his hands. But he must first be a tempter, before he can be a destroyer.

Nevertheless, though he cannot compel to sin, yet he can urge, and press, and follow a man with vehement and continual solicitations to it. And though his malice can go no further, yet certainly it is a real torture and a great misery to a well-disposed mind, that he should go so far, and to find itself incessantly importuned to any vile thing or action; indeed as great and vexatious as blows or bastinadoes can be to the body; for during the solicitation, the spiritual part is all the time struggling and fencing, and consequently in the same degree suffering and oppressed; and for any one to be always in a laborious, hazardous posture of defence, without intermission or relief, must needs be intolerable.

For admitting that none of the fiery darts of the Devil should actually kill and destroy, yet certainly it is next to death to be always warding off deadly blows, and to be held upon the rack of a constant, anxious, unintermitted fear about the dreadful issues of a man’s eternal condition. And that man who is not sped with a mortal wound, yet if he is continually pulling arrows out of his flesh, and hearing bullets hissing about his ears, and death passing by him but at the distance of an hair’s breadth, has surely all that fear, and danger, and destruction, in the nearest approach of it, can contribute to make him miserable.

It is hard indeed, if not impossible, to assign exactly how one spirit may operate upon and afflict another. But thus much it is very agreeable to reason to suppose, to wit, that a stronger spirit may proportionably make the afflictive impression upon a weaker, which a stronger body is able to make upon a body of less strength than itself. And two ways we have ground to conclude that the evil spirit does this by; one by raising strange and unaccountable horrors in the mind; and the other by rude and boisterous impulses to something contrary to the judgment of conscience. The former of which might easily be made out both from reason and experience; and the latter is what we are now discoursing of. And a very wretched, dangerous, and dubious condition is the soul very often cast into by this means; and being brought thereby to the very brink of destruction, God is then pleased to step in to its assistance; and when the tempter grows rest less, and next to violent, and, instead of persuading, attempts even to ravish the consent, God stops his foul mouth, and commands him to hold his peace, as formerly, in Job’s case, he commanded him to hold his hand.

For his devilish method in tempting is commonly this. First to begin the temptation with a still voice and a gentle breath, and all the sly and fawning applications that can be; but when that will not do, then he raises his voice, and the temptation blows rough and high like a tempest, and would shake down where it cannot insinuate. It raises a storm amongst all the powers and faculties of the soul, and, like the rolling billows of a troubled sea, dashes them one against another, judgment against appetite, and appetite against judgment, till the poor man, as it were, broken between both, is ready to sink and perish, and make shipwreck of his faith, did not a merciful and powerful voice from above rebuke the winds, and compose the waves, and chide down the rage and blusterings of so impetuous an adversary.

And this God often does out of mere compassion to a soul labouring and languishing, and even wearied out with the frequent and foul instigations of a tempting spirit. For all importunity is a kind of violence to the mind. This was the course which our Saviour himself took with him in the like case. The Devil seemed to pour in his temptations upon him without any pause or intermission; and accordingly our Saviour answers his first and second temptations with fit scriptures, calmly and rationally applied to both; but when he grew impudent and audacious in his third temptation, our Saviour not only confounds him with scripture, but also cuts him short with a word of authority, and bids him give over, and be gone. And as afterwards he once took up Peter speaking like Satan, so at this time he turns off Satan speaking like himself, with an Ὕπαγε Σατανᾶ, Get thee behind me. And a most proper and efficacious way it is certainly to repel the encroachment of a bold and troublesome proposal, to be rough and peremptory with it, to strike it down, and to answer it with scorn and indignation; and so to silence the pressing insolence of a saucy sophister, not so much by confuting the argument, as by countermanding the opponent. And this is one way by which God gives deliverance and escape out of temptation; he controls and reprimands the tempter, and takes off the evil spirit before he can be able to fasten.

2dly, If the force of a temptation be from the weakness of a man’s mind, rendering it unable of itself to withstand and bear up against the assaults of the tempter, God oftentimes delivers from it by mighty, inward, unaccountable supplies of strength, conveyed to the soul immediately from himself. The former way God delivers a man by removing his enemy, but this latter by giving him wherewithal to conquer him. And this is as certain a way of deliverance as the other can be. For surely a man is equally safe, whether his enemy flies from him or falls before him. It seems to be with the soul, with reference to some temptations, as with one of a weak and a tender sight, with reference to the sunbeams beating upon it: if you divert or keep off the beam, you relieve the man; but if you give him an eagle’s eye, he will look the sun in the face, endure the light, and defy the impression. So if God, instead of silencing and commanding off the tempter, suffers him to proceed and press home the temptation, yet if at the same time also he gives in a proportion of strength superior to the assault, and an assistance greater than the opposition, the man is as much delivered as if he had no enemy at all; the manner indeed of his deliverance is infinitely more noble, and as much preferable to the other, as the trophies of a conqueror surpass the poor inglorious safeties of an escape.

Thus it was with that holy and great man St. Paul. He was not only accosted, but even worried with a messenger from Satan; a messenger sent not only to challenge, but actually to duel him; and so sharp was the encounter, that it passed from soli citations to downright blows; for in 2 Cor. xii. 7, he tells us he was buffeted. And so near was he to an utter despair of the main issue of the conflict, that he cries out like a man vanquished, and with the sword of a prevailing enemy at his throat, O wretched man! who shall deliver me? Delivered (we all know) he was at length, and that it was God who delivered him. But how? Why, not by taking off the tempter, not by stopping his mouth that he should not solicit, nor, lastly, by tying up his hands that he should not buffet, (which yet was the thing which St. Paul so much desired, and accordingly so earnestly prayed for;) Thrice, says he, I besought the Lord, that it might depart from me, ver. 8. But God designed him another, and a nobler kind of deliverance, even by a sufficiency of his grace, ver. 9, My grace, says he, is sufficient for thee. God himself (as I may so speak) undertook the quarrel, and fought his battles, and that brought him off, not only safe, but triumphant, which surely was as much more honourable than to have the combat ended by parting the combatants, as it is for a generous and brave enemy to have his quarrel decided by the verdict of a victorious sword, than took up and compromised by the mean expedients of reference and arbitration.

But this kind of deliverance by such mighty inward conveyances of strength, was never so signal and illustrious as in that noble army of martyrs, which fought Christ’s battles in the primitive ages of the church. For what could make men go laughing to the stake, singing to the rack, to the saw and the gridiron, to the wild beasts and the lions, with a courage vastly greater than theirs, but an invincible principle, of which the world saw the manifest effects indeed, but could not see the cause? What, I say, could make nature thus triumph over nature in the cause of religion? Some heathen philosophers, I confess, did, and some heathenish Christians (who have neither religion nor philosophy) still do ascribe all this to the peculiar strength and sturdiness of some tempers.

But, in answer to these, in the first place I ask, where such a strength and sturdiness of temper ever yet was, or elsewhere to be found in any great and considerable multitude of men? Flesh and blood was and will be the same in all places and ages. But is flesh and blood, left to itself, an equal match to all the arts and inventions, all the tortures and tyrannies, which the will, power, and malice of persecution could or can encounter it with? No, assuredly the courage, which rises and reaches up to martyrdom, is infinitely another thing from that which exerts itself in all other cases whatsoever. Nor can every bold man, who in hot blood can meet his enemy in the field, upon the stock of the same courage fry at the stake, or with a fixed, deliberate firmness of mind endure to have his flesh torn off with burning pincers piece by piece before his eyes. No, there are few hearts so strongly and stoutly hard, but are quickly melted down before such fires.

All this is most undeniably true. But then, by way of further answer to the forementioned allegation, that the natural sturdiness of some tempers might be sufficient to enable some persons to endure such exquisite torments, as we have been speaking of, I add moreover, that the endurance of them has been in none more eminent and glorious than in persons of a quite contrary temper, of a weak and tender constitution, and of a nice and delicate education. Nay (and which is yet more) in such as have been extremely diffident and suspicious of themselves, lest upon the terrible approach of the fiery trial they should fly off, and apostatize, and deny the truth. And yet when God has brought these poor, diffident, self-distrusting souls to grapple (as it were) hand to hand with the enemy whom they so much dreaded, they have found something within them greater and mightier than any thing which they feared without them; something which equally triumphed over the torment itself, and their own more tormenting fears of it. All which could spring from nothing else but those secret, inward supplies and assistances of the divine Spirit, which raised and inspired their blessed souls to such an ecstasy of fortitude, as not only exceeded the very powers, but almost overflowed the very capacities of nature.

For the truth is, nature at best is but a poor and a feeble thing, the flesh is weak, and the heart fallacious; purposes are frail, and resolutions changeable, and grace itself in this life is yet but begun. But thanks be to God, our principal strength lies in none of all those, but in those auxiliaries which shall flow in upon us from the Almighty God, while we are actually engaged for God, in those hidden, ineffable satisfactions, which are able to work a man up to a pitch of doing and suffering incredibly above and beyond himself.

For still as God brings his servants into different states and conditions, he fails not to measure out to them a different spirit, suited and proportioned to the respective exigences of each condition. For this is a most certain truth, and worthy of our best observation; that the same almighty and creative power, which has given to one man greater strength of mind than to another, can, and undoubtedly very often does, vouchsafe to the same man greater strength of mind at sometimes than he does at others. Without which consideration it is impossible to give any satisfactory account of the cause and reason of that miraculous passive fortitude (may our triumphant whigs pardon the word) which shined forth in the primitive Christians; which yet all the records of antiquity, and historians of the church, are unanimously witnesses, and equally admirers of. From all which it follows, that no man living, though never so humble, so distrustful and suspicious of himself, can, from any thing which he finds or feels in his heart in the time of his prosperity, certainly know, what a daring, invincible spirit may enter into him, when God shall call him forth as his champion to own and assert an oppressed truth, to act and to suffer, to fight and perhaps die, in his despised cause.

And therefore, if a day of trial should come upon us, (as God knows how near it may be, and how terrible it may prove,) let us so prepare for it before it comes, as not to despond under it when it does come. For when I consider that vast load of national guilt, which has been growing upon us ever since the year forty-one, and never yet to any considerable degree accounted for to public justice; I cannot persuade myself, that either the judgments of God or the malice of man have done with us yet: especially since the same faction, which overturned the church and monarchy then, is, with all its republican guilt, strong and in heart now; and gnashing its teeth at the monarchy, and at the church of England for the sake of the monarchy, every day. And it is but a melancholy reflection, I confess, to all honest minds to consider, what so daring a combination may in a short time arrive to.

Nevertheless, as I said before, let us not despond, but only make this our care, that though we suffer by their spite, we may not share in their guilt. And then we may be confident, that our main strengths will be found in better keeping than our own; as being neither deposited in our own hands, nor to be measured by our own knowledge. We shall find those inward comforts and supports of mind, which all the malice of men and devils shall never be able to suspend us from or deprive us of. All my fresh springs are in thee, says David, Psalm lxxxvii. 7. We shall find a fulness in the stream to answer all our needs, though the spring perhaps, which feeds it, may escape our eye.

When our Saviour Christ had set before his disciples a full and lively draught of all those barbarous and cruel usages which they should meet with after his death, from synagogues and councils, from kings and potentates, before whom they should be arraigned, and brought to plead their cause against all the disadvantages which the wit and eloquence, the power and malice of their persecutors could put them to, he well knew that this would create in them great anxiety of thoughts and solicitous fore cast, how they, who were men of an unskilled, unlearned simplicity, and withal of none of the greatest courage, should be able to manage their own defence so as to acquit themselves at the bar of the learned, and in the face of princes. All this, I say, he foresaw and knew, and therefore, Luke xxi. 14, 15, he lays in this sovereign and peculiar antidote against all such disheartening apprehensions. Settle it, says he, in your hearts, not to meditate beforehand what ye shall answer; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist. And in Matt. x. 19, it is emphatically remarked, that it should be given them in that same hour what they should speak. Which undeniably proves, that they should receive that ability by immediate and divine infusion; as coming in upon them just in the season, in the very hour and critical instant of their necessity.

This example, I confess, is particular, personal, and miraculous; but the reason of it is universal and perpetual, as being founded in this: that as nature in things natural, so grace in things supernatural, is never deficient or wanting to men in necessaries. And as necessary as it was for the first founding of a church, that Christ should vouchsafe his disciples those miraculous assistances in point of ratiocination and elocution, so necessary is it at this very day, and will be so as long as the world lasts, for God to vouchsafe men under some temptations such extraordinary supplies of supporting grace, as otherwise are not commonly dealt forth to them. For still (as we observed before in St. Paul’s case) God intends us a sufficiency of grace. But where the trial is extraordinary, unless the grace afforded be so too, it neither is nor can be accounted sufficient. Let this therefore be the second way by which God delivers out of temptation.

3dly, If the force of a temptation springs chiefly from the unhappy circumstances of a man’s life continually exposing him to tempting objects and occasions of sin, God frequently delivers such an one by a providential change of the whole course of his life and the circumstances of his condition. And this he may do either by a general public change and revolution of affairs, which always carries with it the rise and fall of a vast number of particular interests, whereby some perhaps, whose greatness had been a snare to themselves, as well as a burden to others, are happily thrown down into such a condition, as may serve to mortify and fit them for another world, from such an one, as had before made them in tolerable in this.

And sometimes God does this by a personal change, affecting a man only in his own person and his private concerns. So that, whereas his former conversation, interests, and acquaintance might enslave him to some sort of objects and occasions, which have such a strange and powerful ascendant over his temper and affections, that he is never assaulted by them, but he is still foiled in the encounter, and always comes off from them a worse man than they found him; in this case, God, by a sovereign turn of his providence, alters and new models the whole state and course of such an one’s affairs, and thereby breaks the snare, and unties the several bonds and ligaments of the fatal knot, and so unravels the whole temptation.

And this is as much God’s prerogative, and the act of a divine power, as that to which a man owes his very being and creation. For as no man can add one cubit to his stature, so neither can he add one span, one hand’s breadth to his fortune. For that a man should be either high or low, rich or poor, strong or weak, healthful or sickly, or the like, is wholly from the disposal of a superior power; and yet upon these very things depends the result and issue of all temptations.

Accordingly, if God shall think fit to strip a voluptuous person of his riches and interest, and there by transplant him from an idle and delicate way of living into a life of hardship, service, and severe action; from the softness of a court to the disciplines of a camp, to long marches, short sleeps, and shorter meals, there is no question but those temptations which drew their main force and prevalence from the plenties of his former condition, will attack him but very faintly under the penuries of the quite contrary; and the combustible matter being thus removed, the flame must quickly abate and languish, expire, and at length go out of itself.

Nevertheless there is, I confess, such an impregnable strength, such an exuberant fulness of corruption in some natures, as to baffle and disappoint all these methods and applications of Providence, and even where objects and occasions of sin are wanting, to supply the want of them by an inexhaustible, over flowing pravity and concupiscence from within. So that such an one can be proud and insolent, though Providence clothes him with rags, and seats him upon a dunghill; he can be an epicure even with the bread and water of affliction; nor can hardship and hunger itself cure him of his sensuality, the fury of his appetites remaining still fierce and unmortified, in spite of the failure of his stores and the scantiness of his condition: in a word, the man is his own tempter, and so is always sure of a temptation.

All this we must own to be very true; but then this is also as true, that these and the like hard and severe passages of Providence have in them a natural fitness to work upon the heart of man, though some hearts are never actually wrought upon by them. For no doubt there are monsters and anomalies, not only in the course of nature, but also in that of grace and morality; and some sort of tempers are not to be altered, and much less bettered by any or all of those disciplines, by which yet God reclaims and effectually reduces millions of souls to himself. God strikes many in their temporal concerns to promote and further them in their spiritual; and if this way fails of its designed effect, it is not from the unfitness of the remedy, but the invincible indisposition of the patient. God knows how to reach the soul through the body, and commonly does so; and so do the laws of all the wise nations in the world; though our new-fashioned politics, I confess, contrary to them all, have cried down the fitness of all temporal inflictions, to reduce men to a sober sense and judgment in matters of religion.

Nevertheless the sacred story assures us, that this was still the course which God took with his own people. They were the sins and apostasies of their souls, for the reformation of which he plagued them in their bodies and estates; and when profaneness or idolatry was the malady, captivity and the sword were generally the cure. This was God’s method; and by this he put a stop to the sin, and an end to the temptation. Nor do we find that the Jews ever threw it in the prophets teeth, when they denounced God’s judgments against them, that sword and famine, and such like temporal miseries and calamities, were things wholly improper, and unable to work upon the conscience: for their conscience knew and told them the quite contrary. And much less do we find, that God ever thought it suit able to his wisdom to secure the authority of those laws by which he meant to govern the world, by proclaiming impunity and indulgence to the bold violators of them.

And thus much for the third way by which God delivers out of temptation; namely, by altering the circumstances of a man’s life, when the temptation is principally founded in them, and arises from them. So that if riches debauch a man, poverty shall reform him. If honour and high place turns his head, a lower condition shall settle it. If his table becomes his snare, God will remove it, and diet him into a more temperate and severe course of living. In a word, God will cut him short in his very conveniences, rather than suffer him in his extravagances; and to prevent his surfeits, abridge him even in his lawful satisfactions.

4thly and lastly, If the force and strength of a temptation be chiefly from the powerful sway and solicitation of some unruly and corrupt affection, God delivers from it by the overpowering influence and operation of his holy Spirit gradually weakening, and at length totally subduing it. The strength of a temptation lies generally in the strength of a man’s corruption. And the tempter, for the most part, prevails not so much by what he suggests to a man, as by what he finds in him; for what hold can he have of that man, in whom he finds nothing to take hold of him by? They are our lusts, our depraved appetites, and corrupt affections, which give the tempter such a mighty power and advantage over us. Otherwise, if these were throughly mortified and extinguished, the temptation must of necessity fail, and sink, and vanish into nothing, for want of matter to work upon. It is said of Archimedes, that he would undertake to turn about the whole earth, if he could but have some place beside the earth to fix his feet upon. In like manner, as skilful an engineer as the Devil is, he will never be able to play his engines to any purpose, unless he finds something to fasten them to. If indeed he finds a man naturally choleric and passionate, he has numberless ways and arts to work upon his choler, and transport him to a rage; if he finds him lustful, he will quickly blow up his lewd heats into a flame; and if luxurious and sensual, he can lay a thousand trains to betray him to excess and intemperance. But still in all these cases, and many more, it is the corrupt humour within us, wherein his great strength lies. It being with the soul in such instances as with some impregnable fort or castle, nothing but treachery within itself can deliver it up to the enemy.

I withheld thee from sinning against me, says God to Abimelech, Gen. xx. 6, and no doubt God has innumerable ways by which he does this: though still, by the way, barely to withhold a man from sin, and to cure him of it, are things extremely different; the proper effect of this latter being to bring a man to heaven, but of the former without this, only to suffer him to pass on in a cleanlier way to hell. God may withhold a man from sin, by plucking away the baneful object that would have ensnared him; as likewise by diverting the course of his thoughts, and the bent of his desires, by sundry cross accidents cast in his way. And lastly, after a full purpose of sin conceived, he may by many intervening impediments disable him from the execution of it: with several other ways of restraint, which we are not aware of, and all of them, no question, very great mercies, as giving a man some check at least in his full career to destruction.

But when, over and above all this, God, by the powerful impressions of his almighty Spirit, shall make a man, of angry and passionate, meek and patient; of lustful, chaste; of luxurious, temperate and abstemious; that is, when he shall subdue, break, and mortify the sinful appetite and inclination itself, and plant a mighty contrary bias and propensity of will in the room of it, (all which God can do, and some times has done,) this is a greater, a nobler, and a surer deliverance out of temptation, than either the removal of the enticing object, or the cutting off the occasion; nay, than the very prevention of the sinful act itself. It is undoubtedly one of the greatest and the best things which God does for a man in this world; and without which a man lives in continual danger of being ruined by every returning temptation. For certain it is, that he cannot be se cure from the returns, nay, the frequent violent returns of it. In a word, as long as the old ferment remains unthrown out, a man cannot be safe; nor can he assure himself, that, after a very long cessation, it shall not break out and rage afresh, as occasion may give life and motion to his corruption.

But you will say, perhaps, Where are there any in stances of such a mighty change wrought upon men? I confess there are but very few; and I must confess also, that this, upon supposal of the necessity of such a change, is a very dreadful consideration. Nevertheless, some such instances there are: for both the scripture asserts it, 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10, 11; and those known expressions of regeneration and the new creature do evidently import it, John iii. 3-7; and the experience of many good men now in heaven, who were far from having been always such while they lived upon earth, does fully confirm it. Howbeit we must still acknowledge thus much, that wheresoever such mighty changes are found, they are (as I may so express it) the very trophies and magnalia of grace, the peculiar triumphs of the Spirit over the corruption of nature, and the grand instances of its invincible, controlling power over the hearts of men. But still, I say, for all the rarity and fewness of such examples, God will have the world know, (maugre all our flourishing Socinians and Pelagians,) that under the gospel economy there is such a thing, such a gratia vorticordia, as we have been speaking of. And I fully believe, from the authority of much learneder men than either Pelagius or Socinus, or any of their preferred disciples, as well as from the authority of holy scripture, (paramount to all other authorities whatsoever,) that none ever yet did, or ever shall, go to heaven, whom God does not vouchsafe these heart-changing impressions of his Spirit more or less to. And indeed, if we do but grant the general corruption of human nature through original sin, it is infinitely sottish, as well as impious, to assert the contrary.

And as to the present subject now before us, I doubt not to affirm, that these extraordinary workings of the Spirit in the sanctification and change of men’s hearts, are so much the very masterpiece of God’s power, and the greatest (as well as last) efforts of his mercy, in ridding men out of temptation, that all other ways (though confessedly great in themselves) are yet as nothing in comparison of this. For they are all of them but the diverting of a blow, not the conquest of an enemy, but like the dealing with a man under a fever or an ague, in which there may be many ways both to lessen and to put off a fit, (and those of singular use too,) but nothing but the removal of the feverish and morbific mat ter within can carry off the distemper.

A DISCOURSE

CONCERNING

TEMPTATION.

PART VI.

1 CORINTHIANS x. 13.

But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

I HAVE discoursed several times, from several texts of scripture, upon this great subject of temptation.

And that branch of it which I last treated of from this scripture, was about the several ways whereby God delivers men from it.

Concerning which we are to observe in general, that the said deliverances are of two sorts.

1st, Those whereby God delivers men out of temptation immediately by himself and his own act, without the concurrence or interposal of any act of the tempted person. And,

2dly, Those wherein God makes use of the endeavours of the tempted person himself, in subordination to the workings of his own grace. And these are two, watchfulness and prayer; which I intend for the subject of my next discourse upon that portion of scripture, Matth. xxvi. 41, Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.

A DISCOURSE

CONCERNING

TEMPTATION.

THE SEVENTH AND LAST PART.

MATTHEW xxvi. 41.

THE SEVENTH AND LAST PART.

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.

AS the life and business of a Christian in this world is certainly to flesh and blood a thing of great difficulty, and, considering the opposition which it is sure to meet with, of equal danger, so this appears in nothing more than in its being represented by one of the most difficult and dangerous things in human life, which is war; 1 Tim. i. 18, This charge I commit unto thee, says Paul to Timothy, that thou mightest war a good warfare. And as the difficulty and danger of war is to be measured partly by the high worth of the thing fought for, and partly by the power and policy of the enemy to be fought with; so the eternal, invaluable interest of an immortal soul on the one side, and the arts and strength of a mighty, subtle, and implacable spirit on the other, are but too full a demonstration with what difficulty and danger the soul is to manage and maintain this spiritual conflict.

And therefore as all war is to be carried on partly by our own strength, and partly by that of allies and auxiliaries called in to our aid and assistance; so in this Christian warfare the things which properly answer those two are watchfulness and prayer; forasmuch as by watchfulness we exert and employ our own strength, and by prayer we engage God’s; and if ever victory and success attend us in these encounters, these two must join forces, heaven and earth must be confederate, and when they are so, the Devil himself, as strong as he is, and as invincible a monarch as he would be thought to be, may yet be forced to go off with a pluribus impar, and to quit the field with frustration and a baffle.

In the first place then we will speak of watchfulness as the first of the two great defensatives against temptation, here prescribed in the text, Watch and pray. In giving an account of which, as the foundation of the expression is a metaphor, so the prosecution and further illustration of it must (in a great measure at least) be metaphorical also. And consequently, as it relates to the soul waging and carrying on this spiritual war with the tempter and his temptations, it imports in it these five following particulars. As,

1. First of all, watching imports a strong, lively, abiding sense and persuasion of the exceeding greatness of the evil which we watch and contend against. Sense of danger is the first step to safety, and no man watches but to secure and defend himself. Watching is a troublesome and severe work, and wise men would not willingly trouble themselves to no purpose. A combatant must first know and dread the mischief of a blow, before he will fence against it; he must see it coming with his eye, before he will ward it off with his hand.

A DISCOURSE

UPON

PROVERBS XXVIII. 26.

He that trusteth in Ms own heart is a fool.

THE great instrument and engine for the carrying on of the commerce and mutual intercourses of the world is trust, without which there can be no correspondence maintained either between societies or particular persons. And accordingly being a thing of such general and immediate influence upon the affairs of mankind, there is nothing in the management of which men give such great experiments either of their wisdom or their folly; the whole measure of these being taken by the world, according as it sees men more or less deceived in their transacting with others. Certain it is, that credulity lays a man infinitely open to the abuses and injuries of crafty persons. And though a strong belief best secures the felicity of the future life, yet it is usually the great bane and supplanter of our happiness in this; there being scarce any man who arrives to any sound understanding of himself or his own interest, till he comes to be once or twice notably deceived by such an one, of whom he was apt to say and think, according to the common phrase, I would trust my very life with him. And for this cause it is, that that nation, which seems justly of the greatest reputation for wisdom in the western world, has vouched it for a maxim, and lived by it as a rule, to trust nobody: whether in so doing they deal honestly and ingenuously they seem not much to care, being contented that it is safe.

But of all the fallacies and scurvy cheats put upon men by their trusting others, there are none so shameful, and indeed pernicious, as the baffles which men sustain by trusting themselves; which gives them but too frequent and sad an experience, that the nearest neighbours are not always the best friends. For none surely can be nearer to a man than himself, or be supposed so true and faithful to all his concerns, as the heart which beats in his own breast; yet Solomon, and a greater than Solomon, which is experience, gives us infallible demonstrations that it is much otherwise; and that the heart, of all things in the world, is least to be confided in, else certainly a man’s trusting of it could not thus denominate him a fool.

The words contain in them a caution or admonition against men’s trusting their own hearts, upon the account of that disgraceful imputation which such a trust or confidence will in the issue bring upon them; and consequently they very naturally present these two things to our inquiry.

I. What is meant by a man’s trusting his heart.

II. Wherein the folly of it consists.

As for the first of these. For a man to trust his own heart, is, in short, for him to commit and resign up the entire conduct of his life and actions to the directions of it, as of a guide, the most able and the most faithful, to direct him in all the most important matters which relate either to his temporal or his spiritual estate. For whosoever trusts another for his guide, must do it upon the account of these two qualifications to be found in him.

1st, That he is able to direct and lead him. So that in this case a man must look upon every dictate of his heart as an oracle; he must look upon it as speaking to him from an infallible chair, incapable of error or mistake in any thing which it proposes to him to be followed. In a word, he must take it for the unerring measure of truth, and the most certain reporter of the mind of God.

2dly, A guide must be such an one as not only certainly can, but also faithfully will give the best directions. For let a man know the way never so well, yet if he has a design not to impart that know ledge, but perhaps has more windings and turnings than the way itself, such an one is far from being a competent guide, and fit to be trusted, especially in a man’s journey to eternity. So that for a man to trust his heart, is to take it for his best, his surest, and most unfailing friend, that will deal openly, clearly, and impartially with him in every thing, and give him faithful intelligence in all his affairs.

Having thus seen what is imported in a man’s trusting his heart, we come now, in the next place, to see wherein the foolishness of it consists. For the making out of which, we are to observe, that there are two things which render a trust foolish, both of them to be considered with mutual relation to one another in this particular.

1st, The value of the thing which we commit to a trust.

2dly, The undue qualifications of the person to whose trust we commit it.

In both of which respects the confidence reposed by men in their own hearts will, in the procedure of this discourse, appear to be inexcusably foolish.

First of all, then, as for the thing which we commit to a trust. We do, in a word, trust all that to our hearts which is the consequent of our actions, either in reference to this world or the other. But to explicate and draw forth this general into the several particulars wrapt up and included in it; while we rely upon the guidance of our heart, we commit these three things to the mercy of its trust. 1. The honour of God. 2. Our own felicity here. 3. The eternal concernments of our souls hereafter. All of them certainly, either jointly or severally, things too great, too high, and too concerning, to be ventured upon the rotten bottom of a false and a deceiving heart.

We shall speak of each of them distinctly.

1st, First of all then, the honour of God is in trusted with the heart. So far as the manifestation of God’s honour depends upon the homage of his obedient creature, so far it is at the mercy of our actions, which are at the command of the heart, as the motion of the wheels follows the disposition of the spring. God is never disobeyed, but he is also dishonoured. In every act of sin, dust and ashes flings itself in the face of the Almighty, and defies him so far, that it puts him to the exercise of his vindictive justice, to prove his sovereignty and dominion over the bold offender.

Now God is capable of being honoured or dishonoured by us in three several respects.

1st, As he is our Creator. And is it not infinitely reasonable for clay to comply with the will of the potter? for such frail vessels as men are, to be subject to their almighty artificer? For did God make us, that we might spit in his face, and give us a being, that we might employ it to the dishonour of him who gave it? While a man sins, he seems to be his own creator, and to own an absolute independency, as to any superior, productive cause. For no understanding, judging rationally, would imagine, that a creature durst act against him, who first raised him into a capacity of acting, and that even out of nothing, and could crush him into nothing again every minute. So that the honour, by which we vouch and own God for a Creator, is a result of our actions, and the conduct of them is committed to the heart.

2dly, God is capable of being honoured by us as a Lord and Governor. If I am a master, says God, where is my honour? But can the rebellion of the subject declare the sovereignty of his prince? And is not every act of sin a blowing of a trumpet against Heaven, and a lifting up of a standard against the Almighty? Is it not the language of every offence, We will not have God reign over us? Does it not trample upon his laws, and puff at the power which should revenge the violation of them? And, on the contrary, is not the piety and obedience of our lives a proclaiming of God to be our King, and a recognizing of him for our great Master?

For this is an obvious and easy maxim of reason, that his servants we are to whom we obey. Obedience is but a clearer comment upon our allegiance. Why does God call upon us to let our light shine before men, did not the shining of that by reflection cast a shine and a lustre upon his own glory? When men see our good works, they are apt to glorify and acknowledge the supremacy and ruling hand of our Lord and Master in heaven.

Well it is, that it is not in the power of the most rebellious creature, by any sin and misbehaviour of his, to take away the power and prerogative of God, though it may for the present be able to eclipse, slur, and so obscure it. For surely this is done, in a great measure, by every broad violation of the divine law, which seems to attempt to persuade the rest of the world, that God is not so great and so mighty a potentate as he bears himself for; since the boldness of an offender, for the most part, speaks the weakness of the governor.

To advance the clearness of which by instance. Pray how did David own God in the relation of a king, when by his two great sins he caused the enemies of God to blaspheme? How did the sons of Eli own him in that respect, when by the insolence and impurity of their behaviour they caused all Israel to loathe the offerings of the Lord? All these actions were a deposing of God from his throne, so far as his throne was placed in the heart and awful esteem of his creatures. In this respect therefore is the heart intrusted with God’s honour.

3dly, The honour of God also, considered as our Saviour and gracious Father, is trusted to the behaviour of the heart. For does not every sin defy, and every act of obedience honour God in this capacity? Would any one take him for a son, who lifts up his heel against him, to whom he should bend the knee? Or can any man be thought to own God for his Saviour, while he treats him with all the acts of hatred and hostility? By the behaviour of sinners towards God, one would think that they took him for an implacable tyrant and an enemy, for one who hated and maligned them, and consequently that the whole tenor of their life was but the acting of a continual revenge upon him for it. Natural ingenuity abhors the recompensing of a friend with all the indignities and contempts that exasperated nature passes upon an enemy. Every unworthy, sinful deportment therefore tends to beget and foment unbeseeming apprehensions of God in the mind of his creature. Now since the actions are governed by the heart, as the great dictator and commander in chief of all that a man either does or desires; it follows, that the heart has that great trust reposed in it, how far God shall receive the glory due to him, as he bears these three grand relations to us, of a Creator, a Governor, and a Saviour.

2dly, The second thing a man trusts his heart with, is his happiness in this world. And this is two fold: 1st, Temporal. 2dly, Spiritual.

1st, And first he trusts it with all his temporal comforts and felicities. It is a most known truth, that most of the miseries and calamities which befall a man in this life, break in upon him through the door of sin; frequent experience shewing us, how easily men sin themselves into disgrace, poverty, sickness, loss of friends, and the like; they are the direct consequents of a man’s personal misdemeanours. David’s adultery and murder made his enemies scorn, and his friends desert him, Psalm xxxviii. 11. It is said of them, that they stood aloof off; they flew from him as from a living, walking contagion. Intemperance ends in poverty, and a full belly makes an empty purse. Luxury enters upon and spoils the soul through the ruins of the body, and the bed of uncleanness prepares for the bed of sickness.

But now in all these instances of sin, which maul the sinner with these temporal disasters, the heart is the first moving spring and principle; they all flow from the prevarications of this. It is this that is the source and the fruitful womb of all the mischiefs that render this life miserable, were there no after-reckonings in another.

How cautious is every man almost of trusting his neighbour with his mind or with his estate; because he knows how much such an one thereby gets the command, and the dispose of his happiness; for he fears lest he may by this means betray his honour, and disgrace him, or undermine his estate, and ruin him; not considering how much greater a suspicion he ought to have of his own heart and temper, which may, through the unhappy bent and propensity of it, push him on upon those courses which shall irrecoverably dash him in all his outward enjoyments; and then that shall sound forth his infamy, and trumpet out his disgrace louder than the tongue of the most merciless reviler can; that shall betray him into captivity to some expensive vice, which shall grind his fortunes to powder, and leave him as bare as the oppression of a domestic tyrant, or the invasion of a foreign enemy.

Such an one ventures into lewd company, and perhaps is thereby surprised into the dishonours of intemperance, and so departs with a wound upon his reputation. Another is confident, and steps into the occasion of sin, which perhaps by degrees entangles, and at length draws him into the paths of vice and uncleanness, and that sullies the clearness of his fame, and withal makes a breach upon the serenity and content of his mind, so that he is brought to taste but little even of these temporal felicities.

Now, how comes this to pass? Why, all through the treachery of his heart, which persuaded him of those strengths which he never really had, which told him what command he had of himself under those circumstances of temptation, which yet upon trial he was unable to contest with, and which would needs make him believe, that he might touch pitch, and yet not be defiled, venture upon the occasions of sin, and yet stand secure from the sin itself. These fraudulent dealings of the heart are those impostures which plunge men into infinite calamities and inconveniences, such as embitter the enjoyment even of common life itself.

2dly, There is yet another part of a man’s happiness in this world, which is spiritual, which his heart is also intrusted with, and that is, the peace of his conscience; a thing, the enjoyment of which is so valuable, and the loss so dreadful, that though it stands here reckoned but for a part of a man’s felicity, yet it is of that nature, that it may well pass for the whole: for what can a man truly enjoy while he wants it? and what can he much feel the want of, while he enjoys it? It is in effect a man’s whole, entire happiness; such a spreading universal influence has it upon all his thoughts, actions, and affections. For while a man carries his acquitting, absolving sentence within him, and a transcript of the pardons of Heaven deposited in his own breast, what storm can shake, what terror can amaze, what calamities can confound him! It is he alone who can look death and danger in the face with a rational unconcernment; for he has that which enables him to look him, who is infinitely more terrible than all these together, even a just, an holy, and sin-revenging God, in the face.

On the other side, when the glass of a man’s conscience shall shew him a God frowning, a law cursing, wrath and vengeance preparing, and all the artillery of heaven and earth making ready against him, what can he think, say, or enjoy, in this condition? Even as much as Cain enjoyed, who lived a vagabond, and a terror to himself; or as Belshazzar, whose joints loosed, and whose knees smote together with horror and consternation. But now, what is this which puts the scourge into the hand of conscience, thus to lash and torment a man? Why, what is it, but the guilt of sin, which arms and envenoms it against the sinner? And is not sin the product of the sinner’s heart? Is not this the dung hill where that snake is bred, and which gives warmth to the cockatrice’s egg, till it be hatched and brought forth to the sinner’s confusion? It is the heart which sows dissension between a man and his conscience, by enticing and ensnaring him into those sins, the guilt of which lies grating and gnawing upon his mind perpetually; so that he lives with pain, and dies with horror, passes his days ill, and ends them worse. In every thing that a man’s heart prompts him to, it casts the die, whether he shall be happy or miserable for ever after. An unwholesome draught or an unwholesome morsel may make a man a pining, languishing person all his days. And it is the treachery of his appetite which inveigles him into the mischief, which cheats, and abuses, and by deceitful overtures trapans him into a perpetual calamity.

3dly and lastly, The other great thing which a man intrusts his heart with, is the eternal concernment of his soul hereafter. For as a man’s heart guides him, so he lives; and as he has lived in this world, so he must be rewarded in the other; and the state a man passes into there is eternal and unchangeable; there is neither retreat from misery, nor fall from happiness. And if so, how vast an acquisition is future glory, and how invaluable a loss goes along with damnation! Better is it that a man had never been born, than that he should miscarry in that his grand and last concern. But it is the behaviour of his heart, which must decide whether he shall or no; for if his heart deceives and seduces him into the fatal ways of sin, upon promise of pleasure, it is a thousand to one but the man holds on his course with his life, till those present pleasures determine in everlasting pains. How many are now in hell, who have nothing to charge their coming into that woful place upon, but an hard heart, a voluptuous heart, a vain, seducing, and deluding heart, which failed them in all the specious shews and promises it made them, which varnished over the ways of sin and death, which spread the paths of destruction with roses, and made them venture an immortal soul upon an appearance, and build eternity upon a fallacy. This has been that which has kindled the unquenchable flames about their ears, which has tied those millstones, those loads of wrath, about their necks, which have sunk them into endless destruction.

A DISCOURSE

UPON

1 JOHN III. 3.

Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

THE apostle in this chapter endeavours to comfort the saints from a consideration of the transcendent greatness of God’s love, which appeared in those excellent privileges that accrued to them from it. The first of which the saints enjoy even in this life, namely, to be the sons of God, the adopted children of the Almighty, to be admitted into the nearest and dearest relation to the great Creator and Lord of heaven and earth. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God! The second great privilege is to be enjoyed by the saints in the life to come, and that is no less than a likeness to Christ himself in glory; a participation of those grand, sublime prerogatives that Christ is endowed withal. We know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him in glory, ver. 2. Now because this great enjoyment was as yet future, and so visible but at a distance, and consequently not so pregnant and bright an argument of comfort, he tells them, that the saints could view it as present in the glass of their hopes, by which they could draw from it a real comfort, with an actual fruition.

It is indeed the nature of earthly comforts to afford more delight in their hopes than in their enjoyment. But it is much otherwise in heavenly things, which are of that solid and substantial perfection, as always to satisfy, yet never to satiate; and therefore the delight that springs from the fruition of those is still fresh and verdant; nay, we may add this yet further, that the very expectation of heavenly things, if rational and well grounded, affords more comfort than the possession and enjoyment of the greatest earthly contents whatsoever.

The apostle having thus told them of their hope, and what a real hold it took of the things hoped for, that he might prevent mistake, and dash presumption, tells them also, that an assured hope of future glory did not at all lead men to present security, but was so far from ministering to sloth, that it did rather quicken and excite them to duty; so that he that has this hope in him purifieth himself: he does not lie still, and acquiesce in this, that he shall be happy and glorious in the world to come, and therefore in the mean time forgets to be virtuous in this; but it raises him to a pursuit of a more than ordinary strain of duty and perfection; he purifies himself., even as Christ is pure; this is his hope, this is his design; he expects to be like Christ in the brightness of his glory, and therefore he exerts his utmost diligence to resemble him in the purity of his life too.

Now before we proceed any further, there are two things that offer themselves in the very entrance of the words, and require some resolution. As first,

1. Is it possible for any man to purify himself? Is it not the Spirit of God that must work in us both to will and to do? For are we not naturally dead in trespasses and sins? And who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? How then can so great a work be ascribed to us?

To this I answer, that we must distinguish of a twofold work of purification.

1. The first is, the infusing of the habit of purity or holiness into the soul, which is done in regeneration or conversion; and in this respect no man living can be said to purify himself. For in this he is only passive, and merely recipient of that grace, that the Spirit of God, the sole agent, infuses into him; antecedently to which we are said to be dead in trespasses and sins, and consequently in this condition can by no means contribute to this work, so as to purify ourselves.

2. The other work of purification is the exercising of that habit or grace of purity which a man received in conversion; by the acting or exercising of which grace he grows actually more pure and holy. And in this respect a man may be said in some sense to purify himself, yet not so as if he were either the sole or the prime agent in this work; for God is the principal agent, who first moves us, and then we act and move, and are said to be coworkers with God; and so are these words to be understood. God, without any help or procurement of our own, first gave us a talent, which afterwards we improve, yet not that entirely by our own strength, but by his assistance. In short, that which has been said in explication of this thing, amounts to no more than that known and true saying, That God who made, and since converted, that is, new made us, without ourselves, will not yet save us without ourselves. And thus much for the first query.

2. But, 2dly, admitting that a man may purify himself in the sense mentioned, yet can he do it to that degree as to equal the purity of Christ himself? to purify himself, even as he is pure? of whom it is expressly said, that he is fairer, that is, holier and purer, than the sons of men, and that the Spirit has anointed him with the oil of gladness, that is, with all divine graces, above his fellows.

To this also I answer, that this term, even as, denotes here only a similitude of kind, not an equality of degree; that is, he that hopes for glory, gets \ his heart purified with the same kind of holiness that is in Christ, though he neither does nor can reach it in the same measure of perfection; he gets the same meekness, the same spiritual mindedness and love to the divine precepts, that is, the same for kind; forasmuch as there is no perfection in Christ’s humanity, but the very same for kind is also to be found in his members, though, we confess, in a much lower degree; as the same kind of blood that runs in the head runs also in the hand and in the foot, though as it is in the head, it is attended and heightened with quicker and finer spirits, than as it is diffused into the inferior members. But yet further, though we should grant that he that has this hope in him pursues not only after the same kind, but also after the same degree of purity that is in Christ, yet it follows not hence that he ever attains to the same; for we must distinguish of holiness as it is absolutely perfect in the pattern, and as it is imperfect in our imitation.

These things being thus cleared off, I cannot perceive any thing more of difficulty in the words; the prosecution of which shall lie in the discussion of these two things.