EXTRACTS FROM THE WORKS OF MR. JOHN SMITH,

Some time Fellow of Queen's College in Cambridge.

WITH

A Sermon preaches at his funeral,

IN AUGUST, 1652.

TO THE READER.

THE author of these discourses was one whom I knew for many years, not only when he was Fellow of Queen's College,. but when a student in Emmanuel College, where his early piety and the remembering his Creator in those days of his youth, as also his excellent improvements in the choicest parts of learning, endeared him to many, particularly to his careful tutor, then Fellow of Emmanuel College, afterwards Provost of King's College, Dr. Whichcote; to whom for his directions and encouragements of him in his studies, his seasonable provision for his support when he was a young scholar, as also upon other considerations, our author did ever express a great and singular regard.

But besides I considered him, (which was more) as a true servant and friend of God: and to such a one, and what relates to such, I thought that I owed no less care and diligence. The former title (a servant of God) is very often in Scripture given to that incomparable person, Moses: incomparable for his philosophical accomplishments and knowledge of nature, as also for his political wisdom, and great abilities in the conduct of affairs; and in speaking excellent sense, strong and clear reason in any case that was before him; for” he was mighty in words and deeds,” Acts 8: (and of both these kinds of knowledge wherein Moses excelled, as also in the more mysterious knowledge of the Egyptians, there are several instances and proofs in the Pentateuch:) incomparable as well for the loveliness of his disposition, the inward ornament and beauty of a meek and humble spirit, as for the extraordinary amiableness of his outward person; and incomparable for his unexampled self-denial in the midst of the greatest allurements of this world. And from all these great accomplishments in Moses, it appears how excellently he was qualified and enabled to answer that title, a The servant of God,” more frequently given to him in Scripture than unto any other.

The other title (a friend of God) is given to Abraham, the father of the faithful, an eminent exemplar of self resignation and obedience even in trials of the greatest difficulty. And it is given to him thrice in Scripture, 2 Chron. 20: 7, Isa. xli. 8, James 2: 23, and plainly imphed in Gen. 18: 17,” Shall I hide from Abraham,” &c. but expressed in the Jerusalem Targum there. Nor is less insinuated concerning Moses, with whom God is said to have spoken, face to face, as a man speaks unto his friend.

And how properly both these titles were verified concerning our author, who was a faithful, hearty, and industrious servant of God, counting it his duty and dignity, his meat and drink, ’ to do the will of his Master in heaven, from his very soul, and with good-will, (the characters of a good servant,) and who was dearly affected towards God, and treated by God as a friend; may appear from that account of him in the sermon at his funeral. I might easily fill much paper, if I should particularly recount those many excellencies that shined forth in him: but I would study to be short. I might truly say, that he was both a righteous and a truly honest man, and also a good man. He was a follower and imitator of God in purity and holiness, in benignity, goodness, and love, a love enlarged as God's love is, whose goodness overflows to all, and his” tender mercies are over all his works.” He was a lover of our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, a lover of his Spirit and of his life, a lover of his excellent laws and rules of holy living, a serious practiser of his sermon on the mount, that best sermon that ever was preached, and yet none more generally neglected by those that call themselves Christians; though the observance of it be for the true interest both of men's souls and of Christian states and commonwealths; and accordingly, (as being the surest way to their true establishment,) it is compared to the” building upon a rock,” Matt. 8: 24. To be short, he was a Christian; not almost, but altogether; a Christian inwardly, and in good earnest: religious he was, but without any ostentation; not so much a talking or a disputing, puting, as a living, a doing, and an obeying Christian; one inwardly acquainted with the simplicity and power of godliness, but no admirer of the pharisaic forms, (though never so goodly and specious,) which do no affect the adult and strong Christians, though they may and do those that are unskillful and weak. For in this weak and low state of the divided churches in Christendom, weak and slight things (especially if they make a fair skew in the flesh, as the apostle speaks) are most esteemed; whereas in the mean time the weightier matters of the law, the most substantial parts of religion are passed over and disregarded by them, as being grievous to them, and no way for their turns, no way for their corrupt interests, worldly ease, and worldly advantages. But God's thoughts are not as their thoughts:” The circumcision which is of the heart, and in the spirit,” is that” whose praise is of God,” though not of men; and” that which is highly esteemed amongst men, is an abomination in the sight of God.”

What I shall further observe concerning the author, is only this, that he was eminent as well in those perfections which have most of Divine worth and excellency in them, and rendered him a truly God-like man, as in those other accomplishments of the mind, which rendered him a very rational and learned man: and withal, in the midst of all these great accomplishments, as eminent and exemplary in unaffected humility. And herein he was like Moses, that servant and friend of God, who was most” meek and lowly in heart,” (as our Lord is also said to have been, be, Matt. 11: in this, as in all other respects, greater than Moses,)” above all the men which were upon the •face of the earth,” Num. 12: 3. And thus he excelled others as much in humility as he did in knowledge, in that thing which, though in a lesser degree in others, is apt to swell them with pride and self-conceit. But Moses was humble, though he was a person of brave parts; and, having had the advantages of a most ingenuous education, was admirably accomplished in the choicest parts of knowledge, and” learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians;” whereby some of the. ancients understood the mysterious hieroglyphically learning, natural philosophy, music, physic, and mathematics. And for this last, (to omit the rest) how excellent this humble man, the author, was therein, did appear to those who had the pleasure of hearing him read the mathematical lectures in the schools for some years. To conclude, he was a plain-hearted both friend and Christian, one in whose spirit and mouth there was no guile; a profitable companion; nothing of vanity and triflingness in him, as there was nothing of sourness and stoicism. I can very well remember, when I have had private converse with him, how pertinently and freely he would speak to any matter proposed, how weighty, substantial, and clearly expressive of his sense his private discourses would be, and both for matter and language much of the same importance and value with such exercises as he studied for, and performed in public.

I have intimated some things concerning the author; much more might be added, but it needs not, there being already drawn a fair and lively character of him by a worthy friend, in the sermon preached at his funeral; wherein, if some part of the character should seem to have in it any thing of hyperbolism and strangeness, it must seem so to such only who either were unacquainted with him, and strangers to his worth, or else find it an hard thing not to be envious, and a difficulty to be humble. But those that had a more inward converse with him,-knew him to be one of those” of whom the world was not worthy,” one of”the excellent ones in the earth;” a person truly exemplary in the temper and constitution of his spirit, and in the well-ordered course

of his life; a life “*”, (as I remember Seneca expresses it somewhere in his epistles,) ”all of one color, every where like itself;” and eminent in those things that are worthy of praise and imitation. And certainly a just representation of those excellencies that shined in him, (as also a faithful celebration of the like accomplishments in others,) is doing honor to God, who is wonderful in his saints; and it may be also of great use to others, particularly for the awakening and obliging them to an earnest endeavoring after those heights and eminent degrees in grace and virtue, which by such examples they see to be attainable, through the assistances which the Divine goodness is ready to afford those souls which” press towards the mark, and reach forth to those things that are before.” The lives and examples of men eminently holy and useful in their generation, are ever to be valued by us as great blessings from heaven, and to be’ considered as excellent helps to the advancement of religion in the world: and therefore there being before us these *, (as St. Basil speaks,) *,” living pictures, moving and active statues,” fair ideas and lively patterns of what is most lovely and excellent; it should be our serious care that we be riot, through an unworthy and lazy self-neglect, “Ingentium exemplorum parvi imitatores,” to use Salvian's expression; it should be our holy ambition to transcribe their virtues and excellencies, to make their noblest and best accomplishments our own, by a constant endeavor after the greatest resemblance of them, and by being” followers of them as they were also of Christ,” who is the fair and bright exemplar of all purity and holiness, the highest and most absolute pattern of whatsoever is lovely and excellent, and makes most for the accomplishing and perfecting of human nature.

Having observed these things concerning the author of these discourses,, I proceed now to observe something concerning the several discourses in this volume. And indeed some of these observations I ought not in justice to the author to omit: and all of them may be for the benefit of at least some readers.

The first discourse, concerning” The true Method of attaining Divine Knowledge, and an Increase therein,” was intended by the author as a necessary introduction to the ensuing treatises, and therefore is the shorter; yet it contains excellent sense, and solid matter, well beaten and compacted, and lying close together in a little room, many very seasonable observations for this age, wherein there is so much of fruitless notion, so little of the true Christian life and practice.

Shorter yet are the two next tracts of Superstition and Atheism, which were also intended by the author to prepare the way for some of the following discourses.

Yet as for the tract of superstition, some things that are briefly intimated by the author therein, may receive a further explication from his other discourses, more especially from the eighth, viz. ”Of the Shortness and Vanity of a Pharisaic Righteousness; or, an Account of the false Grounds upon which men are apt vainly to conceit themselves to be religious.” And indeed what the author writes concerning” that more refined, that more close and subtle superstition,” he would frequently speak of, and that with authority and power. For being possessed of the inward life and power of true holiness, he had a very strong and clear sense of what he spoke, and therefore a great and just indignation (as against open and gross irreligion, so also) against that vain-glorious, slight, and empty sanctity of the spiritual Pharisees, who would (as our Savior speaks of the old Pharisees, Mark 8:)” make void the commandments of God, the weightier things of religion, the indispensable concernments of Christianity; while, instead of an inward living righteousness and an entire obedience, they would substitute some external observances, and a mere outward, lifeless, and slight righteousness; and in the room of ”the new creature,” made” after God, set up some creature of their own, made after their own image, a self-framed righteousness, not worthy to be named with those instances of” the power of godliness,” hearty and universal obedience, entire self-resignation, a being crucified to the world, plucking out of the right eye, and cutting off of the right hand; mortification of the more dear and beloved sins, and the closer tendencies and inclinations to sin and vanity.

“Be not deceived, God is not mocked:” God will not be put off with empty pretence arid pharisaic appearances, (how glorious and precious soever in the eyes of men.) God will not be flattered with goodly praises, nor satisfied with words and notions, when the life arid practice is a real contradiction to them. God will not be satisfied with a specious”form of godliness,” when men under this form are ”lovers of themselves, covetous, proud, high-minded, fierce, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God,” and are manifestly under the power of these and the like spiritual (if not also fleshly,) wickednesses. For the power of sin within can (it seems) easily agree and consist with ”the form of godliness without.” But two such contrary powers as the power of godliness and the power of sin, two such contrary kingdoms as the kingdom of the Spirit and the kingdom of the flesh, which is made up of many petty and lesser principalities of various lusts and pleasures, warring sometimes amongst themselves, but always confederate in warring against the soul; these cannot stand together, nor be established in one soul.

If what the author, of great charity to the souls of men, has observed concerning these things were seriously considered, Christianity would then recover its reputation, and appear in its own primitive luster and native loveliness; such as shined forth in the lives of those first and best Christians, who were Christians in good earnest, and were distinguished from all other men in excelling and outshining them in whatever things were” true, venerable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report.” Then would the true power of godliness manifest itself; which signifies infinitely more than a power to dispute with heat and vehemence about some opinions, or to discourse volubly about some matters in religion, and in such forms of words as are taking with the weak and unskillful more than a power to pray without a form of words; (for this may be done by the formal and unspiritual Christian: more than a power to deny themselves in some things that are easy to be parted with, and do not much cross their inclinations, their self-will, nor prejudice their dear and most beloved lusts and pleasures, their profitable and advantageous sins: and more than a power to observe some lesser and easier commands, or to perform an outward obedience, void of inward life and love, and a complacency in the law of God, (of which temper our author discourses at large.)

But I must not forget that there remains something to be observed concerning some other treatises. And having been so large in the last observation, I shall be shorter in the rest. And now to proceed to the next, which is of atheism. This discourse (being but preparatory to the ensuing tracts, is short; yet I would remind the reader, that what is more briefly handled here, may be supplied out of the fifth discourse, viz. “Of the Existence and Nature of God,” of which (if the former part seem more speculative, yet) the latter containing several “Deductions and Inferences from the Consideration of the Divine Nature and Attributes,” is less obscure and more practical, as it clearly directs us to the best (through not much observed,) way of glorifying God, and being made happy and blessed by a participation and resemblance of him; and as it plainly directs a man to such apprehensions of God as are apt and powerful to beget in him the noblest and dearest love to God, the sweetest delight, and the most peaceful confidence in him.

I pass on to the Discourse on Prophecy. This elaborate treatise is of a more speculative nature than any of the rest; yet it is also useful, and contains sundry observations not only of light and knowledge, but also of use and practice. For besides that in this treatise several passages of “Scripture are illustrated out of Jewish monuments, there are two chapters, (to name no more,) viz. 1: and 4: (the longest in this treatise,) which more particularly relate to practice, and might be (if well considered,) available to the bettering of some men's manners.

The discourse of the legal and the evangelical Righteousness is as much practical as the former was speculative. Nor was the composure of that treatise more painful to the author than the elaborating of this, at least the former half of this, wherein the author has traversed loca nullius ante tr ita solo, the more unknown records and monuments of Jewish authors, for the better stating the Jewish notion of the righteousness of the law; the clearing of which in chap. 2: and 5: as also the settling the difference between that “righteousness which is of the law,” and that “which is of faith,” between “the old and the new covenant,” and the account of the nature of justification and Divine acceptance, are all of them of no small use and consequence.

Of the eighth discourse, showing the Vanity of a Pharisaic Righteousness, I have spoken before.

The next, largely treating of the “Excellency and Noble ness of true Religion and Holiness,” shows the author's mind to have been not slightly tinctured and washed over with religion, but rather to have been double-dyed, thoroughly embued and colored with that “generogum honestum, as the satyrist styles it, incoctunt generosos pectus honesto.” But the author's life and actions spake no less; and indeed there is no language so fully expressive of a man as the language of his deeds. Those that were thoroughly acquainted with him, knew well that there was in him (as was said of Solomon,) a largeness and vastness of heart and understanding, so there was also in him” a free, ingenuous, noble spirit,” most abhorrent of what was sordid and unworthy; and this is the genuine product of religion in that soul where it is suffered to rule, and (as St. James speaks of patience,) u to have its perfect work.” The style in this tract may seem more sublime than in the other, (which might be perhaps from the nature of the subject, apt to heighten expressions;) but yet in this (as in the other tracts,) it is free from the vanity of affectation, which a mind truly ennobled by religion cannot stoop to.

But if in this tract the style seem more magnificent, yet in the last discourse, (viz. “Of a Christian's Conflicts and Conquests,”) it is most familiar. The matter of it is very useful and practical. For as it more fully and clearly acquaints a Christian with the danger and unseen methods of Satan's activity, (concerning which the notions of many men are discovered here to be very short and imperfect,) so it also acquaints him with such principles as are available to beget in him the greatest courage and resolution against the day of battle, chasing away all lazy faintheartedness and despair of victory.

The other discourses were delivered (being college exercises,) in a way suitable to that auditory. And therefore it may not be thought strange, if, sometimes they seem, for matter and style, more remote from vulgar capacities. Yet even in these discourses, what is most practical is easily intelligible by every honest-hearted Christian.

It is possible that some passages in these tracts, which seem dubious, may, upon a patient considering them, if the reader be unprejudiced, and of a clear mind and heart, gain his assent; and what, upon the first reading seems obscure and less grateful, may upon another view, and further thoughts, clear up and be thought worthy of all acceptation. It is not with the fair representations and pictures of the mind as with other pictures; these of the mind show best the nearer they are viewed, and the longer the intellectual eye dwells upon them.

There is only one thing, more which I ought not to forget, That the now-published tracts are posthumous works; that it is likely, if the author himself had revised them in his life-time, with an intent to present them to public view, they would have received from his happy hand some further polishing and enlargements. But it pleased the only wise God (in whose band our breath is,) to call for him home” to the spirits of just men made perfect,” after he had lent him to this unworthy world for about five and thirty years. A short life, if we measure it by so many years; but if we consider the great ends of life, which he fulfilled in his generation, it was not to be accounted short, but long; and we may justly say of him, what is said by the author of the Book of Wisdom concerning Enoch, that great exemplar of holiness, and the shortest-lived of the patriarchs before the flood, (for he lived but 365 years, as many years as there are days in one year,)”He being consummated in a short time, fulfilled a long time.” For (as the same author doth well express it in some preceding verses,)”Honorable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that which is measured by number of years; but wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age.”

And now that this volume is finished, through the assistance of God, the Father of lights, and the Father of mercies, (whose rich goodness and grace in enabling me both” to will and to do,” and” to continue patiently in so doing,” I desire humbly' to acknowledge;) now that the several papers are brought together in this collection to their due and proper places, (as it was said of the bones scattered in the valley, that “they came together, bone to his bone,” Ezek. xxxvii.) what remains, but that “the Lord of life, who gives to all things life and breath,” be, with all earnestness, implored, that he would please to put breath into these (otherwise dry,) bones, that they” may live;- that, besides this paper-life, (which is all that man can give to these writings,) they may have a vital energy within us; that the practical truths contained in these discourses may not be unto us a” dead letter,” but” Spirit, and life;” that” He who teaches us to profit,” would prosper these papers for the attainment of all those good ends to which they are designed; that it would please the God of all grace to remove all darkness and prejudice from the mind of any reader, and whatsoever would hinder the fair reception of truth; that the reader may have an inward, practical, and feeling knowledge of the” doctrine which is according to godliness, and live a life worthy of that knowledge; is the prayer of

His servant in Christ Jesus,

JOHN WORTHINGTON.

Cambridge, Dec. 22, 1659.

A

DISCOURSE

CONCERNING

THE TRUE METHOD

OF ATTAINING

DIVINE KNOWLEDGE.

PSALM iii- 10.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments.

JOHN VU. 17.

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God.

THE TRUE METHOD OF ATTAINING DIVINE KNOWLEDGE,

SECT. 1:

That Divine things are to be understood rather by a spiritual sensation than a verbal description. Sin and wickedness prejudicial to true knowledge. That purity of heart and life, as also an ingenuous freedom of judgment, are the best preparations for the entertainment of truth.

IT has been long since observed, that every art and science has some certain principles upon which the whole must depend; and he that would fully acquaint himself with the mysteries thereof, must come furnished with some knowledge of them. Were I indeed to define Divinity, I should rather call it a Divine life, than a Divine science; it being something rather to be understood by a spiritual sensation, than by any verbal description, as all things of sense and life are best known by sentient and vital faculties; every thing is best known by that which bears a just resemblance and analogy with it and therefore the Scripture is wont to set forth a good life as the fundamental principle of Divine science;” Wisdom has built her an house, and hewn out her seven pillars: “but the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” the foundation of the whole fabric.

We shall, therefore, as a preface to what we shall discourse upon the heads of divinity, speak something of this true method of knowing, which is not so much by notions as actions; as religion itself consists not so much in words as things. They are not always the best skilled in divinity, that are the most studied in art and science. He that is most practical in Divine things, has the purest. and sincerest knowledge of them. Divinity indeed is a true efflux from the eternal light, which, like the sunbeams, does not only enlighten, but warm and enliven; and therefore our Savior has in his beatitudes connected purity of heart with the beatifical vision. And as the eye cannot behold the sun, unless it be sun-like, and has the form and resemblance of the sun drawn in it; so neither can the soul of man behold God, unless it be God-like, has God formed in it, and be made partaker of the Divine nature. The apostle Paul, when he would lay open the right way of attaining Divine truth, says,” Knowledge puffeth up, but love edifies.” The knowledge of Divinity that appears in systems and models, is but a poor wan light, but the powerful energy of Divine knowledge displays itself in purified souls. Here we shall find the true -*, as the ancient philosophy speaks, the land of truth.

To seek our divinity merely in books and writings, is” to seek the living among the dead:” we do but in vain seek God many times in these where his truth too often is not so much enshrined as entombed. No, seek for God within thine own soul. He is best discerned by an intellectual touch of him. We must” see with our eyes,, and hear

with our, ears, and our hands must handle the Word of life.” The soul itself has its sense, as well as the body; and therefore David, when he would teach us how to know what the Divine goodness is, calls not for speculation but sensation,” Taste and see how good the Lord is.” That is not the best and truest knowledge of God which is wrought out by the labor-and sweat of the brain, but that which is kindled within us by an heavenly warmth in our hearts. As in the natural body it is the heat that sends up good blood and warm spirits into the head, whereby it is best enabled to its several functions; so that which enables us to know and understand aright the things of God, must be a living principle of holiness within us. When the tree of knowledge is not planted by the tree of life, and sucks not up sap from thence, it may be as well fruitful with evil as with good, and bring forth bitter fruit as well as sweet. If we would indeed have our knowledge thrive and flourish, we must water the tender plants of it with holiness. When Zoroaster's scholars asked him what they should do to get winged souls, such as might soar aloft in the bright beams of Divine truth, he bids them have themselves” in the waters of life.” They asking what they were, he tells them, the” four cardinal virtues,” which are” the four rivers of Paradise.” It is but a thin, airy knowledge that is got by mere speculation, which is ushered in by syllogisms and demonstrations; but that which springs forth from true goodness, as Origen speaks, brings such a Divine light into the soul, as is more clear and convincing than any demonstration. The reason why, notwithstanding all our acute reasons and subtile disputes, truth prevails no more in the world, is, we so often disjoin truth and goodness, which in themselves can never be disunited; they grow both from the same root, and live in one another. We may, as in Plato's deep pit, with faces bended downwards, converse with sounds and shadows; but not with the life and substance of truth, while our souls remain defiled with any vice or lusts.

These are the black Lethe lake which drench the souls of men: he that wants true virtue in heaven's logic; cc is blind, and cannot see afar off.” Those filthy mists that arise from impure minds, like an atmosphere, perpetually encompass them, that they cannot see that sun of Divine truth that shines about them, but never shines into any unpurged souls; the darkness comprehends it not, the foolish man understands it not. All the light and knowledge that may seem to rise in unhallowed minds, is but like those flames that arise from our culinary fires, that are soon quenched in their own smoke; or like those foolish fires that do but flit to and fro upon the surface of this earth Where they were first brought forth; and serve not so much to enlighten as to defile us; nor to direct the wandering traveler into his way, but to lead him farther out of it. While we lodge any vice in us, this will be perpetually twisting itself into the thread of our finestspun speculations; it will be continually climbing up into the bed of reason; like the wanton ivy twisting itself about the oak, it will twine about our judgments and understandings, till it has sucked out the life and spirit of them. I cannot think such black oblivion would possess the minds of some as to make them question that truth which to good men shines as bright as the sun at noon day, had they not foully defiled their own souls with some hellish vice or other, how fairly soever they may dissemble it. There is a benumbing spirit, a congealing vapour that ariseth from sin and vice, that will stupify the senses of the soul. This is the deadly nightshade, that derives its cold poison into the understandings of men.

Such as men themselves are, such will God himself seem to be. It is the maxim of most wicked men, that the Deity is some way or other like themselves. Their souls do more than whisper it, though their lips speak it not; and though their tongues be silent, yet their lives cry it upon the house-tops. That idea which men generally have of God is nothing else but the picture of their own complexion: that notion of him which has the supremacy in their minds, is only such as has, been shaped out according to some pattern of themselves; though they may so cloak and disguise this idol of their own, when they expose it to the view of the world, that it may seem very beautiful, and- indeed any thing else rather than what it is. Most men (though it may be they themselves take no great notice of it) like that dissembling monk, are of a different judgment in the schools from what they are in their closets. There is a double head, as well as a double heart. Men's corrupt hearts will not suffer their conceptions of Divine things to be cast into that form that an higher reason, which may sometime work within them, would put them into. At best, while any inward lust is harbored in the minds of men, it will so weaken them, that they can never bring forth any masculine or generous knowledge. Sin and lust are always of an hungry nature, and suck up all those vital affections of men's souls which should feed and nourish their understandings.

What are all our most sublime speculations of the Deity, that are not impregnated with true godliness, but insipid things that have no taste nor life in them, that do but swell like empty froth in the souls of men They do not feed men's souls, but only puff them up and fill them with pride, arrogance, contempt, and tyranny towards those that cannot well ken their subtle curiosities: as those philosophers that Tully complains of in his times, who made their knowledge only matter of ostentation, never caring to square their lives by it. Such as these do but, spider-like, take a great deal of pains to spin a worthless web out of their own bowels, which will not keep them warm. These indeed are those silly souls that are GQ ever learning, but never come to the knowledge of the truth.” They may with Pharaoh’s lean kine, eat up and devour all tongues and sciences, and yet when they have done, still remain lean and ill-favored as they were at first. Jejune and barren speculations may be hovering and fluttering up and down about divinity, but they cannot settle or fix themselves upon it. They unfold the pictures of truth's garment, but they cannot behold the lovely face of it.

We must not think that we have attained to the right knowledge of truth, when we have broke through the outward shell of words and phrases that house it up; or when by a logical analysis we have found out the dependencies and coherencies of them one with another; or when, like stout champions of it, having well guarded it with the invincible strength of our demonstrations, we dare stand out in the face of the world, and challenge all those that would pretend to be our rivals.

We have many grave and reverend idolaters that worship truth only in the image of their own wits; that could never adore it so much as they seem to do, were it any thing else but such a form of belief as their own wandering speculations had at last met together in, were it not that they find their own image and superscription upon it.

There is a ”knowing the truth as it is in Jesus,” as it is in a Christ-like nature, as it is in that sweet, mild, humble, and loving Spirit of Jesus, which spreads itself like a morning sun upon the souls of good men, full of light and life. It profits little to know Christ himself after the flesh; but he gives his Spirit to good men, that searches the deep things of God. There is an inward beauty, life, and loveliness in Divine truth, which cannot be known but only then when it is digested into life and practice. The Greek philosopher could tell those high-soaring Gnostics, that cried out so much, “Look upon God;”

“Without virtue and real goodness God is but a name,” a dry and empty notion. The profane sort of men, like those old Greeks, may make many ruptures in the walls of God's temples, and break into the holy ground, but yet may find God no more there than they did. Divine truth is better understood, as it unfolds itself in the purity of men's hearts and lives, than in all those subtle niceties into which curious wits may lay it forth.

And therefore our Savior, who is the great Master of it, would not, while he was here on earth, draw it up into any system, nor would his disciples after him. He would not lay it out to us in any canons or articles of belief, not being indeed so careful to stock and enrich the world with opinions and notions; as with true piety, and a God-like pattern of purity, as the best way to thrive in all spiritual understanding. His main scope was to promote an holy life, as the best and most compendious way to a right belief. He hangs all true acquaintance with divinity upon the doing God's will,” If any man will do his will, be shall know the doctrine, whether it be of God.” This is that alone which will make us, as St. Peter tells us, not” barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior.”* There is an inward sweetness in Divine truth, which no sensual mind can taste. This is that natural man that Savors not the things of God. Corrupt passions and affections are apt of their own nature to disturb all serene thoughts, to darken our judgments, and warp our understandings. It was a good maxim of the old Jewish writers, the Holy Spirit dwells not in earthly passions. Divinity is not so well perceived by a subtle wit as by a purified sense.

Neither was the ancient philosophy unacquainted with this method of attaining the knowledge of Divine things and therefore Aristotle himself thought a young man unfit to meddle with morality, till the heat of his youthful affections was moderated. And it is observed of Pythagoras, that he had several ways to try the capacity of his scholars, and to prove the sedateness and moral temper of their minds, before he would entrust them with the sublimer mysteries of his philosophy. The Platonists were herein so wary and solicitous, that. they thought the minds of men could never be purged enough from those earthly dregs of sense and passion, in which they were so much steeped, before they were capable of Divine metaphysics. And therefore they so much solicited’` a separation from the body,” (as they were wont to phrase it) in all those that would sincerely understand Divine truth; for that was the scope of their philosophy. This was also intimated by them in their defining philosophy to be meditation on death; aiming herein at a moral way of dying, by loosening the soul from the body and this sensitive life; which they thought was necessary to a right contemplation of intelligible things. Besides many other ways they had, whereby to rise out of this dark body; *, as they were all wont to call them, several steps and ascents out of this miry cave of mortality, before they could set any sure footing with their intellectual part on the land of light and immortal being.

Hence we may learn not to devote or give up ourselves to any private opinions or dictates of men in matters of religion. As we should not, like rigid censurers, arraign and condemn the creeds of other men which we comply not with, before a full understanding of them, refined not only by our own reason, but by the benign influence of holy and mortified affection; so neither should we over-hastily subscribe to the articles of other men. They are not always the best men that blot most paper;. truth is not, I fear, so voluminous, nor swells into such a mighty bulk as our books do. Those minds are not always the most chaste that are most parturient with these learned discourses, which too often bear upon them a foul stain of their unlawful propagation. A bitter juice of corrupt affections may sometimes be strained into the ink of our greatest clerks. We are not always happy in meeting with that wholesome food which has been dressed by the cleanest hands. Some men have too bad hearts to have good heads. They cannot be good at theory who have been so bad at the practice, as we may fear too many of those, from whom we are apt to take the articles of our belief, have been. Whilst we plead our right to the patrimony of our fathers, we may take too fast possession of their errors. We can never be, well assured what our traditional divinity is; nor can we securely addict ourselves to any sect of men. He that will find truth, must seek it with a free judgment and a sanctified mind: he that thus seeks, shall find; he shall live in truth, and that shall live in him; it shall be like a stream of living waters issuing out of his own soul; he shall drink of the waters of his own cistern, and be satisfied; he shall every morning find this heavenly manna lying upon the top of his soul, and be fed with it to eternal life,; he shall find satisfaction within, feeling himself in conjunction with truth, though all the world should dispute against him.

SECT. 2:

An Objection against this Method of knowing, answered. Men want not so much Means of knowing what they ought to do, as Wills to do what they know. Practical Knowledge differs from all other Knowledge, and excels it.

And yet I grant there are some principles of knowledge that are so deeply sunk into the souls of men, that the impression cannot easily be obliterated. Sensual baseness doth not so grossly sully and bemire the souls of all wicked men at first, as to make them deny the Deity, or question the immortality of souls. Neither are the common principles of virtue pulled up by the roots in all. The common notions of God and virtue impressed upon the souls of men, are more clear than any else; and if they have not more certainty, yet they have more evidence than any geometrical demonstrations. And these are both available to prescribe virtue to men's own souls, and to force an acknowledgment of truth from those that oppose when they are well guided by a skilful hand. Truth needs not at any time fly from reason, there being an eternal amity between them. Besides, in wicked men there are sometimes distastes of vice, and flashes of love to virtue; which are the faint strugglings of an higher life within them, which they crucify again by their wicked sensuality. As truth doth not always act in good men, so neither doth sense always act in wicked men. They may sometimes have their sober fits; and a Divine Spirit breathing upon them may then blow up some sparks of true understanding within them; though they may soon quench them again, and rake them up in the ashes of their own earthly thoughts.

All this, and more that might be said, may serve to point out the way of virtue. We want not so much means of knowing what we ought to do, as wills to do that which we know. But yet all that knowledge which is separated from an inward acquaintance with virtue and goodness, is of a far different nature from that which ariseth out of a true living sense of them, which is the best discerner thereof, and by which alone we know the true perfection, sweetness, energy, and loveliness of them, and all that which can no more be known by a naked demonstration, than colors can be perceived of a blind man by any definition which he can hear of them.

And further, the clearest notions of truth that shine in the souls of the common sort of men, are extremely clouded, if they be not accompanied with that answerable practice that might preserve their integrity. These tender plants may soon be spoiled by the continual droppings of our corrupt affections upon them; they are but of a weak and feminine nature, and so may be sooner deceived by that wily serpent of sensuality that harbors within us.

While the soul is full of the body, while we suffer those principles of religion to he asleep within us; the power of an animal life will be apt to incorporate and mingle itself with them; and that reason that is, within us becomes more and more infected with those evil opinions that arise from our corporeal life. The more deeply our souls dive into our bodies, the more will reason and sensuality run one into another, and make up a most unsavory and muddy kind of knowledge. We must therefore endeavor more and more to withdraw ourselves from these bodily things, to set our souls as free as may be from its miserable slavery to this base flesh. We must shut the eyes of sense, and open that brighter eye of our understandings, and that other eye of the soul, which indeed all have, in some degree, but few make use of it. This is the way to see clearly; the light of the Divine Word will then begin to fall upon us, and those pure coruscations of immortal and ever-living truth will shine out into us, and in God's own light shall we behold him. The fruit of this knowledge will be sweet to our taste, and pleasant to our palates, sweeter than the honey or the honeycomb. The priests of Mercury, as Plutarch tells tis, in the eating of their holy things, were wont to cry out,” Sweet is truth.” But how sweet and delicious that truth is, which holy and heaven-born souls feed upon in their mysterious converses with the Deity, who can tell but they that taste it When reason is raised by the mighty force of the Divine Spirit into a converse with God, it is turned into sense. We shall then converse with God not with a struggling and contentious reason, hotly combating with difficulties and divers opinions, and laboring in itself, in its deductions of one thing from another; but we shall fasten our minds upon him with such a serene understanding, such an intellectual calmness and serenity as will present us with a blissful, steady, and invariable sight of him.

Alan may be considered in a four fold Capacity, in order to the Perception of Divine Things. That the best and most excellent Knowledge of Divine Things belongs only to the true Christian; and that it is but in its infancy while he is in the Body.

And now, setting aside the Epicurean herd of brutish men, who have drowned all their sober reason in sensuality, we shall divide the rest of men into these four ranks, with respect to a four-fold kind of knowledge.

The first whereof is that complex and multifarious man that is made up of soul and body, as it were by a just equality of parts and powers in each of them. The knowledge of these men is a knowledge wherein sense and reason are so twisted together, that they cannot easily be unraveled. Their highest reason is complying with their senses, and both conspire together in vulgar opinion their life being steered by nothing but opinion and imagination. Their notions of God and religion are so entangled with the birdlime of fleshly passions and worldly vanity, that they cannot rise up above the surface of this dark earth, or entertain any but earthly conceptions of heavenly things. Such souls as Plato speaks of, heavy behind, are continually pressing down to this world's center. And though, like the spider, they may appear sometimes moving up and down in the air, yet they do but sit in the loom, and move in that web of their own gross fancies, which they fasten to some earthly thing or other.

The second is, the man that thinks not fit to view his own face in any other glass but that of reason and understanding; that reckons upon his soul as that which was made to rule, his body as that which was born to obey, and like an handmaid perpetually to wait upon his higher and nobler part. And in such an one the common principles of virtue and goodness are more clear and steady. To such an one we may allow mare clear and distinct opinions, as being already in a method, or course of purgation, or at least fit to be initiated into the lesser mysteries of religion. Though they may not be so well prepared for Divine virtue, (which is an higher emanation) yet they are not immature for human, as having the seeds of it already within themselves, which being watered by answerable practice, may sprout up within them.

The third is, he whose soul is already purged by this lower sort of virtue, and so is continually flying off from the body, and returning into himself. Such, in St. Peter's language, are those “who have escaped the pollutions which are in the world through lust.” To these we may attribute a lower degree of science, their inward sense of virtue and moral goodness being far transcendent to all mere speculative opinions of it. But if this knowledge settle here, it may be quickly liable to corrupt. Their souls may too mach heave and swell with the sense of their own virtue and knowledge: there may be an ill ferment of self-love lying at the bottom, which may puff it up with pride and self-conceit. If this knowledge he not attended with humility and a deep sense of penury and emptiness, we may easily fall short of that true knowledge of God which we seem to aspire after. We may carry such an image of ourselves constantly before us, as will make us lose the clear sight of the Divinity, and be too apt to rest in a mere rational life, without any true participation of the Divine life, if we do not slide back by vain-glory, popularity, or such like vices, into worldly and external. vanity.

The fourth is, the true contemplative man, who shooting up above his own rational life, pierces into the highest life, into the faith which works by love: who, by universal love and holy affection, abstracting himself from himself, endeavors the nearest union with the Divine Essence; knitting his own centre, if he have any, unto the center of the Divine Being. To such an one we may attribute a true Divine wisdom, powerfully displaying itself in an intellectual life. Such a knowledge is always pregnant with Divine virtue, which ariseth out of an happy union of souls with God, and is nothing else but a living imitation of a God-like perfection drawn out by a strong fervent love of it. This Divine knowledge makes us athirst after Divine beauty, beautiful and lovely; and this Divine love and purity reciprocally exalts Divine knowledge; both of them growing up together. Such a life and knowledge as this peculiarly belongs to the true and sober Christian, who lives in him who is life itself, and is enlightened by him who is the truth itself, and is made partaker of the Divine unction, and knows all things, as St. John speaks. This life is nothing else but God's own breath within him, and an infant-Christ, (if I may use the expression) formed in his soul, who is in a sense, *, the shining forth of the Father's glory. But yet we must not mistake; this knowledge is here in its infancy; there is an higher knowledge, or an higher degree of this knowledge that doth not, that cannot descend upon us in these earthly habitations. Here we can see but in a glass, and that darkly too. Our own imaginative powers, which perpetually attend the highest acts of our souls, will be breathing a gross dew upon the pure glass of our understandings, and so sully and besmear it, that we cannot see the image of the Divinity sincerely in it. But yet this knowledge being a true heavenly fire kindled from God's own altar, begets an undaunted courage in the souls of good men, and enables them to east a holy scorn upon the poor petty trash of this life, in comparison with Divine things, and to pity those poor, brutish Epicureans that have nothing but the mere husks of fleshly pleasure to feed themselves with. This sight of God makes pious souls breathe after that blessed time when” mortality shall be swallowed up of life,” when they shall no more behold the Divinity through those dark mediums that eclipse the blessed sight of it,

 

A SHORT DISCOURSE on SUPERSTITION

Having now done with what we propounded as a preface, we should come to the main heads of religion. But before we do that, perhaps it may not be amiss to inquire into some of those anti-deities that are set up against it; the chief' whereof are Atheism and Superstition; which indeed seem to comprehend all kinds of apostasy and prevarication from religion. We shall not be over-curious to pry into such foul and rotten carcasses as these are, but rather inquire a little into the original and immediate causes of them; because they may be nearer of kin than we ordinarily are aware of.

And first for Superstition, (to lay aside our vulgar notion,) it is the same with that temper of mind which the Greeks call AEm3mtkovna; it imports ”an over-timorous and dreadful apprehension of the Deity.” And therefore the true cause of superstition is nothing else but a false opinion of the Deity, that renders him dreadful and terrible, rigorous and imperious; apt to be angry, but yet impotent, and easy to be appeased by some flattering devotions, especially if performed with sanctimonious shows. I wish the picture of God which some Christians have drawn of him, wherein sourness and arbitrariness appear so much, may not too much resemble it. According to this sense Plutarch has well defined it, ”a strong, passionate opinion, such as is productive of a fear, terrifying a man with the representation of the gods as grievous and hurtful to mankind.”

Such men converse not with the goodness of God, and therefore are apt to attribute their impotent passions to him. Or, it may be, because some secret advertisements of their consciences tell them how unlike they themselves are to God; they are apt to be as much displeased with him as they think he is displeased with them. They are apt to count this Divine supremacy as but a piece of tyranny, that by its sovereign will makes too great encroachments upon their liberties, “fearing heaven's monarchy as a severe and churlish tyranny, from which they cannot absolve themselves,” as the same author speaks and therefore be thus discloses the private whisperings of their minds.” The broad gates of hell are opened, the rivers of fire and Stygian inundations run down as a swelling flood; there is thick darkness crowded together; dreadful and ghastly sights of ghosts screeching and howling; judges and tormentors; deep gulfs full of infinite miseries.” The prophet Isaiah gives us this epitome of their thoughts, ch. xxxiii. 14,”The sinners in Zion are afraid, fearfullness has surprised the hypocrites: who shall dwell with the devouring fire Who shall dwell with everlasting burnings” Though I should not dislike these astonishing thoughts of future torment, which I doubt even good men may have cause to press home upon their own spirits, the more to restrain sin; yet I think it little commends God, and as little benefits us, to fetch all this horror and astonishment from the contemplations of a Deity, which should always be the most serene and lovely. Our apprehensions of the Deity should be such as might ennoble our spirits, and not debase them. A right knowledge of God should beget a freedom and liberty of soul within us, and not servility; our thoughts of a Deity should breed in us hopes of virtue, and not gender to a spirit of bondage.

But that we may pass on. Because this unnatural resemblance of God as an angry Deity, should it blaze too furiously, like the basilisk, would kill with its looks therefore these painters use their best arts to render less unpleasing. And those that fancy God to be most apt to be displeased, yet are ready to imagine him so- impotently mutable, that his favour may he won again with their uncouth devotions, that he will be taken with their formal praises. And therefore superstition will always abound in these things, whereby this Deity, made after the similitude of men, may be most gratified, slavishly crouching to it. We shall take a view of it in the words of Plutarch, though what refers to the Jews may seem to contain too hasty a censure of them.” Superstition brings in wallowing in the dust, tumbling in the mire, observations of, uncouth gestures, and strange rites of worship.” Superstition is very apt to think that heaven may be bribed with such falsehearted devotions; as Porphyry has well explained it by this, that it is” an apprehension that a man may corrupt and bribe the Deity:” which (as he before observes,) was the cause of all those bloody sacrifices among the heathen; like him the prophet, that thought by the fruit of his body, and the firstlings of his flock to expiate the sin of his soul. Micah 6:

It is true, superstition looks not so foul in every soul that is dyed with it; nor doth it every where spread itself alike: but it will variously discover itself as it is seated in minds of a various temper, and meets with variety of matter to exercise itself about. We shall therefore a little further inquire into it, and what the judgments of the soberest men anciently were of it; the rather, for that a learned author of our own seems unwilling to own that notion of it which we have hitherto contended for; who, though he has freed it from that gloss which the late ages have put upon it, yet may seem to have too strictly confined it to a cowardly worship of the gentile daemons, as if superstition and polytheism were indeed the same thing; whereas polytheism, or daemon worship, is but one branch of it.

That we may the more fully unfold the nature and effects of it, which are not always of one sort, we shall first premise something concerning the rise of it. The common notions of a Deity, strongly rooted in men's souls, and meeting with the apprehension of guilt, are very apt to excite this servile fear. And when men love their own filthy lusts, that they may spare them, they are presently apt to contrive some other ways of appeasing the Deity and compounding with him. Minds, that have no inward foundation of true holiness, are easily shaken from all inward peace and tranquility. And as the thoughts of some Supreme Power seize upon them, so they are struck into inward at frightments, which are further increased by a vulgar observation of those strange and terrifying effects in nature, whereof they can give no certain reason, as earthquakes, thundering, and lightning, comets, and meteors, which are apt to terrify those especially who are unsettled and chased with an inward sense of guilt. Petronius Arbiter has well described this: From hence it was that the Libri Fulgulares of the Romans, and other such like volumes of superstition, swelled so much, as will easily appear to any one a little conversant in Livy; who every where sets forth this devotion so largely, as if he himself had been passionately in love with it.

And though as the events in nature began to be found out better by a discovery of their natural causes, some particular superstitious customs were antiquated, yet often affrights and horrors were not so easily abated, while they were unacquainted with the Deity, and with the other mysterious events in nature. To which we may add frequent spectres and frightful apparitions. All which extorted such a kind of worship from them as was most correspondent to such causes of it. Arid those rites and ceremonies which were begotten by superstition, were again the unhappy nurses of it; described by Plutarch,” Observations of unlucky and fatal days, lacerations, howlings, and many times filthy speeches,” and frantic behavior, But, as-we insinuated before, this root of superstition diversely branched forth itself, sometimes into magic and exorcisms, at other times into pedantically rites and idle observations of things and times. In others it displayed itself in inventing as many new deities as there were several causes from whence their affrights proceeded. Arid hence it is that we hear of those inhuman and diabolical sacrifices frequent among the heathens, and of those dead men's bones which were found in their temples at the demolishing of them. Sometimes it would express itself in a prodigal way of sacrificing, for which Ammianus Marcellinus, (an heathen writer, but yet one who seems to have been well pleased with the simplicity of Christian religion,) taxeth Julian the emperor. Many other ways might be named wherein superstition might occasionally show itself.

All which may be best understood, if we consider it as a composition of fear and flattery. Flattery is most incident to base and slavish minds; and where the fear of a Deity disturbs the filthy pleasure of vice, there this fawning and crouching disposition will find out devices to quiet an angry conscience within, and an offended God without. This the ancient philosophy has well taken notice of. Thus Maximus Tyrius,”The pious man is God's friend, the superstitious is a flatterer. of God. And most happy is the condition of the pious man, God's friend; but miserable is the state of the superstitious. The pious man, emboldened by a good conscience, and encouraged by the sense of his integrity, comes to God without fear and dread. But the superstitious being sunk through the sense of his own wickedness, comes not without much fear, being void of all hope and confidence, and dreading the gods as so many tyrants.” Thus Plato also sets forth this superstitious temper, where he distinguisheth three kinds of tempers in reference to the Deity; total atheism, which, he says, never abides with any man till his old age; partial atheism, which is a negation of Providence; and a third, which is a persuasion that the

gods” are easily won by sacrifices and prayers;” which he after explains, thus,” that with gifts unjust men may find acceptance with them.”

All this while I would not be understood to condemn, too severely, all servile fear of God, if it tend to make men avoid true wickedness, but that which settles upon these lees of formality.

To conclude: Were I to define superstition more generally, according to the ancient sense of it, I would call it” Such an apprehension of God as renders him grievous and burdensome, and so destroys all free and cheerful converse with him; begetting in the stead thereof a forced devotion, void of inward life and, love.” It is that which discovers itself in the worship of the Deity, in any thing that makes up only the body, or outward vesture of religion; and because it comprehends not the true Divine good, that ariseth to the soul from an internal frame of religion, it is therefore apt to think all its insipid devotions are so many presents offered to the Deity. How variously superstition can discover itself, we have intimated before. To which I shall only add, that we are not rid of superstition, as some imagine, when they have expelled it out of their churches, expunged it out of their books and writings, or cast it out of their tongues, by making innovations in their names. No; for all this, superstition may enter into our chambers, and creep into our closets, it may twine about our secret devotions, and actuate our forms of belief, when it has no place else to shroud itself in; we may think to flatter the Deity by these, when we are grown weary of more pompous solemnities. Nay, it may mix itself with a seeming faith in Christ; as I doubt it doth now in too many; who, laying aside all sober and serious care of true piety, think it sufficient to offer up their Savior, his active and passive righteousness, to a severe and rigid justice, to make expiation for those sins they allow themselves in.