circumstances which he can be in, it will be hard to prove that our allegiance to the king of kings (according to the new, modish, whigdoctrine relating to our temporal kings) is only conditional.

5thly, The fifth and laft corollary, or conclufion deducible from the foregoing particulars, is, that there can be no fuffering or calamity whatsoever, tho' never so terrible and grievous to human nature, but may be endured without fin; and if fo, may be likewise made a means whereby God brings a man out of temptation.

As to the first part of which propofition, the christian martyrs were a glorious and irrefragable proof of it, (as has been before obferved;) the torments they endur'd were as horrid and exquifite as the wit of man could then invent, or now comprehend; nor were they more for their peculiar ftrangeness unaccountable, than for the variety of their kinds innumerable. The whole history of the primitive church is but a continued martyrology; in a word, this noble army of martyrs were (as the apostle tells us, Heb. xi. 35, 36, 37.) cruelly mock'd and feourg'd, rack'd and tortur'd, flain with the fword, or rather butcher'd, burnt, and fawn afunder; and in a word, what not? All this, I fay, and a great deal more, they undauntedly

I

be

undauntedly fuffered, and triumphed over; and the fame grace which enabled them to bear fuch barbarities, enabled them alfo to bear them without fin; the fire indeed confumed them, but the Smoke could not blacken them. All which being as to matter of fact unquestionable, it must needs be an argument of the clearest and most allowed confequence, that if fuch inhumanities actually have been born, it is certain that they may born. Experience (which answers, or rather annihilates all objections) has made good the antecedent, and nothing can keep off the confequent. In the mean time, for my own part, I must confefs my self wholly unable to believe, that fuch monftrous cruelties could ever have been endur'd, but in the strength of fomething fupernatural and divine, something which raised and bore human nature above it self, fomething which gave it a kind of inward armour of proof; meer flesh and blood (God knows) being but a pitiful, weak thing, and by no means a match equal to fuch en

counters.

From all which we fee and learn, how wholly different the wife and gracious methods of God are from those of poor filly mortals. The way of the world is for men to rush into fin, to keep or bring themselves out

of

of mifery; but God's method is, fometimes to bring men into worldly mifery, to keep them from fin, and thereby rescue them from damnation. And this is moft certainly true, that no evil, how afflictive foever, is or ought to be accounted intolerable, which may be made a direct means to escape one intolerably greater. For as there is no fort of enjoyment upon earth, but may, and often does, become the ground and scene of a temptation fo neither is there any fort of temporal mifery, but may be a remedy against it. Poverty is indeed a bitter pill, but often ufed by the great phyfician of fouls, as a fovereign antidote against pride, profufeness, and fenfuality. Nothing finks deeper into an ingenuous mind than difgrace, and yet God frequently makes it an effectual cure of vain-glory, arrogance, and ambition. Sickness is a tedious and vexatious trial, eating up and confuming the vigour and Spirit both of body and mind; and yet the surest and best course, by which God beats down the rage of luft, and the brutish furies of intemperance. And laftly, death it felf, which nature fears and flies from as its dreadfullest and greatest enemy, is yet the grand inftrument in the hand of mercy to put an end to fin and forrow, and a final period to all temptations.

And

And thus at length I am come near a close of what I had to discourse upon this great and important fubject of temptation; indeed fo important, that, whereas that best of prayers prescribed and left us by our Saviour (as the standing form and pattern for his church to pray by for ever) confifts in all but of fix petitions; this against temptation makes one of that fmall number: a clear demonftration doubtless of what infinite concern it is to all who know how to value their eternal state and condition, to guard against it, and to be delivered from it. For fo much I dare aver may with great truth be affirmed of the malignity of it (and more and worse can hardly be faid) that greater numbers have been deftroyed by it, than repentance ever faved. For it is this which has peopled hell, and made the devil's dominions large and populous; this which has carried the trophies of his black conquefts as far and wide as the corruption of man's nature has spread it felf, and the fin of Adam extended its contagion; this, whereby that avowed enemy of God and man has done fuch terrible execution upon fouls: for were it not for his art and skill to infinuate, his power could do nothing to deftroy; that being his fure, and long tried method, for getting hold of the will, and seizing

the

the affections, and fo drawing the whole man after him, which by downright force he could never do. In short (according to the poet's expreffion) populo dat jura volenti, he brings men to obey, and serve him spontaneously; and further than this he cannot go, nor lead any into the bottomless pit, but fuch as are as willing to follow as he to lead; a woful way of perishing certainly, and the very fting, not of death only, but even of damnation it self.

Nor is this all whereby he carries on his work, but he has yet this further advantage over men, that being a spirit, he can convey himfelf into, and poffefs himself of the chief inftruments of the foul's operations, the spirits; and this without the man's difcerning that he does fo. For tho' indeed when God permits him to exert his mischievous power upon the bodies of men, (as he did upon many in the days of our Saviour) it must needs in that cafe be dif cernable enough where and of whom the evil spirit has taken possession; yet where he employs his malice only in a spiritual way, by fecret but powerful inftigations of their corrupt nature to wicked actions (as for the most part he does now-a-days) it is hard, if poffible, to diftinguish truly and exactly what proceeds from bare inherent corruption, and what from diabolical impulfe and infufion; but no doubt in

many