But what is that liberty which they thus cry out for? Why, they would have a liberty to act those things against a prince, which some have took a liberty to write and speak. They would have a liberty to set their insulting feet upon the necks of their fellow-subjects, and those for the most part better men than themselves. They would have a liberty to plunder and fight other men out of their estates and themselves into them. So that, in short, the liberty and property that these men are so zealous for is a liberty to invade and seize other men's properties. For, as it has been appositely and truly observed, none are generally so loud and clamorous for the security of our religion, as atheists and republicans, who have none at all; none such zealous advocates for liberty as those who, when they are once got into power, prove the arrantest tyrants in nature; and none such mighty champions for property, as those who have neither a groat in their purse, nor an inch of land which they can call their own: but a company of beggarly, broken, bankrupt malcontents, who have no other considerable property in the world, but never to be satisfied.

And thus I have gone over some of those popular abused words, those sly and maliciously infused slanders, by which an implacable, unruly faction has been perpetually weakening and worrying the civil government; and that with such success, that it has destroyed the very being of it once, and the settlement of it ever since.

And now, by way of consequence and deduction from the foregoing particulars, what can be so naturally inferred as this; that as the text denounces a curse to those who "call evil good, and good evil;" so it equally imports it to be a duty, and implies a blessing belonging to it, to call "good good, and evil evil?" It is the best oblation which we can make to truth, and the greatest charity that we can shew the world. For how can government, and consequently the peace of mankind, fence and guard itself against knaves passing under the guise and character of honest men, when faction and sedition shall be called activity and fitness for business, forsooth; and loyalty and conscience be sneered at as softness and indiscretion? Never think, that either church or state can thrive upon these

measures.

And here give me leave to utter a great

truth, whether it please or not please; for my business here is not to please men, but to convince them of what concerns them. And it is this: that there has not been any one thing, since the restitution of our church and monarchy, that has contributed more to the weakening of both, and the strengthening the hands of the faction against both, than the general discouragement and restraint of men upon all occasions, and especially from the pulpit, from giving the late villainous times and practices, and the guilty actors in them, boldly and impartially their own. This only use being made by them of all this tenderness, or rather tameness, towards them, that by never hearing of their guilt, they have forgot that they were ever pardoned. They take heart, and insult, and usurp the confidence which belongs only to the innocent. Nay, they have grown, they have thriven, aud become powerful by this usage; it being what above all things in the world they wished for and desired, but could not (I dare say) have been so impudent as to hope for. For what could a thief or robber desire more, than, having seized the prey, and possessed himself of his base booty, to carry it off both safely and quietly too; nay, and to see the person robbed by him, not only with his hands fast tied from recovering his goods, but with his tongue tied also, from so much as crying out "Thief?"

But for all the fallacious state-mists which have been cast before our eyes, men have both seen and felt enough to know, that for persons of honour, power, or place, to caress and soothe up men of dangerous principles and known disaffection to the government with terms and appellations of respect, is manifestly for the government to knock underboard to the faction, to infuse courage into it by courting it, and to make its shrewdest enemies strong and considerable, by seeming to fear those who may be suppressed, but can never be won. Besides, that this must needs grieve the hearts and damp the spirits of those who in its greatest extremities were its best, or rather its only friends, and (if occasion requires) must be so again, or it must have none.

And therefore I will be bold to affirm, that the great long rebellion being, in the whole carriage of it, so very black and foul, so reproachful to religion, so scandalous to the whole nation, and so utterly incapable, not only of excuse, but even of extenuation, especially in that last and hellish scene of it, the king's murder; I say, upon all these accounts it cannot be too frequently, too severely, and too bitterly, upon all public occasions, ripped up and reflected upon. All the pulpits in the king's dominions ought to ring of it, as long as there is a man alive who lived when the villainy was committed. Preachers,

in their sermons to their congregations, and judges, in their charges to the juries and justices of the country, ought to inculcate and lay before them the horrid impiety and scandal of those proceedings, and the execrable mischief of the principles which caused them : especially since we have seen such new rebellions springing out of the ashes of the old; a sufficient demonstration, doubtless, that the fire is not yet put out. And believe it, this, if any, is the likeliest way both to atone the guilt of those crying sins, and to prevent the like for the future. And if this course had been vigorously and heartily followed, can you imagine that such devilish, audacious libels, and such seditious coffee-house discourses, could have flown in the face of the government, as have done for above twenty years together? I tell you, that neither men's courage nor their conscience would have served them to have ventured upon their prince, or attacked his government at such a daring rate. Nay, let this course be but taken yet, and the people all over the kingdom be constantly and warmly plied from the pulpits upon the particulars here spoken of, and I doubt not but in the space of three years the king shall have quite another people, and his people be taught quite another kind of subjection, from what they have practised any time these threescore years.

And therefore let none think that those seasonable rebukes which I here encourage and plead for, proceed from any hatred of the persons of those wretches, (how much soever they deserve it,) but from a dutiful concern for, and charity to the public, and from a just care and commiseration of posterity, that the contagion may not spread, nor the poison of the example pass any farther. For I take reproof, no less than punishment, to be rather for prevention than retribution; rather to warn the innocent, than to reproach the guilty: and by thus warning them while they are innocent, in all probability to preserve and keep them so.

For does not Saint Paul himself make this the great ground and end of all reproof? (1 Tim. v. 20,) "Them that sin," says he, "rebuke before all, that others also may fear." And (Titus, i. 13,) "Rebuke them sharply." Where let us suppose now that Saint Paul had to do with a pack of miscreants, who had by the most unchristian practices dethroned and murdered their prince, to whom this apostle had so often and so strictly enjoined absolute subjection; plundered and undone their brethren, to whom the said apostle had so often commanded the greatest brotherly love and amity; and lastly, rent, broken, and torn in pieces the church, in which he had so earnestly pressed unity, and so severely prohibited all schismatical divisions; what, I say, do we think now? Would Saint Paul have

rebuked such new-fashioned extraordinary Christians, or would he not? And if he would, do we imagine that he would have done it in the modern treacherous dialect? "Touch not my rebels, and do my fanaties no harm." No moderation-monger under heaven shall ever persuade me that Saint Paul would have took such a course with such persons, or have taught Timothy, or Titus, or any other gospel preacher, to do so, for fear of spoiling their promotion, or translation, or offending any powerful faction of men what

soever.

And pray, do you all consider with yourselves, whether you would be willing to have your children, your dearest friends and relations, grow up into rebels, schismatics, presbyterians, independents, anabaptists, quakers, the blessed offspring of the late reforming times? And if you would not, then leave off daubing and trimming it, and plainly, impartially, and severely declare to your children and families the villainy and detestable hypocrisy of those which are such. And assure yourselves that this is the likeliest way to preserve them untainted with the same infection.

To all which considerations I shall add this one more, as an unauswerable argument, why the cursed authors of our late sad distractions should not be suffered to carry off their rogueries with the sneaking silence and connivance of all about them; namely, that by this means, about fourscore or an hundred years hence, the faction (if it continues so long, as no doubt with good keeping it may) will, from denying the impiety and the guilt, come to deny also the very history and being of the long great rebellion. This perhaps, at first hearing, may seem something odd and strange to you. But if you consider, that in the space of forty years the faction has had the face to shift off that rebellion and murder of the king from themselves upon the papists, is it at all unlikely, that in the compass of threescore or fourscore years more, they may utterly deny that there was ever any such thing at all? This, I am sure, is not impossible; and, considering the boldness and falseness, and brazen confidence of the faction, I cannot think it so much as improbable. But I am sure also, that it is no less than a national concern, that following ages should not be so far ignorant of what has passed in ours, as thereby to want so great and so irrefragable an argument against disloyalty and rebellion.

And therefore, as it is said that the king never dies upon a legal account, so it is vastly the interest of the government, that the murder of the king should never die upon a historical. To which purpose, let strict, naked, and undisguised truth take place in all things and let not evil be dignified with the title of good, nor good libelled with the name of evil.

by a false and fraudulent appellation of things and persons. But as the merit of men's works must and will follow them into another world, so (in all reason and justice) let the true name of their works accompany and go along with them in this. That so the honest and the loyal may not be degraded to the same level with knaves and rebels, nor knave susurp the rewards and reputation which none but the honest and the loyal have a claim to.

Which God, the eternal Fountain of truth, and great Judge of all things, vouchsafe to grant; to whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now aud for evermore. Amen.

SERMON LXIII.

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

WITH REFERENCE TO THE INTERESTS AND CONCERNS OF PRIVATE PERSONS IN COMMON CONVERSATION.

PART IV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The three first of these I despatched in my first discourse upon the words, and in my second made some entrance upon the fourth and last, to wit, the assignation of those instances, which I shew spread as far and wide as the universe itself, and were as infinite and numberless as all those various

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ways and accidents, by which a man is capable of being miserable. To recount all which in particular, since it was impossible, and yet to rest in universals equally unprofitable, I found it necessary to reduce those fatal effects of the misapplication of these great governing names of good and evil to certain heads, and those such as should comprehend and take in the principal things, upon the good or bad estate of which the happiness or misery of human societies must needs depend. Which heads were three :

1st, Religion, and the concerns of the church. 2dly, Civil government. And, 3dly, The private interests of particular persons.

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

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

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

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

4thly, A calling the execution of the laws in behalf of the church, persecution. And, 5thly and lastly, A calling all base, trimming compliances and half conformity, mode

ration.

All which five I then insisted upon at large, and shall not now trouble you with any farther repetitions.

After which, the second general head to be treated of was civil government; under which I had designed to shew, how our admirably well-tempered monarchy had been once shook in pieces by the faction under the best of monarchs, King Charles I. and was in a fair way to have run the same fate under his son, King Charles II. both of them princes of glorious and happy memory. And all this by the same villainous artifice of a few popular, misapplied words; by the senseless insignificant clink and sound of which, some restless demagogues and incendiaries had inflamed the minds of the sottish mobile to a strange, unaccountable abhorrence of the best of men and things, and to as fond and furious an admiration of the very worst. Of which sort of words we may reckon these four following:

1st, Their traducing the best of monarchies and the easiest of governments by the odious name of arbitrary power.

2dly, Their blackening the king's ablest