from the effects up to the cause, because these first strike and alarm the senses; and therefore St. James speaks as good philosophy as divinity, when he says, James ii. 18, Shew me thy faith by thy works. Every action being the most lively portraiture and impartial expression of its efficient principle, as the complexion is the best comment upon the constitution: for in natural productions there is no hypocrisy. Only we must observe here, that good and evil actions bear a very different relation to their respective principles. As it is between truth and falsehood in argumentation, so it is between good and evil in matters of practice. For though from an artificial contrivance of false principles or premises may emerge a true conclusion, yet from true premises cannot ensue a false so, though an evil heart may frame itself to the doing of an action in its kind or nature good, yet a renewed, sanctified principle cannot of itself design actions really vicious. The reason of which is, because the former in such a case acts upon a principle of dissimulation; and no man by dissembling affects to appear worse than he is, but better. But all this while, I speak not of a single action, but of a conversation or course of acting: for a pious man may do an evil action upon temptation or surprise, but not by the tenor of his standing principles and resolutions. But when a man's sin is his business and the formed purpose of his life; and his piety shrinks only into meaning and intention; when he tells me his heart is right with God, while his hand is in my pocket, he upbraids my reason, and outfaces the common principles of natural discourse with an impudence equal to the absurdity. This therefore I affirm, that he who places his Christianity only in his heart, and his religion in his meaning, has fairly secured himself against a discovery in case he should have none; but yet, for all that, shall at the last find his portion with those who indeed have none. And the truth is, those who are thus intentionally pious, do in a very ill and untoward sense verify that philosophical maxim, that what they so much pretend to be chief and first in their intention, is always last, if at all, in the execution. Thirdly, The third and last false ground that I shall mention, upon which some men build to their confusion, is party and singularity. If an implicit faith be, as some say, the property of a Roman Catholic, then I am sure popery may be found where the name of papist is abhorred. For what account can some give of their religion, or of that assurance of their salvation, (which they so much boast of,) but that they have wholly resigned themselves up to the guidance and dictates of those who have the front and boldness to usurp the title of the godly. To be of such a party, of such a name, nay, of such a sneaking look, is to some the very spirit and characteristic mark of Christianity. See what St. Paul himself built upon before his conversion to Christ, Acts xxvi. 5. I was, says he, after the strictest sect of our religion a Pharisee. So that it was the reputation of the sect upon which St. Paul then embarked his salvation. Now the nature of this fraternity or sect we may learn from the origination of their name Pharisee; it being derived from parasch, separavit, discrevit, whence in Greek they were called åpwproμévoia, separati. So that the words amount to this, that St. Paul, before he was a Christian, was a rigid separatist. But singularity is not sincerity, though too often and mischievously mistaken for it; and as an house built upon the sand is likely to be ruined by storms, so an house built out of the road is exposed to the invasion of robbers, and wants both the convenience and assistance of society: Christ is not therefore called the corner stone in the spiritual building, as if he intended that his church should consist only of corners, or be driven into them. There is a by-path, as well as a broad-way, to destruction. And it both argues the nature, and portends the doom of chaff, upon agitation to separate and divide from the wheat. But to such as venture their eternal interest upon such a bottom, I shall only suggest these two words. First, That admitting, but not granting, that the party which they adhere to may be truly pious, yet the piety of the party cannot sanctify its proselytes. A church may be pro • Φαρισαῖοι οἱ ἑρμηνευόμενοι ἀφωρισμένοι, παρὰ τὸ μερίζειν καὶ ἀφορίζειν ἑαυτοὺς τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων. Suidas. Again, papiσaîos ȧpwpioμé νος, μεμερισμένος, καθαρός. Hesych. So that the Pharisees properly were, and might be called the Jewish Cathari, or Puritans. perly called holy, when yet that holiness does not diffuse itself to each particular member: the reason of which is, because the whole may receive denomination from a quality inherent only in some of its parts. Company may occasion, but it cannot transfuse holiness. No man's righteousness but Christ's alone can be imputed to another. To rate a man by the nature of his companions, is a rule frequent indeed, but not infallible. Judas was as much a wretch amongst the apostles, as amongst the priests: and therefore it is but a poor argument for a man to derive his saintship from the virtues of the society he belongs to, and to conclude himself no weed, only because he grows amongst the corn. Secondly, Such an adhesion to a party carries in it a strong suspicion and tang of the rankest of all ill qualities, spiritual pride. There are two things natural almost to all men : First, A desire of preeminence in any perfection, but especially religious. Secondly, A spirit of opposition or contradiction to such as are not of their own mind or way. Now both these are eminently gratified by a man's listing himself of a party in religion. And I doubt not but some are more really proud of the affected sordidness of a pretended mortification, than others are of the greatest affluence and splendour of life: and that many who call the execution of law and justice persecution, do yet suffer it with an higher and more pleasing relish of pride than others can inflict it. For it is not true zeal rising from an hearty concernment for religion, but an ill, restless, cross humour, which is provoked with smart, and quickened with opposition. The godly party is little better than a contradiction in the adjunct; for he who is truly godly, is humble and peaceable, and will neither make nor be of a party, according to the common sense of that word. Let such pretenders therefore suspect the sandiness and hollowness of their foundation; and know, that such imitators of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, build upon the same ground upon which they stood, and into which they sunk. And certainly that man's condition is very unsafe, who accounts his sin his perfection, and so makes the object of his repentance the ground of his salvation. And thus I have discovered some of those false and deceiving grounds upon which many bottom their eternal state, and by which they think themselves in the direct way to life and happiness, while, God knows, they are in the high and broad road to perdition. Pass we now to the third thing proposed, which is, to shew whence it is that such ill-founded structures are upon trial sure to fall. For the demonstration of which we must observe, that to the violent dissolution of any thing two things concur : first, an assault or impression from without; secondly, an inherent weakness within. One is the active, the other the passive principle of every change. For so much as there is of weakness, there is of nonresistance, and so far as any thing yields or not resists, the contrary impression enters, and by degrees weakens, and at length destroys the subsistence of the thing opposed. As for the first of these, the force and opposition from without: it comes from the 8 πovnρòs the true common enemy, the implacable, insatiable devourer of souls, the devil; who will be sure to plant his engines of battery against every spiritual building which does but look towards heaven. The opposition he makes, our Saviour here emphatically describes by the winds blowing, the rain descending, and the floods coming, which is not an insignificant rhetorication of the same thing by several expressions, (like some pulpit bombast, made only to measure an hourglass,) but an exact description of those three methods by which this assault of the devil prevails and becomes victorious. First, The first is, that it is sudden and unexpected. The devil usually comes upon the soul as he fell from heaven, like lightning. And he shews no small art and policy by his so doing: for quickness prevents preparation, and so enervates opposition. It is observed of Cæsar, that he did plurima et maxima bella sola celeritate conficere: so that almost in all his expeditions he seldom came to any place, but his coming was before the report of it. And we shall find, that the Roman eagles owed most of their great conquests as much to their swiftness as to their force. And the same is here the devil's method in his warfare against souls. Upon which account also the same character that Tully gave the forementioned Cæsar in his Epistles to Atticus, may much more fitly agree to him, that he is monstrum horribile celeritatis et vigilantiæ. He flies to his prey, he fetches his blow quick and sure; he can shoot a temptation in a glance, and convey the poison of his suggestions quicker than the agitation of thought, or the strictures of fancy. It is the sudden trip in wrestling that fetches a man to the ground. Thus St. Peter, that giant in faith, was shamefully foiled by a sudden though weak assault. While he sits in the high priest's hall, warming himself and thinking nothing, one confounds him with this quick unexpected charge, Matth. xxvi. 69. Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee. The surprise of the onset prevented his deliberating powers from rallying together those succours of habitual grace, which, being alarmed by a more gradual approach of the temptation, would have easily repulsed it. But the devil will never caution the soul into a posture of defence by presenting the temptation at a distance. He bites and shews his teeth at the same instant; and so prevents the foresight of the eye, by exceeding it in quickness. Secondly, His assaults are furious and impetuous. Temptations come very often, as the devil himself is said to do, in a storm. And a gust of wind, as it rises on a sudden, so it rushes with vehemence. And if the similitude does not yet speak high enough; to the violence of a storm, the text adds the prevailing rage of a flood. And we know the tyranny of this element when it once embodies into a torrent, and runs with the united force of many waters; it scorns all confinement, and tears down the proudest opposition, as Virgil fully describes it: 66 rapidus montano flumine torrens "Sternit agros, sternit sata læta, boumque labores, 66 With a parallel encounter does the devil draw upon the poor fortifications of outward civility, good desire imperfect resolutions, and the like, which are no more able to abide the shock of such batteries, than a morning dew is able to bear the scorching fury of the sun; or than such little banks as |