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hensive term, implying all the duties of the second table, as loving God" takes in and comprehends all the duties of the first; according to the best and most authentic explication given of this subject by our Saviour himself. He, therefore, in the apostle's sense, is "the son of God," who does the "works of God;" and he does the works of God who loves his brother; and he loves his brother or neighbour (which in Scripture are terms synonymous) who pays obedience to his governors; who neither kills nor mischiefs his neighbour in his person, nor defiles his bed, nor invades his property, nor traduces his good name, nor yet covets or casts a longing eye upon any part of his substance or estate; but on the contrary prosecutes him with all the acts of justice, love, and charity, which oppose the forementioned injuries and violences prohibited in the law.

Now this being the genuine explication of the words, let us cast them into argumentation. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God," (says the apostle,) "they are the sons of God." The proposition is universal, and perhaps also the terms of it convertible; but whether they are or no, I am sure, it being a right and legitimate way of arguing, from the removal of the consequent to the denial of the antecedent, this inference must needs be firm and good, that those who are not the sons of God are not led by the Spirit. Now whether those who rebel, and prosecute their rebellion with murders, rapine, and sacrilege, who plunder their neighbours, and perjure themselves, who libel church and state, and throw all order into confusion, can be accounted the sons of God in that Scripture sense, in which those only are the sons of God who do the works of God, let any one judge. If they are not the sons of God, I have shewn that they are not led by the Spirit but if they think they can prove themselves the sons of God, while they practise these and the like enormities, (as no doubt they either do or would persuade themselves,) I will undertake to prove, that such sons of God are certain heirs of damnation.

Come we now to the fourth and last thing proposed, which is, to gather some conclusions, by way of use and inference, from the foregoing particulars. The conclusions shall be two:

1. That persons thus pretending to act by an inward voice, or impulse of the Spirit, in opposition to the rule of God's written word, are by no means to be endured in the communion of a Christian church, as being the highest scandal and reproach to religion, indeed a much higher and greater than drunkards, swearers, or robbers upon the highway. For though these persons by such practices disobey, and consequently dishonour the reli

gion they profess; yet they pretend not that their villainies have any countenance or warrant from religion, so as thereby to lose their guilt, and cease to be villainies. But now such as pretend to be led by the extraordinary motions of the Spirit, do by that affirm every thing that they do to be lawful, and suitable to the mind of God: those very actions which in other men are sinful and abominable, as done by themselves through the authority of the Spirit, putting on quite another nature. So that their killing is no murder; their plundering their neighbour, no robbery; their violating his bed, no adultery; their resisting and fighting against their king, no rebellion; for the Spirit, by an inward voice or motion, dissolving the bonds of those laws which tie up other men from these actions, does in the meantime authorize and empower them to act all these things innocently, piously, and perhaps meritoriously too; than which it is impossible for the wickedness of man to utter or conceive any thing more highly opprobrious to God and to religion. Villains may fly to the altar to escape the punishment of their sin; but that they should fly to religion to excuse and take off the guilt of their sin, this is to make the altar itself a party in the crime, and the Almighty, not so much a pardoner, as a patron of their guilt. This is certainly next to the sin against the Holy Ghost, (if that sin may be committed nowa-days,) and possibly one kind of that sin itself. For if the Pharisees are said to have sinned against the Holy Ghost by blaspheming him, and that blasphemy consisted in their attributing those works which were done by the Holy Ghost to the power of the Devil; pray, what difference, in point of blasphemy, is there between that and the ascribing those villainies, which are done by the instigation of the Devil, to the impulse and suggestion of the Holy Ghost? For my part, I can per ceive no more nor other difference in the blasphemy of these two assertions, than there is in the same way, as it leads from Thebes to Athens, and from Athens to Thebes. For the Spirit can be no less dishonoured and blasphemed by having the works of the Devil ascribed to him, than by having his own works ascribed to the Devil.

2. The other conclusion or inference is this; that as these pretenders are upon no terms to be endured in the church, for the scandal they bring upon religion; so neither are they to be tolerated in the state, for the pernicious influence they have upon society. Whether the original right of civil government were from compact or no, has been disputed; but that the actual subsistence and continuance of it stands upon compact observed and made good, is past question; I mean that compact and agreement whereby all agree to submit and be subject to the same laws.

For if one

half of a nation agree to live in subjection to such laws, and the other half refuses all submission to the same, and both parts be equally strong, the government must of necessity fall in pieces. And upon this account, no subject has any right to claim protection of the government he is under, any longer than he submits to the laws of that government.

But now the enthusiasts we speak of, pretending to be led and governed immediately by the Spirit, whose inward voice is the only rule and law they hold themselves obliged to live and act by; by virtue of which also they plead themselves authorized to do many things which the written laws of God and man forbid, and to omit many things which the same written laws enjoin: with what face or confidence can they expect the protection of the government they live under, when they profess themselves to live by a law wholly differing from those laws, to the observers of which alone that government promises protection? Is it reason that my neighbour should live at peace by me, and enjoy his estate only by my conscience of, and obedience to that law, which forbids me to rob or steal from him; and he in the mean time proceed by an inward law, which exempts him from the same obligation, and allows him, when he pleases, to seize upon my estate, and rifle me? I say, is there, can there be any reason that such a fellow should be safe from me by my subjection to the laws of my country, and I not be mutually safe from him by his subjection to the same? No, certainly; where the benefit of the law is his, the obligation of it ought to reach him too, or there will be no equality, and consequently no society. He therefore who shall presume to own himself thus led by an inward voice, or instinct of the Spirit, in opposition to the laws enacted by the civil power, has forfeited all right to any protection from that power, and has, ipso facto, outlawed himself, and accordingly as an outlaw ought he to be dealt with; and if by these impulses and inspirations he shall dare to offend capitally, the magistrate must assert his rights, and vindicate the prerogative of his abused laws with the gibbet or the halter, the axe or the fagot; and this, if any thing, will cure such villains of that which they call the Spirit.

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Infinite have been the disturbances given the world in general, and this poor kingdom in particular, by crafty persons sowing their hypocrisy by pretences of religion of all which pretences none have been so frequent and fatally successful, as the two grand ones, one of the Spirit, the other of tender consciences; concerning the highest pretenders to both of which I shall say no more, than that it is well for them that no sort of lies whatsoever can choke them, and well for the

VOL. I.

magistrate that something else can; there being no casuist comparable to the minister of justice, to answer the sturdy scruples of an enthusiast disposed to rebel. For otherwise, as to matter of duty, whether to God or man, there can be no doubt or difficulty about it at all; that rule of our Saviour being infallible for the discovery of all such pretenders and spiritual cheats, "that by their fruits ye shall know them." And the "fruits of the Spirit," Saint Paul tells us, (Galat. v. 22, 23,) are "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, temperance," and the like; fruits which never grew in the same soil with rebellion, murder, and sacrilege. For, as the same apostle says, "those who live by the Spirit, will walk by the Spirit" too, since no mau subsists by one vital principle, and acts by another.

To which eternal Spirit of truth and holiness, together with the Father and the Son, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, now and for evermore.

SERMON LVII.

THANKFULNESS FOR PAST MERCIES THE WAY TO OBTAIN FUTURE BLESSINGS. PREACHED AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY, NOV. 5, 1688. "What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it ?"- ISAIAH, V. 4.

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

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

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

I. The form and manner ofthe complaint.
II. The complaint itself.

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

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

1. And first for the strangeness of it. Whatsoever falls out either above or beside

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

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

Now ingratitude is the thing here exclaimed against with so much abhorrence; a passion that has all in it that wonder has, with the addition of something more; wonder resting merely in the speculation of things, this proceeding also to a practical aversation and flight from them. But since a sinner is no strange sight, nor can it pass for a wonder to see men wicked, what cannot be found in the bare nature of things must be

sought for in their degree; and therefore it must needs be some superlative height of wickedness which drew from God this loud exclamation. What that is, will appear in the prosecution of the next thing, which is the complaint itself; for which there are these things to be considered:

1. The person complaining, who was God himself.

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

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

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

Of each of which briefly in their order.

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

The next thing to be considered is, the persons here complained of; and they were the Jews, the peculiar and select people of God; a people that had no cause to complain, and therefore the more unfit to give any to be complained of. From the beginning of God's taking them into his care and patronage, they were fed and maintained at the immediate cost and charges of Heaven; they were dieted with miracles, with new inventions and acts of providence, the course of nature itself still veiling to their necessities; the heaven, the sea, and all things, dispensing with the standing laws of their creation to do

them service, in order to their serving of God. But it seems it was easier to fetch honey out of the bowels of the earth, to broach the rock, or draw rivers from a flint, than to draw obedience from them.

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

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

1. That he committed his sacred word and oracles to them; so that when all the world round about them had no other religion than what they either derived from their own errors, or at best from their conjectures, these were taught by immediate and infallible revelation; neither confounding themselves in the notion of God's nature, so as to own a multiplicity of deities, nor yet of his worship, so as to serve him by absurd, and, what is worse, by impious practices, which yet the best and the most reputed of the Gentiles placed all their devotion in. In sum, they had that

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sure word of prophecy," which was "able to make them wise to salvation ;" while the neighbouring nations had such a religion as neither represented them wise in this world, nor like to be saved in the next.

And yet, as pure and as divine as the Jewish worship was, it had many more ceremonies than ours; nor do we find any proviso for the abatement of the least of them, to gratify any tender conscience whatsoever; though yet the nature of God, who was to be worshipped, and of the souls of men, who were to pay him that worship, were the same then that they are now, and consequently apt to be helped or hindered by the same means: which one consideration is enough to cut the sinews of all the pitiful arguments that the nonconforming comprehensive sages did, or

do, or ever will produce. But we understand the men; they strike indeed at the church, but their aim is farther, and, if God prevents not, their blow will follow it.

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

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

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

And has not God dealt as mercifully and as gloriously with these three nations? So that we are an island, not only encompassed with a sea of waters, but also surrounded with an ocean of mercies. From the day that God

first vouchsafed us the settlement of the reformed religion under the reign of Queen Elizabeth, how has he been like a "cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night," both to guide and protect us in the profession of it? For can we forget the deliverance of eightyeight, and those victorious mercies, more invincible than the armada designed to invade and enslave us; when the seas and winds had a command from heaven to fight under the English colours, and to manifest the strength of God in our weakness! Or can we pass over that never to be forgot blessing of this day, which brought to light those hidden and fatal works, of darkness, that would have ruined both king and church, and the three estates at a blow; when that God, who humbles himself enough in beholding what is done upon the earth, was pleased to stoop yet lower, and to behold what was doing under it too; and so, by a mature providence, stepping in between the match and the fatal train, to catch us as it were a "brand out of the fire," or rather, by the greater mercy of prevention, to keep the destructive element from kindling upon us; and thereby to give us both an opportunity and obligation of eternally celebrating the mercy of such a glorious rescue from a plot in all the parts of it so black and hideous, that the sober Papists themselves ever did, and do, and, I believe, ever will profess an utter abhorrence of it, how ready soever they may be to repeat it.

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

Now, surely, by these miraculous instances of mercy, God would fain provoke us to such a degree of piety, as might prevent his justice from consiguing us over to a relapse into the same sad effects of the same sins. For can we think that God detected and dashed the conspiracy of this day, only to enable the sons of luxury and ingratitude perpetually to conspire against him? Did he break the neck of the late rebellion, that we might transcribe their actings towards their king into our behaviour towards God? Did he deliver the

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