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these necessary of late years, because of the vile arts and restless endeavours used by some sly and venomous factors for the old republican cause, to poison and debauch men from their allegiance; sometimes creeping into houses, and sometimes creeping into studies; but in both equally pimping for the faction, and stealing away as many hearts from the son, as they had formerly employed hands against the father. And this with such success, that it cannot but be matter of very sad and melancholy reflection to all sober and loyal minds, to consider, that several who had stood it out, and persevered firm and unalterable royalists in the late storm, have since (I know not by what unhappy fate) turned trimmers in the calm.

(3.) The third instance, in which men use to plead the will instead of the deed, shall be in duties of cost and expense.

Let a business of expensive charity be proposed; and then, as I shewed before, that, in matters of labour, the lazy person could find no hands wherewith to work; so neither, in this case, can the religious miser find any hands wherewith to give. It is wonderful to consider, how a command, or call to be liberal, either upon a civil or religious account, all of a sudden impoverishes the rich, breaks the merchant, shuts up every private man's exchequer, and makes those men in a minute have nothing at all to give, who, at the very same instant, want nothing to spend. So that instead of relieving the poor, such a command strangely increases their number, and transforms rich men into beggars presently. For, let the danger of their prince and country knock at their purses, and call upon them to contribute against a public enemy or calamity; then immediately they have nothing, and their riches upon such occasions (as Solomon expresses it) never fail to make themselves wings, and to fly away.

Thus, at the siege of Constantinople, then the wealthiest city in the world, the citizens had nothing to give their emperor for the defence of the place, though he begged a supply of them with tears; but, when by that means the Turks took and sacked it, then those who before had nothing to give, had more than enough to lose. And, in like manner, those who would not support the necessities of the old blessed king, against his villainous enemies, found that plunder could take, where disloyalty would not give; and rapine open those chests, that avarice had shut.

But to descend to matters of daily and common occurrence; what is more usual in conversation, than for men to express their unwillingness to do a thing, by saying they cannot do it; and for a covetous man, being asked a little money in charity, to answer that he has none? Which, as it is, if true, a sufficient answer to God and man: so, if

false, it is intolerable hypocrisy towards both.

But do men in good earnest think that God will be put off so? or can they imagine, that the law of God will be baffled with a lie clothed in a scoff?

For such pretences are no better, as appears from that notable account given us by the apostle of this windy, insignificant charity of the will, and of the worthlessness of it, not enlivened by deeds, (James, ii. 15, 16,) "If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?" Profit, does he say? Why, it profits just as much as fair words command the market, as good wishes buy food and raiment, and pass for current payment in the shops. Come to an old, rich, professing vulpony, and tell him, that there is a church to be built, beautified, or endowed in such a place, and that he cannot lay out his money more to God's honour, the public good, and the comfort of his own conscience, than to bestow it liberally upon such an occasion; and in answer to this, it is ten to one but you shall be told, "how much God is for the inward, spiritual worship of the heart; and that the Almighty neither dwells nor delights in temples made with hands, but hears and accepts the prayers of his people in dens and caves, barns and stables, and in the homeliest and meanest cottages, as well as in the stateliest and most magnificent churches." Thus, I say, you are like to be answered. In reply to which, I would have all such sly, sanctified cheats, (who are so often harping upon this string,) know, once for all, that that God who accepts the prayers of his people in dens and caves, barns and stables, when, by his afflicting providence, he has driven them from the appointed places of his solemn worship, so that they cannot have the use of them, will not, for all this, endure to be served or prayed to by them in such places, nor accept of their barn-worship, nor their hogsty-worship, no, nor yet of their parlour or their chamberworship, where he has given them both wealth and power to build him churches. For he that commands us to "worship him in the spirit," commands us also "to honour him with our substance." And never pretend that thou hast a heart to pray, while thou hast no heart to give; since he that serves mammon with his estate, cannot possibly serve God with his heart. For as in the heathen worship of God, a sacrifice without an heart was accounted ominous; so in the Christian worship of him, an heart without a sacrifice is worthless and impertinent.

And thus much for men's pretences of the will, when they are called upon to give upon

a religious account; according to which, a man may be well enough said (as the common word is) to be all heart, and yet the arrantest miser in the world.

But come we now to this old rich pretender to godliness, in another case, and tell him, that there is such an one, a man of a good family, good education, and who has lost all his estate for the king, now ready to rot in prison for debt; come, what will you give towards his release? Why, then answers the will instead of the deed, as much the readier speaker of the two, "the truth is, I always had a respect for such men ; I love them with all my heart; and it is a thousand pities that any that have served the king so faithfully should be in such want." So say I too, and the more shame is it for the whole nation that they should be so. But still, what will you give? Why, then answers the man of mouth-charity again, and tells you, that "you could not come in a worse time; that money is now-a-days very scarce with him; and that, therefore, he can give nothing; but he will be sure to pray for the poor gentleman."

Ah thou hypocrite! when thy brother has lost all that ever he had, and lies languishing, and even gasping under the utmost extremities of poverty and distress, dost thou think thus to lick him whole again only with thy tongue? Just like that old formal hocus, who denied a beggar a farthing, and put him off with his blessing.

Why, what are the prayers of a covetous wretch worth? What will thy blessing go for? What will it buy? Is this the charity that the apostle here, in the text, presses upon the Corinthians? This the case in which God accepts the willingness of the mind, instead of the liberality of the purse? No, assuredly, but the measures that God marks out to thy charity are these: thy superfluities must give place to thy neighbour's great convenience; thy convenience must veil to thy neighbour's necessity; and, lastly, thy very necessities must yield to thy neighbour's extremity.

This is the gradual process that must be thy rule; and he that pretends a disability to give short of this, prevaricates with his duty, and evacuates the precept. God sometimes calls upon thee to relieve the needs of thy poor brother, sometimes the necessities of thy country, and sometimes the urgent wants of thy prince: now, before thou fliest to the old, stale, usual pretence, that thou canst do none of all these things, consider with thyself, that there is a God, who is not to be flammed off with lies, who knows exactly what thou canst do, and what thou canst not; and consider in the next place, that it is not the best husbandry in the world, to be damned to save charges.

(4.) The fourth and last duty that I shall mention, in which men use to plead want of

power to do the thing they have a will to, is the conquering of a long, inveterate, ill habit or custom.

And the truth is, there is nothing that leaves a man less power to do good than this does. Nevertheless, that which weakens the hand, does not therefore cut it off. Some power to good, no doubt, a man has left him for all this. And therefore, God will not take the drunkard's excuse, that he has so long accustomed himself to intemperate drinking, that now he cannot leave it off; nor admit of the passionate man's apology, that he has so long given his unruly passions their head, that he cannot now govern or control them. For these things are not so: since no man is guilty of an act of intemperance of any sort, but he might have forborne it; not without some trouble, I confess, from the strugglings of the contrary habit: but still the thing was possible to be done; and he might, after all, have forborne it. And, as he forbore one act, so he might have forborne another, and after that another, and so on, till he had, by degrees, weakened, and, at length, mortified and extinguished the habit itself. That these things, indeed, are not quickly or easily to be effected, is manifest, and nothing will be more readily granted; and therefore, the Scripture itself owns so much, by expressing and representing these mortifying courses, by acts of the greatest toil and labour-such as are, warfare, and taking up the cross; and by acts of the most terrible violence and contrariety to nature-such as are, cutting off the right hand, and plucking out the right eye; things infinitely grievous and afflictive, yet still, for all that, feasible in themselves; or else, to be sure, the eternal wisdom of God would never have advised, and much less have commanded them. For, what God has commanded must be done; and what must be done, assuredly may be done; and therefore, all pleas of impotence, or inability, in such cases, are utterly false and impertinent; and will infallibly be thrown back in the face of such as make them.

But you will say, Does not the Scripture itself acknowledge it as a thing impossible for a man, brought under a custom of sin, to forbear sinning? (Jerem. xiii. 23,) "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil." Now, if this can be no more done than the former, is it not a demonstration, that it cannot be done at all?

To this I answer, that the words mentioned are tropical or figurative, and import a hyperbole, which is a way of expressing things beyond what really and naturally they are in themselves; and consequently the design of this scripture, in saying that this cannot be done, is no more than to shew that it is very hardly and very rarely done; but not, in strict truth, utterly impossible to be done.

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In vain, therefore, do men take sanctuary in such misunderstood expressions as these; and from a false persuasion, that they cannot reform their lives, break off their ill customs, and root out their old vicious habits, never so much as attempt, endeavour, or go about it. For, admit that such a habit, seated in the soul, be, as our Saviour calls it, a strong man armed, got into possession;" yet still he may be dispossessed, and thrown out by a stronger, (Luke, xi. 21, 22.) Or be it, as Saint Paul calls it, « a law in our members," (Rom. vii. 23,) yet, certainly, ill laws may be broken and disobeyed as well as good. But, if men will suffer themselves to be enslaved, and carried away by their lusts, without resistance, and wear the devil's yoke quietly, rather than be at the trouble of throwing it off; and thereupon, sometimes feel their consciences galled and grieved by wearing it, they must not, from these secret stings and remorses, felt by them in the prosecution of their sins, presently conclude, that therefore their will is good and well disposed; and, consequently, such as God will accept, though their lives remain all the while unchanged, and as much under the dominion of sin as ever.

These reasonings, I know, lie deep in the minds of inost men, and relieve and support their hearts, in spite, and in the midst of their sins; but they are all but sophistry and delusion, and false propositions contrived by the devil, to hold men fast in their sins by final impenitence; for, though possibly the grace of God may, in some cases, be irresistible, yet it would be an infinite reproach to his providence to affirm, that sin either is or can be so. And thus I have given you four principal instances, in which men use to plead the will instead of the deed, upon a pretended impotence or disability for the deed, namely, in duties of great labour; in duties of much danger; in duties of cost and expense; and lastly, in duties requiring a resistance and an extirpation of inveterate sinful habits.

In the neglect of all which, men relieve their consciences by this one great fallacy running through them all, that they mistake difficulties for impossibilities. A pernicious mistake certainly; and the more pernicious, for that men are seldom convinced of it, till their conviction can do them no good. There cannot be a weightier or more important case of conscience for men to be resolved in, than to know certainly how far God accepts the will for the deed, and how far he does not; and withal, to be informed truly when men do really will a thing, and when they have really no power to do what they have willed.

For surely, it cannot but be matter of very dreadful and terrifying consideration to any one sober, and in his wits, to think seriously with himself, what horror and confusion must needs surprise that man, at the last and great

day of account, who had led his whole life, and governed all his actions, by one rule, when God intends to judge him by another.

To which God, the great searcher and judge of hearts, and rewarder of men according to their deeds, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

SERMON XI.

OF THE ODIOUS SIN OF INGRATITUDE.

PREACHED AT CHRIST-CHURCH, OXON, BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY, OCTOBER 17, 1675.

"And the children of Israel remembered not the Lord their God, who had delivered them out of the hands of all their enemies on every side; neither shewed they kindness to the house of Jerubbaal, namely, Gideon, according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto Israel." -JUDGES, viii. 34, 35.

THESE words, being a result or judgment given upon matter of fact, naturally direct us to the foregoing story, to inform us of their occasion. The subject of which story was that heroic and victorious judge of Israel, Gideon, who, by the greatness of his achievments, had merited the offer of a crown and kingdom, and, by the greatness of his mind, refused it. The whole narrative is contained and set before us in the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9tlı chapters of this book, where we read, that when the children of Israel, according to their usual method of sinning after mercies and deliverances, and thereupon returning to a fresh enslavement to their enemies, had now passed seven years in cruel subjection to the Midianites, a potent and insulting enemy, and who oppressed them to that degree, that they had scarce bread to fill their mouths, or houses to cover their heads; for in the 2d verse of the 6th chapter, we find them housing themselves under ground, in dens and caves; and (ver. 3, 4.) no sooner had they sown their corn, but we have the enemy coming up in armies, and destroying it. In this sad and calamitous condition, I say, in which one would have thought that a deliverance from such an oppressor would have even revived them, and the deliverer eternally obliged them, God raised up the spirit of this great person, and ennobled his courage and conduct with the entire overthrow of this mighty and numerous, or rather innumerable host of the Midianites; and that in such a manner, and with such strange and unparalleled circumstances, that, in the whole action, the mercy

and the miracle seemed to strive for the preeminence. And so quick a sense did the Israelites, immediately after it, seem to entertain of the merits of Gideon, and the obligation he had laid upon them, that they all, as one man, tender him the regal hereditary government of that people, in the 22d verse of this 8th chapter: "Then said the men of Israel to Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son's also; for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian." To which he answered as magnanimously, and by that answer redoubled the obligation, in the next verse, "I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: the Lord shall rule over you."

Thus far then we see the workings of a just gratitude in the Israelites, and goodness on the one side nobly answered with greatness on the other. And now, after so vast an obligation, owned by so free an acknowledgment, could any thing be expected, but a continual interchange of kindnesses, at least on their part, who had been so infinitely obliged, and so gloriously delivered? Yet in the 9th chapter we find these very men turning the sword of Gideon into his own bowels; cutting off the very race and posterity of their deliverer, by the slaughter of threescore and ten of his sons, and setting up the son of his concubine, the blot of his family, and the monument of his shame, to reign over them; and all this without the least provocation or offence given them, either by Gideon himself, or by any of his house. After which horrid fact, I suppose we can no longer wonder at this unlooked-for account given of the Israelites in the text: "That they remembered not the Lord their God, who had delivered them out of the lands of all their enemies on every side: neither shewed they kindness to the house of Gideon, according to all the goodness which he had

shewed unto Israel."

The truth is, they were all along a cross, odd, untoward sort of people, and such as God seems to have chosen, and (as the prophets sometimes phrase it) to have espoused to himself, upon the very same account that Socrates espoused Xantippe, only for her extreme ill conditions, above all that he could possibly find or pick out of that sex; and so the fittest argument both to exercise and declare his admirable patience to the world.

The words of the text are a charge given in against the Israelites a charge of that foul and odious sin of ingratitude, and that both towards God and towards man-towards God in the 34th verse, and towards man in the 35th. Such being ever the growing contagion of this ill quality, that if it begins at God, it naturally descends to men; and if it first exerts itself upon men, it infallibly ascends to God. If we consider it as directed against God, it is a breach of religion; if as to men, it is an

offence against morality. The passage from one to the other is very easy, breach of duty towards our neighbour still involving in it a | breach of duty towards God too ; and no man's religion ever survives his morals.

My purpose is, from this remarkable subject and occasion, to treat of ingratitude, and that chiefly in this latter sense; and from the case of the Israelites towards Gideon, to traverse the nature, principles, and properties of this detestable vice; and so drawing before your eyes the several lineaments and parts of it, from the ugly aspect of the picture, to leave it to your own hearts to judge of the original. For the effecting of which, I shall do these following things,

I. I shall shew what gratitude is, and upon what the obligation to it is grounded.

II. I shall give some account of the nature and baseness of ingratitude.

III. I shall shew the principle from which ingratitude proceeds.

IV. I shall shew those ill qualities that inseparably attend it, and are never disjoined from it. And,

V. and lastly, I shall draw some useful inferences, by way of application, from the premises.

And first, for the first of these-What gratitude is, and upon what the obligation to it is grounded.

"Gratitude is properly a virtue, disposing the mind to an inward sense and an outward acknowledgment of a benefit received, together with a readiness to return the same, or the like, as the occasions of the doer of it shall require, and the abilities of the receiver extend to."

This, to me, seems to contain a full description, or rather definition, of this virtue; from which it appears, that gratitude includes in it these three parts,

1. A particular observation, or taking notice of a kindness received, and consequently of the good will and affection of the person who did that kindness. For still, in this case, the mind of the giver is more to be attended to, than the matter of the gift; it being this that stamps it properly a favour, and gives it the noble and endearing denomination of a kind

ness.

2. The second part of gratitude is that which brings it from the heart into the mouth, and makes a man express the sense he has of the benefit done him, by thanks, acknowledgments, and gratulations; and where the heart is full of the one, it will certainly overflow, and run over in the other.

3. The third and last is, an endeavour to recompense our benefactor, and to do something that may redound to his advantage, in consideration of what he has done towards ours. I state it upon endeavour, and not upon effect; for this latter may be often im

possible. But it is in the power of every one to do as much as he can; to make some essay at least, some offer and attempt this way; so as to shew that there is a spring of motion within, and that the heart is not idle or insensible, but that it is full and big, and knows itself to be so, though it wants strength to bring forth. Having thus shewn what gratitude is, the next thing is to shew the obligation that it brings upon a man, and the ground and reason of that obligation.

As for the obligation, I know no moralists or casuists, that treat scholastically of justice, but treat of gratitude under that general head, as a part or species of it. And the nature and office of justice being to dispose the mind to a constant and perpetual readiness to render to every man his due, suum cuique tribuere, it is evident, that if gratitude be a part of justice, it must be conversant about something that is due to another. And whatsoever is so, must be so by the force of some law. Now, all law that a man is capable of being obliged by, is reducible to one of these three,

1. The law of nature. 2. The positive law of God revealed in his word. 3. The law of man, enacted by the civil power, for the preservation and good of society.

1. And first, for the law of nature, which I take to be nothing else but the mind of God signified to a rational agent, by the bare discourse of his reason, and dictating to him, that he ought to act suitably to the principles of his nature, and to those relations that he stands under. For every thing sustains both an absolute and a relative capacity. An absolute, as it is such a thing endued with such a nature; and a relative, as it is a part of the universe, and so stands in such an order and relation both to the whole and to the rest of the parts.

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After which, the next consideration immediately subsequent to the being of a thing, is what agrees or disagrees with that thing. what is suitable or unsuitable to it; and from this springs the notion of decency or indecency that which becomes or misbecomes, and is the same with honestum et turpe. Which decency, or To Tov, (as the Greeks term it,) imports a certain measure or proportion of one thing to another, which to transgress, is to do contrary to the natural order of things, the preservation of which is properly that rule or law by which every thing ought to act, and, consequently, the violation of it implies a turpitude or indecency. Now those actions that are suitable to a rational nature, and to that go, that decency, or honestum, belonging to it, are contained or expressed in certain maxims or propositions, which, upon the repeated exercise of a man's reason about such objects as come before him, do naturally result, and are collected from thence; and so remaining upon his mind, become both a rule to

direct and a law to oblige him in the whole course of his actions Such as are these maxims: That the supreme Being, cause, and governor of all things, ought to be worshipped and depended upon. That parents are to be honoured. That a man should do as he would be done by. From which last alone may sufficiently be deduced all those rules of charity and justice that are to govern the offices of common life; and which alone is enough to found an obligation to gratitude forasmuch as no man, having done a kindness to another, would acquiesce or think himself justly dealt with, in a total neglect and unconcernedness of the person who had received that kindness from him; and consequently neither ought he to be unconcerned in the same case himself.

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But I shall, from other and nearer principles, and those the unquestionable documents and dictates of the law of nature, evince the obligation and debt lying upon every man to shew gratitude where he has received a benefit. Such as are these propositions,

(1.) That, according to the rule of natural justice, one man may merit and deserve of another. (2.) That whoso deserveth of another, makes something due to him from the person of whom he deserves. (3.) That one man's deserving of another is founded upon his conferring on him some good, to which that other had no right or claim. (4.) That no man has any antecedent right or claim to that which comes to him by free gift. (5.) And lastly, that all desert imports an equality between the good conferred, and the good deserved, or made due. From whence it follows, that he who confers a good upon another, deserves, and consequently has a claim, to an equal good from the person upon whom it was conferred. So that from hence, by the law of nature, springs a debt, the acknowledging and repaying of which debt (as a man shall be able) is the proper office and work of gratitude.

As certain, therefore, as by the law of nature there may be, and often is, such a thing as merit and desert from one man to another; and as desert gives the person deserving a right or claim to some good from the person of whom he deserves; and as a right in one to claim this good, infers a debt and obligation in the other to pay it; so certain it is, by a direct gradation of consequences from this principle of merit, that the obligation to gratitude flows from, and is enjoined by, the first dictates of nature. And the truth is, the greatest and most sacred ties of duty that man is capable of, are founded upon gratitude. Such as are the duties of a child to his parent, and of a subject to his sovereign. From the former of which, there is required love and honour, in recompense of being; and from the latter, obedience and subjection, in recompense of protection and well-being. And, in general,

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