(2.) In a way of retaliation.

(1.) For the first, I call that prevention, when a man unprovoked makes an injurious invasion upon the rights of another, whether as to his person or estate. God, for the preservation of society, has set a defence upon both these, and made propriety sacred, by the mounds and fortifications of a law. For what living were there, did not the divine authority secure a man both in his being and in the means of his being; but should leave it free for the stronger to devour and crush the weaker, without being responsible to the almighty Governor of all things for the injury done to his fellow-creature, and the contempt passed upon the divine law?

And certainly one would think it not only a reasonable, but a very easy thing for a man wholly unprovoked to keep his hand from his brother’s throat, to let him live and enjoy his limbs, and to have the benefits of nature, and the common rights of creation. It is a sad thing for a man not to be safe in his own house, but much more in his own body, the dearer earthly tabernacle of the two. How barbarous a thing is it to see a Romulus imbruing his hands in the blood of his brother! and he that kills his neighbour, kills his brother, as to the common bonds and cognation of humanity. Now all murders, poisons, stabs, and unjust blows, fall under this just violation of the peace in reference to men’s persons; which God will avenge and vindicate, as being parts of his image: for there is none who requires to be honoured in himself, who will endure to be affronted so much as in his picture.

It is looked upon by some as a piece of gentility and height of spirit, to stab and wound, especially if they are assured that the injured person will not resist; and so secure them the reputation of generosity, without the danger of betraying their cowardice.

The other instance of violence, is the forcible wringing from men the supports of life, their estates, their revenues, or whatsoever is reducible to this notion, as contributing either to their subsistence or convenience. And this is not to be understood barely of oppression managed by open and downright defiance; but by any other sinister way whatsoever, as the overbearing another’s right by the interest and interposal of great persons, by vexatious suits and violence cloaked with the formalities of a court and the name of law. And whosoever interverts a profit belonging to another by any of these courses, is a thief and a robber; perhaps a more safe and creditable one indeed, but still a thief; and that as really, as if he did it by plunder and sequestration; which is only a more odious name, but not a more unjust thing.

And he is no less a disturber of the peace, and a breaker of this law, who oppresses the widow, and grinds the face of the fatherless and the poor, than he who forages a country with an army. For that is only violence with a greater noise, and more solemnities of terror. But God, who weighs an evil action by the malignity of its principle and the injustness of its design, and not by those exterior circumstances which only clothe its appearance, but not at all constitute its nature, has as much vengeance in store for an oppressing justice (if that be not a contradiction in the terms) as he has for the pillaging soldier or the insolent decimator: it being as truly oppression in the accounts of heaven, when proclaimed by the groans and cries of the orphan, as when ushered in with the sound of the trumpet and the alarm of war.

For wherein should consist the difference? Is it because one stands upon his ground, and repels the invasion? and the other opens his bosom to the blow, and resigns himself to his oppressor with patience and silence? Is it peace, because the man is gagged and cannot, or overawed and dares not cry out of oppression? Or is he therefore not wronged, because his adversary, by his place or greatness, has set himself above the reach of justice, and is grown too big for the law?

It was an acute and a proper saying of one concerning a prevailing faction of men, Solitudinem cum fecerint, pacem vocant; when they have devoured, wasted, and trampled down all before them, so that there is none indeed so much as left to resist, that they call peace. But certainly neither are the peacemakers blessed, nor is the peace a blessing, that is procured by such dismal methods of total ruin and desolation. And thus much for the forbearance of hostility in point of prevention or provocation.

(2.) In the next place, there is required also a forbearance of all hostile actions, as to retaliation. I shall not run forth into the common place about revenge, it being a subject large and important enough to be treated of in a discourse by itself. But this I shall say, that according to the weights and measures by which Christianity judges of things and actions, he that revenges an injury will be found as truly a malefactor in the court of heaven, as he that does one. And he that requires an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, is a Jew, and not a Christian; a person of a mean spirit, and a gross notion, unacquainted with the sublimity and spirituality of so refined and excellent a religion.

A peaceable deportment is one of the great duties enjoined in it: and the rule and measure of that is to be charity, of which divine quality the apostle tells us in 1 Cor. xiii. 7, that it suffers all things, hopes all things, endures all things. The very genius and nature of Christianity consists in this, that it is a passive religion: a religion that composes the mind to quietness, upon the hardest and the most irksome terms and conditions.

And the truth is, if it drives on a design of peace, we shall find that the consequences of revenge make as great a breach upon that, as a first defiance and provocation. For were not this answered with resistance and retribution, it would perhaps exhale and vanish; and the peace would at least be preserved on one side. For be the injurious person never so quarrelsome, yet the quarrel must fall, if the injured person will not fight. Fire sometimes goes out, as much for want of being stirred up, as for want of fuel.

And therefore he that can remit nothing, nor recede, nor sacrifice the prosecution of a small dispensable right to the preservation of peace, understands not the full dimensions and latitude of this great duty; nor remembers that he himself is ruined for ever, should God deal with him upon the same terms.

The great God must relax his law, and recede from some of his right; and every day be willing to put up, and connive at many wrongs, or I am sure it is impossible for him to be at peace with us. He shines upon his enemies, and drops the dew of heaven upon the base and the unthankful. And in this very instance of perfection, Matth. v. 48, he recommends himself to our imitation.

If revenge were no sin, forgiveness of injuries could be no duty. But Christ has made it a grand and a peculiar one: indeed so great, as to suspend the whole business of our justification upon it, in Matth. xviii. 35. And in the foregoing verses of that chapter, treating of the unmerciful servant, who exacted a debt from his poor fellow-servant, we find that his lord was wroth with him, and delivered him to the tormentors. Neither could it have profited him to have said, that he exacted but what was lawfully his own; what was due to him upon the best and the clearest terms of propriety. No; this excused not the rigour of a merciless proceeding from him, who had but newly tasted of mercy, and being pardoned a thousand talents, remorselessly and unworthily took his fellow by the throat for an hundred pence.

It is or may be the case of every one of us. We pray every day for forgiveness; nay, we are so hardy as to pray that God would forgive us just so as we forgive others: and yet oftentimes we can be sharp, furious, and revengeful; prosecute every supposed injury heartily and bitterly; and think we do well and generously not to yield nor relent: and what is the strangest thing in the world, notwithstanding an express and loud declaration of God to the contrary, all this time we look to be saved by mercy; and, like Saul, to be caught into heaven, while we are breathing nothing but persecution, blood, and revenge.

But as to the great duty of peaceableness which we have been discoursing of, we must know, that he who affronts and injures his brother breaks the peace; but withal that he who owns and repays the ill turn, perpetuates the breach. By the former, a sin is only born into the world; but by the latter, it is brought up, nourished, and maintained.

And perhaps the greatest unquietness of human affairs is not so much chargeable upon the injurious, as the revengeful. The first undoubtedly has the greater guilt; but the other causes the greater disturbance. As a storm could not be so hurtful, were it not for the opposition of trees and houses; it ruins no where, but where it is withstood and repelled. It has indeed the same force when it passes over the rush or the yielding osier; but it does not roar nor become dreadful, till it grapples with the oak, and rattles upon the tops of the cedars. And thus I have shewn the first thing included in a peaceable behaviour, viz. a forbearance of hostile actions, and that both as to provocation and retaliation. But whether all kind of retaliation be absolutely unlawful, shall be inquired into afterwards.

2. The other thing that goes to constitute a peaceable behaviour, is a forbearance of injurious, provoking words. I know none that has or deserves a reputation, but tenders the defence of it, as much as of his person or estate. And perhaps it has as great an influence upon his contents and emoluments as both of them. It is that which makes him considerable in society. He is owned by his friends, and cannot be trampled upon by his enemies. Even those that will not love him, will yet in some manner respect him. For till the enclosures of a man’s good name are broke down, there cannot be a total waste made upon his fortunes.

Upon this it is, that abusive language, by which properly a man’s repute is invaded, is by all men deservedly looked upon as an open defiance, and proclaiming of war with such a person: and consequently, that the reviler is as great a disturber as an armed enemy; who usually invades a man in that which is much less dear unto him. Rabshakeh broke the peace with Hezekiah, as much by his railing, as by the army that besieged him. And he that flings dirt at a man, affronts him as much as he that flings a stone at him. A wound upon the skin is sometimes sooner got off than a spot upon the clothes.

I would fain know, what man almost there is, that does not resent an ugly, reflexive word with more acrimony and impatience, than he would the stab of a poniard. He remembers it more tenaciously, prosecutes it more thoroughly, and forgets it much more difficultly. And the reason is, because a blow or a wound directs an evil only to a man’s person, but an ill word designs him a wider calamity; it endeavours the propagation and spreading of his unhappiness, and would render him miserable as far as he is known.

Besides, it hurts him so as to put the reparation of that hurt absolutely out of his power: for it lodges his infamy in other men’s thoughts and opinions, which he cannot command or come at, so as to rectify and disabuse them. But admit that the defamed person by a blameless and a virtuous deportment wipes off and confutes the calumny, and clears himself in the esteem of men; yet it is of those only with whom the scene of his converse lies: but in the mean time the slander spreads and flies abroad; and many hundreds come to hear the ill words by which the man is abused, who never come to see his own behaviour by which he is righted.

I conclude therefore, that this great duty of living peaceably is not consummate, without a constant and a careful suppression of all offensive and provoking speeches. And he who does not acquit himself in this instance of a Christian behaviour, will find hereafter, that men will meet with as certain a condemnation for what they have said, as for what they have done.

And thus much for the first general thing proposed for the handling of the words; namely, to shew what was implied in the duty enjoined in them. I pass now to the

Second, which is to consider, what are the measures and proportions by which it is to be determined. And those are expressed in these words; If it be possible, live peaceably. Now possible may be taken two ways.

1. As it is opposed to naturally impossible, and that which cannot be done. Which sense cannot be here intended, as being supposed in all just and reasonable commands. For none can rationally command or advise a man to that, which is not naturally within his power, as has been already observed.

2. It may be taken, as it is opposed to morally impossible, and that which cannot be done lawfully: for it is a maxim in the civil law, id possumus quod jure possumus; which was the sense of Joseph’s answer to his mistress, in Genesis xxxix. 9, How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God? and of that of the apostle, 2 Corinth. xiii. 8, We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth. In both which places, not the possibility, but the lawfulness of the action is specified; and that is the sense here intended.

But now the observance of peace being limited by the measure of lawful, it follows, that where the breaking of the peace is not unlawful, there the maintaining of it ceases to be a necessary duty. It is of some moment therefore to satisfy ourselves when it is lawful, and when unlawful to break the peace. And all inquiries concerning this are reducible to these two.

1. Whether it can at all be lawful.

2. Supposing that it may be lawful, when and where it ought to be judged so.

Under the first of these I shall discuss that great question, whether war can be lawful for Christians. Under the second, I shall shew those general grounds that may authorize a war, and from thence descend to the resolution of particular cases. As,

1. Whether it can be lawful to break peace with the magistrate.

2. Whether it may be lawful for one private man to make war upon another, in those encounters which we commonly call duels.

3. Whether it be lawful for a man to repel force with force, so as to kill another in his own defence.

4. And lastly, since the prosecution of another in courts of judicature is in its kind a breach of the mutual bond of peace, I shall inquire whether it be allowable for Christians to go to law one with another.

All these things admit of much doubt and dispute; and yet, being matters of common and daily occurrence, it concerns us to have a right judgment of them.

I shall begin with the first question, which is concerning the lawfulness of war; in order to the resolution of which, I shall premise what it is. War may be properly defined, a state of hostility, or mutual acts of annoyance, either for the preservation of the public from some mischief intended, or in the vindication of it for some mischief already done to it.

The ground of war therefore is some public hurt or mischief; and since this may be twofold, either intended or actually done, there are accordingly two distinct kinds of war, defensive or offensive.

1. Defensive is in order to keep off and repel an evil designed to the public; and therefore is properly an act of self-preservation.

2. Offensive is for the revenging a public injury done to a community, and so is properly an act of justice.

It is clear therefore, that the lawfulness and justness of war is founded upon the justness of its cause; and this being once found out, and rightly stated, I affirm, that it is allowable before God to cease from peace, and to enter into a state of war; and that upon the strength of these arguments:

(1.) That which is a genuine, natural, and necessary consequent derived from one of the chief principles of the law of nature, that is lawful: but so is war, namely, from the principles of self-preservation, the noblest and the most acknowledged of all those principles, by which nature regulates and governs the actions of the creature. Hoc et ratio doctis, necessitas barbaris, feris natura ipsa praescripsit, ut omnem semper vim, quacunque ope possint, a corpore, a capite, a vita sua propulsarent. Cicero, in his defence of Milo. And that self-preservation cannot be maintained without war is too evident to be proved. The Jews, when they were set upon by their enemies on the sabbath day, and then murdered and massacred, because they thought it unlawful to make any resistance, or to defend themselves on that day, have transmitted the sad truth of this assertion in bloody letters to posterity.

That men will sometimes invade the rights and the lives of others is certain; and it is also as certain, that the naked breast is not the surest armour, nor patience the best weapon of defence.

Do we expect a rescue from heaven? and that God should send down fire from the clouds, and work miracles for our preservation? Experience sufficiently convinces us that such an expectation is vain. God delivers men by means, when means are to be had, and by the interposal of their own endeavours: and therefore he that flies to the church when he should be in the field, and takes his prayer-book in his hand when he should take his sword, tempts God, and loses himself; and, according to a due estimate of things, becomes a murderer, by so patiently suffering another to be so.

Victrix patientia is a puff and a metaphor; and may, perhaps, in the issue of things, bear a man through a domestic injury or a private affront; but I never read that it put an army to flight, or rebated the courage or controlled the invasion of a fighting enemy.

Besides, patience is properly the suffering quietly, when God in his providence calls us to suffer: but it is not a suffering, when God calls us to act, and to stand upon our own defence. As in some men we see it usual to veil their cowardice and pusillanimity with the names of prudence and moderation; so that, which some call patience, will be once found nothing else but a lazy relinquishment of the rights and privileges of their nature; and that a life and a being was much cast away upon such as would not exert the utmost power they had to defend it. This argument is properly for defensive war.

(2.) The second is for offensive; and it proceeds thus: That which is a proper act of distributive justice is lawful; but such a thing is war, it being a retribution of punishment for a public hurt or injury done by one nation to another. That he who does a wrong should suffer for it, is a thing required by justice, the execution of which is committed to the supreme power of every nation: and why justice may not be done upon a company of malefactors defending themselves with arms, as well as upon any particular thief or murderer, brought shackled and disarmed to the block or the gallows, I cannot understand.

The case in a civil war is clear between a magistrate assisted by his subjects, against another rebel part of his subjects: for he being the supreme power, the right of punishing offenders, whether single or in companies, is undoubtedly in him. But since to punish is properly an act of a superior to an inferior, and two kingdoms or nations seem to be equal, and neither to have any superiority or jurisdiction over the other, it may be doubted, how the one’s making war upon the other can be properly an act of punitive justice.

To this I answer, that though these two kingdoms or states be in themselves equal, yet the injury received gives the injured people a right of claiming a reparation from those that did the injury; and consequently, in that respect, gives them a kind of superiority over the other. For, in point of right, still the injured person is superior: and the reason is, because common justice is concerned in his behalf; to whose rules all nations in the world owe a real subjection.

If it were not for war, therefore, there could be no provision made of doing justice upon an offending nation; justice would only prey upon particular persons; but national robberies, national murders, must pass in triumph with the reputation of virtues, as high and great actions, above the control of those common rules that govern the particular members of societies.

In a word, society could not consist, if it were not lawful for one nation to exact a compensation for the injuries done to it by another; and upon the refusal of such compensation, to endeavour it by force and acts of hostility. Wherefore I conclude, that war must needs be just, when the instrument of its management is the sword of justice. And this argument is for offensive war.

But before I dismiss it, there is one doubt that may require resolution, and it is this; that admitting that an injured nation may lawfully make war upon the nation that injured it, yet is it lawful for the injurious nation, being thus justly assaulted by war, also to defend itself?

I answer, that it is; and that upon this ground, that be a man’s delinquency against the laws of society never so great, yet, as long as he retains the nature of a man, he also retains the natural right of self-defence and preservation; unless where, by his own consent, he has quitted it.

But you will say, a particular malefactor is bound to resign up his life to the punishment of the law without resistance: and the case, as to this, seems to be the same in a particular malefactor and an injurious nation; war being a doing of justice upon one, as the execution of the gallows is upon the other: and consequently the obligation to a non-resistance seems to be the same in both. I answer, that the case is very different; and that upon this reason, that a particular member of a commonwealth has consented and submitted to the laws of the nation of which he is a member, which laws enjoin malefactors to surrender up their lives to justice without resistance; whereupon, the right of resisting is lost by his own consent. But now there is no law imposed upon one nation by another, or owned and submitted to by any nation, that obliges it, for having done an injury to another nation, without resistance to endure the effects of war and an hostile invasion; whereupon it still keeps the right of defending itself against all opposition, how just soever it be on their sides that make it.

(3.) The third argument is for all kind of war indifferently, and it runs thus: If St. John the Baptist, Christ himself, and the apostles, judged the employment of a soldier lawful, then war is lawful. The consequence is apparent; for every employment is lawful or unlawful, according to the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the actions to which it is designed: an employment being indeed nothing else but a constant engaging of a man’s self in such or such a way of action. And now for the assumption, that St. John the Baptist, Christ himself, and the apostles, judged the life and employment of a soldier lawful, it shall be made appear particularly.

And first for St. John the Baptist. It was his great office to be the preacher of repentance, and to consign it with the great sacrament of baptism: upon which it is rational to conclude, that he admitted none to baptism, without declaring to them what sins they were to repent of. And since the sum of his doctrine was, that men should bring forth fruits worthy of repentance; when any men asked him what they were to do, to fulfil this great command, it is most consonant to reason to judge, that his answer taught them all that was included in that duty, and shewed them whatsoever was inconsistent with it.

But now, when the soldiers amongst others asked John what they should do, Luke iii. 14, he speaks nothing at all of laying down their employment; but rather confirms that, by prescribing rules to them how they should manage it: as, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any one falsely, and be content with your wages. In short, it is not imaginable that the great forerunner of the Messias, even one of the greatest persons that was born of women, should busy himself to instruct men how they should lawfully manage such an employment as was in itself absolutely unlawful; and to countenance men to receive wages for a work that he judged highly impious and unjust.

In the next place, for the judgment of Christ and his apostles about this matter; the first we have in Matth. viii. 10, where Christ, speaking of the centurion, said, that he had not found so much faith, no, not in Israel. And the like is testified of Cornelius the centurion, in Acts x. 1, 2, that he was a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house.

From whence I argue thus: he whose faith Christ commended, and he to whom the Spirit of God bore this testimony, that he was a devout man, and feared God, could neither of them be engaged in a course of life absolutely unlawful; otherwise saving faith, and the fear of God, would be consistent with a settled, constant, resolved living in sin. For he whose employment is sinful, sins habitually, and with a witness; and we might, with as much propriety of speech, and truth in divinity, commend the faith of an highwayman, and say, a devout bawd, and a devout cheat, as a devout centurion.

I conclude therefore, that war is a thing in itself lawful and allowable, and that the proof of it stands firm, both upon the principles of nature and the principles of Christianity.

And being so, it is a great wonder that Faustus Socinus, and his school, in other things too partial defenders of nature, should yet in this so undeservedly desert it, as to assert all war to be utterly unlawful; not indeed by virtue of the law of nature, or of Moses, but of Christ, who, they say, has perfected the two former, and superadded higher and more sublime precepts.

1. As for that place of St. James, it speaks only of personal quarrels and dissensions between particular men, and not of national hostilities managed by the public conduct of the magistrate: which only is the thing here disputed of.

2. But secondly, admit that the words may be extended to national hostilities and wars between people and people; yet the apostle speaks only of what usually are the causes of war; and not, what are so of necessity, and according to the nature of the thing itself: which, though on one side they are unlawful, namely on that which gives the offence; yet on the other, the causes of it are not. always men’s lusts; but a rational defence of their country, and a due vindication of public justice.

In a word, it is one thing to speak of war, as actually it uses to be managed, and another to speak of it, as it ought and may be managed. And this affords also an answer to the second part of the argument, concerning those sad and sinful effects that follow it, as unjust violences, rapines, cruelties, and the like. Of all which it is to be said, that they proceed only from the corruption and vice of those who manage it, but are utterly extraneous to the nature of war, considered precisely in itself. I know no action so good and allowable but may derive a contagion by passing through ill hands. But we are not to judge of the nature of any thing or action by that which is only accidental to it. The nature of war consists properly either in the repelling of an intended, or the revenging of a received injury. But whether this be done with unjust rapines and hideous cruelties upon the innocent, or duly and justly, the nature of war is still the same: the quality is indeed altered from just to unjust, but that amounts to no more than the ill performing of a thing in itself indifferent.

And thus I have answered all the arguments that to me seem to be of any moment to prove the absolute unlawfulness of all war; upon the strength of which answers, I think I may reckon upon it as a proved assertion, that war is not a thing in itself unlawful.

I suppose nobody will conclude the foregoing discourse to have been a commendation of war, much less an exhortation to it. It is indeed a lawful, but a sad remedy. And I think there is none who looks upon it as a sufficient argument to persuade him that the cutting off a leg or an arm is a desirable thing, because it is better to do so, than to have a gangrene spread itself over the whole body.

Caustics and corrosives may be endured, but certainly the causes that make them necessary are not to be chose. War can be desired only in the nature of a remedy, and a remedy always supposes an evil. And I know no argument so strong to prove the lawfulness of war, but that war itself is a stronger argument to prove the worth and the convenience of peace.

I have now done with the first general inquiry, concerning the measures by which the great duty of peaceableness is to be determined: which was, Whether war could be at all lawful? I come now to the second, which is to inquire, upon supposition that it may be lawful, When and where it ought to be judged so? And here I shall,

First, lay down some general grounds that may authorize war. And,

In which condition we are to suppose the man cut off from all possibility of flying, shut up from all succour by a rescue, or remedy by the law; but drove into those straits, both of place, time, and all other circumstances, that all evasion is rendered desperate and impossible, but through the blood of his adversary.

In this case I affirm it to be lawful for a man to save himself by destroying his enemy, and that upon these two reasons.

1. The first taken from that which we have already insisted upon; the great natural right of self-preservation: which right is as full in particular persons as in public bodies. It is the very firstborn of all the rudiments of nature; and the very ground and reason of its actions; not instilled by precept, but suggested by instinct. A man is no more instructed to this, than he is to be an hungry or thirsty, when nature wants its due refection. And that as to this particular the rights of nature are not abridged by Christian religion, will appear from the

Second argument, taken from that place where Christ commands his disciples to provide themselves swords: but to have allowed them the instruments of defence, and at the same time to have forbid the use of them as unlawful, had been highly irrational. I suppose Christ did not command those poor fishermen to wear swords for ornament only, as men do nowadays; but that he might countenance them in the management of their own preservation, amidst those many unjust violences and assaults, that were likely enough to attend men odious to the world for the promulgation of severe truths.

Has a man therefore received an injury, a disrespect, or something at least that he thinks to be so; if he would now maintain himself in a due composure of spirit, and stop the sallyings out of an hasty and indecent revenge, and all this with success and a certainty of effect; let him first arrest his thoughts, and divert them to some other object. Let him but do this easy violence to himself, as to think of something else: amongst those thousand things in the world that may be thought on, let him fix upon any one; as, his business, his studies, or the news of the time: but amongst other things, let the thoughts be directed rather to reconciling objects, such as are apt to leave a pleasure and a sweetness upon the mind; as a man’s lawful and innocent recreations, the delights of a journey, of a cured sickness or an escaped danger, or the like. But chiefly, let the thoughts be busied upon such things as are peculiar and proper antidotes against the grudge conceived. As, let a man remember whether he never received a courtesy from that person who he thinks has provoked him; and let him consider, whether that courtesy did not outweigh the present injury; and was not done with greater circumstances of kindness, than this of disrespect. Now by such arts and methods of diverting the thoughts, the quick sense of the injury will by degrees be eluded, weakened, and baffled into nothing: and the grudge will strike a man’s apprehensions, but as a gentle breath of air does his face, with a transient, undiscernible touch, leaving behind it neither sign nor impression.

For we must know that it is the morose dwelling of the thoughts upon an injury, a long and sullen meditation upon a wrong, that incorporates and rivets it into the mind. And upon this reason it is ill affronting the melancholy and the thinking man, whose natural temper and complexion lays what he has observed before him, by more frequent remembrances, and more stable and permanent representations; so that the mind has opportunity to carry its examination to every particular circumstance, part, degree, and occasion of the affront, brooding upon it with such a close and continued intention, till it binds the remembrance and resentment of it upon the soul with bands of iron and links of brass, never to be dissolved, or fetched asunder, by time, or kindness, or any after-attempts of reconciliation.

If a man will indulge his thoughts upon a disrespect offered him, he will find how by degrees they will raise and advance, and get the mastery of him. That which first did but lightly move, shall presently warm, then heat, afterwards chafe, and at length fire and inflame him: and now the evil is grown mighty and invincible; and swelled into a strange unlimitedness, so that that which perhaps but a week or two ago was no more than a slight displeasure, and to be smiled, or talked, or slept away, is now like to go off like a clap of thunder, to scatter an huge ruin, and determine in something dismal and tragical.

We shall find that this way of thinking had the like effect upon David, but upon a better subject, in Psalm xxxix. 3, My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue. We see here the gradation by which this holy man’s thoughts led his zeal up to its full height. In like manner, when an injury has passed upon a man, he begins to muse upon it, and upon this his heart grows hot within him, and at length the fire burns, and then he speaks with his tongue; perhaps railing and reviling: and it is well, if in the issue he does not also strike with his hand. The lion has not always such a present supply of fierceness as to fit him to fly upon his prey, till, by the echoes of his own roarings, and the frequent striking of himself with his train, he has called up his drowsy spirits, and summoned his rage to attend his appetite, and so fully chafed himself into his natural fury; and then he is a lion indeed, and to meet him is death, and to behold him a terror next to it.

This is exactly the case of the angry and contentious man; he provokes and works up himself to a passion by a restless employment of thought upon some injury done him; till from a man he grows into a beast of prey, and becomes implacable and intolerable. Surely therefore it concerns the virtuous and the wary, and such as know how absolutely necessary it is to conduct every action of piety by the rules of prudence, to endeavour peaceableness, by keeping down the first inconsiderable annoyances and disturbances of it, which like the mustard seeds in their first sowing are very small and contemptible, but being grown up, shoot out into branches and arms, spread into a vast compass, and settle into a firm strength and consistency of body.

Compare a disgust in its beginnings and after its continuance, in the first appearance and the last effects of it; and we shall find the disproportions monstrous and unmeasurable. No man is able to give laws to an overgrown humour, and to grapple with a corruption ripe and armed with all its advantages. Who would think, when he sees a little spring-head, and beholds the narrowness of its circle, its quiet bubblings and small emissions, that by that time this little thing had crope three or four miles off, it should be spacious in its breadth, formidable in its depth, grow insolent in a tempest, rise and foam and wrestle with the winds, laugh at every thing in its way, and bear its conquering stream over dams and locks, and all opposition? Why thus also it is with the mind of man: after he is offended, if he will not be brought to discharge his thoughts of the offence, he may think and think so long, till he has thought a distasteful apprehension into an action of murder.

But as in order to a man’s keeping of the peace, both with himself and others, it highly lies upon him to give no entertainment to disgustful thoughts, conceived from the behaviour of men towards him; so he is much more to abandon and take heed of all aggravating thoughts. If he will not pass over and forget an offence, at least he is not to heighten it; to make that great, which is but small; and numerous, that is but single. If a man were to chastise a child for a fault, and presently by an error of fancy should persuade himself, that certainly that child was some great porter, and should measure out stripes to him accordingly; there is no doubt but the injury would quickly appear in a sad effect.

There are indeed no venial sins towards God, but there are between men; and therefore he who shall prosecute a venial offence with a mortal hatred, and swell a molehill into a mountain, beholding every thing under new created heights and additions; he betrays a turbulent disposition, and a mind to which peace and the spirit of peace is wholly a stranger.

It is not unusual to hear such speeches fall from some mouths: He did such a thing purposely to spite me; had he not known that I disgusted it, it had never been spoke or done by him. Whereas perhaps the man, in the word or action for which he is censured, thought no hurt, much less designed any: but did it by an innocent carelessness, not sufficiently alarmed by an experience of the baseness, the falseness, and the exceptiousness of men, to set a greater caution or guard upon his behaviour: or perhaps, take it at the worst, it was a word extorted from him by the exasperation of his spirit, and before he was aware, borne upon the wings of passion, and so quickly out of his reach, and not to be recalled.

But shall we now play the exactors and the tyrants, squeezing every supposed irregularity till we fetch blood, and according to that unworthy course condemned in Isaiah xxix. 21, make a man an offender for a word? Are we so perfect ourselves, as to need no allowances, no remissions, no favourable interpretations of what we do or say? Or are we so unjust, as when we need these things ourselves, to deny them to others?

Would any one be willing to be took upon an advantage? to have every slip and weakness of his discourse critically observed, every inadvertency in his behaviour maliciously scanned, and at length heightened, and blown up to a crime, or a great accusation? Surely there is no man so privileged from the common lot of humanity or natural affections, but that he is sometimes more open and gay, free and unconcerned, and so obnoxious to the unseasonable rigours of a watching, ill-natured adversary. And, on the other side, there is no man but sometimes suffers the vicissitude of trouble, business, thought, and indisposition of mind, that may cast a roughness upon his deportment, and for a while interrupt the complaisance of his converse.

And shall these things be now counted grounds sufficient to build a dislike upon, that shall vent itself in the disturbance of a man’s peace, the hatred of his person, the undermining of his interest, and the extinguishing his reputation. It is as certain as certainty itself, that oftentimes they do so: and therefore I have nothing to say more as to this particular, but to make use of that prayer of St. Paul, 2 Thess. iii. 2, God deliver us from unreasonable men: for the way of peace such have not known.

And thus much for the first means to help us in the duty of living peaceably; namely, a mature and careful suppression of all distasteful, but especially of all aggravating apprehensions, either of the defective or faulty instances of men’s behaviour towards us.

2. A second sovereign means conducing to the same great purpose, is the forbearing of all pragmatical or malicious informations against those with whom we converse. It was a worthy saying of Solomon, well beseeming that reputation of wisdom which he stands renowned for in holy writ, that he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends. The carrying of a tale, and reporting what such an one said or such an one did, is the way to sow such grudges, to kindle such heart-burnings between persons, as oftentimes break forth and flame to the consumption of families, courts, and perhaps at length of cities and kingdoms. The mischief such incendiaries do is incredible, as being indeed for the most part inevitable. And a vine or a rose-tree may as well flourish when there is a secret worm lurking and gnawing at the root of them; as the peace of those societies thrive, that have such concealed plagues wrapt up in their heart and bowels.

For let us consider the case a little: there is perhaps in some united body, collection, or society of men, some pick-thank caterpillar or other, who, either to ingratiate himself with some great one, or to mischief some whom he maligns, or peradventure both, comes and cringes and whispers, and tells his story, and possibly with some dissembled expressions of respect to the person whom he is about to ruin: as, that he is heartily sorry that such an one, whom he had always an esteem for, should so misbehave and forget himself, as to be guilty of such things as he found and heard him to be; and indeed was a long time before he could believe any such matter of him, out of the great honour he bore him. Nevertheless thus and thus it is, and he is troubled that he should be forced to be the messenger of any thing to his disadvantage.

Well, the good man has told his story, and the secret bolt is shot: let us now see into how many cursed consequences this viperous piece of villainy is like to spread itself; and that, whether we consider the accusation as true or as false; as relating to the person accused, or to him before whom he is accused. And first we will take the allegation that such informers usually make in their own behalf, that truly they said nothing but what was truth, and they conceive truth may be lawfully spoken. Very good! Be it therefore a truth. But yet give me leave to ask such persons a few questions: as, whether a truth may not be reported with as malicious a design as the greatest falsity that ever was hatched in hell; and whether to tell a truth with the purposes of malice, be not a sin of as black an hue in the accounts of Heaven, as to contrive and tell a downright lie. I would also ask, whether the person who told this truth would have been as ready to tell it, had it made for the other’s advantage as much as it does for his prejudice: and whether he would be willing that every thing should be told and published which is true of himself. I believe the answer to these interrogatories would appear but very lame and imperfect.

But since truth is a thing that seldom dwells in the mouths and discourses of informers, we will suppose the accusation to be, as for the most part it is, really false; and that either as to the very matter of it, there being absolutely no such thing as is reported; or at least in respect of some portion and circumstance of the narration; some little thing being added, over and above the true state of the matter, or something being concealed that should have been mentioned; either of which may make such an alteration in the case, that that which one way is innocent and allowable, the other way becomes impious, vile, and criminal. It is in such reports as it is in numbers, the addition or detraction but of one unit makes it presently another number.

But now, if we proceed further, and direct the consequences of this degenerous practice to the persons concerned in it; as first, to him that is informed against: we shall find that, whether the information be true or false, his condition is very miserable. For if it be true, all opportunities of deprecating his offence, and of reconciling himself to the person offended, are cut off, and took out of his hands; but in the mean time, the accusation lies festering in the other’s mind to whom it is delivered, waiting only for an occasion suddenly to attack or ruin the poor man, who knows not of the cloud which hangs over him, nor of the snare that is spread under him; but is snapt and destroyed before he is aware, without any remedy or escape.

But if the things deposed against him be false, as frequently they both are and may very well be, by reason of the accuser’s presumption that he shall never be brought to vouch or prove what he has said; why then an innocent person unheard, untried, and bereaved of all power to clear himself, and to confute his accuser, is concluded against, and condemned; his sentence is passed, the purpose of his ruin sealed, and the man is blown up before ever he understands that there is so much as any crime, accusation, or accuser of him in the world.

And is not this an horrid and a barbarous thing, and a perversion of the very designs of society? For to what purpose do men unite and convene into corporations, if the mischiefs they suffer under them are greater than those that attend them in a state of dispersion and open hostility?

Certainly it is a grievance to nature, and to that common reason and justice which presides over mankind, to see a brave, an upright, and a virtuous person fall by the informations and base arts of an atheist, a sycophant, and an empty dressed fellow; such an one, that, if but one third part of mankind were like him, neither God nor man would think the world worth preservation. And yet such are the men that overthrow virtue, disappoint merit, and render the rewards of the good and the vicious accidental and promiscuous; and in a word, are the pests and vermin that disturb and infest society.

But neither is the poor, accused, ruined person the only one that is abused and injured by the false and malicious informer, but even he who by such information is brought to ruin him. For is it not the worst of injuries, that such a wretch should make a great person the instrument of his sin, and the prosecutor of his malice; and all this by abusing his intellectuals with a lie? deceiving and cheating him with false persuasions, in order to a gaining him to a base or a cruel action; first blinding his eye, and then using his hand, and making him to do that upon a false representation of things, which, had he been rightly informed of, he would not have done for a world. It is like the making of a man drunk, and then causing him to sign a deed for the passing away of his estate. In short, it is a daring encroachment, and an intolerable injury. And if there were any one that might lawfully not be forgiven, it is this.

But the abuse rests not here; for such sycophants by these practices do not only abuse men in their understanding, their interest, and their peace, by first making them to believe a falsehood, and then to sacrifice a friend or an innocent man to such a belief; but further, they abuse them in that very instance for which they accuse others. It being very frequent, nay my own little experience has observed it, that those who are so officious, by the traducing of others, to fawn, cog, and flatter men to their faces, are as apt to vilify them behind their backs as any other whatsoever: nay, the matter of the accusation by which they secretly stab others, are usually some unwary expressions slipt from those persons, while they have been trapanned into a compliance with the informer’s discourse, in his undervaluing, upbraiding, and detracting from the same men, before whom afterwards he is so diligent to accuse them.

Now in this case there is nothing so much to be wished for, as that some lucky hand of Providence would bring the person informed against, and the person to whom he was informed against, together; that they might compare notes, and confer what the informer had said on both sides. And the truth is, so it falls out by a strange connection and trace of events, that usually such whisperers are discovered, and that that which passing from the mouth is but a whisper, from the echo and rebound becomes a voice: the effect of which is, that a vile person comes to be understood, and then to be abhorred, and to be pointed at as he passes by, with such kind of elogies as these; “There goes a person for whom no one breathing was ever the better, but many ruined, blasted, and undone; the scourge of society, a spit-poison, a viper, and to be abandoned and shunned by all companies, like a mortal infection: and yet withal so despicable, so detested, and that amidst the greatest successes of his base projects, that the condition of him who is most ruined by him, even while he is ruined, is much more eligible, and desirable; as of the two, I know no man, but had rather be spit upon by a toad than be a toad.”

I wonder what such persons think, or propose to themselves, when they come to affront God in his house, praying, hearing sermons, and receiving sacraments; when there is no sin or corruption incident to the depraved nature of man, that more peculiarly unfits them for this divine and blessed duty, than the sin that we have been discoursing of. And I am confident, that when such a person thrusts himself upon the ordinance, and receives the consecrated elements; he yet partakes no more of the body and blood of Christ, or the real benefits of them, than the rat that gnaws the bread, a creature like himself, close, mischievous, and contemptible.

We have seen here how much such persons and practices interrupt the peace of societies; but yet we are to know that the burden of this charge is not so wholly to lie upon the framers and bringers of such informations, but that some is to rest upon those also who are ready to hear them. For as there is a parity of guilt between the thief and the receiver, so there seems to be the like between the teller and the hearer of a malicious report; and that upon very great reason. For who would knock, where he despaired of entrance? or what husbandman would cast his seed but into an open and a prepared furrow? so it is most certain, that ill tongues would be idle, if ill ears were not open. And therefore it was an apposite saying of one of the ancients, that both the teller and the hearer of false stories ought equally to be hanged, but one by the tongue, the other by the ears: and were every one of them so served, I suppose nobody would be so fond of those many mischiefs brought by such persons upon the peace of the world, as to be concerned to cut them down, unless, perhaps, by cutting off the forementioned parts, by which they hung.

But when there is a conspiracy and an agreement on both sides, and one ill-nature tells a tale, and another ill-nature thanks him for it; and so encourages him in the custom, by shewing how ready he is to hear his words, and to do the intended mischief; so that the ball is kept up, by being tossed from one hand to the other: let not that society or company of men, who are blessed with such persons amongst them, expect any such thing as peace; they may as well expect that the winter sun will ripen their summer fruits, or the breath of the north wind preserve their blossoms. No, they will find, that the blasts of contention will blow and whistle about their ears, and a storm arise, which shall endanger their tranquillity to an utter shipwreck, without any possibility of being appeased, but by throwing such wretches and renegadoes from God and good-nature overboard.

Let this therefore be the second means to advance us in the duty of living peaceably; namely, to abominate such practices ourselves, and to discountenance them in others. It is a prescription easy and sovereign, and such an one as will not fail in the experiment: but according to the proportions of its efficacy, will manifest a certain and an happy influence, for the restoring of peace, and the refreshing of human converse: for when the troublers of Israel are removed, the trouble of it must needs cease.

(3.) And lastly, eternal death fills both body and soul with most intense pain, and the highest torment and anguish which can be received within a created, finite capacity. All the woes, griefs, and terrors which humanity can labour under, shall then, as it were, unite, and really seize upon the soul at once. I am tormented in this flame, says the rich man, Luke xvi. 24. And surely a bed of flames is but an uneasy thing for a man to roll himself upon to all eternity. The sufferings which shall attend this estate, no tongue can express, no heart can conceive. Pain shall possess the body; horror, agony, and despair, shall rack the mind: so that the whole man shall be made the receptacle and scene of misery, the tragical scene for vengeance to act its utmost upon, and to shew how far a creature is capable of being tormented without the loss of its being; the continuance of which, under those circumstances, is but a miserable privilege, and would gladly be exchanged for annihilation. For every lash which God then gives the sinner shall be with a scorpion; every pain which he inflicts shall be more eager than appetite, more cruel than revenge; every faculty, both of soul and body, shall have its distinct, proper, and peculiar torment applied to it, and be directly struck there, where it has the quickest, the tenderest, and the sharpest sense of any painful impression.

God seldom punishes or afflicts in this world, but it is with some allay of mercy; some mixture of clemency, which even in the midst of misery may yet support hope. But when sin has lodged the. sinner in hell, the cup which God then administers shall be all justice without mercy, all wrath and venom, all dregs and yet no bottom; a cup never to be drank off, inexhaustibly full, inconceivably bitter.

But I shall use no other argument to evince the greatness of those torments but only this, that the Devil shall be the instrument of their execution. And surely a mortal enemy will be a dreadful executioner; and the punishment which an infinite justice inflicts by the hand of an implacable malice must needs be intolerable.

And thus I have despatched the second general thing proposed; which was to shew, what is included and comprised in death, which is here allotted for the sinner’s wages. I proceed now to the

Third and last; which is to shew, in what respect death is properly called the wages of sin. I conceive it may be upon these two following accounts.

1. Because the payment of wages still presupposes service and labour. And undoubtedly the service of sin is of all others the most painful and laborious. It will engross all a man’s industry, drink up all his time; it is a drudgery without intermission, a business without vacation.

We read of the mystery of iniquity; and certainly the mystery of no trade can be attained without a long and a constant sedulity. Nemo repente fit turpissimus. It is the business of a life to be a complete sinner.

Such as are the commands of sin, such must be also the service. But the commands of sin are for their number continual, for their vehemence importunate, and for their burden tyrannical.

Sin is said to conceive and to bring forth; and there is no birth without pain and travail. God condemned Adam upon his transgression to the turmoils of sweat and labour: but one would have thought, that he might have spared this malediction, when labour is not only the consequent, but the very nature of sin. To dig the earth is man’s punishment; but the sin which deserves it, is the greater labour.

For is there any work so toilsome, so full of fatigue and weariness, as to be always at the call of an unlimited appetite, at the command of an insatiable corruption? The Greek is emphatical, and describes the nature of sin in its name; for πονηρία, which signifies sin or wickedness, takes its derivation from πόνος, which signifies labour. So that the readiest way, it seems, to fulfil the apostle’s precept in 1 Thess. iv. 11, of studying to be quiet, is to study to be innocent.

And were there nothing else in sin but the discomposing and ruffling of that serene quiet, and undisturbed frame of spirit, which naturally attends a true and steady virtue, it were enough to endear the one, and to discommend the other. For sin seldom acts, but in the strength of some passion: and passion never moves but with tumult and agitation: there being scarce any passion but has its contrary to thwart and to encounter it; so that still the actings of them represent a kind of little war in the soul: and accordingly, as the prophet Isaiah says of every battle of the warrior, so we may say of every stirring of an high passion, that it is with confused noise. The still voice of reason is drowned, the sober counsels of religion are stifled, and not heard. And must not that man, think we, needs be very miserable, who has always such a din and hurry in his breast? His passions raging, and his vicious appetites haling and pulling him, sometimes to this object, sometimes to a contrary! So that what through the clamour, and what through the convulsion of exorbitant clashing desires, the soul is in a rent, distracted condition; like Actaeon amongst his dogs, that first bawl about his ears, and then tear him to pieces.

The truth of this is sufficiently manifest, from the general theory of the thing itself; but the same will appear yet more evidently by running over particular instances.

And first, take the voluptuous, debauched epicure. What hour of his life is vacant from the slavish injunctions of his vice? Is he not continually spending both his time and his subsistence to gratify his taste? and, as it were, to draw all the elements to his table, to make a sacrifice to the deity of his belly? And then, how uneasy are the consequences of his luxury! when he is to grapple with surfeit and indigestion, with his morning fumes and crudities, and other low and ignoble distempers, the effects of a brutish eating; thus having his stomach always like a kitchen, both for fulness and for filth.

And next, for the intemperate drinker: is not his life a continual toil? To be sitting up when others sleep, and to go to bed when others rise; to be exposed to drunken quarrels and to sordid converse; to have redness of eyes, rheums, and distillations; a weakened body, and a besotted mind?

And then for the adulterer and unclean person: upon what hard employments does his lust put him! first to contrive, plot, and compass its satisfaction, and then to avoid the furies of an enraged jealousy, and to keep off the shame of an infamous discovery. We find the adulterer, in Job xxiv. 16, digging through houses, till at length, perhaps, he digs his own grave too; and by a laborious pursuit comes to an ignominious end.

And lastly, for the covetous, scraping usurer. It is a question whether he gathers or keeps his pelf with most anxiety: he is restless to get, and fearful to lose; but always solicitous, and at work. And perhaps those who labour in the mines are not so busy as those who own them. But I need say no more of such a person but this, that his business is as vast and endless as his desires; and greater it cannot be.

And thus I have shewn the toil of sin, in several particulars, to which many more might be added. In short, if idleness were not a sin, there was scarce any sin but what is laborious.

So that now the retribution of death following such hard and painful service, may properly bear the denomination of wages; and be reputed rather a payment than a punishment.

2. The other reason why death is called the wages of sin, is because wages do always imply a merit in the work, requiring such a compensation. Sin and death are compared together as sowing and reaping: and we all account it a thing of the highest reason and equity in the world, that he who sows should also reap: He who sows to the flesh, says the apostle, Gal. vi. 8, shall of the flesh reap corruption. The evil of sin is every way commensurate to the evil of death; retaliation is the very nature and spirit of justice; and that a man who does an action contrary to another’s good, should be made to expiate it by a suffering contrary to his own, is but proportion.

But to this, some make that trite and popular objection; that since the same is the measure and extent of things contrary; and since our good works cannot merit eternal life; it should follow also, that neither can our sins, our evil works, merit eternal death.

But to this I answer, that the case is very different in these two. For to the nature of merit, it is required that the action be not due: but now every good action being enjoined and commanded by the law of God, is thereby made due, and consequently cannot merit: whereas, on the contrary, a sinful action being quid indebitum, altogether undue; and not at all commanded, but prohibited, it becomes properly meritorious; and, according to the malignity of its nature, it merits eternal death.

But some will yet further urge; that in regard a sinful action is in itself but of a finite nature, and withal proceeds from a finite agent; there seems to be nothing of proportion between that, and an endless, eternal punishment. For what is man but a weak, mutable creature at the best? And what is sin, but a vanishing action, which is performed in the compass of a few minutes, and not to be laid in the scale with the inexhaustible measures of perpetuity?

But to this also we answer, that the merit of sin is not to be rated, either by the substance of the act, or by the narrowness and poorness of the agent; but it is to be measured by the proportions of its object, and the greatness of the person against whom it is done. And therefore being committed against an infinite majesty, it greatens, and rises to the height of an infinite demerit.

Nevertheless, because men are apt to think that God treats them upon hard terms, and to view sin with a more favourable eye, I shall in a word or two shew what there is in the nature of sin, which renders it so highly provoking, as to deserve the greatest evil that omnipotence itself can inflict upon the creature. And,

1st, Sin is a direct stroke at God’s sovereignty. Hence we read of the kingdom of Satan, in contradistinction to the kingdom of God: and in the conversion of a sinner, when grace is wrought in the heart, the kingdom of God is said to come into it: and the whole economy of the gospel is styled the kingdom of heaven. So that sin had translated God’s subjects into a new dominion: as amongst men, he who has committed a felony or a murder, usually flies the territories of his lawful prince; and so living in another kingdom, puts himself under the necessity of a new subjection.

Thus sin invades the throne of God, usurps his royalty, and snatches at his sceptre. But now there is nothing so tender, and sensibly jealous of the least encroachment, as prerogative; the throne admits of no partner, endures no competitor. Rule and enjoy all Egypt, says Pharaoh to Joseph, but still with this reserve, that in the throne I will be greater than thou.

No wonder therefore if God punishes sin, which is indeed treason against the King of kings, with death; for it puts the question, Who shall reign? It grasps at all, it strikes high, and is properly a blow given to the supremacy.

1. And first of all, it excludes mixture; that is to say, all conjunction with any different or inferior nature; purity still infers simplicity: gold cannot be called pure, though never so great in bulk, if it has but the least alloy of a baser metal. Though there be in the heart seeds of virtue, principles of goodness and morality; yet if blended with a greater, or an equal degree of corruption, that heart cannot challenge the denomination of pure: for, as Solomon says, Eccles. x. 1, even so small a thing as a fly falling into the apothecary’s ointment will give it an offensive savour; and one grain of folly will taint all the honour of him who has a reputation for wisdom. In this sense also is purity ascribed to the word or law of God, in Psalm cxix. 140; Thy word is pure, therefore thy servant loveth it: which is an elogy that cannot be truly given to any other laws in the world, no not to those of the most renowned lawgivers, as of Lycurgus, Solon, or Plato in his Commonwealth, whose laws, though they enjoined many worthy, virtuous, and noble actions, yet still were debased by the addition of something vile and filthy, not only allowed, but sometimes also commended by them; still there was a vein of immorality running through them, that corrupted and defiled the whole channel, and the best of human laws have still some mixture of imperfection.

But now all mixture or composition is a kind of confusion; attempting unity, where nature has made variety and distinction. It raises a certain war or faction in the same compound; and the very cause of death, dissolution, and putrefaction, in all sublunary bodies, is from the contest and clashing of contrary qualities upon mixture; which never takes away the innate enmity of contraries, though it may compose their present quarrel. Christ states this matter fully in Matth. vi. 24, No man, says he, can serve two masters; for he will love the one, and hate the other. In like manner, it is impossible for two opposite principles so to unite and mix themselves in the same heart, as equally to command and share its obedience by such just proportions, that it should at the same time seriously intend the service of virtue and the gratification of a vice. Now to give things their due and exact appellations, I conceive, in the sense hitherto spoken of, a pure heart is properly the same with that which is called in scripture a single heart.

2. Purity excludes also pollution, that is, all adherence of filth and outward contagion; as a fountain is said to be pure, when there is no dirt or soil cast into it, that may discolour or defile it. If the guilt of any gross sinful act cleaves to the conscience, that conscience presently loses its purity and virginity. Every such sin falls upon it like a blot of ink upon the finest linen or the cleanest paper. In this sense St. Paul enjoins purity to Timothy; 1 Tim. v. 22, Keep thyself pure, that is, free from the least taint of vice or scandal. In this sense also St. Paul declares himself, in Acts xx. 26, pure from the blood of all men; that is, clear from the guilt or charge of the murderous neglect of souls. So that a pure heart thus taken,, is properly the same with that which David calls a clean heart; Psalm li. 10, Create in me, O God, a clean heart. For so much of inherent sin, so much of filth and foulness. The very frame and make of man’s heart is but dust; but sin degrades it still lower, and turns it into dirt.

For the explication of which words, I shall shew,

I, What is meant by being Christ’s.

II. What by the flesh with the affections and lusts.

I. For the first of these. To be Christ’s is to accept of and have an interest in Christ, as he is offered and proposed in the gospel. Now Christ is offered and held forth to every particular person that expects to be saved by him under three offices; 1. his prophetical, 2. his kingly, and 3. his sacerdotal. In which account I give you not only the number of his offices, but also their order, as they stand related to us. And this order and economy of them is founded upon the very nature of the thing, and the natural order of religious actions. For in the procedure of nature there must be, 1. the knowledge of a duty; 2. the performance of it; 3. the reward. Correspondent to these is the economy of Christ’s offices. For, 1. by Christ’s prophetic office, revealing his mind to us, we come to know his will. 2. Then by his kingly office, ruling and governing us, we come to yield obedience to that will. 3. And thirdly, by his sacerdotal or priestly office, we come to receive the fruit of that obedience in our justification and salvation. For we must not think that our obedience is rewarded with eternal life for its own merit, but it is the merit of Christ’s sacrifice that procures this reward to our obedience.

Some indeed preposterously misplace these, and make us partake of the benefit of Christ’s priestly office in the forgiveness of our sins, and our reconcilement to God, before we are brought under the sceptre of his kingly office by our obedience. But such must know that our interest in Christ as a lord and king to rule us, does precede, if not also cause, our interest in him as a priest to save us. For the gospel perverts not the order of nature; the work must still go before the reward. And those shall never share in the benefit of Christ’s sacrifice, who have not submitted to the rule of his sceptre.

Now therefore, to sum this up into a firm conclusion, he, and he alone, is properly said to be Christ’s, who, upon a sound knowledge of and a sincere obedience to Christ’s will, stands justified and reconciled to God by the merit of his death and sufferings: and thus he is perfectly Christ’s, who has an interest in him considered under every one of his offices. This may serve to overthrow the wild and irrational justification of the antinomians, libertines, and lazy solifidians, who upon this ground only judge themselves to be Christ’s, because they believe they are: a way of justification, for its easiness, rather to be wished true than to be thought so. But easy things in religion are always suspicious, if not false; and such will find, that their belief is not the rule of God’s proceeding.

II. In the next place we are to see what is meant by the flesh, and the affections and lusts. By the first I suppose I need not tell you that it cannot be understood of the corporeal bulk of man, which together with the soul makes up the whole compound; but it is rather a metonymy of the part for the whole, or perhaps more properly, of the subject for the adjunct, the flesh for the sin adherent to the flesh, as shall be made out by and by. In the mean time by flesh we are to understand the whole entire body of sin and corruption, that inbred proneness in our nature to all evil, in one word expressed by concupiscence, usually called by the schoolmen fomes; that fuel, or combustible matter in the soul, that is apt to be fired by every temptation; the womb that conceives and brings forth all actual impurities, styled in the next words affections and lusts. By which we are not to understand only the brutish affections of carnal sensuality, but indifferently all the actual eruptions of that accursed principle, all the streams that issue from that impure fountain; for as by the flesh is denoted the original depraved disposition of the heart, so by the other is signified the drawing forth of that propensity or principle into the several commissions of sin through the course of our lives; flesh is the fuel, and lust the flame.

Having thus given the explication of the words, and shewn what is to be understood by being Christ’s, and what by the flesh and its affections,

We shall lay the further prosecution of the text in these two things.

I. To shew why this vitiosity and corrupt habit of nature comes to have this denomination of flesh.

II. What is imported by the crucifying of it.

For the first of these. The whole depravation of our nature comes to be called flesh for these reasons.

1. Because of its situation and place, which is principally in the flesh. Here it is placed, here it is enthroned. Concupiscence, I shew, was the radix of all sin, and all the several kinds of sin, to which men are severally inclined, are only so many modifications or different postures of concupiscence; and concupiscence itself follows the crasis and temperature of the body; as we know the liquor for the present receives the figure of the vessel into which it is infused. If you would know why one man is proud, another cruel, another intemperate or luxurious, you are not to repair so much to Aristotle’s Ethics, or the writings of other moralists, as to those of Galen, or of some anatomists, to find the reason of these different tempers; for doubtless they arise from the different quality of the blood and the motion of the spirits in those several persons; which things themselves depend upon the climate, diet, and air, in which men are born and bred. Hence we see that those of the same climate are usually disposed to the same sin. Whereupon some have presumed to set down the standing characters of several nations; as that the Grecians are false; the Spaniards formal, grave, and proud; the French wordy, fickle, and fantastic; the Italians lustful; and the English mutinous and insolent to governors. And these characters, if true, seem to agree to these several nations, not only for one age, but successively in all generations: as waters of a river running in the same channel always retain the same colour, taste, and breed the same sorts of fish. And it is not to be questioned, but that it was the same humour that raised the barons’ wars, and since acted higher in the late rebellion. I do not believe a transmigration of souls, but surely there is something to be observed that looks very like a transmigration of tempers and manners; so constantly does posterity succeed into the humours, appetites, and ways of their progenitors.

But let not any one gather from what has been said, that I place sin in the body only, not in the soul also: for in the body I place only the first seeds and occasions of it, which immediately, upon the sociation of the soul with the body, communicates and transfuses the contagion to that likewise; as we see in stills and alembics, though the fire put under, and the materials put within them, lie in the lower part, yet they send up a steam and exhalation, which settles into drops in the upper part: so all the perturbations of bodily affections, though they are seated in the body, which is the lower part, yet they continually exhale and breathe forth sinful vapours, that leave a guilt and an impurity upon the soul; yea, even upon the top and commanding faculties, the understanding and the will: though, to pursue that similitude a little further, as that which rises from the bottom of the still is but a vapour, and becomes not a drop till it settles upon the upper part of it, so that which comes from the body is but a bare disturbance, and comes not to the proper form and nature of a sin, till consented to and owned by the soul. From what has been laid down, Aristotle observes, that intemperance and luxury about things that affect the body and grosser senses leaves a kind of stupidity and sottishness upon the mind also; as the uppermost part of the chimney is blacked by the fire that burns below.

How the body should affect the soul, that which is material work upon that which is immaterial, is, I confess, a problem hardly resolved in philosophy; but experience shews the truth of the thing by its apparent and undeniable effects: and reason itself will not prove that we ought to reject the thing, because we are ignorant of the manner, unless reason would prove also, that we might know every thing. But where philosophy seems to contradict a divine truth, there it is to be reputed vain, and we are to fetch the decision of the case from faith.

IV. I shall shew the reasons why a curse or woe is so peculiarly denounced against this sin.

V. And lastly, I shall apply all briefly to the present sad occasion.

I. And first for the ground and cause of the curse here denounced, which was the crying, crimson sin of bloodshed; a sin, in the hatred and detestation of which heaven and earth seem to strive for the mastery. The first great disturbance in the world after the fall of man was by a murderer; whom the vengeance of God pursued to that degree, that he professed that his punishment was greater than he could bear, though he himself could not say, that it was greater than he had deserved. Accordingly in all succeeding generations it has still been the care of Providence, both by civil and religious means, to extinguish all principles of savageness in the minds of men, and to make friendship and tenderness over men’s lives a great part of religion. But by nothing has this been so highly endeavoured, as by the rules and constitution of Christianity, the last and noblest revelation that God has made of his mind and will to the sons of men. In which all acts of fierceness, violence, and barbarity, are so strictly provided against, that there are few injuries in which patience and sufferance are not recommended instead of the most just and reasonable pretensions to revenge: nay, and so very tender is it of men’s lives, that it secures them against the very first approaches and preparations to murder, by dashing even angry thoughts, and denouncing damnation to vilifying, provoking words: so that we have both law and gospel equally rising up against this monstrous sin: and the sentence of both confirmed by the eternal voice of reason speaking in the law of nations: and so all passing this concurrent judgment, that whosoever sheds man’s blood, ought by man to have his blood shed. A judgment made up of all the justice and equity that it is possible for reason and religion to infuse into a law.

But now the execution of this law being upon no grounds of reason to be committed to every private hand, God has found it necessary to deposit it only in the hands of his vicegerents, whom he intrusts and deputes as his lieutenants in the government and protection of the several societies of mankind; and so both to ennoble and guard their sceptres, by appropriating to the same hands the use of the sword of justice too. From which it follows, that the law has not the same aspect upon sovereign princes, that it has upon the rest of men; nor that the sword can, by any mortal power, be authorized against the life of him to whom the sole use of it is by divine right ascribed. Upon which account, if it so fall out that a prince invades either the estate or life of a subject, that law, that draws the sword of justice upon the life of any private person doing the same things, has no power or efficacy at all to do the same execution upon the supreme magistrate, whose supremacy, allowing him neither equal nor superior, renders all legal acts of punishment or coercion upon him (the nature of which is still to descend) utterly impossible.

But what! does God then approve, or at least connive at those wicked actions in princes, that he so severely takes revenge of in others? No, certainly, the guilt is the same in both, and under an equal abhorrence with God, and shall equally be accounted for; but the difference is this, that while God punishes inferior malefactors by the hands of princes, he takes the punishment of princes wholly into his own: and surely no guilty person is like to speed at all the better for having his cause brought before him who has an infinite wisdom to search into, and an infinite power to revenge his guilt. It is God’s prerogative to be the sole judge of princes, and heaven only is that high court of justice, where kings can be legally arraigned, tried, and condemned. God has woes enough in store to humble the highest and the proudest tyrant, without needing the assistance of any of his rebel subjects; and therefore such courses for the curbing or pulling down of princes is neither the cause of God nor the defence of religion, but the doctrine of devils, and the dictates of that which in the judgment of God himself is worse than witchcraft. For be a king never so savage, bloody, or unjust, he is, under all these respects, to be looked upon as a plague or a punishment sent by God upon the people, whose duty I am sure is to submit, be the punishment what it will. And however, that nation is like to find but a strange recovery, be its distemper what it will, if its cure must be a rebellion.

II. The second thing to be considered is, the condition of the person against whom this woe or curse is denounced. He was such an one as had actually established a government and built a city with blood. We know that as soon as Cain had murdered his brother, he presently betook himself to the building of a city. And so indeed it falls out, that bloodiness has usually a connection with building, and that upon some ground of reason: forasmuch as men, by shedding of blood, are enabled to build cities, and set up governments; and then because such cities being once built, and governments set up, do secure the shedders of blood from the vengeance due to their sin. The person here spoken of I am sure eminently served his turn by his cruelty and bloodiness in both these respects, as having thereby reared, or at least hugely augmented the most magnificent city that ever was; even Babylon, the stupendous metropolis of the eastern monarchy, then the governess of the world: a city so strong and great, that it might well promise its builder sufficient defence against any mortal power, that should presume to call him to account for any of those slaughters and depredations, by which he had been enabled thus to build it. So that it is not for nothing, that the prophet here expresses the whole Chaldean monarchy by this city, which was of such incredible strength, glory, and vast dimensions, that it might well pass for one of the wonders of the world, and render it almost doubtful whether Babylon should be accounted in the Chaldean empire, or the Chaldean empire be said to be in Babylon. The account the world has had of the Assyrian monarchy, the first and greatest of all the four, is indeed but small and imperfect; but so far as the scattered fragments of antiquity have been able to inform us, we may guess at the unparalleled greatness of the structure by the magnificence of its remains. For if we consider the spaciousness of this city of Babylon, it is reported to have been about four hundred and fifty-eight of our English miles in circuit: yea, so exceeding wide and ample was it, that three days after it was taken, one part of the city knew nothing of what had befallen the other. The wall that encompassed it was two hundred cubits high, and so thick withal, that two coaches might meet upon the breadth of it. It opened itself at an hundred gates, and those all of brass; which whole wall was the work of Nebuchadnezzar, though falsely ascribed to Semiramis. Add to all this, the horti pensiles, art’s miraculous emulation of nature, that is, vast gardens and woods planted upon the battlements of towers, and bearing trees fifty foot in height: such prodigious instances of the grandeur of this city have the most authentic historians, both Greek and Latin, transmitted to us. So that Nebuchadnezzar might well vaunt himself upon the survey of such a mighty structure, as, in Daniel iv. 29, 30, we find that he does to some purpose; where we have him walking in the palace of his kingdom, and thus braving it to himself: Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of my kingdom, and by the might of my power? Words that sufficiently declare the speaker of them to have little regarded either God or man. And surely while he uttered them, he thought himself in a condition rather to rival and defy heaven, than to fear it, and far above the reach of all woes or curses.

But when God shall send a curse, it shall go with a vengeance, and make its way into the very heart of Babylon, climb its high walls, and break through its brass gates, and drive the tyrant with these very words in his mouth from his throne and all his imperial glories, to herd it with the beasts of the field, till a better mind should fit him for a better condition. For it is worth our observing, that God takes a peculiar delight to surprise and seize upon a great guilt in the height of its pride and bravery, and in the very midst of all its strengths and presumed securities. He delights to commission his curse to arrest a bloody Ahab, just as he is going to take possession of the price of blood, and to dash out the brains of a murderous Abimelech in the very head of his army. These are the triumphs of judgment, and the glorious trophies of blood-revenging justice.

III. The third thing proposed was, to shew the latitude and extent of this woe or curse, and what is comprehended in it. Concerning which, there is no doubt but it includes the miseries of both worlds, present and future. And if we go no further than the present, it is grievous enough, and made up of these following ingredients.

1. That it fastens a general hatred and detestation upon such men’s persons. For cruelty and bloodiness, armed with power, is the proper motive and the dreadful object of men’s fears; and fear and hatred usually keep company; it being very hard, if not impossible, to assign that person, who has not the same share and proportion in men’s hatred, that he has in their fears. Every man flies from such an one, as from a public ruin or a walking calamity, who, which way soever he turns himself, both looks and brings certain desolation. He converses amongst the living as an enemy to men’s lives; as a sword or a dagger, which the nearer it comes, the more dangerous it is.

Cruelty alarms and calls up all the passions of human nature, and puts them into a posture of hostility and defiance. Every heart swells against a tyrant, as against a common enemy of mankind, and blood rises at the sight of blood; and certainly it is none of the least of miseries for a man to be justly hated; for though it be tied up and restrained from its utmost effects, yet the very breathings of it are malignant, the silent grudgings and glances of it ominous and fatal. A great part of the happiness of this life is, to enjoy a free and amicable converse with such as live about us; and therefore an ingenuous nature cannot but account it a real plague, to see a cloud in every countenance he beholds; to observe the black and lowering aspects of a reserved malice, and, as it were, to read his doom in every face, and to gather his fortune from another’s forehead.

Who so hated as Cain, Nebuchadnezzar, Saul, Herod, and such other bloodsuckers? All the glory of their power and magnificence was smothered in the hatred of their cruelty, deriving a just hatred upon their persons: for it is the concernment of mankind, and of humanity itself, to abhor such destroyers. He that shews the power he has over men’s lives only by taking them away, must not think to command or reign over their affections.

Neither is this hatred without an equal scorn; for the same temper that is cruel is also sordid and degenerous, and consequently as fit an object for contempt. What so cruel, and withal so base, as a wolf? But on the other side, true worth and fortitude is never bloody. Gold, the noblest of metals, is healing and restorative; and it is only iron, the vilest, with which we wound and destroy.

Let this therefore be the first ingredient of the woe discharged against the tyrant and bloody person, to be universally hated and scorned; to go no whither, but with a retinue of curses at his heels; to be murdered in the wishes, and assassinated in the very looks of his subjects. He who is a monster, and an exception from human nature, may perhaps count this nothing, and say with Lucius Sylla, the murdering, proscribing dictator of Rome, Oderint dum metuant; but he that is sensible that man was born for society, that is, to love and to be loved, must in this case look upon himself as an outlaw and an exile from the converse, and consequently from the felicity and proper enjoyments of mankind.

2. The second ingredient of the woe here denounced against bloody persons is, the torment of continual jealousy and suspicion. He that is injurious, is naturally suspicious; and he that knows that he deserves enemies, will always suppose that he has them, and perhaps at length by suspecting come to make them so.

But now, is it not the height of misery thus like a wild beast still to fear and to be feared? for the mind to be perpetually struggling with its own surmises, and first to create torments, and then to feel them? The breast of a tyrant is like a sea, it swallows up and devours others, and is still restless, troubled, and unquiet in itself. Could Herod the Great be more poorly and basely unhappy, than to be afraid of poor sucking infants, and not to think himself safe in the throne, unless he stormed nurseries and invaded cradles? A kingdom can be desirable upon no other account, but because it seems to command more of the materials of happiness, and to afford greater opportunities of satisfaction to the desires of a rational nature, than can possibly be had in any inferior condition. But now what real happiness can that prince or great man find, that has his mind depraved into such a jealous, suspicious temper? What can all the enjoyments of a court or kingdom profit, when the tormentor within shall imbitter them all, and the paleness of fear and death sit perpetually upon his heart? What pleasure can it afford to cast roses into that bosom, that feels the gnawings of the wolf?

And therefore if the tyrant is brought to this pass, as to feel the reflections of his tyranny over others in that which his own jealousy exercises upon himself, and if his own thoughts plot and conspire against him, his very diadem is but a splendid mockery, his throne a rack, and all his royalty nothing else but a great and magnificent misery.

3. The third ingredient denounced against him that endeavours to raise and settle a government with blood is, the shortness and certain dissolution of the government that he endeavours so to establish. There is no way by which God so usually punishes villainous designs, as the disappointment of them, by those very methods and instruments by which they were to have been accomplished. It is, as I may so say, the great sport of Providence, to ruin unjust titles and usurped government by their very supports. But of all the means employed by tyrants for this purpose, there is none so frequently made use of, though none so often proves fatal to the user, as this of savageness and cruelty; innocent blood always proving but a bad cement to build the walls of a city with. For how do such governments pass the world like so many furious blasts of wind, violent and short! as it were out of breath and expiring with their own violence. How do tyrants, having by much blood and rapine advanced themselves to the sovereign power of a kingdom, like so many fatal comets, shine and blaze, and fright the world below them, in those upper regions for a while, but still portend their own downfall and destruction? For was it not thus with those traitorous captains of Israel, who kinged themselves by slaying their masters and reigning in their stead? How quickly was their usurped government at an end! How soon did they meet with others who did the like for them! Had Zimri peace, who slew his master? Such governments quickly fall and moulder away, like clods dissolved with blood.

Was it not thus also with Cinna and Marius, and afterwards with Sylla himself, who had nothing of Dictator Perpetuus but the name?

How soon was the family of bloody Saul extinct! And for Herod the Great, did not the same cruelty, for which he deserved to be childless, almost make him so? Archelaus, the only son he left, succeeding but to part of his kingdom, and that too but for a short time. And when afterwards Herod Antipas the tetrarch was routed, and lost all his army in a war with Aretas, king of Arabia, and when by the subtilty of Agrippa he was outwitted and outed of all, and also banished, Josephus himself says, that even the Jews ascribed all this to a divine vengeance upon him for the barbarous and unjust murder of John the Baptist.

And for the Jews themselves, does not Christ, in the very same place in which he foretells the ruin and destruction of Jerusalem, upbraid that bloody city with her killing God’s prophets, and stoning those that were sent unto her?

And lastly, whereas the high priest counselled the putting of Christ to death, lest otherwise the Romans should come upon them, and destroy both their nation and government; is it not evident to any one not obstinately blind, that the very guilt of his blood brought that destruction upon them from the Romans, who not long after sacked their city, burnt the temple, killed, crucified, sold, and dispersed the inhabitants; that is, used them as they had used Christ, till at length they took away both their place and nation? Woe to the bloody city, says the prophet, in Ezek, xxiv. 6.

The sin of blood is a destroying, wasting, murdering sin; murdering others, besides those whom it kills; it breaks the back of governments, sinks families, destroys for the future, reaches into successions, and cuts off posterities.

4. The fourth ingredient of the woe here denounced against the bloody builders of governments, is the sad and dismal end that usually attends such persons. He that delights to swim in blood, is for the most part at length drowned in it; and there is a kind of fatal circulation by which blood frequently wheels about and returns upon the shedder of it. How did Cyrus the Persian verify this by a peculiar significancy of death, having his head cut off, and thrown into a tub of blood! How did the fratricide Romulus die, being torn in pieces by the senate! How did Sylla expire in a murdering fit, causing one to be strangled before him in his chamber, and with that passion so disturbing himself, and enraging his distemper, that within a few hours he breathed out his own bloody soul!

And, to come to the sacred story, how did Samuel treat Agag? As thy sword has made many childless, so shall thy mother be childless amongst women. And then for Herod the Great, who so barbarously murdered those poor innocents; he died indeed in his bed, as well as our late grand regicide; but with so much horror and disaster, that for some days before he died, he snatched at a knife to have murdered, or rather to have killed himself; and so to have done that, which only wanted another and an higher hand to have made it a just execution. But upon none did the revenging hand of divine justice appear more signally than upon Herod Agrippa, mentioned in the twelfth of the Acts; who, to please the Jews, and thereby to confirm himself in his kingdom, having slain James, the brother of John, with the sword, proceeded to take Peter also. But we read in what terrible strange manner, even in the height of his pride and glory, he was smote by God, infested with worms, and made a living carcass; thus anticipating the effects of death, and suffering the curse of the grave before he descended into the ground.

Should I endeavour to give a full rehearsal of all such like instances, I must transcribe the stories of all times, which are scarce fuller of pages, than of examples of this kind. Blood seldom escapes revenge, since it is so easily followed and found out by its own traces. And thus much for the third thing proposed; which was, to shew the latitude and extent of the curse or woe here denounced against bloody persons, and the several plagues comprehended in it. I come now to the fourth particular, which is,

IV. To shew the reasons why a curse or woe is so peculiarly denounced against this sin.

For so was Christ, he was the light of the world; and nothing is more manifest or visible than that which manifests both itself and all things else; and needs no invitation to the eye, but will certainly enter, unless it be forcibly kept out.

But they were purposed not to believe their eyes; to question whether it was day when the sun shined; to doubt whether he that did the works of God was sent by God; whether miracles could prove any thing, or signs could signify; and lastly, whether he that fulfilled all prophecies was intended by them. It is clear therefore, that the Jews rejected the Son of God, not because he was not manifested, but because they delighted to be ignorant, and to be sceptics and unbelievers even in spite of evidence.

And thus much for the first thing, the manifestation of the Son of God: pass we now to the next, which is, the end of his manifestation, that he might destroy the works of the Devil.

In the prosecution of which I shall first shew, 1. What were those works of the Devil that the Son of God destroyed: 2. And secondly, the means and ways by which he destroyed them.

1st. For the first of these. I reduce the works of the Devil, destroyed by the manifestation of the Son of God, to these three: 1. Delusion: 2. Sin: 3. Death.

There is a natural coherence and concatenation between these: for sin being a voluntary action, and so the issue of the will, presupposes a default in the understanding, which was to conduct the will in its choices: and then when the delusion and inadvertency of the understanding has betrayed the will to sin, the consequent and effect of sin is death. Christ therefore, that came to repair the breaches and to cure the miseries of human nature, and to redeem it from that phrensy into which it had cast itself, designs the removal and conquest of all these three.

1. And first for delusion. The Devil, as his masterpiece and first art of ruining mankind, was busy to sow the seeds of error and fallacy in the guide of action, their understanding. And surely he has not gained higher trophies over any faculty of man’s nature than this. For where, upon a survey of the world lying under gentilism, can we find truth even in principles of speculation, but much less in those of practice?

As for the first fundamental thing, the original of nature and the beginning of the world; what dissonant and various opinions may we find, and consonant in nothing but their absurdity! Some will not allow it to have had any beginning; others refer it to accident. And those who acknowledge it to have been efficiently framed and produced by an infinite eternal mind, yet assert the matter and rude chaos, out of which he framed it, to have been as old, or rather as eternal as the artificer. Thus ridiculously making two eternals, and one of them infinitely imperfect; whereas the very notion of eternity and self-existence, pursued into its due consequences, must of necessity infer an infinite perfection in all other respects whatsoever. For all imperfection and finiteness proceeds from the restraint of a superior cause: and what cause could limit that which had no cause; and keep that which had its being from itself, from having all the perfections of being?

I. The solemn address and homage made to him by the wise men of the east.

II. Herod’s behaviour thereupon.

For the first of these, there are in this general passage these particulars considerable.

1. Who and what those wise men were.

2. From whence they came.

3. About what time they came to Jerusalem.

4. What that star was that appeared to them.

5. How they could collect our Saviour’s birth by that star.

Of each of which in their order.

1. And first for the first of these. The persons here rendered wise men (and that certainly with great truth and judgment) are in the Greek termed μάγοι, and in the Latin magi. The origination of which word some take from the Hebrew radix, signifying in the participle benoni in hiphil, one that meditates or mutters. Some from a Syro-Arabic word, signifying explorare or scrutari. Others from a Persian word, but what that word is none pretends to know: though since it is probable that these magi did first exist amongst the Persians, it is also not improbable but that both name and thing might have their original in the same place.

As for the use of the word, it is different. At first it was taken, doubtless, not only in an honest, but also in an honourable sense; and the magia of the ancients was nothing else but a profound insight into all truth, natural, political, and divine. So that Suidas gives this account of the word, μάγοι παρὰ Πέρσαις οἱ φιλόσοφοι, they were the Persian philosophers. And that they were divines also is clear; for Xenophon in his 8th book, περὶ Κύρπου παιδείας, commends the piety of Cyrus and his care of religion, for his appointing magi to preside in their sacred choirs, and to manage the offering of sacrifices, τότε πρῶτον κατεστάθησαν οἱ μάγοι ὑμνεῖν τοὺς Θεοὺς, &c. And that this also was a name given to such as were skilled in politic matters is no less evident; for the great counsellors of the Persian kings were called magi; and Cicero affirms, in his 3d book De natura Deorum, that none was ever admitted to the Persian throne, but such as had been thoroughly instructed and trained up by these magi. For, as Plato says in his Alcibiades, it was their work, βασιλικὰ διδάσκειν, to teach and instil into them the arts of government.

Now this discourse is only to shew, that the acception of the word amongst the Greeks and Latins, and other modern languages that speak after them, by which magus signifies no better than a wizard or conjurer, is through abuse and degeneration: the ill practices of some who wore this name, having by little and little disgraced the name itself into a bad sense.

As for the acception of it here by our evangelist, I doubt not but it is in a good sense, and that the persons here spoken of were great scholars, men well studied in the works of nature, and probably most seen in the mysteries of astrology, the chief and principal part of the eastern learning, For the proof of which, this observation is very considerable, that the word μάγοι applied to the Latins, Greeks, or Egyptians themselves, is for the most part used in a bad sense; but the same authors applying it to the Chaldeans and Persians intend it in a good; and that these men mentioned by the evangelist were Persians, shall presently be made at least very probable.

As for the condition and quality of these magi, or wise men, some contend, though I think more eagerly than conclusively, that they were kings; and for the proof of it allege several places of scripture; as first, that of Psalm lxxii. 10, The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents; the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. But what is this to those who came not from Tarshish nor from Sheba, but from Persia, as shall be made appear hereafter? Besides that those words are literally spoke of Solomon, in whom they were eminently fulfilled; for we know what commerce he had with those parts, and we have also a full rehearsal of the great visit and present made him by the queen of Sheba.

They allege also that place in Isaiah lx. 3, The gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the glory of thy rising; with other such texts, which they call proofs; though so unconclusive and impertinent to the matter in hand, that they prove nothing but the folly and absurdity of those that allege them.

To the whole matter therefore I answer, that it is most improbable that these men were kings; and that the behaviour of Herod and the Jews toward them seems clearly to evince so much. For there was no mention of any pompous, kingly reception, but on the contrary, he treats them as imperiously as he would have done his servants or his footmen, in ver. 8, And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go, search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again. Which surely sounds not like language fit to bespeak princes in. Those indeed whose chief religion is to rebel against princes might possibly talk to them also at this rate; but it is not to be imagined that the rest of the world were yet arrived to this perfection.

It is evident therefore that Herod received them not as kings, no, nor with that respect that is due to the ambassadors of kings; but rather as any of our inferior magistrates would nowadays receive some Polonian or Hungarian, that should come to him about a brief, or for a licence to shew some strange, outlandish feats upon a stage.

But lastly, this is an undeniable argument that they were not kings, that the evangelist is thus silent of it. For since it is manifest that his design was to set forth Christ’s birth, and to render it as notable and conspicuous as he could from those passages that did attend it; it is not imaginable that he would have omitted this, that would have added so much of lustre and credit to it in the eyes of the world. The omission of it is indeed so hugely improbable, that, all things considered, it may almost pass for impossible.

2. The second thing here proposed to our consideration was the place from whence these wise men came. The evangelist describes it only by a general term, ἀπ᾽ ἀνατολῶν, from the east. But the east is of a large compass, and therefore we may well direct our inquiries to something that is more particular.

Some therefore are of opinion, that these wise men came from Arabia, and that part of it that is called Arabia Felix, which lay eastward to Jerusalem; especially since their presents consisted of gold, myrrh, and frankincense, the proper commodities of those places: for Arabia afforded gold, and the adjoining Sabea afforded plenty of all manner of spices and perfumes.

Others there are that affirm these wise men to have come from Chaldea or Assyria.

I shall not trouble myself to produce or confute the several reasons upon which either of these opinions are built; but briefly give my reasons why neither of them can be admitted.

For the first. They could not come from Arabia, because there never was in Arabia any sort or sect of men known or distinguished by the name of magi; and therefore to bring these men from Arabia were altogether as absurd, as if in story we should bring the Brachmans, or Indian philosophers, from the Orcades, or the Druids from America.

And as for that reason, that the materials of their presents were the native commodities of those regions, it proves nothing; since other countries afforded them besides, and however might have them otherwise by importation. And when men make presents, they do not always pitch upon such things as grow in their own countries, but upon the best and richest that they have in their possession.

In the next place for Assyria or Chaldea: they could not come from thence neither, forasmuch as they lay northwards to Jerusalem: so that frequently in the prophets, when God threatens the Jews with an invasion from the Assyrians, they are still called a nation or army coming from the north. But the evangelist expressly says, that these men came ἀπ᾽ ἀνατολῶν, from the east, to which words this opinion is utterly irreconcileable.

Having thus removed these two opinions, I judge it most probable that they came from Persia; which as it is confirmed by the concurrent testimonies of the most eminent divines, both ancient and modern, so there wants not also solid reasons to persuade the same.

(1.) The first of which shall be taken from this; that this sort of men most flourished in Persia: they were most famous there. And I believe there may be better arguments brought to prove that the magi had their first rise there, than any can be brought to the contrary.

(2.) The second reason shall be taken from the situation of the place, Persia being situate eastward to Judea; so that it exactly answers the words of the evangelist.

(3.) The third and last shall be taken from the manner of their doing homage to Christ, which was that used by the Persians in expressing their homage to kings, namely, by gifts and presents.

These reasons seem probably to evince that these magi, or wise men, came from Persia: and we must know, that in matters of this nature, where demonstrations are not to be had, probable conjectures, burdened with no inconvenient consequences, are the best arguments, and such as any rational mind may well acquiesce in. And thus much for the place from whence these wise men came.

3. The third thing proposed was, the time when they came to Jerusalem; for some affirm them not to have come to Jerusalem till two years after the birth of Christ, grounding this their assertion upon what is said in ver. 16, that Herod sent and slew all the children in and about Bethlehem, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Whence they infer Christ to have been two years old at the time of the wise men’s arrival at Jerusalem. But the words of the text import the time to have been but very small between the birth of one and the coming of the other; for it is said in ver. 1, that when Jesus was born, behold the wise men came; which word ἰδοὺ, behold, according to the phrase of scripture, is equivalent with forthwith, or presently, as might be made out by sundry parallel places. Besides, that the wise men at their coining found Christ in Bethlehem, where yet it is certain that Joseph and Mary tarried not above forty days, the time appointed by the law for her purification; from whence it follows, that the coming of the wise men must needs have been within the compass of those forty days. As for that argument grounded upon Herod’s killing the children of two years old and under, according to the time of his inquiring of the wise men, the solution of it is very easy, if we reckon those two years before the time of his inquiry, and not those two years that immediately followed it. The reason of which is manifest, forasmuch as the wise men spoke not of Christ as yet to be born, but of him as actually born; though the precise time when, they declared not, nor perhaps knew. And therefore Herod, whose design was to secure himself from a rival king, whom he heard was already born, killed all the children that were born within the space of two years before the coming of the wise men and his inquiring of them. From whence it follows, that the time of the wise men’s coming to Jerusalem was some few days after the birth of Christ, probably nine or ten, and that they worshipped him at Bethlehem about the twelfth, the day still observed by the church for its commemoration.

I. I shall shew what is included and comprehended in that love to Christ that is here mentioned in the text.

II. I shall shew what are the reasons and motives that may induce us to it.

III. What are the signs, marks, and characters whereby we may discern it.

I. As for the first of these, what is included in the love here spoken of, I conceive it may include these five things.

1. An esteem and valuation of Christ above all worldly enjoyments whatsoever. The first foundation stone of this love must be laid in admiration, and an high persuasion of that worth that we are to love. We must first believe Christ excellent, before we can account him dear. Those that profess and avow a love to Christ, and yet, by the secret verdict of their worldly minds, place a greater esteem upon a pleasure, upon honour, upon an estate, do indeed speak contradictions, and delude themselves, and may as well believe their life may remain when their soul is departed, as imagine that their love may go one way, and their esteem another. Upon which account it is clear, that Christ must be first raised above the world in our judgments; he must first rule there; he must lord it in our thoughts, and command our apprehensions.

If we trace David through all his Psalms, he is continually breathing out an ardent love to God; they run all along in a strain of the highest affection. And this love we shall find to have been founded upon a proportionable esteem of God, which esteem does eminently appear in several expressions. How often does he repeat and insist upon this one, Lord, who is like unto thee? Psalm xxxv. 10, and xlxi. 19. His thoughts were even transported into a ravishing admiration of God’s surpassing excellencies, before his heart could be drawn forth in love and affection to him; he suffered an ecstasy in his thoughts before he did in his desires. And again, Psalm xviii. 3, Thou art worthy to be praised. God’s worth, presented to the soul by thoughts of esteem, is that which so strongly, and, as I may say, invincibly draws its affections. It is indeed the price of our desires, and really buys them before it has them.

Some are of opinion that the dictates of the understanding have such a determining, controlling influence upon the will and affections, that they cannot but desire whatsoever the understanding shall sufficiently offer and propose to them as desirable. But whether or no the judgment does certainly and infallibly command and draw after it the acts of the will, (which is a controversy too big to be discussed in a sermon,) yet this is certain, that it does of necessity precede them, and no man can fix his love upon any thing, till his judgment reports it to the will as amiable. This must be the only gate and portal through which we must introduce loving thoughts of Christ into the heart; he must be first valued before he can be embraced. For this is undoubtedly certain, that nothing can have a greater share of our affections, than it has of our esteem.

2. This love to Christ implies a choosing him before all other enjoyments. For a man to pretend affection to Christ, by extolling his person, admiring what he has done for us, by praising the ways of God, commending the practice and the practisers of godliness; and yet in the mean time to act and labour for the world, to live in sin, and upon all occasions to submit to a temptation, rather than to a precept; notwithstanding this strange opposition and clashing between his profession and his course, I suppose every rational man would read his judgment, not in his words, but in his choice. Laudant illa, sed ista legunt; he that commends such books, but reads others, only shews that he praises one thing but values another, and that the best interpreter of his mind is not what he says, but what he chooses.

By this Moses undeniably proved both the strength and sincerity of his love to God and to the people of God, that he chose rather to suffer afflictions with them, than to enjoy all the pleasures of Pharaoh’s court. For to have solicited their cause with Pharaoh, to have procured them a mitigation of their bondage, to have won them favour and a good opinion from the Egyptians, had indeed been signs and effects of love; but this was love itself. His affection was in his choice; for had he still chose Pharaoh’s court, all other things that he could have done for his brethren had amounted rather to a good wish, than to a true affection.

Thus, on the contrary, wicked men are said to love death: but can any man make his greatest evil the object of his best desire, which is love? No, assuredly, while he considers it as such, he cannot; but because it is rational from men’s choice to infer and argue their love, they may be said therefore truly and properly to love death, because they choose it. And by the same reason, on the other side, a believer, though he may be sometimes ensnared in sin, and so brought to commit it, yet he cannot be said indeed to love it, because it is seldom his choice, but his surprise; he makes it not his end and his design. It is rather a sudden invasion made upon his affections, than the resolved purpose of his will.

Thus therefore we see how the spirit and force of our love exerts itself in choice; for the design of love is to appropriate as well as to approximate its object to the soul: and to choose a thing is the first access to a propriety in it. For choice, as I may so say, is possession begun, and possession itself is nothing else but choice perfected. Barely to esteem Christ (if we may suppose a division of those things which indeed are not to be divided) is as much inferior to a choosing him, as a good look is below a good turn.

3. Love to Christ implies service and obedience to him; the same love that when it is between equals is friendship, when it is from an inferior to a superior is obedience. Love, of all the affections, is the most active; hence by those who express the nature of things by hieroglyphics, we have it compared to fire, certainly for nothing more than its activity. The same arms that embrace a friend, will be as ready to act for him. This is the natural progress of true love, from the heart to the hand: where there is an inward spring, there will quickly be an external visible motion.

When we have once placed our affection upon any person, the next inquiry naturally will be, what shall we do for him? And if this be the property of love when it lays itself out upon natural objects, we may be sure it will be heightened when it pitches upon supernatural. It is indeed changed, but withal advanced; the object altered, but the measure of the act increased. Divine and heavenly things do indeed refine and lop off the extravagancy, but they abate nothing of the vigour of our affections.

Christ has determined the case in short, John xiv. 15, If ye love me, keep my commandments. There is more real love to God shewn in the least sincere act of obedience, than in the greatest and the most pompous sacrifice. Many may please themselves in their fair professions, their orthodox opinions, and their judgment about the ways of Christ, but God knows there may be much of all this, and yet but little love. It is the command that must try that; and believe it, the grand inquiry hereafter will be, not what we have thought or what we have said, but what we have done for Christ.

Christ all along in scripture proposes himself to us as our Lord and Master; and a servant’s love to his master is his service. It was the idle servant that God dealt with as his enemy. How does a wicked man’s love to sin appear, but by his continual, indefatigable acting and working for it, obeying its commands, and fulfilling even its vilest lusts and most unreasonable desires! Now Christ requires that every believer should manifest his love to him in that height and measure, that a wicked person manifests his love to sin. So that when he required a testimonial of Peter’s affection, he did not ask him what he thought of him, or what he was ready to profess concerning him: for we know he thought him to be the Son of God, Matth. xvi. 16; and he professed, that if all others forsook him, yet he would not, Matth. xxvi. 33; yet for all this he afterwards both denied and foreswore him. Christ therefore exacts a demonstration of his love in service and obedience. Peter, lovest thou me? Feed my sheep, John xxi. 17. He knew he that would obey and serve him, and execute his commands, loved him beyond all possibility of dissimulation. A man usually speaks, but he seldom does one thing and thinks another.

It is natural for love, where it is both sincere and predominant, to subdue the party possessed with it to undertake the most servile, laborious, and otherwise uncomfortable offices in the behalf of him whom he loves. If you will admit the paradox, it makes a man do more than he can do. Will is instead of power, and love supplies the room of ability. Had the love of Christ but once thoroughly seated itself in our hearts, we should find that, according to that most expressive phrase of the apostle, it would constrain us. It were but Christ’s saying, Go, and we should go; Do this, and we should do it. We should find a double command, one from Christ and one from our own affection. Love without works is a greater absurdity than faith without works; faith works by love, and love by obedience. Let none therefore ever think to divide himself between God and mammon; to afford his love to Christ, but his service to the world. If a man may honour his parents but not obey them, keep loyalty to his governor but rebel against him, then may also his love stand sincere to Christ while unseconded with obedience.

It is the masterpiece of Satan and our own corruptions, to bring us under this persuasion, that we may love Christ without serving him: but believe it, it is a destructive and a damnable delusion; equal in the absurdity and in the danger: and I believe, if we could divide these two, and give the Devil his choice, he would accept of one instead of both: give but the Devil your service, and he would give Christ your love. We are apt to place all upon persuasion; but how shall we be disappointed when God comes to reckon with us for performance!

4. Love to Christ implies an acting for him in opposition to all other things; and this is the undeceiving, infallible test of a true affection. We may not only value and commend, but think also that we serve Christ by reason of the undiscernible mixture of his and our interests sometimes wrapt together; so as to be persuaded that we serve and carry on his interest, while indeed we only serve our own in another dress. I believe that Jehu did not only persuade others, but himself also, that he served the cause of God in destroying the posterity of Ahab and the worshippers of Baal; when in truth, God’s honour and his own safety, the interest of religion and of his crown, at that time so particularly met and combined together, that he mistook his own meaning, and thought he was all the time honouring of God, while he was only endeavouring to establish himself, and pursuing the designs of policy under the mask of zeal.

But when two distinct interests are drawn forth in an open, avowed opposition, and visibly confront one another; when those that embrace one are apparently discriminated from the other, and none can embrace both, but a man must either testify a real affection on one side, or an odious indifference and neutrality, then love will appear to be love; dissimulation will be rendered impossible, and a man will be judged to love there only where he shall dare to appear.

When Christ and the world, Christ and our honour, Christ and our profit, shall make two opposite parties, then is the time to try our affections. If one servant should follow two several persons, it were hard to discern whose servant he was, while they both walked quietly together; but should they once quarrel and come to strokes, we should quickly see by his assistance where he had engaged his service. The truth is, it is but one and the same league, that is, defensive in respect of our friends, and offensive to their enemies. Neither is there any defending of Christ’s interest, without an active opposing that of Satan and the flesh, when the preservation of one lies in the destruction of the other. If Christ cannot increase, unless John decrease, the Baptist himself must not be spared. Because Peter would shew that he loved Christ above the rest, he drew his sword for him. He that fights for another pawns his life that he loves him: competition is the touchstone of reality.

It is not to make invectives against sin and the courses of the world, or to speak satires against the Devil, that infallibly concludes us to be Christ’s disciples. Those may chide very sharply, who are yet hearty and real friends. But shew me the person who can act with as keen a vigour as he speaks; who can put his foot upon the neck of his lust; who can be restless and active in circumventing, undermining, and defeating his corruption; and all this only for its implacable enmity to Christ; such an one indeed declares to the world by a demonstration of the highest evidence, that Christ bears the rule and preeminence in his affections.

Had king Josiah spoke great and glorious words of his love to God’s church, and of his hatred to idolatry, this indeed might have been a fair commendation of his zeal to the world, which is often deceived, and almost always governed by words: but it could not have at all commended his zeal to God, who weighs all such expressions in the balance of truth and reality, and finds them wanting.

But see how this royal person’s love to God manifested itself: as soon as he succeeded his father, and found the church generally corrupted, and idolatry like an usurper reigning in his kingdom, he presently throws down the altars, breaks the images, dismantles the high places; and all this in opposition to a potent, prevailing interest in his kingdom. A friend at court signified but little, when he was to speak for idolatry, where the king himself looked upon the church as his crown, and the purity of religion as his prerogative. And this was to love God and religion indeed, thus to assert them actively, by engaging against their fiercest opponents, and building up the divine worship upon the ruin of its adversaries. And surely between the most glittering professions, the most enlarged vows, and highest verbal engagements for God, and between this way of taking up and owning his quarrel, there is as much difference, as there is between wearing God’s colours and fighting his battles.

5. To assign the greatest and the sublimest instance in the last place. Love to Christ imports a full acquiescence in him alone, even in the absence and want of all other felicities: men can embrace Christ with riches, Christ with honour, Christ with interest, and abundantly satisfy themselves in so doing; though perhaps all the time they put but a cheat upon themselves, thinking that they follow Christ, while indeed they run only after the loaves. What Solomon says of wisdom, that they think of religion, that it is good with an inheritance.

The Devil granted it to be an easy matter for Job to serve God in the midst of that great affluence, while God set an hedge round about all that he had: but, says he to God, Put forth thine hand, and touch him, strip him of all his greatness, his wealth, and honour, and he will curse thee to thy face; and if Job’s heart had not been made of better metal than the heart of the most specious hypocrite in the world, the Devil had not been at all out in his advice, but would have certainly seen his prediction verified in Job’s behaviour.

Many love Christ as they love their temporal king; while he flourishes, and has the opportunity of obliging his dependents, they will be sure to stick close by his side: but would they follow him into banishment, and pay allegiance to majesty poor, and bare, and forlorn? And if Providence should debase him to so low a pitch, could they honour him in rags, as much as they do in purple? and give him the same homage wandering in the land of strangers, that they shew him riding in the head of his own armies?

No; the case comes to be altered here. When indeed duty and emolument conspire, one may easily be performed, because in the very same action the other may be intended: but when they part, and virtue is to set off itself merely upon the stock of its own worth, there men generally look upon it as upon a fair woman without a portion; all will commend, but none will marry her.

But this was the great and infallible demonstration, that all the ancient heroes in the faith gave of their love to God, that they took him alone for an inheritance and a patrimony, and embraced religion separate from all temporal accessions, as the utmost limit of their desires, the just measures of their designs, and the sole and ample object of their satisfaction. Abraham left his country, his family, his estate, following God upon his bare word and command. The disciples left all, and followed Christ; the primitive Christians and martyrs relinquished every worldly enjoyment even to life itself, and embarked all their hopes, all their fortunes and felicities, both present and future, in this one bottom, looking for all these, and that which was much better and greater than all, entirely in their religion.

But because human nature has great arguments and reluctancies against such an heroic act of piety, God, that he might cast all our duties within the rules and measures of reason, which is the proper drawing us with the cords of a man, has provided greater arguments to induce us to such an undertaking, than flesh and blood can produce against it.

For when he called Abraham from the very bosom of his friends and fortunes, he did not divert his will from one desirable object without proposing to it another: but he both answers his desires and obviates his fears, in that infinitely full and encouraging promise, Genesis xv. 1, Fear not, Abraham: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. A promise that might reach the very utmost of his thoughts, confute his doubts, and make good the reason of his obedience in all circumstances whatsoever. And Christ makes the same promise to all his, Matth. xix. 29, that there is none who should leave father, or mother, or lands for his sake and the gospel’s, but should receive an hundredfold in this world, and in the world to come everlasting life. That is, they should receive that high satisfaction, pleasure, and peace of mind, that should be an hundredfold greater than any that is conveyed to the heart of man from the vastest abundance of worldly treasures and enjoyments. So that in all these high instances of religion, God is pleased to convince as well as to command us to obedience, still interweaving argument with precept, and so making our love to him as rational as it can be religious.

And therefore let men frame to themselves what measures of religion they please, yet if they cannot love and acquiesce in it, when Providence shall leave them nothing in the world else to bestow their love upon, but dispossess them of all the former delights of their eyes and joys of their hearts, (of which we have but too frequent and pregnant examples in many, whose fortunes have been ground to nothing by some sad calamities,) such must assure themselves that all their love to Christ is trifling and superficial, and far from that sincerity that makes it genuine, saving, and victorious over the world.

And God knows how soon he may bring all our pretences to so severe a trial; and what need the weak heart of man will then have of such a principle to support it, when it shall find itself beat off from all its former holds, bereft of its supplies, and every thing on this side heaven frowning and looking sternly upon it. It will be then found that religion is not a chimera or a fancy, and that the pious man has something or other within him that makes him hold up his head, while others in the same calamity droop and despond.

Where the love of Christ has once possessed itself of the heart, though a man lives in the world, yet he lives not upon it. And therefore when nothing is imported from without, he can say to the world as Christ did once to his disciples, I have meat that ye know not of. A good man, says Solomon, is satisfied from himself; he carries his store, his plenty, his friends, and his preferments about him. Nothing could more excellently and divinely express this condition than those words of our Saviour, John vii. 38, He that believes on me, as the scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Cisterns may be broke, and we removed from them, or they from us; but he that has a fountain within him can never be athirst.

Having thus despatched the first particular, and shewn those five things included in the love to Christ spoken of in the text, I proceed now to the

Second; which is, to shew what are the reasons and motives that may induce us to this love.

And for this I might insist upon that mighty and commanding cause of love, the amiableness and high perfection of Christ’s person; which contains in it the very fulness of the Godhead bodily, all the glories of the Deity are wrapt up and included in it; they reach as wide as infinity, and as far as eternity. His vast, unlimited knowledge and wisdom, his uncontrollable power and his boundless goodness, are all objects to excite such an esteem and admiration of him as must naturally pass into love.

Every thing that is but good attracts love, but that which is excellent commands it; and then how amiable must that nature needs be of which the sun, the gloriousest creature in the world, is but a glimpse, the light itself a shadow, and the whole universe, that is, the united glories of heaven and earth, but a broken copy and an imperfect transcript. Thou art fairer than the children of men, says the prophet David, Psalm xlv. 2; and beauty, all confess, is the grand, celebrated motive of affection. The whole song of Solomon is but a description of those raptures of love into which the church had been raised by a contemplation of the unparalleled beauties of Christ. All the perfections we behold and admire in the world, either in men or women, are but weak traces and faint imitations of the divine beauty, which is the original; and which would infinitely more captivate our desires, could we see things with an intellectual eye, as clearly as we do with a corporeal. But I shall not dwell upon these motives of love drawn from the perfection of Christ considered in himself, but as relating to us and to our concernments, and so I shall assign these two motives of our love to him.

1. That he is best able to reward our love.

2. That he has shewn the greatest love to us.

1. And first for the first of these, that he is best able to reward our love. I confess, that to love merely for reward, is not so properly to love as to traffic, and flows not from affection but design. But on the other side, to love a worthless thing, to embrace a cloud, or for a vine to cling about a bramble, is not to bestow, but throw away affection. The recompence of reward is a thing always to be respected, though not to be solely intended. And the very pleasure and satisfaction that the mind finds in loving a worthy and a noble object, is a considerable reward of that very love. Virtue and religion composes the thoughts, answers the desires, and satisfies the conscience of him that loves it. The absolving clearness of which is a gratuity much greater than any that either the pleasure of the sin or of the world can bestow. The sensual epicure catches at the delights of sense, and lets out the whole stream of his desires upon them. But what answer and return do they make him? Does he not find them like the apples of Sodom, rotten as well as alluring, fair to the sight, but crumbled into ashes by the touch? How do they vanish into smoke and air, and nothing, and lose all their credit upon experience! Trial puts a period to them, as it must do to all empty, phantastic enjoyments, that owe their value only to distance and expectation.

Those that have been the most insatiable lovers of pleasure, profit, and honour, and such other worldly incentives of love; and have had all their desires pursued and plied with constant surfeiting fruitions of them; let them at last run over all with a severe and a reflecting thought, and see whether they have not been rather wearied than satisfied, their love still determining in loathing, or at least in indifference. How have they been paid for all their love? Why, some have been paid with the wages of poverty, some of diseases, some of shame, but all with dissatisfaction. What fruit have we of those things? says the apostle most emphatically: which words are not so much the voice of a man, as of mankind, upon a survey of all temporal fruitions.. There is an emptiness during the enjoyment of them, and a sting in the remembrance: present they deceive, and being past they disturb. And now must vanity and vexation be took for a valuable price of that affection that Christ would purchase with the pleasures of virtue and the glories of heaven, with present satisfaction and future salvation?

Go over the regions of hell and mansions of the damned, and there you will see how sin and the world have rewarded men for all the love they have shewn them. They have made most men miserable, even in this life; but did they ever make any one happy in the other? in which alone happiness and misery are considerable, as being there alone unchangeable. Consider a man making his addresses to his beloved sin, as Samson did to his Delilah; he courts and caresses it, sacrifices his strength and unbosoms his very soul to it: he breaks through bars, and gates, and walls, to visit it; is impatient of wanting the delights of its company: and now how is he recompensed for all these heights of love? Why, he is answered with tricks and arts, with traps and treacheries; he is dissembled with, and betrayed to his mortal enemies: those eyes are put out by the person upon whom they doted, and the lap he slept in delivers him into perpetual imprisonment, misery, and intolerable disgrace. It is impossible for a man to shew more love than he does to sin, and it is not possible for his bitterest enemy to pay him with more fatal returns. The truth is, a man in all his converse with sin courts a serpent, and hugs a scorpion, which will be sure to strike and sting him to death for all his kindness.

But because there are other things besides sin that are apt to bid fair for our love, as the possessions and honours of the world, let us see what kind of requital they make for that great love that they find from their most passionate suitors and pursuers. A man perhaps loves riches with that vehemence of desire, that he thinks gold cannot be bought too dear, though the price of it be his natural rest, his health, his reputation, his soul, and every thing. But now after all this, what does he find in it to recompense such an unwearied, unconquerable love? Can it ease his conscience, when the injustice by which he gained it shall torment him? Can it reconcile him to Heaven? or afford him one drop of cold water in hell to cool his tongue when it has brought him thither?

And why then should a man fling away the very spirit and quintessence of his soul, his love, upon such an ungrateful object as can make him no return? Would he bestow half of his watchings, his labours, and painful attendances, in the matters of religion, in stating businesses between God and his soul, he might raise himself such an interest, as should scorn the batteries of fortune, the injuries of time, and the very powers of hell; such an one as should stand victorious and eternal, trample upon the world, conquer death, and even outlive time itself, Let that thing or person therefore have our love that will give most for it: and this shall be the first motive or argument for our placing it upon Christ.

2. The second shall be taken from this consideration, that Christ has shewn the greatest love to us. Love is the most natural, proper, and stated price of love. It is a debt that is not to be paid but in kind; it scorns all other return or retaliation: and Christ is so much beforehand with us in this respect, that should we shew him the utmost love that humanity is capable of exerting, yet our love could not come under the notion of kindness, but of gratitude: for we cannot prevent him in the first acts; but only answer him in the subsequent returns of it. It is not a giving, but a paying him our affection.

The united voice of all the world heretofore proclaimed the baseness of ingratitude, and you needed not have amplified upon the topic of several vices, to have represented a man vile; for that charge alone of being ungrateful was a compendious account of all ill qualities, and left a greater brand upon a man, than whole volumes of satires and loud declamations against him.

For the truth is, it is a vice that has in it a peculiar malignity, tending to dissolve and fret asunder the bands of society, and amicable converse between men; forasmuch as society subsists by a mutual intercourse of good offices; and if there were no correspondence and exchange of one friendly action for another, company could not be desirable: and a man might command the same enjoyment in the solitudes of a desert and an howling wilderness, that he could in a populous city, well inhabited, and wisely governed.

Every ungrateful person, that receives much kindness, but repays none, only acts another kind of robbery, for he really withholds a due, and is indeed a thief within the protection of the law. Ingratitude is as great a sin in the sight of God, as any that is punishable by the laws of men; and has as little to plead for itself upon the stock of human infirmity as any sin whatsoever. For nature prompts and even urges a man to acknowledge a benefit conferred on him; and that so far, that an obligation no ways answered lies like a load and a burden upon an ingenuous mind: and a man must have debauched and worn out the natural impressions of ingenuity to a very great degree, before he can be unconcerned where he has been much obliged.

Now Christ has obliged us with two of the highest instances of his love to us imaginable.

1. That he died for us. The love of life is naturally the greatest, and therefore that love that so far masters this, as to induce a man to lay it down, must needs be transcendent and supernatural. For life is the first thing that nature desires, and the last that it is willing to part with. But how poor and low, and in what a pitiful shallow channel does the love of the world commonly run! Let us come and desire such an one to speak a favourable word or two for us to a potent friend, and how much of coyness and excuse and shyness shall we find! the man is unwilling to spend his breath in speaking, much less in dying for his friend. Come to another, and ask him upon the stock of a long acquaintance and a professed kindness, to borrow but a little money of him, and how quickly does he fly to his shifts, pleading poverty, debts, and great occasions, and any thing, rather than open his own bowels to refresh those of his poor neighbour! The man will not bleed in his purse, much less otherwise, to rescue his friend from prison, from disgrace, and perhaps a great disaster.

But now how incomparably full and strong must the love of Christ needs have been, that could make him sacrifice even life itself for the good of mankind, and not only die, but die with all the heightening circumstances of pain and ignominy; that is, in such a manner, that death was the least part of the suffering! Let us but fix our thoughts upon Christ hanging, bleeding, and at length dying upon the cross, and we shall read his love to man there, in larger and more visible characters than the superscription that the Jews put over his head in so many languages. All which, and many more, were not sufficient to have fully expressed and set forth so incredibly great an affection. Every thorn was a pencil to represent, and every groan a trumpet to proclaim, how great a love he was then shewing to mankind.

And now surely our love must needs be very cold, if all the blood that ran in our Saviour’s veins cannot warm it; for all that was shed for us, and shed for that very purpose, that it might prevent the shedding of ours. Our obnoxiousness to the curse of the law for sin had exposed us to all the extremity of misery, and made death as due to us, as wages to the workman. And the divine justice (we may be sure) would never have been behindhand to pay us our due. The dreadful retribution was certain and unavoidable; and therefore, since Christ could not prevent, he was pleased at least to divert the blow, and to turn it upon himself; to take the cup of God’s fury out of our hands, and to drink off the very dregs of it. The greatest love that men usually bear one another is but shew and ceremony, compliment, and a mere appearance, in comparison of this. This was such a love as, Solomon says, is strong as death; and to express it yet higher, such an one as was stronger than the very desires of life.

2dly, The other transcendent instance of Christ’s love to mankind was, that he did not only die for us, but that he died for us while we were enemies, and (in the phrase of scripture) enmity itself against him. It is possible indeed that some natures, of a nobler mould and make than the generality of the world, may arise to such an heroic degree of love, as to induce one friend to die for another. For the apostle says, that for a good man one would even dare to die. And we may read in heathen story of the noble contention of two friends, which of them should have the pleasure and honour of dying in the other’s stead, and writing the inward love of his heart in the dearest blood that did enliven it.

Yet still the love of Christ to mankind runs in another and an higher strain: for admit that one man had died for another, yet still it has been for his friend, that is, for something, if not of equal, yet at least of next esteem to life itself, in the common judgment of all. Human love will indeed sometimes act highly and generously, but still it is upon a suitable object, upon something that is amiable; and if there be either no fuel, or that which is unsuitable, the flame will certainly go out.

But the love of Christ does not find, but make us lovely. It saw us in our blood, (as the prophet speaks,) wallowing in all the filth and impurities of our natural corruption, and then it said unto us, Live. Christ then laid down his life for us, when we had forfeited our own to him. Which strange action was, as if a prince should give himself a ransom for that traitor that would have murdered him; and sovereignty itself lie down upon the block to rescue the neck of a rebel from the stroke of justice. This was the method and way that Christ took in what he suffered for us; a method that reason might at first persuade us to be against nature, and that religion assures us to be above it.

But such an one that both reason and religion cannot but convince us to be the highest and the most unanswerable argument for a surpassing love to Christ on our parts, that (be it spoke with reverence) God himself could afford us. An argument that must render every sin of so black and dismal an hue under the economy of the gospel, that there is no monster comparable to the sinner, to him that can hate after so much love, and by his ingratitude rend open those wounds afresh that were made only to bleed for his offences.

Having thus shewn the reasons and arguments to enforce our love to Christ, I descend now to the

Third and last thing, which is to shew the signs and characters whereby we may discern this love. Love is a thing that is more easily extinguished than concealed. It needs no herald to proclaim it, but wheresoever it is, it will be sure to shew itself. Fire shines as well as burns, and needs nothing but its own light to make it visible and conspicuous.

But yet to make a clearer discovery of the sincerity of our love to Christ, I shall give these three signs of it.

1. In defect. 2. In excess.

And first, for those of the first sort, that consist in defect.

1. This confidence is in the first place opposed to desperation and horror of conscience. A temper that speaks aloud in those desponding ejaculations of the Psalmist, Psalm lxxvii. 7, 8, 9, Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will he be favourable no more? Is his mercy clean gone for ever? and doth his promise fail for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Every word seems to be the voice of a soul supposing itself in the very brink of hell, and even already singed with the everlasting burnings. Nor does despair here only put it to the question, as the Psalmist does; but takes it for a granted, concluded truth, and verily believes that matters stand thus between God and the despairing person; who looks upon God as his implacable adversary, and himself as under a condemning sentence that is both final and irreversible. Nothing can be imagined more black and dismal than those thoughts and representations, that such a mind frames to itself of God’s power and justice. For it thinks that this latter is inexorable, and that the former is wholly employed about the execution of its severe decrees. These grim attributes constantly exercise and take up the meditations; which considered with relation to the state of a sinner, absolutely in themselves, and without any qualification or allays from mercy, must needs drive a man into all the agonies and terrors of mind that can be. For what can a sinner hope for, from power and justice without mercy? What can he expect but the extremity of wrath and revenge? a separation from God, and a consignation over to eternal miseries?

But besides, if despair does sometimes think and reflect upon mercy, yet it expects no share in it; but supposes the bowels shut up, the resentings past, and the day of grace spent and gone. Now so long as it thus misrepresents and libels God to the conscience in all his attributes, how is it possible for a man to have the confidence to pray to him? Despair stupifies and confounds, and stops not only the mouth, but the very breath, and, as it were, keeps and confines a man within himself.

It is natural for every thing to fly from an enemy, and while a man apprehends God to be so, he would if it were possible convey himself out of his very sight. He that presumes to ask a thing of another, is prompted to the doing so, by an opinion of the proneness of such a one to hear and relieve him in all his straits and necessities; but no man puts a petition into the hands of his tormentor, or asks any other favour of his executioner but to despatch him quickly. No man can pray where he cannot hope.

That confidence therefore that must qualify us for and attend us in prayer, is opposed to all kind of desperation, which by making a man account God his enemy, and thereby forbear praying to him, makes him indeed his own.

2. This confidence is opposed also to doubtings and groundless scrupulosities. 1 Tim. ii. 8, I will, says Paul, that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting. Why? Suppose they should doubt and waver in presenting their prayers to God; James i. 7, Let not such an one, says St. James, think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. And the reason is plain; for no man is to pray for any thing, but what God both allows and commands him to pray for. In which case, if he doubts of the issue and success of his prayer, is it not clear that his suspicion upbraids either God’s power, that he cannot, or his truth, that he will not make good the effects of his promise? And would any great man favour a petitioner that should entertain such thoughts of him? Would he not rather think himself affronted than honoured by such an address? Qui timide rogat, docet negare. No man counts himself any longer obliged to do a kindness, after he comes once to be suspected: for to suspect a man is to asperse his clearness and ingenuity, and plainly declares that we judge him not really to be what he pretends and appears; than which there cannot be a greater and a more injurious reflection upon the divine goodness.

God does not love a misgiving, half-persuaded petitioner, that comes in suspense, and trembling, sometimes hopes, sometimes fluctuates, and, in a word, cannot be so properly said to come as a petitioner, as an adventurer to the throne of mercy. God loves to maintain worthy apprehensions of himself and of all his dealings, in the minds of such as serve him; and it is but reason that those apprehensions should shine forth in the freedom of their deportment, and in their frank reliance upon his readiness to give or do whatsoever shall be fit for them to ask.

But it will perhaps be pleaded in defence and excuse of such doubting, that it arises not from, any unbecoming thoughts of God, but from the sense of the unworthiness of him that prays; which makes him question the success of his petition, notwithstanding all the divine mercy and liberality. And this seems to be so far from a fault, that it ought rather to be cherished and commended as an effect of the grace of humility.

But to this I answer, that by the plea of unworthiness is meant either an unworthiness in point of merit; and so the argument would keep a man from praying for ever, forasmuch as none can ever pretend a claim of merit to the thing he prays for, as shall be more fully observed hereafter.

Or 2dly, it is meant of an unworthiness in point of fitness to receive the thing prayed for; which fitness consists in that evangelical sincerity, that makes a man walk with that uprightness, as not to allow himself in any sin. But for a man to plead himself unworthy upon this account, is to plead himself unfit to pray: for whatsoever makes him fit to pray, makes him fit also to expect the thing asked for in prayer. This therefore concerns not the matter in debate; for the question is, whether he that is duly qualified for such an address to God, can without sin doubt of the issue of that address? Which we deny: otherwise it is most certainly true according to that of Solomon, that the prayer of the wicked is an abomination to God; and that such an one may not only lawfully doubt whether he shall be heard or no, but ought to conclude, that without all doubt he shall not be heard.

But it may be urged further. Does not experience shew, that persons that are thus qualified in point of sincerity and uprightness before God, do not always obtain the things they sue for, but are sometimes answered with a repulse? For did not David earnestly pray for the life of his child, and yet was denied it? And the like instances might be produced of several other saints. Now where a man is sure that the prayers of the righteous are not always granted, may not he very well doubt of the success of his own?

To this I answer; that in that respect that a man ought to pray for any thing from God, the prayer of no righteous person was ever denied. For every man is to pray for a thing with submission to the divine will, and so far as God shall think fit to grant it. And in this respect no man is to entertain the least doubt in prayer, but steadfastly to believe that God will vouchsafe him the thing he petitions for, so far as the ends of God’s glory and his own good shall make the granting of that thing necessary. Otherwise for a man to expect absolutely and infallibly the event of whatsoever he prays for, only because he thought fit to pray for it, is a great folly and a bold presumption; it is to determine and give measures to the divine bounty and wisdom; to tell it what it ought to do; to send instructions to heaven, and in a word, it is not so properly to pray as to prescribe to God.

Having thus shewn the two extremes to which the confidence spoken of in the text is opposed in point of defect, I come now to treat of those to which it is opposed in point of excess, and to shew, that as it excludes despair and doubting on the one hand, so it banishes all rashness and irreverence on the other. It is indeed hard for the weak and unsteady hearts of men to carry themselves in such an equal poise between both, as not to make the shunning of one inconvenience the falling into another; but the greater the danger is, the greater must be our attention to the rule.

1. First of all then, confidence in point of excess is opposed to rashness and precipitation. Rashness is properly a man’s sudden undertaking of any action, without a due examination of the grounds or motives that may encourage him to it, and of the reasons that may on the other side dehort and deter him from it: an omission of either of which makes it rash and unreasonable. And prayer surely, of all other duties and actions, ought to be a reasonable service. It calls upon him that undertakes it to consider before he resolves, again and again to consider, into what presence he is going, what the thing is that he is about to do, what preparedness and fitness he finds in himself for it, what the advantages of a right, and what the sad consequences of an undue performance of it are like to be.

I have read that it has been reported of an holy person, that he used to bestow an whole hour at least in meditation before he kneeled down to that prayer which perhaps he uttered in three minutes. He that goes about to pray, must know that he goes about one of the weightiest and the grandest actions of his whole life. And therefore let him turn his thoughts to all the ingredients and circumstances relating to it; let him meditate before what a pure and a piercing eye he presents himself; such an one as shoots into all the corners and recesses of his heart like a sunbeam, as ransacks all his most concealed thoughts, views all the little indirect designs, the excursions and wanderings of his spirit, and spies out the first early buddings and inclinations of his corruption. And as it sees them, so it cannot but abhor and detest them, unless their guilt be washed off by repentance, and covered under the imputed righteousness of a Saviour.

Let him consider, how it were like to fare with him, if this should happen to be his last prayer, and God should stop his breath in the very midst of it, and interrupt him with a summons into another world; whether, in such a case, he should be found in a fit posture to own an appearance at that fearful tribunal, without blushing and confusion of face. No man is fit to pray, that is not fit to die.

Let him consider also, whether there are not the scores of old sins yet uncancelled lying upon his hand. Whether he is not in arrears to God in point of gratitude for past mercies, while he is begging new; and whether he has not abused that bounty that he is now imploring, and made the liberality of heaven the instrument of his vanity and the very proveditor for his lust; even in a literal sense turning the grace of God into wantonness. These things should be recollected and canvassed with a deep, close, and intent reflection, and all reckonings (as much as possible) set even between God and the soul.

David would first wash his hands in innocency, before he would presume to compass God’s altar, Psalm xxvi. 6. But how few are there, that think preparation any part of this duty! They bolt immediately into the presence of God, though perhaps they come but newly from doing that, that they would not own in the presence of men. They come with the guilt of fresh sins warm upon their consciences, lifting up those hands in prayer that were lately busied in all kind of rapine and violence, and joining in it with those tongues that were not long before the instruments of railing, filth, and obscenity. As David washed his hands, so such persons should do well to wash their mouths also, before they approached the place of divine worship, especially when they were to bear a part in it. With what awe and veneration did Jacob look and think upon the place where God had appeared to him! Gen. xxviii. 16, 17. Surely, says he, the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! it is none other but the house of God. But sad experience shews, that men nowadays resort to that, that they both call and think the house of God; but yet behave themselves in it, as if it were neither holy nor dreadful: though if God were not more merciful than men are sinful, they would feel by a severe instance that it was both.

There is some boldness that is the effect of blindness; and surely it is this, that brings men to so sacred and so concerning an action as prayer is, with such trivial spirits, such rambling unrecollected thoughts, and such offensive profane behaviours. But such persons must know, that this is far from the boldness mentioned in the text: and that though God both allows and enjoins a due confidence “in our accesses to him, yet still they are to remember that confidence does not exclude caution.

2. The confidence spoke of in the text, in point of excess is opposed to impudence or irreverence; which, the truth is, is but the natural effect and consequent of the former: for he that considers not the sacredness of a thing or action, cannot easily pay it that devotion and reverence that the dignity of it requires. There are many ways by which this irreverence may shew itself in prayer, but I shall more especially mention and insist upon two.

(1.) The using of saucy, familiar expressions to God. A practice that some heretofore delighted in to that degree of extravagance, that he that should have stood without the church, and not seen what was doing within it, would have verily thought that somebody was talking to his equal and companion. Now the ground of this must needs have been from gross, low, and absurd conceptions of God, and withal very fond and high opinions of themselves, by which they thought themselves such absolute masters of his favour, and bound so close to him by election, that they were to bespeak him at a different rate of fellowship and peremptoriness from all other mortals. And accordingly, they would utter themselves to him as if they were perfectly acquainted with all his counsels, knew his mind, and read over his decrees: and if need were, could advise him in many matters relating to the government of the world.

And therefore their usual dialect was; We know, Lord, that this and this is thy way of dealing with thy saints; and that thou canst not be angry with those whose heart is right with thee, though they may sometimes out of infirmity trip into a perjury, a murder, or an adultery. Nay, and they would tell God to his face, that he had revealed such a thing to them; when perhaps within two or three days the event proved clean contrary. When their armies were in the field, they would usually at home besiege God with such expressions; Lord, if thou shouldest forsake us, thy peculiar inheritance, who are called by thy name, where wouldest thou find such another praying people? And again; Lord, thou mayest, out of anger to the nation, deliver thy chosen ones into the hands of their enemies, but consider what thou doest. It would be endless, and indeed unsavoury, to draw forth all the flowers of their profane rhetoric, with which they so liberally stuffed their impudent harangues, which they were pleased to call prayers.

And the rude familiarity of their expressions was attended with an equal rudeness of gesture and motion, throwing forth their arms, sweating, and carrying their whole bodies so, as if their prayer was indeed a wrestling with God, without a metaphor. But it is strange that any should be able to persuade themselves that this should be zeal, and the proper fervour of devotion, when common sense and good manners generally prompt men to a greater wariness and restraint upon themselves in their appearance before an earthly superior. For no man shakes his prince by the hand, or accosts him with an hail fellow well met. And if the laws and customs of nations will by no means endure such boldness to sovereign princes, for fear of debasing majesty, and so by degrees diminishing the commanding force of government, surely there ought to be more care used in managing our deportment toward God; since the impressions we have of things not seen by us are more easily worn off, than those that are continually renewed upon the mind by a converse with visible objects. And that which will bring us into a contempt of our earthly prince whom we see, is much more likely to bring us into a light esteem of our heavenly King whom we have not seen. We are to use such words as may not only manifest, but also increase our reverence; we are (as I may so say) to keep our distance from God, in our very approaches to him. But such undue familiarity, as it does for the most part arise from contempt, so it always ends in it.

(2.) This irreverence in prayer shews itself in a man’s venting his crude, sudden, extemporary conceptions before God. Why God should be pleased with that which intelligent men laugh at, I cannot understand. And there is nothing more loathsome and offensive to discreet ears, than the loose, indigested, incoherent babble of some bold, self-opinioned persons, who in their talk are senseless and endless. Some indeed sanctify their unpremeditated way of speaking to God, by calling it praying by the Spirit; and so entitling the Holy Ghost to all their impertinencies, which is to excuse or defend boldness with blasphemy. But surely folly is no such difficult thing, that any man should need to fetch it from a supernatural cause, and owe his absurdities to immediate inspirations. For if this be to pray by the Spirit, a man needs only to forget himself, to balk the use of his reason, and to let his words fly at random without care or observation, and he shall find very plentiful assistances of this nature.

But to vindicate the Spirit of God from these unworthy imputations, and withal to dash such impudent pretences, we are to know, that the Spirit measures out his assistance to men in the use of the means proper for the effecting or accomplishing of any work; but suspends and denies that assistance, where the use of those means is neglected; for he cooperates with men according to the established course of working proper to their natures: and no man prays and preaches more by the Spirit, than he that bestows time and study in the orderly disposing of what he is to say; and so employs and exerts those faculties of mind, which the Spirit of God endowed him with, for the better and more exact management of those holy services that he stands engaged in.

Were a man to petition his prince, or to plead at the bar for his life, I believe none could persuade him to venture the issue of so great an action upon his extempore gift. But admit that a man be never so well furnished with an ability of speaking suddenly and without premeditation; yet certainly premeditation and care would improve and heighten that ability, and give it a greater force and lustre in all performances. And if so, we are to remember that God calls for our best and our utmost; we are to bring the fairest and the choicest of our flock for an offering, and not to sacrifice a lame, unconcocted, wandering discourse to God, when our time and our parts are able to furnish us with one much more accurate and exact. When a Roman gentleman invited Augustus Caesar to supper, and provided him but a mean entertainment, Caesar very properly took him up with an Unde mihi tecum tanta familiaritas? Friend, pray how come you and I to be so familiar? Great persons think themselves entertained with respect, when they are entertained with splendour; and they think wisely and rightly. In like manner God will reject such sons of presumption and impertinence with disdain; and though they took no time for the making of their prayers, yet he will take time enough before he will grant them.

2. In the next place we are to consider his fitness for this work in reference to men, for whom he mediates; which will appear from that fourfold relation that he bears to them.

1. Of a friend. 2. Of a brother. 3. Of a surety. 4. Of a lord and master.

1. And first let us look upon him as a friend; that is, as one that we may trust with our nearest concernments as freely as ourselves. And Christ has solemnly owned this relation to all believers; so that we may with the greatest cheerfulness and assurance commit the presenting of our petitions to him, whose care and solicitousness for the success of them will be the same with ours. Friendship is an active and a venturous thing, and, where it is real, it will make a man bolder and more importunate for his friend than for himself. Now Christ has all the perfections of human friendship without the flaws and weaknesses of it: and surely he will bestow a prayer for those for whom he would spend a life. Though the presence of God is terrible to behold, and his anger much more terrible to feel, yet Christ has declined neither of them, but made his way to the former by a resolute undergoing of the latter.

Many men will indeed profess themselves to be friends, and expect to be accounted so: but if at any time they are desired to speak a good word to a great person in the behalf of one to whom they have made all these professions, they will desire to be excused; they must not spend and lavish away an interest upon other people’s advantages, but reserve it fresh and entire for themselves.

Sad were the condition of sinners, should the friendship of Christ shew itself at this rate. A friend in the court of heaven would do them but little good, that would not so much as befriend them with a word. But Christ is interceding for us night and day, presenting our prayers to the Father, and making them effectual by his own.

2. Let us consider Christ as a brother, and so we have a further cause to repose a confidence in him, in point of his mediation for us. For although it does not always fall out that the nearest relations are the best friends, yet it is a fault that they are not so; and therefore we may be sure that Christ, who cannot commit a fault, cannot but equal the nearness of the relation he bears to us with a proportionable measure of affection. He is the Son of God by nature, and because we cannot be so too, he has made us so by adoption; John i. 12, To as many as received him, he gave power to become the sons of God. So that he has even united us into one family with himself: Ephes. iii. 15; By whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. Nay, and to advance the relation yet nearer, because it was impossible for dust and ashes to aspire to a participation of the divine nature, he was pleased to descend to the assumption of ours, and to become the Son of man not by adoption only, but really and naturally: to be bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh; to own the same human affections, and, in a word, not to decline our very infirmities.

Which being so, we may very well own all that confidence of succeeding through the mediation of Christ, that the fidelity of a friend and the dearness of a brother may administer to us. For should a brother prevaricate and prove false, nature itself would seem to fly in his face, and upbraid his unhuman perfidiousness. Society would mark him out as a common enemy to mankind, and unfit for converse.

Brotherhood unites persons by a certain tie that is not only forcible, but sacred; and to violate it by any falseness or treachery of behaviour is to injure not only a man, but even humanity itself. And therefore whatsoever business any one puts into his brother’s hands, he counts as secure as if it were in his own. And we may be sure that Christ will be as much more concerned for our affairs than an earthly brother, as such a brother would be more than an ordinary acquaintance.

3. Let us consider Christ as our surety; and so we shall find the same, if not a greater cause of being confident of him as our mediator. It is not every friend nor every brother that will be a surety, since the love that must raise one to undertake this even amongst men, must be a love greater than he bears to himself: for he that ventures to be a surety for another, ventures an undoing for his sake; and there is not any thing less to be wondered at in common life, than to see such persons undone: so that nothing is more certain in human affairs, than that assertion of Solomon, that he that hateth suretyship is sure.

But the debt that Christ was our surety for, was as much greater than the greatest that befalls men in worldly matters, as eternity is greater than time, as heaven is above earth, and the executions of an infinite wrath above the slight, weak revenges of a mortal power. He bore our iniquities, Isaiah liii. and placed himself before the justice of his Father, as responsible for all that the law could charge us with: and being made thus obnoxious by his own free choice, wrath came upon him to the uttermost: he drank off the cup of God’s fury, and squeezed out the very dregs. All this he did in our stead, in our room, in our persons, whom he represented in all that great action.

And now, after such an experiment of his love to us, can we doubt that he will stick at the lesser and lower instances of kindness? that he will refuse to manage and enforce our petitions at the throne of grace, who did not refuse to make himself an offering to justice? We may rest assured that he will not be wanting to the prosecution of our interest, who, by the very office that he has undertook, has made our interest his own.

4thly and lastly, for the further confirmation of our confidence, in our addresses to God, we will consider Christ under a very different relation from all the former, and that is, as he is our lord and master. Majestas et amor, sovereignty and love, (as the poet observes,) do but ill cohabit in the same breast; and the truth is, love prompts to service, and sovereignty imports dominion, and so proceed in a very contrary strain. Yet Christ has united them both in himself: for as he is the most absolute of lords, so he is the best and the most faithful of friends, the kindest brother, and the ablest surety. Nay, and he has founded our friendship and our subjection to him, things very different, upon the same bottom, which is, obedience to his laws; John xv. 14, Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. And elsewhere he tells us of the homage we owe him, in John xiii. 13, Ye call me Lord and Master: and ye do well; for so I am. But this relation, though it speaks superiority and distance, yet it imports also kindness and protection. For what master is there, of a worthy and a generous spirit, that does not espouse the interest and good of his servant, and esteem himself answerable for it as for a trust, which all the principles of religion, humanity, and good-nature will call him to an account for?

Christ shews sufficiently how far he owns himself concerned for his servants, where he declares, that he looks upon every courtesy or injury done to the least of them as done to himself, in Matt. xxv. 45. And as he owns them before men, so he is not ashamed to acknowledge them before his Father in heaven; to further their prayers, to endear their persons, to recommend their services, and, in a word, to be their constant, indefatigable intercessor.

Now, under this relation of lord, I suppose we may consider that also by which Christ owns himself for our head; than which there cannot be one more peculiarly fitted to encourage us in the business of prayer. For when any of the members are aggrieved, or ill at ease, it is the head that must complain and cry out for relief. Nor needs it any intelligence from the afflicted part; but it feels it by a quick sympathy, and utters what it feels by a kind of necessity. And it is as impossible for an arm or a leg to be broke, and the head to be unconcerned, as for any member of the mystical body of Christ to be under a pressing calamity, and for Christ, the head, not to be sensible of that misery, and to vent his sense of it by a vigorous intercession with his Father for its removal.

And thus I have shewn those four relations that Christ bears to believers; every one of which is a pregnant and a forcible argument for us to depend upon his mediation for the success of our prayers and the acceptance of our persons, in all our addresses to the Father.

3. I come now, in the third and last place, to demonstrate the fitness of Christ to be a mediator for us, by considering him in respect of himself, and those qualifications inherent in him, which so particularly qualify and dispose him for this work: of which I shall mention and insist upon three.

1. That he is perfectly acquainted with all our wants and necessities.

2. That he is heartily sensible of and concerned about them.

3. That he is best able to express and set them forth to the Father.

1. And first for the first of these, his acquaintance with our condition. We need not spend much time or labour to inform our advocate of our case: for his omniscience is beforehand with us: he knows all our affairs, and, what is more, our hearts, better than we ourselves. And it is our happiness that he does so; for by this means he is able to supply the defects of our prayers, and to beg those things for us that our ignorance was not aware of. And what is yet a greater advantage, he is upon this account able also to correct our prayers. For such is the shortness of our understanding and the weakness of our affections, that we pray sometimes for those things that would prove our bane and our destruction: we beg heartily for a mischief, and importune God to be so favourable as to ruin us at our desire. In which case surely it concerns us to have somebody to counter-petition us, and to ask a fish while we are begging for a serpent; and to be so kind to us as to keep our prayers from being granted.

A man perhaps is visited with sickness, and passing his days in pain and languishing, puts up many an hearty prayer to God to restore him to health and ease; but all this time he is ignorant of the end and design of this visitation: for possibly the distemper of his body is every day ministering to the cure of his soul, to the mortification of his pride, his lust, and worldly-mindedness: and perhaps God, who foresees all accidents, and knows upon what little wheels and hinges the events of things move, understands assuredly that his sickness removes him out of harm’s way, and secures him from those peculiar occasions of sin, that, being well and healthful, he would inevitably fall into, and perhaps deplorably fall by. But now Christ has a full comprehension of all these possibilities, and knows what would promote and what would annoy every man in his spiritual estate: he knows when sickness will set a man nearer to heaven than health can do; when poverty, banishment, and affliction, subserve the purposes of grace, and the great interests of eternity, better than all the affluence of fortune, the highest preferments, and the most undisturbed prosperity.

As it is an happiness for some men not to be left to their own choice, but to resign themselves up to the guidance and disposal of one of greater experience; so it is the safest course for many not to be permitted to stand or fall according to their own prayers. For it is not always piety or discretion that indites them, but an impatience of some present grievance, or a passionate desire of some earthly enjoyment, affections that in many circumstances border too near upon sin: and therefore the prayers that proceed from them are never granted by God but in anger, and with an intent to punish and to blast the person that makes them.

Such prayers are never seconded or backed by Christ’s intercession, unless for the begging of their pardon, and excusing their folly and their unfitness; and then God may be said most graciously to hear them, when for the mediation of Christ he pardons and denies them: which mediation of his takes its measures of acting, not by our desires, but our wants; of which he is the most competent judge, as being more privy to them than our very consciences; for they may be deceived and deluded, but he cannot. And thus much for the first thing that qualifies Christ to be our mediator, that he knows every thing belonging to our spiritual estate certainly and infallibly.

2. The second is, that he is heartily sensible of, and concerned about whatsoever concerns us. Without which his knowledge would avail us but little. For the bare knowing of a thing engages no man to act in it. And therefore Christ is represented to us as one that is touched with the sense of our infirmities, as sharing our griefs, and bearing a part in our sorrows; which very thing renders him a merciful high priest, and ready to intercede for us with the same vehemence and importunity, that by a personal endurance of those miseries he might be prompted to for himself. He that would speak earnestly and forcibly of any thing, must work it into his heart by a lively and a keen sense of it, as well as into his head by a clear knowledge and apprehension. For where the heart is engaged, all the actions follow: no part or power of the soul can be unactive when that is stirred; and being once moved itself, it moves all the rest.

Now it is the heart of Christ that every believer has an interest in: and we know that he carries that in his breast that intercedes for us with him, as well as he with the Father. He does not only hear our sighs, but also feels the cause of them: and if we suffer by the direct impressions of pain, he also suffers by the movings and yearnings of his own compassion: so that in a manner our relief is his own ease; and that deliverance that disburdens our minds, does also by consequence discharge his.

When he was to leave the world, we read how sensible he was of the disconsolate condition of his disciples; and that he promised to send the Spirit to them for no cause more than to be their Comforter; and to allay those sorrows that upon his departure he foresaw would fill their hearts: he seemed actually to feel their grief, while it was yet but future, and to come: that is, before they could have any feeling of it themselves. This concernment therefore of his for us, is another thing that greatly fits him for the office of a mediator.

3. The third and last is, his transcendent and more than human ability to express and set forth every thing that may be pleaded in our behalf to the best advantage; which is the peculiar qualification of a good advocate, and that which makes the two former considerable. For admit that he both knows his client’s cause, and is heartily and warmly concerned for it, yet if his tongue and his eloquence doth not serve him to draw forth those thoughts and those affections in a suitable defence of it, he is rather a good man and a good friend, than a good advocate or mediator.

But now is there any one that may compare with Christ in respect of this faculty? to whom God has given the tongue of the wise; a tongue speaking with authority, commanding men, and persuading God: nay, and who himself was able to give his disciples such a tongue, as all their adversaries, though never so learned and eloquent, were not able to resist. That prayer that perhaps is by much ado sighed and sobbed out by the penitent, his grief interrupting his words, yet as it arrives to the throne of God from the mouth of our Mediator, it comes with a grace and a force superior to all human rhetoric; it enters the presence and pierces the ears of the Almighty; and, in a word, prevails in that manner, as if it were almighty itself.

And here I cannot but observe, how the qualities of Christ as our mediator pleading for us do particularly mate and confront those of the Devil our grand adversary pleading against us. For as Christ is most knowing of our spiritual estate, and every thing relating to it; so is the Devil most industrious and inquisitive to give himself an exact information of the same. As Christ is most tenderly concerned for us, so is the Devil most maliciously and inveterately set against us. And lastly, as Christ has all the strengths and treasures of elocution to employ in our defence, so is the Devil restless and artificial in drawing up our charge and accusation with all the heightening, aggravating language, that a great wit and a redundant malice can afford. But in all this he is outdone; even as much as the Creator can outdo a creature: so that we need not use any further elogy of Christ’s mediatorship than this, that he is a greater and a more potent advocate, than the Devil himself can be an accuser.

And thus I have at length demonstrated the eminent fitness of Christ for the office of mediator, upon a treble account or respect; namely, in respect of God, of us, and of himself: and so have finished the third particular proposed for the handling of the words; which was, to shew the reason why Christ’s mediation ought to minister such confidence to us in our access to God.

But upon this it may be replied further, that upon the same ground we may infer also, that the angels may know all the prayers orally put up by men throughout the whole world; forasmuch as they may be signified to them, by the like reports from those angels that have the respective care and governance of each person.

To this I answer, that it is indeed possible that they may; but that they also do, we have no ground to conclude. For although God has told us, that so eminent and remarkable a passage as the conversion of a sinner is known to the angels in heaven, whether by particular revelation from himself, or by report from other angels, it matters not; yet that therefore every action done by, or occurrence relating to such an one, must also be reported and made known to the angels too, no reason or argument can demonstrate. And unless we know that these things certainly are so, as well as that possibly they may, they can administer no sure ground to our confidence, as shall be made appear in its due place.

But after all this discourse, what if we should now affirm, that there is no necessity of our holding, that the angels know the repentance of every sinner here on earth, either by themselves or by the reports of others. For when it is said, that there is joy amongst the angels in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, is it said, that this joy happens just about the time of that repentance, or at any time of the sinner’s abode in this world? No; we find no mention of the time; and therefore what hinders but that it may be understood of the time when the penitent enters into heaven: that then there is joy amongst the angels who rejoice that he repented and is recovered, which repentance they then come clearly to see and know, in the visible consequent of it, his salvation. This I am sure may be the sense of the text without any force done to it at all; and if it may, there is no necessity of the former interpretation, upon a removal of which, there cannot be so much as any colour or shew of argument from hence to evince the angels’ knowledge of every particular man’s actions and affairs here upon earth. And thus much in answer to their first scripture.

2. The other is that place in Revelation viii. 3, And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense., that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints, upon the golden altar that was before the throne. From whence they say it is evident, that the angels are employed in presenting our prayers to God, nay, so invincibly evident in the judgment of some, that they wonder that any should be able to stand out against the prevailing force of it.

But to this I answer, that angel is a name not only of nature, but also of office; and signifies one peculiarly sent and employed by God about any work: upon which account Christ is several times in scripture called the angel of the Lord, the angel of the covenant; and simply without any addition the angel, as in Zechariah i. Accordingly in this sense is the word angel to be taken here, namely for Christ; to whom also the other words most appositely agree; the incense here mentioned very fitly representing the merits of his death and sufferings, by which he offered himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, by virtue of which sacrifice he is continually giving an efficacy to our prayers before the throne of grace. If therefore the angel here spoke of be Christ, and Christ be God as well as man, nothing for the mediation of any created angel can be concluded from this text.

And thus having answered what they allege from scripture for the angels’ knowledge of and concernment about men’s particular actions here upon earth, and especially their prayers, I shall now come to examine what they allege for the same from reason.

2. They argue therefore that the angels see and know our prayers, and every thing else belonging to us, because they behold the face of God, the divine essence; which essence containing in itself the exact ideas and representations of all things, by beholding that, they must by consequence behold and view all things else.

This is frequently urged and insisted upon; and yet there cannot be a more false and absurd reasoning. For if this were true, then it would follow that whosoever saw God would be also omniscient, and know as much as God himself knows, since he knows all things by the survey of his own essence. It would follow also that there could be no possibility of God’s revealing any thing to the angels: for how can any thing be said to be revealed that was known before? But yet Christ tells us, that the angels are ignorant of the day of judgment, Matth. xxiv. 36; and St. Peter tells us concerning the mysteries of Christ’s incarnation and man’s redemption, that the angels desire to look into them, 1 Pet. i. 12; and the word παρακύψαι in the original is most emphatical, as signifying a stooping down to look into a thing, which is a searching, inquisitive posture: and therefore surely the angels are capable of a further knowledge of these things, by a revelation of them from God, and consequently cannot see all things in the divine essence.

But that we may answer and remove the very ground of this reasoning, we are to consider, that the divine essence discovers itself, and what is in it, to those that behold it, not by any natural necessity, as a sensible object lays itself open to the eye, but voluntarily and freely, as the mind of one man discovers itself to another, and as we may presume one angel declares his thoughts to another. Add to this also, that the other supposition of the ideas and images of all things existing in the essence of God, seems but a mere fiction, framed only according to our gross way of apprehending things, and so by no means strictly and literally agreeable to the most spiritual, simple, uncompounded nature of God.

From both which it follows, that that device of speculum Trinitatis, the glass of the Trinity, in which they say that saints and angels behold all things, is a most senseless and ridiculous conceit; and I wonder that any persons of reason and learning should be ever brought to lay any weight upon it. For if this be a good argument, that he that sees him who sees all things, must himself also see all things; then by unavoidable consequence this will be as good, that he that sees him who sees nothing, must also himself see nothing. And then any angel may be omniscient and blind in a minute; for let him look upon God who sees all things, and then he is omniscient, and sees all things himself; but let him immediately after look upon a blind man, and then by a wonderful transmutation presently he sees nothing. But the truth is, such ways of discoursing are fitter to be drolled upon, than to be refuted by any serious answer.

And thus I have shewn, that we have no ground to repose any confidence in the mediation of angels, for the promoting of our petitions before God. I come now to see whether we have any greater ground of confidence from any thing that the saints are like to do for us in this particular.

Concerning which we must observe, that the foregoing arguments brought against the angels interceding for us, by reason of their unacquaintance with our spiritual affairs, proceed much more forcibly against the intercession of the saints, who are of much more limited and restrained faculties than the angels, and know fewer things, and even those that they do know in a much lesser degree of clearness than the angelical knowledge rises to.

But yet for the further proof of the saints’ unacquaintedness with what is done here below, these reasons may be added over and above.

1. As first, it is clear that God sometimes takes his saints out of the world for this very cause, that they may not see and know what happens in the world. For so says God to king Josiah, 2 Chron. xxxiv. 28, Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace, neither shall thine eyes see all the evil that I will bring upon this place, and the inhabitants thereof. Which discourse would have been hugely absurd and inconsequent, if so be the saints’ separation from the body gave them a fuller and a clearer prospect into all the particular affairs and occurrences that happen here upon earth. But if they are ignorant of these, as this scripture sufficiently proves, then can there no reason be assigned, why we should not also judge them ignorant of our prayers.

Some indeed are not ashamed to say, that God reveals the prayers of men here below to the saints above, that they may present those prayers to him; which assertion as it is utterly groundless, so it is also apparently absurd. For to what purpose should God reveal a prayer made to him, to any of the saints, that he might pray it over to him again? Can he make the matter plainer and more evident to God than it was before? Or can he add merit and value to it, when it is impossible for any creature to merit from God? Or lastly, can he prevail with God more than God’s own mercy and Christ’s intercession? Thus when men first take up an opinion, and then afterwards seek for reasons for it, they must be contented with such as the absurdity of it will afford.

2. But 2dly, we have yet further an express declaration of the saints’ ignorance of the state of things here below in those words in Isaiah lxiii. 16, where the church thus utters itself to God; Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not. Abraham and Jacob surely were saints, and those too none of the lowest rank; yet it seems they knew nothing of the condition of their posterity, understood none of their wants and necessities. And if so, how they should pray and be concerned for those of whom they had no knowledge, is hard to comprehend.

This seeming to take in the chief, if not the only drift and scope of the Spirit in these words, waving the consideration of the rest, I shall only prosecute this.

In the prosecution of it, I shall do these things.

I. I shall endeavour to prove and demonstrate the truth of this assertion from scripture.

II. I shall shew how many ways the Spirit may be resisted.

III. I shall shew whence and why it is that upon some resistance the Spirit finally withdraws.

IV. Make application.

I. Concerning the first, I shall present you with the proof of this doctrine from several scriptures, that give us pregnant examples, that this is the way of God’s dealings still to withdraw his Spirit after some notorious resistance.

1. The first is that dreadful place in which is set down God’s dispensation towards the children of Israel, in Psalm xcv. 10, 11; Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest. We have here these things observable.

1. Their resistance of God’s Spirit, specified in these words; I was grieved with this generation.

2. We have the set and limited time of that resistance; it was forty years.

3. God’s judicial withdrawing his Spirit thereupon, and delivering them up to a state of everlasting spiritual desertion, held forth in these words; I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest. From whence we see that the departure of the Spirit was as infallibly sure, as the truth of God confirmed with the obligation of an oath could make it.

A second place, that yet further proves that there is such a critical, fixed time of the Spirit’s working, is in Heb. iv. 7, He limiteth a certain day, saying, To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart. This expression seems to hold forth two things.

1. The fixed determination of the time of the Spirit’s speaking to us; To-day. Now as in a day, after such a set hour it is unavoidably and certainly night; so after such a season of the Spirit’s strivings, there inevitably follows a final desertion. While it is day the Spirit works; but this night cometh, and it will not work.

2. This expression shews the shortness of this time. The day of grace, it is but a day. It is the sun of righteousness shining in our faces for some few hours. Which, by the way, speaks severe reproof to the unreasonable delays of some, in their closing and complying with God. The Spirit calls them to-day, and they promise obedience to-morrow. Procrastination in temporals is always dangerous, but in spirituals it is often damnable.

The third place that may be alleged for the proof of this truth is that, Luke xix. 42, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. In these words also we may observe three things.

1. Their enjoyment of a season, in which the Spirit dealt with them concerning the things of their peace; they had their day.

I. And first for the first, who these scribes and pharisees were. It would be both tedious, and, as to our present business, superfluous, to discourse exactly of the original and ways of the several sects that about the time of our Saviour infested the Jewish church; such as were the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Herodians. Let it suffice us therefore to consider so much of them as may contribute to the clearing of the text; which is, that these pharisees were a powerful ruling sect amongst the Jews, professing and pretending to a greater sanctity of life and purity of doctrine than any others. Upon which account they gave denomination to their sect from pharash, a word importing separation; as that they were men who had sequestered and set apart themselves to the study and pursuit of a more sublime piety and strictness of life than the rest of mankind; as also such as gave the best interpretations of the Mosaic law, not only expounding, but also correcting and perfecting it where it was defective.

In which respect they struck in with the scribes. For pharisee is the name of a sect, scribe of an office; and signifies as much as a doctor, one whose employment it was to interpret and expound the law to the people in their synagogues. So that in short the scribes and pharisees amongst the Jews were such as owned themselves for the strictest livers and the best teachers in the world.

II. The second thing to be explained is, what our Saviour here means by righteousness. The word may have a twofold acception.

1. It may import a righteousness of doctrine; such an one as is to be the rule and measure of the righteousness of our actions.