the great, important ends of religion; and upon these following accounts,

First, because religion, in the prime institution of it, was designed to make impressions of awe and reverential fear upon men's minds. The mind of man is naturally licentious, and there is nothing which it is more averse from than duty; nothing which it more abhors than restraint. It would, if let alone, lash out, and wantonize in a boundless enjoyment and gratification of all its appetites and inclinations. And therefore God, who designed man to a supernatural end, thought fit also to engage him to a way of living above the bare course of nature; and for that purpose to oblige him to a severe abridgment and control of his mere natural desires. And this can never be done, but by imprinting upon his judgment such apprehensions of dread and terror, as may stave off an eager and luxurious appetite from its desired satisfactions, which the infinite wisdom of God has thought fit in some measure to do, by nonplusing the world with certain new and unaccountable revelations of himself and the divine methods of a mysterious religion.

To protect which from the saucy encroachments of bold minds, he has hedged it in with a sacred and majestic obscurity, in some of the principal parts of it; which that it is the most effectual way to secure a reverence to it from such minds, is as certain as the universal experience of mankind can make it; it being an observation too frequent and common to be at all doubted of, that familiarity breeds contempt; and it holds not more in point of converse, than in point of knowledge. For as easiness of access, frankness and openness of behaviour, does by degrees lay a man open to scorn and contempt, especially from some dispositions; so a full inspection and penetration into all the difficulties and secrets of any object is apt to make the mind insult over it, as over a conquered thing; for all knowledge is a kind of conquest over the thing we know.

Distance preserves respect, and we still imagine some transcendent worth in things above our reach. Moses was never more reverenced than when he wore his veil. Nay, the very sanctum sanctorum would not have had such a veneration from the Jews, had they been permitted to enter into it, and to gaze and stare upon it, as often as they did upon the other parts of the temple. The high priest himself, who alone was suffered to enter into it, yet was to do so but once a year; lest the frequency of the sight might insensibly lessen that adoration which so sacred a thing was still to maintain upon his thoughts.

Many men, who in their absence have been great, and admired for their fame, find a diminution of that respect upon their personal

presence; even the great apostle Saint Paul himself found it so, (as he himself tells us, 2 Cor. x. 10.) And upon the same account it is, that the kings of some nations, to keep up a living and a constant awe of themselves in the minds of their subjects, shew themselves to them but once a-year; and even that perhaps may be something with the oftenest, considering that persons, whose greatness generally consists rather in the height of their condition than in the depth of their understanding, seldom appear freely and openly, but they expose themselves in more senses than one.

In all great respect or honour shewn, there is something of wonder; but a thing often seen, we know, be it never so excellent, yet ceasing thereby to be new, it ceases also to be wondered at. Forasmuch as it is not the worth or excellency, but the strangeness of a thing which draws the eyes and admiration of men after it; for can any thing in nature be imagined more glorious and beautiful than the sun shining in his full might, and yet how many more spectators and wonderers does the same sun find under an eclipse?

But to pursue this notion and observation yet farther, I conceive it will not be amiss to consider, how it has been the custom of all the sober and wise nations of the world still to reserve the great rites of their religion in occulto: thus, how studiously did the Egyp tians, those great masters of all learning, lock up their sacred things from all access and knowledge of the vulgar! Whereupon their gods were pictured and represented with their finger upon their mouth, thereby, as it were, enjoining silence to their votaries, and forbidding all publication of their mysteries. Nor was this all, but for the better concealing of the sacra arcana of their religion, they used also a peculiar character unknown to the common people, and understood only by themselves; and last of all, that they might yet the more surely keep off all others from any acquaintance with these secrets, the priesthood was made hereditary amongst them, by which means they easily secured and confined the knowledge of their sacerdotal rites wholly within their own family. The like also is reported of the Phoenicians, the Babylonians, and the Grecians, that they had their ἱερὰ γράμματα, and their ἰδίους χαρακτῆρας, their sacred and peculiar way of writing, by which they rescued the revered mysteries of their religion from the rude inspection of the rout. And lastly, that the same course of secrecy and concealment was also followed by the Romans, though in a different way, and not by the use of such peculiar characters, is sufficiently evident from that known introduction and prologue to their sacred rites, "Procul este profani ;" by which they drove far away the profane; and such were all those

must now be contented with the poor, dim light of faith, which, as I have shewn, guides only in the strength and light of another's knowledge, and is properly a seeing with another's eyes; as being otherwise wholly unable to inform us about the great things of our peace, by any immediate inspection of those things themselves.

Now that the several religions of the forementioned nations of the gentiles were false and idolatrous, I readily own; but that their method of preserving the reverence of them (which is all that I here insist upon) was founded upon any persuasion they had of the falsehood and idolatry of the said religions, this I absolutely deny; since it is not imaginable, that any sort of men whatsoever could heartily own and profess any sort of religion which they themselves fully believed to be false; and therefore, since it could not be but that they believed their several religions true, (though really and indeed they were not so,) yet the way which they took to keep up an awful esteem of them in the hearts of such as professed them, was no doubt founded upon an excellent philosophy and knowledge of the temper of man's mind, in relation to sacred matters. So that, although their subject was bad, yet their argumentation and discourse upon it was highly rational.

Secondly. A second ground of the mysteriousness of religion, (as it is delivered by God to mankind,) is his most wise purpose thereby to humble the pride and haughtiness of man's reason; a quality so peculiarly odious to God, that it may be said, not so much to imprint upon men the image, as to communicate to them the very essence of Lucifer. The way by which man first fell from his original integrity and happiness was by pride, founded upon an irregular desire of knowledge; and therefore it seems to be a course most agreeable to the divine wisdom to contrive man's recovery by such a method as should abase and nonplus him in that very perfection, whereof the ambitious improvement first cast him down from that glorious condition. In short, man would be like God in knowledge, and so he fell; and now if he will be like him in happiness too, God will effect it in such a way, as shall convince him to his face that he knows nothing. The whole course of his salvation shall be all

Whereupon we find the gospel set up, as it were, in triumph over all that wisdom and philosophy which the learned and more refined parts of the world so much boasted of, and valued themselves upon; as we have it in

is the scribe, and where is the disputer of this world?" God is there said to have "made foolish the very wisdom of it." So that when "the world by wisdom knew not God," that is, by all their philosophy could not find out, either how he was to be served, or by what means to be enjoyed, this grand discovery was made to them "by the foolishness of preaching," (as the world then esteemed it;) nay, and of preaching the cross too, a thing utterly exploded both by Jew and Greek, as the greatest absurdity imaginable, and contrary to all their received principles and reasonings about the way of man's attaining to true happiness. And yet, as high as they bore themselves, their strongest reasonings were to bend to this weakness of God, (as the apostle, in derision of those who thought it so, there calls it,) and their sublimest wisdom to stoop to this foolishness, if so be they were not resolved to be too strong and too wise, forsooth, to be saved. For as the primitive effect of knowledge was first to puff up, and then to throw down; so the contrary method of grace and faith is first to depress, and then to advance.

The difficulty and strangeness of some of the chief articles of our religion, such as are those of the Trinity, and of the incarnation and satisfaction of Christ, are notable instruments in the hand of God, to keep the soul low and humble, and to check those self-complacencies which it is apt to grow into by an overweening conceit of its own opinions, more than by any other thing whatsoever. For man naturally is scarce so fond of the offspring of his body, as of that of his soul. His notions are his darlings: so that neither children nor self are half so dear to him as the only-begotten of his mind. And therefore, in the dispensations of religion, God will have this onlybegotten, this best-beloved, this Isaac of our souls, (above all other offerings that a man can bring him,) to be sacrificed, and given up to him.

Thirdly, God in great wisdom has been pleased to put a mysteriousness into the greatest articles of our religion, thereby to engage us in a closer and more diligent search into them. He would have them the objects of our study, and for that purpose has rendered them hard and difficult: for no man studies things plain and evident, and such as by their native clearness do even prevent our search, and of their own accord offer themselves to our understandings. The foundation of all inquiry is the obscurity as well as worth of the thing inquired after. And God has thought good to make the constitution and complexion of our religion such as may fit it to be our business and our task; to require and take up all our intellectual strengths, and in a word, to try the force of our best, our noblest, and most active faculties. For if it were not so, then surely human literature could no ways promote the study of divinity, nor could skill in the liberal arts and sciences be any step to raise us to those higher speculations. But so the experience of the world (maugre all fanatic pretences, all naked truths, and naked gospels, or rather shameful nakedness, instead of either truth or gospel) has ever yet found it to be. For still the schools are and must be the standing nurseries of the church; and all the cultivation and refinement they can bestow upon the best wits, in the use of the most unwearied industry, are but a means to facilitate their advance higher, and to let them in more easily at the strait gate of those more hidden and involved propositions which Christianity would employ and exercise the mind of man with. For suppose that we could grasp in the whole compass of nature, as to all the particulars and varieties of being and motion, yet we shall find it a vast, if not an impossible leap from thence to ascend to the full comprehension of any one of God's attributes, and much more from thence to the mysterious economy of the divine persons; and lastly, to the astonishing work of the world's redemption by the blood of the Son of God himself, condescending to be a man, that he might die for us. All which were things hidden from the wise and prudent, in spite of all their wisdom and prudence; as being heights above the reach, and depths beyond the fathom, of any mortal intellect.

We are commanded by Christ "to search the Scriptures," as the great repository of all the truths and mysteries of our religion; and whosoever shall apply himself to a thorough performance of this high command, shall find difficulty and abstruseness enough in the things searched into to perpetuate his search; for they are a rich mine, which the greatest wit and diligence may dig in for ever, and still find new matter to entertain the busiest contemplation with, even to the utmost

period of the most extended life. For no man can outlive the reasons of inquiry, so long as he carries any thing of ignorance about him; and that every man must and shall do, while he is in this state of mortality: for he, who himself is but a part of nature, shall never compass or comprehend it all.

Truth, we are told, dwells low, and in a bottom; and the most valued things of the creation are concealed and hidden by the great Creator of them from the common view of the world. Gold and diamonds, with the most precious stones and metals, lie couched and covered in the bowels of the earth; the very condition of their being giving them their burial too. So that violence must be done to nature, before she will produce and bring them forth.

And then, as for what concerns the mind of man, God has, in his wise providence, cast things so as to make the business of men in this world improvement; that so the very work of their condition may still remind them of the imperfection of it. For surely, he who is still pressing forward, has not yet obtained the prize. Nor has he who is only growing in knowledge, yet arrived to the full stature of it. Growth is progress; and all progress designs and tends to the acquisition of something which the growing person is not yet possessed of.

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Fourthly. The fourth and last reason which I shall allege of the mysterious dispensation of the gospel here is, that the full, entire knowledge of it may be one principal part of our felicity and blessedness hereafter. those heights and depths which we now stand so much amazed at, and which so confound and baffle the subtlest and most piercing apprehension, shall then be made clear, open, and familiar to us. God shall then display the hidden glories of his nature, and withal fortify the eye of the soul so that it shall be able to behold and take them in, so far as the capacities of human intellect shall enable it to do. We shall then see the mysteries of the Trinity, and of the incarnation of Christ, and of the resurrection of the dead, unriddled and made plain to us; all the knots of God's decrees and providence untied, and made fit for our understanding, as well as our admiration. We shall then be transported with a nobler kind of wonder, not the effect of ignorance, but the product of a clearer and more advanced knowledge. We shall admire and adore the works and attributes of the great God, because we shall see the glorious excellency of the one, and the admirable contrivances of the other, made evident to our very reason, so as to inform and satisfy that which before they could only astonish and amaze.

The happiness of heaven shall be a happiness of vision and of knowledge; and we shall there pass from the darkness of our native

ignorance, from the dusk and twilight of our former notions, into the broad light of an everlasting day; a day which shall leave nothing undiscovered to us which can be fit for us to know: and therefore the apostle, comparing our present with our future condition in respect of those different measures of knowledge allotted to each of them, (1 Cor. xiii. 12,) tells us, "that here we see but darkly, and in a glass ;" and a glass, we know, often gives a false, but always a faint representation of the object: "but then," says he, "shall we see God face to face." And again, "Here we know but in part, but there we shall know as we are known; and that which is perfect being come, then that which is in part shall be done away." Reason being then unclogged from the body, shall have its full flight, and a free uncontrolled passage into all things intelligible. We shall then surmount these beggarly rudiments and mean helps of knowledge, which now, by many little steps, gradually raise us to some short speculation of the nature of things. Our knowledge shall be then intuitive, and above discourse; not proceeding by a long circuit of antecedents and consequents, as now in this vale of imperfection it is forced to do; but it shall then fully inform the whole mind, and take in the whole object, by one single and substantial act.

For as, in that condition, we shall enjoy the happiness, so we shall also imitate the perfection of angels, who outshine the rest of the creation in nothing more than in a transcendent ability of knowing and judging, which is the very glory and crowning excellency of a created nature. Faith itself shall be then accounted too mean a thing to accompany us in that estate; for being only conversant about things not seen, it can have no admittance into that place, the peculiar privilege of which shall be to convey to us the knowledge of those things by sight, which before we took wholly upon trust. And thus I have given you some account, first of the mysteriousness of the gospel, and then of the reasons of it; and that both from the nature of the things themselves which are treated of in it, as also from those great ends and purposes which God, in his infinite wisdom, has designed it to.

From all which discourse several very weighty inferences might be drawn, but I shall collect and draw from thence only these three; as,

First, The high reasonableness of men's relying upon the judgment of the whole church in general, and of their respective teachers and spiritual guides in particular, rather than upon their own private judgments, in such important and mysterious points of religion as we have been hitherto discoursing of, say, upon the judgment of those who have made it their constant business, as well as

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their avowed profession, to acquaint themselves with these mysteries, (so far as human reason can attain to them,) and that in order to the instruction and information of others.

Certain it is, that there is no other profession in the world, besides this of divinity, wherein men do not own something of a mystery, and accordingly reckon it both highly rational, and absolutely necessary, in many cases, to resign and submit their own judgments to the judgments of such as profess a skill in any art or science whatsoever. For whose judgment ought in all reason to be followed about any thing-his, who has made it his whole work and calling to understand that thing, or his, who has bestowed his whole time, parts, and labour, upon something else, which is wholly foreign to it, and has no cognation at all with it?

But there is not only reason to persuade, but also authority to oblige men in the present case. For see in what notable words the prophet asserts this privilege to the priesthood under the Mosaic economy, (Mal. ii. 7,)“ The priest's lips," says he, "should preserve knowledge, and the people should seek the law at his mouth;" (adding this as a reason of the same,) "for," says he," he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts."

For which words, no doubt, this prophet would have passed for a man of heat, or high churchman, nowadays: for, in good earnest, they run very high, and look very severely upon our so much applauded, or rather doated upon liberty of conscience, and are so far from casting the least eye of favour upon it, that they are a more direct and mortal stab to it, than all the pleas, arguments, and apologies I could ever yet read or hear of, have been a defence of it.

Nor does the same privilege sink one jot lower under the Christian constitution; for as we have already shewn that the gospel is full of mysteries, so (1 Cor. iv. 1) the ministers of the gospel are declared the "stewards of these mysteries ;" and whatsoever any one dispenses as a steward, he dispenses with the authority and in the strength of an office and commission; and I believe it will be hard to prove, that a minister of the gospel can be obliged to dispense or declare any thing to the people, which the people are not upon his declaration of it equally bound to believe and assent to.

An implicit faith indeed in our spiritual guides (such as the Church of Rome holds) I own to be a great absurdity; but a due deference and submission to the judgment of the said guides in the discharge of their ministry, I affirm to be as great a duty. And I state the measures of this submission, in a belief of, and an obedience to, all that a man's spiritual guide shall in that capacity declare and enjoin, provided that a man does not certainly know, or at least upon very great and just grounds

doubt, any thing to the contrary: (which two conditions, I allow, ought always to be supposed in this case; and then, if no objection from either of these shall interpose, I affirm, that every man stands obliged, by the duty he owes to his spiritual pastor, to believe and obey whatsoever his said pastor shall, by virtue of his pastoral office, deliver to him. In a word, if men would but seriously and impartially consider these three things; first, that the gospel, or Christian religion, is, for the most part of it, made up of mysteries; secondly, that God has appointed a certain order of men to declare and dispense these mysteries; and thirdly and lastly, that it was his wisdom thus to order both these; certainly men would both treat the gospel itself more like a mystery, and the minsters of the gospel more like the dispensers of so high and sacred a mystery, than the guise and fashion of our present blessed times disposes them to do; that is, in other words, men would be less confident of their own understandings, and more apt to pay reverence and submission to the understandings of those, who are both more conversaut in these matters than they can pretend to be, and whom the same wisdom of God has thought fit to appoint over them as their guides. For the contrary practice can proceed from nothing but a high self-opinion, and a man's being wise in his own conceit, which is a sure way to be so in nobody's else. In fine, every one is apt to think himself able to be his own divine, his own priest, and his own teacher; and he should do well to be his own physician, and his own lawyer too: and then, as upon such a course he finds himself speed in the matters of this world, let him upon the same reckon of his success in the other.

Secondly. We learn also from the foregoing particulars, the gross unreasonableness and the manifest sophistry of men's making whatsoever they find by themselves not intelligible, (that is to say, by human reason not comprehensible,) the measure whereby they would conclude the same also to be impossible. This, I say, is a mere fallacy, and a wretched inconsequence and yet nothing occurs more commonly (and that as a principle taken for granted) in the late writings of some heterodox, pert, unwary men; and particularly it is the main hinge upon which all the Socinian arguments against the mysteries of our religion turn and depend; but withal so extremely remote is it from all truth, that there is not the least show or shadow of reason assignable for it, but upon this one supposition, namely, that the reason or mind of man is capable of comprehending, or thoroughly understanding, whatsoever it is possible for an infinite divine power to do. This, I say, must be supposed; for no other foundation can support the truth of this proposition, to wit, That whatsoever

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For who can comprehend, or thoroughly understand, how the soul is united to, and how it acts by and upon the body? Who can comprehend or give a full account how sensation is performed? or who can lay open to us the whole mechanism of motion in all the springs and wheels of it? Nay, who can resolve and clear off all the difficulties about the composition of a continued quantity, as whether it is compounded of parts divisible or indivisible? both of which are attended with insuperable objections. And yet all these things are not only possible, but also actually existent in nature. From all which, therefore, and from a thousand more such instances, (which might easily be produced,) I conclude, that for any one to deny or reject the mysteries of our religion as impossible, because of the incomprehensibleness of them, is, upon all true principles, both of divinity and philosophy, utterly inconsequent and irrational.

Thirdly. In the third and last place, we learu also, from what has been discoursed, the great vanity and extravagant presumption of such as pretend to clear up all mysteries, and determine all controversies in religion. The attempts of which sort of men I can liken to nothing so properly as to those pretences to infallible cures, which we daily see posted up in every corner of the streets; and I think it is great pity, but that both these sort of pretences were posted up together. For I know no universal, infallible remedy, which certainly cures, or rather carries off all diseases, and puts an end to all disputes, but death: which yet, for all that, is a remedy not much in request. Quacks and mountebanks are doubtless a very dangerous sort of men in physic, but much more so in divinity: they are both of them always very large in pretence and promise, but short in performance, and generally fatal in their practice. For there are several depths and difficulties (as I noted before) both in philosophy and divinity, which men of parts and solid learning, after all their study, find they cannot come to the bottom of, but are forced to give them over as things unresolvable, and will by no means be brought to pronounce dogmatically on either side of the question.

Amongst which said difficulties perhaps there is hardly a greater, and more undecidable problem in natural theology, and which has not only exercised but even crucified the greatest wits of all ages, than the reconciling of the immutable certainty of God's foreknow

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