whether he fasts, or prays, or serves a brother, it is all one and the same: for he knows that he serves and pleases God equally, whether his works be great or small, precious or vile, short or long. Nor does he in particular choose any one work, nor does he reprobate any one; but, as Samuel said to Saul, he does whatsoever comes into his hands to do. But where there is not this faith, there will be always found a fermenting toil of distinguishing, choosing, and rejecting works; while such, with an impious opinion, believe, that by such a work they shall please God more, and by such a work less which iniquity is full of labour, toil, and solicitude; in the Hebrew called AVEN and AMAL, as we have abundantly shewn before.

The impious folly of these men is a certain spiritual simony; they wish to buy God with works. For what they do is this: they suppose, that in doing and after doing these works, they shall have faith in God; and thus, they make God to be appeased and rendered propitious by their works: whereas, we ought to have God propitious to us first by faith, and then, in that faith to do good works: that thus, that which pleases God may be of preventing grace, and not of our own power and merits. For no one can please God because he does good works; but he does good works because he pleases God. So that, the cause of the works being good, is the faith by which a man knows that he pleases God: but works are not the cause of that faith which pleases God. And hence it is impossible, but that those must trust more in their own works than in God, though (as hypocrites always lie) they boast that they trust in God alone. And thus they always remain reprobate concerning faith, yet always pretending that they trust in God. It is past all belief how secret, deep, and great this evil of the human heart is: for it not only clothes and feeds itself with its own works with an insuperable and desperate perverseness, but boasts of the title and value of that very faith which it directly militates against, and flatters itself in the possession of it. David prayed against this, Psalm li. "Create in me at

clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.". And Psalm xix. 13, "Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.

If any one could but see how many of the most specious and showy work-mongers this iniquity destroys, he would then understand that of Eccles. viii. 10, "And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone: from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in: the place where they had so done." In a word, there is not an evil more natural to man nor to be rooted out with more care, than this subtle presumption, which always strives to be before-hand with God and to render him propitious by its own works. From which natural enormity have proceeded also all those impious dogmas and doctrines in the church, by which men are driven on to works and indulgences in order to appease God and to make satisfaction for their sins, entirely setting aside faith. And I believe that this radical evil' and all-specious idol of the spirit, (as we have it called, Psalm xxxii.) is never extinguished, no, nor even known until a man has been exercised with those deeper temptations of death, hell, conscience, (or, faith and hope,) and predestination, and others of the same kind. All other things rather increase than take away this natural evil, even though they may be the greatest of virtues or works.

And the same destruction attends them also who deny that all works done without faith are sins, as we have shewn before. For if you should say by way of question, whether a good work (as they may call it) when done in the pursuit of adultery, murder, or theft, or, when done in rebellion or disobedience, would not be a sin; they would without doubt answer, that it was a sin. Why then do they ascribe so much goodness of working to the man that sins against the first commandment and does his good work in disobedience towards God, (that is, in unbelief,)-why, I say, do they ascribe so much goodness to such an one as to say that his work

is not a sin? Are not, then, disobedience with respect to God and unbelief as great sins as the pursuit or intent of adultery, and the neglect of chastity?

But the sin of unbelief is deep, and of all the most natural, nay, committed by nature herself: concerning which David says, "All men are liars:" the natural man cannot acknowledge this sin in himself; but as to the sins of the flesh, such as theft, murder, and human rebellion, they are wrought by the grosser parts of the senses and the body, and therefore they are easily understood by his higher faculties, the soul and the understanding: whereas, the soul itself cannot perceive the incomparably greater sin and "beam" that is in its own eye, though it so easily perceives the "mote" that is in the body's eye. Such is the nature of hypocrites and of all who are unclean in spirit, until they have been exercised and tried by the powerful and spiritual perils of death and hell.

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In this same way, lime grows harder and colder until water be poured upon it. And hence, the wise man rightly saith that the beginning or fountain-spring of sin, or rather the principal and greatest of all sins, is departing from God of which the members, as it were, are rebellions, lusts, murders, thefts, and every thing that comes under the name of sin. By which things God, as it were, admonishes us to think and consider thus,-if these things are so great and so foul, how great and foul must be the manifold and many-mouthed head and spring of all these foul streams; that is, unbelief itself; which is the very palace from which they all proceed, and which renders dead every work that is done, by its very touch and look. What then are a number of good works without faith, but, (as Christ says,) a whited sepulchre, which within is full of dead men's bones, and all filth and iniquity.

And here also that common saying about putting and taking away the bar,' falls to the ground. For if to commit adultery, to steal, and to kill, be to put the bar,' how many good works soever a person may do, and howsoever he may dispose himself; how much more

will not believing in God be putting the bar,' though a man in the mean time may do never so many of his good works? For the commandment to believe in God, is of far greater weight and importance than not to commit adultery, and not to steal or kill. Wherefore, the omission of faith which is commanded in the first table, far exceeds in enormity the commission of any of those sins which are prohibited in the second table. Thus, as unbelief is the fountain of all evils, and prevents any good work, or, if the work be done, renders it polluted, and makes the man prone to every sin; so, on the contrary, faith is the fountain of all good, and will not permit any thing evil to be done, or, if any thing evil be done, immediately takes it away and cleanses the man, and renders him prone to all good works. Hence, when Adam and Eve had sinned, they immediately felt lust, or the fruit of their unbelief and sin in their members: whereas, in John vii. 38, it is on the contrary written, "He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters." And 2 Tim. ii. 19, it is written, "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity."

Wherefore, let us firmly hold that the first precept is the head and foundation or beginning of all the other precepts, and that its fruits or fulfilment is the head and beginning of all works; and also, that the moral philosophy of the Peripatetics errs altogether from the way, which saith,That by doing just and temperate things we are rendered just and temperate.' But not so ye ungodly! not so! But we must be made just and temperate first, and then do just and temperate things. And we are made just or righteous by that faith which believes that God is propitious unto us; and this is the faith that God has commanded, saying, "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have none other gods but me." For as we believe so it is done unto us. For faith is not here deceived: he is rather deceived who fears this, or doubts or hesitates to believe it.

But you will say, How can it be that I can believe that in all works I please God, or that God is always

and continually propitious to me, when I must sometimes talk, eat, drink, and laugh with my neighbour, nay, sometimes joke also and enjoy the mutual consolation of pleasant converse? And what if I sometimes sin in the very act, and even run into some great fall of wrath, lust, and evil concupiscence? And who is that man who does not sometimes offend in word, as James says in his Epistle? Nay even you yourself also teach that there is sin or defilement in every word. Can, then, sin and pollution please God?

I answer: First, with respect to the works of familiar intercourse.-Hypocrites, who have confined the works of God within their narrow straits, are rigid and implacable censurers of those works which are done by honest and proper familiarity and friendship: such as lively converse and society, acute and witty observations and sayings, a pleasant and jocund laugh. For I do not here mean scurrilous remarks, profane laughing, or filthy conversation: because not even the human rules of living allow of such things as those. But as this life cannot pass without society, it certainly becomes thee to believe, that thou pleasest God when thou speakest to thy brother with a jocund countenance, when thou invitest him to pleasantry by a cheering laugh, and when thou sometimes delightest him with a facetious or shrewd remark. For this is that "gentleness" (XpnoTorns) commended by Paul, Gal. v. 22, which they call kindness and sweetness of conversation, and which the same Apostle, 2 Cor. vi. 4, commands us to shew forth, saying, “In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience," &c.; and afterwards, ver. 6, " by kindness, in the Holy Ghost;" where he adds "in the Holy Ghost," that this kindness, companionableness, or pleasantry may not, as it is often wont to do, degenerate into levity, and effuse scurrility, and a certain licence to say any thing and do any thing, until, out of this kindness, which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, they make a deadly familiarity, which is the fruit of the unclean spirit of man. Thus it is read of St. Bernard, that when he wished to comfort a brother who was dejected in mind,

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