way of prosopopoeia, in the person of the scribes and Pharisees, whose custom it was to preface and authorize their lectures and glosses to the people with the pompous plea of antiquity and tradition. As if Christ had bespoken them thus: You have been accustomed indeed to hear the scribes and Pharisees tell you, that this and this was said by those of old time: but, notwithstanding all these pretenses, I tell you that the case is much otherwise, and that the true account and sense of the law is thus and thus. This, I say, is the natural purport and meaning of our Saviour's words throughout this chapter.

Thirdly, That passage in the 43d verse of the same, Ye have heard that it hath been said, Ye shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, is so far from being the words of the Mosaic law, that Moses commands the clean contrary to the latter clause, Exod. xxiii. 4, 5, If thou seest thine enemy's ox going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again; and if thou seest the ass of him who hateth thee lying under his burden, thou shalt surely help him. And if this was the voice of the law then, can we imagine that it would make it a man's duty to relieve his enemy's ox, or his ass, and at the same time allow him to hate or malign his person? This certainly is unaccountable and incredible.

Fourthly, If Christ opposed his precepts to those of the Mosaic law, then God speaking by Christ must contradict himself as speaking by Moses. For whatsoever Moses spoke, he spoke as the immediate dictates of God, from whom he received the law. But this is absurd, and by no means consistent with the divine holiness and veracity.

Fifthly and lastly, Christ in all this discourse never calls any one of the doctrines opposed by him the words of Moses, or of the law, but only the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, which shows that they, and they only, were the persons with whom he managed this whole contest.

Let this therefore rest with us as a firm conclusion: that Moses and Christ were at perfect agreement, whatever the controversy was between him and the Pharisees. And so from the scheme and context of the words, I pass to the duty enjoined in them, which is to love our enemies; the discussion of which I shall cast under these three general heads:

First, I shall show negatively what is not that love which we are here commanded to show our enemies.

Secondly, I shall show positively wherein it does consist. Thirdly, I shall produce arguments to enforce it.

And first, for the first of these: what is not that love which we must show our enemies: this we shall find to exclude several things which would fain wear this name.

1. As, first, to treat an enemy with a fair deportment and amicable language, is not the love here enjoined by Christ. Love is a thing that scorns to dwell anywhere but in the heart. The tongue is a thing made for words; but what reality is there in a voice, what substance in a sound? and words are no more. The kindness of the heart never kills, but that of the tongue often does. And in an ill sense a soft answer may sometimes break the bones. He who speaks me well proves himself a rhetorican or a courtier; but that is not to be a friend.

Was ever the hungry fed or the naked clothed with good looks or fair speeches? These are but thin garments to keep out the cold, and but a slender repast to conjure down the rage of a craving appetite. My enemy perhaps is ready to starve or perish through poverty, and I tell him I am heartily glad to see him, and should be very ready to serve him, but still my hand is close, and my purse shut; I neither bring him to my table, nor lodge him under my roof; he asks for bread, and I give him a compliment, a thing indeed not so hard as a stone, but altogether as dry. I treat him with art and outside; and lastly, at parting, with all the ceremonies of dearness, I shake him by the hand, but put nothing into it. In a word, I play with his distress, and dally with that which will not be dallied with, want and misery, and a clamorous necessity.

For will fair words and a courtly behavior pay debts and discharge scores? If they could, there is a sort of men that would not be so much in debt as they are. Can a man look and speak himself out of his creditor's hands? Surely then, if my words can not do this for myself, neither can they do it for my enemy. And therefore this has nothing of the love spoken of in the text. It is but a scene, and a mere mockery, for the receiving that can not make my enemy at all the

richer, the giving of which makes me not one penny the poorer. It is indeed the fashion of the world thus to amuse men with empty caresses, and to feast them with words and air, looks and legs; nay, and it has this peculiar privilege above all other fashions, that it never alters: but certainly no man ever yet quenched his thirst with looking upon a golden cup, nor made a meal with the outside of a lordly dish.

But we are not to rest here; fair speeches and looks are not only very insignificant as to the real effects of love, but are for the most part the instruments of hatred in the execution of the greatest mischiefs. Few men are to be ruined till they are made confident of the contrary: and this can not be done by threats and roughness, and owning the mischief that a man designs; but the pitfall must be covered, to invite the man to venture over it; all things must be sweetened with professions of love, friendly looks, and embraces. For it is oil that whets the razor, and the smoothest edge is still the sharpest; they are the complacencies of an enemy that kill, the closest hugs that stifle, and love must be pretended before malice can be effectually practiced. In a word, he must get into his heart with fair speeches and promises, before he can come at it with his dagger. For surely no man fishes with a bare hook, or thinks that the net itself can be any enticement to the bird.

But now, if these outward shows of fairness are short of the love which we owe to our enemies, what can we say of those who have not arrived so far as these, and yet pretend to be friends? Disdain and distance, sour looks and sharp words, are all the expressions of friendship that some natures can manifest. I confess, where real kindnesses are done, these circumstantial garnitures of love (as I may so call them) may be dispensed with; and it is better to have a rough friend than a fawning enemy: but those who neither do good turns, nor give good looks, nor speak good words, have a love strangely subtile and metaphysical: for other poor mortals of an ordinary capacity are forced to be ignorant of that which they can neither see, hear, feel, nor understand. And thus much for the first negative. The love that we are to show to enemies is not a fair external courtly deportment; it is not

such a thing as may be learnt in a dancing-school, nor in those shops of fallacy and dissimulation, the courts and palaces of great men, where men's thoughts and words stand at an infinite distance, and their tongues and minds hold no correspondence or intercourse with one another.

2. Fair promises are not the love that our Saviour here commands us to show our enemies. And yet these are one step and advance above the former: for many fair speeches may be given, many courteous harangues uttered, and yet no promise made. And it is worth observing how some great ones often delude, and simple ones suffer themselves to be deluded, by general discourses and expressions of courtesy. As, 66 Take you no care, I will provide for you. I will never see you want. Leave your business in my hands, and I will manage it with as much or more concern than you could yourself. What need you insist so much upon this or that in particular? I design better things for you." But all this while there is no particular determinate thing promised, so as to hold such an one by any real, solid engagement, (supposing that his promise were such,) but perhaps, when the next advantage comes in the way, the man is forgot and balked: yet still those general speeches hold as true as ever they did, and so will continue, notwithstanding all particular defeats; as indeed being never calculated for any thing else but to keep up the expectation of easy persons; to feed them for the present, and to fail them in the issue.

But now, as these empty glossing words are short of promises, so promises are equally short of performances. Concerning both which I shall say this, that there is no wise man but had rather have had one promise than a thousand fair words, and one performance than ten thousand promises. For what trouble is it to promise, what charge is it to spend a little breath, for a man to give one his word, who never intends to give him any thing else? And yet, according to the measures of the world, this must sometimes pass for an high piece of love; and many poor unexperienced believing souls, who have more honesty than wit, think themselves wrapped up into the third heaven, and actually possessed of some notable preferment, when they can say, "I have such a great person's promise for such or such a thing." Have they so?

Let them see if such a promise will pay rent, buy land, and maintain them like gentlemen. It is at the best but a future contingent; for either the man may die, or his interest may fail, or his mind may change, or ten thousand accidents may intervene. Promises are a diet which none ever yet thrived by, and a man may feed upon them heartily, and never break his fast. In a word, I may say of human promises, what expositors say of divine prophecies, "that they are never understood till they come to be fulfilled."

But how speaks the scripture of these matters? Why, in Rom. xii. 20, If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink. It is not, Promise him meat and drink a week hence, that is perhaps two days after he is dead with thirst and hunger. He who lives only upon reversions, and maintains himself with hope, and has nothing to cover him but the clothes of dead men, and the promises of the living, will find just as much relief from them, as a man in the depth of winter feels the heat of the following summer.

But bare promises are so far from answering Christ's precept of loving our enemies, that if they are not realized in deeds, they become a plague and a great calamity. For they raise an expectation which, unsatisfied or defeated, is the greatest of torments; they betray a man to a fallacious dependence, which bereaves him of the succors of his other endeavors, and in the issue leaves him to inherit the shame and misery of a disappointment, and unable to say any thing else for himself, but that he was credulous, and the promiser false.

3. But thirdly and lastly, to advance a degree yet higher, to do one or two kind offices for an enemy is not to fulfill the precept of loving him. He who clothes a naked man with a pair of gloves, and administers to one perishing with thirst a drop or two of water, reaches not the measure of his necessity, but, instead of relieving, only upbraids his want, and passes a jest upon his condition. It is like pardoning a man the debt of a penny, and in the mean time suing him fiercely for a talent. Love is then only of reality and value when it deals forth benefits in a full proportion to one's need, and when it shows itself both in universality and constancy. Otherwise it is only a trick to serve a turn and carry on a design.