"That if but two men in the world should be saved, one of them would be a pharisee." Now, let any one shew me, where amongst us there is such a face of religion and concernment for it. You will say, perhaps, that the truth and body of it may be among us; but certainly it is a strange thing to see a body without a face, and reality without any shew. There is a difference indeed between the substance and the shadow, yet there is seldom a substance without the shadow. But this by digression. We have seen what the pharisees did; but what was the first moving cause that bore them up to such a pitch of acting? Why, that they might be talked of and admired; in a word, that "they might be seen of men." They gave alms indeed, but it was with trumpets and proclamations. They prayed; but it was standing in the streets, with a design more to be seen here below, than to be heard above. They fasted; but then they disfigured themselves, wore a sad countenance and a drooping head, that they might gain notice. and observation, and so feed their ambition. They pretended great zeal to the law; but carried it more in their phylacteries than their hearts, and in the borders of their garments more than their lives. All their teaching was in order to be called rabbi; to be treated with public and pompous salutations; to be cringed to in solemn meetings; to be at the top of every public feast and assembly. The whole design of all that pageantry and show of piety that they amused the world withal, was nothing but noise, and vogue, and popularity: this was the breath that blew up their devotion to such a high and a blazing flame. And are not many Christians, though differing from them in religion, yet the very same men; and owe all those shows and forms of godliness, which they have clothed themselves withal, to the influence of the same spurious principle? How many appear devout, and zealous, and frequent in the service of God, only to court the esteem of the world, or perhaps to acquit themselves to the eye of a superior! How vast a distance is there between their inside and their outside; between the same men as they open themselves in private, and as they sustain an artificial dress or person in public! the reason is, because though they have not goodness enough to be religious, yet they have pride enough to appear so. 2. That the love of glory is sufficient to produce all those virtuous actions, that are visible in the lives of those that profess religion, appears farther from hence; that there is nothing visible in the very best actions, but what may proceed from the most depraved principles, if acted by prudence, caution, and design. And if piety be not requisite to their VOL. II. production, I am sure the next principle, for influence and activity, is a man's concernment for his reputation. Now that a principle, short of piety, is able to exert the fairest performances that bear the name of pious, is clear from this, that there is no external discrimination of the hypocrite from the sincere person: what one does, the same is done by the other. He that should see a stone that is shot from a sling, and a bird fly in the air at the same time, were he ignorant of their nature, could not, by any mark of discovery inherent in the motions themselves, know one to be natural, and the other to be violent. And Christ pronounces, that in the great day of discovery, many that are first shall be last ;" that is, those who have the highest esteem for piety, grounded upon the gloss of an outwardly virtuous behaviour, shall be found to have had but little reality, and so be rewarded accordingly. This therefore being proved, who can deny but a sense of honour, and a touch of ambition, may supply the room of a better principle in those outward instances of virtue, that shine only upon the surface of men's lives; yet sufficient to attract the estimation of those who can look no farther? We know designs much inferior to this are able to bear a man up to such a pitch. The designs of gain, which are the lowest and basest that can be, and put a man upon the most sordid and inferior practices; yet these are able to inspire him with such an impetus, as is able to raise him to a show of piety; so that the vilest person shall appear godly, when, in a literal sense, he shall find that godliness is great gain." Nay, the design of pleasure and sensuality may make a man undergo many religious austerities, and sacrifice a less pleasure to the hope of a greater. For in the great instance of mortification, which is fasting, what were all the fasts and humiliations of the the late reformers, but the forbearing of dinners? that is, the enlarging the stowage, and the redoubling the appetite, for a larger supper; in which the dinner was rather deferred, than took away. And But now the design of glory is as much above these, as the mind of a Cæsar above the mind of a farmer or a usurer; or the applauses of the learned and the knowing above the entertainments of a kitchen. therefore, if those ignoble appetites were able to advance a man to so high a strain, certainly the other, which has the same activity, and a greater nobility, must needs do it much more. And thus much for the first thing. II. I come now to the second, which is to shew, whence this affection comes to have such an influence upon our actions. The reasons, I conceive, may be these: 1. Because glory is the proper pleasure of L the mind. That which pleases is by the Latins called jucundum: and I find this jucundum, by a certain author, of some repute in the world, divided into that of the body, and that of the mind. That of the body is properly the perception of those pleasing objects that respectively belong to the five senses; but that of the mind he affirms to be glory which, I think, may be properly defined or described, the complacency that a man finds within himself, arising from his conceit of the opinion that another has of some excellency or perfection in him. For as pride is the opinion that a man has of his own perfection, so glory is the pleasure that he takes, from the opinion that another has of it. And experience shews, that the perception of harmonious sounds do not more please the ear, nor sweet things the taste, than the opinion of this does affect and please the mind. It was the speech of Dionysius, concerning his parasites and flatterers, that though he knew that what they said was false, yet he could not but find himself pleased with it. And Themistocles, being pointed at in the public theatres and meetings, confessed, that the pleasure he took in it did amply reward all those great exploits that he had done for his country. Now that this so intimately affects the mind with pleasure, appears from the great regret and trouble that the mind feels from its contrary, which is scorn and disgrace. There is nothing that pierces the apprehensive mind so keenly and intolerably as this. It depresses the spirits, restrains the freedom, and contracts the largeness of the thoughts. A man that is under disgrace neither relishes the returns of business, nor the enjoyments of society; but desponds, and suffers himself to be trampled upon and contemned by persons much worse than himself. From whence it follows, since glory so much enamours, and disgrace so much afflicts the soul of man, that it is no wonder, if the acquiring of one, and the avoiding of the other, so potently commands all our actions. For what are actions, but the servants of our appetites? And what are all the labours of men laid out upon, but to acquire to themselves such objects as either please their senses, or gratify their more noble desires? And certainly there are some tempers in the world, that can sit up as late, and rise as early, and endure as much trouble, to purchase the pleasure of their mind, as others do for that of the senses. Sallust, in the character that he gives of Lucius Sylla the dictator, amongst other things, sets down this, and it is for his commendation, that he was voluptatum cupidus, sed gloriæ cupidior:" though he loved his cups and his women too well, yet still he commanded them as well as his army; and had rather court honour with the hardships and dangers of the field, and with hunger and thirst, and toilsome watchings, arrive at length to the glories of a triumph. And no wonder; for the pleasures that lie in the gratifications of the senses are transient, and short, and perishing, as those gratifications are themselves: but the pleasure of a glorious object is lasting; it is treasured up in the memory, and the mind may have recourse to it as often as it will. He that eats a luscious morsel, or sees a fine picture, is pleased as long as he tastes the one, or beholds the other, which perhaps is a minute: but he that has done a glorious action, reflects upon it with pleasure to his dying day; it is as sure to him as his life or his being; it lasts and lives, and supplies the mind with continual, fresh perceptions, with all the delights of an active remembrance and a busy reflection. The same also holds in the contrary of glory, which is disgrace, compared to all those pains that afflict the body, which are afflictive just so long as they actually possess the part which they aggrieve; but their influence lasts no longer than their presence. Nobody is therefore in pain to-day, because his head ached a month ago; nobody feels the torments of a cured gout, nor languishes with the remembrance of a removed sickness. Nay, he is rather so much the more refreshed, by how much a former pain gives a man a quicker sense of his present ease. But it is otherwise in the afflictions of dishonour: this, wheresoever it fastens, leaves its marks behind it. It torments the mind with an abiding anguish. A man cannot lay it down: it incorporates into his condition. It is a pain not to be slept away, and a scar not to be worn off. He eats, he travels, he lies down and rises up with it. It is an emblem of hell, irksome and perpetual. And being so, we need seek for no farther cause why these affections so entirely command a man, as to every faculty both of body and soul. A man would do any thing to secure his honour and his reputation: that is, to live while he is alive, and not to be the scorn and laughing-stock of a company of worthless, pitiful, and contemptible persons, who have nothing else to make them seem honourable, so much as in their own esteem, but the disgraces of others. 2. The second reason, that this affection of glory comes to have so strong an influence upon our actions, is from this; that it is founded in the innate desire of superiority that is in every man. One man desires to be greater and better than another, and consequently to be thought so. Nature has placed us in the lower region of the world, but, for all that, we aspire; it has cast us upon the earth, but still we rebound. If it be here demanded, whence this desire arises, and upon what it is founded; I answer, that it is founded upon the very natural lovo that we bear to our being, and the preservation of it. For every degree of superiority, or greater perfection, is a farther defence set upon a man's being; as he that is powerful, rich, wise, or the like, has those means of securing his being, that he, who is destitute of power, riches, and wisdom, has not. So much as any man is above another, so much he thinks himself safer than another. But now it is the great effect of glory and fame thus to raise a man: hence the very word, by which we express the praising of one, is to extol him; that is, to lift him up: for honour properly sets a man above the crowd; it makes him, like Saul, higher by the head than the rest of his brethren. Hereupon, since the desire of superiority is such a restless affection, engaging a man in the highest and hardest attempts; and since the desire of glory is grafted upon it, and indeed is subservient to it; it is a matter of no hard resolution to find out, whence the desire of glory comes to exercise such a control over us, as to compel us to do this, abstain from that, endure another thing, and that with such success, as to carry its commands victorious through any reluctancies whatsoever. For what is it that makes the practice of religion irksome and difficult, but that it thwarts the inferior appetites of sense? which being thwarted, will be sure to make a considerable opposition. But now, if an appetite stronger and more active than those of sense strikes in with religion, it will render its conquest over them easy and effectual: and such an one I affirm to be the appetite of glory; which certainly rules more or less in every one, who has not degenerated into a brute so far, as to have fastened his designs to the earth, and his desires to his trencher. But besides a desire of superiority, there is also a desire of greatness, (for I know no other name to give it,) which is equally predominant in men, and equally served and promoted by fame and honour: for does not this, as it were, diffuse a man, and extend him to the wideness and capacity of the world? That little bulk that is contained in this or that room, in its fame carries a circumference greater and larger than a nation. Glory makes a man present in ten thousand places at once, and gives him a kind of ubiquity, and that without labour or motion: while he sits still, he travels over the universe; he crosses the seas, and yet never passes the continent; he visits all nations, and perhaps never stirs abroad. But his fame, like lightning, makes him shine from one end of the heavens to the other. No wonder therefore, since glory itself is able thus to stretch a man to a kind of omnipresence, if the desire of glory has over his life and actions a kind of omnipotence. 3. The third and last reason that I shall assign, why this affection of glory comes to have such an influence upon our actions, is, because it is indeed the great instrument of life to have a fair reputation, and really opens a man a way into all the advantages of it. For who would employ a profane person, or trust a known atheist? And he that is counted neither fit to be employed or trusted, may go out of the world, for he is like to find but little happiness in it. The repute of a man's principles, his conscience and honesty, is that which represents a man worthy to be used and preferred; and the repute of a man's principles grows out of the external fairness of his practices. All the accommodations of life, as power, wealth, offices, and friends, are often derivable from the good opinion that men have procured themselves by the outward and seeming piety of their behaviour. For the proof of which, take but the instance of the late times: more than a show of piety I think none will allow them, that well understood them; but a show they had, and so wisely did they manage it, that the opinion which the vulgar had of their saintship was such an engine in their hands, that by it they could turn and wield them to all their designs and purposes as they pleased. They plundered, and oppressed, and robbed men of their estates: yes, but they did it preaching and praying, and abstaining from swearing, drinking, and the like, and composing themselves to the rigours of an appearing virtue and sobriety. Not but that they had an appetite to have lashed out into all that looseness, gaudery, and debauchery, that sometimes bewitches other men. But they were too wise: they knew that would have vilified their persons, and consequently have dashed their designs: their villainy was sober, and therefore successful. And I am afraid that experience is like to convince us, that the face of a dissembled piety gave them a greater credit and authority with the generality, than others are like to gain by a better cause managed with seemingly worse manners. So much does the appearance, the opinion, and the noise of things govern the world! Let this therefore pass for another great cause, why the affection of glory so engages and rules the practices of men, namely, that it does indeed serve a real interest, and is resolved into the utile, the idol of profit sc much adored by mankind. It is to very great purpose for a man to be esteemed; for he that is so, will at length be something more. Fame is indeed but a breath and a wind; yet even the wind is that which carries the ship, and brings the treasure into the merchant's bosom. And thus much for the second general head proposed for the handling of the words, namely, to shew whence this affection comes to have such an influence upon men's actions. IH. Pass we now to the third; which is to shew the inability of it to be a sufficient motive to engage mankind in virtuous actions without the assistance of religion. In order to the proof of which, I shall premise two considerations: 1. That virtue and a good life determines not in outward practices, but respects the most inward actions of the mind. Virtue dwells not upon the tongue, nor consists in the due motion of the hands and the feet: but it is the action of the soul, and there it resides. Whatsoever we behold of it in the external behaviour of men, is but the manifestation, not the being of virtue; as the action of the body is not the principle, but only the discovery of life. They are inward, secret wheels, that set the outward and the visible a-work. Piety lodges in the regions of the heart; and when the body is immured in prison, or withered by sickness, an active soul feels none of those impediments, but is free to the exercise of virtue or vice; and by inward volitions or aversations can supply the want of outward performances. A man may act like a saint before men, and like a devil before God; and on the contrary, appear but mean outwardly, and yet be allglorious within. Otherwise virtue would be but an outside, and sit but as a varnish upon the forehead; and he that looked upon the body would be as competent a judge of it, as he that searched the heart. But colour is not health; he that looks pale, may be sound and vigorous; and he that wears the rose upon his cheeks may have rottenness in his bones. Virtue and vice are the perfection and pollution of the soul; that is, of a being in its nature spiritual, and consequently invisible; whereupon they must be such also themselves. The scene of their acting is the conscience; and conscience has an eye over a man's most inward and retired behaviour; it spies out the first infant essays and inclinations of virtues, and encourages them, and discerns the first movings and ebullitions of concupiscence, and severely checks and condemns them. And thus it judges of a man's estate before ever the soul comes to communicate with the body, in the external production of any of those actions; and so to alarm the notice and observation of the world. So that a man is indeed condemned before the world knows him to be an offender, and has made a very great progress in sin before he comes to execute and declare it by visible practices. But yet the man is a vile person, a stranger to virtue and goodness, as well when he is concealed, as when the light shews him to a public detestation. The swine is as filthy when he lies close in his stye, as when he comes forth and shakes his nastiness in the street. Let this therefore be the first previous consideration, that virtue and vice chiefly respect the inward, invisible behaviours of the soul. 2. The second consideration is this; that the principle of honour or glory governs a man's actions entirely by the judgment and opinion of the world concerning them. The grand proposals, that a man acted by this principle makes to himself upon every undertaking, and which either licenses or rescinds his designed action, is, What will the world say of me, if I do thus or thus? He never says, Is it pious, or generous, or suitable to a rational soul? or is it contrary to all these, and unbecoming the strictness of the religion I profess, and the ingenuity of being really what I am thought to be? Is it such an action as would blush in the dark, and needs not the sun and the day to discover its deformity? No, these are none of the questions or the demurs, that such an one troubles himself withal; if the action be safe and secret, let it be dirty, and ill-favoured. All actions, he thinks, are the same, and are discriminated with these different appellations, by custom, by received prejudices, and common opinion. And if he can but secure himself as to these, he may enjoy the reputation of virtue, while he reaps the sweetness of his vice. Now these two considerations premised, I affirm that the principle of honour is utterly insufficient to engage and argue men into the practice of virtue, in these following cases: 1. When by ill customs and perverse discourses a vice comes to have a reputation, or at least no disreputation in the judgment of a nation and that this so falls out sometimes is evident. Some nations have allowed of simple fornication; some have so far perverted that which we call nature, as to count it lawful, nay laudable, for a son to have his own mother in marriage, as Quintus Curtius reports of some of the Persians. The Lacedemonians would commend and reward their children when they could thieve and rob dexterously. Many have counted self-murder in many cases an heroic action, and becoming a man of courage and philosophy. For a son to defraud his parents, and to give that which he purloined from them, or at least withheld from them in their indigence and necessity, to holy uses, was, in the judgment of our Saviour, a great sin, and a perversion of the divine law; yet the pharisees from Moses's chair authorized it, as hugely suitable to that law, and an action of sublime devotion. Now that the forementioned practices were highly unlawful, and inconsistent with piety and virtue, is most certain; yet passing current in the world by public warrant, and the countenance of general use, I demand upon what rational ground any man, acted by a bare principle of honour, could be kept from them, if either his inclination or convenience prompted him to them? That which he was only a slave to, the opinion and vogue of the world, that could not withhold him, for that would own and credit him in the practice; and any other restraint upon him besides this we suppose to be none. But now, God would have made but very short provisions to engage men in duty, if he had not bound it upon them by such a principle, as should universally be able to oblige them in all cases, and in all circumstances of condition, in which it concerned them to be virtuous, and to abhor and shun the contrary vices. But it is clear, that a man's tenderness of his honour cannot be that principle; for that looks only upon what is allowed and countenanced: but sin is sin, and consequently damnable, whether custom revenges it with a gibbet, or adorns it with a garland. And the divine tribunal will punish an incestuous person, a pilfering Lacedemonian, a self-murdering Roman or Athenian, and an undutiful Jew, as much as it would a person guilty of these crimes in any of those nations, where they are cried down, detested, and revenged by the hand of public justice; did not the infamy of such actions in those places by accident state the guilt of the persons that committed them under a higher aggravation. And this, in my judgment, may be one reason amongst others, why God is so severely angry at national sins; or such sins as have at least an influence upon the manners of a nation, though committed by a few persons, namely, that by this means there is a reputation given to sin, and the shame that God has annexed to it in a great measure took from it for nothing is shameful that is fashionable. And when a thing comes to be practised by all, or by such as are eminent, public, and leading persous, it gains credit, and easily passes into a fashion. But now by this, one of the great instruments by which Providence governs the societies of men, and controls the course of sin, is made utterly frustrate to this purpose. This instrument is the shame that attends upon base and wicked actions; a great curb to the fury of some men's inclinations, and consequently a great mound and bank against that torrent of villainy, that would otherwise break in upon society; for the better understanding of which, we must observe, that as God, in the great work of governing the world, has several purposes upon several men, so he effects those purposes by several he governs, not by any supernatural change wrought upon them, but by the principles of natural affections, as fear, shame, and the like; which shall suit them to society, by restraining their extravagant and furious appetites within bounds and measures. And of all these principles, there is none such a bridle in the jaws of an unregenerate person, as the dread of shame upon the commission of things unlawful and indecent. But now, if custom and countenance takes off the shame, and paints the Jezebel, and gives a gloss and a reputation to a vile action, why this cord is snapt asunder; and the principle of honour can be no argument to keep a man from a creditable villainy and a splendid sin. If to have been a rebel is no shame, provided a man be rich, potent, or factious; and to have been loyal is no honour; but to be poor, though loyalty were the cause of it, is a great dishonour; I would fain know, what principles of honour could engage a man to draw his sword in his prince's defence, or tie his hands when it lies fair for his advantage to rebel. Nothing but conscience and a sense of duty can have any obliging influence upon him in this case; for all arguments from credit or reputation dissolve, and break, and vanish into air. Now certainly the thought of this should add caution to the behaviour of persons of eminence, and such as sit at the top of affairs, and attract the eyes of a nation: for their practice of any sin leaves a colour, and imprints a kind of an authority upon it; so that the shame of it comes at length to be took away, and with that the strongest dissuasive that averts the natural ingenuity of man from vile and enormous practices. And this is the first case in which a principle of honour, without the aid of religion, is insufficient to engage men in the practice of virtue, namely, when the contrary vice comes, in the general judgment of a people, to lose its infamy aud disrepute. 2. Another case, in which the same principle is insufficient for the same purpose, is, when a man can pursue his vice secretly and indiscernibly; and that he may do two ways: (1.) When he entertains it in his thoughts, affections, and desires. These are the cabinet councils of the soul; and it is certain that God does not take his estimate of a man from any thing so much as from the regular or irregular behaviour of these: for as a man thinks or desires in his heart, such indeed he is; for then most truly, because most incontrollably, he acts himself. But now, if a man shall take a pleasure to gratify and cherish a corrupt humour by the services of fancy, and desire, and imagination representing to it suitable sinful objects; why he knows himself out of the reach, and con |