the subject's conscience, wheresoever the name and title of sovereignty may be lodged, the power is undoubtedly in those who overrule the law.

And now, if this pitiful sham and term of art, persecution, shall be able to screen those spiritual riots and seditious meetings, that look so terribly upon the government, from the justice of it, how can it possibly be safe? For the design of conventicles is not to worship God in another and a purer way, (as they cant it,) but to adjust the numbers, to learn the strength, and to fix the correspondence of the party, and thereby to prepare and muster them for a new rebellion; and the design of a rebellion is, for those that have not estates to serve themselves upon those that have. This is the sum-total of the business. And thus much for this other trick that the faction would trump upon the government of the church, by loading the execution of its laws (which is the vital support of all governments) with the abhorred name of persecution. But now in the

Fifth and last place, let us come to the principal engine of all, which is their prosecuting the worst of designs against the best of churches, under the harmless gilded name of moderation, than which can any thing look milder or sound better? For as justice is the support of government, so moderation and equity are the very beauty and ornament of justice itself. And what is all virtue but a moderation of excesses, a mean that keeps the balance of the soul even, neither suffering it to rise too high on one side, nor to fall too low on the other? And does not Solomon, the wisest of men, commend it, by condemning the contrary quality, in "being righteous overmuch?" (Eccles. vii. 16.) And is not also one of the best of men, and one of the greatest of the apostles, Saint Paul himself, alleged in praise of the same? (Philip. iv. 5,)"Let your moderation be known unto all men." And possibly some Bibles, of a later and more correct edition, may by this time have improved the text, by putting trimming into the margin. So that you see that there could not be a more plausible nor a more authentic word to gull and manage the rabble, and to carry on a design by, than this of moderation.

But have we never yet heard of a wolf in sheep's clothing? nor of a sort of men who can smile in your face, while they are about to cut your throat? And for these fellows, who have all along hitherto handled our church with the hands of Esau, how come they now all on a sudden to bespeak it with the voice of Jacob? Certainly therefore there is something more than ordinary couched under this beloved word of theirs, moderation. And if you would have a true and short account of it, as by persecution they

mean the execution of those laws that would suppress nonconformity, so by moderation they mean neither more nor less than the encouraging and supporting of nonconformity by the suppression of those laws. This is the thing which is meant and driven at by them.

But then you are still to understand, that this is to be done dexterously and decently, and in a creeping, whining, sanctified dialect, and such as may not too much alarm the government, by telling it plainly and roundly what they would be at; for that would be more haste than good speed. As for instance, to break in rudely and downright upon the church, and to cry out, "Away with your superstitious liturgy, we will have no stinting of the Spirit: away with your popish canons, we are a freeborn people, and must have our liberty, both as men and as Christians: away with your gowns, hoods, and surplices, and other such rags and trumpery of the whore of Babylon: down with bishops and archbishops, deans and chapters, we will have nothing of them but their lands repeal, abrogate, and take away all laws for conformity, and against conventicles, which are held as a rod over the good people of God, the sober, industrious, trading part of the nation.' Now I say, though "a gracious heart" (as they call their own) is big with all and every one of these designs, yet it is not time nor prudence to cry out, till there be "strength to bring forth;" and therefore, instead of all these boisterous assaults, the same thing is much better and more spefully carried on in a lower strain and a softer expression. "Pray use moderation, gentlemen. Moderation is the virtue of virtues. Moderation bids fair to be a mark of regeneration, it is a healing, uniting, protestant-reconciling grace; and therefore since by our good will we would neither obey the laws, nor suffer for disobeying them, be sure above all things that you use moderation." Well, the advice, you see, is good, especially for those that give it; but how is this to be done? Why thus: suppose one, in the first place, a church-governor, and that he comes to understand that such and such of his clergy exercise their ministry in a constant neglect of the rules, rites, and orders of the church? why, with great prudence and gravity he is to take no notice of it. Is the surplice and the ecclesiastical habit laid aside? why, still he is to practise the grace of connivance, and to wink hard at this too. Is the service of the church read brokenly, slovenly, imperfectly, and by halves? why he is to suffer this also, and to make no words of it. Does any one presume to preach doctrines quite contrary to some of the articles of the church? why, in this case, if the preacher offends, the bishop is to silence only himself. And if at any time there happens a contest

As,

between a clergyman and some potent neighbour about the rights and dues of his living he is presently to cajole and side with that potent oppressing neighbour, and to snub and discountenance the poor clergyman for not suffering himself to be oppressed, defrauded, and undone quietly, and without complaint. And this is some (though not all) of that moderation which some now-a-day's require in a church-governor, and which in due time cannot fail to have the very same effect upon the church which the continual hewing and hacking at a tree must naturally have towards the felling it down.

Well, but in the next place, we will suppose another man a justice of peace. And if so, let him not concern himself to lay this or that factious conventicle-preacher by the heels, as the law and his office require him to do. But if he must needs, for shame or fear, sometimes make a shew at least of searching after this precious man, let him however send him timely notice thereof underhand, that so the justice may fairly and judiciously search for that which he is sure not to find; according to that of the poet, "Istud quæro, quod invenire nolo." Moreover, if there chance to be a conventicle or unlawful meeting just under his nose, let him not disturb or break it up; for, alas! those that are of it are a sort of "peaceable well-meaning people, who meet only to serve God according to their consciences." Possibly indeed some of the chief of them may have fought their king heretofore at Edgehill, Marston-Moor, Naseby, or Worcester; but that is past long since, and they are resolved never to do so again till they are better able than at present (to their sorrow) they find themselves to be. And this is some of the moderation which is required of a magistrate or justice of peace; so called, I conceive, for sitting still, holding his peace, and doing nothing.

But then, lastly, if a parliament be sitting, Oh! that above all others is the proper time for such as are men of sobriety and zeal, and understand the true interest of the nation, (forsooth,) to manifest a fellow-feeling of the sufferings of the brotherhood, and in the behalf of their old puritan friends to pimp for bills of union, comprehension, or toleration. And this you are to know is a principal branch of that moderation which has been practised by several worthy and grave men of the church of England, as they are pleased, (little to the church's honour, I am sure) to style themselves; and, which is more, it was practised by them at a certain critical juncture of affairs, not many years since, when a clergyman could hardly pass the city streets without being reviled, nay spit upon, as several (to my knowledge) actually were. And I hope, though we churchmen had been blind before, so much

dirt and spittle so bestowed might (without a miracle) have opened our eyes then.

And now, when both sense and experience as broad as daylight have shewn us what the party means by popery, what by true protestantism, and what by reformation, and the like, is this a time of day for any who profess and own themselves of the church of England to play fast and loose, to trim it, and trick it, and prevaricate with the church by new schemes and models, new amendments and abatements of its orders and discipline, in favour of a restless implacable faction, which breathes nothing less than its utter destruetion? Has not the church of England cause above all other churches in the world to complain and cry out, "These are the wounds, which I have received in the house of my friends? My constitution is undermined and weakened, my laws broken, my liturgy despised, my doctrine impugned, and a kind of new gospel brought in, and millions of souls drawn from my communion; and all this dishonour done me, not only by my open avowed enemies, but chiefly and most effectually by such as have subscribed my articles and canons, such as have eat my bread and worn my prefer ments; these are the men who have brought me to this low, languishing, and consumptive condition, by their treacherous compliances and their false expedients, while I was still calling for their help and support, by that which only, under God, could or can preserve me a strict, thorough, and impartial observation of my laws." For this I say, and will maintain, that the church of England, as to its external state and condition in this world, stands upon no other bottom, and can be upheld by no other methods, but a vigorous execution of her laws on the one side, and a constant, uniform, unreserved conformity to them on the other. And all other ways are but the palliated remedies and the fallacious prescriptions of quacks, and mountebanks, and spiritual Pontæus's, such as wise men would never advise, nor good men approve of, and such as, by skinning over her wounds for the present, (though probably not so much as that neither,) will be sure to cure them into an after rottenness and suppuration, and infallibly thereby at length procure her dissolution. And for my own part, I fully believe that this was the very thing designed by these men all along. For I dare aver, that if that one project of union, as it was laid, had took place, it would have done more to the breaking our church in pieces, and to the bringing in of popery by those breaches, than the papists themselves have been able to do towards it since the reformation. So that whatsoever the danger may have been to our church heretofore from church papists, I am sure the great danger that threatens it now is from church fanatics.

And thus I have at length done with the first grand instance of the three, in which the abuse and confusion of those great controlling names of good and evil has such a pernicious effect; and that is, in the business of religion and the affairs of the church, and particularly as they stand here amongst ourselves, where both have infinitely suffered by the malicious artifice of a few misapplied words. But wo to those villainous artists by whom they have been so misapplied; good had it been for the church of England, and perhaps for themselves too, that they had never been born: and may the great, the just, and the eternal God, judge between the church of England and those men who have charged it with popery, who have called the nearest and truest copy of primitive Christianity superstition, and the most detestable instances of schism and sacrilege reformation; and in a word done all that they could, both from pulpit and press, to divide, shatter, and confound the purest and most apostolically reformed church in the Christian world, and all this by the venomous gibberish of a few paltry phrases instilled into the minds of the furious, whimsical, ungoverned multitude, who have ears to hear, without either heads or hearts to understand.

For I tell you again, that it was the treacherous cant and misapplication of these words, popery, superstition, reformation, tender conscience, persecution, moderation, and the like, as they have been used by a pack of designing hypocrites, (who believed not one word of what they said, and laughed within themselves at all who did,) that put this poor church into such a flame heretofore as burnt it down to the ground, and will infallibly do the same to it again, if the providence of God and the prudence of man does not timely interpose between her and the villainous arts of such incendiaries. For we may and must pronounce of this vile cant, what a great and learned man said of common prophecies and predictions, usually vented and carried about to amuse the minds of the vulgar, to wit, that in point of any credence to be given to them, in respect of their truth or credibility, they are utterly to be despised and slighted; but in point of the influence they may have upon the public, by perverting the minds of the people, no caution can be too great to be used against them, no diligence too strict, no penalties too severe, to discourage and suppress them. For even the silliest and most senseless things may sometimes conjure up more mischief to a government, than the wisest and ablest statesman in the world can conjure down again.

And to give you one terrible instance, how far the minds of men are capable of being canted and seduced into the most violent and outrageous courses, as they are managed by some pulpit impostors, you may all remember that the great engine of battery, which broke

and beat down our church, was the Scotch covenant. But how did it do this execution? Why, by those spiritual boutefeus calling this wretched thing from the pulpit to the deceived rabble "the covenant of God." And so strangely had they beat this notion into their addle heads, that there was not one text in the whole book of God about the covenant between God and the Israelites, in which the brainless rout did not immediately, upon the bare clink of the words, conclude the Scotch covenant to be meant and pointed at thereby. Such were all the texts in which God calls upon the Israelites "to keep his covenant," and all the texts in which he reproaches and expostulates with them for having broke and been false to his covenant. In all which the stupid, schismatical herd, by the help of those hypocrites, those perverters of Scripture, and murderers of souls, (if ever there were any such upon the face of the earth) I say by the fraudulent and fallacious infusions of those seducers, the abused vulgar reckoned the Scotch covenant, by clear and irrefragable evidence of Scripture, bound inviolably fast upon their consciences. And can any thing in nature be imagined more profane and impious, more absurd, and indeed romantic, than such a persuasion and yet, as impious and absurd as it was, it bore down all before it and overturned the equallest and best framed government in the world. So that it was not for nothing that a sanctified dunce of the faction compared the covenant to the ark of God, brought into the temple of Dagon, and Dagon thereupon falling prostrate upon his face before it. For thus says he: "Nothing wicked or superstitious could stand before this other ark of God, the covenant, but presently upon the bringing of it into England, popery fell down before it, arbitrary power fell down before it; prelacy fell down and gave up the ghost at the feet of it." And why did not the man of allusion, while his head was hot, and his hand was in, add also, that sense and reason, law and religion, justice and common honesty, and, in a word, all that was enjoined by God or approved by man, fell down and gave up the ghost before it? For it is certain that wheresoever the very breath of the covenant came, it blasted and consumed all these.

And now, was it not high time, think you, to tie up the tongues of those seducers, who could arm mere cant and nonsense to such a formidable opposition to the government, as to make one despicable word, villainously misapplied, and sottishly misunderstood, a fatal besom of destruction," to sweep away all before it, civil or sacred, legal or established, both in church and state?

Certainly there can be no truly pious, or indeed so much as truly English heart, but must bleed, when it looks back upon that

"abomination of desolation," which was seen in all our holy places in those days, and consider, both by whom all this was brought upon them, and how. That the best and surest bulwark of protestantism, the glory of the reformation, and the express image of the purest antiquity, should be run down and laid in the dust by the meanest of cheats, managed by the worst of men. This has been done once, and God grant that we may never see it done again.

To which God, the great lover of truth, peace, and order in his church, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might majesty, and dominion, both now and for Amen.

evermore.

SERMON LXII.

THE SECOND GRAND INSTANCE OF THE MISCHIEVOUS INFLUENCE OF WORDS AND NAMES FALSELY APPLIED,

IN THE LATE OVERTHROW OF THE ENGLISH MON

ARCHY, COMPASSED CHIEFLY HEREBY, IN THE REIGN OF KING CHARLES I. AND ATTEMPTED

AGAIN IN THE REIGN OF KING CHARLES II.

PART III.

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil," &c. ISAIAH, V. 20.

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

1st, To give some general account of the nature of good and evil, and of the reason upon which they are founded.

2dly, To shew, that the way by which good and evil commonly operate upon the mind of man, is by those respective names and appellations, by which they are notified and conveyed to the mind.

3dly, To shew the mischief which directly, naturally, and unavoidably follows from the misapplication and confusion of these names.

4thly, and lastly, To shew the grand and principal instances in which the abuse or misapplication of those names has so fatal and pernicious an effect.

The three first of these I despatched in my first discourse, and in my second made some entrance upon the fourth, to wit, the assignation of those instances, &c. concerning which I shewed, that if we should consider them in their utmost compass and comprehension, they would carry as large a circumference as the world itself, and grasp in the concerns of all mankind put together, being in their full latitude as numberless, various, and incon

ceivable, as all the particular ways and means by which men are capable of being miserable. And therefore, since to reckon up all particulars would be endless, and to rest only in universals would be equally fruitless, I chose to reduce the forementioned fatal effects of the misapplication of those great governing names of good and evil to certain heads, and those such as should take in the principal things which the happiness or misery of human societies depends upon.

Now those heads were three:

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

2dly, Civil government. And,

3dly, The private interests of particular persons.

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

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

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

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

But though it be above our sphere to teach the rules and arts of governing, and to direct those how to steer who sit at the helm; yet I am sure it is not above us to help and assist them in their government, by declaring the villainy of those practices which would subvert it. Any one may kill wasps and hornets, and other vermin which infest a garden, without pretending to the skill and art of a gardener; and a watchman may do much towards the defence of a city, though he offers not to govern it. In like manuer, for a preacher of the word to denounce the wrath

of God against faction and sedition, and by all the spiritual artillery of the word (as I may so call it) to prosecute and run down those sins which both disturb government and destroy souls, cannot justly or properly be called his meddling with matters of state. And therefore when some very gravely tell us, that the sole or chief business of a preacher is to preach up a good life, and to preach down sin, I heartily assent to them, but withal must tell them, that I take obedience to government to be a principal part of a good life, and faction and rebellion to be some of the worst, the blackest, and most damning sins that men can be guilty of; and consequently, that it is the direct, unquestionable duty and business of a preacher, with all imaginable zeal, to testify against crimes of so high and clamorous a guilt, wheresoever he finds them; since the same divine commission which commands him to instruct, equally empowers him to reprove; and I know no privilege or condition under heaven which can warrant a man to sin without reproof or control. This indeed is the proper post in which every preacher and spiritual person ought to serve the government; and how much soever such men may be despised, I am sure no sort of men are able to serve or disserve it more; the infamous pulpits between the years forty and sixty having been but too convincing a demonstration of the one, and the loyal clergy ever since sixty as effectual a proof of the other.

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

VOL. I.

shall think fit to take their prince by the throat with one hand, and to wrest the sceptre from him with the other?

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

But must not that government, think you, be all this time in a very hopeful case, where a company of popular demagogues are let loose to poison and inflame the minds of the people with the rankest principles of rebellion; and those whose proper office, duty, and calling is to teach and to inform, to undeceive and disabuse men, must not, in the behalf of the government, warn them against such persons and principles as would debauch them from their allegiance, for fear of being loaded with the odious imputation of meddling with matters of state? No doubt that flock must needs be in a safe and good condition, where the shepherds must never cry out, nor the dogs bark, but when the wolves shall give them leave.

But I hope no clergyman of the church of England will ever debase and prostitute the dignity of his calling so far, as to want either courage or conscience to serve the government, by testifying against any daring, domineering faction which would disturb it, though never so much in favour with it; no man certainly deserving the protection of the government, who does not in his place contribute to the support of it; as, on the other side, those who at their utmost peril have spoke, and others who have fought for the support of it, surely of all others have least cause to be dis|couraged or forsook by it, howsoever it has sometimes happened otherwise.

And thus much by way of introduction to our main subject, which is to shew how our old gamesters have been, and still would be playing the same game upon the state, which they had done upon the church, and that by

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