therefore you are not to feed your flocks with such herbs whose virtue you know not, of whose wholesomeness or powers of nourishing you are wholly, or for the most part, ignorant. We have seen and felt the mischief, and sometimes derided the absurdity. "God created the sun and the moon," said Moses; that is, said the extravagants of pope Boniface VIII, the pope and the emperor.' And “Behold here are two swords," said St Peter: "It is enough," said Christ; enough for St Peter; and so he got the two swords, the temporal and spiritual, said the gloss upon that text. Of these things there is no beginning and no end, no certain principles, and no good conclusion.

These are the two ways of expounding all Scriptures; these are as "the two witnesses of God;" by the first of which he does most commonly, and by the latter of which he does sometimes, declare his meaning; and in the discovery of these meanings, the measures which I have now given you are the general land-marks, and are sufficient to guide us from destructive errors.

:

PREPARATION FOR DEATH.

GOD is our God when we die, if we be his servants while we live; and to be our God signifies very much good to us. He will rescue us from the powers of hell; the devil shall have no part or portion in us; we shall be kept in safe custody, we shall be in the hands of Christ, out of which all the powers of hell shall never snatch us; and therefore we may die with confidence, if we die with a good conscience; we have no cause of fear, if we have just grounds to hope for pardon. The Turks have a saying, that the Christians do not believe themselves, when they talk such glorious things of heaven and the state of separation; for if they did, they would not be so afraid to die but they do not so well consider that Christians believe all this well enough, but they believe better than they live; and therefore they believe and tremble, because they do not live after the rate of going to heaven; they know that for good men glorious things are prepared; but Tophet is prepared for evil kings,' and unjust rulers, for vicious men and degenerate Christians; there is a hell for accursed souls, and men live without fear of it so long, till their fear as soon as it begins in an instant passes into despair and the fearful groans of the damned. It is no wonder to see men so unwilling to die, to be impatient of the thought of death, to be afraid to make their will, to converse with the solemn scarecrow. He that is fit to die, must have long dwelt with it, must handle it on all sides, must feel whether the sting be taken out: he must examine whether he be in Christ ;* that is, whether he be a new creature.' And indeed I do not so much wonder that any man fears to die, as when I see a careless and a wicked person descend to his grave with as much indifference as he goes to sleep; that is, with no other trouble than that he leaves the world, but he does not fear to die; and yet, upon the instant of his dissolution, he goes into the common receptacle of souls, where nothing can be addressed to him but the consequence of what he brings along with him, and he shall presently know whether he shall be saved or damned.

We have read of some men, who by reading or hearing strange opinions have entered into desperate melancholy, and divers who have perfectly despaired of the Divine mercy; who feeling such horrid convulsions in their souls, such fearful expectations of an eternal curse, that not anding themselves able to bear so intolerable a fear, have hanged or drowned themselves; and yet they only thought so, or feared it; and might have altered it if they would have hoped and prayed: but let it be considered, when the soul is stripped of the cloud, her body; when she is entered into strange regions, and converses only with spirits, and sees plainly all that is within her; when all her sins appear in their own natural ugliness, and set out by their aggravating circumstances; when she remembers her filthy pleasures, and hates them infinitely, as being such things to which she then can have no appetite; when she perceives she shall perish for that which is not, for that whose remembrance is intolerable; when she sees many new secrets which she understood not before, and hath stranger apprehensions of the wrath of God, than ever could be represented in this life; when she hath the notices of a spirit, and an understanding pure enough to see essences, and rightly to weigh all the degrees of things; when possibly, she is often affrighted with the alarms and conjectures of the day of judgment; or if she be not, yet certainly knows not only by faith and fear, but by a clear light and proper knowledge, that it shall certainly come, and its effects shall remain for ever, then she hath time enough to bewail her own folly and remediless infelicity; if we could now think seriously, that things must come to that pass, and place ourselves, by holy meditation, in the circumstances of that condition, and consider what we should then think,-how miserably deplore our folly, how comfortless remember our ill-gotten wealth; with how much asperity and deep sighing we should call to mind our foolish pride, our trifling swearing, our beastly drinkings, our unreasonable and brutish lusts; it could not be but we must grow wiser on a sudden, despise the world, betake ourselves to a strict religion, reject all vanities of spirit, and be sober and watch unto prayer. If any of us had but a strange dream, and should, in the fears of the night, but suppose ourselves in hell, and be affrighted with those circumstances of damnation which we can tell of, and use in our imperfect notices of things, it would effect strange changes upon a ductile and malleable spirit. A frequent, severe meditation can do more than a seldom and a fantastic dream; but an active faith can do more than all the arts and contingencies of fancy or discourse.

Now it is well with us, and we may yet secure it shall be well with us for ever; but within an hour it may be otherwise with any of us all, who do not instantly take courses of security. But he that does not, would, "in such a change, soon come to wish, that he might exchange his state with the meanest, with the miserablest of all mankind; with galley-slaves and miners, with men condemned to tortures for a good conscience.

In the day of felling timber, the shrub and the bramble are better than the tallest fir, or the goodliest cedar; and a poor saint, whose soul is in the hand of Jesus, placed under the altar, over which our high priest, like the cherubim over the propitiatory, intercedes perpetually for the hastening of his glory, is better than the greatest tyrant, who, if he dies, is undone for ever. For, in the interval, there shall be rest and comfort to the one; and torment, and amazement, and hellish confusion to the other; and the day of judgment will come, and it shall appear to all the world, that

they whose joys were not in this world, were not, of all men, most miserable,' because their joys and their life were hid with Christ in God, and at the resurrection of the just, shall be brought forth, and be illustrious, beyond all the beauties of the world.

THE MORAL LAW AS EXPOUNDED BY NATURE, BY MOSES, AND BY CHRIST.

BEING THE PREFACE to the HISTORY OF THE HOLY JESUS.

CHRISTIAN religion hath so many exterior advantages to its reputation and advancement, from the Author and from the Ministers, from the fountain of its origination and the channels of conveyance, (God being the Author, the Word Incarnate being the great Doctor and Preacher of it, his life and death being its consignation, the Holy Spirit being the great argument and demonstration of it, and the Apostles the organs and conduits of its dissemination,) that it were glorious beyond all opposition and disparagement, though we should not consider the excellency of its matter, and the certainty of its probation, and the efficacy of its power, and the perfection and rare accomplishment of its design. But I consider that Christianity is therefore very little understood, because it is reproached upon that pretence, which its very being and design does infinitely confute. It is esteemed to be a religion contrary in its principles or in its precepts to that wisdom, whereby the world is governed, and commonwealths increase, and greatness is acquired, and kings go to war, and our ends of interest are served and promoted; and that it is an institution so wholly in order to another world, that it does not at all communicate with this, neither in its end nor in its discourses, neither in the policy nor in the philosophy; and therefore, as the doctrine of the cross was entertained at first in scorn by the Greeks, in offence and indignation by the Jews, so is the whole system and collective body of Christian philosophy esteemed imprudent by the politics of the world, and flat and irrational by some men of excellent wit and sublime discourse; who, because the permissions and dictates of natural, true, and essential reason, are, at no hand, to be contradicted by any superinduced discipline, think that whatsoever seems contrary to their reason is also violent to our nature, and offers indeed a good to us, but by ways unnatural and unreasonable. And I think they are very great strangers to the present affairs and persuasions of the world, who know not that Christianity is very much undervalued upon this principle, men insensibly becoming unchristian, because they are persuaded, that much of the greatness of the world is contradicted by the religion. But certainly no mistake can be greater: for the holy Jesus by his doctrine did instruct the understandings of men, made their appetites more obedient, their reason better principled, and argumentative with less deception, their wills apter for noble choices, their governments more prudent, their present felicities greater, their hopes more excellent, and that duration, which was intended to them by their Creator, he made manifest to be a state of glory; and all this was to be done and obtained

respectively by the ways of reason and nature, such as God gave to man then, when at first he designed him to a noble and an immortal condition; the Christian law being for the substance of it, nothing but the restitution and perfection of the law of nature. And this I shall represent in all the parts of its natural progression; and I intend it not only as a preface to the following books, but for an introduction and invitation to the whole religion.

2. For God, when he made the first emanations of his eternal being, and created man as the end of all his productions here below, designed him to an end such as himself was pleased to choose for him, and gave him abilities proportionable to attain that end. God gave man a reasonable and an intelligent nature; and to this noble nature he designed as noble an end; he intended man should live well and happily, in proportion to his appetites, and in the reasonable doing and enjoying those good things, which God made him naturally to desire. For, since God gave him proper and peculiar appetites with proportion to their own objects, and gave him reason and abilities not only to perceive the sapidness and relish of those objects, but also to make reflex acts upon such perceptions, and to perceive that he did perceive, which was a rare instrument of pleasure and pain respectively; it is but reasonable to think, that God who created him in mercy, did not only proportion a being to his nature, but did also provide satisfaction for all those appetites and desires, which himself had created and put into him. For, if he had not, then the being of a man had been nothing but a state of perpetual affliction, and the creation of men had been the greatest unmercifulness in the world; disproportionate objects being mere instances of affliction, and those unsatisfied appetites nothing else but instruments of torment.

3. Therefore, that this intendment of God and nature should be effected, that is, that man should become happy, it is naturally necessary that all his regular appetites should have an object appointed them, in the fruition of which felicity must consist: because nothing is felicity but when what was reasonably or orderly desired is possessed; for the having what is not desired, or the wanting of what we desired, or the desiring what we should not, are the several constituent parts of infelicity; and it can have no other constitution.

4. Now the first appetite man had in order to his great end was, to be as perfect as he could, that is, to be as like the best thing he knew as his nature and condition would permit. And although by Adam's fancy and affection to his wife, and by God's appointing fruit for him, we see the lower appetites were first provided for; yet the first appetite which man had, as he distinguishes from lower creatures, was to be like God, (for by that the devil tempted him ;) and in order to that he had naturally sufficient instruments and abilities. For although by being abused with the devil's sophistry he chose an incompetent instrument, yet because it is naturally certain, that love is the greatest assimilation of the object and the faculty, Adam by loving God might very well approach nearer him according as he could. And it was natural to Adam to love God, who was his Father, his Creator, the fountain of all good to him, and of excellency in himself; and whatsoever is understood to be such, it is as natural for us to love, and we do it for the same reasons, for which we love any thing else; and we cannot love for any other reason, but for one or both these in their proportion apprehended.

5. But because God is not only excellent and good, but by being suprene

Lord, hath power to give us what laws he pleases, obedience to his laws therefore becomes naturally, but consequently, necessary, when God decrees them; because he does make himself an enemy to all rebels and disobedient sons, by affixing penalties to the transgressors: and therefore disobedience is naturally inconsistent, not only with love to ourselves, because it brings afflictions upon us, but with love to our supreme Lawgiver: it is contrary to the natural love we bear to God so understood, because it makes him our enemy, whom naturally and reasonably we cannot but love; and therefore also opposite to the first appetite of man, which is to be like God, in order to which we have naturally no instrument but love, and the consequents of love.

6. From this first appetite of man to be like God, and the first natural instrument of it, love, descend all the first obligations of religion; in which there are some parts more immediately and naturally expressive, others by superinduction and positive command. Natural religion I call such actions, which either are proper to the nature of the thing we worship, (such as are giving praises to him, and speaking excellent things of him, and praying to him for such things as we need, and a readiness to obey him in whatsoever he commands), or else such as are expressions proportionate to our natures that make them; that is, giving to God the best things we have, and by which we can declare our esteem of his honour and excellency; assigning some portion of our time, of our estate, the labours of our persons, the increase of our store, first fruits, sacrifices, oblations, and tithes ; which therefore God rewards, because he hath allowed to our natures no other instruments of doing him honour, but by giving to him in some manner, which we believe honourable and apt, the best thing we have.

7. The next appetite a man hath is to beget one like himself, God having implanted that appetite into man for the propagation of mankind, and given it as his first blessing and permission: "It is not good for man to be alone;" and "Increase and multiply." He gave to man a woman for a wife, for the companion of his sorrows, for the instrument of multiplication; and yet provided him but of one, and intimated he should have no more: which we do not only know by an after revelation, the holy Jesus having declared it to have been God's purpose; but Adam himself understood it, as appears by his first discourses at the entertainment of his new bride. And although there were permissions afterward of polygamy, yet there might have been a greater pretence of necessity at first, because of enlarging and multiplying fountains rather than channels; and three or four at first would have enlarged mankind by greater proportion than many more afterwards; little distances near the centre make greater and larger figures, than when they part near the fringes of the circle; and therefore those after permissions were to avoid a greater evil, not a hallowing of the license, but a reproach of their infirmity. And certainly the multiplication of wives is contrariant to that design of love and endearment, which God intended at first between man and wife.

And amongst them that have many wives, the relation and necessitude is trifling and loose, and they are all equally contemptible; because the mind entertains no loves or union where the object is multiplied, and the act unfixed and distracted. So that this having a great commodity in order to man's great end, that is, of living well and happily, seems to be intended by God in the nature of things and instruments natural and reasonable towards man's