less it is that they can do, when they grow confident upon any present state of things. There is no one enjoyment that a man pleases himself in, but is liable to be lost by ten thousand accidents, wholly out of all mortal power either to foresee or to prevent. Reason allows none to be confident, but Him only who governs the world, who knows all things, and can do all things, and therefore can neither be surprised nor overpowered. 2. The other extreme, which these considerations should arm the heart of man against, is, utter despondency of mind in a time of pressing adversity. As he who presumes, steps into the throne of God, so he that despairs limits an infinite power to a finite apprehension, and measures Providence by his own little, contracted model. But the contrivances of Heaven are as much above our politics as beyond our arithmetic. Of those many millions of casualties which we are not aware of, there is hardly one but God can make an instrument of our deliverance. And most men, who are at length delivered from any great distress indeed, find that they are so by ways that they never thought of; ways above or beside their imagination. And therefore let no man, who owns the belief of a providence, grow desperate or forlorn under any calamity or strait whatsoever; but compose the anguish of his thoughts, and rest his amazed spirits upon this one consideration, that he knows not which way the lot may fall, or what may happen to him; he comprehends not those strange unaccountable methods by which Providence may dispose of him. In a word. To sum up all the foregoing discourse: since the interest of governments and nations, of princes and private persons, and that both as to life and health, reputation and honor, friendships and enmities, employments and preferments, (notwithstanding all the contrivance and power that human nature can exert about them,) remain so wholly contingent as to us; surely all the reason of mankind can not suggest any solid ground of satisfaction, but in making that God our friend who is the sole and absolute disposer of all these things and in carrying a conscience so clear towards : : him as may encourage us with confidence to cast ourselves upon him and in all casualties still to promise ourselves the best events from his providence, to whom nothing is casual : who constantly wills the truest happiness to those that trust in him, and works all things according to the counsel of that blessed will. To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen. SERMON IX. A SERMON PREACHED AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY, APRIL 30, 1676. 1 COR. iii. 19. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. THE HE wisdom of the world, so called by an Hebraism, frequent in the writings of this apostle, for worldly wisdom, is taken in scripture in a double sense. 1. For that sort of wisdom that consists in speculation, called (both by St. Paul and the professors of it) philosophy; the great idol of the learned part of the heathen world, and which divided it into so many sects and denominations, as Stoics, Peripatetics, Epicureans, and the like; it was professed and owned by them for the grand rule of life, and certain guide to man's chief happiness. But for its utter insufficiency to make good so high an undertaking, we find it termed by the same apostle, Col. ii. 8, vain philosophy; and 1 Tim. vi. 20, science falsely so called; and a full account of its uselessness we have in this, 1 Cor. i. 21, where the apostle, speaking of it, says, that the world by wisdom knew not God. Such a worthy kind of wisdom is it: only making men accurately and laboriously ignorant of what they were most concerned to know. 2. The wisdom of this world is sometimes taken in scripture for such a wisdom as lies in practice, and goes commonly by the name of policy; and consists in a certain dexterity or art of managing business for a man's secular advantage: and so being indeed that ruling engine that governs the world, it both claims and finds as great a preeminence above all other kinds of knowledge, as government is above contemplation, or the leading of an army above the making of syllogisms, or managing the little issues of a dispute. And so much is the very name and reputation of it affected and valued by most men, that they can much rather brook their being reputed knaves, than for their honesty be accounted fools; as they easily may: knave, in the mean time, passing for a name of credit, where it is only another word for politician. Now this is the wisdom here intended in the text; namely, that practical cunning that shows itself in political matters, and has in it really the mystery of a trade, or craft. So that in this latter part of verse 19. God is said to take the wise in their own craftiness. In short, it is a kind of trick or sleight, got not by study, but converse, learned not from books, but men; and those also, for the most part, the very worst of men of all sorts, ways, and professions. So that if it be in truth such a precious jewel as the world takes it for, yet, as precious as it is, we see that they are forced to rake it out of dunghills; and accordingly the apostle gives it a value suitable to its extract, branding it with the most degrading and ignominious imputation of foolishness. Which character running so cross to the general sense and vogue of mankind concerning it, who are still admiring, and even adoring it, as the mistress and queen-regent of all other arts whatsoever, our business, in the following discourse, shall be to inquire into the reason of the apostle's passing so severe a remark upon it: and here, indeed, since we must allow it for an art, and since every art is properly an habitual knowledge of certain rules and maxims, by which a man is governed and directed in his actions, the prosecution of the words will most naturally lie in these two things: I. To show what are those rules or principles of action, upon which the policy or wisdom here condemned by the apostle does proceed. II. To show and demonstrate the folly and absurdity of them, in relation to God, in whose account they receive a very different estimate from what they have in the world's. And first, for the first of these; I shall set down four several rules or principles, which that policy or wisdom, which carries so great a vogue and value in the world, governs its actions by. 1. The first is, That a man must maintain a constant continued course of dissimulation, in the whole tenor of his behavior. Where yet, we must observe, that dissimulation admits of a twofold acception. (1.) It may be taken for a bare concealment of one's mind: in which sense we commonly say, that it is prudence to dissemble injuries, that is, not always to declare our resentments of them; and this must be allowed not only lawful, but, in most of the affairs of human life, absolutely necessary: for certainly it can be no man's duty to write his heart upon his forehead, and to give all the inquisitive and malicious world round about him a survey of those thoughts which it is the prerogative of God only to know, and his own great interest to conceal. Naturé gives every one a right to defend himself, and silence surely is a very innocent defence. (2.) Dissimulation is taken for a man's positive professing himself to be what indeed he is not, and what he resolves not to be; and consequently it employs all the art and industry imaginable, to make good the disguise; and by false appearances to render its designs the less visible, that so they may prove the more effectual: and this is the dissimulation here meant, which is the very groundwork of all worldly policy. The superstructure of which being folly, it is but reason that the foundation of it should be falsity. In the language of the scripture it is damnable hypocrisy ; but of those who neither believe scripture nor damnation, it is voted wisdom; nay, the very primum mobile, or great wheel, upon which all the various arts of policy move and turn: the soul, or spirit, which, as it were, animates and runs through all the particular designs and contrivances by which the great masters of this mysterious wisdom turn about the world. So that he who hates his neighbor mortally, and wisely too, must profess all the dearness and friendship, all the readiness to serve him, (as the phrase now is,) that words and superficial actions can express. When he purposes one thing, he must swear and lie, and damn himself with ten thousand protestations, that he designs the clean contrary. If he really intends to ruin and murder |