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SERMONS

PREACHED UPON

SEVERAL OCCASIONS.

BY ROBERT SOUTH, D.D.
fREBENDARY OF WESTMINSTER, AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD.

A NEW EDITION, IN FOUR VOLUMES,

INCLUDING

THE POSTHUMOUS DISCOURSES.

VOL. IV.

PHILADELPHIA :
SORIN & BALL, 42 NORTH FOURTH STREET.
1845.

BI i^REOTYPED BV L. JOHNSON.
PRINTED BY T. K. & P. G. COLLINS, PHILADELPHIA.

THE
CHIEF HEADS OF THE SERMONS.

VOL. IV.

SERMON I.
obstinate sinkers doomed to eternal perdition.
Psalm xcv. 11.
Unto whom I sware in my wrath, that they should not enter into my rest.
Br this expression, "I sware in my wrath," is meant God's peremptory de
claring his resolution to destroy the murmuring and rebellious Jews, 1. The
word "swearing" is very significant, and seems to import,
1. The certainty of the sentence here pronounced, 1.
2. The terror of it; if the children of Israel should say, "Let not God speak
to us, lest we die," 2.
As for the word rest, we must admit in this scripture, as well as in many
others of the like nature, a double interpretation ; 1st. A temporal rest in
Canaan the promised land. 2dly. An eternal rest in the heavenly Canaan, 2.
The words thus explained are drawn into one proposition, viz., that God
sometimes in this life, upon extraordinary provocations, may and does in-.
evitably design and seal up obstinate sinners to eternal destruction, 3. The
prosecution is managed under these three particulars :
I. Showing how and by what means God seals up a sinner to perdition.
There are three ways by which God usually does this :
1. By withholding the virtue and power of his ordinances, 3.
2. By restraining the convincing power of his providences, 4. And there
are three sorts of providences instanced, in which God often speaks con
vincingly. 1st. In a general common calamity, 5. 2dly. By particular,
personal, and distinguishing judgments, 6. 3dly. By signal, unexpected
deliverances, 7.
3. By delivering up a sinner to a stupidity or a searedness of conscience, 8.
II. Showing what sort of obstinate sinners those are that God deals with in
this manner : which are, 1. Such as sin against clear and notable warnings
from God, 10. 2. Such as sin against special renewed vows and promises of
obedience made to God, 11.
III. Answering and resolving two questions that may arise from the forego
ing particulars :
1. Whether the purpose of God passed upon an obstinate sinner (here ex
pressed by God's swearing against him), be absolutely irrevocable ? Concern
ing which it is affirmed that the scripture is full and clear for it, 13.
iii

iv HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV.
2. Whether a man may know such a purpose to have passed upon him,
antecedently to its execution'! In answer to which, from a consideration ot
the ordinary ways by which God imparts his will to men, namely, 1st. By his
word, 13. 2dly. By men's collection of it from its effects, 14. Jt is affirmed,
that no man in this life can pass any certain judgment concerning the will ot
God in reference to his own final estate, 15. But here is observed a wide dif
ference between the purpose of God hitherto discoursed of, and that which the
schools call God's decree of reprobation. 1st. Because that decree is said to
commence upon God's good pleasure and sovereign will, but this purpose upon
the provocation of the sinner. 2dly. Because that decree is said to be from all
eternity; but this purpose is taken up after some signal provocation, 15; from
all which,
IV. We are exhorted to beware of sinning under sin-aggravating circum
stances, 16, and shown the danger of dallying with and venturing upon the
Almighty, by a daring continuance in a course of sin, 17.

SERMON II.
the folly of atheism.
Psalm xiv. 1.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
In the words we have two particulars, wherein we may consider,
I. An assertion made, " There is no God."
2. The thing asserted, which may be understood, (1.) Of an absolute removal
of the divine being and existence ; or (2.) Of a removal of God's providence,
by which he governs and takes account of all the particular affairs of the
world, and more especially of the lives and actions of men, 19.
2. The manner of the assertion, "The fool hath said in his heart;" it wears
the badge of guilt, privacy, and darkness, 20.
By " the fool's saying in his heart, There is no God," may be implied,
1. An inward wishing that there was no God, 21.
2. His seeking out arguments to persuade himself that there is none, 21.
3. Not only seeking for reasons and arguments, but also a marvellous readi
ness to acquiesce in any seeming probability or appearance of reason that may
make for his opinion, 22.
4. Another way, different from all the former, for a man to place his sole de
pendence, as to his chief good and happiness, on any thing besides God, is, as
we may so speak, virtually and by consequence for him to " say in his heart,
There is no God," 23.
II. The second particular considered is, the person who made this assertion,
" the fool ;" whose folly will appear from these following reasons :
1. That in making and holding this assertion, he contradicts the general
judgment and notion of mankind, 24.
2. That he lays aside a principle easy and suitable to reason, and sub
stitutes in the room of it one strange and harsh, and, at the best, highly
improbable, 25.
3. His folly appears from the causes and motives inducing him to take up
this opinion, which, amongst others, are, (1.) Great impiety, and disquiet of
conscience eonsequent thereupon. (2.) Great ignorance of nature and natural
causes, 26.
4. From those cases, in which such persons begin to doubt and waver, and
fly off from their opinion, instanced, (1.) In the time of some great and immi
nent danger. (2.) In the time of approaching death, 27.
The modern and more thorough-paced sinners affect a superiority in villany
above their ancestors; therefore this discourse against atheism is supposed to
be of some use ; and if so, the most proper use is, to give every one of us a
view and prospect into his own heart: and such as are willing to watch over
that, so as to prevent this monstrous birth, are advised to beware,

HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV. V
1. Of great and crying sins, such as make the conscience raw and sick.
2. Of discontents about the cross passages of God's providence towards
them. 3. Of devoting themselves to pleasure and sensuality, there being nothing in
the world that casts God out of the heart like it, 29.

SERMON III.
the Israelites' ingratitude to god.
[Preached on the 29th of May, at Westminster Abbey.]
Psalm cvi. 7.
Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt ,- they remembered not the multitude
of thy mercies ; but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea.
The resemblance between the transactions of Providence with the children
of Israel in their redemption from Egypt, and with ourselves in the restora
tion of the royal family, being briefly considered, 30, 31 ; to show how like we
are to them for their miraculous ingratitude, we must observe three things in
the text:
I. The unworthy and ungrateful deportment of the Israelites towards God,
upon a most signal mercy and deliverance, " they provoked him ;" which ex
pression seems to import an insolent daring resolution to offend; and, as it
relates to God, strikes at him in a threefold respect :
1. It rises up against his power and prerogative, 32.
2. It imports an abuse of his'goodness, 32.
3. It is an affront upon his long-suffering and his patience, 33.
II. The second thing to be observed is, the aggravation of this deportment
from the nature and circumstance of the deliverance, " They provoked him at
the sea, even at the Red sea," 33. The baseness and ingratitude of which God
casts in their teeth, by confronting it with the glorious deliverance he vouch-
* safjjd them; a deliverance ennobled with these four qualifications : — 1. Its great
ness, 34. 2. Its unexpectedness, ib. 3. The eminent seasonableness of it, 37.
4. Its absolute undeservedness, 38. Our case is severally shown in the above
particulars to be parallel to that of the Israelites, and likewise in the return
made to God for his goodness.
HI. The third thing observable is, the cause of this misbehaviour, "They
understood not thy wonders in Egypt." Now in every wonderful passage of
providence, two things are to be considered, 40.
1. The author, by whom it is done, 40.
2. The end for which it is done : neither of these, in the cases before us,
were understood by the Israelites, nor have been attended to by us as they ought
to have been, 41.
SERMON IV.
pasting a means of subduing sin.
Matthew xvii. 21.
Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.
It was a general received command, and an acknowledged rule of practice
in all ages and places ofthe Christian world, that we are to "hear the church;"
which, being acted by the immediate guidance of the Holy Ghost, hath set
apart the time of our Saviour's fasting in the wilderness, to be solemnized with
the anniversary exercise of abstinence, for the subduing the flesh and quicken
ing the spirit, 42.
As for the words, among other expositions, they are more judiciously mter-
a2

VI HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV.
preted of an evil spirit, having had long and inveterate possession of the
party out of whom it was cast; and the sense of them, as improvable into a
standing, perpetual precept, is this, that there are some vices which, partly by
our temper and constitution, partly by habit and inveterate continuance, have
so firm a hold of us, that they cannot be thoroughly dispossessed but with the
greatest ardour and constancy of prayer, joined with the harshest seventies ol
mortification, 43, 44.
In the text are two parts :
1st. An intimation of a peculiar duty, prayer and fasting.
2dly. The end and design of it, which is to eject and dispossess the unclean
spirit. The entire discussion is managed in three particulars.
I. In taking a survey of the extent of this text, 44. _ _
This duty of fasting admits of several kinds and degrees; the first kind is
of constant, universal exercise; universal, both because it obliges at all times,
and extends to all persons, 44. The second is a fast of total abstinence, when
for some time we wholly abstaiu from all bodily repasts, 45. The third is an
abstinence from bodily refreshments, in respect of a certain sort or degree, and
that undertaken for some space of time, 46. This head is closed with a caution,
that the observation of fasting in this solemn season should be so strict as not
to bend to any man's luxury ; so dispensable as not to grate upon his infirmity
of body, 48—50.
II. In showing what are the qualifications that must render this duty of fast
ing acceptable to God, and efficacious to ourselves, 50.
There are four conditions or properties, a joint concurrence of all which is a
necessary qualification of it for this great purpose. 1. That it is to be used not
as a duty either necessary or valuable in itself, but only as an instrument, 50.
2. That it be done with a hearty detestation of the body of sin, for the weaken
ing of which it is designed, 53. 3. That it be quickened and enlivened with
prayer, 54. 4. That it be attended with alms and works of charity, 55.
III. In showing how this duty of fasting comes to have such an influence in
dispossessing the evil spirit, and subduing our corruptions, 56.
It does not effect this, either, 1st. By any casual force naturally inherent in
itself. Neither, 2dly. By way of merit, as procuring and engaging the help
of that grace, that does effect it, 56. But it receives this great virtue, 1. From
divine institution. 2. By being a direct defiance to that disposition of body
and mind, upon which especially the devil works, 57. , But when we have
taken all these courses to eject the evil spirit, we must remember that it is to
be the work of God himself, whom the blessed spirits adore, and whom the evil
obey, 58.
SERMONS V. VI.
THE NECESSITY OF IMMEDIATE REPENTANCE.
Rev. n. 16.
Repent; or I will come unto thee quickly, and fight against them with the sword of my
mouth.
It is wonderful upon what ground a rational discerning man can satisfy and
speak peace to his conscience in the very career of those sins, which, by his
own confession, lead him to assured perdition, 59. One would think that the
cause of it must of necessity be one of these three:
v 1st. That he is ignorant of the curse attending his sin, 59. Which cannot
be here the cause.
2dly. That he may know the curse, and yet not believe it.
Sdly. That though he knows and believes the curse, yet perhaps he relaxes
nothing of his sin, because he resolves to bear it, 60
But it is shown, that it can proceed from neither of these reasons, therefor*
the true one is conceived to be a presuming confidence of a future repentance
other reasons indeed may allure, this only argues a man into sin, 61. Now the

HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV. Vii
face of these words is directly set against this soul-devouring imposture of a
deferred repentance. In the prosecution of them, it will be convenient to in
quire into their occasion. In the 12th verse we find, they are part of a letter
to the church (here collectively taken as including in it many particular
churches) of Pergamos, indited by the Spirit- of God, and directed to the
angel, that is the chief pastor of that church, 62.
The letter contains a charge for some sinful abuse that had crept in, and was
connived at, ver. 14. This abuse was its toleration of the Nicolaitans, whose
heresy consisted in this, 1st. That they held and abetted the eating of sacrifices
offered to idols to be lawful. 2dly. That they held and abetted the lawfulness
of fornication, 63.
It likewise contained the counsel of- speedy and immediate repentance, in the
words of the text, in which are two parts :
1. The first stands directed to the church itself: "Repent, or I will come unto
thee quickly." God's coming is shown to mean here his approach in the way
of judgment, 63.
2. The other part of the words relates to those heretics, "And I will fight
against thee with the sword of my mouth:" that is, with the reprehending,
discovering force of the word, and the censures of the church, 65. From this
expression these two occasional observations are collected :
1. That the word of God, powerfully dispensed, has the force and efficacy
of a spiritual sword, 66.
2. When God undertakes the purging of a church, or the reformation of
religion, he does it with the weapons of religion, with " the sword of his
mouth," 66.
The general explication of the words thus finished, the principal design
of them is prosecuted, by enforcing the duty of immediate repentance; which
is done, In showing what that repentance is that is here enjoined, 67.
Repentance in scripture has a threefold acceptation :
1. It is taken for the first act by which the soul turns from sin to God, 68.
2. It is taken for the whole course of a pious life, from a man's first turning
from a wicked life to the last period of a godly : which is the only repent
ance that Socinus will admit. But this is not the proper notion of repent
ance; 1st. Because then no man could properly be said to have repented till
his death. 2dly. Because scripture, no less than the natural reason of the
thing itself, places repentance before faith. 3dly. Because scripture makes all
those subsequent acts of new obedience after our first turning to God, not to be
the integral constituent parts, but the effects, fruits, and consequents of repent
ance, 68, 69.
3. Repentance is taken for a man's turning to God after the guilt of some
particular sin, 69.
H. Arguments are produced to engage us in the speedy and immediate
exercise of this duty ; which are,
1. That no man can 'be secure of the future, 70.
2. That, supposing the allowance of time, yet we cannot be sure of power to
repent, 71.
3. That, admitting a man has both time and grace to repent, yet, by
such delay, the work will be incredibly more difficult, 74. And the delay
of this duty is most eminently and signally provoking to God, upon these
reasons, 1. Because it is the abuse of a remedy, 77.
2. Because it clearly shows that a man does not love it as a duty, but only
intends to use it for an expedient of escape, 78.
3. Because it is evidently a counterplotting of God, and being wise above the
prescribed methods of salvation, to which God makes the immediate dereliction
of sin necessary, 79.
After the general nature of this subject, follows a consideration of it in
particular. The grand instance of it is a death-bed repentance ; the efficacy
of which, having been much disputed in the world, is here discussed under
two heads :

Viii HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV.
I. This great case of conscience is resolved, whether a death-bed repentance
ever is or can be effectual to salvation, 80. Several arguments against it being
stated and answered, 80 — 85 ; six positive arguments are produced to prove
and assert it. ,
1. That such a repentance, commenced at the last hour of a man s lile, nas
de facto proved effectual to salvation, 85.
2. Is taken from the truth and certainty of that saying, owned and attested by
God himself, that " if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to
that a man hath, and not according to that a man hath not," 86.
3. Because repentance saves not, as it is a work, or such a number of works,
but as it is the effect of a renewed nature and a sanctified heart, from which it
flows, 87.
4. If to repent sincerely be a thing at the last moments of our lives impos
sible to be done, then, for that instant, impenitence is not a sin, 88.
5. That to deny that a death-bed repentance can be effectual to salvation,
is a clear restraint and limitation of the compass and prerogative of God s
mercy, 88.
6. That if a death-bed repentance cannot possibly be effectual to salvation,
then a sinner upon his death-bed, having not repented before, may lawfully, and
without sin despair, 88.
II. Supposing a death-bed repentance may prove effectual, yet for any one to
design and build upon it beforehand, is highly dangerous, and therefore abso
lutely irrational ; which appears from these considerations :
1. From the exceeding unfitness of a man at this time, above all others, to
exercise this duty, 89.
2. That there can be no arguments, from which either the dying person him
self, or others by him, can certainly conclude that his repentance is sound and
effectual, 91.
In fine, this alone can be said for it (and to a considering person no more
need to be said against it), that it is only not impossible, 92.

SERMON VII.
Christ's resurrection a proof of his divinity.
Romans i. 3, 4.
Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David, accord
ing to the flesh ; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit
of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
Where the construction of the text lies so, that we cannot othewise reach
the full sense of it without making our way through doubts and ambiguities,
philosophical discourses are necessary in dispensing the word.
The present exercise therefore consists of two parts :
I. An explication of the words : foT the scheme of the Greek carries a very
different face from our translation, which difference renders the sense of them
very disputable, 93.
The explication is comprised in the resolution of these four inquiries :
1. Whether the translation rightly renders it, trrat Christ was "declared
to be the Son of God," since the original admits of a different significa
tion, 94.
2. What is imputed by this term, " with power," 95.
3. What is intended by the following words, "according to the Spirit nf
holiness," 95. ? l
4. How those words, "by the resurrection from the dead," are to be unde
stood, 96. er'
II. An accommodation ofthe words to the present occasion, which is in sh
ing, first, how Christ's resurrection may be a proper argument to Drove °hY"
divinity and eternal sonship, 98. Next, that it is the greatest and principal nf
all others. 1 " OI

HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV. ix
, And for this we may observe, that it is not only true, but more clear and
evident than the other arguments for the proof of the truth of Christ's
doctrine, when we consider them as they are generally reducible to these
three, 99.
1. The nature of the,things taught by him, 99.
2. The fulfilling of prophecies in his person, 100.
3. The miracles and wonderful works which he did in the time of his life,
101. And though these were undoubtedly high proofs of Christ's doctrine, yet
his resurrection had a vast pre-eminence over them upon two accounts.
(1.) That all the miracles he did, supposing his resurrection had not
followed, would not have had sufficient efficacy to have proved him to be
the Messias. But his resurrection alone, without relation to his preceding
miracles, had been a full proof of the truth of his doctrine, which ap
pears upon these two accounts: 1st. That considered absolutely in itself,
it did outweigh all the rest of his works put together. 2dly. That it
had a more intimate and near connection with his doctrine than any of
the rest, 102.
(2.) Because of the general opinion and judgment that the world had
of both, 102.
The Jews and unbelievers never attempted to assign any causes of the resur
rection besides the power of God, so as by that means to destroy the miraculous-
ness of it ; though they constantly took exceptions to Christ's other miracles,
still resolving them into some cause short of a divine power; which exceptions
may be reduced to these two heads :
1. The great difficulty of discerning when an action is really a miracle, 103.
2. Supposing an action is known to be a miracle, it is as difficult to know
whether it proves the truth of the doctrine of that person that does it, or not,
103. But neither of these exceptions takes place against the resurrection.
For, 1st. Though we cannot assign the determinate point where the power of
nature ends, yet there are some actions that, at first appearance, so vastly
transcend it, that there can be no suspicion that they proceed from any power
but a divine, 105.
2dly. Should God suffer a miracle to be done by an impostor, yet there was
no necessity hence to gather, that God did it to confirm the words of that im
postor : for God may do a miracle when and where he pleases, 105.
SERMON VIIL
increase of knowledge attended with sorrow.
Eccles. i. 18.
In much wisdom there is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth
sorrow.
This assertion is taken up upon Solomon's judgment, who by the very ver
dict of omniscience itself, was of all men in the world the most knowing.
After premising that, in speaking to the text, the patronage of ignorance,
especially in things spiritual, is not intended; but if any thing is indeed
said against knowledge, it is against that only that is so much adored by the
world, and falsely called philosophy; and yet more significantly surnamed by
the apostle, "vain philosophy," 107 — 109. ,
To rectify the absurd opinions of the world concerning knowledge, and to
take down the excessive estimation of it, in the prosecution of the words, it is
demonstrated to be the cause, or at least the inseparable companion of sorrow,
in three respects, 109.
I. In respect of the nature and properties of the thing itself, 109. Under
this head a question is started, Whether or no there be indeed any such thing
as true knowledge in the world? And three reasons advanced, which seem
to insinuate that there is none, 110. And then the uncertainty of knowledge,
Vol. IV.— (2)

X HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV.
its poorness, and utter inability to contribute to the solid enjoyments of life, is
shown in several theological and philosophical problems, 110 — 112.
II. In respect of the laborious and troublesome acquisition of it : in setting
forth which, the scholar's labour is considered with that of the soldier and the
husbandman, and a view is taken of those callings to which learning is neces
sary, the physician, and the lawyer, and the divine, 112 — 114.
IH. In respect of its effects and consequents, three whereof are instanced.
1. The increase of knowledge is an increase of the desire ofknowledge, 114.
2. Knowledge rewards its followers with the miseries of poverty, and clothes
them with rags, 115.
3. Knowledge makes the person who has it the butt of envy, the mark of
obloquy and contention; which considered, men are advised to make him that
is the great author, also the subject of their knowledge. For though there is a
vanity, a sorrow, and a dissatisfaction in the knowledge of created inferior
objects, yet we are assured, that " it is life eternal to know God, and whom he
has sent, his Son Christ Jesus," 115 — 117.

SERMON IX.
prayer answered only when offered in sincerity.
Psalm lxvi. 18.
If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.
The resolution and model of this whole psalm, which is David's grateful
commemoration of all God's mercies, together with a retribution of praise
being given, and therein the occasion and connection of these words, 118.
They are considered two ways, 1st. As they have a peculiar reference to
David and his particular condition, and so they are a vehement asseveration
of his integrity. 2dly. Absolutely in themselves, and so they are applicable to
all men, 1 19, 120. And being resolved, as they lie in supposition, into a positive
assertion, they afford this doctrine ; " Whosoever regards iniquity in his heart,
the Lord will not hear him." In prosecution of which is shown,
I. What it is for a man to regard or love sin in his heart, which he may be
said to do several ways.
1. There is a constant and habitual love of sin in the unregeneracy and cor
rupt estate of the soul, 120.
2. There is a regarding of sin in the heart, that consists in an unmortified
habit or course of sin, much different from the former, because even a child
of God may thus regard sin, 122. Which may be evinced, 1st. From ex
ample, ib. 2dly. From scripture reason, which is grounded upon those ex
hortations that there are made even to believers for the mortification of sin, 123.
And the soul may thus love sin two ways, 1st. Directly, and by a positive pur
suance of it. 2dly. Indirectly, and by not attempting a vigorous mortification
of it, ib.
3. There is another kind of regarding sin in the heart, and that is, by an
actual intention of the mind upon sin, 124.
n. What it is to have our prayers «ccepted with God: and this is to prevail
with God for the obtaining the good thing we desire, by virtue of an interest in
Jesus Christ, and in the covenant of grace, 125. Several objections to this
doctrine stated and answered, 125 — 128.
III. Whence it is that a man's regarding or loving sin in his heart, hinders
his prayers from acceptance with God.
1. Because in this case he cannot pray by the spirit.
2. Because he cannot pray in faith ; that is, he cannot build a rational confi
dence upon any promise, that God will accept him, 128.
3. Because he cannot pray with fervency, which, next to sincerity, is the
great qualification of prayer, to which God has annexed the promise of accept
ance, 129. *
IV. By way of application, the duty of sincerity in our worship is pressed

HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV. XI
from these two motives : 1st. By praying to God with insincere, sin-regarding
hearts, we incur the certain frustration of all our prayers, 131. JSdly. In such
prayers we are not only certain not to gain a blessing, but also'we incur the
danger of a heavy curse, ib. And to direct us how to pray with sincerity, this
rule is laid down, to endeavour first to prepare our hearts by a thorough and a
strict examination, 132.
SERMON X.
all things known to god.
1 John iii. 20.
God is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things.
The words are plain, and need no explication ; therefore, after premising
some things concerning God's attributes in general, 133, 134, this doctrine is
drawn from them, not much different from the words themselves, viz., that God
is an all-knowing God. This is indeed a principle, and therefore ought to be
granted ; yet since it is now controverted and denied by the Arminians and the
Socinians, 135, it is no less needful to be proved. In prosecution of this,
I. The proposition is proved, -and that both by scripture and by reason, 136.
Under this head we are exhorted to the knowledge of God in Christ, 137.
II. Is shown the excellency of God's knowledge above the knowledge of men
or angels, 138; and this appears,
1. From the properties of this knowledge : now its first property is, the
exceeding evidence, and consequently the certainty of it, 138. Its second
property is this, that it is a knowledge independent upon the existence of the
object or thing known, ib. For God beholds all things in himself, and that two
ways, 1st. By reflecting upon his power, and what he can do, he has a perfect
knowledge of all possibilities, and of things that may be produced. 2dly. By
reflecting upon his power and his will, he knows whatsoever shall be actually
produced, 139.
2. The excellency of God's knowledge appears in respect of his objects,
which are all things knowable; but they may be reduced to three especially
which God alone perfectly knows, and are not to be known to men or angels.
1st. The nature of God himself, 139. 2dly. Things future, 139—142. 3dly.
The thoughts of men, 142.
HI. Is shown, by way of application, that the consideration of God's
omniscience may serve as an argument to press several duties upon us. I. It
must be a strong motive to bring us to a free confession of all our sins to God,
143. 2. It may enforce us to an humble submission to all God's commands
and directions, and that both in respect of belief, 144, and of practice, 145.
3. That as we are commanded to " be perfect, as our heavenly Father is per
fect," we should endeavour to resemble him in knowledge, wisdom, and under
standing, that we make a true judgment of every thing relating to our temporal
or eternal happiness or misery, 145, 146.
SERMON XI.
[A Fast Sermon, preached in 1658.]
public calamity a call to public humiliation.
Jonah iii. 8, 9.
But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God : yea let
them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that
we perish not?
We are called this day by public authority to the work of humiliation ; and
the occasion of this ,work is the deplorable eruption of a sad distemper in
sundry parts of the nation, and the cause of this, we are to know, is sin.

XU HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV.
In this chapter we have the example of a fast celebrated by heathens
(the men oL Nineveh), but worthy of the imitation of the best Chris
tians, 147. ¦
Here are several things considerable.
1. Jonah's denunciation of a judgment of God impendent upon them.
2. Their humiliation upon the hearing of this judgment, in which fast or
humiliation there is considerable,
1. The manner of it, which consists in two things: 1st. The external humilia
tion of the body. 2dly. An internal spiritual separation from sin.
2. The universal extent of it, and the particular application of it, ver. 8, 147.
3. The motive of it, which was hope of mercy, and a pardon upon the exer
cise of this duty, 148.
The words will afford six considerations, which are here discussed.
1st Observation. The consideration of a judgment approaching unto, or
actually lying upon a people, is a sufficient argument for fasting and humilia
tion : 1. Because in every judgment God calls for humiliation; they are the
alarums of the Almighty, by which he terrifies and awakens sleepy souls, 148.
2. It deserves our humiliation : though this be an unpleasing duty to the flesh,
yet it is abundantly countervailed by the greatness of the trouble it does re
move, 149.
2nd Observation. The affliction of the body is a good preparative to the hu
miliation ofthe soul: 1. Because the operations ofthe soul do much follow the
disposition and temper of the body. 2. Because afflicting of the body curbs
the flesh, and makes it serviceable to the spirit, 149.
3rd Observation. The nature of a fast especially consists in a. real, sincere
separation from sin. The truth of this will appear from these considerations :
1. That fasting is a spiritual duty. 2. The nature of a fast chiefly consists in a
separation from sin, because this is the proper end of it, 151.
4th Observation. National sins deserve national humiliation, 152. 1. Because
a general humiliation tends most to solve the breach of God's honour.
2. Generality gives force and strength to humiliation, 153.
5th Observation. The best w'ay to avert a national judgment, is for every
particular man to inquire into and amend his own personal particular sins.
This is proved, 1. Because particular sins oftentimes fetch down general,
universal judgments, 153, which God sometimes inflicts upon that account:
1st, To show us the provoking nature of sin, 154, or else because, though the
sin is particular in respect of the subject and cause of it, yet it may be general
in respect of its contagion, ib. 2. Because if there were no personal there
could be no national sin, 154. 3. Because God takes especial notice of par
ticular sins, 155. 4. No humiliation can be well and sincere unless it be per
sonal and particular, 156.
6th Observation. Upon our serious humiliation for, and forsaking of our sins,
there is sufficient argument in God's mercy to hope for a removal of the severest
judgment, 157, which will appear, 1. Because God has promised it, ib. 2. Be
cause God has often removed judgments upon a sincere humiliation, 158.
3. Because in this God attains the ends of his judgments, 159, 160.

SERMON XII.
povehtt of spirit enjoined by the gospel.
Matthew v. 3,
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Our Saviour begins his sermon on the mount with seven or eight snch propo
sitions, as are paradoxes and absurdities to the maxims and practices of the
carnal world; and these he ushers in with the text, in which we have two
things considerable.
1. A quality or disposition recommended by our Saviour, which is poverty
of spirit, 161. In treating whereof,

HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV. X1U
1. The nature of this poverty of spirit is declared,
(1.) Negatively, by showing what it is not ; as, 1. A mere outward indigence,
and want of all the accommodations of common life, 162. 2. A sneaking fear-
fulness and want of courage; there being nothing base in nature, that can be
noble in religion, 163.
(2.) Positively, by showing what it is ; and it may be said properly to consist
in these two things : 1. An inward sense and feeling of our spiritual wants and
defects, 164. 2. A sense of our miserable condition by reason of such want,
the wretchedness whereof appears from these two considerations : (1.) That
we are unable, by any natural strength of our own, to recover and bring our
selves out of this condition, 166. (2.) That during our continuance under it,
we are exposed and stand obnoxious to all the curses of the law, 168.
2. The means are shown, by which this poverty of spirit may be obtained,
169. Now there are three ways, by which, through the concurrence of the
Holy Ghost with our endeavours, we may bring ourselves to it.
(1.) By a frequent, deep, and serious considering of the relation we stand in
towards God, 169.
(2.) By being much in comparing ourselves with the exceeding exactness,
perfection, and spirituality of the divine law, 172.
(3.) By making a due and spiritual use of all those afflictions and cross
events, that the providence of God is pleased to bring us under. 174.
The second general head considered is, the ground or argument upon which
this poorness of spirit is recommended; namely, that it entitles him who has it
to the kingdom of heaven," 175, 176. In the words, "Theirs is the kingdom
of heaven," two things are worthy of remark. 1. The thing promised, the
kingdom of heaven ; which here signifies not only the future state of glory
allotted for the saints in the other world; but that whole complex of blessings,
that is exhibited to mankind in the gospel, 176.
2. The manner of the promise ; which is in words importing the present
time ; not " theirs shall be," but " theirs is the kingdom of heaven," 177.

SERMONS XIII. XIV.
the hope of the hypocrite delusive.
Job viii. 13.
The hypocrite's hope shall perish.
Sincerity and hypocrisy are the two great things about which the whole stress
ofthe gospel is laid out; namely, to enforce the one, and to discover and detect
the other, 178.
Two things explained to clear the words. 1. What is meant by the
hypocrite : all hypocrites may be comprehended under these two sorts.
(1.) The gross dissembler, who knowingly pursues some sinful course,
endeavouring only to conceal it from the eyes of men, 178. (2.) The
formal refined hypocrite, who deceives his own heart; and is the person
spoken of in the text, 179.
2. What is meant by this "hope," which is, those persuasions a man has,
that he is now in a state of grace, and consequently shall hereafter attain to a
state of glory: and this hope may be distinguished into two degrees: 1. A pro
bable opinion. 2. A peremptory persuasion, 179.
After these premises, the words cast themselves into two propositions.
First, That a hypocrite may proceed so far, as to obtain a hope and expecta
tion of a future blessedness. The prosecution whereof lies in three things:
I. Proving that the hypocrites have such hopes. This evinced by two
arguments :
1. From the nature and constitution of man's mind, which is vehement and
restless in its pursuit after some suitable good, 180.
2. From that peace and comfort that even hypocrites enjoy ; which are the
b

XIV HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV.
certain effects, and therefore the infallible signs of some hope abiding in the
mind, 181.
II. Showing by what ways and means the hypocrite comes first to attain this
hope; which are four.
1. By misapprehending God, 183, in his attributes of justice, 184, and
of mercy, ib.
2. By misunderstanding of sin ; and from undervaluing the nature of sin in
general, he quickly passes into a cursed extenuation of particulars, 185.
3. By mistakes about the spiritual rigour and strictness of the gospel,
which he looks upon to be all mercy without justice, 186. Several texts
instanced, which he first niisnnderstands, and then draws to his own pur
pose, 187.
4. By his mistakes about repentance, 188, conversion, 189, and faith, ib.
Whence a caution is given to such as think they stand, to "beware lest they
fall," and still to fear, that hope is scarce sure enough, that can never be too
sure, 190, 191.
III. Showing how the hypocrite continues and preserves his hopes. Three
ways particularly instanced.
1. By keeping up a course of external obedience, and abstaining from gross,
scandalous sins, 193.
2. By comparing himself with others, who are openly vicious and apparently-
worse than himself, 195.
3. By forbearing to make a strict and impartial trial of his estate, 196.
Second proposition. That the hypocrite's fairest expectation of a future
happiness will in the end vanish into miserable disappointment, 197. For the
prosecution of which,
I. The proposition itself is proved, 1. From scripture, 197. 2. From the
weakness of the foundation upon which his hope is built, 199.
II. Those critical seasons are shown, in which more especially his hope will
be sure to fail him. As 1. In the time of some heart-breaking, discouraging
judgment from God, 200. 2. At the time of death, 201.
HI. An application is made of the whole discourse, by displaying the tran
scendent misery of the final estate of all hypocrites, 202 — 204.

SERMONS XV. XVI.
THE DUTY OP RESIGNATION.
PsALM XXXIX. 9.
I was dumb, I opened not my mouth ; because thou didst it.
All the duties of a Christian are reducible to these three, faith, obedience and
patience: and the vital principle that animates them all is submission. This
great virtue is here recommended to us by a great pattern, 205.
In the text are these two general parts :
1. David's submissive deportment under a sharp affliction.
2. The reason of such his deportment; which was the procedure of that
affliction from God, 206.
The words being a full lecture of patience, and designed to argue us into an
absolute submission to the divine will in our most severe distresses, are prose
cuted in two things. ' !""»<=
I. In declaring the nature and measures of this submission. This is done
1. Negatively, by show.ng that it does not consist in an utter insensibility of
or unconcernment under an affliction : for he who is so insensible, 1. Robs
God of that honour he designs to himself from that afflicting dispensation, 206.
And, 2. Renders every affliction befalling him utterly useless to all spiritual
purposes, 207. IS or, y
inflS t7 app^h^1 Z™™;:*™ " fr0m PrayiDg ^iDSt ^ Calami*

HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV. XV
Thirdly, Exclude our endeavours to prevent or remove an affliction, 208.
2. Positively, by showing what this submission is ; namely, a quiet composure
of the whole man under any calamity, distress, or injury; and requires,
(1.) A submission of the understanding to God, 209.
(2.) A perfect acquiescence of the will, and resignation of it to God's
will, 210.
(3.) A composure or serenity in our passions and affections, 21 li
(4.) A suppressing of all hard and discontented speeches, 212.
(5.) A restraint of all rage and revenge against such as are the instruments
of God, 214.
By way of deduction are inferred three things.
1. The worth and excellency of such a submissive, composed frame of
spirit, 216.
2. The difficulty of attaining to it: which appears, (1.) From that opposition
which a man is to conquer, 218. (2.) From that mean opinion which the
generality of men have of such a temper, ib.
3. The necessity of an early and long endeavour after it, 219.
II. In showing the reasons and arguments for this submission, as the suffer
ing person stands related to God, 222.
Every thought which a man can possibly conceive, either of God or of him
self, aright, will strongly enforce this duty : but six things in God are particularly
instanced for this purpose.
1. His irresistible power, 223. '
2. His absolute, unquestionable dominion and sovereignty over all things, 224.
3. His infinite and unfailing wisdom, 225.
4. His great goodness, benignity, and mercy to all his creatures, 227.
5. His exact and inviolable justice, 229.
6. His gracious way of treating all patient and humble sufferers, by turning
every thing to their advantage at last, 229, 230.
This submission has three noble qualities, as it stands related to the fore
going considerations : 1. The necessity, 231 ; 2. The prudence, 232 ; 3. The
decency of it, 234.
The foregoing discourse may teach us an art that all the wisdom of the world
cannot teach ; which is, by acquiescing cheerfully and entirely in the good plea
sure of Almighty God, to make ourselves happy in the most afflicted, abject,
and forlorn condition of life, 235, 236.

SERMONS XVII— XX.
christians exhorted to live peaceably.
Romans xii. 18.
If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
Christianity the last and most correct edition of the law of nature: every
precept of it may be resolved into a. natural reason ; as advancing and im
proving nature in the higher degrees and grander concerns of it. Christianity
takes care for man, not only in his religious capacity, but also in his civil and
political, binding the bonds of government faster, by the happy provisions of
peace, 237.
The words of the text are discussed under four particulars.
I. The showing what is implied in the duty here enjoined.
II. What are the measures and proportions by which it is to be de
termined. III. What are the means by which it is to be determined.
IV. What are the motives by which it may be- enforced.
I. The duty here enjoined is, "live peaceably;" which may be taken,
1. For the actual enjoyment of peace with all men: and so he only lives--
peaceably, whom no man molests. But this cannot be the sense intended
here, (1.) Because so to live peaceably is impossible, 1. From the contentious

XVI HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV.
unreasonable humour of many men, 238. 2. From the contrary and inconsist
ent interests of many men, 239. (2.) Because, though it were not impossible,
it can be no man's duty, 240.
2. For a peaceable behaviour towards all men ; which is the duty here
enjoined; it seems adequately to consist of two things,
(1.) A forbearance of all hostile actions; and that in a double respect.
1. In a way of prevention, 241. 2. Of retaliation, 242.
(2.) A forbearance of injurious, provoking worfls, 244.
II. The measures and proportions by which it is to be determined, are ex
pressed in these words: "If it be possible," 245.
Now possible may be taken two ways. 1. As it is opposed to naturally im
possible, and that which cannot be done. 2. As opposed to morally impossible,
and that which cannot be done lawfully, 245.
But the observance of peace being limited by the measure of lawful, all
inquiries concerning the breaking of it are reducible to these two:
1. Whether it be at all lawful.
2. Supposing it lawful, when and where it ought to be judged so, 245.
Under the first is discussed that great question, whether war can be lawful
for Christians, 245.
War is of two distinct kinds. 1. Defensive, in order to keep off and repel
an evil designed to the public. 2. Offensive, for revenging a public injury
done to a community. And it is allowable upon the strength of these
arguments. (1.) As it (the defensive) is properly an act of self-preservation, 246.
(2.) As it (the offensive) is a proper act of retributive justice, 247.
. (3.) Because St. John the Baptist, Christ himself, and the apostles, judged
the employment of a soldier lawful, 248.
The ground of the Socinians' arguments in this case, viz., that God, under
the Mosaical covenant, promised only temporal possessions to his people,
therefore war was lawful to them ; but now, under the covenant of grace
through Christ, has made no promise of temporal enjoyments, but on the
contrary bids us to despise them, and therefore has taken from us all right
of war and resistance. This argument examined and confuted, 249 — 252.
And, The scripture produced by those who abet the utter unlawfulness of war,
examined and explained. As,
1. Matt. v. 39; Rom. xii. 17, 19, 252, 253.
2. Isaiah ii. 4, 254.
3. Matt. xxvi. 52, 255.
4. James iv. 1, 256.
Under the second inquiry, supposing it lawful, when and where it ought to
be judged so.
First, Some general grounds that may authorize war are laid down. As
when those with whom we are at peace,
1. Declare that they will annoy us, unless we cut off our limbs, &c., and
upon our refusal disturb us.
2. Declare war with us, unless we will renounce our religion, 257.
3. Injure us to that degree as a nation, as to blast our honour and
reputation. 4. Declare war with us, unless we will quit our civil rights, &c, 258.
Secondly, Some particular cases are resolved; as,
1st Case. Whether it be lawful for subjects in any case to make war upon
the magistrate, 258.
Grotius's seven cases, wherein he asserts it to be lawful, 259, 260.
David Paraus's arguments, in a set and long dispute upon Rom. xiii. examined
and answered, 261 — 264.
2nd Case. Whether it be lawful for one private man to make war upon
another, in those encounters which we commonly call duels, 264. And here
are set down,
1st. The cases in which a duel is lawful. As (1.) When two malefactors,
condemned to die, are appointed by the magistrate to fight, upon promise

HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV. XVII
of life to the conqueror, 264. (2.) When two armies are drawn out, and
the decision of the battle is cast upon a single combat, ib. (3.) When
one challenges another, and resolves to kill him, unless he accepts (he
combat, 265.
2dly. The cases in which duels are utterly unlawful. As (1.) When they
are undertaken for vain ostentation, 266. (2.) To purge one's self from
some crime objected, ib. (3.) When two agree upon a duel, for the de
cision of right, mutually claimed by both, agreeing that the right shall fall
to the conqueror, 267. (4.) When undertaken for revenge, or some injury
done, or affront passed, t6.
But other arguments there are against duels, besides their unlawfulness. As,
1. The judgment of men generally condemning them, 269.
2. The wretched consequences of the thing itself; which are twofold,
I. Such as attend the conquered person, viz., (1.) A disastrous death, 269
(2.) Death eternal, 270. 2. Such as attend the conqueror. (1.) In case he is
apprehended. (2.) Supposing he escapes by flight. (3.) Supposing by the
intercession of great friends he has outbraved justice, and triumphed over the
law by a full acquitment, 271.
3rd Case. Whether it be lawful to repel force by force, so as to kill another
in one's own defence, 273.
If a man has no other means to escape, it is lawful upon two reasons.
1. The great natural right of self-preservation, 273. 2. From that place where
Christ commands his disciples to provide themselves swords, 274. Add to this
the suffrage of the' civil law.
Yet so to assert the privilege, as to take off the danger, it is stated under its
due limitations by three inquiries.
1st. What those things are which may be thus defended; namely, 1. Life,
274. 2. Limbs, 275. 3. Chastity invaded by force, ib. 4. Estate or goods ;
which case admitting of some more doubt than the others, the opinions for the
negative are stated and answered, 276 — 278.
Whatsoever a man may thus' do for himself, the same also is lawful for him
to do in the same danger and extremity of his neighbour, 278.
2dly. What are the conditions required to render such a defence lawful ;
which are these, 1. That the violence be so apparent, great, and pressing, that
there can be no other means of escape, 279. 2. That there be no possibility
of recourse to a magistrate for a legal protection, 280. 3. That a man design
only his own defence, without any hatred or bitter purpose of revenge, ib.
3dly. Who are the persons against whom we may thus defend ourselves, 281.
4th Case. Whether it be allowable for Christians to prosecute and go to law
with one another.
1. The arguments brought against it are examined: which seem principally
to bear upon two scriptures: (1.) Matt. v. 40. (2.) 1 Cor. vi. 7. The argu
ments against going to law being drawn from the letter of these scriptures,
they are examined and explained according to the sense of them, 282 — 286.
(3.) The strict' command that lies upon Christians to forgive injuries, 286.
Here prosecutions are distinguished as they concern restitution or punish
ment and going to law with regard to the first of these shown to be just and
allowable, 287.
The arguments for the proof of the assertion are next considered. Which
are, 1. That it is to endeavour the execution of justice in the proper acts of it
between man and man, 287.
2. That if Christian religion prohibits law, observance of this religion draws
after it the utter dissolution of all government, 288.
The limitations of law-contentions are three :
1. That a man takes not this course, but upon a very great and urgent
cause. 2. That he be willing to agree upon any tolerable and just terms, rather than
to proceed to a suit.
3. Supposing great cause, and no satisfaction, that he manage his suit by the
rule of charity, and not of rejenge, 290.
Vol. IV.— (3) b 2

XVU1 HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV.
III. The means by which the duty of living peaceably is to be effected are,
1. A suppression of all distasteful, aggravating apprehensions of any ill turn
or unkind behaviour from men, 292.
2. The forbearing all pragmatical or malicious informations against those
with whom we converse, 296.
3. That men would be willing in some cases to wave the prosecution of
their rights, and not too rigorously to insist upon them, 300. As (1.) When
the recovery of it seems impossible, 301. (2.) When it is but inconsiderable,
but the recovery troublesome and contentious, 302. (3.) When a recompence
is offered, ib.
4. To reflect upon the example of Christ, and the strict injunction lying upon
us to follow it, 304.
5. Not to adhere too strictly to our own judgment of things doubtful in them
selves, 305.
IV. The motives and arguments to enforce this duty are,
1. The excellency of the thing itself, 306.
2. The excellency of the principle from which peaceableness of spirit pro
ceeds, 307.
3. The blessing entailed upon it by promise, Matt, v., 308.
Two instances of this blessing, that certainly attend the peaceable in this
world. (1.) An easy, undisturbed, and quiet enjoyment of themselves, 308.
(2.) Honour and reputation, which such a temper of mind fixes upon their
persons, 309. Their report survives them, and their memory is blessed.
Their name is glorified upon earth, and their souls in heaven, ib.

SERMON XXI.
death the wages of sin.
Romans vi. 23.
The wages of sin is death.
A discourse of sin not superfluous, while the commission of it is continual,
and yet the preventing necessary.
The design of the words prosecuted in discussing three things,
I. Showing what sin is, 310. As it is usually divided into two sorts :
1. Original sin, 311.
2. Actual sin, 312. Which is considered two ways,
(1.) According to the subject matter of it: as, 1. The sin of our words, 312.
2. Of our external actions, 313. 3. Of our desires, ib.
(2.) According to the degree or measure of it. As, 1. When a man is engaged
in a sinful course by surprise and infirmity, 313. 2. Against the reluctancies
oi an awakened conscience, 314. 3. In defiance to conscience, ib.
II. Showing what is comprised in death, which is here allotted for the sinner's
wages. And,
1. For death temporal, 315.
inn2;.?6^ T"aI' 3lB- Which has other Properties, besides its eternity, to
comforts whi.hT °f "" f- H* bereaVes a man of a11 the pleasureswd
comtorts which he enjoyed in this world, 315. (2.) Of that inexpressible
w^h'th/h TlfiC fruUi°n °f G°d' ib- ^ As * *'¦ "oth body and sou!
rapacity, 3l1 ' t0rmem ^ aDgUish that can' be received within a finite
III. Showing in what respect death is properly called "the wages of sin "
1. Because the payment of wages still presupposes service and labour 318
2. Because wages do always imply a merit in the work, requ ring such , a
compensation, 320. ' ,c1umQg sucn a
being^i.1 ^ * dir6Ct Str°ke' 1S'' At G°d'S sovereiSnty; Sdly, At his very
Having thus shown what sin is, and what death is, the certain in^vt^i
wages of sin ; he who likes the wages, let him go about the work 322. We

HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV. XIX
SERMON XXII.
heaven promised to the pure in heart.
Matthew v. 8.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
It may at first seem wonderful, that there are so few men in the world
happy, when happiness is so freely offered : but this wonder vanishes upon
considering the preposterous ways of men's acting, who passionately pursue
the end, and yet overlook the means: many perishing eternally, because
they cannot eat, drink, sleep, and play themselves into salvation. But this
great sermon of our Saviour teaches us much other things, being fraught
with the most sublime and absolute morality ever vented in the world, 323.
An eminent instance whereof we have in the text, which is discussed under
four heads.
I. Showing what it is to be " pure in heart."
Purity in general cannot be better explained than by its opposition, 1. To
mixture, 324; 2. To pollution, 325.
Purity iu heart is shown, 1. By way of negation; that it does not consist in
the external exercise of religion, 325. There being many other reasons for the
outward piety of man's behaviour. As, (1.) A virtuous and strict education,
327. (2.) The circumstances and occasions of his life, 327. (3.) The care
and tenderness of his honour, ib.
2. Positively, wherein it does consist, viz., in an inward change and renova
tion of the heart, by the infusion of such a principle as naturally suits and
complies with whatsoever is pure, holy, and commanded by God, 329.
Which more especially manifests itself, (1.) In the purity and untainted
sanctity of the thoughts, 329. (2.) In a sanctified regulation of the desires,
330. (3.) In a fearful and solicitous avoiding of every thing that may tend to
sully or defile it, 331.
n. Explaining what it is to " see God."
Some disputes of the schools concerning this, 332, 333.
Our enjoyment of God is expressed by seeing him; because the sense of
seeing, (1.) Represents the object with greater clearness and evidence than any
of the other senses, 333; (2.) Is most universally exercised and employed, ii.
(3.) Is the sense of pleasure and delight, 334; (4.) Is the most comprehensive
and insatiable, ib.
III. Showing how this purity fits and qualifies the soul for the sight of God;
namely, by causing a suitableness between God and the soul, 335.
Now during the soul's impurity, God is utterly unsuitable to it in a double
respect. 1. Of the great unlikeness ; 2. Of the great contrariety there is betwixt
them, 335.
IV. The brief use and application is, to correct our too great easiness and
credulity in judging of the spiritual estate either of ourselves or others. If we
would prevent the judgment of God, we must imitate it, judging of ourselves,
as he will judge of us: for he who has outward purity only, without a
thorough renovation within him, and a sanctified disposition of heart, may
indeed hereafter see God, but then he is like to see him only as his
judge, 336, 337.
SERMON XXIII.
self-denial the duty of christians.
Gal. v. 24.
And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
As all sects and institutions have their distinguishing badge, or characteristic
name ; that of Christianity is comprised in the crucifixion of the flesh, and the
lusts thereof, 338.

XX HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV.
This explained by showing: .
1. What is meant by being Christ's : it consists in accepting ol, and having
an interest in Christ, as he is offered and proposed in the gospel, under three
offices, his prophetical, his kingly, and his sacerdotal, 338.
2. What is meant by the flesh, and the affections and lusts: by the former
we are to understand, the whole entire body of sin and corruption, the inbred
proneness in our nature to all evil: by the latter, the drawing forth of that
propensity or principle into the several commissions of sin, through the course
of our lives, 339.
The text further prosecuted in showing two things :
I. Why this vitiosity and corrupt habit of nature comes to have this denomi
nation of "flesh;" and that for three reasons:
1. Because of its situation and place, which is principally in the flesh ;
concupiscence, which is the radix of all sin, following the crasis and
temperature of the body, 340.
2. Because of its close, inseparable nearness to the soul; being, as it were,
ingrafted into it, and thereby made connatural to it, 342.
3. Because of its dearness to us; there being nothing we prosecute with a
more affectionate tenderness than our bodies ; and sin being our darling, the
queen-regent of our affections, 344.
Hence is inferred:
1. The deplorable estate of fallen man, 345.
2. The great difficulty of the duty of mortification, 345.
3. The mean and sordid employment of every sinner, 346.
II. What is imported by the crucifixion of the flesh : under which is shown :
1. What is the reason of the use of it in this place. It is used by way of
allusion to Christ, of whose behaviour and sufferings every Christian is to be a
living copy and representation, 347.
2. The full force and significancy of the expression. It imports four
things : (1.) The death of sin, 348. (2.) Its violent death, 349. (3.) Its
painful, bitter, and vexatious death, 350. (4.) Its shameful and cursed
death, 351.
3. Some means prescribed for the enabling us to the performance of this
duty: viz.,
(1.) A constant and pertinacious denying our affections and lusts in all their
cravings for satisfaction, 352.
(2.) The encountering them by actions of the opposite virtues, 353.
4. What may be drawn, by way of consequence and deduction, from what
has been delivered: and,
(1.) We collect the high concernment and absolute necessity of every man's
crucifying his carnal, worldly affections, because without it he cannot be a
Christian, 353.
(2.) We gather a standing and infallible criterion, to distinguish those that
are not Christ's from those that are, 354.
An objection, that it is a hard and discouraging assertion, that none should
be reputed Christ's, unless he has fully crucified and destroyed his sin,
answered by explaining the doctrine to mean an active resolution against
sin, 354, 355.

SERMON XXIV.
[Preached January 30th.]
A CURSE DENOUNCED AGAINST BLOODSHED.
Habakkuk ir. 12.
Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood!
A short account being given of this whole prophecy, which foretells the great
event of the Babylonish captivity, 356, 357; the words of the text are prose
cuted in five particulars.

HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV. Xxi
I. The ground and cause of this woe or curse; which was the justly
abhorred sin of blood-guiltiness, 357.
II. The condition of the person against whom this curse is denounced: he
was such a one as had actually established a government and built a city with
blood, 359.
III. The latitude and extent of this woe or curse; which includes the
miseries of both worlds, present and future : and, to go no further than the
present, is made up of the following ingredients.
1. A general hatred and detestation fastened upon such men's persons, 361.
2. The torment of continual jealousy and suspicion, 362.
3. The shortness and certain dissolution of the government that he en
deavours so to establish, 362.
4. The sad and dismal end that usually attends such persons, 363.
IV. The reasons why a curse or woe is so peculiarly denounced against this
sin. Among many, these are produced:
1. Because the sin of bloodshed makes the most direct breach upon human
society, of which the providence of God owns the peculiar care and protec
tion, 364.
2. For the malignity of those sins that almost always go in conjunction with
it ; particularly the sins of fraud, deceitfulness, and hypocrisy, 365.
V. An application of all to this present occasion, 366, by showing how close
and home the subject-matter of the text comes to the business of this annual
solemnity. 1. In the charge of unjust effusion of blood, considered, 1. As public, and
acted by and upon a community, as in war, 367; or 2. Personal, in the
assassination of any particular man, 368.
2. In the end or design for which it was shed : namely, the erecting and set
ting up of a government, 368.
3. In the woe or curse denounced, which is shown to have befallen these
bloody builders. 1. In the shortness of the government so set up. 2. In the
general hatred that followed their persons, 369, 370.

SERMON XXV.
the design of christ's incarnation.
1 John iii. 8.
For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works
ofthe devil.
This divine apostle endeavours to give the world a right information about
this so great and concerning affair in this chapter, and particularly in these
words ; wherein we have,
I. An account of Christ's coming into the world; in this expression, "the
Son of God was manifested." Which term, though it principally relates to the
actual coming of Christ into the world, yet is of a larger comprehension, and
leads to an enumeration and consideration of passages before and after his
nativity, 371.
II. The end and design of his coming, which was to " destroy the works of
the devil." In the prosecution of which is shown,
1. What were those works of the devil, that the Son of God destroyed, 373,
and these works are reduced to three. (1.) Delusion, his first art of ruining
mankind; which is displayed by a survey of the world lying under gentilism,
in their principles of speculation and practice, 374. (2.) Sin. As the devil
deceived men only to make them sinful, some account is given of his success
herein, 376. (3.) Death : the inseparable concomitant of the former, 378.
2. The ways and means by which he destroys them. Now as the works of
the devil were three, so Christ encounters them by those three distinct offices
belonging to him as mediator. (1.) As a prophet, he destroys and removes that
delusion that had possessed the wprld, by those divine and saving discoveries

Xxii HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV.
of truth exhibited in the doctrine and religion promulged by him, 379. (2.) As
a priest, he destroyed sin by that satisfaction that he paid down for it, and by
that supply of grace that he purchased, for the conquering and rooting it out
of the hearts of believers, 380. (3.) As a king he destroys death by his power :
for it is he that has " the keys of life and death, opening where none shuts, and
shutting where none opens," 380, 381.
SERMON XXVI.
the visit of the wise men to jerusalem.
Matthew ii. 3.
And when Herod the king heard these, things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem
with him.
It having been the method of divine Providence, to point out extraordinary
events and passages with some peculiar characters of remark; such as may
alarm the minds and engage the eyes of the world, in a more exact observance
of, and attention to the hand of God in such great changes; no event was ever
ushered in with such notable prodigies and circumstances, as the- nativity of
our blessed Saviour, 382, 383. Some of them the apostle recounts in this chap
ter; which may be reduced to these two heads.
I. The solemn address and homage made to him by the wise men of the east.
Under which passage these particulars are considered.
1. Who and what these wise men were, 383.
2. The place from whence they came, 385.
3. About what time they came to Jerusalem, 386.
4. What that star was, that appeared to them, 387.
5. How they could collect our Saviour's birth by that star, 388.
II. Herod's behaviour thereupon, 389. Herod is discoursed of,
1. In respect of his condition and temper, in reference to his government of
Judea ; which are marked out by three things recorded of him, both in sacred
and profane story. (1.) His usurpation, 390. (2.) His cruelty, ib. (3.) His
magnificence, 391.
2. In respect of his behaviour and deportment, upon this particular occasion,
which shows itself, (1.) In that trouble and anxiety of mind that he conceived
upon this news. (2.) In that wretched course he took, to secure himself against
his supposed competitor, 392.
3. In respect of the influence this his behaviour had upon those under his
government, 393.
The question, Why Christ, being born the right and lawful king of the Jews,
yet gave way to this bloody usurper, and did not assume the government to
himself, answered.
1. Because his assuming it would have crossed the very design of that
religion that he was then about to establish, which was to unite both Jew and
Gentile into one church or body.
2. Christ voluntarily waved the Jewish crown, that he might hereby declare
to the world the nature of his proper kingdom; which was, to be wholly
without the grandeur of human sovereignty, and the splendour of earthly
courts, 393, 394.
SERMON XXVII.
christ worthy of our highest esteem.
Matthew x. 37.
He that loves father or mother better than me is not worthy of me.
Our Saviour here presents himself and the world together, as competitors for
our best affections, challenging a transcendent affection on our parts, because
of a transcendent worthiness on his, 395.

HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV. XXU1
By "father and mother" are to he understood whatsoever enjoyments are
dear unto us, 395, and from the next expression, " he is not worthy of me," the
doctrine of merit must not be asserted : because there is a twofold worthiness.
1. According to the real inherent value of the thing; and so no man by his
choicest endeavours can be said to be worthy of Christ. 2. When a thing
is worthy, nof for any value in itself, but because God freely accepts it as
such, 396.
This being premised, the sense of the words is prosecuted in three par
ticulars. I. In showing what is included and comprehended in that love to Christ here
mentioned. It may include five things. 1. An esteem and valuation of Christ above all
worldly enjoyments whatsoever, 396. 2. A choosing him before all other en
joyments, 397. 3. Service and obedience, to him, 398. 4. Acting for him in
opposition to all other things, 400. 5. It imports a full acquiescence in him
alone, even in the absence and want of all other felicities, 401.
II. In showing the reason and motives that may induce us to this love.
1. He is the best able to reward our love, 404.
2. He has shown the greatest love to us, 406, and obliges us with two
of the highest instances of it. (1.) He died for us, 407. (2.) He died for us
while we were enemies, and, in the phrase of scripture, enmity itself against
him, 408.
IH. In showing the signs and characters whereby we may discern his love,
1. A frequent and indeed a continual thinking of him, 409.
2. A willingness to leave the world, whensoever God shall think fit, by death,
to summon us to a nearer converse with Christ, 410.
3.* A zeal for his honour, and impatience to hear or see any indignity offered
him, 410—412.

SERMONS XXVIII.— XXX.
the mediation of christ a motive to confidence in prayer.
Ephesians hi. 12.
In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.
Prayer is to be exercised with the greatest caution and exactness, being
the most solemn intercourse earth can have with heaven. The distance be
tween God and us, so great by nature and yet greater by sin, makes it fearful
to address him: but Christ has smoothed a way ; and we are commanded to
come with a. good heart, not only in respect of innocence, but also of confi
dence, 413.
The words prosecuted in the discussion of four things.
I. That there is a certain boldness and confidence, very well becoming of our
humblest addresses tp God, 414.
This is evident; for it is the very language of prayer to treat God with the
appellation of father. The nature of this confidence is not so easily set forth
by positive description, as by the opposition that it bears to its extremes ; which
are of two sorts.
1. In defect. This confidence is herein opposed, I. To desperation and
horror of conscience, 414. 2. To doubtings and groundless scrupulosities, 415.
Some of these stated and answered, 415, 416.
2. In excess. Herein confidence is opposed, (1.) To rashness and precipita
tion, 417. (2.) To impudence or irreverence, which may show itself many
ways in prayer, but more especially, 1st. By using of saucy familiar expres
sions to God, 418; or, 2dly. In venting crude, sudden, extemporary conceptions
before God, 420. , . '
II. Is shown, that the foundation of this confidence is laid in the mediation
of Christ, 421, which is yet more evidently set forth,

xxiy HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. TV.
m In showing the reason why Christ's mediation ought to minister such
confidence to us: which is, the incomparable fitness of Christ for the perform
ance of that work, 423; and this appears by considering him,
1 In respect of God, with whom he is to mediate. God in this business sus
tains a double capacity, (1.) Of a father; and there cannot be a more promising
ground of success in all Christ's pleas for us, 423. (2.) Of a judge; now
Christ appears for us, not only as an advocate, but as a surety, paying down to
God on our behalf the very utmost that his justice can expect, 424; and besides
God himself appointed him to this work, 425.
2 In reference to men, for whom he mediates. He bears a fourfold relation
to them. (1.) Of a friend, 426. (2.) Of a brother, ti. (3.) Of a surety, 427.
(4.) Of a lord or master, 428.
3. In respect of himself, who performs the office. (1.) He is perfectly ac
quainted with all our wants and necessities, 429. (2.) He is heartily sensible
of, and concerned about them, 430. (3.) He is best able to express and set them
before the Father, 431.
IV. Whether there is any other ground that may rationally embolden us in
these our addresses to him, 432.
If there is, it must be either, 1. Something within : as the merit of our good
actions. But this cannot be, (1.) Because none can merit, but by doing some
thing absolutely by his own power for the advantage of him from whom he
merits, 432. (2.) Because to merit is to do something over and above what is
due, 433. It must then be,
2. Something without us : and this must be the help and intercession either,
(1.) Of angels, or (2.) Of saints, 433.
Angels cannot mediate for us, and present our prayers. 1. Because it is im
possible for them to know and discern the thoughts, 433. 2. Because no angel
can know at once all the prayers that are even uttered in words throughout the
world, ib.
The arguments some bring for the knowledge of angels, partly upon scripture,
434, and partly upon reason, 436, examined and answered, 436, 437.
The foregoing arguments against angels proceed more forcibly against the
intercession of saints : to which there may be added over and above, 1. That
God sometimes takes his saints out of the world, that they may not know and
see what happens in the world, 437. 2. We have an express declaration of
their ignorance of the state of things below in Isaiah lxiii. 16, 438.
The Romish arguments, from scripture, Luke xxi., and from reason, stated
and answered, 438 — 440.
The invocation of saints supposed to arise, 1. From the solemn meetings,
used by the primitive Christians, at the saints' sepulchres, and there celebrating
the memory of their martyrdom. 2. From those seeds of the Platonic philoso
phy, that so much leavened many of the primitive Christians, 440. 3. From
the people's being bred in idolatry, 441. But the primitive fathers held no such
thing ; and the council of Trent, that pretended to determine the case, put the
world off with an ambiguity, ib.
Conclusion, that Christ is the only true way; the way that has light to direct,
and life to reward them that walk in il; and consequently there is "no coming
to the Father, but by him," 443.

SERMON XXXI.
the danger of resisting thb spirit.
Genesis vi. 3.
And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man.
God, in the first chapter, looks over all created beings, and pronounces them
to be good; in this chapter he surveys the sons of men before the flood and
delivers his judgment, that they were exceeding wicked, nay totally corrupt

HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV. XXV
and depraved. But amidst those aboundings of wickedness, God left not him
self without a witness in their hearts : they had many checks and calls from the
Holy Spirit, which, by their resolution to persist in sin, they did at length totally
extinguish. God withdraws his Spirit, and the strivings of it; and presently
the flood breaks in upon them, to their utter perdition, 444.
The words afford several observations ; as first, from the method God took in
this judgment, first withdrawing his Spirit, and then introducing the flood, we
may observe,
1. D. That God's taking away his Spirit from any soul, is the certain fore.-
runner of the ruin of that soul.
2. From that expression of the "Spirit's striving with man," we may
observe, 2. D. That there is in the heart of man a natural enmity and opposition to the
motions of God's Holy Spirit.
3. From the same expression we may observe,
3. D. That the Spirit, in its dealings with the heart, is very earnest and
vehement. From the definite sentence God here passes, we may observe,
4. D. That there is a set time, after which the convincing operations of God's
Spirit upon the heart of man, in order to his conversion, being resisted, will
cease and for ever leave him, 445.
This last doctrine, seeming to take in the chief scope of the Spirit in these
words, is here prosecuted in four things.
I. In endeavouring to prove and demonstrate the truth of this assertion from
scripture, 446.
That it is the way of God's dealings, still to withdraw his Spirit, after some
notorious resistance, instanced from several scriptures. 1. From Psalm xcv. 10.
2. From Heb. iv. 7. 3. From Luke xix. 42. And from Gen. xv. 16, 446, 447.
Here note, that by a set time, is not to be understood a general set time, which
is the same in every man; but a set and stinted time in respect of every par
ticular man's life, in which there is some limited period, wherein the workings
of the Spirit will for ever stop, 448.
II. In showing how many ways the Spirit may be resisted; that is, in every
way which the Spirit takes to command and persuade the soul to the perform
ance of duty and the avoidance of sin, 448. As,
1. Externally, by the letter of the word, either written or preached, it may be
resisted, (1.) By a negligent hearing and a careless attendance upon it, 449, 450.
(2.) By acting in a clear and open contrariety to it, 450. And this last kind
of resisting is great and open rebellion. 1. Because action is the very perfec
tion and consummation of sin. 2. Because sin in the actions argues an over
flowing and a redundancy of sin in the heart, 451.
2. By its immediate internal workings upon the soul. And here the Spirit
may be resisted, (1.) In its illumination of the understanding: that is, its
infusing a certain light into the mind, in some measure enabling it to discern
and judge of the things of God, 452. Now this, light is threefold. 1. That
universal light usually termed the light of nature, 453. 2. A notional light
of scripture ; or a bare knowledge of, and assent to scripture truths, ib. 3. A
special convincing light, whieh is a higher degree, yet may be resisted and
totally extinguished, 454.
2. In its conviction of the will, 455. Now the convincing works of the
Spirit upon the will, in all which it may be opposed, are, 1. A begetting in it
some good desires, wishes, and inclinations, ib. 2. An enabling it to perform
some imperfect obedience, 456. 3. An enabling it to forsake some sins, ti.
III. In showing the reasons why, upon such resistance, the Spirit finally
withdraws. 1. Because it is decreed by Godj
2. Because it is most agreeable to the great intent and design of the gospel,
(1.) In converting and saving the elect, 460. (2.) In rendering reprobates in
excusable, 461.
3. Because it highly tends to the vindication of God's honour: (1.) As it is a
punishment to the sinner, 463. (2.) As a vindication of his attributes, 1. Of
Vol. IV.— (4) c

XXyi HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV.
wisdom; 2. Of mercy, in showing it is no ways inferior, much less contrary to
bio holiness 464. 465, and not repugnant to his justice, 465.
4 Because it naturally raises in the hearts of men an esteem and valuation
of the Spirit's workings: (1.) An esteem of fear: (2.) An esteem of love, 466
IV In an application. We are exhorted not to quench the Spirit, but to
cherish all his suggestions and instructions, 467. Because our resisting the
SPJncIrtain!y bereave us of his comforts, 468 ; which are, (1.) Giving a man
to understand his interest in Christ, and consequently in the love ot Uod, ib.
(2 1 Discovering to him that grace that is within him, 469.
2 It will bring a man under hardness of heart and a reprobate sense, by
way, 1- Of natural causation; 2. Of a judicial curse from God, 469, 470.
3. It puts a man in the very next disposition to the great and unpardonable
sin against the Holy Ghost : and the foregoing acts, being like so many degrees
and steps leading to this dreadful sin, which is only a greater kind of resistance
of the Spirit, 470.
SERMON XXXII.
the difference between a saving and a pharisaical righteousness.
Matthew v. 20.
For I say unto you, That unless your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the
scribes and pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Our blessed Saviour here shows, first, that eternal salvation cannot be attained
by the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees ; secondly, that it may be at
tained by such a one as does exceed it, 472.
For understanding the words it is explained,
First, That these scribes and pharisees amongst the Jews were such as
owned themselves the strictest livers and best teachers in the world, 472.
Secondly, That ^righteousness" here has a twofold acception. 1. Righteous
ness of doctrine. 2. Righteousness in point of practice, 473.
Thirdly, That "the kingdom of heaven" has three several significations in
scripture. I. It is taken for the Christian economy, opposed to the Jewish and
Mosaic ; 2. For the kingdom of grace ; 3. For the kingdom of glory, 473, 474.
These things premised, the entire sense of the words lies in three propositions.
1st. That a righteousness is absolutely necessary to the attainment of sal
vation. 2dly. That every degree of righteousness is not sufficient to entitle the soul
to eternal happiness.
3dly. That the righteousness that saves must far surpass the greatest
righteousness of the most refined hypocrite in the world, 474.
This proposition, virtually containing both the former, is the subject of the
discourse, and prosecuted in three things.
I. Showing the defects of the hypocrites (here expressed by " the scribes and
pharisees"), 475.
As 1. That it consisted chiefly in the external actions of duty, 475. 2. That
it was but partial and imperfect, not extending itself equally to all God's com
mands, 476. 3. That it is legal, that is, such a one as expects to win heaven
upon the strength of itself and its own worth, 478.
H Showing the perfections and qualities by which the righteousness that
saves transcends that of the hypocrites.
Among many, four are insisted upon. 1. That it is entirely the same whether
the eye of man see it or not, 480. 2. That it is an active watching against and
opposing every even the least sin, 482. 3. That it is such a one as always
aspires and presses forward to still a higher and a higher perfection, 484
4. The fourth and certainly distinguishing property of its humility, 485.
m. Showing the necessity of such a righteousness in order to a man's salva-
tion. Which arises,

HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV. XXVII
I. From the holiness of God, 486.
2. From the work and employment of a glorified person in heaven ; and no
person, whom the grace of God has not thoroughly renewed and sanctified, can
be fit for such a task: for it is righteousness alone, that must both bring men to
heaven, and make heaven itself a place of happiness to those that are brought
thither, 487. . ,
SERMON XXXIII.
on the martyrdom of king charles i.
Judges xix. 30.
And it was so, that all that saw it, said, There was no such deed done or seen from the
day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day :
consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds.
These words were occasioned by a foul and detestable fact, which, for want
of kingly government, happened in one of the tribes of Israel : but may be
applied to express the murder of King Charles the First, 491, 492. The un
paralleled strangeness of which deed will appear, if we consider,
I. The qualities, human accomplishments, and personal virtues of the person
murdered, 493.
II. The gradual preparations to such a murder, a factious ministry and a
covenant, 496, and their rebellious catechism, 497.
III. The actors in this tragical scene, 498.
IV. Their manner of procedure in it, 439, openly, ib., cruelly, 500, and with
pretences of conscience, and protestations of religion, 501, 502.
V. The fatal consequences of it, 503, such as were of a civil, ib., or a religious
concern, ii.
Lastly, Hereupon we ought to take advice, 505, and consider, that our sins
have been the cause of our calamities ; and that the best way to avoid the same
evil is to sin no more, 506.

SERMON XXXIV.
ecclesiastical constitutions to be maintained.
Galatians ii. 5.
To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour ; that the truth of the gospel
might continue with you.
From the way of St. Paul's dealing with the schismatics of his time, avpat-
tern may be drawn, how to deal with our dissenters, viz., not to yield up the
least lawful received constitution of our church to their demands or pretences,
though never so urging and importunate, 507 — 509. The prosecution of which
assertion shall be managed by considering,
I. The pretences alleged by dissenters against our church's ceremonies, 510.
As, 1. The unlawfulness of those ceremonies, 512.
2. Their inexpediency, 513.
3. Their smallness, 514. Which three exceptions are confuted severally.
II. The consequences of yielding or giving them up, 515. Which will ap
pear very dangerous, if we observe,
1. The temper and disposition of those men, who press for such a compli
ance, 515.
2. The effects of such a compliance heretofore, 516, and those which a com
prehension is likely to produce for the future, 517, together with a discourse
upon toleration, 518.
III. The good and great influence of a strict adherence to the constitutions
of our church, in procuring the settlement of it, and preserving the purity of the
gospel amongst us, 520, because it is the most sovereign means,

XXviiJ HEADS OF SERMONS IN VOL. IV.
1. To preserve unity in the church, 520. ,
2. To beget in the church's enemies an opinion of the requisiteness ol those
US3? To possess them with an awful esteem of the conscience of the governors
of the church, 522. ,
Lastly A brief recapitulation is made of all the forealleged reasons and
arguments, why (according to St. Paul's example and dealing with the
Judaizing Christians) we are by no means to give place in the least to our
dissenters, 523 — 526.

SERMON XXXV.
the certainty of a future judgment.
2 Corinthians v. 10.
We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ : that every one may receive the
things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
Besides instruction and exhortation, there are only two ways, in the ordinary
course of divine providence, by which man is wrought upon, viz., hope of re
ward, and fear of punishment. God having tried the former method towards
this nation, but in vain, he is compelled to make use of the latter, by the terror
of his judgments. If any thing will rouse from spiritual lethargy, it must be
an apprehension of and meditation on the last judgment: therefore, although
the words may be considered as matter of consolation to the righteous, they
will on this occasion be handled in the severer sense, that of terror, 526 — 528.
The intention in this sermon is,
I. To convince every man's conscience, that there shall be indeed such an
appearance, or such a general trial or doom of all mankind after this life, as is
here spoken of. This may be proved by the dictates of reason and the light
of nature :
I. Because it is very agreeable to the nature of God, 529.
2. Because it is consonant to the nature of the soul of man, 530.
3. Because it is necessary for the manifestation of the divine justice, 530.
4. Because the disproportion between merits and rewards in this life seems
to require such a judgment, 532.
5. Because there is an inbred notion in all men, that there will be such a
judgment, 533—539.
II. To inquire what manner of thing this judgment or last doom will be. In
the description of which we have,
1. The judge, 539. 2. The parties to be judged, 541. 3. The matters for
which they will be tried, ib. 4. The form of the trial, ti. 5. The sentence and
its execution, 541 — 543.
III. By way of application, to show how much all men are concerned in this
judgment. If there be such a judgment to come, we may conclude,
1. That the greatest pretenders to wisdom are not the wisest men, 543, 544.
2. We may learn the folly of hypocrisy, 544. But there are others also who
will receive as great a punishment as the hypocrites, viz., presumptuous and
openly profane sinners.
To conclude : the best method we can take is to judge ourselves, and to make
it part of our daily business to meditate, 1st. Upon the vanity and shortness of
our lives. 2dly. Upon the certainty and uncertainty of our deaths. 3dly. Upon
the exactness and severity of the judgment after death. 4thly. Upon the im
mutability of every man's condition in the other world.

SERMONS.

SERMON I.
OBSTINATE SINNERS DOOMED TO ETERNAL PERDITION.
PSALM XCV. 11.
Unto whom I sware in my wrath, that they should not enter into my
rest.
In these words we have an account of the severest proceeding
of an angry God against sinners. What Calvin says of repro
bation, that it was decretum horribile, a dreadful amazing decree,
the like may be here said of this sentence pronounced against
Israel. For certainly, if such decrees are so terrible in the consti
tution of them, they cannot but appear much more terrible in the
promulgation. We have in the precedent verses a narrative of the Israelites'
provoking sins, like a black cloud gathering over their heads, and
here we have it breaking out into this dreadful thunder: a
thunder much more dreadful than all those that sounded in their
ears at the promulging of the law from mount Sinai ; for if the
terror of the Almighty was so great in giving the law, no wonder
if it was much greater in pronouncing the curse.
The words in themselves seem very plain and easy ; and by
this expression, " I sware in my wrath," is meant God's peremp
tory declaring his resolution to destroy those murmuring and re
bellious Jews. The word swearing is very significant, and seems
to import these two things :
1st. The certainty of the sentence here pronounced. Every
word of God both is and must be truth ; but ratified by an oath,
it is truth with an advantage. It is signed irrevocable. This
fixes it like the laws of the Medes and Persians, beyond all pos
sibility of alteration ; and makes God's word, like his very nature,
unchangeable.
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2 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. I.
2dly. It imports the terror of the sentence. If the children
of Israel could say, "Let not God speak to us, lest we die,
what would they have said had God then sworn against them.'
It is terrible to hear an oath from the mouth but of a poor mor
tal • but from the mouth of an omnipotent God, it does not only
terrify, but confound. An oath from God is truth de]"'ered in
anger ; truth, as I may so speak, with a vengeance. When God
speaks, it is the creature's duty to hear ; but when he swears, to
tremble. As for the next expression, "that they should not enter
into my rest," we must observe that the word rest may have a
double interpretation.
1st. It may be taken for a temporal rest in Canaan, the
promised land; or 2dly, for an eternal rest in the heavenly
Canaan. Concerning which, some, who interpret spiritual truths ac
cording to the model of their own carnal conceptions, will have
the whole sense of these words to be no more than God's ex
cluding that generation of the Jews that murmured from a
temporal possession of the land of Canaan, by destroying them
in the wilderness. But this does not reach the matter. For
since the church of the Jews, as to the whole economy and
design of it, was in every thing typical (so that it is observed
by all writers, that there was no dispensation that befell them
from God, in respect of any temporal blessing or curse, but it
did signify and couch under it the same in spirituals) : from the
warrant of this rule, we must admit in this scripture, as well as
in many others of the like nature, both of a literal and of a
spiritual, or mystical sense. And,
1st. Considered according to the literal meaning of the words,
as they are an historical passage relating to God's cutting off that
murmuring generation of the Jews in the wilderness, set down
in Numb. xiv. 21 — 23, so questionless they signify only God's
denying them an entrance into the temporal Canaan. For to
affirm, that all those that fell in the wilderness were excluded
from heaven, would be both a harsh and an unwarrantable inter
pretation. But then,
2dly. Considered according to the spiritual or mystical sense
of the words. So the meaning of them runs thus : as God in
his fierce anger destroyed many of the children of Israel for
their murmurings in the wilderness, and so denied them an
entrance into the promised land of Canaan ; so he will externally
destroy all obstinate unbelievers, and for ever exclude them from
an enjoyment of a perpetual rest with himself in heaven.
This I pitch upon as the prime intendment and sense of the
words, though not so as wholly to exclude the other; and I
ground it upon the apostle's own interpretation of these words
in Heb. iv. 5, compared with Heb. ix. 1], -where he interprets
this word " rest" of such a rest as a man may fall short of through

obstinate sinners doomed to eternal perdition. 3-
unbelief. But now unbelief does not so much exclude from a
temporal, as from an eternal rest. He applies it also to the Jews,
his contemporaries, living in the same age with himself; and
those could not possibly be said to miss or fall short of the earthly
Canaan, since they and their ancestors had possessed that long
before. It is clear, therefore, that it is to be understood chiefly
of the heavenly.
The words thus explained, I shall draw into this one proposi
tion, viz.
That God sometimes in this life, upon extraordinary provoca
tions, may and does inevitably design and seal up obstinate sinners
to eternal destruction.
The prosecution of which I shall manage under these following
particulars : ! '
I. I shall show how and by what means Godi seals up a sinner
to perdition.
II. What sort of obstinate sinners those are that God deals with
in this manner.
III. I shall answer and resolve one or two questions that may
arise from the foregoing particulars. And
IV. And lastly, draw some uses from the whole. Of these in
their order.
I. And for the first of these. There are three ways by
which God usually prepares and ripens a= sinner for certain
destruction. 1. By withholding the virtue and power of his ordinances:
and when God seals up the influences of these conduits^, no;
wonder if the soul withers and dies with drought. For, al»s:!'
what is a conduit by which nothing is conveyed ! The ordi'
nances of themselves can do nothing but as they are actuated and:
enlivened by a secret divine energy working1 in them. Now God,
while he freely dispenses them, can suspend the other-; and as he
can give rain, and yet deny fruitfulness, and even send famine
with a harvest, so he can fix such a curse upon the means of grace,
that a man may really want them while he enjoys them ; that isj
he may want them in their force and power, while he enjoys.
them in the letteri As a man may eat and yet not be nourished ;
for it is not the bread that nourishes, but the blessing. Thus
the Israelites had leanness in their bones^ together with their
quails, the hidden nutritive power of the divine benediction beingi
withheld. So in spirituals, a man may have an. unthriving soul
in the midst of the greatest evangelical provisions because
unblest ; and in the midst of such plenty, suffer a real scarcity
and famine.
The truth of this will appear from those different effecte that are
ascribed to the same word in scripture. For is not that which
is " a savour of life " to some ; that is, to those that are within

DR. SOUTH's POSTHUMOUS SERMONS.

[SERM.

thepurpose of God's love, and whom he intends effectually to
call, and to convert to himself: I say is not the same termed a
savour of death" to others? that is, to the obstinate and im
penitent, and such as God leaves to themselves. lhat which
God uses as an instrument to save, meeting with the corruption
of some obdurate hearts, is made a means to ruin : as it softens
some, so it hardens others. The chosen of God are qualified by
it for glory ; the reprobates prepared for wrath. So contrary are
the workings of the same principle upon different subjects. As
the same rain that, falling upon a tree or plant, makes it grow and
flourish : falling upon wood cut down and dried, makes it rot and
decay. By this means God does very powerfully fit the sons of
perdition for their final sentence. For when men grow worse and
worse by sermons and sacraments, and under the continual drop
pings of the word preached, produce nothing but the cursed
fruits of sin ; like " the earth, that, drinking in the rain that
cometh often upon it, beareth nothing but briars and thorns ;"
what can be expected, but that, as they resemble the earth in
its barrenness, so they should be like it also in its doom ; which
is, to be " nigh unto cursing ; whose end is to be burned," Hib.
vi. 8. The apostle draws a peremptory conclusion concerning
this, in 2 Cor. iv. 3, " If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that
are lost." When the word shall be exhibited to the soul, like a
dark lantern, not to display, but to conceal the light ; no wonder,
if " seeing, we do not see," but wander through the darkness of
a soul-destroying blindness, to such a darkness as is perpetual.
God can order even his word and precepts so, and turn them to the
destruction of the unprofitable, unworthy enjoyers of them, that,
as it is in Isaiah xxviii. 13, " they shall go backward, and be
broken, and snared, and taken." And certainly we have cause to
conclude him, who receives no benefit at all by the word of life,
a lost person. He, whom the very means of salvation do not save,
must needs perish.
2. God seals and prepares a sinner for destruction, by re
straining the convincing power of his providences. God's pro
vidences are subservient to his ordinances : they are, as it were,
God's word acted and made visible to the eye. For God speaks,
not only in his word, but also in his works. And, as Christ says
of his miraculous, so we may say also of God's providential
works ; that " the works that he does, bear witness of him."
There are such fresh marks and signatures of the divine will in
the many occasional passages of our lives, that such as have
their senses in any measure spiritually exercised, do not only see
the hand, but also hear the voice of him that sent them. And
it would not be difficult to draw forth sundry instances from
history, showing how several persons have been converted by
a serious reflection upon some strange passages of providence
that have so directly thwarted, and even melted them in their

OBSTINATE SINNERS DOOMED TO ETERNAL PERDITION. 5
sin, and withal carried with them such undeniable evidence of
the divine displeasure, that the persons concerned have been
forced to cry out, that it was the apparent finger of God ; and
so to submit to it by a conscientious reformation of their lives.
Now I shall instance in three sorts of providence, in which God
often speaks convincingly.
(1.) In a general common calamity. In respect of which it is
said, that " when God's judgments are abroad in the land, the
inhabitants will learn righteousness," Isaiah xxvi. 9. Now that
which concerns all, concerns every particular; as in a general
rain, every twig, every single spire of grass shares in the influence.
Judgments that are general in the sending, are to be made par
ticular by a distinct application. Thus Ezra and Nehemiah made
the common desolation and captivity of the Jews the subject-
matter of their personal sorrow. Thus also Jeremy, Lam. iii. 1,
considers all the words and griefs that were diffused here and
there in a common, universal calamity, and then makes them all
concentre in his own breast: "I am the man," says he, "that
have seen affliction." And what is the whole book of the La
mentations, but the doleful expression of the sorrows of one
man for the misery of all ? The convincing sense of a calamity
should spread wider a great deal than the actual endurance of it,
and the terror proceed further than the smart. As the sunbeams,
though directly and immediately they may strike only this or
that thing, yet they are sure to reach many others in the rebound.
But now, when God, as it were, blunts the edge of a common
calamity, so that it makes no impression, or hardens the heart so
that it admits none, this is a pregnant sign of a soul fitted and
prepared for destruction. See the truth of this exemplified in
one or two particulars. And first, could any thing be imagined
more impious and absurd, than that which we read in 1 Sam. xv.
of Agag, king of Amalek; that immediately upon the conquest
of his kingdom, the slaughter of his subjects, and the captivity
of his own person, like a man wholly unconcerned in all these
distresses, he should venture to adorn and trick up himself, and
conclude presently, that " surely the bitterness of death was
past?" But behold, even then, in that very moment, sudden
destruction rushes in upon him ; which, by the way, is then
usually nearest to our persons, when furthest from our thoughts.
But, to proceed to a higher example of villany ; could there be a
more prodigious, horrid instance of incorrigible lewdness, than
that in Numb. xxv. 6, of one Zimri, of whom it is said, that in
the very midst and height of a plague from heaven, raging over
the whole camp of Israel, " he brought into his tent the Midian-
itish strumpet in the sight of Moses, his prince, and in the sight
of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who stood
weeping before the door of the tabernacle of the congregation ?"
Neither any touch of common humanity, upon the sight of his
a2

6 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. I.
brethren's mourning and misery, nor any awe and reverence of
that great lawgiver, could give check to his fury ; but that, in
defiance of the plague, and of the wrath that sent it ; in spite ot
all shame and scandal, and in the face of God and of the world,
he charges on, resolutely and audaciously, to the satisfaction ot
his impure desires. But wheresoever we meet with such a rate
of sinning, we may be sure destruction cannot be far off, but even
at the door. And accordingly here in ver. 8, we find the ven
geance of God overtaking this vile person, by a sudden and dis
astrous death ; a death that carried away body and soul together.
For when men are killed in their sin, flagrante crimine, death
temporal is by consequence eternal. But now, had these two
daring wretches duly and rightly considered these dreadful, public
dispensations of God, they would quickly have reflected upon
their own personal danger, and cried out with surprise and horror,
as those sinners of Sion did upon the sight of God's judgments
round about them, in Isaiah xxxiii. 14 " Who among us shall
dwell with devouring fire ? who among us shall dwell with ever
lasting burnings?" This, together with the fears of mature re
pentance, had been the only sure way to have extinguished them.
But persons that will not be concerned, nor moved, nor wrought
upon by the loud alarms of God's judgments upon others, are
ripening apace for perdition.
(2.) The second sort of convincing providences is by particu
lar, personal, and distinguishing judgments. When a man is
singled out for misery, in the midst of a general prosperity, this
surely cannot be accounted accident. When God hits one in a
company you may very well conclude that he aimed at him.
Distinction and discrimination was never yet the effect of chance.
Now, in every such judgment the voice and command of God is,
that* we should either begin or renew our repentance. And when
God speaks with his hand, certainly he speaks most forcibly. But
when he binds up, and withholds the healing force of this also, and
inflicts the rod, but denies jurisdiction ; and uses that to kill, that
was first made to correct; this is another speedy and effectual
way to destroy.
Those many rubs and crosses that befell Saul, both in his per
secution of David and his other affairs, were certainly the voice, of
God, audible enough to any spiritual ear : and though God
- answered him not by Urim and Thummim, yet he spoke aloud
to him in vocal blows ; which were both reprehensions of what
he had done, and admonitions what, for the future, he should do
But we know, none of all these things had any effect upon him'
unless only^to make him worse. It appeared to be God's purpose
all along by a continual increase of guilt and hardness, to train
him up for destruction. The event did still demonstrate what
God designed him to. The same judgments that in the hand of
God are sovereign means to polish and improve a well-disposed

OBSTINATE SINNERS DOOMED TO ETERNAL PERDITION. 7
mind, are as efficaciously used by him to inflame the accounts of
the wicked and the obdurate ; who take occasion from thence to
make themselves ten times more the sons of reprobation than they
were before. As in bodies, those that are solid and excellent, as
gold and silver, the more you beat them, . the brighter and better
they grow ; but in flesh, that is presently subject to corrupt, the
more you strike it, the blacker and nearer it is to putrefaction. See
the desperate resolve that a wretched king of Israel made under a
pressing judgment, incumbent upon him from God, in 2 Kings vi.
33 : " And he said, Behold, this evil is of the Lord ; why should
I wait for the Lord any longer ?" When a man, instead of being
humbled by an evil, is enraged ; and, instead of lying at God's
feet, flies in his face ; we may be sure that his final judgment
and damnation lingers not. For if such works of God, as have
in them naturally a convincing quality, do not actually convince ;
but that the sinner can account " all God's arrows as stubble, and
laugh at the shaking of his spear ;" we may look upon that man
as one that hardens himself against God. And what will prove
the issue of such a behaviour is not difficult to conclude, from that
in Job ix. 4, that " none ever hardened himself against God, and
prospered." (3.) The third sort of providences, in which God often speaks
convincingly, is by signal, unexpected deliverances. These are
both the strongest and the sweetest ways of conviction : they are
properly God's "drawing us with the cords of a man :" all per
suasion, without any mixture of terror or compulsion ; by these
God does, as it were, allure, and even court us into subjection.
Now all deliverance, in the nature of it, presupposing some
evil, from which we are delivered ; God first brings us under an
evil, that we may see our sin, and then rescues us from perishing
by it, that we may repent. He shows us death in the punjshr
ment, to affright, and afterwards removes it in/ the deliverance,
to endear the soul. And surely, upon all the accounts of reason
and common humanity, it should be natural from hence to draw
an argument for repentance. For to sin against mercy, shining
in a deliverance, is disingenuous; and, since it, provokes the
judgment to return, equally "dangerous. The most proper, and
genuine deduction that is to be made from God's mercy, is his
fear, in Psalm cxxx. 4, "There is forgiveness with thee, that
thou mayest be feared." But now, if any man, from, a. deliver
ance from punishment, shall draw a consequence *br boldness in
sin, and if, from compassion, he shall argue himself into presump^
tion, this; is not the discourse of his reason, but the sophistry
and baseness of his corruption ; and such a way of arguing
as God reproached the children of Israel for, as equally wicked
and irrational, in Jer. vii. 10, " Will ye stand before me, and
say, We are delivered to do all these abominations ?" For can
we imagine, that the great and just God should concern, himself

8 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. I.
to deliver us, and to knock off our shackles, only that we may sin
against him so much the more freely ? . When God has §£t tte
sinner upon the advantage, and is making him feel, in «)ra«m*
sure the evil of his sin, in the smart of his punishment, what is it
that makes God, after all this, let him go, and choose rather to
release than to despatch him ? Is it because he could not destroy
him in justice? or, because it would not stand with the reputa
tion of his goodness ? No, assuredly ; it was wholly out of free,
spontaneous, undeserved mercy, to see whether or no he will
improve such an act of favour into a motive and occasion of
amendment. But if, for all this, the sinner will not hear what
God speaks in such a dealing ; but shuts his eyes and stops his
ears, and after so many endearments, loves God never the better,
nor his sin at all the worse (as this frame of spirit often befalls
sturdy, overgrown sinners), we may assuredly conclude, that God
is taking another course with such a one ; and fairly fitting him
for the final stroke of his revenging justice.
And thus much for the second way, by which I show, that God
seals and prepares a sinner for destruction ; namely, by restraining
the convincing force of his providences.
3. The third and last that I shall mention, is by delivering up
the sinner to a stupidity, or searedness of conscience. And here
it will be requisite to show what this searedness of conscience
means: which I shall endeavour to explain from that place of
scripture in 1 Tim. iv. 2, " Having their consciences seared
with a hot iron ;" xixo,vtrjpt,aoii£vu>v tr^v ISlav avvclSriaw. Where
some, by a " seared conscience," understand a prostitute, branded,
filthy conscience ; alluding to such notorious criminals as are
branded for their villanies : which, though it be in itself a truth,
yet others, I think, more significantly, make it an allusion to the
practice of surgeons and physicians, who use cuttings and burn
ings for the healing of corrupt flesh : which being once thus cau
terized or seared, becomes afterwards insensible. And like such
flesh are the consciences of some men ; which are, as it were,
seared into a kind of insensibility.
Now for the nature of conscience, we must know that it is
God's vicegerent in the soul, placed there by him, as superin
tendent over all our actions, severely to examine and supervise
them, and impartially to excuse or accuse, according to their con
formity or inconformity to the rules prescribed by God's law. And
it is, withal, naturally of the tenderest, the quickest, and the most
exact sense of any of the faculties ; impatient of the least irregu
larity, and not conniving at the smallest deviation from the rule a
man ought to act by.
But now, when this becomes gross, stupid, and insensible, the
soul may sin on as it pleases: for what can hinder sin from
reigning, when conscience is hardened, and cannot so much as
check it? If, when the watchman is but asleep, the city or

OBSTINATE SINNERS DOOMED TO ETERNAL PERDITION. 9
castle committed to him is in danger of a surprise from the
enemy, how much more must it needs be so when he is blind!
When there is a benumbedness, or searedness, upon the grand
principle of spiritual sense, so that, as it is expressed in Eph.
iv. 19, we come to be " past feeling," no wonder then if sin and
Satan inflict blow after blow, in the most fatal manner, upon the
soul : for this is most certain, that unless we feel the evil of sin, we
shall never resist it. Such a conscience will brook and digest the
foulest sins ; as when a man has lost his taste, any thing will go
down with him.
But still we must here note, that it is not at once, but by
degrees, that the conscience comes to be trained on to this insen
sible, obdurate temper. As first, if a man's conscience will serve
him to be worldly, from thence it shall allow him to proceed to
ambition and covetousness; and then, following the scent of
gain through thick andthin, he shall be able to mould and cast
himself into any kind, even of. the wickedest and the basest com
pliances ; and from thence, at last, if need be, he shall not stick
at perjury itself. And now, when conscience, by going this
cursed round, is become hardy, and the man made an expe
rienced, thorough-paced sinner; what sin will he not dare to
commit ? Any he, any oath, any treachery, shall be readily
swallowed and digested by him.
But how dangerous and even desperate, is such a frame of
mind ! and yet God sometimes delivers up sinners to it ; as he
did Pharaoh, to hardness of heart. But how ? not by any posi
tive infusion of such an evil habit into the conscience ; but by
subtracting his grace, as also providentially administering occa
sions, by which the sinner, thus deprived of grace, is more and
more hardened. And further than this, I see not how any evil
or sinful disposition in the creature can be said to be from God.
It is sufficient that God effectually works his end upon sinners
this way. As the sun is the cause of night and darkness, not by
any casual influence producing it, but only by withdrawing
his light ; the corruption of a man's heart, unrenewed by grace,
is the cause of its own hardness : as, when you melt wax, remove
but the fire, and the wax will harden itself. But now, there is
no way so sure and dreadful, by which God binds over a sinner
to death, as this. For thus God dealt with the Jews : " He
gave them eyes, that seeing, they might not perceive ; and ears,
that hearing, they might not understand : but made the heart
of that people gross, that they might not be converted, and
healed ;" that is, that they might be hardened and ruined ; as
it is in Isaiah vi. 9, 10.
The same appears also from that opposite way that God takes to
save. Because God had thoughts of mercy for king Josiah,
therefore he gave him a tender heart, to relent, upon the hear
ing of the law, 2 Kings xxii. 19 : " Because thine heart was
Vol. IV.— 2

10 DR; SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. 1.SERM.
tender, &c, therefore have I heard thee, saith the Lord." This
hardness growing upon the conscience is hke i fita g>™S
upon the eyes; it blinds them. And that which makes the con
science blind to discern its duty, makes it bold to venture upon
sin But, whosoever it is that God shuts up under such a trame
?f spiriMhat man carries the mark of death about him, and the
wrath of God, in all likelihood, abides upon him.
And thus I have done with the first thing proposed ; which was
to show how, and by what means, God seals up a sinner to perdition.
Come we now to
II. The second, which is to show, what sort of obstinate sinners
those are, that God deals with in this manner •¦: I shall instance in
1. Such as sin against clear and notable warnings from God.
Before a sinner comes to have finished his course, if he can but
reflect upon and trace over the several dealings ¦> of God's special
providence, he will find, that there have been many stops and
rubs thrown in his way ; which might have given him fair warn
ing to make a stand, at least, if not to retreat. For God some
times hedges in a sinner's way, so that it is really very difficult
for him to proceed, and not only more safe, but' also more easy for
him to return. How many men have gone to church, with
their hearts fully engaged in a resolution to pursue some secret,
beloved sin ; and there have been strongly arrested with the con
vincing force of some word, so seasonably, and, as it were, pur
posely directed against that sin, that they have thought the
preacher to have looked into their very hearts, -and to have been
as privy to their most inward thoughts and designs, as their own
consciences! Now this is a manifest admonition and caution,
cast in by God himself; which to balk o-- break through, greatly
enhances the sinner's guilt. Sometimes God warns a sinner
from his course, by making strong impressions upon his mind of
its unlawfulness, and contrariety to the divine will^ which im
pressions are so strong and cogent, that they overbear all the
shifts and carnal reasonings that the subtlety of a wicked heart'
can make in the behalf of it. Again, sometimes God meets the
sinner with some heavy threatening sickness, lays him upon the
bed of pain and languishing, and scares him with the fears of an
approaching death, and the weight of an endless confusion. And
then he pleads with him, opens the book of conscience, and sets
before him his sins, represented with all their killing circum
stances and dismal appearances, together with their hideous de
structive consequences in the everlasting endurance of an infinite
wrath. In which case, as the condition of sickness and danger is
usually a relenting condition, so, no doubt, but at that time
glorious designs of repentance are taken up by the sinner. But
»s soon as he is released of his sicknesSj he quickly grows sick of

OBSTINATE SINNERS DOOMED TO ETERNAL PERDITION. 11
his repentance ; and, as the Roman orator says, Timor non diu-
,turni magister officii: nothing more common than for the vio
lences of fear to return to the inclinations of nature. Possibly,
after all this, God meets the sinner again, scatters his estate,
makes a breach upon his reputation, and so disciplines him with
poverty and disgrace, till, at length, he resumes his forgotten re
pentances, and recovers himself into soberer thoughts and severer
principles. These are the methods, that, for the most part, God takes to
reduce obstinate sinners. But yet, there both have been and still
are men in the world deeply engaged, and, as it were, fixed and
riveted in their sins, notwithstanding all these and the like admoni
tions. But whosoever they are that can frustrate and defeat all
these arts and attempts of grace for the recalling of sinners, you
may write them hopeless : for, where admonition cannot enter,
nothing but death and destruction can.
2. The other sort of sinners are such as sin against special
renewed vows and promises of obedience made to God. This is
not only to break God's bonds, laid upon us in conviction, but
also those bonds and ties that we have laid upon ourselves, by
our own voluntary protestations. A vow, or promise, is the most
binding thing that can limit or restrain a free agent. And from
mere natural principles, men generally bear such a reverence to
them, that they must be far gone in a contempt of nature, as well
as religion, before they can wholly break or cast them off. For,
if these cannot bind, corruption must needs be boundless. Solo
mon gives us an excellent admonition in Eccles. v. 4 : " When
thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it ; for God hath
no pleasure in fools." Where we may observe, that he supposes
that men are not of such prostitute consciences, as wholly to
deny the performance of a vow ; and therefore he fastens folly
and wickedness upon the very delay of it. And if so, what can
we think that he would have said to a downright breach of a
vow ? and that in a matter of such indispensable necessity as
obedience ? To break it here is therefore so transcendently
wicked, because this was due upon the account of God's law, be
fore, and without our promise. It obliged, of itself, as a duty ;
but a vow or solemn promise, superadded, sets home duty with a
further obligation.
Moreover, the violation of these is more than ordinary sinful ;
not only from the necessity of the matter to which they oblige,
but also from the occasion upon which they were made. For
men seldom make such vows, but upon extraordinary cases ; as
upon the receipt of some great endearing mercy, or some notable
deliverance ; which causes them, by way of gratitude, to bind
themselves to God in closer and stricter bonds of obedience.
Whereupon, such as make a custom of affronting God, by a fre
quent and familiar breach of these, are justly very odious to him,
and, from odious, quickly become unsupportable.

12 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. I.
Where sin is grown inveterate, and the ^e\ ™°°X™w'
so that he can endure no restraint, nothing can hddhm but
like the man possessed with a legion of devils, he breaks all chains
and fetters that have been cast about him ; we may be confident
that evil is designed for him : he stands as a condemned person
before God already. God has pronounced his doom. And
though he has frequently broken promise with God, yet in this
thing he shall find, that God will certainly keep his word with
And thus much for the second thing proposed ; which was to
show, what sort of obstinate sinners those are that God seals up to
destruction. I come now to
III. The third, which is to answer and resolve two questions
that may arise from the foregoing particulars.
1st. "Whether the purpose of God, passed upon an obstinate
sinner (here expressed to us by God's swearing against him), be
absolutely irrevocable.
2dly. Whether a man may know such a purpose to have passed
upon him antecedently to its execution.
For the first of these, I affirm that the scripture is full and
clear for it. As for instance, God unalterably purposed the
taking away the kingdom from Saul : of which purpose Samuel
speaks thus, in 1 Sam. xv. 29, " The Strength of Israel," says
he, "is not a man that he should repent:" where, by repenting,
is meant only God's altering his counsel, or reversing his pur
pose. And now, if God may pass such a purpose upon a man with
reference to his temporal estate, why may he not also with refer
ence to his eternal ? Since the motive inducing God to one (which
is the high malignity of sin) may be advanced to such a degree
of provocation, as equally to induce him to the other ; especially,
since the difference of the subject, viz. that one is about a tem
poral, the other about an eternal estate, does not at all alter the
nature of the action. For is it anyways strange in reason, ab
surd in divinity, or indeed, in any respect derogatory, even to the
divine goodness itself, for God, upon unusual sins frequently re
peated, pertinaciously continued in, and beset with circumstances
of the highest aggravation and defiance, to take up a purpose con
cerning such a person, certainly to exclude him from salvation ?
This is so suitable, even to the most just and equal transactions
between man and man, that I find no paradox to assert it, in re
spect of God's dealings, at all.
But some, perhaps, will urge: Suppose such a one should
repent, change his life, and break off his sins, by a sincere and
constant devoting of himself to the duty of piety and mortifica
tion, would the purpose of God stand still in force against such
a one ?

OBSTINATE SINNERS DOOMED TO ETERNAL PERDITION. 13
I answer, No ; but I add withal, that this, in the present case,
is both an improper and an impossible supposition : for, suppos
ing that God once commences such a purpose against any sinner,
he always withholds and denies that grace which should render
the means of repentance effectual, after that : so that it is certain
that such a one will never have a will, or a heart, to repent and
turn from his sins. And therefore, in the foregoing discourse, I
show that God puts this purpose in execution, chiefly, by with
drawing the secret converting energy of his word : for to me it
seems clear, that the word does not convert by any mere suasive
force naturally inherent in it ; but, by a divine power concomi
tant to, and co-operating with it. It being otherwise hard to
imagine, how a man can be barely persuaded out of his nature, or
at least out of that which sways him as strongly. I show also,
that God took away the convincing edge and impression of
his providences ; so that they never became effectual to reduce
such a one.
From all which it follows, that upon these grounds the foregoing
question is impertinent. For though God promises salvation
upon a certain condition ; yet if he alone, by his grace, is able to
effect that condition, and upon great provocation refuses to
effect it ; it is evident that he may, upon failure of that condition,
irreversibly purpose to condemn a sinner, and yet stand firm to
the truth of his former promise.
This is most certain ; that both these propositions may, and
are, and must be unalterably true ; namely, That whosoever
repents, and leaves his sins, shall be saved ; and yet that he, who
soever God has sworn shall never enter into his rest, can never
enter into it : and all pretences to the contrary are but harangue
and declamation, and fit to move none but such as understand not
the strength of arguments, or the force of propositions. And thus
much in answer to the first question.
The second is, Whether a man may know such a purpose to
have passed upon him, antecedently to its execution ?
In answer to which, we must observe, that the ordinary ways
by which God imparts the knowledge of his will to men, are only
these two : 1. God's declaration of it by his word. 2. Men's
collection of it from its effects.
Now, for the first of these, I shall lay down this assertion ;
that every peremptory and absolute declaration of something to be
done by God, does not always infer God's absolute purpose to do
that thing, as to the event of it.
The due* consideration of which is of so great moment, that
without it we cannot rightly understand many of the promises
and threatenings of God, which run in terms absolute and per
emptory, and yet never come to be fulfilled. As for instance, in
that first great threatening made to Adam in Gen. ii. 17, " In
the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die ;" we find, that
B

14 DR. SOUTH's POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [SERM. I.
the execution did not reach the letter of the denunciation ; foras
much as Adam long survived the violation of that precept, to
which this threatening was annexed.
And then, in the next place, for promises. Let us take that
eminent one made by God to Eli, in 1 Sam. ii. 30, where God
repeats his own promise in terms very absolute : " Wherefore the
Lord God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the
house of thy father should walk before me for ever ;" yet he adds
in the very next words, "Far be it from me." Strange! that
when God had promised a thing absolutely, he should add after
wards, " Far be it from me " to perform it. How are these things .
reconcileable to, and consistent with his immutable truth and
veracity ? For the explication of which,
(l.) We must observe first, particularly, concerning God's
threatenings ; that frequently they do not signify the event of the
thing threatened, but sometimes declare only the merit of the
action and the will of God, that such a punishment should be due
to such an offence ; not that it should be eventually inflicted for
it : so that those words in Genesis signify only thus much, " In
the day that thou eatest," thou shalt certainly be obnoxious and
liable to death : and so Adam really was, and might have been
proceeded against according to the tenor of that sentence, had God
been pleased to take him upon the advantage.
(2.) We must observe jointly concerning both ^promises and
threatenings, that they often run in absolute terms, when really
they imply a condition. So that the promise made to Eli and his
family implied the condition of their obedience and pious
behaviour towards God ; which failing and the promises there
upon not being performed, it appeared, that however in words it
was absolute, yet in sense and design it was but conditional.
h rom all which I affirm, that promises and threatenings, though
expressed in never such absolute terms, yet cannot be known to
be absolute or conditional, till such time as they are put in
execution. And yet therefore upon this ground no sinner can
conclude that God has taken up such a purpose against him, till
he nnds it actually fulfilled upon him. To which I add further,
that God now-a-days makes no such declaration of his purposes
to any particular persons.
Wwi11!, the,next, Place then, ^ any will pretend to gather the
sZleffZ f U"h V^086 °f God aSainst him> ^ must be from
Zace S? «! ? * SuCh' a-S I 8h0W' Were God's withdrawing his
fnd ^n hi T r6t convlnclnS P°wer, that operates in his word
and in his providences : but this cannot immediately be known

OBSTINATE SINNERS DOOMED TO ETERNAL PERDITION. 15
against frequently renewed vows and promises of amendment and
obedience. But these I mentioned not as certain, infallible marks
of such a forlorn estate, but only as shrewd signs of it. For be
sides that the scripture declares no man Absolutely and finally lost,
as soon as these qualifications are found upon him, unless they
continue so till his death ; so it is further manifest, that the grace
of God is so strange and various, in its working upon the heart of
men, that it sometimes fastens upon and converts old overgrown
sinners, such as, to the eye of reason, were going apace to hell,
and almost at their journey's end.
From all which it follows, that no man, in this life, can pass
any certain judgment concerning the will of God in reference to
his own final estate ; but ought, with fear and trembling, to
attend God's precept and revealed will ; and so gathering the
best evidence he can of his condition from his obedience, with
all humility to expect the issue of God's great counsels and
intentions. But here, to prevent all mistakes about what has been said,
you must observe, that there is a wide difference between the
purpose of God, that I have been hitherto discoursing of, and
that which the schools call God's decree of reprobation : concern
ing which I shall only remark this by the way, That there is so
much to be argued, both from scripture and reason, grounded
upon the actuality and immutability of the divine nature for it ;
and so much, on the contrary, from the difficulty of its seeming
to some to make God the author of sin, and to cross some re
ceived principles of morality, to be urged against it, that had
not authority most wisely and justly restrained all discourses of it
from the pulpit, I think none could show a better understanding
of it, than by not presuming to determine "any thing about it.
And therefore my business rather is, only in a word or two to
show, that the purpose of God, that I have been hitherto speak
ing of, is quite another thing from that decree considered ac
cording to the hypothesis of the schools, and that in a double
respect. 1st. Because that decree is said to commence entirely upon
God's good pleasure and sovereign will, and not upon any com
pulsive cause from without him ; but this purpose commences
upon the provocation of the sinner, as an impulsive cause moving
God to make such a determination against him.
2dly. Because that decree is said to be from all eternity ; but
this purpose is actually taken up in time ; namely, after some
signal provocation. And because the schools will not admit of
any new immanent acts, new purposes or decrees in God ; there
fore I call it a purpose only in a large and popular sense : for in
deed, in strictness of speech, it is properly but an effect of
God's will, actually disposing the sinner under such circum-

16 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. I.
stances, as meeting with his corruption, will certainly end m his
perdition. And thus having cleared these two questions, which was the
third thing proposed to be "handled,
IV. I descend now to the fourth and last, which is to draw some
uses from the whole. And the
First shall be of exhortation, to exhort and persuade all such
as know how to value the great things that concern their peace, to
beware of sinning under sin-aggravating circumstances. What
those are, you may know by recollecting, in your meditations,
what has been delivered. It is wonderful to consider what weight
a bare circumstance gives to sin, and what a vast and wide dis
parity it makes between actions of the same nature. What is the
reason that the same sin does not actually fetch down wrath upon
one, when it strikes another with an immediate vengeance, but
because in one it is empoisoned with more killing circumstances
than in the other ? Now we are to know, that the things that
chiefly provoke God to swear against men, are judgments, mercies,
means of grace, warnings, and convictions ; these are the things
that, neglected, double and treble the guilt of sins, and of
damnable, make them actually condemning. These are the fair
days that ripen us apace for the sickle of sin-revenging justice.
It is said of the times of heathenism, in Acts xvii. 30, that " God
winked at them ;" what was the reason ? Certainly their sins, as
to the nature and kind of them, were as black, hideous, and pro
voking, and struck as high as the highest improvement of natural
corruption could reach. Why then cannot God wink also at the
same sins now under the gospel? Why ! because as the gospel
offers grace to sinned, so it adds guilt and greatness to sin. A
dunghill under the hot sunshine is much more offensive than un
der the shade.
As men therefore fear falling under that terrible sentence ex
pressed in the words ; as they dread a final unappeasable anger,
let them shun these sin-heightening aggravations ; and beware of
sinning against judgments and deliverances, gospel light, clear
warnings, and strong convictions. For can we in reason imagine,
that that great and universal Providence, that takes cognizance
L^S least accident, and reckons every hair that falls
11 l' 7ld not have some great and particular designs
Sstat Hl Ti Nf" G°d S T^ n0r *" Vorks can
be frustrate. He neither discourses nor fights with the air And
therefore in the strength and evidence of what I have laki down
I must affirm, that that person, whosoever he is, whom the Z'
tinual returns ofthe word preached does not alter; but that hi
old sins continue firm, entire, and unbattered ; the baseness 5 £
inclinations unchanged ; so that .after all his Attendance Tpon. the

OBSTINATE SINNERS DOOMED TO ETERNAL PERDITION. , 17
word, his tongue and thoughts are as loose to all filthiness, to all
levity of discourse and behayiour, as before; — he also whose
former distresses, hardships, and disasters have not laid him low
in the valleys of humility, nor circumscribed the lashings out of
his luxury, but that his past miseries and restraints give only a
relish instead of a check to his present pride and intemperance ;
— and lastly, he whom all the caresses and embraces of providence
have not been able to win upon, so as to endear him to a virtuous
strictness, or to deter him from a vicious extravagance : I say
every such person, (unless the great God be trivial and with
out concern in his grand transactions with our immortal souls,)
during this condition is, so far as we can judge, a fashioning
for wrath. He is a probationer for hell, and carries about him
the desperate symptoms and plague-tokens of a person likely
to be sworn against by God, and hastening apace to a sad
eternity. The other use and improvement of the foregoing particulars
shall be to convince us of the great and fearful danger of a dar
ing continuance in a course of sin. The counsel of Daniel to
Nebuchadnezzar carries an equal aspect upon us all that we
" break off our sins by righteousness," and change our lives by
an immediate repentance : for who knows what dreadful things
may be forming in the mind of God against us during our im
penitence ? Who knows what a day may bring forth, and what
may be the danger of one hour's delay ? This is most sure, that
every particular repeated act of sin, sets us one advance nearer to
hell. And while we are sinning obstinately, and going on auda
ciously in a rebellious course, how can we tell but God may
" swear in his wrath " against us, and register our names in the
black rolls of damnation ? And then our condition is sealed and
determined for ever.
It is dangerous dallying with, and venturing upon the
Almighty. God is indeed merciful, but we know mercy itself
may be angry, and compassion provoked may swear our destruc
tion. Every sinner, upon his return to God, should repent and
believe with that confidence, as if God were nothing but mercy ;
but having once repented, it would be his wisdom to live with
that caution and exactness, as if God were nothing but justice.
For none certainly can be too exact in acquitting himself to God,
or too cautious in the business of eternity. And therefore when
the tempter shall dress up any beloved minion sin, and present it
to our eager* inflamed appetites, let us not look upon it as it paints
and sparkles in the temptation ; but rather let us demur a while,
and debate with ourselves, what may be the issue of that sin, if
committed by us, in the court of heaven : whether it may not
provoke God to protest that we shall never come thither; and
then believe it, God will say, as he does in Isaiah xiv. 23, " I
have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righ-
Vol. IV.— 3 b 2

18 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. I.
teousness, and it shall not return." What God absolutely pur
poses and declares, God himself- cannot, because he will not
disannul. Still therefore, let us keep this consideration alive
upon our spirits, that before the sentence of death pass upon us,
it may fairly be prevented ; but when it is once denounced, it
can never be recalled. God in mercy give us a right understand
ing of these things.
To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise,
might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore.
Amen.

19

. SERMON II.
the folly of atheism.
Psalm xiv. 1.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
That any one should degenerate to that degree of unreason
able baseness, as to deny that being and power by which he
breathes, is not easy to imagine, did not some force us to believe
so much of them upon their own word ; such as, history tells us,
were Diagoras Melius, Theodorus Cyrenseus, and the like : and
we have no cause to have so much better an opinion of the
modern age, as to doubt that it has those who are ready enough to
let fly and vent the same impiety. Though, let them affirm
it never so much in words, there are not wanting arguments to
persuade us, that their mouth belies their heart ; and that they
have an inward, invincible sense of what they outwardly re
nounce, holding them under the iron bands of a conviction not
to be stifled or outbraved, or hectored out of their conscience ; as
shall be discoursed of afterwards.
In the words we have these two particulars :
I. An assertion made ; " There is no God."
H. The person by whom it is made ; " the fool."
I. As for the assertion, we may consider in it two things: 1.
The thing asserted ; 2. The manner of its- assertion.
1. As for the thing asserted; that ct there is no God;" it may
be understood,
(1.) Either, first, of an absolute removal of the divine being
and existence : that there is no such spiritual, infinite, omniscient,
omnipotent nature, as we call God: but that the world is of it
self; and that there is nothing else distinct from it. This is the
highest degree of asserting that there is no Gdd.
(2.) It may be understood of a removal of God's providence,
by which he governs and takes account of all the particular
affairs of the world ; and more especially of the lives and ac
tions of men,, so as to reward or punish them according as they
are good or evil. This is a lower degree of atheism ; but has al
together as masculine an influence upon the manners and practices
of men as the former ; and perhaps upon a due improvement of
consequences, will be found to end in it. Epicurus was of this
opinion. He confessed that there was a God ; but as for his in
terposing or concerning himself in our affairs here below, this he

20 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. ii.
utterly denied, and that for a reason as absurd as his assertion
was impious; namely, that it would disturb his ease, and conse
quently interrupt his felicity, to superintend over our many little
and perplexed businesses. .
Now I suppose, the text mav be understood equally of both
these senses : and accordingly I" shall so take it m the ensuing
discourse. 2 The next thing is the manner of the assertion ; " The fool
hath said in his heart." It wears the badge of guilt, privacy,
and darkness ; and, as if it were sensible of the treason it carries ¦
in its bowels, it hides its head, and dares not own itself in the
face of the sun and of the world. Atheism is too conscious to
be venturous and open ; that is the property of truth, the
daughter of the light and of the day. It is not the nature of
this ill thing, to display itself in words, and to summons prose
lytes upon the market-place. It will not hang up a flag of defi
ance against God, and cry out, " Hear, 0 heaven, and hearken,
0 earth : there is no such thing as a maker and governor of the
universe ; it is all but a crafty invention of statesmen, priests,
politicians, to bring mankind to their lure, and to bind the bonds
of government faster upon societies."
No ; the atheist is too wise in his generation to make remon
strances and declarations of what he thinks. His tongue shall
keep the track of the common and received way of discoursing ;
and, perhaps, his interest may sometimes carry him so far, as to
disguise his behaviour with zeal for the assertion of those things
which his belief is a stranger to. It is his heart, and the little
council that is held there, that is only privy to his monstrous opi
nions. There it is that he dethrones his Maker, and deposes
conscience from its government and vicegerency. For here, he
knows, he may think, and think freely, and uncontrollably ; since
there is no casement in his bosom, no listening hole in his heart,
from which the informer may catch and carry away a guilty
thought. He that would see the stage upon which human liberty acts
entirely and to the utmost, must retreat into his heart, and there
he shall see a principle, absolute and unshackled, and not framed
into any demureness, and assumed postures of virtue and gravity,
from the awe of men's eye and observation, which, instead of
the man, exhibits only a dress to the spectator. He shall find
his heart bold enough to question the laws he bows to ; to exa
mine the first principles, that in his profession lie sacred and un
touched ; to ransack and look into foundations ; and, in a word
to think as he pleases, while he speaks and does as he is com
manded. It will now concern us to inquire a little, what is meant and
implied by the fool's saying in his heart that " there is no God."
I conceive it may imply these following things :

THE folly of atheism. 21
1. An inward wishing, that there was no God. There is
nothing more properly the language of the heart, than a wish. It
is the thirst and egress of it, after some wanted, but desired
object. The atheist first pleases his contemplation, with the
supposition of that free range that he might take in all the gar
dens of pleasure, if there were no superior eye to supervise and
judge him. And, how brave a thing it were to have the enter
tainments of a feast every day, and no reckoning brought up in
the rear of them! to be voluptuous, and yet unaccountable!
to be lord and master, and supreme in his choice, and to obey
nothing but his own appetites !
These reflections fill his fancy with glistering imaginations :
and the man cannot hold, but wish that troublesome thing, the
Deity, that so sours and thwarts his contents, removed and
wholly taken out of the way; than which there cannot be a
thought of a higher malignity and a more daring venom. For
he that wishes a thing would certainly effect it, if it were in his
power. He that would have no God, is full of indignation that
there is one ; and, according to the poet's fable of the giants
attempting to scale heaven, and to fight with the gods ; so would
he ascend, and ravish the sceptre from the hands of omnipotence,
nestle himself in the government of the world, and, like Lucifer,
place himself higher than the Most High.
Now it is probable that God punishes the wish, as much as he
does the actual performance : for what is performance, but a wish,
perfected with a power : and what is a wish, but a desire, wanting
opportunity of action ; a desire -sticking in the birth, and mis
carrying for lack of strength and favourable circumstances to
bring it into the world. Certain it is, that wishes discover the
most genuine and natural temper of the soul ; for no man is more
heartily himself, than he is in these.
They are indeed the chief weapons with which atheism can
strike at the Deity : for the wickedness and malice of man can
not make any change in God. It cannot shake any of these
solid felicities, that the divine nature is possessed of. The atheist
can only wish, and would, and desire ; that is, with the snake he
can hiss, and show his poison ; but it is not in his power to be
mischievous any further.
2. The fool's saying in his heart, that " there is no God," im
plies his seeking out arguments to persuade himself that there is
none. Where the heart is concerned, it will quickly employ the
head ; and reason shall be put to the drudgery of humouring a
depraved mind, by providing it^vith a suitable hypothesis. The
invention must be set a- work to hammer out something that may
sit easy upon an atheistical disposition.
Hereupon the mind begins to boggle at immaterial substances,
as things paradoxical and incomprehensible. It brings itself, by
degrees, to measure all by sense ; and to admit of nothing, but

22 DR. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. II.
as it is conveyed and vouched by the. judgment of : the eye the
ear, and the touch. A being purely spiritual shall be flouted at,
as a chimera, and a subtile nothing. . nosture
Besides men see all things still continue in the same posture,
and proceed in the same course; which makes them question,
whether there be any overruling, governing Being, distinct from
St vi ible frame of things that is always m their view. As
those scoffers in St. Peter questioned the future judgment upon
the sight of the constant, unchanged tenor of things, 2 Peter iu.
4- "Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers
fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of
They will declaim against a Deity also from this, that they
think all human affairs proceed by chance, and accident, and
great disorder; and consequently are not under the disposal or
management of any superior understanding, that may be pre
sumed to regulate and take cognizance of them. They see pious
men afflicted, and the wicked exalted ; the oppressor triumphing
and clothing himself with the spoils of oppressed innocence and
humility. They observe that virtue is no step to wealth or
honour ; and that conscience is but a hinderance and a strap to
greatness. And perhaps also they find by experience in them
selves, that they never thrived so well, as when they acted freely
and boldly, and without the control of rules ; when they un
shackled themselves from the niceties and punctilios of that
fruitless, unprofitable thing, called sincerity.
And these considerations may well be thought so much the
more prevalent working in a corrupt breast, since we read, that
they have made no small impression even upon the most excellent
and sanctified persons ; they staggered such heroes in the faith
as David, Jeremy, and the like ; 'they engaged them in a dispute
with God himself about the justice and equality of his actings ;
they changed them, from believers, into disputants ; and made
them undertake their Maker for their opponent. Now, what
the pious and the faithful may doubt of, the atheist may well be
thought to deny. And no question but he puts his wits upon the
rack, and uses all the art, learning, and industry he is master of,
to rid himself of the belief of a God ; a God that governs, and
will hereafter judge the world. The thought of which cannot
but be a perpetual check and allay to the revels of the epicure :
and consequently must needs put him to relieve himself by the
best shifts he can, to conjure down the terrors of his mind and
to drown the clamours and threatenings of his conscience ¦ which
as long as he acknowledges a deity, will be sure to torment him
with a secret, insupportable sting.
3. For the fool to say in his heart, " There is no God," im
plies not only a seeking for reasons and arguments, but also a
marvellous readiness to acquiesce in any seeming probability

01

THE FOLLY OF ATHEISM. 23
appearance of reason that may make for his opinion. Which is a
sure demonstration of a mind desperately in love with a notion,
and yet suspicious and indifferent of the truth of it. It is a sign
that a man is falling, when he catches at straws, and every little
nothing, to support him. The atheist, who is so rigid an exactor
of evidence and demonstration for the proof of those points that he
rejects, yet with the most impudent and unreasonable partiality,
produces no such thing, but only remote, pitiful, precarious con
jectures, for the assertion and defence of his own infidelity.
As for instance, how weak and slight were all the foregoing ex
ceptions alleged in his behalf? His first cavil, produced against
immaterial substances ; concerning which, can the atheist prove
that it implies any contradiction or absurdity, that there should be
such substances, such natures as fall not under the cognizance of
outward sense ? Is there any solid argument to overthrow this ?
If there be, whence is it, that none of the philosophers have been
hitherto able to assign such a one ; and solidly to evince, as well
as magisterially to assert, that all substance includes in it the
dimensions of quantity ; and consequently, that substance and body
are but terms equivalent ?
And then, for the other exception, drawn from the prosperity of
the wicked, and the present afflictions of the godly and virtuous :
is there any such disorder or injustice in this, when the assertors
of Providence assert also a future estate of retribution in» another
world ? where the present sense of things shall be vastly and uni
versally changed ; and the epicure shall pass from his baths, and
his beds of roses, into a bed of flames ; and the poor, distressed
saint be translated from his prison and his oppressors, into joys,
pleasures, and glories that are unspeakable. It may be replied,
that the atheist believes no such thing : but, whether he does or
no, it is not material as to our present business, which is only to
prove the reasonableness of God's dealing with the wicked and
the just, in this world, upon supposition of the truth of this prin
ciple ; which it has not been in the power of any atheist yet to
shake or to disprove ; and, for the present, falls not under this
discourse. 4. And lastly, to mention yet another way, different from all
the former : for a man to place his sole dependence, as to his chief
good and happiness, on any thing besides God, is, as we may so
speak, virtually, and by consequence, for him to say in his heart,
" There is no God." It is, indeed the voice of a man's actions,
the direct affirmation of his life : for while a man expects that
from the creature, which every created being can only have, and
consequently ought only to expect, from its creator, it is a practi
cal, and, in its kind, a loud denial of a Gpd ; inasmuch as in this
case a man so behaves himself, as if really there were none : and
therefore in scripture is most emphatically styled a " living without
God in the world."

24 DR. SOUTHS POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. II.
Which, though it does not always include a direct denial of the
divine existence, yet, so far as the acknowledgment of that ought
to influence the life, the impiety of it is the very same and he
absurdity greater. For grant but the speculative atheis his sup-
poSion^d principle, that there is no Deity or Providence and
he cannot be charged with any great unreasonableness of proceed
ing for his giving way to all his appetites and lusts in the prosecu
tion of their respective excesses and irregular gratifications. But
for a man who has not paved his way to such a license of acting,
by a life of the same principle, but who owns in his mind a clear
and a standing persuasion of the being of a supreme maker, judge,
and governor of the world, yet to trample upon all rules and laws
prescribed for the regulation of his behaviour towards this his
Maker, and to give himself wholly over to the dictates of his un
bridled passions and affections ; this assuredly is the height of folly ;
it is the granting of the antecedent in the judgment, and the denial
of the consequence in the practice.
That man who places all his confidence, hope, and comfort^ in
his [estate, his friend, or greatness, so that upon the failure of
anyof these his heart sinks, and he utterly desponds as to all
enjoyment or apprehension of any good or felicity- to be enjoyed
by man, does as really deify his estate, his friend, and his great
ness, as if in direct terms he should say to each of them, " Thou
art my God ;" and should rear an altar or a temple to them, and
worship before them in the humblest adoration : nay it is much
more ; since God looks upon himself as treated more like a Deity,
by being loved, confided in, and depended upon, than if a man
should throng his temple with a whole hecatomb, sacrifice thou
sands of rams, and pour ten thousand rivers of oil upon his
altars. Let every man, therefore, lay his hand upon his heart, and con
sider with himself, what that thing is that wholly takes it up and
commands it as to all its affections ; and let him know, that that
thing, whatsoever it be, is his god ; and that God really so ac
counts of it : and consequently, that it is possible for a man to
" say in his heart, that there is no God," though he neither
blasphemes or denies his being, nor divests him of his providence
and government of the world.
And thus much for the first thing, the assertion that " there is
no God."
II. I come now to the second, namely, the author of this asser
tion, who, the text tells us, is " the fool," and his folly will be
made to appear from these following reasons :
1. That such a one, in making and holding this assertion,
contradicts the general judgment and notion of mankind. He
opposes his drop to the ocean, his little forced opinion, to the
torrent of universal, natural instinct, that infused this persuasion

THE FOLLY OF ATHEISM. 25
into everyone before his first milk. It is a notion that a man is
not catechized, but born into : his mother's womb was the school
he learned it in. It sticks to him like a piece of his essence, and
his Very being is the argument that enforces it. Hereupon it has
possessed and spread itself into all nations, all languages, all socie
ties and corporations : nor was it ever known, that any company
of men constantly owned the denial of a Deity. Many nations
have indeed foully erred, and abused their reason in the particular
choice of a God, or rather of the worship of God. For I verily be
lieve, that when the Egyptians and others worshipped this thing
or that, they designed to worship the Supreme Being, as manifest
ing some effect of his power or goodhess by that thing. I say,
though the nations perverted themselves by idolatry, yet the
general notion and acknowledgment of a deity remained entire
amongst them. So that the contrary opinion of the atheist is not
so much confuted as overwhelmed. And there is no man that
can rationally profess himself an atheist, but must also profess
• himself wiser than the whole world, oppose his single ratiocination
to the- ratiocination of all mankind ; but surely, the match will be
found marvellous, unequal, and the vast disparity of the Very-
number, will be an unanswerable presumption against him.1 For
what he can be thought to find out or discern more, than so, many
millions of the subtlest and most improved wits, every one of
which was perhaps of' a quicker apprehension and a further reach
than himself?
It is morally impossible for any falsity to be universally received
and believed, both as to all times and places ; and therefore an
atheist appears in the world as a strange, unusual thing, as an ir
regularity, and exception from the standing rules of nature ; like a
man born without legs or arms, or indeed, rather without a head
or a heart.
2. The folly of such a person appears in this, that he lays aside
a principle easy and suitable to reason, and substitutes in the
room of it one strange and harsh, and, at the best, highly impro
bable. For is it not most suitable to reason, there being a necessity
of a first mover, a thing granted by all, that an intelligent nature
of a substance above the grossness Of body, infinite in wisdom,
power, goodness, and all other perfection's, should first of all con
trive and give being to this fabric of the world, and afterwards
preserve, govern, and order every thing in it to his wise and
righteous purposes ? Is there any thing, I say, in this, that an un
prejudiced reason does not immediately close or fall in with, as
that that is fairly consistent with all its principles, and grates upon
none of them ?
But the atheist that puffs at this, and lays it wholly aside,
what does he resolve the phenomena of nature into ? How come
we by this world, according to his philosophy ? Why, he either
tells us, that it was from eternity ; a strange, though much the
Vol. IV.— 4 C

26 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. II.
most rational hypothesis that he can frame. For if it has existed
fom2Si$%ence is it that we have no history or record
tiZT thtl beyond a little above five thousand years? How
come Ae transactions of so many myriads of years to be swallowed
up m such deep silence and oblivion? And as for the story
even of those five thousand years, we are beholden to the scrip
tures for it ; for all profane histories set out from a much later
date- so that this hypothesis is hugely improbable and unfit for
any rational man to build his discourse, much less to venture his
salvation upon. ,,,1**1. ¦ c -,
But if this will not do, we are told that there was an infinite
innumerable company of little bodies, called atoms, from all
eternity, flying and roving about in avoid space, which at length
hitched 'together and united ; by which union and connexion they
grew at length into this beautiful, curious, and most exact structure
of the universe. A conceit fitter for Bedlam than a school or an
academy ; and taken up, as it were, in direct opposition to com
mon sense and experience. For, let any one take a vessel full of
sand or dust, and shake it from one end of the year vto the
other, and see whether ever it will fall into the figure of a horse,
an eagle, or a fish : or, let any one shake ten thousand letters
together, till by some lucky shake they fall at length into an
elegant poem or oration. That chance and blind accident, the
usual parent of confusion and all deformity in men's actions,
should yet in this outdo the greatest art and diligence in the pro
duction of such admirable, stupendous effects, is contrary to all
the rules that human nature has been hitherto accustomed to judge
by ; and fit for none to assert but for him, who with his God has
also renounced his reason.
3. The folly of such a person appears from the causes and mo
tives inducing him to take up this opinion ; which, amongst
others, are two.
(l.) Great impiety, and disquiet of conscience consequent there
upon. Some have sinned their accounts so high, and debauched
their consciences so far, that they dare not look the persuasion of
a Deity in the face : and therefore, they think to convey them
selves from God, by hiding God from themselves ; by suppress
ing, and, as much as they can possibly, extinguishing all belief
and thought of him. They are so hardened in sin, and so far gone
in the ways of sensuality, that to think of retreating by repentance
is loathsome, and worse than death to them ; and therefore they
cut the work short, and take off all necessity of repentance by
denying providence, and a future judgment of the lives and ac
tions of men.
(2.) The second cause of this opinion is great ignorance of
nature and natural causes. It is a saying of the lord Bacon that
a taste and smattering of philosophy inclines men to atheism
but a deep and a thorough knowledge of it directly lead men to

THE FOLLY OF ATHEISM. 27
religion. And if the assertor of the world's eternity, or of its
emerging out of the forementioned coalition of atoms, would
consider how impossible it is for a body to put itself into motion
without the impulse of some superior immaterial agent; and
what an unactive sluggish thing that is that the philosophers call
matter, and how utterly unable to fashion itself into the several
forms it bears, he would quickly fly to a spiritual, intelligent
mover, such a one as we affirm to be God.
4. And lastly, the folly of such persons as say in their heart,
" There is no God," appears from those cases in which such
persons begin to doubt and waver, and fly off from their opinion.
I shall instance in two.
(1.) In the time of some great and imminent danger. As it is
is reported of the Persians in iEschylus, that were routed by
the lake Strymon ; and thereupon, being either to pass the ice
then ready to thaw, or to be cut in pieces by the enemy ; though
before they held, or at least pretended to hold, that there was
no God; yet then they fell upon their knees, and prayed to
God that the ice might bear them : nor is this to be wondered
at, since all men by nature seem to have a secret acknowledg
ment of a certain invisible power that is able either to help or
to hurt them, which perhaps is the first rude draught and original
seed of the persuasion of a Deity. And it is this secret acknow
ledgment that naturally makes men, in a great strait and extre
mity, willing to rely upon more assistances than they see, and to
extend their hope further than their sense.
But now, is not every such person most ridiculous, who shall
owe his religion to the disturbances of his fear, which he cast off
in the settlement of his reason ? Shall a little danger and con
fusion make him quake out his atheism, and be able to enthrone
God in his mind, who by his being and constant preservation,
and the exact frame and order of the universe, could never yet be
convinced of any such thing ? But this is an evident sign that
the judgment of such persons lies not in their understanding, but in
the lower region of man's nature, their affections.
(2.) The other time in which the atheist usually deserts his
opinion, is the time of approaching death. What a different way
of reasoning and discoursing has the mind then, and needs must
it have so! for atheism is not any real persuasion, but a vain
pretence and affectation, by which some would seem to be greater
wits and higher speculators than other men. But alas! affecta
tion expires upon a death-bed. No man has then any design to
deceive or impose upon the reason of other men, much less upon
his own. All his thought and desire then is to be as safe as he
can : he knows that it has been the judgment of all the wise
men in the world, that there is a supreme Judge and a future
estate for men's souls ; and he perceives his reason too light and
too little to lay in the balance against them.

28 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sEJiM. II.
But now it is a most righteous > thing .with God, to let such as
have striven to free themselves from this ^ belief , be able * over
rule and bind up their conscience so far, as to keep n uuwii m*
W time and then at length to let conscience loose upon
X with this terrible persuasion quick and awakened upon it:
Sr God has not put it into any man's power to extinguish this
w Less that he has left of himself in the minds of men ; he has
Tot left men so much at their own disposal, as to obliterate and
rase out what he has written in their hearts, and to be ^atheists
when they please. And therefore, wheresoever I have hitherto
made mention of atheists, I understand not such as have abso
lutely shaken off the notion of a Deity, but such as have endea
voured and attempted so to do, by arming themselves with
arguments and considerations against it ; and accordingly have
proceeded so far, as to weaken and eclipse the present actings
of this habitual persuasion ; otherwise I fully believe, that there
are some lucid intervals, in which, maugre all the art and force
used to suppress it, it breaks forth and shows its terrifying com
manding majesty over the guilty hearts of such wretclies, but
especially when they are to bid adieu to those little worldly sup
ports that for a while bore up their spirits in their profaneness
and contempt of God.
I have now finished what I first proposed from the words,
namely, the assertion, that " there is no God," and the author of
it, "the fool."
But here, after all, is it not a sad thing, that it should be per
tinent for any preacher to make a sermon against atheism ! A
sin, that does not only unchristian, but unman the person that is
guilty of it! But we have great reason to judge, that the
corruption of men's manners is grown to that enormous height,
that men are not as they were heretofore. Those awes of
religion and a Deity, that a less improved debauchery left still
untouched upon the conscience, the modern and more thorough
paced sinner endeavours to deface and throw off as pedantry and
narrowness, and the foolish prejudices and infusions of education.
What this will come to, and whether God and nature will
suffer men to be as bad as they strive to be, I cannot determine ;
but, surely, they generally affect a superiority in villany above
their ancestors ; and it is not enough for a man to approve himself
a laborious' drunkard, and a dexterous cheat, or a sly adulterer,
unless he can set off all with the crowning perfection of passing
for a complete atheist.
I suppose the foregoing discourse may be of some use to us ;
and if so, what can that use be so properly, as to give every one
of us a view and prospect into his own heart? None knows
how much villany lodges in this little retired room. The pro
phet tells us that " the heart is desperately wicked ;" and we
need no other argument to prove his words, than that it is the

THE FOLLY OF ATHEISM. 29
soil where„this detestable weed grows. There are few who be
lieve that they can be atheists, even in the sense that I have
declared ; but it is because they have not studied the workings
and methods, the depths and hollownesses of that subtle principle
within them, their heart. But as for such as will set themselves to
watch over and counterwork it, so as to prevent this monstrous
birth, let them be advised to beware of three things, as I think,
the most ready leaders to atheism.
1st. Great and crying sins, such as make the conscience raw
and sick, and so drive it to this wretched course for its cure.
2dly. Let them beware of discontents about the cross passages
of God's providence towards them. A melancholy discontented
mind, by long brooding upon these things, has at length hatched
the cockatrice's egg, and brought forth atheism.
3dly and lastly. Let men especially beware of devoting them
selves to pleasure and sensuality. There is no one thing in the
world that casts God out of the heart like it, and makes the heart
by degrees to hate and be weary of all thoughts of him.
These things cannot here be insisted upon. It remains, therefore,
that we endeavour to preserve a constant fear and love of the great
God upon our spirits ; that so we fall not into the fatal, devouring
gulf of either of their sins ; as namely, to " deny the Lord that
bought," or to renounce the God that made us.
To whom therefore be rendered and ascribed, as is most due,
all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for ever
more. Amen.

c2

30
SERMON III.
THE ISRAELITES' INGRATITUDE TO GOD.
PSALM CVI. 7.
Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered
not the multitude of thy mercies ; but provoked him at the sea,
even at the Red sea.
Providence, in all its parts and methods of acting, seems to
carry on this great design, not to leave itself without witness in the
world. And for this cause, it gives greater or less manifestations
of its superintendency over affairs here below, those especially re
lating to the church, according to the proportion of the church's
exigencies and occasions. Which when they are so great and
arduous, that they seem even to call out for help from heaven, and
to exceed all possibility of redress, but by the interposal of a
miracle, why then miracles come in season, and shall be^shown,
as being the rarities and reserves of Heaven, designed to recover
upon men's hearts a belief of that Providence, that the constant,
uninterrupted course of natural causes is apt to obscure, and to
render the less observable.
But in no passage since the creation did omnipotence ever so
eminently make bare its arms and show itself, as it did in those
stupendous proceedings in Egypt, following miracle with miracle,
till at length, even in spite of power and malice, and obstinacy
itself, it brought out the armies of Israel free and victorious, from
amidst the iron grinding jaws of a long, a cruel, and unsupporta-
ble bondage and subjection.
And that the world may see that the hand of divine power is
not yet shortened, nor the bowels of divine goodness straitened,
but that God is as able and ready to save his church as ever ;
succeeding ages have not been wholly without some declarations
of it, in several transcendent and miraculous instances of help
and deliverance ; when once the straitness and vast difficulty of
affairs has baffled and laughed at all assistances of created power,
and so made the omnipotent Author of the deliverance visible
and conspicuous.
And amongst these supernatural instances of temporal mercy,
vouchsafed to mankind in these latter ages of the world, there is
none certainly superior, if any parallel, to that glorious master
piece of Providence, to the commemoration of which we are
called by this day's solemnity. For if ever the miracles of Egypt
were re-acted, it has been upon the scene of England ; which

THE ISRAELITES INGRATITUDE TO GOD. 31
stands, as it were, a copy, and a lasting transcript both of the
bondage and the deliverance. Both church and state were under
the yoke and lash of remorseless tyrants and taskmasters. Ty
rants resolved to have bound the bonds of their captivity for
ever, and never to have let them go : nor was there any hope or
likelihood of it, till God himself undertook the business, and
plagued the nation, by shaking tSe threatening sword of a civil
war over it, that had so lately turned all into blood ; by blasting
it with the hail and stones of several insulting governments, then
as changeable as the weather; also pestering the land with the
frogs of this sect, and the lice of that, and the locusts of another ;
likewise confounding our English Egyptians with the thick dark
ness of faction and ignorance ; and lastly, snatching away that
first-born of tyranny, perjury, and rebellion, and blowing him
out of the world, as he did the locusts out of Egypt ; till at
length breaches and divisions amongst themselves, like the dividing
of the Red sea, and the parting of the mighty waters, both
swallowed up them, and became as a wall of brass on both hands,
to our king and his loyal exiled subjects, to convey them safe
into a possession of those rights which, both by the gift of God
and the laws of men, were so undoubtedly their own.
Thus we have seen some resemblance between the transactions
of Providence with Israel and with ourselves. We have seen
how like we are to them for their miraculous deliverances ; and,
which is the worst, though perhaps the nearest, part of the re
semblance, it will appear also presently, how like we are to them
for their miraculous ingratitude.
In the text we have these three things observable.
I. The unworthy and ungrateful deportment of the Israelites
towards God upon a most signal mercy and deliverance : " They
provoked him."
II. The aggravation of this unworthy deportment from the
nature and circumstance of the deliverance : " They provoked
him at the sea, even at the Red sea."
III. And lastly, the cause of this misbehaviour and unworthy
deportment, which was their not understanding the designs of
mercy in the several instances of it ; " They understood not thy
wonders in Egypt."
I. And for the first of these, the Israelites'' ungrateful and
unworthy deportment towards God : " They provoked him."
1 To provoke, is an expression setting forth a peculiar and more
than ordinary degree of misbehaviour ; and seems to import an
insolent daring resolution to offend. A resolution not contented
with one single stroke of disobedience, but such a one as multi
plies and repeats the action, till the offence greatens, and rises
into an affront : and as it relates to God, so I conceive it strikes
at him in a threefold respect: 1. Of his power: 2. Of his
goodness ; 3. Of his patience.

32 DE. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. III.
1. And first it rises up against the power and P™^ f
God It is as it were, an assault upon God sitting upon nis
throne a matching at his sceptre, and a defiance of his very
°1' and supremacy. He that provokes God does in a manner
dare him to strike, and to revenge the injury and invasion upon
his honour. He considers not the weight of God almighty's arm,
and the edge ofhis sword, the Swiftness and poison of his arrows,
but puffs at all, and looks the terror of sin-revenging justice in
the face. The Israelites could not sin against God, after those
miracles in Egypt, without a signal provocation of that power
that they had so late and so convincing an experience of: a
power that could have crushed an Israelite as easily as an Egyp
tian ; and given as terrible an instance of its consuming force upon
false' friends, as upon professed enemies : in the sight of God,
perhaps, the less sort of offenders of the two.
And can the sins of any nation in the world more affront God
in the grand attribute of his power, than the sins of ours ; which
has given such flaming illustrious experiments of itself, as have
dazzled our eyes and astonished our hearts. For have we not
seen a flourishing state and a glorious church broken in pieces,
and, as it were, extinguished in a moment ? and a prince, as great
as good, torn out of his throne, stripped of his power, and at
length disastrously cut off by the hand of violence? and dare
we now sin against that power that has thus shown us how easily
it can confound and overturn all the glories of worldly grandeur ?
and which after all this, has, by a miraculous exertion of itself,
called up a buried church and state from the grave, and given
them a stupendous resurrection from the confusion and rubbish of
a long and woful desolation : and this by bringing back the
banished son of a murdered father, even over the heads of his
enemies armed and potent, and rather amazed than conquered into
their former allegiance. A work so big with miracle and wonder,
so apparently above, nay even against, the common methods of
human acting, that, were there no other argument to prove a
Providence, this one passage alone were sufficient; and that
such a one as carries in it the force and brightness of a demon
stration. 2. Provoking God imports an abuse of his goodness. God, as
he is clothed with power, is the proper object of our fear ; but as
he displays his goodness, of our love. By one he would com
mand, by the other he would win, and, as it were, court our obe
dience. And an affront to his goodness, his tenderness, and his
mercy, as much exceeds an affront of his power, as a wound at
the heart transcends a blow on the hand. For when God shall
show miracles of mercy, step out of the common road of provi
dence, commanding the host of heaven, the globe of the earth
and the whole system of nature out of its course, to serve a
design of goodness upon a people, as he did upon the Israelites •

the Israelites' ingratitude to god. 33
was not a provocation, after such obliging passages, infinitely base
and insufferable, and a degree of ingratitude higher than the
heavens it struck at, and deeper than the sea that they passed
through ? \
3. Provoking God imports an affront upon his long-suffering
&nd his patience. The movings. of nature, in the breasts of all
mankind, tell us how keenly, how regretfully, every man resents
the abuse of his love ; how hardly any prince, but one, can put
up an offence against his acts of mercy ; and how much more
affrontive it is to despise mercy ruling by the golden sceptre of
pardon, than by the iron rod of a penal law. But now patience is
a further and a higher advance of mercy ; it is mercy drawn
out at length ; mercy wrestling with baseness, and striving, if
possible, even to weary and outdo ingratitude ; and therefore a
sin against this is the highest pitch, the utmost improvement,
and, as I may so speak, the ne plus .ultra of provocation. For
when patience shall come to be tired, and even out of breath, with
pardoning, let all the invention of mankind find something further,
either upon which an offender may cast his hope, or against
which he can commit a sin. But it was God's patience that the
ungrateful Israelites sinned against; for they even plied and
pursued him with sin upon sin, one offence following and throng
ing upon the neck of another, the last account still rising highest,
and swelling bigger, till the treasuries of grace and pardon were so
far drained and exhausted, that they provoked God to swear,
and what is more, to " swear in his wrath," and with a full
purpose of revenge, that they should " never enter into his
rest." And thus I have given you the threefold dimension of the pro
vocation that the Israelites passed upon God ; and it is to be
feared, that our sins have been cast into the same mould, they do
so exactly resemble them in all their proportions ; for we are as
deep in arrears to heaven, and have as large a sum of abused
goodness and patience to account for, as ever they had ; and so
much greater is our account than theirs could be, that we had the
advantage of their example to have forewarned us.
II. I proceed now to the second thing proposed from the text ;
which is, the aggravation of the Israelites' unworthy deportment to
wards their almighty deliverer, set forth in these words : " They
provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea."
The extraordinary emphasis of which expression, in the re
peated use of the same words, shows what a particular and severe
observation God passed upon their behaviour. The baseness and
ingratitude of which he casts in their teeth, by confronting it
with the eminent obligation laid upon them, by the glorious de
liverance he vouchsafed them : a deliverance heightened and en
nobled with these four qualifications: 1. Its greatness; 2. Its
Vol. IV.— 5

34 DR. south's posthumous sermons. Lserm. iii.
unexpectedness: 3. Its seasonableness ; 4. Its undeservedness.
Of parh of which in their order. .., „„„„.
1 AndfiSt for the greatness ofthe deliverance. Very great
sure'lv "t must needs have been, comparing the contemptible
weZess of the persons delivered, with the strength and terror
ofthe enemy from whom they were delivered. What were a
company of poor oppressed bricklayers, inured to servitude as to
an inheritance, for four hundred years successively and conse
quently whose very soul and spirit was even tost in clay and rub
bish, and made poor, and low, and grovelling by the disciplines
of a long captivity ? How were these able to have looked Pha
raoh and his armies in the face, who had so long trembled under
the frown and lash of the meanest of his task-masters ? What
could their trowels have done against the Egyptian swords ; their
aprons against the others' armour and artillery ? They could be
confident of nothing, but of sinking under the inequality of the
encounter. And could there be a greater deliverance than thus to
fetch a lamb out of the jaws of the lion, to wrest weakness out of
the hands of power, and the captive from the clutches of the
strong ? This was the case of the Israelites.
And surely we shall find that it was our own too. For could
there be a greater disproportion than there was between us and our
oppressing enemies ? Were they not, even in the very day of
our deliverance, as strong, as mighty, and well armed as ever ?
Were their hands at all weakened, that they could not strike, or
their swords blunted, that they could not wound ? Naturally speak
ing, I am sure they were not : but whether their hearts were for
the present changed by an immediate impression from heaven, or
their hands overruled by the art and conduct of that great restorer
of his country ; certain it is, they were like men in amaze, and not
able to act the habitual villany of their principles and dispositions.
So that we saw our king returning to his own triumphantly, at the
head of that army by which he had been driven and kept out ; an
army with their swords in their hands, and, for the most part, with
their old principles in their hearts. And had not this deliverance
all the marks of greatness and prodigy, that (be it spoken with
reverence) almightiness itself could stamp upon it? Search the
annals of story, run over all the records of antiquity, and give it
a parallel if you can. It could be none but the Almighty's doing,
and therefore ought to be " marvellous in our eyes." It carried
its author in its front, and every circumstance of the transaction
was noted with the traces and signatures of a divine power and
contrivance. It was too great for the measures of any finite
created agents.
2. A second property of the deliverance vouchsafed to the
Israelites at the Red sea, was its unexpectedness. Their wits
failed them to contrive an escape, as well as their power to make
good a resistance. The enemy was behind, and the sea before
them ; that is, death both faced them and pursued them too • and

THE ISREALITES' INGRATITUDE TO GOD. 35
could they expect, that either the hardened heart of a Pharaoh
should relent, and bid them return, or the devouring element forget
its cruelty, and turn their sanctuary to protect them ?
It is true, indeed, that if any people in the world might have
expected such miraculous countermands upon nature, they were
the Israelites, to whom custom and frequency had made miracles
so familiar, as even to offer them to their expectation. Yet we
know they were far from inferring their future preservation from
their former deliverance, and that the God of their fathers would
act as miraculously in one, as he had done in the other ; and
thereupon we read these worthy expostulations of their infidelity,
striking directly indeed at Moses, but tacitly reflecting upon God
himself: Exod. xiv. 11, 12, "Because there were no graves in
Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?
Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us out of
Egypt ? Did we not say to thee in Egypt, Let us alone, that we
may serve the Egyptians? for it had been better for us to
serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilder
ness." Death was their belief, death their fear, nothing but death
their expectation. But now how welcome, how sweet and even
transporting must such a deliverance needs be, as steps in be
tween a great mischief and a great fear : as disappoints and con
futes the terror of a man's expectations, and, as I may so say,
baffles him according to his heart's desire ! For the expectation
and hope of a good fulfilled, is not so pleasing as the expectation
and fear of a great evil defeated. It does not affect the mind
with so sensible, so quick, and so exalting a delight. The reason
of which is, because enjoyment in this state of mortality does not
so much gratify as misery does afflict us ; and consequently na
ture more desires to be delivered from one, than to be possessed
of the other. If ever there is a "picture of silver," to set forth
an " apple of gold," it is when the mercy of the deliverance is
set forth and enhanced by the precedent fears and despairs of him
that is delivered. For can any delight be greater, than for a man
to set his foot upon the neck of that enemy, by whom but three
minutes before he expected certainly to die ? To behold that sea
opening itself as a bosom to embrace, which he could not expect
to be any other than a grave to swallow and consume? With
these circumstances of endearment did God deliver the Israelites.
And with the very same did he advance the mercy of our de
liverance : for it was a thing so much beyond men's expectation,
before the doing of it, that they could scarce believe it when it
was done; the astonishing strangeness of the thing made men al
most question the reports of their own eyes and ears, and disbe
lieve the information of their very senses, so that we might in
that day have taken up those emphatical words of the prophet
David : " Lord, when thou didst turn the captivity of thy people,
then were we like unto those that dream." The matter and sub-

36 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. III.
iect of our ioy was so strange and unlikely, that, like men in a
dream, beseemed to enjoy it rlther by the flattering representations
of fancv than to possess it by any reality of fruition.
For so improbable was it, a little before it happened that
foreign princes and nations began to lay aside all hope _of the
king's restoration , and our next neighbours, together with their
hopes of that, began to give over also their respects to his person,
banishing him out of their territories, without any consideration
of his near alliance of blood, and (which ought to have been
the warmest argument in the breast of kings) the distress of
majesty by such an act of inhospital barbarity, as before was un
heard of, and perhaps never practised but by themselves. And
as for affairs here at home, factions and animosities grew higher
and higher, clashing indeed amongst themselves, but unanimously
conspiring against the royal interest. Nay, and did not the
wonted fidelity and courage of many begin to warp and decline,
while they were willing to buy a settlement under any usurped
government, with the price of their allegiance to the right and
lawful ; so that the title of the just heir was looked upon as for
lorn and desperate, and the restitution of it exploded as a thing
impracticable; and that by many virtuosos who now enjoy so
much under it ; that they forget what formerly they deserved
from it ? And so far did things then seem to settle upon another
bottom, that, as the Israelites said, " Let us alone, that we may
serve the Egyptians:" so all parties, but tbe royal and episcopal,
were recognizing and courting the new puny protector, and
adoring that rising ignis fatuus as the Persians do the sun, com
paring him, forsooth, to a peaceable Solomon, succeeding in the
throne of his warlike father David ;' and there is no doubt but the
father was just as like David for his piety, as the son was like
Solomon for his wisdom ; much at one.
But so little did their covenant put them in mind of their
king, that his highness's most loyal and obedient subjects,
especially of the schismatical preaching order, desired no change,
nor ever thought of any, till the ministerial maintenance (so
much as remained of it) began to reel and totter, and be made a
prey to those whom they themselves had preached into such
principles as would in the issue have certainly devoured them.
And as those persons desired no change, so the hearts even of
the loyal and the faithful began to fail, and scarce to expect any ;
at least m such a manner as it came to pass. For who could
have believed, that so many parties, whom both their guilt and
interest had made so inveterate against their prince, could ever
ft) ^/r™ at, the feet of offended majesty, but in the
field ? That those whose blood boiled so high against him, could
ever have been brought to receive him, keepinf the same blood
still in their veins ? None could have expected any other restora
tion of his majesty but by dint of sword, by the battle of the

the Israelites' ingratitude to god. 37
warrior, with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood ; or, in
a word, that he should return any other way, than by which he
was driven out. Let this, therefore, be the second commending
property of our deliverance, that while it met with our desires it
transcended our expectations.
3. The third commending property of the Israelites' deliver
ance was the eminent seasonableness of it. God delivered them
at that very nick of time, when they were but one remove, one
hair's breadth from destruction. One hour's delay might have
made the deliverance for ever impossible. So that it was a
mercy in season, and therefore in its prime. The hand of the
enemy was already lift up, and then it could not be long before
the blow. But God that interposes between the purpose and the
action, even then when it is ripest for it, and immediately passing
into it, diverted the enemy's rage, and took from him- the power
of revenge almost in the very midst of the opportunity. A rescue
from death, though but threatening at a distance, is a mercy;
but to rescue from it when it hovers over a man, and is even
grasping him in his talons, is the most endearing circumstance of
mercy. And now, if we pass from the Israelites to ourselves, (as very
easily and naturally we may), we know how seasonably the day
of our temporal redemption sprang in upon us. Our long-dying
liberty seemed then taking its last gasp, and God knows what
.mischiefs were then hatching in the breasts of those tyrants. For
that the furnace was heating, might be known by the sparks that
flew out. A massacre was often spoken of and urged, and, it is
like, not far from being intended ; the ministry and the law were
then professedly struck at; new oaths of abjuration invented and
imposed, to ensnare the nation ; and, if it were possible, to
plunge it deeper in perjury than it was before. Religion was so
unhinged, both as to the discipline and doctrine of Christianity,
•that there was nothing certain but change, nothing constant but
variety ; till, having run the round of all other alterations, they
were passing into direct atheism, and casting off that Deity,
whom, having so notoriously disobeyed, it was their concernment
also to deny. In a word, the nation was then involved in a uni
versal confusion ; its government, its laws, its religion, were then
following their prince into banishment, and resolved not to return
till he did.
And surely, now it grew high time for the English nation to
think of recovering itself from some of that infamy and loud re
proach, that the spilling of innocent royal blood, and the profane
invasion of all that was sacred or civil had brought upon it, in
the opinion of all the nations round about, that stood as specta
tors and detesters of those religious barbarities, those villanies
cloaked and sanctified with the name of reformation. Time it
was also for God to show himself, upon the account of our exiled
D

38 DR. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. iii.
distressed sovereign,, lest the taunts and triumphs , of ^ J°g
successful villany, might have t^en away either ^hearts ot M
subjects that they would not, or their abilities, that they couia not
have mi'n stered to the necessities of his royal person. For, for
St we know, had the rod of usurpation lam any longer upon us
°he fountains of relief had been quite stopped both at home and
abroad, and the heir and lord of three flourishing kingdoms have
wanted bread, and the common supplies of human life : for to
hear, as we may from some, to how low an ebb^the barbarous
tyranny of his enemies had sometimes brought hirn, might even
melt the hardest of our hearts, till they ran out at our eyes ; but
I shall forbear the rehearsal of such stories so full of tragedy, that
they must needs spread a cloud upon the joys and festivities of
this blessed .day. And I would not willingly contradict my sub
ject, and make an unseasonable discourse upon so seasonable a
deliverance. 4. The fourth and last crowning property of the deliverance
vouchsafed by God to the Israelites, was its absolute undeserved-
ness. The entire cause of it was the divine goodness, but none
of theirs. And therefore Moses, knowing the innate arrogance
and pride of that insolent as well as undeserving people, most
particularly cautions them against such flattering thoughts : " Think
not," says he to them, " that God has done these great things for
thee, for any righteousness of thine ; for thou art a stiff-necked
people," Deut. ix. 6. And again, in ver. 24, " You have been
rebellious against the Lord, from the day that I knew you." So
that, if there was any merit in obstinacy, any worth in ingratitude,
then indeed their claim stood full and high, and of all other peo
ple upon earth they were the most meritorious.
And now, bating these good qualifications, can we allege any
thing more for our deserving the deliverance here acknowledged
by us, than the ungrateful and rebellious Israelites could plead
for theirs ? Did we so well improve ourselves under God's judg
ments, as to be fit for such a mercy ? We saw a civil war reaping
down thousands and ten thousands of our countrymen ; but has it
cut off so much as one of our public sins ? Have not our vices
grown under the sword, like trees under the pruning-hook, gather
ing thence only a greater luxuriance and fertility ? Have we
mourned and humbled ourselves, according to the greatness of
the occasion ? and if, peradventure, any of us have mourned, has
it not been more for the effects of the war, than for the causes of
it ? for the ruin and the waste that it has brought upon our fami
lies and estates, rather than for the crying sins that first blew the
trumpet, and drew the fatal sword to revenge God's quarrel upon
us in the field ?
Even self-love might fill the eyes with tears, and cover the
back with sackcloth, for the untimely loss of a father, a husband
or a brother ; but how many of us wept or sighed to see majesty

the Israelites' ingratitude to god. 39
trampled upon, religion abused, or the sacred houses of God pro
faned ? No ; these things were but little settled in most men's
thoughts; they scarce sighed or groaned for any thing but for
taxes and impositions. All which considered, we were so far
from meriting such an incomparable deliverance, that had God
treated us according to our merits, we had never been delivered.
We have now seen the four several properties that commended
and gave a value to the deliverance of the Israelites ; every one
of which contributed to inflame their account, and to stamp their
ungrateful, provoking behaviour with a higher aggravation.
And we have seen also the parallel between their deliverance
and our own so exactly made out, thkt there is not one of these
properties failing in it; for our deliverance was altogether as
great, as unexpected, as seasonable, and as undeserved as theirs
could be : it might vie with it in every particular.
And if that charge can be now made good against us, that the
text draws up against them, of provoking God ; surely our guilt
must be as great as our deliverance, and every way equal the
vast measures of theirs. It cannot be pleasing to rip up old
sores, even to those who desire to cure them. Bui whether the
preacher does it or no, our ingratitude will lay open and proclaim
itself. Ingratitude, I say, the crying, crimson sin of this de
livered nation ; a sin of a universal comprehension, and, as I may
so speak, the generalissimo of sins, having an influence upon ail
the particular sins and irregularities of our practice. And if we
ask, in what the nation has been so ungrateful, it is a question
best answered by another. In what has it not ?
We have been harassed by a long civil war ; and by a peace.
under several sorts of usurpers, worse than a war. We have
seen a general confusion of all ranks and degrees ; and, as if the
flood-gates of popular insolence had been opened, we have seen
an inundation breaking in upon all, and subverting every thing
above it ; even from the king to the meanest gentleman ; from
him that commanded three kingdoms, to him that had the com
mand but of one servant ; and with the confusion of order and
degree, we have seen the same also in point of property ; no
man was able to call any thing his own, but slavery. The
honour went first, and the estate stayed not long behind. This is
a summary account of the mischiefs we then groaned under.
And a merciful Providence was pleased to deliver us from
every one of them. For we have had a peace at home, a peace,
enabling us to make war abroad ; and this under a prince of an
undoubted title and an unparallelled goodness ; a prince, repre
senting God, not only in majesty, by vicegerency, as all princes
do, but eminently, and beyond example, in that, his beloved
attribute, that must save the world, his pardoning mercy; which
he has imitated so far, even towards his bitterest enemies, that he
has pardoned more and greater offences, than they themselves
could, with any face or modesty, have expected.

40 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. in.
But how has this goodness been answered ? Have not pardons
beenfohowed with "plots ? the blessing of peace and sett emen
been entertained with murmunngs, repinings, and reflections
upon his government, not to say, upon his person also, under
whose shadow they enjoy all this? Have those who have been
restored to the privileges of their birthright and nobihty be
haved themselves with that gratitude to him, that, under God, is
the fountain of honour ? and have they pursued those courses
that must give a lustre to titles, and ennoble nobility itself?
Have those that have been restored to their estates, stretched
out their hands, and opened their bowels to their indigent fellow-
sufferers, who served the same master and whose fortunes fell
sacrifices to the same cause ; who fought with them, or rather
for them ; but have not these been rather neglected and scorned
for their poverty, the effect of their fidelity; and at length,
been even ground to powder, by that which was designed for
their relief? I am afraid, if we come to be arraigned with these
questions, we must be forced to plead guilty to them all.
Having thus despatched the first two things proposed from the
text, to wit, the Israelites' unworthy and ungrateful behaviour
towards God, upon a great deliverance, together with the aggrava
tion of it ; as also shown how much their case has been made ours,
in both respects ; I proceed now to
III. The third and last thing proposed from the words, namely,
the cause of this unworthy behaviour, which was their not under
standing the designs of mercy in the several instances of it:
"They understood not thy wonders in Egypt." Now, in every
wonderful passage of providence, two things are to be considered :
1. The author, by whom; 2. The end for which it is done:
neither of which were understood by the Israelites as they ought
to have been.
1. And first for the author of it. It is more than probable,
that many of the Israelites ascribed most of those wonders to
the skill of Moses transcending that of the Egyptian magicians,
or to his working by the assistance of a higher and more potent
spirit than that which assisted them. Or, in case they did
believe them to have been the effects of a divine power, yet they
did not inure their minds seriously to consider it, so as to have a
standing awe of that power imprinted upon their hearts by such
a consideration; and he that considers great and concerning
matters superficially, in the language of the scripture, does not
understand them.
Now I believe this will be found to have been most particu
larly the sin of this nation : for how many, who think atheism
a piece of ingenuity, ascribe the whole passage of the king's res
toration to chance and accident, or to this man's prudence or
that man's miscarriage ; not considering how impossible it was

41
for any human contrivance to lay a train of so many causes, so
many accidents, so exactly, and to make so many opposite inte
rests and cross circumstances fall into a direct and perfect sub
serviency to the composing this one grand work : a work so incom
parably great, that, to adjudge the entire accomplishment of it to
any creature under heaven, would be to rob God of the honour of
one of his greatest actions, and to take the crown off from Pro
vidence, and to set>it upon the head of human counsels. And
then, no wonder if ingratitude for a blessing follows, where the
author of it is neither understood nor acknowledged.
2. The other, and the 'chief thing to be considered in every
wonderful deliverance, is the intent and end of it. Which
surely is not, that men should forget it as soon as it is done, or
turn it into wantonness, and make it minister to the excesses of
pride, luxury, and intemperance. God neither dried up the
sea, to bring the Israelites into a land flowing with milk and
honey," that they might debauch, revel, and surfeit upon that
mercy : nor did he, by a miracle as great, reinstate a company of
poor, distressed exiles iu the possession of their native country,
that they should live at that rate of vanity and superfluity, that
the world now-a-days cries out upon them for. God did not
work wonders to clothe and feed a few worthless parasites with the
riches of a kingdom, to fill up their cups with the blood of
orphans and the tears of the widows. God did not intend that
so universal a blessing, big enough for us all, should be directed
under ground, into the obscure, narrow channel of a few private
purses ; leaving so many loyal, suffering, undone persons, to sigh
and mourn over their destitute condition, in the day of a public
joy. God did not restore us to scoff at religion, and to malign
his church, as if the nation and the government might stand well
enough without a church, but not without plays. No ; surely,
this was not the intent of this miraculous deliverance, whatso
ever has been made the event of it. The voice of God in it
calls us to humility, to industry, to temperance, to public-minded-
ness, to great and generous actions, for the good both of church
and state. And if, instead of these, we resolve to spit in the
face of mercy, by still pursuing a vain, luxurious, profane course
of life, we shall find, that he who rules in the kingdoms of men,
and appoints over them whomsoever he will, can turn the stream
of our happiness, and destroy us after he has done us so much
good. To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise,
might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore.
Amen.

Vol. IV.— 6 d 2

42

SERMON IV.
fasting a means of subduing sin.
Matthew xvii. 21.
Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.
It was a general received command, and an acknowledged
rule of practice, in all ages and places of the Christian worjd,
that we are to " hear the church :" except only of late, since we
began to be wiser than the world, and holy above the scripture ;
from which this text has been, as it were, discanonized, and its
authority struck out of date. But no wonder if the church then
had no jurisdiction, when it had scarce so much as a being ; and
that men did not use to hear it, when it grew almost impossible
for them to see it ; and if the disciples of those days regarded
not much the casting out of evil spirits, who were chiefly busied
about rejecting God's ministers.
But heretofore, when men were led by the written word, and
not by the ignis fatuus of a bold fancy, styling itself divine re
velation, the church was always recognized as Christ's court here
upon earth, fully empowered and commissioned from him to
decide all emergent controversies, to interpret doubtful com
mands, and to make wholesome sanctions and institutions, as
particular occasions and the circumstances of affairs, should re
quire: that so it might appear, that the assistance of the Spirit
promised to the church was not a vain thing, or a mere verb.
Now it seemed good to the primitive church, acted by the im
mediate guidance of the Holy Ghost, to set apart the time of
our blessed Saviour's fasting and temptation in the wilderness,
to be solemnized with the anniversary exercise of abstinence, and
other holy austerities, for the subduing the flesh, quickening the
spirit ; that so we might conform to Christ, and worship the
author of our religion with the devotions of imitation.
Thanks be to God, our church is lately come out of the wil
derness ; yet let it not cease to imitate what our Saviour did when
he was there. I confess the blessed Jesus is a pattern above the
imitation of mortality; fitter to terrify than to excite our en
deavours ; a copy to be admired, not to be transcribed. His
whole life was a continued miracle: in every instance of be
haviour his divinity beamed through his humanity, and every
action was a cast of his omnipotence ; and miracles, I acknow
ledge were never intended for precepts ; nor is any man bound

FASTING A MEANS OF SUBDUING SIN. 43
to be omnipotent, divine, or an angel, nor to do such things as are
only the effects of such perfections.
Yet even this strange, high, inimitable fasting of Christ may be
stripped of the miracle, and, by due qualified proportions, found
a moral duty : for though to fast forty days were miraculous, and
so not at all concerning us, yet the ends of Christ's fasting, which
were to enjoy a more immediate converse with God, the better to
fortify himself against the temptation of the devil, and to fit him
self for the execution of a great work, laid upon him by the
Father ; these are all common to us, according to the due abate
ment of degrees ; and therefore, where there is some proportion in
the duty, there ought to be the same in the use of the means.
Nay, we may advance the argument further, and dispute thus ;
That if he, who had no corruption or disorder in his nature, to
weaken or betray the motions of the spirit, found it yet fit to un
dergo these austerities and violences to the flesh ; how much more
ought we, who find a continual rebellion in all our appetites,
against the spiritual inclinations of the mind, to endeavour, by
such religious arts, to subdue those luxuriancies to the obedience
of reason and the dictates of the spirit ?
Let us therefore follow Christ, though at a distance ; for if we
may but touch the hem of our great exemplar by the small begin
nings of a faithful imitation, we shall find a virtue coming out
from him, to the curing ofthe flux of sin, and the bloody issue of
the most deadly threatening corruption.
We are commanded to be like Christ, but in every likeness phi
losophy teaches that there are some degrees of dissimilitude ; be
cause no likeness amounts to an identity : and when he bids us
" be perfect," he still intends it according to that economy of per
fection that is incident to an imperfect nature. Wherefore let us
not distinguish ourselves out of duty, nor make our ease our re
ligion ; but suspect that those arguments are very likely to pro
ceed from the flesh that tend to the flesh's gratification. Though
we cannot reach Christ in the miracle of the performance, yet we
may follow him in the sincerity of the attempt.
Certain it is, from the united testimony of many of the most ex
perienced followers of Christ, that these abstinencies and sour rudi
ments of self-denial have a signal influence, both to the procuring
of mercies, and to the removal of impending judgments.
He that thus hungers is sure to be filled. Fasting may prevent
starving, and wearing sackcloth for a while keep us from wearing
it all our days. It is able to reverse a decree, and to remand the
word out of God's mouth. Ahab himself found it so ; and what
rewards may we hope for to a true, when so great did attend even
the forced abstinencies of an unsound repentance ?
As for the words: it is much doubted by expositors, what
kind of evil spirit is here intended by our Saviour, which he
affirms not to be dispossessed but by prayer and fasting. Some un-

44 DR- south's posthumous sermons. [serm. IV.
derstand it generally of all evil spirits, contrary to the express let-
tZ He of the place. Others of an evil spirit of a peculiar
and extraordinary fierceness. But others, more appositely and
mdiciously, interpret it of an evil spirit having had long and in
veterate possession of the party, out of whom it was cast ; wh.ch
appears from Mark ix. ; where the spirit is said to have possessed
him ft<uS*°8ev " even from a child."
I 'shall now, by a parallel application, improve the words beyond
this particular occasion to their general reason, and extend what
was here spoken of, the casting out the devil as to his person, to
an ejection of him as to his works. And whereas the duty of
fasting is extraordinary, and a proper instrument to advance the
heights and fervours of prayer ; the sense of the words, as im
provable into a standing perpetual precept, is this :
That there are some corruptions and vices which, partly by
reason of a strong situation in our temper and constitution, partly
by habit, custom, and inveterate continuance, grow so sturdy, and
have so firm a hold of us, that they cannot be subdued and con
quered, and thoroughly dispossessed, but with the greatest ardour
and constancy of prayer, joined with the harshest severities of
mortification. This therefore is the genuine sense of the words : in which there
are these two parts :
1st. An intimation of a peculiar duty : prayer and fasting.
2dly. The end and design of it ; which is to eject and dis
possess the unclean spirit.
These aie the parts of the text, the entire discussion of which I
shall manage in these three particulars.
I. To take a survey of the extent of this text.
II. To show the due qualifications of it, that render it both ac
ceptable to God, and efficacious to ourselves.
III. To show how it comes to have such an influence, in dis
possessing the evil spirit and subduing our corruptions.
I. For the first of these ; this duty of fasting admits of several
kinds and degrees ; for in fasting as well as feasting we may find
variety. 1. The first kind is of constant, universal exercise. Universal,
both because it "obliges at all times, and extends to all persons.
And this is nothing but a temperate, sober, and restrained use of
the creature ; in abridging the appetites of nature for the designs
of religion ; in bringing liberty to the love of reason ; and con
tracting the latitude of things lawful into the narrower compass
of expedients.
He that ventures to the utmost verge of his Christian liberty
stands upon a precipice ; the utmost bounds of lawful are the
borders and immediate confines of unlawful. And when the
devil thus sets a man upon a pinnacle, he may be sure

FASTING A MEANS OF SUBDUING SIN. 45
that he hath designed him for a temptation. To dwell near the
sin, without sometimes stepping into it, is very hard. Neigh
bourhood is still the occasion of visits.
Upon this cause Christ has placed the spirit and soul of his
religion in self-denial, and a renouncing the pleasures, softnesses,
and caresses of worldly delights ; as knowing, though pleasure
and a full enjoyment is in itself not evil, yet such is the weak
ness of our nature, that it fails and melts under the encounter ;
and by its very enjoyments is betrayed into the snares of sin and
the regions of death.
It is lawful for us to feast with Job's sons, yet feasting may
sometimes pull the house about our ears. When Ammon's heart is
merry with wine, then the ambush is ready to rise and strike
him. Fulness of bread was the occasion of Sodom's sin, and
Sodom's sin was the occasion of its destruction. Temperance,
therefore, the only easy and constant fast, is the great duty of
a Christian life: a sure and sovereign instrument of mortifi
cation. And whosoever struggles with any unruly corruption, will
perhaps find, that the constant turn of a well guided abstinence
will, in the issue, give a surer despatch to it, than those extra
ordinary instances of total abstinence and higher severtties, only
undertaken for a time. As a land flood, it carries a bigger stream
and comes with a mightier force and noise, yet presently dries
up and disappears ; but the emissions of a fountain, though
gentle and silent, yet are constant and perpetual ; and whereas
the other, being gone, leaves nothing behind it but slime and
mud, this, wheresoever it flows, gently soaks into verdure and
fertility. This constant temperance, therefore, is by all means intended
by the rules of Christianity; the constancy of which, running
through our whole lives, makes abstinence our diet, and fasting our
meat and drink.
We used to say, " a good conscience is a continual feast ;" but,
surely, it is in a great measure the effect and product of such
a continual fast. Wherefore, let us still secure ourselves by the
guards of a temperate and reserved sobriety ; remembering that
it was the sop that slid the devil into Judas, and the glutton that
ushered in, the*traitor : and that, in all spiritual surprises, it is the
bait that is most likely to betray us to the hook.
2. The second kind of fast, is the fast of a total abstinence,
when for some time we wholly abstain from all bodily repasts.
This is the highest' kind, and therefore in ordinary speech, has
engrossed the name of fast only to itself, as the name of the
whole kind is not unusually confined to the principal member
of the division.
We have instances of this frequently in the Old Testament
and in the New; in the disciples of John, in Cornelius, and

46 dk. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. IV.
others. And it is not to be questioned, but that this is the fast
Sefly intended in the words of the text ; that great instrument
to Seise and drive out the evil spirit from a defiled and a pos-
sessed heart. . ,. •. r
Every remedy is successful according to the proportion it. bears
to the distemper: and certainly a cure is not likely to be wrought
where an ordinary remedy encounters an extraordinary disease;
where the plaster is narrow and the wound broad. Temperance
is good, but that is to be our continual diet ; and surely, that
man is not like to recover who makes his food his physic.
Where the humour is strong and predominant, there the pre
scription must be rugged, and the evacuation violent. We must
leave the road of nature when nature itself is disordered, and the
principles of life in danger.
Possibly a man may have a transient disrelish and loathing of
his sin; but have these loathings rested only in thought, or have
they improved into contrary resolutions ? Suppose they have, and
a man has fully resolved against his sin, yet has he watered
those resolutions with prayers and tears, the great conveyance of
that strength which alone can actuate the resolutions? Admit
also, that he may have prayed and humbled himself before God,
yet still perhaps his corruption is vigorous, and snaps asunder all
his resolutions, tramples upon his prayers, and triumphs over bis
tears and repentances, upon the periodical returns of a tempta
tion, or the critical workings of a bad temper.
Why, now the reason of this unconquered activity of his sin,
after ail these courses taken against it, may be because the place
of its strength is yet untouched. Its lock is only hampered, and
not cut off by a thorough removal of the fuel and materials of
concupiscence, in a severe abstinence from things sometimes
necessary ; for a distempered stomach will digest aliment into
poison. To eat and to drink is necessary ; but even necessity must give
place to extremity. And the physician is merciful, if he pines
his patient into a recovery. In this case we encounter sin in the
body, like a besieged enemy : and such a one, when he has once
engarrisoned himself in a strong hold, will endure a storm and
repel assaults : you must cut off his supplies of provision, and
never think to win the fort, till hunger breaks through the walls,
and starves him into a surrender.
3. The third kind of fast is an abstinence from bodily refresh
ments, in respect of a certain sort or degree, and that undertaken
for some space of time ; such as is this quadragesimal solemnity ;
in which for the space of some weeks, the church has, in some
select days, enjoined a total abstinence from flesh, and a more
restrained use of other refreshments.
I am not ignorant that the same obligation comes also from
the civil magistrate, and that for secular ends ; yet I see not why

FASTING A MEANS OF SUBDUING SIN. 47
there may not be a friendly correspond enee*- between both these;
or why one should be thought to exclude the other, which it only
confirms : certainly a law ought not to be the weaker for being
enacted by a double authority.
I know also, that the celebration of this solemnity is much con
troverted ; but then it is by those who doubt as much whether
they ought to obey the magistrate, and to renounce the principles
of religion. But just as in the apostles' times, so in ours also, the
church has been troubled with disputes concerning meats ; and
whether it be lawful to oblige men, under the gospel, in the use of
things in their nature indifferent.
Some, who would be reforming while they should be obeying,
who are too holy to need fasting, have too much of the spirit to
stand in fear of the flesh ; and who still express God's mercies by
" marrow and fatness," and such other expressions, as please their
palate, and leave a relish upon the tongue that speaks them, so
that they cannot be so properly said to preach sermons as din
ners : of which they put their auditors in mind long before they
have done. These, I say, will hear of nothing but of liberty ;
they must have elbow-room at their meat : and as for Lent, they
defy it ; it is popish, antichristian, and idolatrous : and so, their
conscience being fallen into their stomach, what one finds trouble
some, the other easily concludes superstitious.
But who shall be judges and arbitrators in this case? The
scripture, which is to be the rule, is the same, and open to the
allegation of both parties. But who shall interpret and apply this
rule? Now, in every science and profession, the most rational
way to resolve doubts arising in it, has been, either to consult
with all, or most of the professors of it ; or with some that are most
eminent for their skill and knowledge in it.
Of the first sort, in matters of Christianity, we have the church
of God congregated in councils ; of the second, we have those
ancient writers, famous in their ages for their profound ac
quaintance with evangelical mysteries, whom we call fathers:
let us therefore see the judgment of both these, in this par
ticular. For councils, I shall mention one for all ; the council of Nice,
in which we find both mention and approbation of this quadragesi
mal fast. Add to this the canons of the apostles : in the 68th of
which we read the institution of the same ; which canons, though
they were not written by the apostles themselves yet they are of
great, undoubted antiquity, and consequently of no less authority
in the several ages of the church.
As for the suffrages of the fathers ; I could bring St. Basil and
St. Chrysostom, of the Greek church ; St. Austin and St. Jerome,
the two great luminaries of the Latin.
Of which St. Au«tin, in his 119th epistle to Januarius, has
these words: " Quadragesima sane jejuniorum habet authoritatem

48 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. IV.
et in veteribus libris et in evangelio." And St. Jerome, in his
en stllto Marcella, delivers his mind to the same purpose : Nos
unam quadragesimam, secundum traditionem apostolorum, toto
annT tempore nobis c'ongruo jejunamus." Also in his Comment
upon IsaTah lviii, he speaks to the like intent : < Dominus diebus
quadraginta in solitudine jejunavit, ut nobis solennes jejuniorum
dies relinqueret." . • , . ,
I do not desire to multiply quotations, but had rather weigh
than number them ; and therefore these shall be sufficient.
And now let any one judge, whether it is fitter for us to steer
our practice according to the ducture of the universal church, or
the broken voice of a particular faction, compared to that, both
small in number and inconsiderable in qualification ? Must the
gray hairs of antiquity bow down to the upstart appearance of
novelty? especially since the same faction that decry fasting in
Lent, have publicly kept a national fast upon the day of Christ's
nativity, in the year 1645 ; the first fast that was kept by Chris
tians on that day since Christianity saw the sun: but, it seems,
Christianity and reformation are two things.
They talk of reforming, and of coming out of Egypt, as they call
it ; but still, though they leave Egypt, they will be sure to hold
fast to their flesh-pots. And the truth is, their very fasts and
humiliation have been observed to be nothing else but a religious
epicurism, and a neat contrivance of luxury : while they forbear
dinner, only that they may treble their supper ; and fast in the day,
like the evening wolves, to whet their stomachs against night. i
But these principles and practices are too rank for the strict,
pure, and mortifying severities of Christianity. Let us, therefore,
poor mortals, \|ho dare not be perfect above our example, content
ourselves to follow our great Master, and not be ashamed to be
deceived with the universal church.
And truly, he that with spiritual design and prudent usage shall
manage this religious solemnity, as with Christ he may be said to
fast, so with Christ also he may conquer the tempter. And let all
schisms, and factions, and pretended reformers, ring about his ears
peals of popery, will- worship, and superstition ; yet still, like
Christ in the wilderness, he may converse with God, though his
abode be amongst such wild beasts.
And thus I have despatched the first general head of this dis
course ; which was to show the extent and latitude of this duty
of fasting, in the several sorts and kinds of it: I must now close
up what I have spoken upon this subject with this cautional ob
servation :
That in the whole economy of the gospel, mercy is predomi
nant ; and therefore the rigour of every precept is to be sweet
ened and reduced to this standing rule, as the vital reason running
through every evangelical institution. We *cannot but allow the
great legislator of the new law to carry things with so much

FASTING a means of subduing sin. 49
equity and evenness, as to fix upon the same law a different pro
portion of obligation, according to different tempers and occa
sions. Now what Christ said upon another occasion may be said also
of fasting: " Every one cannot receive this saying." There may
be a poison in abstinence, as well as in meats ; and when natural
weakness and infirmity will not reach the sweetness and perfection
of the precept, it is the genius of the gospel to relax, and not to
urge sacrifice, standing in competition with mercy.
Certainly he, that would make the rigours of the sabbath give
way to the pulling of an ox or a sheep out of the ditch, would not
now ruin a man, for whom even the sabbath was made, only to
spare one of those. Where the performance depends upon a power
rare and singular, it is there hard to make the duty universal.
We know the body is subservient to the uses of the soul ; but
Christ never destroys one to save the other ; nor bids any one put
the knife to his throat so as to kill himself. We must distinguish
between murder and mortification. Christ commands no man
to be a skeleton, or a walking ghost, or to throw away his
health, in order to his salvation. A catarrh or a consumption is
no man's duty : self-denial may be a duty ; but I am sure self-
murder is a sin.
A potion may be sovereign and excellent, but not therefore to
be equally administered to all. No application can be successful,
but what is managed with caution : and where there is caution,
there must be distinction. Every vessel is not alike fit for new
wine : an old, crazy cask betrays its burden, and sinks under the
vigour and spirituous emanations of too generous a liquor.
There is no soul but may pray, and be , pious * but there are
many bodies that cannot fast. It were a sad thing, if a man
should be forced to make his table-cloth his windingtsheet, and
his poison his religion. No, undoubtedly ; all the injunctions of
Christ carry in them nothing but sweetness, convenience, and a
tender compliance with the necessities and frailties of human
nature. The weakness of some tempers perform upon them the very
same effects that fasting works upon others ; and therefore those
severities, which in others would be only an abridgment of their
luxury, would in them be an entrenchment upon their being ; and
not only cut short their pleasure, but their very existence.
As soon as Jesus Christ had raised one from the dead, we read
that " he commanded something to be given her to eat," Mark v.
43. And I am confident, the severity of no institution could
have induced him, at that time, to have bid her fast ; unless he
only raised her from the state of death, that he might send her to
it again. The height of prudence is, in all precepts, laws, and institu
tions, to distinguish persons, times, and occasions, and accordingly
Vol. IV*— 7 E

50 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. iv.
to discriminate the obligation; and upon ^•™%£g£C?t£
Justice to dispense with it in some, upon which it conhrms it m
offiers And pr^ence is but one part of Christianity which takes
b al moral virtues with advantage and addition ; and what is ab
surd in the sanctions of right reason, will never be warranted by
the rules of religion. Wherefore, as to the matter in hand, I shall
comprise all in this one word : Let the observation of this solemn
time be so strict, as not to bend to any man's luxury; so dispensa
ble, as not to grate upon his infirmity.
II. I come now to the second general head proposed for the dis
cussion of this subject ; which is to show, what are the qualifica
tions that must render this duty of fasting both acceptable to God,
and efficacious to this great purpose.
To give men a right information concerning which, I think to
be a matter of very great moment ; as perceiving that men egre-
giously abuse themselves in the practice of this duty, spoiling it
with strange apprehensions, and loading it with many foreign and
preternatural strictnesses, for which they will one day receive but
small thanks, either from God or from themselves. The truth is,
the sum of all their miscarriage about it seems to lie iri this, that
they depress it into a bodily exercise ; which the apostle affirms
to " profit little ;" while they acquiesce barely in this, that they
have fasted so long, or so often ; not at all considering in what
manner or to what end : whereas, indeed, the former is but the
mere bulk and rude draught of this duty ; and these latter only
stamp it divine, and make it spiritual.
Wherefore I shall lay down four conditions or properties, with
out a joint concurrence of all which, this duty of fasting can neither
be pleasing to God, nor effectual to dispossess the unclean spirit,
in the mortification of any strong corruption.
1. The first is, that it is to be used, not as a duty either ne
cessary or valuable for itself, but only as an instrument. There
are some duties that carry in them an absolute necessity ; as be
ing founded upon the necessary relation that the creature bears
towards God, in respect of its being created by him, and its
depending upon him ; as also upon the relation that one crea
ture bears towards another, arising from their natural equality
and cognation.
Of the first sort are our loving God, adoring him, adhering to
him, with the utmost exertion of all the powers and faculties of
the soul ; demeaning ourselves with that humility and prostration
of spirit, that becomes poor shadows before self-sufficiency, weak
ness before omnipotence ; a creature of yesterday, and but for a
day, before him who is from everlasting to everlasting. In shoit,
as it becomes a man to behave himself towards that divine power,
from the arbitrary disposals of whose pleasure he first received his
breath, and still holds his being.

FASTING A MEANS OF SUBDUING SIN. 61
Of the second sort are all the duties we owe to our neighbour,
in the rank and condition our creation has placed us. As, that
we bear a benign affection towards him ; entertain a concernment
for him ; upon all occasions advance his good and emolu
ment ; by no means entrench upon his happiness, by defrauding,
slandering, defiling, or any ways circumventing those whom God
has joined with us in the society and common ligaments of nature
and humanity.
Now all these actions, with their respective branches and fur
ther improvements, are indispensably requisite, as parts of God's
image in us ; and without which the decorum and offices of that
station which every man holds, both towards God and his fellow
creatures, cannot! be sustained. These, therefore, are the princi
pal duties, and chief pillars of morality ; and whatever becomes
necessary over and above these, it is so only by way of supply
and assistance, as helps and arts to promote the soul's progress in
these grand instances of duty.
For we must observe, that there is not only in the mind of man
an ingenite sense of turpe and honestum, thaf constantly in
clines him to the practice of such virtuous actions, but also a
strong inclination of appetite, that, like a constant remora, stops
and impedes the virtuous principle ; and withal, like a bias,
sways and carries him to what is vicious and irregular.
Upon this ground it is, that to quicken the soul in a course of
virtue, we must removere prohibenS, and weaken the contrary
principle of the sensitive appetite, which clogs and oppresses the
other in all its due operations. Now, since the seat of this
appetite is the body, according to the various disposition of
which, that becomes either lively or faint in its workings, it
follows, that we must lay siege to this, and begin the assault
here, as that great apostle and artist in the ways of holiness did
before us, 1 Cor. ix. 27, " I keep under my body, lest, having
preached to others, I myself should become a castaway."
How this can be effected surer and better than by fasting, not
only Christianity, but reason itself is yet to seek. It is this that
curbs nature, circumscribes appetite, restrains the gaiety and exor
bitance of desire, stops the career of luxury, by taking off its
wheels. He, whose nature is reduced and kept low by the disciplines of
religion, is neither a slave to the suggestions of lust, pride, or
idleness ; their innate fuel is extinguished ; and so all their
proposals easily vanish, finding nothing to fasten upon. They are
so far from being victorious, that to such a one thej are scarce
troublesome. He is so far from being subject to their tyranny, that
he is not so much as vexed with their importunity.
Now, by all that has been said it appears, that fasting is re
quired, not as a virtue but as a help to virtue ; and that by con
trolling its hindrance, removing its impediments, subduing the

52 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. IV.
emulations of a contrary principle, and so enabling it to act with
freedom. Otherwise, were there no reluctancy from the interior
appetites against a virtuous and a pious course, these arts and
stratagems against the flesh would be superfluous, and we should
have no more need of fasting than the angels or the blessed
spirits have of eating. Could the mariner sail with as much ease
and safety in a storm, as he does in a calm, he would never empty
or unlade his vessel.
Would a full luxuriant body subserve the ends and execute
the commands of the spirit, with as much readiness and agility
as one that is disciplined to such compliances with hunger and
hardship ; God, who takes no delight to afflict the children of
men, you may be sure would not command us to afflict our
selves ; certainly no abstinence would be then more our duty, than
to abstain from fasting.
For is there any excellency in the thing itself to commend it
to God ? Does fasting perfume our sighs, or add a fragrancy to
our prayers ? Are the jejunia sabbatariorum sacrifices of so sweet
a savour to the Almighty, that the offerings of justice, piety,
and mercy, would be nothing valued by him, without the mixture
of such incense ?
Nay, let me add this one consideration ; that fasting, as such,
considered barely in itself, is so far from being of any value in the
sight of God, that it is indeed an evil ; not morally, I con
fess, but naturally ; for whatsoever grieves or afflicts nature is an
evil to it, and consequently fasting, being such a one, would
never be allowed, much less commanded by God, if it were not
sanctified by its subserviency to a moral good.
Let this therefore be fixed upon, that fasting is neither com
manded, nor to be used, but merely as a spiritual instrument.
And since it is the nature of all instruments to receive their
value and worth from their fitness to produce those effects to which
they are designed, I believe it would be no hard matter to unravel
and run through most of the pompous austerities and fastings of
many religious operators and splendid justiciaries.
Some of which neither know or design any other religion in
this duty, but only that at such and such a time they forbore
flesh, and made their meal of fish, which perhaps also they loved
better. This, they think, is a notable piece of service to God ;
and so they rise from the table with their blind besotted con
sciences as much applauding them, as if they had risen from a
well-performed prayer.
But may I not say to such a one, Thou hypocrite ! does God
receive any honour at all from this ? or does it at all discrimi.
nate fee from the epicure in his account, or in the final sentence
that he shall pass upon both hereafter? May not he that eats
fish and he that eats flesh go to the same place of damnation, as,
well as the fish and flesh that they eat be served up to the same table ?

FASTING a means of subduing sin. 53
Is there any spiritual design carried on in this abstinence? Is
the ruin of any vice driven at ; the working of any corruption
undermined and defeated by this means ? These are the things
that God looks at and requires, and which the very nature of the
duty suggests ; and without which it is but the carcass of a duty ;
dead and noisome ; detestable before God, and irrational in itself.
2. The second condition of a religious fast is, that it be done
with a hearty detestation of the body of sin, for the weakening of
which it is designed. Whosoever duly undertakes a fast, by the
very nature of the duty is actually engaged in a war against his
sin ; and who ever fought valiantly against him whom he did not
first hate heartily ?
If we have not first wrought our minds to a settled dislike and
a bitter disgust of sin as our mortal enemy, all our attempts
against it will be faint and heartless, our mortifications treache
rous, and our fastings frustraneous ; much like David's sending an
army against Absalom with a design to save him, and to deal
with him gently. It will be only an alarm to sin to put itself
into a posture of defence, to retreat further into the soul, and
there to rally together its strengths, and to secure itself by a
firmer possession.
It is most certain, that in the same degree that sin is amiable to
us, our fast is odious to God, and looked upon by him only as a
more solemn mockery and religious provocation.
* It is not a mournful expression, a solemn dress, or a thin table,
that God so much regards. It is the heart, and not the stomach,
that he would have empty; and, therefore, if a man carries a
luxurious soul in a pining body, or the aspiring mind of a Lucifer
in the hanging head of a bulrush, he fasts only to upbraid his
Maker, and to disgrace his religion, and to heighten his final
reckoning, till he becomes ten times more the son of perdition,
than those who own their inward love of sin, by the open undis-
sembled enmities of a suitable behaviour.
Let us not deceive ourselves, nor take an estimate of our duty
by false measures and fallacious judgments. He that obeys the
injunctions of, the church, that executes upon himself the afflict
ing rigours of external abstinences, he does well ; but he has not
therefore done all. Let him not count himself to have fasted to
any purpose, if by it he has not got ground of his corruption, in
some measure supplanted his sin, and estranged his affections from
the beloved embraces of sinful objects.
But if, after all these spiritual arts and severities, the love of sin
continues yet active and entire, let him assure himself, that his
fasting will have no other effect upon him, than to send him back
to the repeated practice of what he loves, with a fiercer and a
keener appetite. The vicissitudes of restraint will only endear the
returns of the enjoyment, and draw forth the desires of a quicker
and more inflamed inclination.
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54 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. IV.
He therefore, that would manage this duty to his great and
spiritual advan ge, let him draw" his eye from his tab e, and
S™ it unto his soul: let him overlook the spare furniture of
one and see whether there be not large provision laid up for
hWin the other. Does he find any vile unmortified desire in his
heart? let him extinguish it: any sin in his hands ? let him re
move it- any blot upon his conscience ? let him wash it out in the
great laver of souls, the blood of Christ, conveyed to him by a
true repentance.
But if these things are not the matter of his care, it he only
forbears his meat, and not his sin, let such a one know, that the
beasts of Nineveh kept as good a fast as he.
Add to all this, that the love of sin cherished in the heart, makes
fasting not only an impious, but also an unseemly practice. A
man's behaviour contradicts his designs: the duty does not set
well upon him ; it neither suits nor squares with his condition. In
short, it is as improper and absurd to come to a fast with a foul
heart, as to a feast with foul hands.
3. The third condition of a duly qualified fast is, that it be
quickened and enlivened with prayer. The truth is, one of the
greatest designs of this duty is, to be an apportunity of prayer,
which is never performed with greater fervency, activity of spirit,
and restlessness of importunity, than when nature is abridged, the
humours of the body low, and consequently the avocations that it
suggests to the mind small and conquerable. »
Prayer is a duty running through all the periods and offices of
our lives, but the days of fasting are properly the time of its so
lemnity. They are, as I may so say, the festivals of devotion.
Prayer, joined with fasting, is like " an apple of gold set off with
a picture of silver." Now we have it at its best advantage ; it
shines bright, and it flames pure, like fire without the incumbrances
of smoke, or the allay of contrary blasts.
And in the management of so great a duty, to be silent and ob
stinate, to have no petition to prefer, what is it but to transact the
whole religion of the fast with our teeth ? with a temper inferior to
the ox and the brute animals, who low in their hunger, and speak
aloud their wants to the hand that feeds them.
Nay, the very reason of a fast seems to require the society of
prayer, for it must needs be undertaken either for the procuring
of some good, or the deprecation of some evil : and is there any
way appointed, either by God or nature, to represent the wants and,
grievances of our condition to heaven but by petition ? by the soli
citations of prayer, a duty whose strange and never- failing suc
cesses in all its holy contests with the Almighty have rendered it
not only acceptable, but also invincible ?
And, to add example to reason, what saint almost do we find in
scripture, whose prayers did not attend their fasts ? Ezra and
Nehemiah, David and Daniel took this course ; and, doubtless,

FASTING A MEANS OF SUBDUING SIN. 55
while David's " knees were weak through fasting," as, he expresses
it in Psalm cix. 24, they were also employed in kneeling.
One would think, that in this performance the actings of grace
might imitate the workings of nature ; for is there any thing so
proper to hunger as craving, or to a fast as supplication ?
But where I enforce the conjunction of prayer with fasting, peo
ple must not think, that by prayer is meant a formal, customary
attendance upon the offices of the church, undertaken only out
of a sordid fear of the eye of man, and then performed with wea
riness and irreverence, with seldom access, and more seldom devo
tion : of the duties of which persons I may say this, that if filth
could be defiled, their prayers would defile their fastings, and their
fastings their prayers ; so that the joining of one to the other, would
be nothing else than the offering up of carion with the fumes and
incense of a dunghill.
4. The fourth condition of a truly religious fast is, that it be
attended with alms and works of charity. Amongst our other
emptinesses, the evacuation of the purse is proper to this solem-'
nity ; and he that inflicts a thorough penance upon this, stops the
fountain of luxury, and the opportunities of extravagance.
Charity is the grand seasonage of every Christian duty : it gives
it a gloss in the sight of God, and a value in the sense of men ;
and he fasts properly, whose fast is the poor man's feast ; whose
abstinence is another's abundance.
. In Isaiah viii. 4 — 7, God roundly tells his people what was
truly a fast, and what was no fast in his esteem ; not to abstain
from bread, but to "deal it to the hungry:" this is properly to
fast ; not to wrap ourselves in sackcloth, but to cover and clothe
our naked brother ; this is to be humbled.
To what purpose did the pharisees fast twice a week, when
they stayed their stomachs with devouring widows' houses ? so
lemnizing all their humiliations with the poor man's groans, and
the orphan's tears ? To what spiritual intent did our zealots so
much exercise themselves in this duty, when, as the prophet's ex
pression is in the same fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, they fasted
for violence, and to fight with the fist of oppression, only that
they might plunder and pillage with success ; that they might
make poor for others to relieve, and so provide objects for other
men's charity, instead of exercising their own ?
But if the constant practice of the church may have any weight
with us to determine our practice, we shall find, that works of
charity were always Jooked upon as a proper appendage, if not
also an integral parirof this duty. In the same place that we
read of Cornelius's fasting, we find it ushered in with its two great
supporters, prayers and alms.
And the truth is, if we may compare these two together, alms
have so much the preeminence above prayer, that one is a begging
of God, the other is a lending to him.

56 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. IV.
I have now assigned those conditions that I think are both
necessary and sufficient to render our fastings effectual to this great
end of dispossessing and throwing out the evil spirit.
I confess I have not mentioned the popish austerities of whip
pings, pilgrimages, and going barefoot, with twenty other such
tricks (for they are no better) which they prescribe and use upon
these solemnities. For if they were indeed of such sovereign
force to help the soul in the practices of virtue, what is the reason
that the scripture affords us not one instance of any saint
that ever took this course? The pharisees indeed disfigured and
mangled themselves, and treated their bodies much after the same
manner, till they made themselves more deformed in the eyes of
God, than in the eyes of men.
Other examples besides these I know none ; neither will rea
son supply the defects of tradition, or afford any solid argument
to prove that the evil spirit may be driven out of the soul as the
money-changers were out of the temple, with whips and scourges.
"The devil does not always go, when such weapons drive.
Those, indeed, whose religion lies no deeper than their skin, may
whip themselves holy, and owe their progress in virtue to the
slash and the whipcord ; but surely there are none, who have not
enslaved their intellectuals by an implicit faith and tamely resigned
themselves first to be deceived, and then to be ruled by impostors,
who do not look upon all these carnal assistances of the spirit, as
no better than the mortifications of the gallies, or the devotions of
the whipping-post.
III. I come now to the third and last general head, which is to
show how this duty of fasting comes to have such a peculiar
influence in dispossessing the evil spirit, and subduing our cor
ruptions. And here, first by way of denial, we must observe, that it does
not effect this work upon the soul,
1st. Either, first, by any casual force naturally inherent in
itself ; for if it did, fasting would certainly and constantly have
this effect upon every man that used it ; the contrary of which is
undeniably manifest from experience. For how many thou
sands, after all these abridgements, find their corruptions recoil
upon them with as great a force and fury as ever, their sinful
appetites being not at all abated, but rather exasperated and
renewed ? Which shows, that the bare performance is in itself
but a weak, unactive thing, and effects nothijjg but in the virtue of
a superior power, which sometimes co-operates with, sometimes
deserts the exercise of this duty.
2dly. Neither does fasting effect this great change upon us by
way of merit, as procuring and engaging the help of that grace
that does effect it : for besides that, it is upon irrefragable
grounds of reason evident, that it is impossible for a created'

FASTING A MEANS OF SUBDDING SIN. 57
nature to merit any thing from God by way of reward. So
there is over and above a peculiar poorness and vileness in this
action that degrades it to infinite distances and disproportions,
from being able to challenge, at the hands of God, the dispensa
tions of that grace upon which so much depends the weight and
moments of eternal glory.
In the next place, therefore, to show positively from whence this
duty derives this great virtue.
1. It receives it from divine institution. Whatsoever God
ordains by his word, he usually owns by his assistance ; and
therefore, in every thing made a duty by his command, if we
bring but endeavour, he will undertake for the success. It is
the concernment of his honour to make his ordinances consider
able ; and this is done by making them conduits and conveyances
of such a power as may advance them above themselves to be
instrumental to great and spiritual purposes.
Thus, when Moses fetched water out of the rock with a stroke
of his rod, we are not to imagine that the rod did it by any force
inherent in itself ; but God, having appointed it for such a work,
was pleased to attend it with a miraculous effect, and so to credit
his institution with the exercise of his omnipotence.
2. Fasting comes to be effectual to dispossess the evil spirit, by
being a direct defiance to that disposition of body and mind upon
which especially he works.
(1.) For the body. The devil never finds it so pliable to his
motions, so instrumental to his designs, as when it is pampered
and luxuriant. It is then like a strong liquor, it receives the
infusions of poison more intimately and deeply, and diffuses the
same with stronger and more insinuating communications.
But a body subdued with abstinence, it is to the evil spirit like
an unfurnished house ; and then we know, that though there is
no violence used to drive out an inhabitant, yet bad accommoda
tions will make him dislodge.
(2.) For the mind. This is a singular corrective of that pride
and garishness of temper, that renders it impatient of the sobrie
ties of virtue ; but open to all the wild suggestions of fancy, and
the impressions of vice.
Now, I say, fasting gives a wound to this disposition in a
double respect.
1st. That it is a notable act of self-revenge ; and self is the
only lawful object of revenge. Paul reckons this amongst the
heroic performances of an extraordinary repentance. 2 Cor.
vii. 11 : " What care, what zeal has it wrought, nay, what re
venge !"
A man by this does as it were retaliate an evil to the author,
and by defrauding himself, he does fallere fallentem, which cer
tainly is a pious fraud. It speaks a man hugely in earnest, and
intent upon the work of mortification : for of all things in the
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58 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. IV.
world, revenge is never in jest ; but in returning an evil, it always
repays the principal with interest and advantage.
2dly. Fasting corrects and brings down this ill temper of mind,
by being an act of self-abasement and prostration. A man by
this in a manner awards upon himself the very judgments which
he deprecates. He acknowledges a forfeit of all God's creatures,
and therefore he neither touches nor tastes, lest in every morsel he
should thieve and usurp ; being by sin, as it were, an outlaw to
the common issues of providence.
Now the end of God's judgments is not so much to revenge
as to convince, and to lay a man low in the apprehensions of his
own wretchedness. Wherefore, if a man thus judges himself,
and not only kisses the rod, but also inflicts it with his own hand,
he by this takes the work out of God's, and makes an affliction
superfluous by anticipating its effect.
Much more might be spoken of this subject ; but when we have
taken all those courses to eject the evil spirit, we must still re
member, that it is to be the work of God himself, whom the blessed
spirits adore, and whom the evil obey.
To whom therefore be rendered and ascribed, as is most due,
all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for
evermore. Amen.

59

SERMON V.
the necessity of immediate repentance.
Revelation ii. 16.
Repent; or I will come unto thee quickly: and fight against them
with the sword of my mouth.
Reflecting upon these many and strange methods by which
sin prevails upon man's will, collected from an ordinary experience
and survey of the practices of the world, compared with the in
fallible verdict of the scriptures ; and amongst the rest, of that
signal place in Deut. xxix. 19, which presents to us one blessing
himself, and saying, " I shall have peace, though I walk in the
imaginations of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:" I have,
upon such reflections, not without some amazement, considered
what should be the ground upon which rational discerning men
can satisfy and speak peace to their consciences in the very career
of those sins, the commission of which, even by the confession of
those that commit them, leads to assured perdition.
As for that peace that springs from a refined well-contrived
hypocrisy, that is wholly of another nature ; for where there is
some restraint of sin coloured over with some superficial varnish
of duty, considering the weakness of man's understanding, and
the treachery of his will, it is no wonder that such a peace is easily
attainable ; nay, that it is very hardly avoidable. But here,
where sin is let loose to its full uncontrolled course, so that "men
lie and wallow in a free and palpable perpetration of it, even
arising to the height of this expression, "to add drunkenness to
thirst ;" that is, as some expound it, the outward commission of
sin to the inward desire ; or, as others, a perpetual continued glut
and surfeit in sin. As the abused satisfaction of thirst causes
drunkenness, and drunkenness again provokes thirst, men never
more liberally call for their cups, than when they have too liberally
taken them already.
I say, that any one should find peace in such a course, this
seems prodigious, and did not scripture and experience overrule
the disputes of reason, almost incredible. But since there is no
human action or course without some cause, it will be expedient
to inquire what may be the cause of this. And one would think,
that the cause that any man can be jocund and fully satisfied in
the eager pursuit of known sins, must of necessity be one of these
three :
1st. That he is ignorant of, the curse that attends his sin ; and

60 dr. south's posthumous sermons. Lserm. V
so no wonder, if blindness produces boldness : for he that is blind
may not only accidentally fall, but soberly go into the ditch. But this
cannot be here the cause ; for he that thus blesses himself, ls^said
in ihe former part of the verse to do so after he had heard the
words of this curse." A curse plain enough, and large enough,
filling all the foregoing chapter, one of the longest in the bible.
So that if terror set home with evidence, or evidence edged with
terror, could convince, ignorance was here unpleadable. The
broad light of the word beat full in his face, the discovery was
clear, and the conviction unavoidable ; and therefore ignorance
could not be the cause.
2dly. A second cause might be unbelief: he might know the
curse, and yet not believe it ; and so, not being believed, it could
not control his comforts. For though apprehension brings the ob
ject to tbe mind, yet it is belief only that lets it in. But neither
can this be always the cause ; for certainly no man is so improved
in sin, as to transcend the devil, who, as the schoolmen say, stands
confirmatus in summd malitid : and yet he believes, and that even
to trembling. He knows and believes that he shall be tormented
to the utmost extent of the very least tittle and jot of all God's
threatenings, and yet he sins with a most resolved, implacable
purpose ; nay, he therefore sins, because he knows and believes
it. Wherefore audacious sinning is not always founded upon
infidelity. 3dly. But thirdly, though he knows and believes the curse, yet
perhaps, he relaxes nothing of his sin, because he resolves to
bear it ; and has wrought himself into that hardiness and courage,
as to think that he can weather out the storms of God's wrath,
and stand the shock of eternal vengeance ; and, like Scaevola,
with the same hand and sturdiness endure the shame with which
he committed sin.
But alas ! where lives that man that can thus reason, either
sober or in his wits ? The principles of our nature will not bear
it. Belshazzar had as much of power, and of drink withal, to
raise him to bid defiance to God, as any ruffian under heaven ;
ahd yet when God, as it were, lift but up his finger against him,
how poorly did he crouch and shiver ! how did his joints loose,
and his knees knock together ! So that if he felt God's hand so
intolerable, when it did but write, what would he find it when it
should inflict the sentence. And therefore neither can this be the
reason. But now, if men both apprehend the curse, and believe the
truth of it, and withal confess their utter inability to contest with
it; what can be the reason that any man can, with a contented
mind and a daring hand, proceed in such a strain of rebellion ;
believing and yet despising the curse, fearing its weight, and yet
defying the event? Why, the reason, I conceive, in short, is a
presummg confidence of a future repentance.

the necessity of immediate repentance. 61
This is the great mysterious engine of sin, that turns about
the world, that reconciles all the contradictions of interest and
religion, that solves all doubts, cuts off all demurs, that can as
sure a Balaam he shall " die the death of the righteous," though
he lives upon the wages of iniquity. It is this only that presents
sin in some respect rational ; that can make even conscience
itself sign and seal the petitions of the basest appetite. In
short, it works wonders : it unites the joys of heaven and the
pleasures of sin ; the promises of God and the precepts of the
devil. I shall not enforce this by any other probation, but by appealing
to every man's own conscience ; sending him to reflect upon him
self, and to consider the temper of his spirit, the inward reasonings
and debates of his mind, when he is allured to do any thing, of
the unlawfulness of which he stands clearly convinced, whether
he is not drawn forth to the actual commission of it, by pre
suming upon impunity, through the interposals of an after-
repentance. For if conscience startles and flies back, and dreads the apple
of the temptation, because God's word is peremptory, " He that
eats shall die ?" future repentance stands forth and supplies the
room, and retorts the answer of the devil, " Thou shalt not
surely die ;" nay, thou mayest repent, and surely live. So that
repentance being now stamped as current as perfect obedience,
this argument is heightened much beyond what that of the devil
was then capable of; because, indefinitely, without any restriction
of time or person, God's promise of life to the penitent stands
clear and irreversible.
Now what can speak more home and full to a man's desires,
and, in a great measure to his reason, than that which encourages
him to crop the present sweets of sin, by giving him security
against the future smart ? Let the wine be never so poisonous, a
man may safely drink it, when he has not only an appetite for its
sweetness, but also an antidote against its poison.
This, this therefore is the very hinge upon which the whole
persuasive force of sin turns and depends ; the only temptation
that seems unanswerable. Others, indeed, may allure ; this alone
argues a man into sin. And I desire to leave this with you, as an
observation infallibly true, that were it not for the persuasions of a
future repentance, a knowing man could scarce ever be brought to
sin against his conscience.
But now if this be overthrown,- and proved to be both absurd
and dangerous, as I hope some part of the ensuing discourse shall
do, with clear undeniable evidence, then all other temptations,
that are but the mere appendices of this, will > fall and vanish of
themselves : as by confuting the main hypothesis of an opinion, all
other arguments by consequence drawn from thence, are also by
consequence confuted. F

62 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. v.
Now the face of these words is directly set against this soul-
devouring imposture of a deferred repentance. The words are
short and cutting, full of a smart and reprehensive vehemency; the
word and the blow seem to go together.
In the prosecution of them, for a more methodical proceeding, it
will be convenient to inquire into their occasion. For since they
are a command, and every command respects some person to
whom it is directed : and since this command is of repentance,
which always relates to some sin to be repented of; this inquiry
will give us a fair insight and introduction into both.
First of all then, for the occasion of these words : if we have
recourse to the 12th verse, we shall find that they are part of a
letter to the church of Pergamos, indited by the Spirit of God,
and directed to the angel of that church.
And here it will not be amiss briefly to consider what the
angel of that church was. It is evident that the church of Per
gamos must be taken collectively, for many particular churches
included in it ; for that it should be but one particular church,
considering the number of the persons and the extent of the
place, cannot with any colour of sense or reason, be affirmed.
By " angel " therefore must be understood that chief pastor, who
had the supervisal and government of those particular churches,
and the pastors of them, contained within the compass of Perga
mos ; correspondent to a bishop among us, ruling over the par
ticular churches and ministers of his diocese. .
And the denomination of " angel " shows the divine justification
of the office, it being in Eccles. v. 6, given to the priest, the chief
ruler of the Jewish church. Neither can any instance be given
of the name of " angel," ascribed to any person employed about
the church ; but it imports a messenger from God. So that, I
say, it is probable, that the word carries in it divine institution.
But, however, both the word and the usage of it here imports
Christ's owning and approbation of the office : and confirmation
is a kind of after-insinuation ; at least, it is no less authentic.
But some reply, that the word angel may be applied here to some
one pastor or presbyter, equal to the rest. To which I answer,
that it is highly improbable that the Spirit should address a
message to one minister, who was but equal to the rest, and no more
concerned in it than the rest, and that about a matter relating to all
their churches.
But I add further, that this could not be ; for one pastor over
a particular church has nothing to do to interpose and correct the
abuses of other particular churches, which are severally under their
own pastors ahd governors.
But now, the minister here. spoken of is blamed for the abuses
of all the churches in Pergamos, and charged to rectify them;
which clearly imports, that he stood invested with a more general
and extended jurisdiction. And this by the way, though vet it is
no digression. ¦" 6 J

the necessity of immediate repentance. 63
Having thus shown who the person was to whom this letter was
directed ; in the next place we are to consider the subject-matter
of the letter itself ; which contains in it these three things :
1. Commemoration of the virtues and graces that were eminent
Tand resplendent in this church, in ver. 13. 2. A charge for some
sinful abuse that had crept in, and was connived at, in ver. 14.
3. An advice upon the whole matter, which was speedy and im
mediate repentance.
In our present discourse we shall only be concerned in the two
latter of these : and first, for the sinful abuse or scandal here
charged upon this church ; it was its toleration of that vile and
impure sect of the Nicolaitans. The Nicolaitans, as their name
imports, took their rise and denomination from one Nicolas, one
of those seven deacons who were first ordained by the apostles,
Acts vi. 5. Now their heresy consisted of these two branches,
1st. That they did assert the eating of sacrifices offered to idols,
and that even in honour to those idols, to be lawful : 2dly, That
they held and abetted the lawfulness of fornication. So that
their heresy was a complete system of all impiety : the first part
containing the greatest spiritual, the latter the greatest carnal
pollution. In the 14th verse of this chapter, the Spirit calls this heresy
" the way of Balaam ;" who, when he could not curse, fell to
counsel; that is, to do a greater mischief ; and advised Balak to
cause the women of the Moabites to entice the children of Israel
to the feasts of Priapus ; in which " the people sat down to eat
and drink, and afterwards rose up to play;" that is, they first
feasted upon the idol-sacrifices, and then finished the solemnity
with the impurities of lust. It seems, something of this nature
was revived and practised by these impure heretics ; a strange
thing, one would think, that so filthy a heresy should get ground
in the very beginnings and first dawnings of the church, and in
the purest times of Christianity !
Yet thus it was. The brightest day may begin with a mist ;
and the best of churches is not privileged from corruptions : but
it was not so much the churches' having, as not animadverting
upon these pests, that is here reprehended. They had their meet
ings by public toleration and connivance: and this is that for
which the Spirit rounds them up with this short advice, armed and
seconded with a severe combination.
Come we now to the next thing ; which is, the counsel of speedy
repentance, given upon this scandal, and contained in the words
of the text ; in which are these two parts :
1. The first stands directed to the church itself: " Repent, or
I will come unto thee quickly." By God's coming, is meant his
approach in the way of judgment: for so the word coming
frequently signifies, both in the Old and New Testament.
Isaiah xxx. 27, " The name of the Lord cometh from far, burning

64 DR. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. V
with his anger." And in Psalm 1. 8, " Our God shall come, and
shall not keep silence ;" that is, he shall come to judge and
punish • or, as the usual phrase is, he shall come with a vengeance:
for so the following words explain these: A fire shall devour
before him." . , .
In the same sense also is the word coming frequently used in the
New Testament ; which is well worth our observation, as being of
signal use to rescue sundry places of scripture, that have been
hitherto held under false and perverse interpretations.
In this sense is it taken in Matt. xvi. 27, where it is said, that
"the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his
holy angels, to reward every man according to his works ;"_ which
place though many understand of Christ's coming in his own
person to judge all men at the end of the world, yet indeed it
signifies only his coming in the ministers of his wrath, to take
vengeance of the Jews in the destruction of Jerusalem.
That this is so I evince by another parallel place, in Matt. xxvi.
64, where Christ, speaking of his coming, says, <**' aoti o^oBs
¦tov viov tov dVflpwrtov lf>x°l>-*vov £rt^ *"v vs^iXCJv tov oipavov, which WOrd
d*' ap*i, though we translate hereafter, yet it properly signifiesyrom
now ; that is, within a very short time.
But yet more fully from that forementioned place in Matt, xvi.,
whereas in verse 27, he had said, " You shall see the Son of man
come with the glory of his Father, and the holy angels," he sub
joins in the very next verse, " And verily there are some standing
here, that shall not taste death till they see the Son of man coming
in his kingdom."
What ! did he mean that they should not die till the day of
judgment? No; this was evidently false and impossible: but
his meaning was, that some of the younger sort of his auditors
should live to see the execution of his wrath upon the Jews, in
the destruction of Jerusalem.
And this seems excellently to interpret a place that will hardly
be understood without it, in John xxi. 22, where Christ says to
Peter, concerning John, " If I will that he tarry till I come, what
is that to thee ?" Here now the apostles' minds, running upon
the last judgment, presently concluded that John should not die.
But now take the word coming in this sense, and it gives a
clear and apposite interpretation to the place ; John being the
only disciple who both saw and survived the destruction of
Jerusalem. But the only doubt that may occur here is this : How Christ
could be said to come in the destruction of Jerusalem, which was
effected by the Roman armies: but the solution is easy. For
when God, by his peculiar providence, raises up any instruments
to execute his decrees or purposes upon any people or place the
actions of those persons are both usually and properly applied to
God, as if he had done them immediately himself.

THE NECESSITY OF IMMEDIATE REPENTANCE. 65
And for his coming with his holy angels, it is very probable,
that when God brings a public ruin and destruction upon a
nation, he uses the ministry of angels, as well as the weapons of
men. This seems clear to me from that place in Dan. x. 20,
where the angel says to him, " Now will I return to fight with
the prince of Persia ; and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of
Grecia shall come." In like manner Christ might send his
angels out to fight against Judea, before the coming of Vespasian's
army. And lastly, for his coming in the clouds ; he that shall read
Josephus and others concerning the Jewish history, will find
what strange prodigious appearances there were in the sky, of
armies fighting, and a flaming sword hanging over Jerusalem, a
little before the Romans sacked and ruined that city. So that,
all things being laid together, I cannot but conclude it more than
probable that this is the sense of the place.
A learned author, considering this sense of Chrjst's coming,
judges that the whole book of the Revelations, in which that is
so often spoken of, relates to things immediately to happen after
the delivery of that prophecy ; and consequently, that it had
its completion within two hundred years. And certain it is,
that the very beginning of the book says, that it was to deliver
" things shortly to come to pass ;" and the last concluding
chapter emphatically repeats this three times, " Behold, I come
quickly." Now, if the judgment of this learned man stands, as it hath
both the countenance of reason and of the express words of the
text, then what must become of the bloody tenets of those
desperate wretches, who for these many years have been ham
mering of blood, confusion, and rebellion out of this book, from
a new fancy that they have of Christ's coming. Thus ruling
their lives, not by precepts, but prophecies ; and not being able to
find any warrant for their actions in the clear and express word
of law or gospel, they endeavour to shelter their viilanies in the
obscurities and shades of the Revelation ; a book intricate and
involved, and for the most part never to be understood ; and
upon which, when wit and industry has done its utmost, the best
comment is but conjecture. And thus much for the first part of
the words that stands directed by the church, " Repent, or I will
come unto thee quickly."
2. The other part of the words relates to those heretics ;
"And I will fight against them with the sword of my mouth:"
that is, with the reprehending discovering force of the word, and
the censures of the church ; where, for the credit and divine
authority of the ministry, Christ owns that for the sword of his own
mouth, which was only delivered by theirs.
Now we must observe, that as the Spirit had called this heresy
" the way of Balaam," so the judgment here pronounced is still
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66 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. v.
with allusion to that of Balaam : whom as the angel of God
met with a drawn sword, to divert him from his course, so bod
here threatens to meet these heretics with the curse and terrors of
the law, and the spiritual sword of his word.
And every obstinate sinner must know, that it is God that
meets him face to face, that withstands and pleads with him in
the word as with a drawn sword ; and therefore, if he is resolved
to persist and hold on his course, he must of necessity run upon
the sword's point, the very pike of divine vengeance, and re
solve to fight it out with God and all his judgments : or, by a
penitential prudence, fairly consult his safety in his duty, and
retreat. Now, from this expression here used, " I will fight against
them with the sword of my mouth," I collect these two occasional
observations. 1st. That the word of God, powerfully dispensed, has the
force and efficacy of a spiritual sword. For as a sword has both a'
glittering radiance and brightness to strike and terrify the eye,
and also an edge to pierce the flesh ; so the word, being drawn
forth . and brandished by a skilful hand, darts a convincing light
into the understanding, and with an irresistible edge enters the
heart and the affections.
It is not like the song of one that has a pleasant voice, that
only strikes the ear, gratifies the fancy, and courts those affec
tions which it should command. But when the word comes
from God, it comes with such a searching, invincible quickness,
such a spiritual keenness, that it shall cut and make its way
through the hardest heart, and not find admittance by mere
petition, or precarious suasion ; for a sword never enters by
entreaty. ^
And for men's encouragement to attend upon this ordinance,
take the proudest and the stoutest sinner upon earth, and God is
able, with his word alone, to fetch him upon his knees, and to
lay him in the dust. Take the stubbornest and the knottiest
corruption of the most depraved heart, and God is able, with the
sword of his mouth, to hew it asunder. And when Providence
shall place a man under the dint of such a ministry, he will find
the work short and speedy ; it will quickly send him away con
verted or inexcusable.
2dly. From hence I observe, when God undertakes the purg
ing of a church, or the reformation of religion, he does it with
the weapons of religion, with "the sword of his mouth." Show
me anyone text in the whole book of God, especially since the
spirit of meekness took place in the introduction of Christianity,
where God commissions any man, at least any subject, to correct
the abuses of religion with fire and sword, and to dispute the
articles of his faith in the high places of the field. For in such
cases, if his conscience will not suffer him to obey, the same con-

THE NECESSITY OF IMMEDIATE REPENTANCE. 67
science will as strongly oblige him to suffer. And therefore,
though the truths, the worship, nay the person itself of Christ
should be invaded, yet let Peter put up his sword, and let Christ
employ' his own, even this " sword of his mouth," which is sharper
and better, and able much more powerfully to reach and affect the
ear without cutting it off.
And I am persuaded that the great reformation that God intends
to bring over the Christian world, in the last and best days of the1
church, shall not be effected with confused noise, and garments
rolled in blood, with fire and faggot, but Christ shall do it silently^
yet powerfully, by " the brightness of his coming." As the rising
sun chases away the darkness, without noise indeed, but yet witbr-
out resistance.
So that whatsoever trash or stubble shall be built upon the foun
dation of the eternal word of God, swords and spears, weapons
heterogeneous to these things, shall not be employed for their re
moval, but they shall insensibly vanish and moulder away before
the prevailing efficacy of the everlasting gospel. As a skilful dis
putant does not cut off the fallacious argument of his opponent by
fretting and. fuming, and speaking loud, but by a calm, sedate re
ducing it to the rules of argumentation; just so it is here, where
Christ shall subdue his enemies, not by combat, but discovery.
And then the promises being fulfilled, in the universal propagation
of the gospel, Jesus Christ shall reign as " King of kings, and
Lord of lords," and that without deposing of other princes. And
if God be true, and Christianity no imposture, whensoever this is
brought about, it will be in this manner ; for the whole dispensa
tion of the gospel, whether offensive or defensive, (must needs be
entirely spiritual.
. And thus having finished the general explication of the words, I
shall now descend to a more particular prosecution of the princi
pal design of them, which is to enforce the duty of immediate re
pentance ; and this I shall do in these two things.
I. I shall show what that repentance is that is here enjoined.
II. I shall produce arguments to enforce the necessity of its im
mediate exercise.
I. For the first of these : since divinity has been so much spun
into disputation, repentance is a thing almost as difficult in the
notion as it is in the practice. There are three words in scripture
to express it by, (utafUxim, fistdvoia, and lttMtpo<pri ; thougli this
last rather signifies conversion. The first, which is /tsta^ia, de
notes an anxiety or displeasure of mind upon something done
amiss, to which answers the Latin pcenitentia; the second, which
is pitavoia, signifies a total change or transmutation of the mind, to
which answers resipiscentia.
Now between these two some make this difference ; that the
former signifies either the whole of an ineffectual repentance, or

68 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. V.
only the beginning of such a one as, in the issue, proves saving
and effectual ; and that the latter signifies the whole work of such
a one as is sound, and effectual to salvation. _
It must be here confessed, that according to the strict and rigid
acceptation of the word, pttapitoia is only that trouble, regret, or
anxiety of mind for the evil of past actions, which is rather a pre
parative to repentance than the work itself, and consequently being
rested in cannot save ; and on the other side, iictavom signifies
strictly a change of mind, which, in the matter of sin, proves to
be saving.
This, I say, is the proper and strict signification of the words ;
but since we can determine nothing of them in a scripture way
from their literal meaning, but only from their use and acceptation
there, which in several instances may be easily shown to be pro
miscuous, we cannot make their native literal force any solid
ground for such a distinction. Wherefore leaving all weak and
unwarrantable deductions from the first signification of the Latin
or Greek words, you may observe that repentance in scripture has
a threefold acceptation.
1. It is taken for the first act by which the soul turns from sin
to God ; the first dividing stroke that separates between sin and
the heart ; the first step and advance that a sinner makes to holi
ness ; the first endeavours and throes of a new birth.
2. It is taken for the whole course of a pious life, comprising
the whole actions a man performs from first to last inclusively ;
from his first turning from a wicked life to the last period of a
godly. This is the only repentance that Socinus will admit ; and
some others, who would pretend to bring something new, but only
transcribe from him in this particular.
Now such as own this assertion find themselves under a neces
sity to assert also, that faith and repentance are the same things,
and differ only in the manner of our conception. So that the
whole obedience of our lives, as it is a turning from sin to God,
properly bears the name of repentance ; but then as this obedience
and turning to God proceeds from a belief of the promises and
precepts of Christ, so they say it is properly styled faith. Whence
repentance and faith, according to them, are only two different
denominations fixed upon the same thing, as it sustains different
respects. But that this is not the proper notion of repentance is clear from
these reasons :
(1.) Because, if repentance be properly the whole entire course
of gospel-obedience, from the first to the last of a man's life,
then no man could properly be said to have repented, till such
time as he had actually finished such a couse of obedience ;
that is, not till his death ; which to assert, is a strange paradox,
and contrary to the general apprehensions of men upon this
subject.

THE NECESSITY OF IMMEDIATE REPENTANCE. 69
(2.) The scripture, no less than the natural reason of the thing ,
itself, places repentance before faith, Matt. xxi. 32, " And ye,
when ye had seen it, repented not, that ye might afterwards be
lieve in him." Here we see repentance is made the antecedent
condition of faith: but now, should repentance grasp in the
whole series and course of gospel-obedience, to the last period of
our lives, how were it possible for faith to follow repentance,
unless we should begin to believe in another world ?
(3.) The scripture makes all those subsequent acts of new obe
dience after our first turning to God, not to be the integral con
stituent parts, but the effects, fruits, and consequents of repent
ance. Matt. iii. 8, " Bring forth fruits meet for repentance."
But to make the fruit part of the tree itself is certainly a thing
very preposterous.
I conclude, therefore, that repentance is not formally the whole
course of new obedience, but that first act by which a man turns
from sin to God. But then this I also add, that though it is not
formally, yet it is virtually and consequentially so. That is in
plain terms : repentance is not itself this course of new obedience,
but it does infer and produce it, and that as its inseparable effect
or consequent : so that if this new obedience does not follow in
the course of a man's whole conversation, after his first turning
to God, he must conclude that that act was spurious and un
sound ; and that indeed it never truly and thoroughly brought
him off from sin, whatsoever solemnity of sorrow, tears, and
confession it might be attended with.
Let him fast, and whip himself, and run barefoot, and mumble
out a thousand misere mei's, like some ignorant formalists, who,
the truth is, know not what repentance means, as being utterly
strangers to the spirit of the gospel. Or let him pray and weep,
and hang down his head like a bulrush, go softly, and look sourly ;
yet if a change pass not upon his life and actions, so that instead
of his accustomed wickedness, the whole tract of his conversation
is drawn forth in a constant, equable practice of the contrary
virtues, that man must know that he has not repented. He has
perhaps deluded himself, and deceived others, stopped the cries
of conscience and the clamours of men ; but repented he has not ;
and fearful were his case, should God' snatch him out of the
world in that condition.
3. Repentance is taken for a man's turning to God after the
guilt of some particular sin. It differs from the former thus ;
that the former is from a state of sin ; this latter only from a
sinful act. No repentance precedes the former, but this supposes
a true repentance to have gone before. Thus Peter is said, after
his denial of Christ, to have been converted, Luke xxii., that is,
to have repented ; not but that Peter was a true penitent and
convert before : but upon so sad and notorious a fall, he was, by
a renewed exercise of repentance, to disentangle himself from the
guilt of that particular sin of denying his master.

70 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [SERM. V.
This repentance, therefore, builds upon the former ; and it is
that which is here intended in the words. For the church ol
Pergamos was in favour with God, and consequently must needs
hav! repented before, as is clearly collected from that elogy
the Spirit gives it in Rev. ii. 13, "Thou holdest fast my
name, and hast not denied my faith." But by reason of this
scandal permitted and connived at, it was to cleanse itself trom
this stain by a renewed fresh act of humiliation.
The distinction, therefore, between these two kinds of repent
ance is carefully to be observed. The first passes but once upon
the soul, the latter is to be frequent, indeed continual. Naaman
washed off the leprosy of his body but once, but the soil of his
hands every day.
And thus much concerning the nature of the repentance here
spoken of; which being enjoined under pain of a speedy judg
ment, in case of omission it follows, that the command was not
indefinitely of any kind of repentance, but only of such a one as
was present and immediate.
II. Come we therefore to the second thing proposed, which is
to produce arguments to engage us in the speedy and immediate
exercise of this duty.
1. The first argument against a deferred repentance shall be
taken from this consideration, that no man can be secure of the
future. Neither, indeed, will men act as if they were in things
that concern this life, for no man willingly defers his pleasures.
And did men here well compute the many frailties of nature,
and further add the contingencies of chance, how quickly a
disease from within, or a blow from without may tear down the
strongest constitution, certainly they would ensure eternity upon
something else than a life as uncertain as ihe air that feeds it.
Do you not think, that that young man that brought David that
feigned traitorous message, did not set forth in good hearty
plight in the morning? and yet before sunset the vengeance of
God overtook and slew him in his sin.
God tells the sinner he must repent to-day ; he now thinks
with himself, that he can contrive the matter more wisely, and
defer his repentance to some of those years into which his pre
sent health seems to give him a long prospect. And now, is it
not just with God to smite such a one in the infatuation of such
counsels, and to convince him, that God spoke good reason when
he told him, that immediate repentance was necessary ?
And indeed the providence of God, for the most part orders
the matter so, that such are snatched and hurried away to judg
ment on a sudden, when they have power to repent of nothing
but this, that they had not repented before. See how God deals
with that servant that deferred his repentance upon a supposed
delay of his master's coming, Matt. xxiv. 50, 51 " The lo d f

THE NECESSITY OF IMMEDIATE REPENTANCE. 71
that servant shall come in an hour that he looked not for him, and
cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with hypocrites.'^
God's grace will not-always dance attendance upon obstinate re
solved hypocrites ; for this were, as if the sun of mercy should
stand still over their heads at their beck and command, while they
are fighting against heaven.
Should God open the book of his decrees, and give a man a
prospect into the secrets of futurity, and show him his death sealed
and appointed at such a day and such an hour, he might then,
indeed, with some more reason, enjoy the present, and set apart
some few days to make his peace with God, and set his soul in
order before he died. But this is- a privilege that God vouchsafes
to none, and that upon the highest reason ; for if he should, it
would destroy religion.
Wherefore, since this is a secret, like God's dearest attributes
incommunicable, locked up from the curious prying inspection
of all created knowledge, with what reason can any man build
his life, his happiness, his eternity upon such a repentance, as
hovers upon the uncertain slippery conjectures of a supposed
futurity ?
Ordinary experience observed would unbewitch men as to these
delusions. Did you ever see any man arrested, but it was before
he was aware ? A man would not willingly have his friend take
him in a surprise, much less then his greatest enemy, death and
judgment. Possibly God may strike him in the very eagerness
and perpetration of his sin. Thus he sent Corah, Dathan, and
Abiram, in the heat of their schism and rebellion, quick into hell.
Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead with a lie in their mouths.
Zimri and Cozbi, in the very act of uncleanness, were despatched
into another world.
And let that man, who promises to himself a future repentance,
and upon that confidence proceeds to sin, show me any solid satis
factory reason, why God may not, in the same manner, cashier him
in the very commission of that sin that he is designing. And then,
whether it would not be the grimmest dispensation that ever befell
him, to be thrust out of the world with his sins about his ears ;
and so to be brought, as it were, in the very heat and steam of his
offence, to render up an account for it at God's tribunal, before he
had scarce finished the commission.
The events of to-morrow are neither within the compass of our
understanding to know, or of our power to dispose of : wherefore
the advice of the Spirit concerning the time of our repentance, is
the same with that of St. Austin, who counselled his friend to re
pent a day before he died ; which, proceeding upon terms of
rational certainty, is to repent to-day.
3. The second argument shall be taken from this consideration,
that, supposing the allowance of time, yet we cannot be sure of
power to repent. It is very possible, that by the insensible

72 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. V.
encroaches of sin a man's heart may be so hardened, as to have
neither power nor will to repent, though he has time and oppor-
tunity. He that is unwilling to-day, will undoubtedly be more un
willing to-morrow. And the reason is evident, because his present
unwillingness proceeds from the hold that sin has got upon his
will already : but this every hour increases, and gets further
ground upon it ; so that sin being increased, unwillingness to re
pent, the proper effect and consequent of sin, .must needs be in
creased in an equal proportion.
The longer the heart and sin converse together, the more
familiar they will grow ; and then, the stronger the familiarity, the
harder the separation. Does any one think he has his heart so in
his hand as to say, Thus far will I sin, and there will I leave off?
Such a one shows, indeed, that he neither understands the nature
of sin nor of his heart.
How that that which now creeps and begs for entrance, having
once got admission, will command and domineer : and like that
emperor, though it gets into power like a fox, yet -it will manage
it, and reign like a lion. Neither does he know those many wind
ings and turnings, the sly excuses and glossing apologies, that
the heart will suggest to rescue its sin from the summons of re
pentance, being once endeared and bound fast to . it by inveterate
continuance. The commission of sin is like the effusion of water, easily con
tained in its bounds, but uncontrollable in its course. We indeed
may give it vent, but God alone knows where it .will stop. • Is not
that man therefore stupidly ignorant, who chooses to encounter his
sin by a future repentance ? Reason would argue , and discourse
thus: If I find that I have scarce power enough to resist my sin
at present, shall I not have much less when time shall give it
growth and strength, and as it were knit its joints, and render it
unconquerable? It is here as with a man in a combat ; every Mow his adversary
fives him, disables him for the very next- resistance. A man at
rst finds the beginnings and little inconveniences of a disease,,
but physic is unpleasant; and withal, he finds himself in a good
competence of strength at present, and therefore he resolves to
wear it out ; but in the mean time his distemper- eats on its way,
and grows upon him, till at length he has not so much as strength
to bear physic, but his disease quickly runs him down, and be
comes incurable.
A man at first is strong, and his sin is weak, and he may easily
break the neck of it by a mature repentance ; but his own- de
luding heart tells him, that he had better repent hereafter • that is
when, on the contrary, he himself is deplorably weak and his sin
invincibly strong. '
Commission of sin may indeed wound, but it is continuance ,
of sin that kills. A man by falling to the ground may perhaps

THE. NECESSITY OF IMMEDIATE REPENTANCE. 73
get a bruise or a knock ; but by lying upon tlie ground after he is
fallen, he may chance to catch his death.
And now does not that man's heart give him wise and whole
some counsel, that bids him balk the present, and fix upon the
future? But still, as the desires of sin are impious, so its
discourses are irrational. And what a dreadful thing is it for a
man, in the grand concernment of his repentance, in the great
deciding cast for eternity, to relinquish the word, and to consult
his heart ? whereas the word cannot, and his heart cannot but
deceive him.
The prophet Elisha, 2 Kings, viii. 12, told Hazael, knowing
his design to murder his prince, that his villany would not stop
there, but that he would proceed so far as to wreak his fory upon
sucking infants, and to rip up women with child. But his heart
in the mean while, which possibly at that very time, together
with the sin, had designed its repentance, that persuaded him
another thing, and makes him reply with resent and wonder,
"What! am I a dog that I should do these things?" And
questionless, at that time he little believed that he could be so
wicked ; but we know that the event shows whether Elisha or
his heart were the truer prophet. , For as soon as he had com
mitted his first -great leading sin, and his hand was well in, and
hot in the work, his corruption rages and swells higher and higher,
and his heart serves him for the utmost execution of all those
villanies, that at a distance he himself abhorred and judged
incredible. And how does that man know, that has built all upon his
resolves of repentance hereafter, but that he, who now trembles
at the first approach of a temptation, and can discern the insen
sible progress of his corruption, so that upon the very first rising
and moving of the heart to sin, his conscience smites him, remorse
pursues, troubles, and disquiets him ; the same, within a while
after his conscience has worn off all those restrictions, and becomes
hardened and steeled with custom; in sinning, may lash on furiously
and audaciously, with a high hand and bare face against tfie
grudges of conscience, the terrors of God,, and the , shame of the
world ; till at length he ends a wretched course in irrecoverable
perdition ; unless God in mercy steps in, and by a potent over
ruling hand of conviction rebukes the rage of his corruption, and
says, Thus far it shall come, and no further.
But now, as in the very course of a natural cause, continuance
in sin hardens against repentance ; as a man that is out of his
way, if he be far gone, will be hardly brought, to return, but will
venture over hedge and ditch, and wade through any difficulty
rather than endure the irksome, ingrateful trouble of a retreat ; so
we must further know,
That repentance is entirely in God's disposal. This grace is
in the soul from God, as light is in the air from the sun, by con-
Vol. IV.— 10 G

74 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. v.
tinual emanation ; so that God may shut or open his hand, con
tract or diffuse, set forth or suspend the influence of it as he
pleases. And if God gives not repenting grace, there will be a
hard heart and a dry eye, maugre all the poor frustraneous
endeavours of nature. A piece of brass may as easily melt, or
a flint bewater itself, as the heart of man, by any innate power
of its own, resolve itself into a penitential humiliation. If God
does not, by an immediate blow of his omnipotence, strike the
rock, these waters will never gush out. The Spirit blows where it
listeth, and if that blows not, these showers can never fall.
And now, if the matter stands so, how does the impenitent
sinner know but that God, being provoked by his present impeni
tence, may irreversibly propose within himself, to seal up these
fountains, and shut him up under hardness of heart and reproba
tion of sense ? and then farewell all thoughts of repentance for
ever. See this sadly exemplified in Pharaoh. He had time
enough to repent, day after day; but yet he never did repent;
for it is expressly said, that " God hardened his heart ;" that is,
he withheld his grace. See the children of Israel in the same
case, in Psalm lxxix. 11, " My people would not hearken to my
voice ; and Israel would none of me ;" that is, they peremptorily
refused God's present call to repentance. What follows ? why in
the next verse, " So I gave them up to their own hearts' lusts;
and they walked in their own hearts ;" that is, they would not re
pent, and therefore God, in effect, tells them that they should not
repent : but leaves them to the delusions of a besotted mind, and the
desperate, incorrigible estate of a final impenitence.
3. In the third and last place, the duty of immediate repent
ance may be enforced upon this reason ; that admitting a man has
both time and grace to repent, yet by such delay the work will be
incredibly more difficult. The longer a debt lies unpaid, the
greater it grows ; and not discharged, is quickly multiplied. The
sin to be repented of will be the greater, and power and strength
to repent by will be less. And though a man escapes death the
utmost effect of his distemper, yet certainly he will find it some
thing to be cut and scarified, and lanced, and to endure all the
tortures of a deferred cure.
And is it not better for a man in the business of repentance to
rise up early, and take the morning of his years before him,
while these heavenly penitential dews fall kindly and naturally,
than when his day is far spent, and the heat of temptation has
scorched them off from his heart, and they are gone ; and he
must be forced to struggle for every tear, to. pump for every drop,
to recover and refresh his languishing and otherwise dying soul ?
I say, is it not much better, while his conscience is tender and apt,
to relent under every motion and impression of the word, while
his wound is green, and his heart bleeds yet afresh, to stop the
bloody issue of sin with the healing balsam of a bleeding Saviour,
appbed quick and warm by a speedy humiliation.

the necessity of immediate repentance. 75
By a single commission of sin, a blot falls upon the soul ; but,
by continuance, it soaks into it. And when once sin comes to
have that desperate symptom of being inveterate, an ordinary re
pentance will not serve turn. The stain must lie and steep a
great while longer ; the brine must be sharper, and the repentance
severer, before the soul can be recovered to its first whiteness and
integrity. God, who at first might have been won by entreaties, must
now be wrestled with : and a man suffer many foils and repulses
in his spiritual conflict, endure many bitter agonies, pass under
much darkness and doubt, as to the whole matter of his eternal
condition, before he can recover upon his heart a sense of God's
lost favour. And perhaps, when at length it does return, it is but
weak and imperfect, mingled with much fear and spiritual dis
satisfaction. As when the clouds have spread themselves thick
and dark over the face of the whole heavens, the showers must
fall, and it may continue raining for many days before you can so
much as see the sun ; and when at length he shines forth, yet it
is but waterishly, and through the cloud, with a dim, uncom
fortable brightness : just so is it with a sinner in his deferred re
pentance. O remember David, his roarings and cryings, his broken bones,
his mournful days, and his sleepless nights. Why, what was the
cause of all this ? In Psalm xxxviii., My wounds stink and are
corrupt, because of my foolishness." They festered and grew
noisome, only by his foolish deferring of the cure. For all agree
that it was near a year, that David lay in his two great sins, be
fore he repented.
But on the contrary, in Peter, who followed his sin close at the
heels, who rose betimes to his work ; as soon as ever the cock
crew, and the alarm was given, we find that the matter of con
troversy was quickly taken up between Christ and him : and being
thus converted, he had the honour to strengthen his brethren, and
to be the great leading man and captain of the apostles.
Consider therefore, that the speedy penitent has a much fairer
reception and easier discharge from God, than he that lingers ;
whose repentance, though it may prove sincere, yet it still comes
with this degrading circumstance, that a delayed courtesy does
diu noluit.
We know, he that brings ready money has a thing much cheaper
than another, together with an overplus of more credit and esteem
into the bargain. In like manner the late penitent, like the late
paymaster, though by such a repentance he may secure himself
from the final arrests of damnation ; yet still it is something sordid
and degenerous.
Consider also, that God is so much pleased with an early peni
tence, that he is ready to accept that which is in itself a duty, as
a gift : at least, to reward it for such. Besides, he that is slow to

76 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. v.
attempt this great work, though his repentance may be real and
sincere, yet he will scarce be able to know that it is so ; and then,
though his condition may be sure, yet his comfort cannot be entire ;
but though he is at peace with God, yet he will hardly be at peace
with himself; in the mean time the early penitent has repentance,
with these two incredible advantages, he repents with facility and
with certainty. I have now done : you have heard the duty, and
the arguments to enforce it ; how that the neglect of it is a bold
venture upon God's justice ; and that no man can be sure of time
and opportunity to repent ; nor, admitting this, can he promise
himself grace and ability to execute this work : and lastly, sup
posing that he has both, yet the work will be trebly more difficult
and laborious, and, at the best, uncomfortable and dubious. Add
to this, that God may thunder out his judgments, which will over
take and force us to mend our pace : and, because we would not
repent upon a fairer invitation, force us to lie down and repent in
shame, poverty and sickness ; and to heighten spiritual desertions
with temporal afflictions.
Since this is so, I shall wrap up all in that advice of the pro
phet Amos to Israel, in the fourth chapter, verse 12, " Thus will
I do unto thee, O Israel ; and because I will do this unto thee,
therefore prepare to meet thy God, 0 Israel !" As for any other
application, since deductions from the words are natural and easy,
I shall leave it to your own thoughts : and indeed these truths are
of that nature, that he that really believes them cannot but ap
ply them.

77

SERMON VI.
PART II. • ,
the necessity of immediate repentance.
Revelation ii. 16.
Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and fight against them
with the sword qf my mouth.
As before I enforced the duty of immediate repentance, and
disputed against the deferring of it, by arguments drawn from
the unreasonableness of such a course ; so now, I shall further
proceed against it, from a consideration of the strong, peculiarly
provoking nature of this sin above all others ; though indeed, in
propriety of speech, impenitence cannot be called a sin, but
rather a collection and combination of sins, or a sinful state and
condition. But certain it is, that there is nothing that kindles the divine
wrath to such a flame, as the delayed exercise of the great duty
of repentance. We find not such fierce expressions of vengeance
against any sinner, as the Spirit of God, in Deut. xxix. 20, 21,
discharges against him that obstinately delayed his repentance.
It is said, " that God will not spare him : that the anger of the
Lord, nay, his jealousy, which is the very sting and poison of his
anger, shall smoke against that man ; that all the curses of the
law, shall lie upon him ; that God shall blot out his name from
under heaven : and lastly, that he shall even separate him to evil,
according to all the curses of the covenant."
Now what could have been said so fully, with such a copious
ness of terror? every word almost carrying in it fire and brim
stone ; every period being, as it were, pregnant with death, and
breathing out destruction : and yet we may be sure that every
tittle shall be verified. God rather overdoes his words, than
underspeaks his actions : and his performances are always com
mensurate to his expressions.
But both, we see, light heavy upon the lingering penitent;
whose sin, I conceive, is so eminently and signally provoking to
God upon these reasons ;
1st. Because it is the abuse of a remedy. Since sin entered
into the world, there is nothing but repentance can stand between
the sinner and certain destruction. It is the only asylum and
place of refuge that God has provided for malefactors. If mercy
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78 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. VI.
had not found this expedient, every man had been the deplorable
object of a remorseless, vindictive justice. Now for a sinner to
neglect this, to slight and trample upon the conditions of pardon,
what is it else, but as if a man, that lay gasping under a mortal
wound, should both throw away the balsam, and defy the phy
sician ?
Certainly it cannot but be the highest provocation, to see guilt
kick at mercy ; and presumption take advantage merely from a
redundancy of compassion. He that will fight it out, and not
surrender, only because he has articles of peace offered to him,
deserves to feel the sword of an unmerciful enemy. A delayed
repentance is a downright defiance to mercy. And every moment
a man spends under such a delay, he falls under that character of
Babylon, Jer. li. 9, that God " would have healed him, but yet
he was not healed:" and that for no other cause, than that he
pursues, chooses, and even woos death, and solicits his own de
struction. 2dly. The reason why God is exasperated by our delaying this
duty is, because it clearly shows that a man does not love it, as a
duty, but only intends to use it for an expedient of escape. It
is not because it is pleasing to God, grateful to an offended
majesty, or because he apprehends a worth and excellency in the
thing itself ; for then he would set about it immediately : for love
is quick and active ; and desire hates all delay.
But a man is enamoured with his sin, and resolves to take his
full course in the satisfaction of his lusts, to consult his pleasure,
and to sacrifice the vigour of his years to the gratification of his
appetite, the lusts of the flesh, and the pride of life, and all those
other sinful vanities that are apt to bewitch the heart of man.
This, I say, he resolves; but in regard the rear of such a
course is brought up with a sad and fatal account at the last, all
ending in eternal wrath and damnation ; that he may now escape
this, and will come off clear, he will repent just at the last ; and so,
by that means, as this life has given him the pleasures of sin, re
pentance shall interpose and rescue him from the fruits and effects
of sin.
And is not this a neat design, to live with pleasure, and yet
die with peace ? to provoke God's justice all the time of one's
life, and then fairly to slip from it, by repenting some* minutes
before death ?
But it is not to be wondered at, if God's fury rises at such a
course; for it evidently turns his grace into wantonness, and
makes it drudge and subserve to the design of sin. For he that
resolves only to secure himself by repenting at the last, at the
same time also resolves to continue sinning all the mean while.
Which is nothing else but an endeavour to put a trick upon
God ; to affront him to his face ; and yet to despise him under the
protections of his own mercy.

the necessity of immediate repentance. 79
Though the allowance of repentance be an infinitely gracious
concession, yet we are mistaken if we think that the entire de
sign of it is only the sinner's interest, and not God's glory, as well
as his salvation. God intends repentance to be a means to purify
the heart from that corruption that renders it utterly unserviceable.
Repentance, though it cannot deserve, yet it must qualify the soul
for heaven. And this penitential cleansing, though it merits no
thing, yet it is a necessary condition to fit a man to be a vessel of
honour. In short, repentance is chiefly valued by God, because
he loves the fruits of repentance.
But now, he that declines the present exercise of it, and
throws it back to the future, he evidently shows, that whenso
ever he takes it up, he does it solely for the interest of his own
safety, and not to pay any retribution of honour to God ; and that
he repents, not to cleanse, but to secure, not to sanctify, but to
defend himself.
3dly. A third reason that God's displeasure so implacably burns
against this sin is, because it is evidently a counterplotting of God,
and being wise above the prescribed methods of salvation, to
which God makes the immediate dereliction of sin necessary. But
he that defers his repentance makes this his principle, to five a
sinner and to die a penitent.
But to what purpose does God command repentance, if it must
be in the power of man to choose the time of it, and so to elude
the duty itself, by the circumstance of its performance ? It is to
no end for good to give a law, if a man may interpret the sense,
and so shuffle off the obligation. He that is commanded to repent,
and defers it to the future, declares that he will be obliged by that
command only when he thinks fit, and not before. He also looks
upon it as a refined, subtle piece of policy, to choose such a re
pentance as has a longer consistency with sinful pleasure, and yet
no less efficacy as to the procurement of salvation, than such a one
as is present and immediate.
And now, may we not imagine that such a course is highly
offensive ? in which a poor weak man shall endeavour to vie wis
dom with his Maker, to outwit and outreach an omniscience ?
When he shall thus find a new and a shorter way to heaven,
cutting off those austerities of life as superfluous, which God has
vouched necessary, and so derogating from God's knowledge ;
withal, making those allowances and indulgencies which God has
denied as destructive, and so upbraiding his goodness.
Briefly, a deferred repentance is a contradiction to God's
word, and an impudent affront to all his attributes. He that
hears God's counsel but follows his own, that repents at his
leisure, and so makes his practice overrule his belief; he has
changed his deity, and though he confesses a God, yet he adores
himself. And thus I have shown the grounds upon which the delay of

80 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. vi.
this duty is so highly provoking to God ; which ought to serve
for another invincible argument against it, to all those that value
his love, and tremble at his wrath.
But now to descend from the general nature of this subject to
a consideration of it in particular. The grand instance of it is a
death-bed repentance ; concerning the efficacy of which, since
there are so many disputes, and since the right stating of it is a
matter of so high consequence, we will enter into a more exact
and particular discussion of it ; which I shall endeavour to manage
under these two heads :
I. I shall resolve this great case of conscience, whether a death
bed repentance ever is or can be effectual to salvation.
II. I shall show, that supposing it may prove effectual, yet for
any one to design it, and to build upon it beforehand, is highly
dangerous, and therefore absolutely irrational.
And when I shall have despatched these two things, I suppose
there can be nothing considerable in this subject that will be left
unspoken to.
I. And for the first of these, whether or no a death-bed repent
ance may be effectual.
There are some who absolutely deny it, and explode it as the
very bane of piety, and utterly destructive of a holy life ; and
therefore by no means can be brought to open the doors of heaven
to such penitents. The reasons why such a repentance cannot be
effectual are these :
1. Because a good life is all along the gospel required by
Christ, as indispensably necessary to salvation ; but a death-bed
repentance cannot be productive of this, and therefore it cannot
save. The first is evident from sundry places of scripture, as in
Matt. vii. 21, " Not every one that says, Lord, Lord, but he that
does the will of my Father shall be blessed ;" and John xiv. 21,
" If ye love me, keep my commandments ;" and Phil. ii. 12,
" Work out your salvation with fear and trembling ;" with several
tither places ; which proclaim aloud, that there can be no admis
sion into glory without the obedience of a holy life.
And the assumption that a death-bed repentance can produce
no such thing, seems no less evident. For is it possible for a man
to lead a new life when he is even ceasing to live ? Can he work
out his salvation when the fatal night of death is seizing upon him,
and he cannot work ?
Now since this is the condition upon which salvation depends,
and since this condition cannot be performed upon a man's death
bed, it follows that all repentance that is acted there must be
utterly ineffectual, as to all purposes of salvation. And thus much
for the first argument.
2. The second is this, which though it may be brought under
the former, yet, for the more perspicuity, I shall propose it dis
tinctly and by itself. You may take it thus :

THE NECESSITY OF IMMEDIATE REPENTANCE. 81'
The only thing within the power of a dying penitent, is a sin
cere purpose of a good life, and a resolution to amend ; but this-
is not sufficient to save, and consequently, being the utmost that he
can do, it follows that he can do nothing effectual to salva
tion. For the clearing of this we must observe, that whatsoever
is only purposed is for that very reason as yet not done, but to
be done hereafter, and then the argument proceeds in this man
ner : Either the leading of a new life, here purposed by the
death-bed penitent, is necessary actually to be done, or it is not
necessary. If it be not necessary to be done, then neither is
there any reason why it should be necessary to be purposed :
inasmuch as action is both the cause, the end, and also the
measure of purpose : but if it be necessary to be done, then it
follows that barely to purpose it cannot be sufficient.
And thus, from these arguments, they infer and conclude the
absolute nullity of a death-bed repentance.
But, for my part, I cannot be yet convinced that there is an
absolute necessity to reprobate all death-bed penitents, and to
exclude them from all possibility of being saved. It is an asser
tion harsh and inhuman, and at the very first sight seems to carry
in it a contrariety to the merciful and tender spirit of the
gospel ; and therefore ought not to be admitted, but upon most
clear and unavoidable reasons, and such as yet I see none to
enforce it.
For the first general exception ; that it naturally undermines
the necessity of a good life, and takes away all strictness and
holiness of conversation, and so turns the gospel into a doctrine
of licentiousness ; making it to warrant and patronize a continu--
ance in sin, from the assurance it gives to men, that upon such a
repentance they shall be saved at the very last.
To this I answer, first, by concession ; that if we state all a
man's actions in things spiritual, upon a perfect entire freedom
of will, by which it is in his power to repent when he will, after
he has persisted in his sin as long as he pleased ; so that- he is so
perfect a master of his choice, as to be able to determine it to
sin, or to the practice of holiness, at any time whatsoever : I say,
upon this principle I confess, that it does in a great measure untie
and unravel all obligations to a holy life. And supposing that a
man were sure of the time of his life, and that it should not, by any
unexpected accident, be snapped off" suddenly, the doctrine of
the efficacy of a death-bed, or indeed of any future repentance,
would in its nature tend to encourage such a man to a presump
tuous perseverance in sin. But then, considering that (as I have
evinced already) no man has his life leased to him for any set
time, nor secured from casual fatal accidents, but that he may
lose it unawares : even this principle itself, of a free entire power
in man to repent when he will, cannot, upon a rational account,
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82 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. VI.
warrant any man either in the delay of a pious, or in the pursuit of
a virtuous life.
But then I add ; that repentance is not to be stated upon the
power of man's will, but upon the special grace and power of
God, by which it is wrought upon the heart, whereby the will is
advanced to exert those acts of repentance which of itself it
is utterly unable to do. Now, upon this principle I affirm, that to
hold that a death-bed repentance may be effectual, neither cuts off
the necessity of a good life, nor indeed encourages any one to defer
his repentance till that time.
For, as I shall venture to tell any man, that if in the very
last period, the last expiring instant of his life, he shall sincerely
repent him of all his past sins, he shall assuredly find mercy ; so
I shall tell him also, that it is entirely in the pleasure and hand
of God, whether he shall be able to repent or no ; and that he
has no certainty in the world that God will vouchsafe him such
a measure of grace at that hour ; but much, on the contrary, to
make him suspect and doubt that he may deny it him, and revenge
the provocations of a wicked life with impenitence and obduration
at the time of death.
And thus I think that the exception against the efficacy of a
death-bed repentance is clearly removed, by stating the' exercise
of it upon this principle. For though I say, that a man shall be
saved whensoever he repents, yet I deny also, that a man can
repent whensoever he pleases.
Having thus made our way through this general objection, we
are now to look back upon those two arguments that were brought
against this doctrine.
The first was ; That no repentance can be saving but such a one
as produces a holy life, and is attended with it ; but how can a
man upon his death-bed, begin a holy life, when he is even ceasing
to live ?
To this I answer, that the space between the first act of re
pentance, by which the soul is turned from sin to God, and
between a man's death, be it never so short, even to but one
minute, it is reckoned in the accounts of the gospel for a holy
life ; that is, any time that a sanctified person lives, is a holy life.
Now that this is so I thus evince ; for either this is sufficient, or
there is required some determinate space of time, under the
compass of which no man can be said to have lived holily : if
this be asserted, let that fixed determinate compass of time be
assigned. Either it must be the major part of a man's life, or a just half
of it, or some set number of years or days.
If the first ; then he that repents and is converted in the
fifteenth year of his age, and dies in the thirtieth, cannot be said
to have lived a holy life, and therefore cannot be saved, inasmuch

THE necessity of immediate repentance. 83
as the major part of his life does not come under the accounts of
repentance. In like manner, he that is converted in the twentieth
year of his age, and dies before he reaches his fortieth, must
come under the same doom, as not being able to bring the just
half of his life under this reckoning.
But this is evidently false and absurd ; we must therefore seek
for this stinted time in some set number of years or days ; and
here let any one show me whether it be twelve, ten, six, or four,
or one year : or, to descend to days, whether it be a hundred,
sixty, thirty, ten, or seven days, that a man must have completely
spent in the practice of holy duties, before he can be said to have
lived a holy life ; but I believe it would puzzle any one to make
such an assignation, or to find warrant for it, either in scripture or
reason. Wherefore we must reckon that time indeterminately which a
man spends in this world after he has sincerely repented, be it long'
or be it short, for a holy life ; and consequently I see not why, in
those few days, hours, nay minutes that a sincere death-bed peni
tent lives, he may not be as truly said to live holily, as he that
dates his holy living from twenty years' continuance ; and why
the widow's two mites were not as true, though not as great an
offering, as his that consisted perhaps of a hundred or two
hundred shekels.
To the second argument : That the death-bed penitent can only
resolve upon leading a holy life ; and that if the actual leading of
such a life be necessary, then barely to resolve it cannot be suffi
cient; as, on the contrary, if to effect it be not necessary, then
neither can it be necessary to resolve it.
To this I answer, by an absolute denial of that assertion, that
the death-bed penitent can only resolve upon living a holy life.
And make out the reason of this denial, I shall here first lay down
what is properly a holy life. In short, it is the doing of all those
actions that a man is obliged to do in the condition in which he
is ; to which I add, that a man is obliged to do no more than he
is capable of doing in such a condition.
Now a person upon his death-bed is only capable of doing
such duties as are wholly transacted in the mind and in the will ;
as loving of God, hating of sin, sorrowing for it, forgiving ene
mies, and the like ; and these he is not only able to resolve, but
also to perform.
But to go to church, to fast and pray, kneeling, with other such
actions of duty, these are naturally not within his power in that
state of weakness, and therefore he is not obliged to them. Yet
however, though he cannot perform these, he must not therefore
be said not to live holily ; forasmuch as he does perform other holy
duties, which his condition is capable of doing, and in the doing of
which a holy life equally consists.
I answer therefore to the second part of the argument, that a

84 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. VI.
holy life is both necessary to be resolved on, and also to be per
formed, but both still in the same manner.
That is, a penitent, upon his repentance, is to resolve to live
holily for that whole course of time that he is to spend in the
world, and this resolution he is faithfully to perform. But he is
not to resolve upon living a holy life for such or such a determinate
number of years, inasmuch as it is not in his power to dispose of
the time of his life so long.
But both resolution and performance as to this particular, is to
respect a man's whole life for the future ; whether that life fall out
to be long or short. And if it chance, by God's providence, to
last but one hour, yet still it is his whole life from that time,
as much as if it were spun out to many years. From which it
follows, that a death-bed penitent may both resolve and perform
as much as is required to complete the nature of an effectual re
pentance. Having thus answered the arguments brought to disprove* the
efficacy of a death-bed repentance, it will not be amiss to con
sider what kind of persons they are that are the authors of such a
grim assertion.
Are they of such an unstained unblameable life ? such an
angelical piety and perfection ? Certainly it were but reason to
expect that those that throw such great stones, that give such
remorseless stabs to poor dying sinners, should be able to enter
heaven themselves, though it were through the eye of a needle ;
and should be of such a sublime sanctity as to supererogate at
the least, and not to need mercy themselves, who so severely deny
it to others.
But I am afraid that upon inquiry it will appear that they are
nothing less. I should not willingly libel or defame any, especially
from the pulpit ; but from the best information I can give myself,
either by reading, observation, or report, those that make ithe way
to heaven so narrow, walk in the broad themselves ;¦ take a scope
and liberty in their lives, and content themselves to be only strict
in their doctrine, denying to others a possibility to repent effectually
on their death-bed, while they live in that manner themselves that
it seems to be for their interest to hold even a possibility of
repenting after death. In short they are usually such as pre
scribe rules' and direction for other men to follow ; such as, after
the practices of uncleanness, tell others that they must become
vestals ; such as are famous for covetousness, and for preaching
against it.
These are those inexorable spiritual Cato's, those parsimonious
dispensers of mercy ; perhaps out of a mistaken fear, upon the
knowledge of their own wickedness, lest there should not be
mercy enough for themselves.
Thus the late casuists of the church of Rome, what great
things do they speak of man's power to merit, to fulfil and over-

THE NECESSITY OF IMMEDIATE REPENTANCE. 85
do the law, to a higher uncommanded strain of perfection ; and
yet what puddles, what sinks of impurity are their books of
casuistical divinity ; what horrid loose maxims have they, that
not only undermine Christianity, but even extinguish and cut
the bands of all morality! Which licentious doctrines have
already kindled such a flame in that church, as, for ought I know,
may burn to its confusion.
But to return to our subject : we shall still find, that such as
are most merciless to dying sinners, in stopping up the passages of
repentance and salvation against them, do yet relax this rigour, and
walk by another rule themselves : unless perhaps it may properly
bfe said, that they walk by no rule at all.
And experience has shown, that those spiritual guides who are
the most austere in their own lives, the greatest and most rigid
exactors of duty from themselves, and of the most improved
acquaintance and converse with God : yet when such come to
dealt, with dying sinners, they handle their wounds more gently,
treat them with more relentings and compassion, open the trea
sures of pardoning mercy to them more freely, and are glad to see
any glimmerings of sincerity and contrition, that may warrant
them to send the .repenting sinner out of the world with a full
and a free absolution.
And the reason of this is, because such, by a continual strict
living up to the precepts of Christ, come at length to partake of
the spirit and temper of Christ ; who of all men that ever lived,
or shall live in the world, was the freest even from the least stain
of sin, and yet was the most boundless and enlarged in his com
passion to sinners. And certainly should he now live and con
verse with us, he that raised sinners from their graves,, would not
now condemn them upon their death-beds.
And thus, I think, that I have not only answered, but also
cleared off all objections against this doctrine, so that it may
henceforward pass for a gospel truth; which that I may yet
further confirm, I shall produce positive arguments to prove and
assert it.
1. The first shall betaken from this consideration; that such a
repentance commenced at the last hour of a man's life, has de
facto proved effectual to salvation; and therefore there is no re
pugnancy in the nature of the thing itself, but that it may do so
again. The consequence is clear ; for that which is impossible
in itself, can never be verified-so much as in any one single in
stance ; and that if it were impossible for any repentance beginning
at the latter end of a man's life, that is; just before his death, to
prove saving, no one man whatsoever so repenting could be saved.
But the falsity of this evidently appears from that eminent
and known instance of the thief upon the cross ; whose repent
ance began no sooner than his crucifixion, and yet it ended with
the rewards of paradise. And who knows, but that God in-
H

86 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. VI.
tended this signal instance to remain as a perpetual remedy
against despair, to sinners repenting in any part of their lives?
And there are some doctrines, that God does not think fit to set
down and express in open terms, lest the corruption of our nature
might abuse them to presumption ; but rather to hint them to us
in an example, and to represent them in the person of another :
leaving us by rational discourse, to apply the same to ourselves
when we are in the like condition.
As for instance : should God have said in express terms, that
though a man murders his neighbour, and commits adultery with
his wife, yet, if he repents, such sins should not hinder his salva
tion : such a declaration as this, given antecedently to those vil-
lanous actions, would have been apt to have encouraged the
wicked hearts of men much more boldly to have ventured upon
the commission of them. But now should any one chance to
be plunged into such enormous sins as these, that he might not
here, subsequently to the act, which cannot be recalled, utterly
cast off all thoughts of mercy, and consequently of returning to
God, for the obtaining of mercy, God has discovered so much
compassion in the pardon of David, guilty of the same sins,
upon his sincere repentance, as to keep such a one from despair,
and to warrant him his pardon, if, upon the same sins he acts the
same repentance.
The same very possibly might be the design of the Spirit here,
not to make any such declaration of pardon openly and expressly
to death-bed penitents, lest by accident it might open a door of
license to sin : but rather to preach it more tacitly to our reasons,
in the example of the thief upon the cross ; that in case a sinner
be overtaken and brought upon his death-bed, he might not yet
despair, seeing one before him obtaining pardon in the same con
dition. 2. The second argument is taken from the truth and certainty
of that saying, owned and attested by God himself, in 2 Cor.
viii. 12, that if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted
according to that a man hath, and not according to that a
man hath not." That is, it is accepted instead of the deed, when
the deed, through some outward impediment, not within the power
of man to remove or remedy, becomes impracticable.
Now, when a penitent upon his death-bed has wrought his re
pentance to the highest resolutions and most sincere purposes of
future obedience, if God immediately put a period to his life, is
it any fault of his if he is taken off from so full an execution of
those purposes as he intended ? Certainly God, who can pierce
into his soul, and view the sincerity of those resolutions, seeing that,
in case he should live many years, they would be all performed,
and actually drawn forth into so many years' obedience, he can
not but rate those intentions according to the utmost effect and
issue that they would have had under such opportunities.

THE necessity of immediate repentance. 87
And as for the time, so also for the quality of the duty : where
God has visited a man with such bodily weakness, that he cannot
move or stir from his bed, do we not think that God accepts his
desire to attend the church, to kneel in prayer, with other acts of
devotion to which the body must concur, as truly and really, as if
he had strength of body actually to perform all these ? Truly, if
we deny that he does, we have strange thoughts of the equity and
goodness of his nature ; and degrade his mercy to a pitch below
the mercies of an earthly father, and the dispensations of a prudent
governor. Indeed, when God is said in such a case to accept of the will,
and to dispense with the deed, it is only a further explication of
that known, unalterable rule of justice, that God cannot command
or require the performance of a thing impossible. But should he
exact the deed, when the weakness of a man's condition utterly
disables him to perform it ; should he command a bedrid person to
stand or kneel, or require ten years' practice of holiness from him
that is to live but an hour, what could this be but to rank his com
mands amongst those unreasonable, tyrannical injunctions that will
and require impossibilities ?
3. The third argument why a death-bed repentance may prove
effectual is, because repentance saves not, as it is a work, or such
a number of works ; but as it is the effect of a renewed nature
and a sanctified heart, from which it flows. But now the renova
tion of our nature being the sole immediate work of God's Spirit,
it may be wrought, if it so please him, in the last moment of our
lives, as well as in twenty years : for, being a new creation, and
the production of a quality in the soui that was not there before,
there is nothing hinders, but that by an infinite power it may be
transacted in an instant.
Upon which I argue thus : If God can sanctify and renew a
man's nature in the last instant of his life, then a person thus
sanctified is either in a state of salvation, or he is not : if not,
then a man truly sanctified may be in a damnable condition ;
which is false and absurd : but if he is, then, inasmuch as a death
bed penitent may be thus sanctified and renewed, he may be also
in a state of salvation, which is inseparably annexed to a true
sanctification. But now, on the other hand, if we say that a man cannot be a
true penitent, and in a state of salvation, unless he has spent such
a considerable number of years or months in the continual exer
cise of holy duties ; what is this, but to ascribe his salvation to
such a measure of works ? This is evident : for a death-bed
penitent may have all other qualifications ; as a sanctified heart,
a sincere resolution, and a direction of it to the glory of God ; so
that there is nothing wanting but such a number of holy actions.
Now if, notwithstanding the former qualities, salvation must be
yet denied to such a penitent, is it not most clear, that salvation

88 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. vi.
is stated upon the apus operatum of such a parcel of holy per
formances ? So that it is not the sincerity, but the multitude ; not
the kind, but the number of our actions, that must save us.
Which assertion if we admit, and improve into its due conse
quences, I cannot see but it must needs bring us back to our
beads. 4. A fourth argument is this : If to repent sincerely be a thing
at the last moment of our lives impossible to be done, then, for
that instant, impenitence is not a sin. For it cannot be a sin not
to do that which in its nature cannot be done. The reason is, be
cause where there is no obligation, there can be no sin, inasmuch
as sin is either the transgression or omission of something that we
stand obliged to do : but I have shown before, that no man can be
obliged to impossibilities. It follows therefore from hence, that not
to repent upon one's death-bed is no sin, because, according to the
opinion hitherto maintained, to repent there is impossible. Which
argument is of so much quickness and force, that were there no
other, this alone were enough, both to establish ours, and to over
throw the contrary assertion.
5. The fifth argument that I shall produce is this ; That to
deny that a death-bed repentance can be effectual to salvation, is
a clear restraint and limitation of the compass and prerogative of
God's mercy.
For since it is a thing that neither involves any contradiction in
itself, nor yet to any one of God's attributes, it is both an impu
dent and an insolent thing for any man to deny the possibility of
it. For shall we prescribe to omnipotence, or set bounds to an in
finite mercy, and say, that this and this it can do ; but this it can
not ? What, if God, " willing to show the riches of his mercy,"
calls and accepts of some at the very last hour of the day, and
rewards them equally with those that came in at the first : have we
any thing to reply at such a proceeding, or to carp at his justice,
or to murmur at our brother's felicity ? God expressly says, that
his thoughts are not as our thoughts ; nor his mercies as our
mercies. And indeed, sad and lamentable were the condition of
most sinners, if they were. The number of those that should be
saved would be much less, and the volume of the book of life
contracted to a very small epitome. I should think it therefore
much more agreeable to a pious sobriety, to acquiesce in the
method of God's dealing ; and, according to rule of the civil law,
rather to amplify than to limit acts of favour.
If God brings a sinner to himself at the last, and so makes his
death-bed a portal and entrance to heaven ; if he accepts of the
purposes, and crowns the short endeavours of a late repentance
with life and glory ; I, for my part, have nothing to do here, but
to congratulate the person that obtains, and to adore the mercy
that gives it.
6. The sixth and last argument for the confirmation of the

THE NECESSITY OF IMMEDIATE REPENTANCE. 89
same truth is this : That if a death-bed repentance cannot possibly
be effectual to salvation, then a sinner upon his death-bed, having
not repented before, may lawfully, and without sin, despair. The
reason is clear ; for where the proper object of hope ceases, which
is possibility of pardon, there despair must lawfully succeed ! for
despair is then only a sin when there is ground of hope, of which
here there is none. In short, despair cannot be sinful where it is
rational ; but it is most rational to despair of salvation, when the
only means of attaining it, which is repentance, becomes im
possible. But now, I desire any one to show me any thing in the gospel,
that admits of despair in the time of this life ; nay, that does not
proscribe and condemn it as utterly sinful ; it is proper only to the
state of the damned, whose condition God has declared to be
remediless. But God has not signified that a sinner, in any part
of, his life whatsoever, is out of all possibility of mercy, and salva
tion. Indeed, as a man dies, so he continues for ever ; but while
he lives, his condition is alterable.
And therefore that assertion that must engage a man both cer
tainly and lawfully to despair, while he is on this side death, is
surely a branch of a new, unheard-of gospel and divinity.
And thus I have endeavoured to demonstrate, that it is not im
possible for a man effectually to repent upon his death-bed.
Which doctrine, if it be true, truth, as such, cannot be hurtful,
however by accident and abuse it may.
But I shall now proceed, from these arguments, to such consi
derations as will be more strong to keep off the encroaches of
presumption, than these can be to invite them. And so I am
come to
II. The second general head proposed for the management of
this subject, viz. that supposing that a death-bed repentance may, in
the issue, prove effectual, yet for any one to design and build upon
it beforehand, is highly dangerous, and therefore absolutely irra
tional. The truth of which will be made to appear from these
considerations. 1. The first shall be taken from the exceeding unfitness of a
man at this time, above all others, to exercise this duty. Repen
tance is a work that will take up the whole soul ; that will distend
every faculty, and fill every part and power of it, even when it is
in its most vigorous, fresh, and active condition.
It is transacted by the sublimest and most refined operation of
the soul, which is reflection. The soul must retreat into itself,
view its accounts, and summon the records of memory, to give in
a faithful relation of all a man's 'past sins, of all the passages and
remarks ofhis former life. And, having done this, the mind
must dwell upon a sad and severe consideration of the nature,
degrees, and aggravating circumstances of each sin, till thought
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improves into affection, and opens the penitential sluices, and fills
the heart with sorrow, mourning, and weeping for sin ; which sor
row for sin rising higher and higher, till at length it ends in detes
tation of it, and resolutions against it, it becomes the first degree
of a true repentance. But is a man fit to encounter and run
through all these difficulties amidst those many impediments, both
natural and civil, that clog and hang about him in his death-bed
condition ?
And first, for natural hindrances ; his memory will be weak and
treacherous, his judgment infirm, and his apprehension slow and
da.rk. And then, perhaps, all these disabilities may be increased
by the accession of bodily distempers : either lethargies may dis
pirit and benumb him, or some acute painful disease divert and
enrage him. So that the whole man is in a tumult and disorder :
within is weakness, without is pain ; his intellectuals forsake him ;
his fever scorches him ; life is troublesome, and yet death terrible.
In short, the man is very unfit to use his reason to remember, or
contemplate ; and, being so, how can he be fit to repent ? which
is a work that includes in it all these operations.
But we will suppose the death-bed penitent, by the mercy of
Providence, pretty well freed from these natural impediments, and
that he has a good proportion of memory, a good reserve of judg
ment, with a readiness to apprehend and discern, and to exercise
the several functions of a rational nature. Yet then there are
civil obstructions, worldly encumbrances, settling the estate, pro
viding for friends, satisfying the craving importunities of relations.
And what can a poor, dying man do, when such a swarm of trou
blesome thoughts are buzzing about him ? How can he recollect
and compose himself to a meditation of his past actions, when he
is busied in settling things for the future ?
Repentance is too great a thing to be wielded in such a hurry.
No sooner, perhaps, is a man setting himself to clear old scores
between God and his soul, but his worldly creditors come bawling
upon him for another kind of satisfaction. No sooner does he set
himself to mourn and weep for his sins, but he is interrupted with
the tears of those that stand weeping for him.
This is his case : and now, can any rational person in the world
judge that a death-bed is the proper scene of repentance ? That
a dying person, racked with pain, choked with phlegm, immersed
and even hurried in encumbrances, before he is dead, can be fit to
manage the spiritual-searching severities of this duty ?
The apostle observes well, in 2 Tim. ii. 4, that " no man that
warreth, entangled himself with the affairs of this life." And in
deed repentance is a kind of spiritual warfare : but certainly none
so unfit for a war as a dying person.
There are some duties, whose performance so properly belongs
to some certain time, that they can neither with ease nor. order be
performed out of it. Repentance is the work of life, and the

THE NECESSITY OF IMMEDIATE REPENTANCE. 91
business of health. And truly, that man has mistimed his work,
and misplaced his occasions, who, when he comes upon his death
bed, has any thing else to do, than the proper business of that
place, which is, to die.
2. The other reason is taken from this consideration, that there
can be no arguments from which either the dying person himself,
or others by him, can certainly conclude that his repentance is
sound and effectual. I speak of ordinary means of knowledge ;
for it is confessed, that God, by an extraordinary manner, may
reveal it to a man : and as he gave him the grace of true repent
ance, so he may give him an assurance and certain knowledge of
the truth of that repentance.
But by the ordinary, usual methods of discourse, the dying
penitent cannot infallibly know it ; the reason is, because he has no
infallible medium to introduce him to such a knowledge.
The mediums by which he must collect it can be no other than
these three : 1. The heartiness of his present resolutions, in relation
to a future amendment ; or, 2. The great expressions of sorrow
that he makes for his past sins ; or, 3. His solicitous concernment
for his estate in the next world. But all these, according to the
cognizance that a death-bed penitent can take of them, are very
fallible. For the first, his resolutions, though God, who quenches not
the smoking flax, will by no means reject these, if sincere ; but
will own the work of his grace, though but kindled in the first
fane intention, as much as if it flamed out in a constant and glo
rious practice : yet in regard the opportunities of performing
those death-bed resolutions are in a great measure cut off, the
death-bed penitent cannot be assured that his resolutions are true.
For a man may think that he heartily resolves against a sin, when
indeed he does not ; his own heart deceiving him. As in a man's
life-time, he often finds, by experience, that when he has taken up
firm purposes and resolves against a sinful course, so that, as he
thinks, he shall never relapse into it again ; yet, notwithstanding
upon the next temptation, all such resolutions disband and vanish,
and the proposal is complied with ; which clearly shows that these
purposes and resolutions were indeed false ahd deceitful.
And now, how does the death-bed penitent know, but the reso
lutions he makes there may be as weak and unsincere, as those
.that heretofore he made, and broke in the time of his health?
Possibly they may be sincere; but he certainly cannot know it,
but God alone, who only can foresee whether, in case his life
should be prolonged, those resolves would be made actuate in
performance. And then for the other two things, his venement expressions
of sorrow, and his concernment about his salvation, are of as un
certain information as the other. For a man may mourn and weep
for. those sins, which he yet afterwards returns to, continues

92 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [SERM. VI.
in and perhaps dies under; which shows that tears and sighs,
and complaints, and all other expressions of sorrow whatso
ever, are utterly fallacious. But in the state a man now is, all
these may very well be presumed to issue from the fear and ter
ror of an approaching damnation. And fear is a kind of con
straint and violence upon the will ; so that all school-men unani
mously hold, that actions proceeding from fear are of a mixed
nature, and not perfectly voluntary.
Now all fear is from a principle of self-love ; and therefore all
religious actions, commenced upon this motive, are spurious and
rejected by God.
This supposed, I affirm, that it is more than ten to one but that
all the pomp of a death-bed repentance, in its highest and most
angelical resolutions, in its most sorrowful, mournful, and affec
tionate discoveries, moves wholly upon this false spring of fear,
suggested upon the dismal apparition of the nearness of death, and
the frightful thoughts of a miserable eternity.
It is highly probable that there is scarce one of a hundred in
this condition, but goes off with the forced sorrows of fear, instead
of repentance ; and so dies rather terrified than sanctified.
And would not any rational man here rather fear and suspect
that his lot may fall amongst the hundred, than promise himself
that he shall be that one exempted person ? Certainly it is ill
venturing the salvation of an immortal soul upon such huge un
likelihoods, such vast disparities.
But to conclude, and wrap up all that I have said for and
against a death-bed repentance ; I aver, that it ismot at all in a
man's power, but only in God's ; and that God, being offended
with a wicked life, is more likely to deny than to give it at the
hour of death ; that a man has all the indispositions of body and
mind imaginable to unfit and disable him for it ; that it is very
seldom true, always suspicious ; and that when true, yet it is not
discernible by any certain, infallible sign to be so ; in short, that
it is most difficult, doubtful, dangerous, and very improbable.
In fine, I have this alone to say for it, (and . to a considering
person I need say no more against it,) that it is only not im
possible. To Almighty God be rendered and ascribed, as is most due,
all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for
evermore. Amen.

93

SERMON VII.

Romans i. 3, 4.
rTfpt tov vtov avtov (tov ysvofiivov ix tfrtfip^MWoj Aa/3tS, xa-ta crapxa* tov
opiB&vtos viov ®eov iv Swdfin xata itvcvfia aytcotfijjufj, it uvaataoeas vsxpuv,
I^tfov Xptdi-oiJ tov Kuptou rtfiZivO)
Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the
seed of David, according to the flesh ; and declared to be the Son
of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the re
surrection from the dead.
In these words we have an adequate and entire description of
the person of Christ. For in the third verse his human nature,
and in the fourth his divine, is fully and exactly represented
to us.
I delight not, I must confess, to insist much upon philological
or philosophical discourses in dispensing the word ; but where
the construction of the text lies so, that we cannot otherwise
reach the full sense of it, but by making our way through doubts
and ambiguities, we must have recourse to such expedients.
The present exercise, therefore, shall consist of these two
parts. I. An explication of the words.
II. An accommodation of them to the present occasion.
I. For the first of these we must know, that the scheme of the
Greek carries a very different face from our translation, which
difference renders the sense of the words very disputable.
The explication of which I shall comprise in the resolution of
these four inquiries.
1. Whether the translation rightly renders it, that Christ was
" declared to be the Son of God," since the original admits of
i a different signification.
2. What is imported by this term, " with power."
3. What is intended by the following words, " according to the
spirit of holiness."
4. And lastly, how those words, " by the resurrection from the
dead," are to be understood.
In all which (as the resolution will manifest the reason of the
doubt) I shall be as brief as I can ; for if I should give myself
scope to pursue each particular through all the difficulties that

94 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. VII.
might attend it, it would fill a much larger discourse than the
measure of the present exercise would allow. After which ex
plication I shall show that the resurrection of Christ is the
greatest and the principal argument to prove the divinity of his
person. I. And for the first of these : that which we render " declared,"
is in the Greek ipiaeivtos, which may signify decreed or determined ;
and accordingly the vulgar Latin reads it prcedestinatus, and some
other destinatus est. But with what propriety, or indeed with
what tolerable sense, Christ could be said to be decreed to be the
Son of God, which he was from eternity ; and especially to be
decreed to be so by the resurrection from the dead, a thing that
had happened very lately, is hard to understand, and much harder
to make out. That which is the proper object of decree or desti
nation is something future ; but that which was eternal cannot be
imagined in any period of time to be future.
Those, indeed, who deny the eternal godhead of Christ, and
date his deity entirely, and his sonship principally, from his re
surrection, are great friends to this exposition of the word ; and
well they may be so, for it serves their turn to very great purposes :
for if Christ was constituted eminently the Son of God at and by
his resurrection, it might very properly be said of him, that he was
decreed so to be antecedently to his resurrection ; but how this can
consist with the supposition of his eternal godhead, I must profess
I cannot apprehend.
Aquinas, indeed, retains this interpretation of the word by
prcedestinatus est ; but it was the gross ignorance of the Greek
tongue, and all critical learning in those days, that betrayed so
great a judgment to the inconvenience of holding that, of which
to give a rational account he took so much pains, and to so little
purpose. Erasmus therefore observes (whose authority in this sort of
learning is inferior to none), that there is another proper significa
tion of the word opt'fu, besides to decree or determine, and that
is, to declare, show forth, or manifest; hence in grammar the indic
ative mood is called opiunxoj ; and in logic the definition of a
thing, which is the declaration of its nature, is called o>o;, or
optdfioj ; all which confirm this interpretation.
And for the agreeableness of it to this place, besides the utter
disagreeableness of any other signification ; that is proved from
hence, as that it carries a most fit and emphatical opposition to'
the words of the former verse, where the apostle expresses
Christ's human nature by ytvo/ihov, " he was made of the seed
of David," which word imports the constitution of something
that did not exist before ; but here in this verse, expressing his
divine nature, since he had from eternity been the Son of God,
it is not said of him that he was made, but only declared or mani
fested to be so.

Christ's resurrection a proof of his divinity. 95
Besides, the apostle here speaks of things past and already done ;
which being so, with what propriety could he insist upon a thing
only as decreed and purposed, after it had actually come to pass ?
especially since it was this only which here made for his purpose.
His design was to prove Christ the Son of God by an argument
taken from a thing known and notable, which was his resurrection ;
and would any rational disputer omit this, that he was actually
risen, and argue only from this, that it was decreed that he should
rise from the dead ? According to the natural way of speaking,
men never use to say that such a thing is decreed, or purposed,
after once that decree, or purpose, has passed into execution. And
so much for explication of the first term.
2. The second inquiry is, what is imported by this term " with
power ;" the Greek is iv Swaps ^ " in power," so that by some it
is rendered in virtute : but it being not unusual for the particle
i" to be put for «vv, it is most properly rendered in our transla
tion " with power ;" which, though some understand of the power
of Christ, as it exerted itself in the miracles which he did ; yet
here it signifies rather the glorious power of his divine nature, by
which he overcame death, and properly opposed to the weakness
of his human nature, by which he suffered it. Correspondent to
which is that" place in 2 Cor. xiii. 4, " He was crucified by weak
ness, but he liveth by the power of God." That is, the weakness
of his humanity made him capable of the death of the cross ; but
the power of his divinity triumphed over that death, and raised
him to eternal Ufe.
3. The third thing to be inquired into is, what is the intent of
the following words, " according to the spirit of holiness." The
expression is a Hebraism, and signifies as much as the Holy
Spirit ; but what is the meaning of that here, is the doubt to be
resolved. Some understand it only as a further explication of the pre
cedent word i» Svvdfin, taking both that and this for the miracu
lous works done by the Spirit of God to confirm the gospel : for
still we shall find that the miracles of Christ and his apostles were
ascribed to the Spirit of God ; which exposition cannot stand, for
these reasons :
(1.) Because it ought then to have been joined with the pre
cedent words by conjunction, *<« *» Swdpci., xai xata rtvii/ta.
(2.) Because in right construction it should have been nvsipatt,
or $ia avsvfiatot, " by the Spirit," noting the efficient cause ; not
" according to the Spirit," as it is here ; for xata Ttvsv/ia can
never be brought to have an equivalent signification to 8™ jivsvpatos.
In the next place, therefore, if we observe the connexion be
tween this and the former verse, we shall find that there is a cer
tain antithesis between them; and that as xata adpxa signifies
the human nature of Christ, so *ata Aveipa may most appositely
signify the divine: for it is not unusual in scripture for the

96 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. vii.
divine nature to be rendered by the word spirit; John iv. 24,
" God is a spirit ;" and 1 Tim. iii. 16, it is said, in respect of
Christ, that " God was manifested in the flesh, but justified in the
Spirit ;" that is, he was proved to have a divine nature, as well
as a human. And now here, because the apostle had expressed
the humanity of Christ, not by *<"¦' avOpunlvrir yieiv, or xat'
uvepurtop, but xata adpxa, namely, the better to set forth the
frailty and gross substance of the human nature ; by way of oppo
sition, he renders his divinity by *ata rtvdfia, a word properly
corresponding to *atd edpxa, and withal importing the vigor
ous and refined substance of this nature. And whereas he annexes
this qualification of holiness, and calls it " the spirit of holiness,"
it is because he considers not the divine nature of Christ, abso
lutely in itself, but according to the relation it had to, and the
great effect that it exercised upon his other nature. For it was
his divinity which sanctified, consecrated, and hypostatically
deified his humanity ; and in that respect it is here treated of by
the apostle.
4. I come now to the explication of that fourth and last expres
sion, " by the resurrection from the dead," which is exceeding
different from the original, according to the first and literal ap
pearance of the sentence. For the words " Jesus Christ our Lord,"
which in the translation are placed in the beginning of the third
verse, in the Greek are the last words of the fourth ; which has
occasioned great diversity in the construction. The words in the
original are these, it avastdotus vtxpuv 'irjaov ~x.pi.atov toi Kupt'ou tjpuv.
So that what we render " by the resurrection from the dead," is
word for word to be rendered, " by the resurrection of the dead
of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Whereupon some interpret it not of Christ's personal resurrec
tion ; which, they say, ought to have been ix vtxpw, not simply
rexpw ; but either of the resurrection of those, who in Matthew are
said to have risen from their graves, at the time of Christ's cruci
fixion, or of the general resurrection of all the saints; who are
therefore called the dead of Jesus Christ, to discriminate them from
the wicked and the reprobates, who, though they shall rise again,
yet bear not this relation to Christ.
Accordingly they take the word avdataaic actively for the
action of Christ, by his power raising them from the dead : foras
much as otherwise their being raised from the dead would not
have had so immediate a force to prove Christ to be the Son of God.
But that the words are not so to be rendered, nor consequently
to be understood of the resurrection of any but of Christ him
self, is clear, upon the strength of this reason ; that (as I have
partly observed already) the apostle's design here is to demon
strate to the Romans the divinity of Christ, by some signal pas
sage already done, and so familiarly known by them. But the
general resurrection was as yet future, and the resurrection

Christ's resurrection a proof of his divinity. 97
of those few, it is probable, was not so famed a thing, as to have
been commonly known amongst them : especially since there is
mention of it only in St. Matthew, biit in none else, either of
the apostles or evangelists ; who, being so diligent in representing
all those arguments that seemed to prove the divinity of Christ,
had they apprehended this to have been so clear and immediate
an argument for the proof of it, certainly would not have thus
passed it over in silence.
¦ I conclude therefore, that it is to be understood of the personal
resurrection of Christ from the dead. So that the only thing
that remains for us is, to . solve and make out the construction :
, for which, though several ways may be assigned, yet the most
rational is to refer the words 'itjaoi ~Kpiatoi toi Kupwu JJ^;,, by
apposition to the precedent words in the former verse, ttcpi tov
vloi aitoi ; not making it . to be governed of vsxpw ; so that,
in the Latin translation, Jesus Christ is not to be rendered by the
genitive, but by the ablative case ; it being repeated after the in
tervening words by an hyperbaton ; a figure usual in the writings
of this apostle ; whose expression must be acknowledged to be
none of the easiest or clearest.
Neither is it material that the particle ix is not prefixed to vcx-
pZv, to make it from the dead ; since it is usual amongst the Greeks
to omit prepositions, such as h, it, and d*6 ; as also amongst
the Latins, with whom surrexit terra is all one with surrexit a
terra. But above all this, the preposition here may be so much
the better omitted, since the very word avdataan carries in it the
force of this preposition; forasmuch as it denotes a motion or
recess from a certain place or state.
And thus I have given an explication of the words,, the first
thing proposed for the management qf this subject ; which expli
cation has been, I confess, something large ; but I ,hope, to those
who understand these matters, is not altogether unuseful.
II. I come now to the second general head, which is, the
accommodation of the words to the present occasion ; Emd that shall
be in showing, that Christ's resurrection is the greatest and the
principal argument to prove him the Son of God. Now both the
foundation and sum of the gospel lies within the compass of this
proposition, that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God; from
which one aphorism spring all the other branches of Christianity.
For that which properly discriminates the Christian religion from
the natural, or Judaical, is the holding of Christ's deity, and his
satisfaction naturally consequent upon it : to both which together
are reducible all the parts of the gospel, as appendages to, or
conclusions naturally flowing from them.
But it is not here to be denied, that Christ is capable of being
called the Son of God in several respects ; as that, according to
his human nature, he had no natural father, but was produced in
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the womb of his mother by the immediate power of God ; as
also for his resemblance to God, upon the accounts of his trans
cendent holiness : it being proper to call him the Son of God
who does the works of God (as Christ called the Jews the sons of
the devil, for doing the works of the devil, John iii. 44 ) : " Ye are
of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do :"
all great likeness, in the scripture dialect, founding the denomi
nation of sonship. Christ might be also called the Son of God,
from his having the government of all things put into his hands
upon his ascension. All this must be granted : yet here we are
to consider only the principal and grand cause of his being called
so ; which is from the eternal generation and emanation of his
person from the person of the Father ; that is, we are to consider
him to be the Son of God upon such an account, as may also
infer and prove him to be God himself.
Now this supereminent way of sonship being the foundation
of his deity, as that is the foundation of our religion, ought in
reason to be evinced by some great and evidently conclusive
argument ; and such a one we affirm to have been his resurrec
tion. But you will here naturally reply, How can this be a proper
proof of that ? How can his resurrection, which supposes him
to have been dead, prove him to be such a one as existed from all
eternity, and so could not die ? Is the grave a medium to
demonstrate a person incorruptible ? or death, to enforce that he
is immortal ? I answer, that this argumentation is so far very
right; and that the resurrection, considered only in a bare relation
to the person rising from the dead, proves him only to be a
wonderful man ; but is so far from proving him the eternal Son
of God, that it rather proves the contrary. But then, if we
consider it with relation to the doctrine of that person affirming
himself to be thus the Son of God, and as the seal set to the
truth of that doctrine by an omnipotent hand and an unfailing
veracity ; why, thus it is an infallible argument to prove the real
being of all those things that were asserted by that person.
Christ's resurrection therefore proved him to be the eternal Son of
God consequentially ; that is, as it was an irrefragable con
firmation of the truth of that doctrine which had declared him
to be so.
It is much disputed, whether Christ's resurrection is to be re
ferred to his own power raising himself from the dead, or only
to the power of the Father. Those who deny his eternal divi
nity allow only this latter, stiffly opposing the former. To give
countenance to this their opposition, they seem to make challenge
to any one to produce but one place of scripture, where Christ is
said to have raised himself from the dead, and they will yield the
cause. To which I answer ; though this is no where affirmed in
these very terms, representing it in prceterito, as done ; yet if

Christ's resurrection a proof of his divinity. 99
Christ spoke the same thing in words importing the future, the re
sult is undoubtedly the same. And for this, I desire to know what
they will answer to that place, John ii. 19, where Christ, speaking
of his body, says, " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will
raise it up ?" Does not Christ personally appropriate the action to
himself and to his own power ? Wherefore that exception is a
vapour and a cavil, unbecoming a rational opponent.
But I add, that as to the proof of the divinity of Christ's per
son, it is not material whether his resurrection be stated upon his
own power, or the power of his Father ; for both equally prove
the same thing, though in a different manner.
If Christ raised himself, it directly proves that he was God,
and so had a divine nature, besides his human : for if he raised
that, being dead, it must needs follow, that he did it by virtue of
a power inherent in another nature, which was some divine spirit.
But, on the other hand, if the Father raised him, yet still it
proves him to have been God ; forasmuch as he always avouched
himself to be so ; and the Father would not have exerted an
infinite power to have confirmed a lie, or verified the words of an
impostor. •
Having thus shown how Christ's resurrection could be a pro
per argument to prove his divinity and eternal sonship, I come
now, in the next place, to show that it is the greatest and the
principal of all others.
And for this we may observe, that the arguments for the proof
of the truth of Christ's doctrine, of which the sum is, that he
himself is the Son bf God, are generally reducible to these three :
1. The nature of the things taught by him. 2. The fulfilling of
prophecies in his person. 3. The miracles and wonderful works
which he did in the time of his life.
Now to prove that his resurrection was an argument sur
passing all these, I shall premise this one consideration ; that
whatsoever is brought as an argument to prove a thing demon
stratively, ought to be in itself not only true, but evident and
clear. Forasmuch as to prove a thing is properly to make it
evident, but nothing can make another thing evident which is
not so itself ; nay, more evident than the thing to be proved by
it. This being premised, let us take a brief examination of
each. 1. And first for the nature ofthe things which he taught. If
you take a view of those which relate to practice ; as, that we
are to take no thought for the morrow, to take up our cross daily,
and to renounce all the enjoyments of those things which were
made only to be enjoyed ; not to resist evil, nor to defend our
selves, but being smitten upon one cheek to turn the other ; and
when the oppressor has robbed me of my coat, to gratify him
with my cloak also : which is, in effect, to relinquish the grand
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written in the hearts of all men with the pen of an adamant :
furthermore, that for every petty anger we are responsible to the
degree of murder ; and that for every idle word we are liable to
eternal damnation ; that is, to a perpetuity of torments, not only
unsupportable, but unconceivable ; with several other such articles
of the same nature.
Now I say, what strange, unusual, and grating documents are
these to the nature and universal apprehensions of man's reason !
How does this, as it were, start and fly back at the direful appear
ance of these severities, as much fitter to terrify than to persuade,
to confound than to conquer the affections ; and therefore, if these
have any influence upon man's belief (as undoubtedly they have a
very great one), we may be sure that such aphorisms shall never
find any credit for their own sake, nor can it be expected that
they should.
But then again ; if we cast our eye upon what things Christ
taught relating to belief; as that the divine nature being most
simply and indivisibly one, there are yet three persons in it, every
one of which is truly and properly God. Also, that the same per
son should be God and man ; and that person, in his human nature,
should be born of a virgin ; that he should die, and make satisfac
tion for the sins of the world ; and that there should be a resur
rection of all mankind with the same bodies, though consumed
many thousand years since, and by infinite changes transformed
into other things ; and all this to a state of happiness or misery,
of which there shall be no end.
Now how much stranger are these than the former ! How do
they look more like riddles than instruction ! designed rather to
astonish than to inform the man's understanding.
A great part ofthe world reject them all, as absolute paradoxes,
and contrary to reason, and we ourselves confess them to be above
reason ; so that from our confession it will follow, that they are
not to be believed for themselves.
I conclude therefore, that though these things are in themselves
most true, yea, as true as the most evident proposition in the
mathematics ; yet because they are not at all evident, they are
utterly unable to give evidence to the truth of that doctrine which
does assert them.
2. The second argument of the truth of Christ's doctrine, and
consequently of his divinity, is from the fulfilling of prophecies in
his person. An argument no question very solid, and really con
clusive, but perhaps not so clear and demonstrative as to silence
very great exceptions. For the ways of interpreting prophecies
are so various-, as to be here attended with such allowances,
and there again bound up with such limitations, such distinc
tions between the literal and mystical intention of them, and
such great difficulty to prove when one is' to be pitched upon,
and when the other, that he who shall look into this matter will

101
find, that this argument is not so absolutely full, nor so totally
commands down the difficulty, as to render all additional argu
ments superfluous.
The modern Jews are so expert and versed in this particular,
that there is not a text or prophecy throughout all the Old
Testament, but they will readily give you such an interpretation
of it as shall not at all relate to Jesus Christ. Nay, and there
have not been wanting some such amongst the Christians ; one I
am sure there has been, who has endeavoured to show, that all or
most of those places in the Old Testament, which the Christian
church generally applies to Christ, have had an actual and literal
completion in some other before him, and so belong to him only by
accommodation ; which to a Jew (should you dispute with him,
would upon another beg the question) would signify as much as
nothing. Though when such persons have shown all the tricks they can
upon the scripture, for I must needs call it showing tricks upon
it rather than expounding it: I say, still, there remain some
portions of it which point to Christ with such a pregnant and in
vincible clearness, such as the twenty-second Psalm and the fifty-
third of Isaiah, that they cannot without an apparent force, and a
visible wresting them from their genuine sense, be applied to any
else. And what good design to Christian religion any one could
have in giving them such an interpretation, as makes them in
the first and literal purport of them, not at all to relate to Christ,
surpasses my understanding to give any tolerable account of.
3. The third argument is taken from the wonderful works that
Christ did during his lifetime ; all which were undoubtedly high
proofs of the truth of the doctrine which they were brought to
prove, and consequently of the divinity of Christ's person, and
of his mission. They were the syllogisms of heaven, and the
argumentations of omnipotence.
Yet over these also Christ's resurrection had a vast preeminence,
and that I prove upon the strength of these two considerations.
(1.) That all the miracles Christ did, supposing that his resur
rection had not followed, would not have had sufficient efficacy
to have proved him to be the Messias. But his resurrection
alone, taking it single and by itself, and without any relation to
his precedent miracles, had been a full and undeniable proof of
the truth of his doctrine and the divinity of his person. The
former part of the assertion is clear from that of St. Paul, 1 Cor.
xv. 14, " If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and
your faith is also vain ;" and in the 17th verse, " Ye are yet in
your sins." Now before Christ's death all his miracles were
actually done, and yet, notwithstanding all these, the apostle lays
this supposition, that in case then he had not risen from the
dead, the whole proof of the gospel had fallen to the ground,
and been buried with him in the same grave.
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102 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. vu.
And for the other part of the assertion, that Christ's resurrection
alone, without respect to his miracles, had been a sufficient demon
stration of the truth of his doctrine, that appears upon these two
accounts :
1st. That the thing considered absolutely in itself, according to
the greatness and wonder of it, did transcend and outweigh all
the rest of his works put together.
2dly. That it had a more intimate and near connexion with
his doctrine than any of the rest : and that not only by way of
inference, as a sign proving it, but by way of real effect, as it
enabled him to give being and subsistence to the things which he
had said and promised. He had promised to send the gifts of
the Holy Ghost upon his disciples to fit them to promulge the
gospel ; he had promised also to raise up those that believed in
him to life eternal at the last day ; which are two of the principal
parts and pillars of the doctrine delivered bv him. But for him
to have done this not rising from the dead, but continuing under a
state of death, had been utterly impossible.
(2.) The second consideration upon which I ground the pre
eminence of Christ's resurrection above all the rest of his miracles,
is the general opinion and judgment that the world had of both.
For besides, that upon Christ's doing the most strange and signal
of his miracles, you will find that they did not convince men so
potently, but that while some believed, as many or more went
away with the same unbelief of him that they brought ; so we
shall find moreover, that they were still resolving them into some
other cause short of a divine power ; as, that he " cast out devils by
the prince of the devils," Matt. xii. 24. p\nd they generally
looked upon him as a conjuror, and as one who had commerce
with a more potent spirit or demon, by whose assistance he was
too hard for the rest. But now observe, when they came to that
great and difficult problem of his resurrection, they never
attempted to assign any causes of that besides the power of God,
so as by that means to depress the miraculousness of it ; but
they absolutely deny the matter of fact, and set themselves to
prove that there was no such thing.
And to this day the modern Jews, who hold Christ to have been
an impostor, do yet for all that grant the history of his miracles ;
that he did most of those strange, stupendous works reported of
him ; but still they persist in a denial of his resurrection.
All which shows, that they tacitly confess, that should they
grant this one thing, that Christ was risen from the dead, they
could have no reason to except against his person or doctrine ;
but must needs acknowledge, that being owned in such an im
mediate, undeniable way, by the power of God himself, and that
m the grand and crowning passage of his doctrine, all that he
said was true, and consequently that he himself was the Messias,
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Christ's resurrection a proof of his divinity. 103
But they thought his other miracles carried no such cogent
evidence in them, but that they had so much to except against
their being convinced by them, as to warrant their unbelief.
Which exceptions, I conceive, may be reduced to these two
heads. 1st. The great difficulty of discerning when an action is really
a miracle ; which difficulty lies in this : that since a miracle is
properly such an action as exceeds the force and power of natural
or second causes ; to the discerning of it so to be, it is required,
that a man knows the utmost extent and just measure of the
power of those causes, how far it extends, and where it ends, be
fore he can certainly pronounce that such an action or effect does
exceed it : and consequently that it is a miracle. But now, I defy
the greatest and the most indefatigable searches of nature to give
me in such an account of the activity and force of all natural
causes, as to state the just boundaries and portions of their powed.
I cannot easily believe that any one would be so impudent, as to
pretend to such an achievement.
But admit that some men, by the singular dexterity of their wit,
and their profound experience, were able to do this ; yet how will
vulgar minds, which have neither ability nor opportunity to make
these inquiries, be able to assure themselves, that such an action is
above the force of nature, and therefore to be ascribed to a super
natural power ?
These men, not being able to look beyond the outward bulk and
first appearance of an action, determine miracles, not from the
principle that causes them, but from the wonder that they find
caused by them in themselves : which wonder arises from the un-
usualness of the thing, and their utter ignorance of the reason of
it. As for instance, suppose a man should come amongst a rude,
barbarous sort of people, and affirm to them strange things, as a
message from God ; and, to verify his words, should assure them
that he would make such a piece of iron come to him of its own
accord, and cure any wound immediately, without arry application
made to it ; and accordingly should do so ; that those people, who
know nothing of the force of the loadstone, or the sympathetic
cure of wounds, would from hence conclude that this man did
those things by a divine power, and consequently that his message
was of divine authority, I do no more doubt, than that I am now
speaking. 2dly. But then, in the next place, supposing that an action is
fully known to be a miracle, it is altogether as difficult, if not
more, to know whether it proves the truth of the doctrine of that
person that does it, or not. The reason is, because it is not certain
but that God may suffer miracles to be done by an impostor, for
the trial of men, to see whether or no they will be drawn off from a
received, established truth. That the Jews thought so is certain ;
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vii.

Deuteronomy xiii. : "If there arise amongst you a prophet, or a
dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder ; and the
sign or wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying,
Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let
us serve them ; thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that
prophet, or dreamer of dreams ; for the Lord your God proveth
you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul." And it is added, in the fifth
verse, that " that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put
to death."
Now, though I noways question but that the main principle that
acted the Jewish council in the putting of Christ to death was
carnal policy, and resolution to maintain their own grandeur ; yet
I verily believe, that the more zealous and conscientious of them
(of which sort there were, doubtless, some) commenced their pro
ceedings against him upon the force of this law : for we must
know, that it was the judgment of the Jews, that to worship other
gods, was all one with worshipping the true God in any other way,
besides, or opposite to, the Mosaic institution. But this was their
7tputov 4Cf8o$, the first and chief error that betrayed them to all
the rest.
Now supposing this to have been the sense of this law ; foras
much as they saw that Christ visibly designed an abolition of the
Mosaic rites and economy hereupon, notwithstanding all the signs
and wonders shown by him, they thought they had sufficient war
rant to look upon him as an impostor, and to deal with him ac
cordingly. But moreover, as the forementioned scripture seems to prove
that God may suffer true miracles to be done by him who does
not always avouch a true doctrine ; so the same seems yet more
clear from those miracles done by several : as Vespasian is said
to have cured a blind man by spitting on him, and striking him
with his foot ; and Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, was wont to cure
persons distempered with the spleen, with a touch of his foot ; and
at this day the kings of England and of France cure a certain
disease with a touch of their hand and a piece of money : all
which cures can no more be resolved into the mere power of-those
agents, visibly employed in that action, than the curing of the
lame or the deaf can be naturally effected with a word. And yet
surely we neither believe the kings of England or France, upon
this account, to be persons assisted by God, in all that they do or
say, by an infallible spirit. I conclude, therefore, that it is
not so easy to be assured of the truth of any doctrine upon
the credit of a miracle done by the person who does pro-
mulge it.
For, to represent to you the sum of both exceptions in short ;
he who will assure himself of the truth of any doctrine, upon
the account of any miracle done by the author of it, must first

105
assure himself that it is a miracle ; to be sure of which, he must
understand the utmost power of all natural causes ; which I
have shown is very hard, if not impossible to be compassed.
And then, after that he knows it to be a miracle, before he can
conclude that it proves any doctrine to be true, he must know
that it was done by God with an intent to confirm that doc
trine ; and not for some other end, as to try whether men will
suffer themselves, by such means, to be drawn from the truth ;
which, since it is not to be distinguished by any mark of differ
ence inherent in the actions themselves, but by a knowledge of
the mind of God in them, which knowledge also we cannot have,
without an immediate inspection into his counsels; it follows,
that a certainty in these matters is highly difficult, and not
without a very strong faith attainable. Hence it is, that the
most learned writers of the Romish church, when they come to
speak of the proof of the truth of any doctrine by miracles, speak
exceedingly contemptibly of them : but this perhaps is no wonder,
if they thought all other miracles of the same nature with those
that they do themselves.
But now, neither of those two forementioned exceptions take
place against the resurrection.
For first, though we cannot assign the determinate point
where the power of nature ends, and so cannot possibly know
every miracle ; yet there are some actions that at first appear
ance so vastlv transcend it, that there can be no suspicion that
they proceed from any power but a divine. As for instance, I
cannot exactly tell how far a man may walk in a day, but yet I
can tell that it is impossible for him to walk a thousand miles,
by reason of the apparent disproportion between the natural
strength of man, and such a performance. Now, such a thing
does reason judge the raising of a dead man to life again, in
reference to the force of natural causes ; which, in their utmost
actings, were never observed to do any thing like it : and cer
tainly that is not in their power to do, which from the beginning
of the world was never exemplified, or actually done by them, so
much as in one particular instance.
And for the second : should God suffer a miracle to be done
by an impostor (which I, for my part, think he never does : but
have hitherto disputed only upon a supposition of the Jews) ;
vet, I say, there was no necessity hence to gather, that God did it
to confirm the words of that impostor ; for God may do a
miracle when and where he pleases. So that it follows not that
it must needs relate to the vouching of what the impostor says.
But now, Christ had so often laid the stress of the whole truth of
his gospel upon this, that he would rise from the dead; and
declared to those who sought for a sign, that it was the only sign
that should be given to that generation ; that God could not
have raised Christ from the dead, but that this action must
Vol. IV.— 14

106 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. yil
needs have related to his words, and to have confirmed what
Christ had said and promised, and consequently have joined with
him in the imposture.
In a word ; if this does not satisfy, I affirm, that it is not in the
power of man to invent, or of God to do any greater thing
to persuade the world of the truth of a doctrine. It would even
puzzle omniscience, and nonplus omnipotence itself, to find out a
brighter argument to confound infidelity. And I dare avouch,
that he who believes not upon Christ's resurrection from the
dead, would scarce believe, though he rose from the dead him
self. So that, if after this he continues an infidel, he does, in
effect, give heaven the lie, and bids the Almighty convince him
if he can. He is miracle-proof, and beyond the reach of persua
sion ; and not like to be convinced, till it is too late for him to be
converted. But to sum up all : he who builds the grand concern of his
eternal happiness upon his obedience to the gospel, as the sure
way to it ; and his obedience to the gospel upon a firm belief of
the same ; and, lastly, grounds the said belief upon a belief of
Christ's resurrection, has hereby made his " calling and election
as sure," as things knit together by an absolute decree and an
unchangeable law are uncapable of being ever disjoined or
forced asunder. And therefore, instead of those uncouth, ill-
sounding words used by Luther, upon another occasion, Si
decipior, Deus me decepit, such a one may, with equal reverence
and assurance, conclude, that while he believes the Christian
religion true, because the great author and promulger of it
"died and rose again from the dead, according to the scrip
tures," it will be as impossible for him, so doing, to be deceived,
as it is for the God of infinite truth and goodness to deceive him.
To which God, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus
Christ, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the
everlasting covenant, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due,
all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for
evermore. Amen.

107

SERMON VIII.
increase of knowledge attended with sorrow.
Eccles. i. 18.
In much wisdom there is much grief: and he that increaseth
knowledge increaseth sorrow.
It is a saying usual, and of great reason, that we are to believe
the skilful in their own art and profession. And therefore,
if we would understand the nature, properties, and effects of
knowledge, none can be so fit to inform us, as he who, by the
very verdict of omniscience itself, was of all men in the world
the most knowing.
Nothing, indeed, is more common than for every man almost to
pass a universal censure upon all persons and things ; but none
can despise a thing rationally, but he who knows it thoroughly.
Otherwise, though a man should pass a right judgment upon a
thing, yet he does it only by accident; and not by reason, but
luck : and therefore, though the thing spoken be truth and
wisdom, yet the speaker of it utters it like a fool. None but a
scholar can be a competent judge of knowledge ; and therefore
all the encomiums and endless praises of it that now fly about
the world, must come and be tried, and stand or fall, according
to the verdict of this rule.
First therefore, we shall find those that are loudest in their
commendations, and highest in their admirations of learning, are,
for the most part, such as were never bred to it themselves ;
hence it is, that such, of all others, are the most desirous to breed
their sons scholars : so that if we take a list of the most renowned
philosophers in former ages, and the most eminent divines in the
latter, we shall find that they were, for the most part, of mechanic,
mean, and plebeian parentage.
Upon this score also there came to be so many free-schools and
endowed places for learning ; because those are most apt to send
their children to study, who, being poor and low, are not able to
maintain them in it ; and therefore need the expense and benevo
lence of others, to bring their imprudent designs to maturity. Let
this therefore be fixed upon, as one great reason that the praise of
knowledge is so great in the world, viz. that much the major part
of the world is ignorant. And ignorant men are indeed very fit
to praise and admire, but very unfit to judge.
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stop me with those elogies that the most learned bestow upon
knowledge, still adorning it with such panegyrics, such high
words and expressions, as if rhetoric was invented for nothing
else but to describe and set off her praise. But, in answer to
this, though I might note, that to be learned and to be wise are
things very different ; yet I shall produce another reason of -these
commendations, which, in all probability, is this ; that learned
men would not seem and be judged fools, for spending their time
upon so empty a thing ; and therefore, as those that have been
deceived into a ridiculous sight do yet commend it, that they
may not be thought to have been deceived, but may bring others
into the same cheat with themselves :
So here, should philosophers confess, that all the time they
spent about materia prima, about esse per se, and esse per accidens,
they were laboriously doing nothing; the world would be apt to
hiss, and to explode them ; and others would be so wise as, seeing
the example, to forbear the imitation. But now, when a man
finds himself to be really deceived, the only relief that remains
to him, is to cover the report of it, and to get companions in the
deception. If what has been hitherto said does not satisfy, I can only
take sanctuary in this; that the same was Solomon's judgment:
and I desire to know, whether those philosophers, who so profusely
commend learning, knew more than he, and saw that worth in
knowledge which he did ? As for Aristotle, who for these many
ages has. carried the repute of philosophy from all the rest, he
certainly was not wiser than Solomon ; for he is reported to have
stolen most of his philosophy out of Solomon's writings, and to
have suppressed them from the view of posterity.
I proceed therefore, and take up my assertion upon the warrant
of his judgment, whom God has hitherto vouched the wisest of
men ; and therefore see no reason to alter it, till I am convinced by
a wiser. But before I make any further progress, I must premise this;
that both in what has, and what shall be said by me, I design not
the patronage of ignorance, especially in things spiritual : for, in
this respect, we know, and are assured by the Spirit of God, that
this is the condemnation of the world, that " men love darkness
rather than light :" and that the blind must needs " fall into
the ditch:" and for any man to expect to be saved, or to be
happy, without the knowledge of the revealed will of God, in
things necessary to salvation,- is as great an absurdity, as to expect
to see without eyes ; and therefore in these matters, he that
increases ignorance, increases the means of his damnation ; he
increases the shadow of death, adds darkness to darkness, and
passes by the darkness of ignorance, to the darkness of hell and
damnation. But if any thing is indeed said against knowledge, it is against

INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE ATTENDED WITH SORROW. 109
that only that is so much adored by the world, and falsely called
philosophy ; and yet more significantly surnamed by the apostle
' vain philosophy ;" and that too, with no other intent than to
dash the overweening pride of those that have it, and to divert
the admiration of those that have it not, to some better and more
deserving object.
But as for those parts of knowledge that are either instrumen
tal to our knowledge of the will of God, or conduce to the good
and support of society, in the state that mankind now is, I must
not be thought therefore to speak against them, if from the text I
impartially show those infelicities, those miseries and sorrows, that
through our sin and weakness they are attended with. It is the
effect of sin, that duty is accompanied with sorrow : and that by
such an unfortunate necessity of grief, we cannot attain the joy
and happiness we design to ourselves in the end, unless for a time
we quit it in the use of the means.
Now the design of this portion of scripture is to rectify the
absurd opinions of the world, concerning the great idol of man
kind, knowledge ; and to take down their excessive estimation of
it, by showing that it is the cause, or at least the inseparable
companion of sorrow. And, in prosecution of the words, I shall
demonstrate it to be so in these three respects :
I. In respect of the nature and properties of the thing itself.
II. In respect of the laborious and troublesome acquisition
of it.
IH. In respect of its effects and consequents.
1. First of all then, knowledge is the parent of sorrow from its
very nature, as being the instrument and means by which the
afflicting quality of the object is conveyed to the mind ; for as
nothing delights, so nothing troubles till it is known. The mer
chant is not troubled as soon as his ship is cast away, but as soon
as he hears it is.
The affairs and objects that we converse with have most of them
a fitness to afflict and disturb the mind. And as the colours lie
dormant, and strike not the eye, till the light actuates them into a
visibility, so those afflictive qualities never exert their sting, nor
affect the mind, till knowledge displays them, and slides them into
the apprehension. .
Nihil scire vita jocundissima est. It is the empty vessel that
makes the merry sound. Which is evident from those whose in
tellectuals are ruined with frenzy or madness ; who so merry, so
free from the lash of care ? their understanding is gone, and so is
their trouble. It is the philosopher that is pensive, that looks
downwards in the posture of the mourner. It is the open eye that
weeps. Aristotle affirms, that there was never a greater scholar in the
world, but had in his temper a dash and mixture of melancholy ;
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and if melancholy be the temper Of knowledge, we know that it
is also the complexion of sorrow, the scene of mourning and
affliction. Solomon could not separate his wisdom from vexation of spirit.
We are first taught our knowledge with the rod, and with the
severities of discipline. We get it with some smart, but improve
it with more.
The world is full of objects of sorrow, and knowledge enlarges
our capacities to take them in. None but the wise man can know
himself to be miserable.
I might now, from the nature of knowledge, pass to the proper
ties of it, and show its uncertainty, its poorness, and utter inability
to contribute any thing to the solid enjoyments of life. But be
fore I enter upon this, there may be a question started, whether or
no there be indeed any such thing as true knowledge in the
world ? for their want not reasons that seem to insinuate that there
is none. 1 . As first : because knowledge, if true, is upon that score cer
tain and infallible ; but the certainty of the knowledge cannot be
greater than the certainty of the faculty, or medium, by which it is
acquired ; now all knowledge is conveyed through sense, and sense
is subject to fallacy, to err, and to be imposed upon. For how
often does our eye tell us that the trees and the banks run, and that
the ship or the coach stand still ! How does it abridge the sun to
the compass of a few spans, to a small ignoble circumference! It
follows therefore, that we cannot be assured of the truth of that
knowledge that commences upon the fallible report of sense, indeed
no more than we can be certain that a thing is true, because a
known liar has affirmed it.
2. Knowledge is properly the apprehension of a thing by its
cause ; but the causes of things are not certainly known : this by
most is confessed, but may be proved without confession ; for since
none ever assigned a certain cause of any effect, but that others,
with the same probability, have assigned a clear different cause , it
is most evident, that we do not certainly know the causes of things,
and consequently neither the things themselves.
3. To know a thing is to apprehend it as really it is, but we
apprehend things only as they app|ar ; so that all our knowledge
may properly be defined the apprehension of appearances. But
now it is undeniable, that things oftentimes appear otherwise than
they are ; and when they do appear as indeed they are, yet there
is no certain rule to discern that they do so.
Other arguments might be brought to show, that it is not with
out cause that there is such a set of men as sceptics in the world.
And though I will not say, that these arguments prove that there is
no such thing as knowledge, yet thus much, at least, they seem to
prove, that we cannot be assured that there is any such thing.
But you will reply, that this overthrows the hypothesis of the

INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE ATTENDED WITH SORROW. Ill
text, which supposes and takes it for granted that there is such a
thing as knowledge. I answer, it does not ; for the arguments
proceed against knowledge, strictly and accurately so taken ; but
the text speaks of it in a popular way, of that whioh the world
commonly calls and esteems knowledge.
And that this is but a poor, worthless thing, and of no efficacy
to advance the real concerns of human happiness, might be made
most evident.
For, first, it is certain that knowledge does not either constitute
or alter the condition of things, but only transcribe and re
present the face of nature as it finds it; and therefore is but a low-
ignoble thing, and differs as much from nature itself, as he that
only reports great things from him that does them. If I should
run through the whole series and scale of sciences from top to
bottom, I am sure I could verify this assertion.
For what am I, or any one else the better, whether God foresees
future contingents from the determination and decree of his
will, or from the infinite actuality of his nature, by which his ex
istence is beforehand with all future duration ? What am I
concerned, whether he punishes sin by the necessary egress of
his vindictive justice, or by a freedom of choice ? Of what such
great necessity is it to know, whether Christ intended his death
for all mankind, or only for a select company ? when it is certain
on both sides, that the benefit of his death is offered conditionally
to all those, and only to those, who shall believe ; and that upon
either supposition this proposition shall surely be verified, that
whosoever believes shall be saved.
And to descend to things of an inferior nature. What is it to
me, whether the will has a power to determine itself, or is deter
mined by objects from without ? when it is certain that those here
that hold a different opinion, yet continue in the same course and
way of action.
Is any use of human life served by the knowledge of this,
whether the vegetative, sensitive, and rational soul in men, be
three distinct souls, or only three denominations, from three dis
tinct operations and offices issuing from the same soul. Or am I
any ways advantaged, whether the soul wills, understands, and
performs the rest of its actions, by faculties distinct from itself, or
immediately by its own substance ?
Is it of any moment, whether the soul of man comes into the
world with carnal notions, or whether it comes bare, and receives
all from the after reports of sense ?
What am I benefitted, whether the sun moves about the earth,
or whether the sun is centre of the world, and the earth is indeed
a planet, and wheels about that ? Whether it be one or the
other, I see no change in the course of nature. Day and night
keep the same order ; winter and summer observe the same re
turns ; our fruit ripens as soon under one hypothesis as under the

1 12 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. viii.
other ; and the day begins no sooner nor stays any longer with
Ptolemy than with Copernicus.
Or what am I bettered, whether all motion is performed by
faculties, powers, or inherent qualities ; or in a mechanical way, by
the impulse of one body upon another, the greater overcoming and
moving the less ?
Who in the world finds any change in his affairs, whether there
be little vacuities and empty spaces in the air ; or whether there is
no space but what is filled and taken up with body ?
What am I altered, whether colour be a quality emergent from
the different contemperarure of the elements ; or whether it be only
the reflection of the light upon the different situation of the parts
of the body ?
I could reckon up a hundred more such problems as these,
about an inquiry into which men are so laborious, and in a sup
posed resolution of which they so much boast ; which shows,
that that which passes with the world for knowledge is but a slight
trivia] thing ; and that men's being so eager and industrious in the
quest of it, is like sweeping the house, raising the dust, and keep
ing a great do only to find pins.
II. Pass we now to the second thing ; which is to show how
that knowledge is the cause of sorrow, in respect of the laborious and
troublesome acquisition of it. For is there any labour comparable
to that of the brain ? any toil like a continual digging in the
mines of knowledge ? any pursuit so dubious and difficult as
that of truth ? any attempt so sublime as to give a reason of
things ?
When a man must be led a long trace from the effect up to a
hidden, remote cause, and then back again, take a survey of the
several virtues and active qualities of that cause, in its many and
numerous effects.
Will an ordinary industry be able to break open those rarities
that God and nature has locked up, and set out of the reach of
a vulgar endeavour ? How hard is it to draw a principle into all
its consequences, and to unravel the mysterious fertility but of one
proposition !
A man must be always engaged in difficult speculation, and
endure all the inconveniencies that attend it ; which indeed are
more and greater than attend any other sort of life whatsoever.
The soldier, it is confessed, converses with dangers, and looks
death in the face ; but then he bleeds with honour, he grows
pale gloriously, and dies with the same heat and fervour that
gives life to others. But he does not, like the scholar, kill him
self in cold blood ; sit up and watch when there is no enemy ;
and, like a silly fly, buzz about his own candle till he has con
sumed himself.
Then again ; the husbandman, who has the toil of sowing and

INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE ATTENDED WITH SORROW. 113
reaping, he has his reward in his very labour ; and the same corn
that employs, also fills his hands. He who labours in the field
indeed wearies, but then he also helps and preserves his body.
But study, it is a weariness without exercise, a laborious sitting
still, that racks the inward, and destroys the outward man ; that
sacrifices health to conceit, and clothes the soul with the spoils of
the body ; and, like a stronger blast of lightning, not only melts
the sword, but also consumes the scabbard.
Nature allows men a great freedom, and never gave an appe
tite but to be an instrument of enjoyment ; nor made a desire, but
in order to the pleasure of its satisfaction. But he that will in
crease knowledge, must be content not to enjoy ; and not only to
cut off the extravagancies of luxury, but also to deny the lawful
demands of convenience, to forswear delight, and look upon plea
sure as his mortal enemy.
He must call that study that is indeed confinement ; he must
converse with solitude, walk, eat, and sleep thinking, read volumes,
devour the choicest authors, and like Pharaoh's kine, after he has
_ devoured all, look lean and meagre. He must be willing to be
weak, sickly, and consumptive ; even to forget when he is a hungry,
and to digest nothing but what he reads.
He must read much, and perhaps meet with little ; turn over
much trash for one grain of truth ; study antiquity till he feels the
effects of it ; and like the cock in the fable, seek pearls in a dung
hill, and perhaps rise to it as early. This is,
Esse quod Arcesilas aeru ranosique Solones :
to be always wearing a meditating countenance, to ruminate, and
talk to a man's self, for want of better company : in short, to do
all those things, which in other men are counted madness, but in
a scholar pass for his profession.
We may take a view of all those callings to which learning is
necessary, and we shall find that labour and misery attends them
all. And first for the study of physic : do not many lose their
own health, while they are learning to restore it to others ? do not
many shorten their days, and contract incurable diseases, in the
midst of Galen and Hippocrates ? get consumptions amongst re
ceipts and medicines, and die while they are conversing with
remedies ?
Then for the law : are not many called to the grave, while they
are preparing for a call to the bar ? Do they not grapple with
knots and intricacies, perhaps not so soon dissolved as them
selves ? Do not their bodies wither and decay, and, after a long
study of the law, look like an estate that has passed through a
long suit in law ?
But, above all, let the divine here challenge the greatest share ;
who, if he takes one in ten in the profit, I am sure, may claim
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114 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm^ viii.
nine in ten in the labour. It is one part of his business indeed to
prepare others for death ; but the toil of his function is like to
make the first experiment upon himself.
People are apt to think this an easy work, and that to be a
divine is nothing else but to wear black, to look severely, and to
speak confidently for an hour ; but confidence and propriety is not
all one ; and if we fix but upon this one part of his employment,
as easy as it seems to be,
Expertus multum sudes, multumque, labores.
But the divine's office spreads itself into infinite other occasions
of labour : and, in those that reach the utmost of so great a pro
fession, it requires depth of knowledge, as well as heights of
eloquence. To sit and hear is easy, and to censure what we have heard
much easier. But whatsoever his performance is, it inevitably puts
us upon an act of religion ; if good, it invites us to a profitable
hearing ; if otherwise, it inflicts a short penance, and gives an
opportunity to the virtue of patience.
But, in sum, to demonstrate and set forth the divine's labour, I
shall but add this, that he is the only person to whom the whole
economy of Christianity gives no cessation, nor allows him so
much as the sabbath for a day of rest.
III. And lastly, knowledge increases sorrow, in respect of its
effects and consequents ; in three of which I shall give instance.
1. The first effect of the increase of knowledge, is an increase
of the desire of knowledge. It is the covetousness of the under
standing, the dropsy of the soul, that drinks itself athirst, and
grows hungry with surfeit and satisfaction ; it is the only thing in
which reason itself is irrational.
Now an endless desire does of necessity vex and torment the
person that has it. For misery and vexation is properly nothing
else but an eager appetite not satisfied.
He that is always a getting, is always looking upon himself as
in want. And he that is perpetually desiring to know, is perpetu
ally thinking of himself ignorant ; namely, in respect of those
things that he desires to know.
In fine, happiness is fruition ; but there is no fruition where there
is a constant desire. For enjoyment swallows up desire, and that
which fulfils the expectation also ends it. But while desire is ac-
tiveand vigorous, and the mind still a craving and reaching at
somewhat, it supposes our happiness to be at a distance ; for no
man reaches after what he has already.
The bottomless appetite of knowledge will not be satisfied, and
then we know that sorrow is the certain result and inseparable
companion of dissatisfaction.

INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE ATTENDED WITH SORROW. 115
2. The second unhappy effect of knowledge is, that it rewards
its followers with the miseries of poverty, and clothes them with
rags. Reading of books consumes the body, and buying of them
the estate. ,
The mind of man is a narrow thing, and cannot master several
employments ; it is wholly employed, whether in the pursuit of
riches, or in the quest of learning, and no man grew either rich or
learned merely by the diversion of his spare hours.
He therefore that buries his strength, his thoughts, his oppor
tunities in a book, can he possibly be rich, unless Providence
itself should trade for him, the exchange follow him, and the
Indies travel to him ? But certainly these would be vain expec
tations. The east now-a-days affords no such wise men, that
will take a long journey only to make presents, and to give of
their gold and their treasures.
Hence it is that the learned man and the philosopher omnia sua
secum portat ; he numbers no flocks, tells no acres of ground,
has no variety or change of raiment, and is not solicitous which,
but what he shall put on : he never aspires to any purchase,
unless perhaps of some dead man's study; at the same time
buying the relics of another's death, and the instruments of his
own. Hereupon he is put to the worst and the most discouraging of
all miseries, which is, to be beholden and obliged. For what
was Aristotle without his Alexander ? Virgil without Augustus ?
Horace without Maecenas ? and other poets, like their own
wreaths of ivy, they were always creeping about something for a
support. A scholar without a patron is insignificant: he must
have something to lean upon : he is like an unhappy cause,
always depending.
We read of the prophet's accommodation and furniture in the
house of the Shunamite, 2 Kings iv. 10, " A little chamber, a
table, a stool, and a candlestick ;" and perhaps, if he had lived
there for any considerable time he would have been reckoned not
so much one of the inhabitants, as part of the furniture of the
house. These are the happy effects of study and knowledge ; and as
most kinds of study hinder men from getting estates, so there
are some that cannot be undertaken without an estate, nor long
pursued without the loss of it. As for instance, he that follows
chemistry.must have riches to throw away upon the study of it ;
whatever he gets by it, those furnaces must be fed with gold. In
short, I will not say, that the study of knowledge always finds
men poor, but sure it is, that it is seldom or never but it leaves
them so.
3. The third fatal effect of knowledge is, that it makes the
person who has it the butt of envy, the mark of obloquy and
contention. Whoever sees another more knowing than himself,

116 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. VIII.
he presently thinks him a reproach to his understanding ; and
although he himself will not undergo the labour of knowledge, yet
he will not allow another the fame.
Hence come all the jars between learned men, the invectives
and bitter books, the wars of critics, and the controversies of the
schools, all managed with such keenness and virulence, throwing
dirt and disgorging daggers at one another's reputation ; for no
other injury in the world, but because the adverse party is thought
to know more.
As Grotius, in one of his poems, speaking of knowledge, and
the invidiousness of it, not inelegantly expresses it,
Quam nil sit illud quod vocamus his scire,
Quo nos superbi tollimus caput coelo,
Calcamus alios, invicemque calcamur.
To trample, and to be trampled upon, to write, and to be writ
against, is the lot of the learned, the effect of learning, as it lies
under the malign aspect of a constant emulation.
Now one would think that envy, which like fire aspires as well
as consumes, and always soars and strikes high, should not prey
upon a poor threadbare philosopher. Yet if a man ventures but
out of the old road, and attempts to enlarge the borders of philo
sophy, by the introduction of some new method, or the discovery
of some unheard-of invention, gome new phenomena in nature,
what a tragical outcry is presently raised against him, all the world
pecking at him, and about his ears !
How are Gallileo and Copernicus persecuted, and Descartes
worried by almost every pen ! Dreadful are the censures thun
dered out against them, both from the press and the pulpit, espe
cially by those puny, systematical theologues, whose philosophy
never went beyond Keckerman, nor their divinity beyond Wolle-
bius, and who would have all things new in the church, but
nothing in the schools.
Thus must a man spend his fortune, consume his time, and rack
his brain, and all to produce some birth that is like to be devoured
as soon as born ; to have his labours stifled or trod upon, his
knowledge railed down, and his person exposed to the violence of
those who are never witty but in their malice, nor extraordinary in
any thing but ill behaviour.
And now, if this be our lot,, what remains for us to determine
upon ? Is there no way to get out of this unhappy dilemma, but
that we must needs either dash upon the sorrows of knowledge,
or the baseness of ignorance ? Why yes, there is a fair escape
left us ; for God has not placed mankind under a necessity either
of sin or misery. And therefore, as to the matter in hand, it is
only to continue our labour, but to alter the scene of it; and to
make him, that is the great author, also the subject of our know
ledge. For though there is a vanity, a sorrow, and dissatisfac-

INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE ATTENDED WITH SORROW. 117
tion in the knowledge of created, inferior objects, yet we are as
sured that " it is life eternal to know God, and whom, he has sent,
his Son Christ Jesus."
To which God, the fountain of all true wisdom and understand
ing, giving freely to those that ask, and upbraiding ,none, be ren
dered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty,
and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

118

SERMON IX.
praye& answered only when offered in sincerity.
Psalm lxvi. 18.
If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.
This Psalm is David's grateful commemoration of all God's
mercies, together with a retribution of praise, the only recom-
pence and return that the poor sons of men are able to make for
divine favours. And David, *is standing in a double relation,
first of a king and public parent, under which he did not only
govern, but represent his people ; and secondly, of a saint of God
under which notion it was his business to regard the peculiar in
terest of his own soul ; so accordingly he does proportion his
praises to these two several conditions : first, as he was a public
person and a king, he gives thanks to God for public mercies :
for he whose duty it was to love his people as himself, it was also
his duty to esteem all mercies shown to his people, at a second
hand, shown to himself. And this he does from the first to the
thirteenth verse ; where he praises God in respect of the glory
of his majesty and the greatness of his power, which he had
often employed in the miraculous deliverance of his people, from
the first verse to the eighth. And then for his mercy and faith
fulness, not only in ridding them out of adversity, but, by season
able afflictions, securing them from the greater danger of pros
perity : and this he does from the eighth verse to the thirteenth.
And secondly, as one of God's saints, so he takes a more especial
thankful notice of the personal favours that God had conferred
upon him : and this he does from the thirteenth verse to the end
of the Psalm. Wherein, for the manner of the duty, we may
observe, that it is praise. As prayer is an asking or craving, so
praise is a giving and returning ; therefore not only a spiritual,
but a kingly work; and consequently most beseeming David,
who was in his days not only the most religious of men, but the
best of kings. And it was that which gave him no less a pre
eminence above other saints, than his crown gave him prerogative
over his people, that he was a man of praises, of all others the
most frequent and earnest in this duty : which, in this sense
excels prayer ; inasmuch as gratitude is more laudable than a
craving desire. It was David's best, his greatest and most lasting
praise, that he made it his business to praise God. Secondly, for
the matter of this praise ; it was not things carnal, as the establish
ing his crown, and the enlarging his dominions, but it was spiri-

ON SINCERITY IN PRAYER. 119
tual ; as in the sixteenth verse, " I will declare what he has done
for my soul."
Now in this acknowledgment of his we may observe, that the
greatest argument of his praise was the sense of God's gracious
hearing his prayer, as appears from ihe two last verses, where in
the verse immediately foregoing, containing the words of my
text, he insinuates the reason of the success of his prayers, by
showing what would have hindered that success. He says, " If
he had regarded iniquity in his heart, God would not have heard
him ;" therefore he implies, that his integrity, in not regarding it,
was the reason that God did hear him. And thus I have given
you the resolution and model of the whole Psalm, and therein
the occasion of these words that I have read unto you, together
with the connexion they have with the foregoing and following
verses. The words may be considered two ways :
1st. As they have a peculiar reference to David and his parti
cular condition ; and so they are a vehement asseveration of his
integrity. We read the words thus ; " If I regard iniquity in
my heart, God will not hear me." But the Septuagint has it,
nil siaaxovadta jiov ®ebg ; that is, " let not God hear me." And
so they are David's avouchment of his uprightness, by an impre
cation, or calling for a curse upon himself, namely, God's not
hearing his prayers, in case he was not really so upright, as in
words he did protest himself to be. Thus Job also testifies his
integrity in Job xxxi. 7, 8, "If my steps have turned out of the
way, and mine heart walked after mine eyes, and any blot have
cleaved to my hands ; then let me sow, and let another eat." All
this is an earnest protestation of Job's steadfast walking before
God. And thus the words hold forth a testimony of David's up
rightness ; and, compared with the following verses, are not only
a testimony, but a clear proof of it ; and that in a perfect hypo
thetical syllogism. " If I regard iniquity in my heart, God will
not hear me ;" then it follows in the next verse, " But verily, God
hath heard me ;" and, adding the conclusion, " Therefore I do not
regard iniquity in my heart." It amounts to a full argumentation,
proving the sincerity of David's heart. Here we may note, as
David does evince his integrity from the success of his prayers, as
a sign and consequent of that integrity ; so the hypocrite, or sin
ner, may invert the argument, and collect the future unsuccessful-
ness of all his prayers from his want of integrity; and that not
only as a sign, but as the proper cause of that unsuccessfulness ;
in this manner, " If I regard iniquity in my heart, God will not
hear me :" now the hypocrite must assume, ''But I regard iniquity
in my heart:" therefore he must also conclude, "God will not
hear me ;" he will have no respect unto my prayers. And thus
much concerning the first consideration of the words.
2dly. The words may be considered absolutely in themselves,

120 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [SERM. IX.
and so applicable to all men. In this sense they are a positive
direction laid down in negative terms, and prescribing the way of
our sincere worship of God. For interpreters do generally agree,
that although David in these words intends to attest his own in
tegrity, yet he does also no less intend to give men a rule for the
regulation of their holy worship. For, by telling us that God does
not respect the prayers of those that regard iniquity in their hearts,
he does intimate, that the acceptation of all our holy services be
fore God is grounded upon the inward, hearty sincerity of our
souls ; and therefore it ought to be our duty, both in point of
reverence to God, and wisdom for our own interest, never to engage
in any holy performance without this sincerity, but especially in
prayer, wherein men have the nearest address to God ; and con
sequently upon their sincerity, may here chiefly expect a blessing,
and, upon the want of it, fear a judgment. I shall consider the
words in this latter general sense ; and so deduce from them an
observation, not much distinct from the words themselves ; for only
by resolving them, as they lie in supposition, into a positive asser
tion, they afford us this doctrine :
" Whosoever regards iniquity in his heart, the Lord will not
hear him."
Or yet more plainly.
A man's regarding or loving any sin in his heart, will certainly
hinder his prayers from having any acceptance with God.
In the prosecution of this doctrine, I shall show,
I. What it is for a man to regard or love sin in his heart.
II. What it is to have our prayers accepted with God.
III. How regarding or loving sin in the heart, hinders a man's
prayers from being thus accepted.
IV. Application.
I. Concerning th£ first : a man may be said several ways to
love or regard sin in his heart.
1. There is a constant and habitual love of sin in the unre-
generacy and corrupt estate of the soul. For a man, as con
sidered in his pure, or rather his impure naturals, has not
only a strong, but a universal love to sin. Sin was born, and
lay in the same womb with every man ; therefore he must needs
love it as his brother. Now, as union is generally stated the
effect of love, therefore, since the union between sin and our
nature is so close, we may thence also collect that the love is
very great. In this sense sin and the corruption thereof is
styled "the flesh; not only by a metonymy ofthe subject for
the adjunct, because sin has its place and residence in the flesh:
but also for the tender love and affection that we bear to it ; for,
as the apostle says in Eph. v. 29, " No man hateth his own flesh,
but nourisheth and cherisheth it;" and withal, because we
continually carry it about us. A man may as well go abroad,

ON SINCERITY IN PRAYER. 121
and leave his body and his flesh behind him, as an unregene
rate man go any whither not attended by his sin. It is called
sometimes "the body of sin," and that deservedly, because it is
so nearly united to the soul. The scripture has several ex
pressions showing the cursed habitual love that a natural man
bears to his sin. Sometimes it is called his " right eye,"
Matt, xviii. 9, than which nothing is more dear. God him
self sometimes expresses the greatness of his love to his chil
dren in the same terms : he regards them as the " apple of his
eye." To have one's eye continually upon any thing argues a
great love of it ; but to account it as the eye itself, shows a love
more than ordinary. Elsewhere sin is called " our right hand,"
Mark ix. 43, the member of use and execution ; and therefore,
most carefully tendered by man, whose nature it is to be in con
tinual action. How dear it is, the common expression demon
strates ; we say of an extraordinary and beloved friend, he is our
right hand. It is also placed and lodged in the heart, Jer. xvii.
9, which in every sinner, as it is the original of natural life, so it
is the principle and fountain of spiritual death. Sin, it is the
primum vivens, and the ultimum moriens ; life the heart itself,
which harbours it in every finally impenitent sinner : so ex
ceedingly beloved, that many unregenerate men vouchsafe even to
live and die with their sins ; which is the highest pitch of love
imaginable. Again, in Job xv. 16, the wicked is said to " drink
iniquity like water." No appetite so strong as that of thirst.
Hence, as it is the peculiar distinguishing property of the godly
to thirst after righteousness, Matt. v. 6, so it is of the wicked to
thirst after iniquity ; who quenches his present desire of sin with
the actual commission of it ; as a man does his thirst, that is,
both with vehemence and delight. It is proper only to the
drunkard to make his drink his sin ; but it is the nature of every
carnal man (if you will admit of the expression) to account his
sin as desirable as his drink. But that we may yet further see
how a natural man loves, tenders, and regards his sin ; there is
nothing dear and lovely to us, but the Spirit of God expresses sin
by that. What more to be prized than our eyes or hands?
What can or ought to be more dear to us than our heart ? more
desired than our food, or more amiable than life ? Yet sin, we
see, engrosses all the affections that ought to be distributed
amongst all these. This love is yet more evident from the service
a carnal man does for his sin, who bears rule over him, from
his own voluntary subjection. It is the nature of love, where it
is excessive, to enslave a man to the commands of the party
whom he loves : as Jacob did for Rachel, so a wicked man for
his sin ; he will serve many years for it, and they shall seem but
a few days, because of the love he bears to it. What God and
nature has bestowed on man, that, man has made a full and total
resignation of to sin, to be commanded, used, and employed by
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122 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. viii.
it : the understanding is busied to contrive iniquity ; the senses
to purvey and bring in provender for it, in the representation of
sinful objects ; the will to command and govern in the name of
sin; the outward powers and members to execute those com
mands : so that the whole frame and structure of man is prin
cipled, and, as it were, even animated by sin ; for, first, it has
general rule and possession of all the faculties; and, secondly, of
all the actions that flow from those faculties. And then, for the
perpetuity and constant course of those actions, Gen. vi. 5,
" they are sinful continually," and without any intermission. In
short he that regards iniquity in his heart, in this habitual way, he
so regards it as he neither does or can regard any thing else.
For the force and activity of man's mind is a limited force ; and
as it is with our attention, so it is also with our love, it cannot be
vehement and intense at the same time upon two different
objects. Now, from what has been said, it follows, that in this
manner a regenerate person cannot love or regard sin ; and all
unregenerate do.
2. There is a regarding of sin in the heart, that consists in an
unmortified habit or course of sin; this is much different from
the former, because even a child of God may thus regard sin,
from the relics of corrupt nature, fired and stirred up by Satan's
temptations ; for the model of a regenerate state is, like that of
the body, mixed and compounded of contrary principles, grace
and corruption, as that is of contrary elements. And as the
elements, in the composure of the body, have their qualities
allayed and refracted ; so these habits of grace and corruption,
as they are in a regenerate soul, are not in their utmost degree
and extremity. For if grace were in its full height and latitude,
there could be no corruption ; which is a bliss rather to be wished
for, than ever enjoyed in this life. And, on the other hand, if
corruption were in its full extent or degree, there could be no
grace, and so no regeneration. For it is the nature of contraries,
that one arising to its highest pitch, does, by consequence, expel
and devour the other. Wherefore grace and corruption are
joined and contempered in a believing soul, from which conjunc
tion arises a possibility of the entertainment of sinful habits and
dispositions, even in the regenerate, though not such as are found
in the unregenerate : in the one they defile indeed and pollute ;
in the other, they prevail and domineer : in the one, they separate
from the sense of God's love ; in the other, they take away all
interest in it. Now, that there may be such sinful dispositions or
habits in believers may be evinced,
(1.) From example : when David had committed that gross sin
of murder and adultery, if we compute the time of his sin to his
repentance, which was dated from Nathan's coming to him, we
shall find that he continued in it for the space of a year. Now
we must know, every intense and vehement action leaves a suit-

ON SINCERITY IN PRAYER. 123
able disposition behind it upon the faculty, which, if seconded by
actions of the same kind, or not weakened and destroyed by ac
tions of a contrary nature, it daily gathers strength, and gets root
and fixation in the mind, till it at length becomes a sinful habit,
very difficultly to be removed. So that David, after the commis
sion of so great a sin, must needs have had a further inclination
to it left upon his spirit, which, by reason also of the compliance
it found with his natural corruption, daily grew more and more
fixed ; for, although he did not reiterate it by other external actions,
yet by his internal desires and approbations he did increase and
confirm it ; for it cannot be imagined but that he entertained
those approbations of it as long as he deferred his repentance.
Hereupon he found the work of repentance so hard, and his
sin so hardly moveable, when he set about the penitent removal
of it : so that he cries, Psalm xxxviii. 5, " My wounds stink and
are corrupt by reason of my foolishness." A wound immediately
cured, soon after it was given, cannot stink or grow noisome. It
is clear then, that David was not only guilty of sin, but also of
continuance in sin ; who, notwithstanding he was a son of God,
and truly regenerate, yet had his heart overrun with a sinful habit
and disposition.
d(2.) It may be proved from scripture-reason, which is grounded
upon those exhortations that are there made even to believers for
the mortification of sin ; as peculiarly, that, Rom. viii. 13, the
apostle exhorts even those to mortify the deeds of the flesh, who
were truly ingrafted into Christ ; for they were such as, he said,
in the first verse, " were justified ;" such, to whom there was " no
condemnation:" also he bids them mortify sin " by the Spirit;"
but the Spirit is to be found in none but the regenerate. Now to
mortify sin, is not properly to forbear one or many sinful actions,
but it is the weakening or destroying a course or habit of sin.
Comparing therefore the nature of the duty with the qualification
of the persons to whom it was enjoined, the apostle must seem to
insinuate a possibility that even believers may be entangled and
overtaken in a sinful course.
This therefore is the second kind of regarding sin in the heart ;
and the soul may thusjove or regard sin two ways :
1st. Directly, and by a positive pursuance of it ; as the follow
ing of one action by another ; the backing of one sinful deed by a
greater ; when sin reigns by a cursed kind of succession ; when
one wicked action expires, another presently succeeds.
2dly. Indirectly, and by not attempting a vigorous mortifica
tion of it. In the former sense, we cherish sin by giving it food :
in this second, by not taking that which it has away. Not to re
sist sin, and that by an indefatigable watching, striving, and pray
ing against it, is to love it. He that does not attempt the utter
ruin and death of it, does not hate it : for hatred, no less than
love, is an active, restless quality, and cannot quiet itself,

124 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. IX.
but in the destruction of the thing it hates. Can there be
hatred where there is agreement ? Can we banish sin from our
hearts, and yet hold it in our bosoms ? He that is not against his
sin, in a lively resistance, is for it in his affections. _ He that
does not oppose the tempter, invites him. He that hinders not
the occasion of his sin, tacitly wishes the event. Qui non pro
hibit cum debet, imperat. What mortification of sin is, in the
nature, causes and means of it, is not my present business to
discourse; but let it suffice to note thus much, that it js a
Steady, thorough course of repentance and severe humiliation :
and he that does not, by a continual rigid exercise of these
duties, by hacking at the root of sin, bears a secret longing to
the fruit.
And thus much of this second kind of love to sin ; which con
sists in the cherishing an unmodified lust.
3. There is yet another kind of regarding sin in the heart, and
that is, by an actual intention of the mind upon sin ; " If I re
gard iniquity :" the Latin renders it, Si aspexissem iniquitatem;
if I did behold, if I cast a gracious aspect upon sin. True it is,
that the most sincere, if they look upon their heart, must also
look upon sin ; but then they view it another way ; the wicked
look upon it with an eye of complacency and delight ; the sin
cere, with an eye of hatred and detestation. The same sin, in a
wicked and a godly eye, has a contrary hue ; as the same colour,
through different glasses, is conveyed under a different represen
tation. Now, to look upon, signifies to be intent upon ; the ac
tions of the eye, by an easy metaphor, signifying the intention
of the mind. Interpreters, in their expositions upon this place,
unanimously run this way. i§£ aspexissem iniquitatem : that is
Si pravd intentione ilium deprecatus fuissem, says one ; Aspicere
iniquitatem est peccato intentum esse et addictum; says another : or,
as Mollerus has it, Cum proposilo perseverandi in delicto contra
conscientiam ; to regard iniquity in our heart, is to address our
selves to God in prayer, with a purpose or intention of perse
vering in some sin, condemned and disallowed by our own con
science. And it is added, " in the heart," to show how little the
outward duty avails, without inward uprightness. We may have
clean hands, and yet a foul heart ; that is, be free from the ex
ternal commission of sin, yet defiled with the desires of it. We
may regard it in our minds and intentions, while we declare
against it in our professions ; wherefore these ought chiefly to be
rectified. Having thus shown that there are three several ways of
loving or regarding sin, I conceive the words are to be under
stood principally in this last sense, though not exclusively to the
former ; for it implies and takes them in a fortiore. For if the
actual intention of sin will hinder our prayers from being ac
cepted, then much more a sinful disposition, or wicked course,
as long as cherished and continued in : and if a sinful disposition

ON SINCERITY IN PRAYER. 125
disannul our prayers, then much more a state of unregeneracy.
We may look upon these three under this difference. The pur
pose or intention of sin differs from a sinful disposition in respect
of the duration and continuance of it. It is confessed, a sinful
intention may be improved into a sinful course; but, considered
as such, it implies no more than a bare intention ; and, if cast off
by an immediate repentance it will be no more. Next, a sinful
disposition differs from a state of unregeneracy, inasmuch as the
precise nature of it neither implies prevalence, nor a graceless
condition of the party in whom it is, both of which are absolutely
implied in the other.
I have now done with the first general head, viz. to show what
it is to regard iniquity in the heart. I proceed to
II. The second, which is to show, what it is to have our prayers
accepted with God : and this is to prevail with God for the ob
taining the good thing we desire, by virtue of an interest in
Jesus Christ, and in the covenant of grace ; this is clear, from
that general received truth, that the acceptance of our prayers
is founded upon the acceptation of our persons: and this, we
know is from an interest in Christ : hereupon Christ teaches his
disciples the way of making their prayers successful ; John xvi.
24, " Whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name, he will give it
you ;" that is, what ye ask, upon the score of that title and
interest that you have in my merits. If it here be excepted,
that although he indeed prescribes asking in his name, as a means
of having our prayers granted, yet he does not exclude other
means : I answer ; that by commanding us so frequently to ask
in his name, he does imply, that there is no other way of asking
aright, so as to speed in the things we request ; for if there was
some other way, this exhortation were of little or no force.
Hence, in Rev. viii. 3, we read of incense that was mingled and
offered with the prayers of the saints ; by which incense is meant
the sweet savour of the meritorious sufferings of Christ, which
alone was able to give virtue and value to those prayers, which
of themselves had none. And thus, by showing what it is to
have our prayers accepted, by the same is also manifest, who
they are who. have their prayers thus accepted; namely, those
alone who have a portion in him ; who can not only ask of his
Father, but also demand an answer for them ; who can take what
comes from our polluted lips, and perfume it with the incense of
his own merits. I shall further assert and prove this truth, by
removing some objections, which will naturally arise from what has
been already said.
Objection. If the acceptance of our prayers bears upon the
foundation of our interest in Christ, whence then is it that God
hears the prayers of the wicked, who are void of all such inte
rest ? as particularly appears in Ahab, a sinner of the first mag-
l2

126 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. IX.
nitude, no where mentioned in scripture but with some distin
guishing mark of impiety ; yet, upon the intervention of his
prayer and humiliation, God repeals a judgment denounced
against him, and, from his own days, translates it to his son.
I answer : that God, indeed, often seconds the prayers of the
wicked with a blessing ; but he does not give the blessing with
any respect to their prayers, as the procuring cause of that bless
ing. But it may be replied ; that neither are the prayers of the
righteous any way a meritorious and procuring cause of any
good thing from God ; since the most exact of our endeavours
are tainted with imperfection : so that, after all, we have cause to
sit down as unprofitable servants. I answer ; that the prayers
of the righteous are not the procuring cause of any blessing, by
virtue of any inherent merit in them ; but by virtue of the free
covenant and promise of God, who has engaged, upon the fer
vent and unfeigned prayers of the faithful, to grant their re
quests. But if it be further urged, that God says, " Because
Ahab humbled himself, I will not bring the evil threatened in
his days," 1 Kings xxi. 29, therefore it seems that Ahab's prayer
had a casual influence as to the procurement of that merciful re
prieve : to this I answer, that such expressions as signify casuality,
are often applied to those things that are only occasions of such
events. And so it is here : Ahab's humiliation was noways a
procuring cause of that mercy ; neither by any meritorious virtue
residing in it, for the prayers of the wicked merit nothing but a
denial ; nor yet by any virtue that it has from any covenant
made by God, who is so far from making any promise of hearing
the prayers of the wicked, that he has expressly promised that
he will not hear them. It was therefore only an occasion' of this
mercy, that is, the mercy so depended upon it, as if that humili
ation had not been, he had never enjoyed the mercy ; however,
it was no cause of the mercy, neither deserving nor procuring.
As for instance ; if a rich man engage to relieve some beggars,
upon their coming to his door and asking ; although this their
beggarly address has no value in it to merit a reward, yet, by
virtue of the rich man's promise and engagement, they may
challenge it ; now if he give the like alms to other beggars, to
whom he had made no such promises, only upon their importunity ;
this their importunity does here neither deserve, nor can challenge an
alms ; yet it may be said properly to occasion it, inasmuch as,
if it had not been for this, they had gone without it. And thus,
I think, it is clear, that God may bestow upon the wicked the
matter they pray for, and yet not hear their prayers ; that he
may grant them, and yet never accept them. And let me add
another thing, that discriminates the prayers of the wicked from
those of the faithful ; that although God often gives them the
thing they desired, yet he never gives it with an intent of mercy.
Thus he gave the Israelites quails, but withal sent leanness into

ON SINCERITY IN PRAYER. 127
their souls. He so gives the thing, as he still withholds the
blessing. When we are importuned by any one for something
against our will, we at length cast it to him with anger ; so I
may_ say, God, being wearied with the restless, importunate
cravings of a sinner, does not so much give, as rather angrily
throw an outward blessing at him, whose very prayer is a sin ;
for what is it but a kind of extortion towards God himself.
What we usually say amongst ourselves in ceremony, that is
here verified in respect of God ; that in all his bounty, not so
much the substance of the gift, as the mind of the giver, is to be
valued and regarded: yea, as God may, and often does deny
some of the prayers of the righteous, out of love and mercy ; so,
out of anger and judgment, he grants the prayers of the wicked :
whose very petitions are oftentimes their severest indictment ;
and their most devout requests may be interpreted into an im
precation. It may be objected, if those that are in a state of sin regard
iniquity in their heart, how then is it possible to get out of that
estate ? for how can they do it but by addressing themselves to
God ? and how can they address themselves unto God but by
prayer ? and we have already shown, that the condition they are
in renders their prayers ineffectual.
To this I answer ; that in their first serious resolution and pur
pose to turn to God, they pass from the state of sinners into the
state of the penitent, and are such in God's account ; and so
consequently, there is a change of their condition. For although
it cannot be said, that they have repented, yet they are then re
penting : though, like the prodigal, they are not come home to
their heavenly Father, yet they are upon their journey. We
must know repentance has several acceptions : it may be either
taken for the change and alteration of the corrupt qualities of our
nature, and so it is the same with sanctification, and follows faith,
as the effect does its cause ; and in this sense a wicked man, in
his present estate, is not immediately capable of repentance.
Secondly, repentance may be taken for a sincere alteration of a
man's sinful purposes and intentions ; and so it precedes faith,
and a wicked man ought and may repent ; it is a duty im
mediately incumbent upon him in order to his salvation. Al
though, when I say a wicked man may repent, and thereupon
his prayers be acceptable to God ; we must distinguish between
the instant immediately going before his repentance, in respect of
which only he is to be termed wicked, and the instant of his re
pentance, in respect of which he is become another man. In the
same sense, therefore, that the wicked may be said to repent, they
may be said to have their prayers and services accepted ; that
is, the wicked antecedently so taken, and (as they speak, in
sensu deyiso) to wit, before the instant of their repentance, not
concomitantly, and in sensu composito ; the wicked as such, and

128 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. IX.
while he is such, can neither repent nor pray, nor have any audi
ence or acceptance at the throne of grace.
And thus much concerning the second general head, viz. to
/ show what it is to have our prayers accepted with God. I pro
ceed now to
III. The third thing, to show whence it is that a man's regard
ing or loving sin in his heart hinders his prayers from acceptance
with God.
1. The first reason is, because in this case he cannot pray by
the Spirit. All prayers that are acceptable with God are the
breathings of his own Spirit within us. Rom. viii. 26, " We
know not what we should pray for as we ought ; but the Spirit
itself maketh intercession for us with sighs and groans that can
not be uttered." As without the intercession of Christ we can
not have our prayers accepted, so without the intercession of the
Spirit we cannot pray. No prayers can find the way to heaven,
but such as first come from thence. Every sincere prayer, it is
a beam of the sun of righteousness darted into our hearts, and
from thence reflecting back again. But now, as long as sin and
the love of it have dominion in the soul, the Spirit -of God is
silent ; for as prevailing corruption and the Spirit cannot cohabit
together, so neither can they work together. The motions of sin
and of the Spirit often struggle in the same heart, as Pharez
and Zarah did in the same womb, in Gen. xxxviii. 29 ; the mo
tions of the Spirit put forth their hand, but those of sin prevailing,
they drew it back again, and sin comes out first. Wherefore, if
any one bears a love and liking to sin, let him never expect to
have his prayer accepted, till sin and the Spirit concur in the same
petition. 2. The second reason is, because as long as a man regards ini
quity in his heart, he cannot pray in faith ; that is, he cannot build
a rational confidence upon any promise that God will accept him.
Now faith always respects the promise, and promise of acceptance
is made only to the upright : so long, therefore, as men cherish a
love of sin in their heart, they either understand not the promises,
and so they pray without understanding ; or they understand
them, and yet misapply them to themselves, and so they pray
in presumption: in either case they have little cause to hope
for acceptance. This reason naturally issues from the former ;
for whosoever prays not in the Spirit prays not in faith; and
every prayer made in faith is also indited by the Spirit ; only
with this distinction, that in every such prayer the Spirit is the
principal agent, and faith the instrumental. Here we may ob
serve, that faith may be either taken for the habit and seed of
faith, or for the act and exercise of that habit. Now the unre
generate man has not so much as the habit or principle, of faith,
and so upon no hand can have his prayers accepted ; and he that

ON sincerity in prayer. 129
is truly regenerate, and endued with this principle, yet while he
is entangled with the love of sin, cannot act nor exercise that
principle, and so neither can his prayers be acceptable. Faith
causes the soul fiducially and strongly to rely and cast itself upon
God in prayer : love to sin causes the soul to depart and fly off
from God. Faith clears up the evidence of our title to the pro
mises ; love to sin (although we have a title to the promises by
conversion) yet it slurs and takes away the evidence ; and when
this is gone, we cannot pray with any life and vigour. But to
manifest further the nature of a wicked man's prayer not acted by
faith, see Rom. xiv. 23, " Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." No
wonder, therefore, if that which is sin, and so consequently de
serves a curse, cannot prevail for the obtaining a blessing.
Objection. But it may be objected, if, during the time of our
regard and love to integrity, our prayers (as not proceeding from
faith) are sins, then it is our duty not to pray, since it is the duty
of all men to forbear sin.
I answer ; That this consequence is very unreasonable, inas
much as omission of prayer is of its own nature a sin, and that a
greater. And for that maxim that it is the duty of all to forbear
sin, it is to be understood of those actions that in their own kind
and nature are sins, not of those that are such by accident, and
the defect of some circumstance ; in which case the defect is to be
amended, and not the action to be omitted. Now prayer of itself
and in its nature is good, and becomes sinful only from some ad
herent corruption which derives a tincture and defilement upon it ;
wherefore it ought to be our business to endeavour the removal
of this corruption, which weakens, pollutes, and defiles our prayers,
and not to cease from prayer itself. And thus much for the
second reason.
3. The third reason is, because while we regard iniquity in our
hearts we cannot pray with fervency ; which, next to sincerity, is
the great qualification of prayer, to which God has annexed a
promise of acceptance, Matt. xi. 12, " The kingdom of heaven
suffers violence, and the violent alone take it by force ;" Matt.
vii. 7, those only that seek are like to find, and those that knock,
to have admittance ; all which expressions denote vehemence
and importunity. Now the cause of vehemence, in our prose
cution of any good, is our love of it ; for proportionable to the
affection we bear to any thing is the earnestness of our desires,
and the diligence of our pursuit after it. So long therefore as
the love of sin possesses our hearts, our love to spiritual things
is dull, heavy, inactive, and our prayers for them must needs
be answerable. O the wretched fallacy that the soul will here
put upon itself! At the same time it will love its sin and pray
against it ; at the same time it will entreat for grace, with a
desire not to prevail : as a father confesses of himself, that be
fore his conversion he would pray for chastity, with a secret
Vol. IV.— 17

130 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. IX.
reserve in his wishes, that God would not grant his prayer. Such
are the mysterious, intricate treacheries, by which the love of sin
will make a soul deceive and circumvent itself. How languidly
and faintly will it pray for spiritual mercies, conscience in the
mean while giving the lie to every such petition ! The soul, in
this case, cannot pray against sin in earnest ; it fights against it,
but neither with hope nor intent to conquer ; as lovers, usually, in
a game one against another, with a desire to lose. So then, while
we regard iniquity, how is it possible for us to regard spiritual
things, the only lawful object of our prayers? and, if we regard
them not, how can we be urgent with God for the giving of them ?
And where there is no fervency on our part, no wonder if there
is no answer on God's.
And thus much concerning the reasons, why love to sin hinders
the acceptance of our prayers ; they would both admit and de
serve a larger handling ; but
IV. I pass to the application : which shall be only a use of ex
hortation to all, that in their prayers they would endeavour to come
with hearts free from hypocrisy, and the love of sin ; and, from
what has been said, make that conclusion that Paul did in 2 Tim.
ii. 19, " Let every one that nameth the name of Christ" (especially
in prayer) " depart from iniquity." The prayer will still savour of
that which lies in the heart; as the putrefaction ofthe inward
parts give a noisomeness to the breath. God, that would not let
David, because he had made great wars and shed much blood,
build him a temple ; if thou carriest blood and revenge in thy
heart, will not let thee worship in his temple. It was an excel
lent speech that Homer puts in the mouth of Hector, in the sixth
Iliad ; and spoken by a Christian 1o the true God, from a principle
of faith, might savour of good divinity. When he comes from
the fight, and being entreated by his mother to sacrifice to the
gods ; " No," says he ;
Xfpfffc 5 avmtoiai Att heifieiv al$07ta oZvov
A^ofiat,' OTjfie 7tr[ ieti xETjxwetyi'C Kpoa>tcoj»t
Ai'uatt, xai y.vOpa tirtaXay/iivov cixstdaa^ai.
" I dread to sacrifice to the gods with unwashed hands ;" how
much more should the Christian to the true God, with an un
washed heart ; " for," says he, " it is not decent or fitting for a
warrior, besmeared with blood and dirt, to present his suppli
cation to God." God has declared himself a jealous God, and
will be worshipped in truth : but, as long as we have holiness in
our tongue, and sin in our heart, we worship him with a lie : and
let none think, as Jacob did from his father, so from God also, to
extort a blessing with a lie. He that under the law, for the most
part, was worshipped with the offering of lambs, will, in the
gospel-worship, dispense with our bringing them, so ,we bring
their innocence.

ON SINCERITY IN PRAYER. 131
To press this duty of sincerity in our worship, we may take
these two motives :
1st Motive. By praying to God with insincere, sin-regarding
hearts, we incur the certain frustration of all our prayers. And
sure, to rational men, that propose to themselves an end in all
their actions, it should be some trouble to make long prayers, and
to be answered with nothing but disappointment : to offer a sacri
fice, like Cain, and for God to have no respect to their sacrifice :
Magno conatu nihil agere ; in much labour and pains to traffic
with heaven for a nothing. This is the end of all hypocritical
prayers ; they are only empty words, and accordingly they vanish
into wind.
2nd Motive. In such prayers we are not only certain not to
gain a blessing, but also we incur the danger of a heavy curse.
He that comes to the wedding without a wedding-garment, is not
only like to miss of the feast, but also to be cast into a prison. If
the leprosy of sin cleaves to thy head, God has forbid thee to
enter the congregation. If lust lies burning in thy heart, if
pride lies swelling in thy bosom, beware and stand off; God has
commanded, if any such beast dare approach his holy mountain,
that he should be struck through. And he will certainly do ite,
for he has made ready the sword and arrows of his vengeance for
the same purpose. Jacob's argument to his mother was good,
that if his father should discern his fraud, he should not only not
gain a blessing, but also bring a curse upon himself, Gen. xxvii.
12. So when a hypocrite makes his false, yet specious addresses
to his heavenly Father for a blessing, God may say to him, Thy
voice, indeed, is the vbice of a holy Jacob, but thy heart is the
heart of a profane Esau ; and accordingly he will curse him, and
he shall be cursed. And no wonder; for to engage in prayei
while the heart goes a whoring after sin, what is it else, but to
delude and mock the great God ? And God has said, that he will
not be mocked ; he will not endure to have a hypocrite come and
affront him to his face : if we pray only in a mockery, God will
curse and punish in earnest. If the heart be torn from the body,
it becomes a dead body ; and the heart, separated from the prayer,
makes a dead prayer : and we know, as our Saviour says, " God
is not a God of the dead, but ofthe living." Better one sigh and
broken expression, with sincerity, than the most long, accurate,
and elaborate prayer, with hypocrisy. Gratior est qui deorum
delubris, puram castamque mentem, quam qui meditatum carmen in-
tulerit. A man that is in conspiracy against his king, and knows
that his king understands his conspiracy, would he dare come
and present with a petition ? He that is in love and league with
sin, is a traitor and conspirator against God ; and had he the same
dread of him that he has of an earthly prince, he would know
that in such a case it is death to come into his presence. When
some formal hypocrites set upon this duty, with their eyes turned

132 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. IX.
up, and some forced tears, not having their hearts at all affected
with the sense of that which they pretend to ; if we consider the
vileness of the affront, and the infinite majesty of God that is so
affronted, it is an argument of his inconceivable mercy and for
bearance, that such are not struck dead in the place.
But to direct us how to pray with sincerity, I shall only give
this rule : before you enter upon prayer, endeavour to prepare your
hearts by a thorough and a strict examination. This, if any
thing, will clear the coast. Sift yourselves by examining, as Satan
does by tempting. Search and shake every corner of your heart.
Ransack every passage of your life. Believe it, if any one un-
mortified lust, one cursed action lies undiscerned, it will trouble
the peace of the whole soul. Whosoever therefore is conscious to
himself of any regard or love that he bears to his iniquity, and
shall yet venture to make an offering of prayer to God ; let
such a one " leave his gift upon the altar, and go and reconcile
himself" to God, in the blood of Jesus Christ; and first sacrifice
his sin, and then come and offer, and the sacrifice of his prayer
shall be accepted.
To whom therefore be rendered and ascribed, as is most due,
all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for
evermore. Amen.

133

SERMON X.
ALL THINGS KNOWN TO GOD. f
1 John hi. 20.
Gpd is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.
God, the creator of all things, an object fitter for our adoration,
than our curious, but yet weak inquiries, is infinite in his
being, and so consequently not to be comprehended by our finite
understandings : yet since he is pleased to command us to wor
ship him, which we cannot rationally do, unless in some measure
we know him ; he is therefore also pleased to aid our weak con
ceptions, by several expressions of himself, which we call attri
butes ; as, that he is just, wise, merciful, and the like ; all which,
according to the common notions that men have of justice, wis
dom, and mercy, are not strictly and properly to be found in God ;
so that, indeed, these words, as by us applied to him,, rather tes
tify our reverential desires of honouring him, than at all express
his nature. For our words expressing only those ideas and
images of things in the mind, all which were conveyed thither
through the senses, it is impossible they should properly express
the nature of God, which was never comprehended by the short
reach of our senses ; and therefore they could not report any
representation of him to the mind, which might afterwards be
expressed in words. And thus, by natural ratiocination, I gather
that these words, just, righteous, and merciful, do not indeed ex
actly signify the nature and being of God. It is the prerogative
of his essence not only to surpass the ken of sense, but also to
nonplus the most accurate and sagacious discourses of reason.
He laughs at the bold and laborious attempts of our understand
ings, in comprehending him : and, by his excessive brightness,
wards off the eyes of the beholder, and (as we may say, by a
seeming contradiction, but a real truth) is like the sun, too visible
to be seen. And shall we then, poor mortals, think ourselves
able to express what we are not so much as able to conceive ?
And if our thoughts take in a larger compass and latitude than
our expressions, (for who is it that cannot think more than he
speaks?) then, certainly, if we cannot reach his essence by our
most elevated thoughts, much less can we do it by our words.
But the same is further demonstrable from the difference of righ
teousness, mercy, and power, properly so called, from any thing
that is in God. For these are all qualities inherent in the soul
M

134 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. X.
of man, by virtue whereof he Is enabled to act. For the soul
being unable of itself, and by its bare substance, to advance
into action, there are requisite therefore these certain qualities,
by the instrumental mediation of which, it may exert its several
operations. So that the soul, without its respective faculties and
qualities to act by, is like an artificer without his tools : but now
it is far otherwise with almighty God in his workings, whose ac
tions immediately stream from his essence, without the auxiliary
intervention of any being distinct from himself. Whereupon it
must be granted, that these things, justice, mercy, &c, exist not of
themselves, but as they are shouldered and propped up by the
subject in which they are; and therefore are imperfect beings,
and so not properly to be found in God, whose very nature it is
to be perfect. And furthermore, as they are always distinct from
the essence in which they are, we thence also collect that they
are not in God, who is an indivisible, absolute, and uncompounded
being, in whom there is nothing to be found but what is really
himself. But it may be said, If these things are so, that righteousness,
justice, and mercy are not really and properly in God ; whence is
it that the scripture so often attributes these things to him ?
I answer, in this, as in many other things, it speaks according
to the manner of men. In the same sense it attributes hands,
eyes, and ears to God, not really, but metaphorically ; that by
the things we see, we may in some measure apprehend him that
is invisible. In short, therefore, righteousness, justice, and mercy,
are attributed, not according to the reality of the things them
selves, but by the analogy of their effects. The meaning is this :
God is called merciful, because some of his actions bear a pro
portion to those that men exercise from a principle of mercy ;
and powerful, because some of his actions have a similitude to
those that men exercise from a principle of power : and so of
the rest. Some say the like of his decrees ; who affirm, that
God can no more properly be said to decree a thing, than to fore
know it, to whom all things are present. Now, according to the
sense of these men, God is said to decree, because some of his
actions have a likeness to such actions as men produce under a
decree or resolution. But I forbear, since I am afraid that I
have gone too far in these notions already. But being, in my
subsequent discourse, to insist upon one of the attributes of God,
I thought it convenient to premise something of them in general.
We find mention of them all in scripture, and peculiarly the
words which I have at present read to you, clearly hold forth
his omniscience, or infinite knowledge. The words are plain and
need no explication ; therefore I shall forthwith draw this doc
trine from them, not much different from the words themselves,
viz. That God is an all-knowing God.

ALL THINGS KNOWN TO GOD. 135
This may seem a principle, and therefore not to be doubted,
and consequently needless to be proved. But he that has looked
into controversy, and especially those two which are now the
most considerable, the Arminian and Socinian, will find that their
grand fallacy, their rtputav ^ciJSof, is founded upon their errone
ous stinting of God's knowledge ; but the first of these especially,
who affirm, that God's knowledge, in respect of contingent fu
tures, is only conditional, that is, God does not absolutely fore
know that such things will come to pass ; but upon supposal that
such and such causes meet with such and such circumstances,
then he knows such things will follow : but now, if God does not
absolutely and certainly know every contingent future, it follows,
that he does not absolutely will and decree it ; for whatsoever he
wills he also knows; and if God does not will the future ex
istence of it, whence comes it to exist ? Certainly not from
God, but from itself; for if God hereafter vouchsafes a produc
tive influence to the actual producing of a thing contingent,
which we now suppose future (which God must do, or cease to
be the first cause of all things) : I say, if God vouchsafes his
power to give it existence, it follows, that he wills the production
and existence of it at that time ; for God wills a thing before he
does it : and it also follows, that if he wills it at that time, he
always willed and decreed it before ; for to affirm that God wills
the existence of a thing contingent, then in the producing of it,
which before, while it was yet future, he did not will or decree ;
this is to make a new act of willing, which is an immanent act,
and therefore not distinct from God, to begin in time; that is,
to make something that is the same with God to be in God now,
which was not in him before : which is hugely absurd, if not
blasphemous. Thus we see the denial of God's absolute certain
foreknowledge of all things makes the existence of many of
them entirely independent upon God, and totally from themselves ;
which is indeed to make him an idle epicurean God, and to
deify them. And herein lies the abomination of asserting God's
knowledge in respect of any thing conditional. As for the next
opinion, Socinus endeavouring to assert the freedom of man's
will in the highest, and observing that God's absolute certain
foreknowledge did lay an antecedent necessity upon all men's ac
tions as to their event, he makes short and thorough work, and
utterly denies his prescience. Animadvertenduni est infallibilem
istam Dei prcenotionem, quam pro re concessd adversarii sumunt,
d, nobis non admitti, Socin. Prselect. cap. viii. And that he
might not seem to blaspheme "without some reason, he says, as
God, though he is omnipotent, cannot yet do those things that
imply a contradiction ; so, though he is omniscient, ,he cannot
know things, the knowledge of which implies the same absurdity ;
which, he says, will follow in asserting that God has a certain in
fallible knowledge of those things which in themselves are un-

136 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. X.
certain and contingent. And thus we see, that although God's
omniscience be indeed a principle, and therefore ought to be
granted ; yet since it is thus controverted and denied, it is no less
needful to be proved.
In the prosecution of this, I shall,
I. Prove the proposition, and that both by scripture and
reason. II. I shall show the excellency of this knowledge of God, be
yond the knowledge of men or angels.
III. From the consideration of that excellency, I shall deduce
something by way of inference and application.
I. And first for the proof qf it. and that from scripture. In John
xxi. 17, Peter says to Christ, Lord, thou knowest all things;
thou knowest that I love thee." Divines do here generally ac
knowledge, that in these words Peter makes a confession of the
deity of Christ, which could not be inferred, unless there was a
necessary connexion between the divine nature and the power of
knowing all things ; for in this consists the strength of Peter's ar
gument, proving Christ to be God ; in this he ascribes a property
to him that agrees only to God : as Christ elsewhere proves him
self to be really a man, by assuming those properties to himself
which are inseparably inherent in man's nature. Another scripture
proving the same truth, is that of Heb. iv. 13, " All things are
naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do ;"
that is, by a mataphor, to his understanding, which, by reason of
the quickness and spirituality of this sense, is often expressed by
an eye, and knowing by seeing : so that the words import thus
much, that God most clearly discerns and knows all things and
actions, as the eye manifestly beholds those objects that are fully
presented to its view. There are many other places in scripture
that richly hold forth God's omniscience, but in a point so evident
these two may suffice.
Our second proof is from reason ; and here our first argument
shall be drawn from his works of creation and providence. It is
impossible that he that made all things should not also know all
things. Who is it that cannot readily acknowledge and read his
own hand ? What artificer is there that does not presently know
and distinguish his own work ? In all rational agents, before every
action there is presupposed a knowledge of the thing that is to be
produced by that action. So that if we grant (as I suppose none
denies) that God is the maker of all things, that every creature
dropped into the world through his hands, we cannot be so absurd
as to deny him a distinct knowledge of those things, which with
his own finger he made and fashioned. Next, his providence
sufficiently declares his omniscience ; if he manages, rules, and
governs all things, yea sin itself, sometimes by permitting,
sometimes by limiting or preventing, other times by punishing

ALL THINGS KNOWN TO GOD. , 137.
it, it clearly follows, that he has full cognizance of those things,
since all these acts presuppose knowledge.
Now, from the consideration of this attribute, since ¦ it is our
duty to be like our heavenly Father, let us endeavour also to re
semble him in knowledge. As it is the perfection of God to
know all things, so it is the excellency of man to know any thing
aright. Ignorance, it is the dishonour of our nature ; and he
that continues in it, what does he but erect a certain kingdom of
darkness in his soul ? But of all knowledge, that is the most
excellent upon which depends our eternal interest : I mean, our
knowledge of God in Christ. In comparison of which, God
gives a very slight character of all things besides. What more
desirable in the eyes of the world than riches ? What more ex
cellent than strength, more to be admired than wisdom ? Yet
what says God of all these, Jer. ix. 23, 24, " Thus saith the
Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom ; neither let the
mighty man glory in his might ; let not the rich man glory in
his riches : but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he un-
derstandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, that exercise
loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousuess, in the earth."
So that this is a knowledge that does not only surpass strength
and riches, before which the very heathens could prefer their
poor knowledge of nature ; but it is such a knowledge, in com
parison of which the very wisdom of men is folly. Consider
also, that this is the sure way to everlasting life ; so sure, that in
scripture it is called everlasting life itself, in John xvii. 3, " And
this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Observe likewise, as
this knowledge is called eternal life, so, on the contrary, the
Spirit of God calls ignorance eternal death, John iii. 19, " And
this is the condemnation that light is come into the world, and
men love darkness rather than light." Now if there can be any
greater argument to a rational soul, to pursue after this knowledge,
than the obtaining eternal life, let that soul neglect it ; and
on the other hand, if there can be any stronger motive to woo a
man out of his ignorance, than avoiding damnation, let him hug
his ignorance as a desirable thing ; let him embrace a cloud, and
refresh himself under the shadow of deaths But consider this,
you that are ignorant of God, ignorant in the midst of teaching
ordinances. 0 how dreadful is it, to enjoy precious means of
knowledge, and only to be proficient in ignorance ! As long as
thou art destitute of this spiritual light and knowledge, thou art
to the devil as Samson to the Philistines without his eyes, thou
must go whither he will lead thee, grind in his mill, and undergo
all the slavish drudgery of sin, that a malicious devil, that hates
thy soul, can put thee to. But on the other side, knowledge,
as it makes thee in a true sense a man, so this saving knowledge
of God makes thee more than a man, that is, a Christian. And
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138 dr. south's posthtmous sermons. [serm. X.
remember, as the preposterous desire of knowledge was the first
cause of man's unhappy fall, so the pursuit of this spiritual
knowledge must be the first occasion of his recovery.
Thus far the arguments by which we prove God's omniscience ;
pass we now to
II. The second thing, which is to show the excellency of God's
knowledge, above the knowledge either of men or angels. And this
appears, 1. From the properties of this knowledge ; 2. From the
object. 1. Concerning its properties. The first property holding forth
the excellency of this knowledge, is the exceeding evidence, and
consequently the certainty of it ; for though a thing may be
certain, and yet not evident, yet whatsoever is evident, that also
is certain. Evidence brings a property emanent from the essence
and being of knowledge ; it follows, that that which includes the
nature of knowledge in an infinite manner, must be also attended
by a most infinitely clear evidence. He that causes that innate
evidence in every object, by which it moves and strikes the faculty,
shall not he see ? He that gives light to the eye, by which that
evidence is discerned, shall not he discern ? The great intellectus
agens, that by shining upon our. understandings causes us to un
derstand, shall not he himself understand much more clearly ?
John i. 9, it is said of Christ, in respect of his deity, that "he is
the true light, that lighteth every man that cometh into the
world." It is elsewhere said of God, that he is " the Father of
lights." Indeed, the knowledge of man, upon the greatest im
provements, retains a great mixture of ignorance, and all his
labour, all the travail of his soul, in the pursuit of science, is not
able thoroughly to work out that darkness of mind which he
brought with him into the world ; but now God is not only light,
but such a light as with him there is no darkness at all. And
thus it is clear, that the best of human knowledge is not able to
contest with the divine. But yet may not the angels, those sons
of light and knowledge, those near resemblances of their Creator,
may not they at least vie with the divine knowledge ? Why,
no. For even the angels stoop down and pry into the mysteries
of God, and particularly that of the incarnation, as it is in 1 Pet.
i. 12. Therefore they do not fully and evidentially know them,
for these are the postures, not of those that know already, but
of those that endeavour to know. But now God must needs
know this great mystery, for he contrived it. In Job iv. 18, he
is said to charge his angels with folly." Certainly then he
must have a transcendently perfect wisdom, far excelling theirs.
From hence, therefore, we see, that the knowledge of God, even
as to its clearness and pregnant evidence, is inconceivably beyond
the knowledge of men or angels.
2. Another property of this knowledge, showing the excellence

ALL THINGS KNOWN TO GOD. 139
of it is this, that it is a knowledge independent upon the exist
ence of the object or thing known. Man indeed receives nothing
into his understanding but through his senses ; and sense has
nothing but what it fetches from the object. Take away sounds,
and there will be no hearing ; deprive us of light, and there will
be no seeing. But now God beholds all things in himself; and
that both eminently, as he sees his own perfection, which
eminently includes all the perfection that is scattered among the
creatures, as the light of all the stars is contained eminently in
the sun ; and he beholds them also formally, distinctly, and
according to the model of their own proper beings, without look
ing upon the existence of the things themselves, and that two
ways: 1st. By reflecting upon his power, and what he can do, he has a
perfect knowledge of all possibilities, and of things that may be
produced. 2dly. By reflecting upon his power and his will, he knows
whatsoever shall be actually produced. For upon the concur
rence of God's will with his power, there is nothing else requi
site, but the thing does immediately result. This is the consti
tutive knowledge which gives being to the - thing known ; in
which sense it may be truly said, that God does not therefore
know things because they are or may be, but they therefore are
or may be because he knows them. So that this our maxim,
Non entis nulla est scientia, is true only of finite knowledge. For
God's knowledge is antecedent to the object, quite different from
ours, which is borrowed from it, and so subsequent to it. As
the knowledge that a builder has of a house depends not upon
the actual being of it; but he knows it partly by reflecting
on his skill, in which he sees a perfect idea of it before ever it
is made ; and partly on his power, by which he is able to make
it: but now others' knowledge depends upon the actual being
of the house, as flowing from those representations they have
of it after it is built. And such is our knowledge in respect of
God's. 2. The excellency of God's knowledge appears in respect of
his objects ; which are all things knowable. But they may be
reduced to three things especially, which God alone perfectly
knows, and are not to be known by men or angels.
(1.) The nature of God himself. Nothing but an infinite
knowledge can comprehend an infinite being. We may as well
endeavour to take up the ocean in the hollow of our hands, or to
clasp the heavens in our arms, as to understand or fathom the
immense perfections of the divine nature.
(2.) The second sort of things only known to God are things
future, and these are only within his reach. As for us, setting
aside what we know by history, which is not so properly know
ledge as belief, we know only what is present ; for although we

140 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. X.
know some things that are past also, yet we first know them as
they were present ; and the reason is, because we know things
by 'our coexistence with them. Now God, by reason of the
infinite compass of his being, running through all the distinctions
of time by an intimate coexistence with them, and consequently
with all things that do exist in those several and successive
parcels of time, he takes a full survey of things, both past, pre
sent, and to come ; which, though it be an undenied principle
both in Christian and natural theology, and consequently to be
rather granted as a self-evident truth, than disputed as a problem,
yet he who shall look into the writings of the Pelagians, Jesuits,
or their Dutch brood, the Remonstrants, will find that their
grand fallacy, their xp^tov tyiSos, is founded upon their er
roneous stating of the divine knowledge ; by which they affirm,
that God's knowledge, in respect of future contingents, is
wholly conditional. For, as by one simple act of his being he
does coexist with all successive durations, so, by one act of his
understanding, he does also know them. To help our apprehen
sions in this thing, we may take this similitude : a man walking
in a path sees not that part of the way that is behind him,
neither that which is any great distance before him, but suc
cessively comes to see it, as by degrees he arrives to, and coexists
with it : but now he that is upon a high mountain or tower, by
one single cast of his eye, takes a view of the whole path, and
at once sees the man, and what is behind him, and what so remote
before him. Just so man, who exists in some part of time,
neither properly knows those things that were before he was, nor
those things that are future, but as he gains a successive coex
istence with them. But God being, as I may say, exalted upon
his own essence, does from thence, as from a high and lofty place,
by one single act of his understanding, take a survey of us that
are in the world, and those things that are past and behind us,
together with those that are before us, and yet to come.
Now these things are of two sorts :
1st. Such as depend upon necessary causes, that is, those that
constantly and in the same manner produce their effects : such
are the sun and moon, in respect of the eclipses ; and the heavens,
in respect of many things here below. So that their effects,
though future, may yet be known in the causes. For we can
foretell an eclipse many years before : and while it is yet winter,
we know that within such a period of days it will be summer.
Now, in respect even of these future things, the knowledge of
God, and of the creature, is very different: God, indeed, cer
tainly knows when they will come to pass. Men and angels,
indeed, have also a certain knowledge of them ; but it is not
absolute, but only suppositional : that is, upon supposal that such
and such things continue in their being, and that God withal
affords them his ordinary concurrence, such and such effects will

ALL THINGS KNOWN TO GOD. 141
certainly follow. But the causes themselves may perish ; and
God, that created nature, may, by the same power and sovereignty,
interrupt it in its course ; as he did.the sun, in the time of Joshua,
Josh. x. 13, and the operation of that fire upon the three children.
Now in this case, neither men nor angels can certainly know or
determine of such futures.
2dly. The second sort of things future are things in their nature
occasional and contingent ; such as come by chance, and such as
depend upon the free will of man ; which is various in its working,
and consequently, that which is produced by it must needs be un
certain in the event. Now, it is the prerogative of God alone to
have a steady foreknowledge of such things ; no created being
can dive into them : that man cannot, as reason would sufficiently
prove, so scripture also does no less clearly demonstrate. Isaiah
xlvii. 11, God speaks to Babylon; "Evil shall come upon thee,
and thou shalt not know from whence it ariseth : and desolation
shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know:"
hereupon, in the two next verses, he defies them to find them
out with all their sorceries and enchantments : in the twelfth
verse, " Let now the astrologers and prognosticators stand up,
and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee."
If any man could foresee future events, then certainly it would be
those who made it their business and their profession ; those who
had not only their own understanding, but all the light of heaven
to direct them. A man may as easily draw the perfect picture
of a man yet unborn, as have in his mind the idea of a contin
gent future.
Who knows what a day may bring forth ? God has put ob
scurity between us and the nearest futures ; there is night be
tween us and the very next day. To the proofs drawn from
scripture, we may add the overplus of our own experience. And
that angels are also to seek in the certain knowledge of these
things is no less true. Had those fallen angels, before their sin,
foreseen what would have followed it, we cannot but in reason
imagine, that the foresight of their fall would have kept them
from their sin. Hereupon the devil, in the heathen oracles, when
he was consulted about future events, gave always doubtful,
ambiguous answers ; so that, however the thing fell out, he had
still a salvo or evasion in the ambiguity of the expression. It is
confessed, that sometimes his predictions have been answered bv
the event of the thing; but then this was rather from the hap-
piness of his conjecture, than the certainty of his knowledge.
And as one says, " Angels have the advantage of us _ in respect
of their experience, which is far greater in them than in us, both
because they have been of longer duration and continuance in the
world, and also because of the piercing quickness of their un
derstandings, in comparing one thing with another; and from
thence making conjectures at other things." Now experience is

142 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. X.
a reiterated or repeated knowledge of things past ; from whence
arises an ability of judging and guessing at things future, And
thus far angels can go, and no further. As for that argument by
which some would prove that angels know things future, because
distance of time and distance of place are equally accidental dif
ferences ; and we know, distance of place does not impede the
knowledge of angels ; therefore they may know things, notwith
standing the difference of time, that they are future. I say, this
argument proves nothing, because the case is not the same, in re
spect of difference of place and of time. Distance of place always
supposes the existence of the things that so differ : futurity, which
is a difference of time, puts a non-existence of the thing ; for that
which is future is not yet in being. And since all created
knowledge follows the existence of the thing known, there can be
no knowledge of that which does not exist, but of that which
either exists, or is supposed and looked upon as existing. But
•now, God knows contingent futures, yea, and that certainly and
infallibly; and the reason is, because the most contingent being,
when and while it actually exists, is, in its being, necessary :
Omne quod est; quando est, necessario est. But all things are
present to God ; they are looked upon by him as under an actual
existence ; from whence we may collect, that he has a certain and
necessary knowledge of them.
(3.) The third sort of things, known only to God, are the
thoughts of men : it belongs to the sovereignty of God's om
niscience alone to judge and know these : Psalm cxxxix. 2,
"Thou understandest my thoughts afar off." This is attributed
to God, by way of eminence ; and every such thing is not only
proper, but also peculiar to him ; so as to be communicated to
nothing else : for that cannot be ascribed to God by way of dis
tinction which is also common to the creature. Angels, indeed,
do exactly know our constitutions, and so can read the general
inclination of our thoughts in them, but not the particular deter
mination of them, quoad hie et nunc, in respect of particular ob
jects and circumstances ; and also, when the thoughts move and
stir the passions, and the passions work some change on the
body : for, as natural philosophy teaches, every passion (which is
a motion of the sensitive appetite) fit cum aliqud mutatione cor
poris non naturali. I say, in this respect, the angels may know
the thoughts, as they betray themselves in some outward cor
poreal sign ; but by any immediate inspection of the thoughts
themselves, so they are not able to discern them. It is a privi
lege that God has given to our nature, to be able to conceal our
thoughts; next to that by which we are able to communicate
them : Jer. xvii. 9, " The heart is deceitful above all things ;
who can know it ?" None can read the thoughts, none can be
hold the intentions and desires, but that God, who vouchsafes an
influence to the production of every thought and every desire :

ALL THINGS KNOWN TO GOD. 143
1 Cor. ii. 11, " Who knoweth the things of a man, save the
spirit of a man that is'within him ?" It is well known, that
these interrogations imply strong denials. Who can know the
things of man ? that is, none can know them : they are not sub
ject to the inspection of any being but God. For, notwithstand
ing this universal negation, we must of necessity except him,
because the scripture elsewhere makes a peculiar exception of
God, even there, where it affirms that the heart cannot be known,
Jer. xvii. 10, "I the Lord search the heart: I try the reins."
From hence therefore appears the transcendent excellency of God's
knowledge, beyond all created, that it is able to pierce into men's
thoughts. III. I proceed to make some application ; and to see what
uses may be deduced from the consideration of God's om
niscience : it may serve as an argument to press several duties
upon us.
1. It must be a strong motive to bring us to a free confession
of all our sins to God. God's omniscience, or infinite know
ledge, should indeed make us ashamed to commit sin; but it
should embolden us to confess it. We can commit and tell our
secrets to a friend that does not know them; how much more
should we do it to him that knows them already. God's know
ledge outruns our confessions, and anticipates what we have to
say. As our Saviour speaks concerning prayer, " Your heavenly
Father knows what you have need of before you ask," Matt. vi.
8. So I may say of confession, your heavenly Father knows
what secret sins you have committed before you confess. But
still he commands this duty of us ; and that not to know our
sins, but to see our ingenuity. Adam, when he hid himself, to
the impiety of his sin added the absurdity of a concealment.
Our declaring of our sins to God, who knows them without
being beholden to our relation, it is like opening a window to
receive the light, which would shine in through it howsoever.
Every man has fenestratum pectus, a casement in his bosom,
through which God looks in upon him every day. When a
master sees his servant commit a fault in secret, and thereupon
urges him to a confession, he does it not so much to know the
fault, as to try the man. Now there is no duty by wliich we
give God the glory of his omniscience so much as by a free con
fession of our secret iniquities. Joshua vii. 19, Joshua says to
Achan, "My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of
Israel, and make confession unto him." Here we see, had he
not confessed his theft, he had been guilty of a greater, to wit,
the fobbing God of his glory. Thus the widow of Tekoah, by
confessing her design and project to David, gave him the glory
of his wisdom and knowledge. Hereupon, having confessed it,
she says, in 2 Sam. xiv. 20, " My lord the king is wise, accord-

144 DR. SOUTH's POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [SERM. X.
ing to the wisdom of an angel of God, to know all things that
are done in the earth." God seems to compound with us, and
in lieu of satisfaction, only to require our confession ; Jer. iii.
12, 13, " I am merciful, saith the Lord, and will not keep anger
for ever; only acknowledge thy iniquity, that thou hast trans
gressed against the Lord thy God." Nay, God commands us to
confess our sins, not so much that he may know them, as that we
may know them ourselves. For while sin sits close in the
heart, we cannot see it till we cast it forth by confession ; as a
man cannot see the corruption that is in his stomach till he spits
it out. But howsoever, the impossibility of concealing our sins
from God's omniscience, is the great reason why we should con
fess them ; for, as we cannot rescue them from his justice, so
neither can we hide them from his knowledge. God's om
niscience, together with his justice, represents him to a secret
sinner like a flaming fire ; which by its heat consumes, and by
its light discovers. Wherefore, to confess our sins, since we are
not able to conceal them, what is it but, in a spiritual sense,
to make a virtue of necessity ?
2. The consideration of God's omniscience may enforce us to
an humble submission to all God's commands and directions, and
that both in respect of belief and of practice. ,
(1.) And first, concerning things to be believed. There is
such a depth in these, and such a seeming contradiction to
reason, that our natural understandings are apt to quarrel, and
find absurdities in them, and to dispute against that which we
cannot comprehend. Hence, in Eph. iii. 19, the apostle prays
that he may " know the love of Christ, that passeth knowledge."
Here we should captivate the vain reasonings of our blind under
standings, and answer the defect of our knowledge, by the infi-
niteness of God's ; who knows a reason of whatsoever he com
mands, and of whatsoever we ought to believe. When we hear the
mystery of the Trinity, that three subsistencies are contracted into
one essence, and one essence enlarged into three subsistencies ;
when we hear of two natures conjoined in the same person, the
Creator and the creature, united in Jesus Christ ; our reason is
nonplussed and amazed, and cannot satisfy itself from any of its
own principles. When we hear of the resurrection, that after our
bodies are destroyed, and by continual transmutation brought to be
clean another thing ; then for the same numerical bodies to be
restored, and all the scattered parts to be renewed, and return to
their proper places ; so that with Job, we should be enabled to see
our Redeemer "with these very eyes, and no other," Job xix. 26, 27.
When we hear of the mysterious, hidden works of the Spirit in
our regeneration, and the begetting of new principles within us,
so as to change and alter our nature ; that he, which by his con
stitution is intemperate and furious, should be made temperate
and meek; that he, which by his education is profane and

ALL THINGS KNOWN TO GOD. 145
worldly, should, by the secret, forcible operation of the Spirit, be
come holy and spiritually-minded. I say, this startles and con
founds us ; and we are apt to say with Nicodemus, " How can
these things be ?" We cannot, from any topic of reason or phi
losophy, give a rational account of them. But here we should
know, that although these things are not intelligible by men, yet
they are to the all-knowing God. And although our reason cannot
discern or comprehend these things, yet God is greater than our
reason, and knoweth all things.
(2.) The consideration of God's infinite knowledge ought to
make us comply with God's commands in things Concerning our
practice, and that even in those duties that to our natural judg
ments may seem unreasonable. He that renounces the dictates of
his own carnal wisdom, and prosecutes the ways prescribed to him
by God, has set to his seal, that God is wise and infinitely more
knowing than himself. For all our disobedience, our relinquish
ing the ways of God, and adhering to our own, may be resolved
into this ; that men think they know a nearer way to happiness
than God has prescribed them ; which, how derogatory it is to the
all-knowing wisdom of God, let our own reason be judge. Why
do we follow the advice our physicians and lawyers, but from the
opinion we have of their knowledge and experience. Absalom,
by not doing according to Ahithophel's counsel, did in that clearly
undervalue his wisdom ; and the discredit of that made Ahithophel
hang himself. Now the most wise and omniscient God, that knows
the utmost of sin, that knows what it is for a sinner to be saved,
and to escape the stroke of his justice, does, in order thereto, com
mand us to deny ourselves, to take up our cross, to renounce our
dearest pleasures, our nearest relations, as they stand in competi
tion with Christ ; yea, to prefer the most unpleasant duty before
the most pleasing sin. Here flesh and blood is at a stand ; and,
as it cannot endure the strictness and rigour, so neither can it see
the reason of these commands. But what Elijah said to Israel in
the case of Baal, that I may here apply, " Why halt we between
two opinions ?" If God, who has commanded and enjoined
these duties, be the all-knowing God, why do we not then, with
out any further delay, perform them ? If he be not, why do we
then give him divine worship ? Wherefore I shall conclude with
this most certain truth : There is no such way of giving God the
glory of his infinite knowledge, as by an obediential practice of
those duties and commands which seem most to thwart and con
tradict our own.
3. And lastly, since it is an express command of our Saviour
himself, that we should " be perfect, as our heavenly Father is
perfect ;" why should we not, according to our weak model,
endeavour to copy out this divine perfection upon our soul, as
well as any of the rest? And why, as well as we are commanded
to be like him in his goodness, bounty, and mercy, we should not
Vol. IV.— 19 N

146 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. X.
endeavour to resemble him in knowledge, wisdom, and under
standing, according to our weak capacity ? For this is not to say
as Lucifer, " I will ascend, and be like the Most High ;" nor to
follow what he suggested to our first parents, " Ye shall be like
gods:" for had they affected to be like God in knowledge, as
they ought to have done, they would have certainly discerned the
cheat of the serpent, and the trials which the devil was then put
ting upon them. No ; it is no arrogance for us to endeavour to
be like God, in passing a right and true judgment upon all things
that concern us ; in judging of holiness as God judges ; in judg
ing of sin, as God judges of every thing relating to our temporal
or eternal happiness or misery. " God," says the apostle, " is
light, and in him there is no darkness at all." We do not dis
parage nor rival the great fountain of light, the sun, by endeavour
ing to have as much of his light in our houses as we can. We
have our rule and measure to proceed by, in our imitation of our
heavenly Father, in this respect, as well as in any other : for as it
is the perfection of God to know all things, so it is the excel
lency of man to know any thing aright. j
To God therefore be rendered and ascribed, as is most due,
all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for
evermore. Amen.

147

SERMON XI
public calamity a call to public humiliation.
Jonah iii. 8, 9.
But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily
unto God ; yea, let them turn every one from, his evil way, and
from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God
will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that
we perish not.
The business of the day is not unknown to you ; we are
called by public authority to the work of humiliation ; and the
cause and occasion of this work you are acquainted with, to wit,
the deplorable eruption of a sad distemper, in sundry parts of the
nation ; and the cause of this we are to know is sin. There is no
calamity, but if we track it to its original, we shall find it issue
from sin. They are the distempers of the soul that cause the
distempers of the body ; therefore, if we would recover our bodily
health, we must begin the cure at the soul. Fasting and humilia
tion is a sovereign remedy to evacuate all spiritual distempers ;
and what is true in physic of the body, tertia pars morborum
sanatur jejunio, that the third part of diseases is cured by fasting,
is much more true in divinity, in respect of the soul ; that not
only some, but all its diseases are removed, or at least weakened
and diminished by a spiritual fasting.
In this chapter we have the example of a fast celebrated by
heathens, but worthy of the imitation of the best Christians ;
and if we do not fast and humble ourselves, now a judgment is
actually lying upon us from God, certainly the men of Nineveh
will rise up in judgment against this generation, and condemn it;
for they fasted and humbled themselves upon the very approach
of a judgment.
Here are several things considerable :
1st. Jonah's denunciation of a judgment of God impendent
upon them.
2dly. Their humiliation upon the hearing of this judgment : in
which fast or humiliation there is considerable.
1. The manner of it ; which consists in two things: 1. The
external humiliation of the body. 2. An internal spiritual separation
from sin.
2. The universal extent of it, " Let man and beast," &c. ; and
withal the particular application of it, verse 8, " Let them turn
every one from," &c.

148 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XI.
3. The ground or motive of this humiliation ; which was hope
of mercy and a pardon upon the exercise of this duty.
The words will afford several observations.
1st. The consideration of a judgment approaching unto, or
actually lying upon a people, is a sufficient argument for fasting
and humiliation, ver. 4, 5.
2dly. That an afflicting of the body is a good preparative to
the humiliation of the soul, ver. 6, 7,
3dly. That the nature of a fast more especially consists in a real,
sincere separation from sin, ver. 8.
4thly. That national sins do deserve national humiliation,
ver. 5.
5thly. The best and most effectual way to remove a national
judgment, is for every particular man to inquire into, and to amend
his own personal particular sins, ver. 8.
6thly. Upon a serious humiliation for, and forsaking of our sins,
there is sufficient argument in God's mercy to hope for a removal
of the severest judgment, ver. 9.
I chiefly intend the discussing the five observations ; but I shall
speak something to them all.
1st Obs. Concerning the first : that the consideration of a judg
ment, &c. Extraordinary occasions call for extraordinary services.
Every judgment overspreading a nation is an extraordinary judg
ment ; and fasting bears some proportion to it, as being an extra
ordinary duty. When God shall shake his sword over a nation,
and the inhabitants take no notice of it ; when he shall begin to
take hold of judgment, and the people not take hold of his mercy
in prayer and repentance ; these are sad symptoms of a decaying,
if not perishing state. When the son sees his father about to
whip him, and has already laid hold of the rod, will he not fall
down upon his knees and ask him pardon ? Now we ought to
humble ourselves under a judgment upon several accounts.
(1.) Because in every judgment God calls for humiliation;
they are the alarums of the Almighty, by which he terrifies and
awakens sleepy souls. We read of the " voice of God's rod,"
Micah vi. 9, and the rod of God in every judgment speaks this ;
either that we should begin or renew our repentance. For a
people to hear the dreadful voice of a displeased God in a judg
ment, and yet not to be wrought upon to proceed to a speedy
humiliation ; it is like Samuel's hearing the Lord speaking to
him when he was a child, in the midst of his sleep ; the voice
comes, and awakes him, he hears it, yet takes little notice of it,
but presently returns to sleep again. If we can so pass over the
voice of God in a judgment, as presently to return to our former
sleep and security, it is an act of high contempt and disobe
dience. The proudest of the heathens, and the greatest contemners of

PUBLIC CALAMITY A CALL TO PUBLIC HUMILIATION. 149
a Deity, yet would be amazed, and endeavour to hide themselves
when they heard it thunder. Could the voice of the cloud make
them shrink and tremble, and shall not the voice of a national
judgment make us mourn and repent ? God calls for mourning
and lamentation, his voice is plain and loud, and woe be to us if
we do not hear it.
(2.) We ought to humble ourselves under every judgment, be
cause it deserves our humiliation : though this be an unpleasing
duty to the flesh, yet it is abundantly countervailed by the great
ness of the trouble it does remove. Not only Christianity, but
nature bids us mourn under an affliction. To what do we reserve
our sorrows, if we do not spend them upon this occasion. |jam.
iii. 48, " Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water, for the de
struction of the daughter of my people." The prophet found no
sucb time for weeping as the time of public calamity. Then did
Hezekiah mourn and humble himself, when there was a devouring
army of the Assyrians approaching. If the securing of your health,
your lives, your temporal, your spiritual estates, does not merit the
deepest of our humiliations, our strongest wrestlings with God in
fasting and prayer, then keep these duties for something that may
better deserve them.
2nd Obs. That the affliction of the body is a good preparative to
the humiliation qf the soul; thus we see in Joel ii., where there
was a solemn fast proclaimed, and directions given for the keeping
of it, it is said, in the 16th verse, " Let the bridegroom go out of
his chamber, and the bride out of her closet." Bodily and sen
sual enjoyments must be laid aside ; and that which is prescribed
to us for the right celebration of the sabbath, that a man should
not find his own pleasure, in Isaiah lviii. 3, is upon the same ac
count requisite to a due performance of this duty. Sensual de
lights are not consistent with spiritual services.
Now the reasons that the affliction of the body is so good a
preparative to the humiliation of the soul, are,
(1.) Because the operations of the soul do much follow the dis
position and temper of the body. There is a near connexion and
a sympathy between these two. There can scarce be grief and
pleasure in one, but the other partakes. Pleasure ! it melts the
soul through the body, as lightning does the sword through the
scabbard. Can the body be pampered, and the soul not grow
wanton ? Can the carnal objects of sense be received, without
leaving a tincture upon the mind ? When the body is filled and
feasted, the soul is not in so fit a posture to hunger and thirst after
righteousness. Herod, after his feast, is fit to behead, but not to
hear John Baptist.
(2.) The afflicting of the body, it curbs the flesh, and makes
it serviceable to the spirit. The flesh is unruly, and repugnant
to the yoke' of a spiritual service ; it has a natural averseness to
them, and as long as it is indulged, the opposition is so much the
n2

150 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XI.
stronger: wherefore, if we would keep our hearts close to so
heavenly a duty, we must sequester them from the incentives of
carnal objects. " I keep under my body," says St. Paul. In all
these engagements the spirit must keep under the body, or the
body will be above the spirit. The body is and ought to be the
soul's instrument in the execution of all duties ; but if it be not
rightly fixed and disposed, it may recoil upon the soul, and hurt
it : as a hatchet, if not rightly ordered, may fly off, and mischief
him that uses it. 0 let us therefore lay aside all flesh-pleasing
vanities ; let us abandon those delights that encumber the soul,
that clip its wings, and hinder its aspiring to heaven. It will be
part of our happiness and perfection hereafter to have spiritual
bodies, let us endeavour to make them so now : " Canst thou not
watch with me an hour ?" says Christ : canst not thou fast with
me a day? It is our duty to deny ourselves in these outward re
freshments, so far as it may quicken and enable us to a more nim
ble performance of so severe a duty. Let us follow the example
of the Ninevites in the text ; " Let man and beast be covered with
sackcloth." Let our brutish part, our body, as well as our manly
part, our soul, be brought under the spiritual yoke of humiliation.
But it may be here said,
(Objection.) Is not this contrary to what our Saviour prescribes
in the gospel, who in express terms forbids us this afflicting of
the body in our fastings ? Matt. vi. 16 — 18, " When ye fast, be not
as hypocrites, of a sad countenance," &c. Now, how can this
scripture consist with the truth of this doctrine, that the affliction
of the body tends to advance the devotion and humiliation of
the soul ?
In answer to this, we may observe ;
1st. That Christ does not absolutely forbid them to be of a sad
countenance, but with this qualification ; " Be not as the hypo
crites, of a sad countenance." There is a difference between a
religious and an affected sadness ; between a due composure, and
a dissembling of the countenance : one is spiritual duty, the other is
spiritual pride ; one adorns, the other destroys humiliation. And
those that do in this manner, and for this end, disfigure their faces,
that they may appear to fast, they make themselves more deformed
in the eyes of God, than in the eyes of men.
2dly. Christ does not forbid such a sadness of countenance as
was the natural effect of an inward sorrow. For as it is said,
" Mine eye affecteth mine heart." Lam. iii. 51, so the heart will
affect the eye ; spiritual sorrow will break out into the counte
nance. But the Pharisees had a peculiar way among themselves,
of making and deforming their faces, in their days of fasting ; in
which they placed the chief part of the duty (as the papists do
in whipping themselves) ; and it was against this abuse that
Christ cautioned his disciples. For when he bids them, on Ihe
contrary, anoint their head, and wash their feet, it was not meant

PUBLIC CALAMITY A CALL TO PUBLIC HUMILIATION. 151
of ornament, but, of a decent dressing of themselves, according
to the custom of those places. So that he does not here oppose
jollity and looseness tb a due and serious sadness, so as to com
mand that in the room of this ; but he does oppose a prudent
decency to an absurd superstition. And thus much in answer to
this objection, and concerning the second observation.
3rd Objection. I proceed now to the third ; viz. that the na
ture of a fast especially consists in a real, sincere separation from sin.
The truth of this will appear from these considerations :
(1.) That fasting, it is a spiritual duty : the humbling of the
body indeed is required, not so much as a part, as an instrument
of this duty; it is separation from sin that God requires and
the soul must intend : it is thy heart, and not thy stomach, that
God would have empty. It is not thy outward mourning or com
plaining, not the presence of thy body in the church, not thy
abstaining from bodily food, that makes a fast ; for what does it
avail thee to forbear thy meat, if thou dost feed upon thy sin ?
what does the sackcloth and the ashes, if thou art not clothed
with righteousness ? God overlooks and rejects all these services,
as a piece of provoking mockery, if they are not attended with
a sincere renouncing of thy sin. Thou mayest have a thin,
pining body, and yet a luxurious soul ; thou mayest hang the
head like a bulrush, and yet aspire in thy mind like a Lucifer.
Let us not deceive ourselves, for God is not deceived. If our sin
abides after all our fasting, we shall return to it with a greater
appetite. To leave our sin, and exercise the opposite duties of
holiness, this is that which gives a relish and a savour to all our
humiliations before God. In Isaiah lviii. 4 — 6, God roundly
tells his people what was truly a fast, and what was no fast,
in his esteem. — Not to abstain from bread, but to deal it to the
hungry : this is properly to fast ; not to wrap thyself in sack
cloth, but to cover and clothe thy naked brother ; this is to be
humbled. Hence, in Jer. xxxvi. 6, 7, we have the prophet pre
senting the children of Israel, upon their fasting days, with a
catalogue of God's commands : this was their bill of fare upon
such days. Take therefore a survey of the state of thy soul ;
is there such a corruption in thy heart? remove it; such a sin
in thy hands, such a blot upon thy conscience ? wash it out with
the tears of a true repentance. He that only forbears his meat,
and not his sin, the beasts of Nineveh kept as good a fast as he.
It is as unseemly to come to a fast with a foul heart, as to dinner
with foul hands.
(2.) The nature of a fast chiefly consists in our separation
from sin, because this is the proper end of it. As the end of
eating is to strengthen the body, so the end of fasting is to
strengthen the soul. For as our Saviour speaks of some unclean
spirits, Matt. xvii. 21, so it is true of some kind of sins, that they
are not, to be cast out but by fasting and prayer. This is

152 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XI.
the greatest means of mortification of sin, and that which of all
others carries it on most effectually; it is that which lays the
axe to the very root of our corruption. It is a duty that is
marked out by God's institution, for this very purpose. David,
that was most in this work of mortifying his sin, that omitted the
use of no means that might weaken his corruption, he gives us
an account of what course he took, Psalm cii. 4 ; he tells us,
that "he forgot to eat his bread ;" and Psalm cix. 24, that "his
knees were weak through fasting." Now, all that he aimed at
in this, was the getting the upper hand of his corruption, that
he might starve his sin. So that it follows, that if our fasting
attain not the proper end for which God designed it, it falls
short of its nature, and cannot properly be called a duty. True
it is, that one end of a religious fast is to prevent or remove
God's judgments ; but how does it effect this? It is not by re-
movings in, that is the cause of those judgments ? No humiliation
ever took off an affliction, before it first took off the sin. Misery
is the natural consequent of iniquity ; and he that endeavours to
rid himself of one, before he has freed himself of the other,
would hinder the streams before he has stopped the fountain.
Humiliation ! it quenches the wrath of God, by removing the
combustible matter of sin upon which it preys. When this
affords no fuel, God's anger ceases to burn. A plague, or a dis
ease, sent from God, will scarce be able to hurt or infect that soul,
which has cleansed and purged off all its ill humours, by a
thorough humiliation. It is clear, therefore, that the removal of
sin is the very essence of this duty, without which all other
humbling ourselves is so far from being profitable, that it is
abominable : Joel ii. 13, " Rend your hearts, and not your gar
ments." If the heart be not torn off from sin, to rend only the
garment, it further provokes God, and, as I may so speak, makes
the breach wider. To what purpose does the riotous drunkard
strain himself to a fast, if he does not from this gain strength
against his intemperance ? To what ends does the profane, the
covetous, the neglecter of sabbaths, engage in this duty, unless he
gathers spiritual strength, to walk more closely with God for the
future ? This we must know, that there is no religious duty that
attains its end, but when it weakens our sin.
And thus much of the third observation.
4th Obs. National sins deserve national humiliation : there must
be some proportion between sin and sorrow. Humble repent
ance is to cure us of our sins and miseries ; and there can be no
cure wrought, unless the plaster be as broad as the sore. If a
whole nation sins, a whole nation must also repent, or perish.
If a whole world corrupts itself before God, it must either be
humbled, or be drowned. The highest to the lowest have pro
voked God ; there has been a joint concurrence in sin, therefore
all must jointly concur in humiliation. When a distemper has

PUBLIC CALAMITY A CALL TO PUBLIC HUMILIATION. 153
seized the whole body, there must be a general change of the
whole habit and frame of it, Otherwise no sound recovery can he
expected. The body of a nation should speak to God, as Peter
did to Christ, when he washed his feet ; " Lord, wash not ray feet
only, but also my head and my hands." Let thy Spirit enable
not only the vulgar sort, but the great ones, to abase themselves in
tears and repentance. The spirit of humiliation should be like
Aaron's precious ointment, running down from the head to the
skirts and hem of bis garment. This was the custom of the re
ligious princes of Judah, when they were to deal with God about
public mercies ; they knew their sins were general, and therefore
that their humiliation was to be of the same extent, 2 Chron. xx.
3, 4, " And Jehoshaphat feared and set himself to seek the Lord ;
and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah :" and Jer. xxxvi. 9,
it is said of the princes of the people, that " they proclaimed a
fast before the Lord to all the people in Jerusalem, and to all the
people that came from the cities of Judah unto Jerusalem." Now
the reasons that there is such a universality required in our humilia
tions, may be,
1. Because a general humiliation tends most to solve the
breach of God's honour. A prince that has been offended by a
general rebellion, cannot be appeased but by a general submis
sion. This is a lively acknowledgment of God's majesty ; when
a nation shall lie in the dust before him ; when he shall be praised
and adored in the great congregation ; by this we confess him the
Lord of nations : and that he is able to destroy us, though we
unite ourselves into multitudes ; and that we need be humbled,
and tremble at his power, as much as if we were but one single
person. 2. Generality gives force and strength to humiliation. When
an army of humble penitents besieges heaven, it is hard if their
prayers do not force their way through : Credidimus junctas for
tius ire preces ; many hands give despatch to a difficult business.
And humiliation is a very hard task, and justly requires many
helping hands to be lift up together in prayer. General sins are
strongest to bringdown a judgment; therefore, general humilia
tion must needs be strongest to prevent it I proceed to the
5th Obs. viz. That the best and most effectual way to avert a na
tional judgment, is for every particular mam to inquire into, amd to
amend his oum personal particular sins. I shall prove the truth
of this assertion by several reasons :
(1.) Because particular sins oftentimes fetch down general,
universal judgments. Sin, like a leprosy, though it begin in a
small compass, yet it quickly, in the effects of it, overspreads the
whole. It may first appear like that cloud, no bigger than a man's
hand, 1 Kings xviii. 44; but it presently overclouds and darkens
the heavens over us, and showers down the heaviest of God's
judgments. Adam's sin was but the sin of one man, and yet
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154 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XI.
how large and extensive were the dimensions of the curse ! it
diffused itself to all his posterity, and that in all places, in all
ages. When David numbered the people, none but David sin
ned ; yet all Israel felt the smart of the punishment, thousands
fell under the pestilence : the penalty of this sin was as large as
his dominions ; the curse, it reached from Dan to Beersheba. But
here it may be replied, these, indeed, were public persons, and
their offences public, and therefore the punishment might be so
too. But then, what shall we think of Achan ? he was no public
person, no governor, no representative of a people ; yet we see
his one particular trespass, in meddling with the cursed thing,
caused the whole armies of Israel to fly before their enemies ; that
one sin chased a thousand, and put ten thousand to flight,
Joshua vii. And again, did not the sin of a few profane Benja
mites scatter and almost devour a whole tribe ? Judges xx.
From these examples we may make this natural conclusion to
ourselves, that what God did then, if he please, he may do the
same now.
The reasons that God sometimes, for particular sins, inflicts
general judgments, may be these :
1st. To show us the provoking nature of sin ; and that we live
upon the score of mercy, and not by any title that we claim to life
from our own righteousness ; it is a mercy that God does not de
stroy for the sins of other men. Was it not a singular mercy to
Lot, that he was delivered from the common destruction, though
he never shared in the common sin ? The righteousness of the
whole world, since the fall, is not able to save one man ; but the
sin of one man, if God should deal according to the rigour of his
justice, was enough to destroy a whole world.-
2dly. God deservedly sometimes sends a general judgment for
a particular sin ; because though the sin is particular, in respect of
the subject and cause of it, yet it may be general in respect of
its contagion. The plague, though but in one man, yet it is able
to derive a general infection over a whole city. Thy sin, though
the commission of it abides upon thy particular person, yet thou
dost not know how far the example of it may spread. David's
murder and adultery, as to the personal guilt of it, went no
further than himself; but we know the scandal of it was very
infectious ; it caused the enemies of God to blaspheme : God,
therefore, may deservedly avenge particular sins with general
judgments. (2.) As some particular sins are the total cause of a general
judgment, so all and every particular sin shares and contributes
its part in the bringing down of a judgment upon a nation,
though it be not always the only cause of that judgment : a uni
versal sin is made up of many particulars : if there were no per
sonal, there could be no national sin. We may look upon our
own particular miscarriages as small things, and not discernible

public calamity a call to public humiliation. 155
in so great a crowd ; we may think that the sins of one man are
no more considerable, in respect of the sins of a nation, than one
man is in comparison of all the inhabitants of the nation : yet
one man's sin, though in itself it should be weaker, yet as it is
joined with the sins of a multitude, it will do no execution. One
soldier, taken by himself, is of no considerable force; but as
joined to the body of an army, he will conquer and trample down
towns and cities. One single drop of water, how contemptible
is it ! but as it is joined to the ocean, so it is terrible ; it drowns,
it destroys. Wherefore let none flatter himself, and think that his
sin has no share in the misery of the nation ; for every par
ticular man may think so, as well as one : and if it should be
true of every one, to whose sin should we ascribe the calamities
we endure? "For the sin of the inhabitants a land is said to
mourn ; a fruitful land to be made barren, for the wickedness
of those that dwell therein." And who knows but mine and thy
sins may have provoked God to visit the nation with this dis
temper? How dost thou know, but thy profaneness, thy drun
kenness, may cause the land to mourn : thy slighting God's or
dinances, and thy causeless absenting thyself from his worship,
may cause God to appear against the nation in anger. When a
barrel of gunpowder is fired, does not one corn as well as ano
ther, contribute to the blowing up of the house ? Certainly if the
nation should receive some great blessing from God, upon the
score of desert, would not every particular man be apt to thrust
in, and ascribe some part of it to the merit of his own particular
righteousness ? How much more should we take shame and con
fusion to ourselves, and mark out our own personal sins, as those
that have stuck deep in the nation's misery ! As it is the duty of
every particular soldier in the army to fight in the day of battle,
so it is equally the duty of every particular Christian, to mourn in
a day of humiliation.
3rd Reason. Because God takes special notice of particular
sins ; punishing of a multitude does not make God overlook par
ticulars ; but he takes a distinct view of each several man's trans
gression ; as in our reading over a volume, the eye takes a distinct
view of every letter. It is our prudence to take notice of those
sins that God takes notice of; and, as it is our prudence to take
notice of them, so it is our greater prudence to lament them.
Hence we have God, in scripture, so often singling out some sin
ners : in particular, Deut. xxix. 18, God, speaking to the whole
body of the Israelites, says, " Take heed, lest there be amongst
you a root that beareth gall and bitterness." One would think
that in so large a garden one weed might escape his eye : but the
eye of God, like the sun, as it enlightens the whole world, so it
discovers every little atom. It is said that God would " search
Jerusalem with candles : so exact is he in his survey of each
several man's condition. In Psalm xiv. 2, " God looketh down

156 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XI.
from heaven, to see if there were any one, whose heart sought
the Lord : and in the third verse he brings a particular report
of their wickedness ; " There is none that doeth good, no, not
one." He speaks as if he had searched and considered them one
by one. Now the consideration of this, that God takes a par
ticular notice of our personal misdemeanours, should engage us
to set about a particular amendment. When workmen know
their master will come, and take a particular account of each
man's several task, this is a sufficient argument to make them
fearful to be negligent, and incite them to be accurate in their
performance of it. God oftentimes, in a general judgment, has
a more especial design upon some few particular sinners ; as when
Joab drew up a party of men to be slain by the Ammonites, his
design was only directed to the death of Uriah. God, when he
commissions his plagues to go over a nation, he gives them more
especial charge to visit such and such a sinner. God sends a war
and the sword abroad to such a nation ; but be sure, says he, take
such a secure sinner, such a covetous person in your way : let his
goods and his substanee be rifled, and made a spoil : I have ob
served, that his heart has been estranged from me, and wholly set
upon the world. He bids a sickness go to such a people: but be
sure, says he, forget not to take off such a backsliding, incorrigible
sinner ; he cumbers the ground, and I can bear with him no
longer. To speak according to the manner of men, God does as
really mark out and separate some sinners, more especially, to a
general destruction, as David gave his captain a more especial
command to preserve Absalom. This is a third reason why men
should, in their humiliations, descend to a particular removal of
their personal sins, because God accurately considers them.
4th Reason. No humiliation can be well and sincere, unless
it be personal and particular. It is a saying, that there is dolus
in universalibus, deceit in universals. In general acknowledg
ments, a man is apt to put a fallacy upon his soul, and to take
that for repentance which is no repentance. He that is truly
humbled and repents, his voice must be, not " We have sinned,"
but, " I have sinned against the Lord." Nathan, when he would
force home a sound, real humiliation upon David, he makes his
case particular, " Thou art the man," 2 Sam. xii. 7. The only
word that dropped from Pharaoh, that seemed to have something
in it of true humiliation, was that in Exod. ix. 27, "In this I
have sinnned : the Lord is righteous, but I and my people
are wicked." Now it is clear, that this is the only true way of
humiliation, for this is the way and the method that the Spirit of
God takes in humbling the soul ; it makes a personal particular
application of all God's curses against sinners to the soul: The
word in general says, " Cursed be he that continues not in all these
things that are written in the law, fo observe and do them." Here
the Spirit comes in, and with much power tells a soul, " Thou art

PUBLIC CALAMITY A CALL TO PUBLIC HUMILIATION. 157
the man," thou art he that has broken God's commands, violated
his laws, trampled upon all his precepts, and therefore thou art
he that liest under the dint of this heavy curse: God means
thee ; God speaks to thee in particular ; therefore take it to thy
self, and be humbled. Now the reason that a man's considera
tion of his particular sins is the means to produce a true and
thorough humiliation is, because man is only humbled for those
things in which he is concerned ; and no man looks upon himself
as concerned in a general evil, till he makes it particular by a
personal application. When we hear of sickness abroad, we are
not much moved ; but when we find the symptoms of it upon our
own bodies, then we speak more feelingly of it, and use the utmost
care to remove it. The notions we have of sin, and misery that
follows sin, are but common and superficial, till we make them
particular by our own experience. If we would kill our sins,
we must not shoot our arrows at random, at sin in general, but
single them out, and take a distinct aim at every sin in particular.
Although to make the work of humiliation more easy, I should
advise the soul to this way, because we may master and conquer
these sins by our sorrows, thatv we take severally and apart, which
we could not well deal with in the heap. Those evils most affect
. our sorrows that most affect our apprehensions ; but sins, as they
are represented to us in particular, chiefly affect our apprehensions:
-• generals and universals leave a confused, imperfect notion in the
mind; but particulars leave a more clear and evident impression.
Thus much of the fourth reason to prove this doctrine, that it is
the best and most effectual way to avert a general judgment, for
every particular man seriously to inquire into and amend his
personal particular sins.
6th Observation is, That upon our serious humiliation for, and
forsaking of our sins, there is sufficient argument in God's mercy
to hope for a removal of the severest judgment. Now the truth of
this will appear from these three things :
(1.) Because God has promised upon true humiliation, to
remove his judgments.
(2.) Because he has often actually removed them upon such
humiliation. (3.) Because, when we are brought to be thus humbled, God
has attained the end of his judgments.
(1.) There is argument for this hope, because God has pro
mised it. Mercy, it is the only refuge of a lost creature, the
only prop of a decaying confidence, it is God's endearing attri
bute. But since we have sinned, God's justice keeps us from
relying upon his mercy, till his promise gives us leave ; this is
that alone that opens a door of mercy to a forlorn soul, and
makes that confidence become duty, which would otherwise be
presumption. In Leviticus xxvi. the Spirit of God reckons up
many sad and dismal curses which should befall the children of
0

158 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XI.
Israel if they did apostatize from God, and break his commands.
Yet in the 41st and 42nd verses, he promises them an after-
return of mercy upon their humiliation. So merciful is God, that
he closeth his threatenings with prescriptions how to avoid them :
and in the midst of judgment shows the way how to regain
mercy. What God promised to Israel he does as truly promise
to us ; for his mercy, that caused him to make this promise, is the
same yesterday and to-day. And as the apostle observes, no
promise is of private interpretation. In the forementioned Jer.
xxxvi. 3, "It maybe,"says God, "that the house of Judah will
hear all the evil that I purpose to do unto them, that they may
return every man from his evil way, that I may forgive their
iniquity and their sin." Where God forgives the sin he always
removes the judgment. Why do we not then engage our utmost
in these duties ? Is not God's promise true, that we should not
believe it ? and if it be true, and we do believe it, is it not
worthy our closing with it, by fulfilling its conditions? We
have cause enough to believe, that God is much more willing to
remove than to bring judgments upon men. It is reason enough
that we should humble ourselves under God's judgment, though
he had made no such promise of mercy; even for this cause,
that by our humiliations we might prevail with him to make us
such a promise. But how much readier should we be in this
duty, now the promise is prepared and presented to our hands !
Surely if our miseries abide upon us, it is not because God is
wanting to us, but we are wanting to ourselves.
(2.) There is argument for hope, because God has often
removed judgments upon a sincere humiliation. And if we can
not command our faith to believe what God has promised to dd,
yet let us believe what God has done already. Every instance
in this nature, it is an overplus of evidence to overrule us into
this persuasion. A promise with an instance, it is like an excel
lent medicine with a probatum est, ratified by experience. The
first instance of those that have tasted mercy after humiliation is
that in the text, the 10th verse, " And God saw their works,
that they turned from their evil way ; and God repented of the
evil that he had said that he would do unto them, and he did it
not." God will let men see that he can more easily repent of
his anger than they of their sins. The second instance is that of
Manasses ; a prodigy of sin, one, as it were raised up on purpose,
in whom it might appear how far wickedness might proceed ;
yet we know upon his humiliation, God turned his captivity,
and set him loose from his chains, and from a prison (a thing
seldom known in any age) he returned him to a kingdom,
2 Chron. xxxiii. 12, 13. Now is there any man that can
rationally doubt of the strength of humiliation, after • it has
restored a Manasses ? The third instance is that of Ahab, one
almost as deep in sin as Manasses ; one that sold himself to do

PUBLIC CALAMITY A CALL TO PUBLIC HUMILIATION. 159
wickedly ; a king of Israel, yet a slave to sin ; polluted with the
blood of his innocent neighbour ; yet when the curse of God met
him, and shook him into a humiliation, 1 Kings xxi. 29, God's
anger thereupon leaves him for a while, and though his justice
could not let him take away the punishment, yet his mercy caused
him to defer it. God's fury in this case, if I may so express it,
something resembling an ague ; it shook him for a while, and then
it left him. All divines do agree, that Ahab's humiliation was not
sincere, but only hypocritical. Now if God were so merciful as
to reward the bare outside of an humble repentance with such an
abatement of a judgment, will he not answer and reward thy
hearty, sincere humiliation with an entire removal of it ? In
Psalm cvii. 17 — 19, " Fools, because of their transgression, and
because of their iniquities, are afflicted ; their soul abhorreth all
manner of meat, and they draw near unto the gates of death ;
then they cry unto the Lord in their troubles, he saveth them out
of their distresses." Here we have another kind of unsincere re
pentance, seconded with an undeserved reward. And can God so
love the very picture of humiliation, and not love and embrace
that much more ? Can. the bare show of repentance delay God's
stroke, and shall not the reality and truth of it avert it? Cer
tainly this is the only reason that God shows himself so favoura
ble to hypocrites' bare pretences, that he may encourage our real
endeavours. (3.) There is argument to hope for the removal of a judgment
upon true humiliation, because in this God attains the end of his
judgments. No need of further purging when the humour is
carried off. God's actions extend no further than his designs.
God does not punish that he may punish, but that he may hum
ble ; wherefore, when humility is produced, his punishments pro
ceed no further : God is of too great mercy to triumph over a pros
trate soul. There is a resurrection from misery as well as from
the grave. It is true God is said to kill, 1 Sam. ii. 6, but in the
next words it is added, that " he makes alive." God does not
punish us that he may thence receive satisfaction for our sins, for
then, as our sin is infinite, so our punishments would be endless.
All satisfaction is laid up in Christ, and when we are thoroughly
humble for sin, that satisfactic n is then actually made ours. No
wonder, therefore, if God's judgments vanish before that satis
faction ; if it removes a temporal judgment, that rescues from an
eternal. This is certain and worth our observation, that God
never sends a judgment upon any of his children, but it is for one
of these two ends, either to prevent or remove sin. Oh, says
God, here is a poor soul that is hugging and embracing its sin,
pleasing itself in its own ruin ; unless sin be embittered to it by
some severe affliction, it will never leave it, but perish in it.
Here is another ready to sin, in a posture to close with any
temptation, going on' in the ready road to death. Oh, says God,

160 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XI.
here is another poor creature, that if some sharp judgment does
not meet and stop it, it is posting on with a full career to its own
perdition. Now God does effect both these works, to wit, the re
moval and the prevention of sin, by the instrumental help of a
thorough humiliation. Consider therefore with thyself, thou that
hast lain a long time under any cross or affliction from God, has
thy affliction humbled thee ? has it weakened thy sin, strengthened
thy hands to duty? if it has not thou hast cause to fear that God
will either continue that judgment that now presses thee, or bring
a greater and a sorer evil upon thee. But, on the other hand, if
thy affliction has wrought kindly, if it has cleansed off the filth
and corruption of thy heart, if it has brought thee to disesteem the
world, and value Christ, to look upon sin as a greater evil than
death, believe it, God has done his work upon thee, and he will
quickly remove either the judgment itself, or the venom and sting
of it. Now the showers of repentance are fallen, the clouds of
God's wrath are vanishing : and he 'is coming forth to meet thee
as a poor returning prodigal. He looks upon thee as he did once
upon Ephraim, Jer. xxxi.' 18 — 20, " I have surely heard Ephraim
bemoaning himself, &c, therefore my bowels are troubled for him:
I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord." If thou hast
a heart to mourn over thy sin, God has bowels of compassion to
yearn and relent over thee. If thou canst in sincerity say, I will
sin no more, God is as ready to say, that he will afflict no more.
Believe it, if thou hast a purpose to return to God, God. has
mercy to return to thee.
To which God therefore be rendered and ascribed, as is most
due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for
evermore. Amen.

161

SERMON XII.
poverty of spirit enjoined by the gospel.
Matthew v. 3.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
It is doubtless a great paradox in the general judgment and
opinion of the world, that any poverty, of what sort soever,
should be desirable : forasmuch as every one desires to enjoy the
good things of the world, and thereby to enjoy himself; to the
attainment of which, riches are the most acknowledged means.
And if these are the prime instrument of enjoyment, poverty
surely must be the main opposite to it. But the gospel we con
fess, is a system of paradoxes and absurdities to the maxims of
the world ; the grand rule, which the generality of mankind both
live and judge by, being to follow the full bent of their sensua
lity. And therefore our Saviour begins this his notable and
great sermon on the mount, with seven or eight such proposi
tions, as directly oppose and bid defiance to the opinions and
practices of the carnal world : and these he ushers in with the
commendation of that so much abhorred thing, called poverty.
And that also such a poverty, as rests not only in the surface of
the body, clothing that with rags, or, which is worse, with nothing ;
but such a one as enters into the very soul, and strips the spirit,
leaving that naked, destitute, and forlorn.
In the words we have these two things considerable :
I. A quality or disposition recommended by our Saviour, which
is poverty of spirit.
n. The ground and argument upon which it is recommended,
namely that it entitles him who has it to "the kingdom of
heaven." I. And for the first of these, the thing recommended by our Sa
viour, viz. poverty qf spirit. In the treating of which, I shall,
1. Declare the nature of" this poverty of spirit; and, 2. Show tbe
means by which it is to be obtained.
As for the nature of it, I shall give an account of this,
First, Negatively, by showing what it is not.
Secondly, Positively, by showing what it is, and wherein it does
consist. First of all then, that excellent thing here recommended by our
Saviour is not
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162 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xii.
(1.) A mere outward indigence, and want of all the accommo
dations of common life. For certain it is, all want, considered
merely in itself, and not as sanctified by the Spirit of God to
some further use, is a curse, and consequently can of itself make
no man blessed ; as the poor, here spoken of, are pronounced to
be. It is possible that a man may be poor, in point of wealth,
but yet abound in sin and vice ; and experience shows, that there
is not a more unsanctified, wretched, and profane sort of men
under heaven than beggars commonly. are ; whose manners en
title them to a less portion of happiness in the other world, than
they can have in this. Many beg of us for Christ's sake, whom
Christ will never own ; as being the very shame and spots of
Christianity ; persons void of all sense of virtue, all conscience
of duty, either to God or man ; swearers, railers, idle, useless
drones, and intolerable burdens to society. Nay, and we shall
sometimes find poverty in conjunction with such vices, as seem
to be directly crossed and taken away by poverty. For how
poor are some, and yet how insolent! what pride lurks under
their rags, like a snake under the leaves ! Yea, and how luxuri
ous are many ! for there is scarce any man in the world, be he
never so poor, but some time or other chances upon opportunities
of luxury : so that those common expressions, ' as proud as
a beggar,' and ' drunk as a beggar,' are so far from being either
false or improper, that they are the most full and significant de
scriptions of a person possessed with these vices, to the utmost
height of them, that can be found out. Many there are who
embrace dunghills, the filth and offensiveness of whose lives does
exceed them ; and who are sordidly and nastily habited, whose
clothes are but an emblem of their hearts, and a lively picture of
their manners.
Poverty is not always the lot of the righteous, and the true
servants of God, who make a conscience of their ways ; but
sometimes, by the just disposal of Providence, comes to be the
inheritance also of the wicked, the unconscionable, and such as
would be rich, if they could, upon any terms whatsoever : but
the curse of God has been too hard for them, and put them be
hind-hand in spite of all their gains : so that whatsoever they
have got has insensibly melted and mouldered to nothing.
Their riches have never stayed with them, but " made themselves
wings and flown away ;" and thereby taught the world, that to get
and to thrive are not always the same thing.
Besides, that poverty very frequently is the direct effect and
consequent of sin and vice. The drunkard drinks off his estate
like his cups, to the very bottom, and leaves nothing behind.
The vain-glorious man wears his fortunes upon his back, till at
length he has worn them out. The contentious man follows the
law against his neighbour, for the gratification of his revengeful
humour, so long, that in the end the very obtaining of the cause

POVERTY OF SPIRIT ENJOINED BY THE GOSPEL. 163
does not defray the charges, or remove the poverty contracted by
its prosecution.
But now, certainly, such a poverty can be no more recommend
ed by our Saviour than the sinful causes of it. For Christ com
mands no man to be luxurious, ambitious, or revengeful, in order
to his making of himself poor. He who is the one will undoubt
edly be the other. But the interest of religion and virtue is not
concerned, that a man should be either.
In a word, poverty is usually the effect of sin, but always a
temptation to it. For it provokes the corrupt heart of man to dis
contents, murmurings, and repinings, to sinister and base courses
for his relief, unless there be a predominant principle of grace, to
compose and quiet the dissatisfactions of nature. This therefore
cannot be the thing to which Christ pronounces a blessing. For
whatsoever renders a man blest may be the proper object of his
prayers : but none surely ought to pray for a temptation, or to pe
tition heaven for a great calamity. But
(2.) The poverty of spirit here spoken of is not a sneaking fear-
fulness and want of courage ; for there is nothing base in nature,
that can be noble in religion. Cowardice is neither acceptable to
God nor man ; it neither promotes the honor of one, nor the good
of the other : it being indeed the portal and broad gate through
which most of the unworthy and vile practices that are seen in the
world, enter upon, and rifle the consciences of men. So that in
Rev. xxi. 8, St. John reckoning what kind of persons shall be
cast into " the lake that burns with fire and brimstone," amongst
"murderers, whoremongers, sorcerers, and idolaters," ranks "the
fearful." And why? Because fearfulness betrays a man almost
to all other sins. So that the fearful person is uncapable of making
good any relation of common life, whether in the capacity of a
subject, a friend, or a servant ; for a man's fear will make him
speak, swear, or do any thing, to rescue himself from an im
pendent danger.
And if this had been the proper virtue and qualification of a
Christian, there would never have been any such thing in the
world as martyrdom ; as owning of Christ in the face of tyranny
and torment, and holding fast the Christian faith upon the rack
and in the flames. And therefore it is " the righteous man " only,
who, Solomon tells us, " is as bold as a lion ;" and who carries in
his breast a heart too big to " fear those who can only kill the
body." In many passages and circumstances of life, it requires
no ordinary pitch of courage for a man to dare to be good : and
he must be a valiant as well as a conscientious man, who can and
will choose duty, when it is beset with the greatest danger,
and can defy the powers of darkness, as well as abhor the works
of it.
v Wherefore, since the poorness in spirit here spoken of by our
Saviour is neither to be understood of meanness or timorousness

164 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XII.
of spirit ; it is much that some should make the badges and cha-
racters of such a pitiful temper the proper indications of piety, and
the marks of a more improved Christianity. For do not many by a
sneaking look, and a whining voice, affect the reputation of pious
and devout persons ? Do not many behave themselves so, as if
there were no going to heaven but by creeping, no passing through
the strait gate but upon all four ? But such persons understand not
the nature of the Christian religion, if they think that such igno
ble qualities can be any parts of it. Christianity is a superstruc
ture upon, and an addition to the excellencies of nature : and
therefore, if a pusillanimous spirit debases and degrades a man,
considered but as a man, it can neither adorn or improve him in
the capacity of a Christian.
Having thus, by a negative consideration, shown what this
poverty of spirit is not, I come now, in the next place, to show
positively what it is, and wherein it does consist. In order to
which, we are to observe, that poverty, or want, is properly a
privation of fulness, or abundance, and consequently opposed to
it. Now a man may be said to be spiritually full, when he
abounds in a confident opinion, both of his own righteousness,
and his happiness thereupon : and therefore poverty of spirit,
which is its direct opposite, may be said properly to consist in these
two things :
(1.) An inward sense and feeling of our spiritual wants and
defects ; and,
(2.) A sense of our wretched and forlorn condition by reason
of those wants.
(1.) And first, it consists in an inward sense of that deplorable
want of holiness, which we are in by nature. We are born into
the world destitute, and surrounded with innumerable infirmi
ties : and, in the phrase of the apostle, in the Revelation, ch. iii.
17, " poor, miserable, blind, and naked." All the powers of our
souls are crippled and disordered, and rendered strangely impotent
to the prpsecution of good. Our judgments are perverted, our
wills depraved, and our affections misinclined, and set upon vile
and unworthy objects. This is the portion* and inheritance which
we derive from our first parents : these are the weaknesses and
evils we labour under ; and the first step to a deliverance
from them, is to be sensible of them: for we shall never at
tempt to be what we are not, till we come to dislike what we
are. Self-opinion and self-love are the great strong holds which the
gospel sets itself to beat down ; for by nature we are as prone to
overvalue as to overlove ourselves ; but in both of them there
is a kind of spiritual fulness and repletion, which must be re
moved and carried off, before the gospel can have its effect
upon us. For Christ comes with a design to infuse his gifts arid
graces into the soul ; but there is no pouring of any thing into a

POVERTY of spirit ENJOINED BY THE GOSPEL. 165
vessel^ which is full already. And therefore a man must be
emptied of all his vain and fond conceptions and principles ; and,
in a word, of himself too, before he can be prepared and qualified
for the infusions of the Spirit.
He who thinks himself holy and righteous enough, is a most
unfit subject for the gospel to work upon, indeed he is scarce fit
for repentance ; for Christ " came not to call the righteous,"
that is, those who thought themselves so, " but sinners to
repentance:" sinners, who in their consciences stood convict of
their sinful estate, who beheld the " plague of their own hearts,"
the sores and leprosy of their souls : these were the men who
stood in the next disposition for the reception of mercy, for the
alms of heaven, and the compassions of a Saviour: for these are
such as Christ properly calls the heavy laden, and upon that
account invites to himself. As for the Pharisees, and the opinion-
ators of their own holiness, the spiritually proud, confident, and
disdainful, they were men of another dispensation : the gospel
knows them not, nor justifies any such ; it finds them standing upon
their own bottom, and so also leaves them to fall.
That soul, upon which the spirit of regeneration has truly
passed, is utterly of another temper; it is still apt to bemoan
and to condemn itself: it sees its own scars and deformities, and
upon the sight of them falls down, and wallows in the dust
before the pure eyes of God. The true Christian temper shows
not itself upon the mountains of pride and self-opinion, but
dwells low in the valleys of humility, self-denial, and spiritual
dejection. And as it behaves itself thus towards God, so it demeans itself
with a proportionable condescension to men too. He who has this
evangelical poorness of spirit, is still apt to think others better and
holier than himself ; for his conscience teaches him to think the
worst of his own heart, and his charity prompts him to judge the
best of his neigbour's.
Upon a due consideration of which, I have often wondered,
and indeed think it a just matter of wonder, how some persons
are able to reconcile their high and loud pretences of piety, and
a more than ordinary purity, with that insolence and spiritual
pride, which breaks forth in every part of their conversation.
For how do some as it were, monopolize the covenant of grace
wholly to themselves, calling themselves the only people of God,
the saints, the godly ; looking upon all round about them as
heathens and reprobates ; and upon that account separating
themstives into little companies and congregations, as not being
willing to join, forsooth, in a less refined way of God's worship !
Which persons, though they have the good fortune to find
friends to countenance them upon a supposed political account,
such as call compliance prudence, and cowardice moderation ;
yet upon what grounds of true piety and religion can these pha-

166 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XII.
risaical separatists acquit themselves ? I am sure not upon this,
which recommends poorness in spirit ; for did ever any one yet,
endued with this excellent grace, say to his brother, Stand off,
for I am holier than thou ?" or bid defiance to a whole church,
and spit in the face of all church-governors, as every conven-
ticler certainly does, upon a supposal of his own transcendent
purity and perfection ; which neither upon clear evidence of
scripture, the practice of former ages, nor the judgment of many
thousands more knowing than himself (as they may very easily be),
he is at all able to make out or demonstrate? Such persons
may flatter themselves as they please ; but the gospel must alter
its voice, and say, Blessed are the proud in spirit, the censorious,
the insolent, and self-opinioned, before they can either have any
solid ground of comfort, or real title to a blessing.
Where true poverty of spirit dwells, a man thinks of nothing
less than his own perfection, which he utterly disowns. There is
no beggar and forlorn distressed person that more keenly feels
the afflicting hardships of hunger, cold and nakedness, than such
'a one feels and groans under his spiritual wants ; he laments the
hardness of his heart, his want of life and activity in the per
formance of duty ; he complains of the weakness of his faith,
the instability of his hope, the dispersion and wanderings of his
affections; he cannot pray with that fervour, hear with that
attention, and practise with that steadiness and perseverance,
which, he is sensible, becomes the excellent and exact measures of
Christianity. These blots and flaws in his Christian course his eye is con
stantly upon : and as they are the objects of his thoughts, so they
are the continual matter of his sorrow. Let this therefore be the
first thing in which consists this poorness in spirit here recommended
by our Saviour in the text ; namely, a sense of that deplorable
want of holiness, which we are in by nature.
(2.) The second thing in which it consists, is a sense of our
wretched and miserable condition by reason of such want; the
wretchedness of which appears from these two considerations.
1st. That we are utterly unable, by any natural strength of our
own, to recover and bring ourselves out of this condition.
2dly. That during our continuance under it, we are exposed and
stand obnoxious to all the curses of the law.
1st. And first of all, this evangelical poverty of spirit makes a
man sensible in how wretched a condition he is, by reason of
his own utter inability to redeem himself from it. He finds his
understanding much darkened, so that he cannot perceive and
judge of the things of God ; and his will full of weakness and
impotence, as to its choosing of them : it sees no beauty in holi
ness, why it should desire it ; but the stream of all its appetites
and inclinations wholly runs out after other things, things evil
and pernicious, and tending to the direct ruin of him that does

POVERTY OF SPIRIT ENJOINED BY THE GOSPEL. 167
embrace them. All this does a person so qualified find and feel
in himself; but, for all this, is still unable to enlighten his own
understanding, to sanctify his will, or correct his inclinations :
but, like a man bound hand and foot, and thrown into a quag
mire, there is he like to lie and sink, for any succour that he can
give himself, unless such as pass by have compassion on him, and
relieve him.
And therefore, as the assertion of Pelagius of the freedom of thel
will, and its full power to choose things spiritually good, evenl
since the fall, is indeed a great piece of nonsense in, itself; so those
that maintain and insist upon it sufficiently declare themselves to I
have little or no experience of their own hearts : nor can all the
rhetoric of men and angels persuade a person truly poor in spirit,
and fully studied in his own spiritual wants and defects, that he is
able to repent when he pleases, to believe when Ke pleases, and
to perform all the divine commands. For he looks upon it as a
contradiction, and a defiance to his experience, which -he will not
believe and subscribe to, in spite of all the world, as he has good
reason. And therefore, in his use of all outward means of grace, he
depends upon them no more them if he used them not ; but upon
the Spirit of God only working in them ; for he knows it is he
alone that can change his heart, and that must be changed, or
a man cannot be saved. It is in his power indeed to hear and
read the word, and to say his prayers, but this will not do his
work ; and for -this cause it is, that God often suffers a man to
wait upon him for many years in the use of these duties, and yet
gives him not his desired success, in the change of his heart, and
the conquest of his corruptions, merely to convince him of the
emptiness and inefficacy of all means considered in themselves ;
and to show him, that when these great things come to be wrought
for him, it is the sole grace of God, to which he is a debtor for
all. It would be long enough before we should hear a person endued
with this evangelical quality, to talk of his merits and his supere
rogations, of his fulfilling and even outdoing the law : for these
are whimsies framed and minted in the heads of those, whose
hearts never served them to be experimentally pious. That
poverty of spirit that has a claim to the kingdom of heaven,
neither discourses nor thinks after this manner ; but vents itself in
that doleful passionate exclamation of St. Paul ; " Who shall de
liver me from this body of death ?" It convinces a man that he
is carnal and sold under sin, and sold to a more than Egyptian
bondage, to the yoke of Satan, and the tyranny of his own base
domineering affections.
But surely none is ever heard to cry out with so much vehe
mence, " Who shall deliver me ?" who thinks that he is able to
deliver himself. None calls in for auxiliaries from abroad, who

168 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XII.
finds a sufficiency of strength to secure him at home. Let this
therefore be one part of the misery of that wretched condition
that this poorness in spirit makes a man sensible of, namely, that
he is utterly unable by any strength »of his own to get out of this
condition. 2dly. The other part of its misery, which this evangelical poor
ness makes a man also sensible of, is, that during his continuance
under this woful condition, he stands liable and obnoxious to all
the curses of the law. A sad consideration certainly, that a man
should be in a condition from which he is not able to rid himself,
and in which, if he remains, he is infallibly ruined. Yet this is
the state of every man by nature. He is born in sin, and "the
wages of sin is death ;" death in its utmost compass and latitude,
considered with all its retinue of miseries and calamities, which,
as its harbingers, make way for it, and by degrees usher on the
last and fatal blow, which from temporal sufferings translates a man
to eternal. -
Whosoever has a right spiritual sense of sin, knows the terror
of the law, and the dreadfulness of the curse ; what it is to live
under the sentence of damnation ; every day, every hour, every
minute expecting its fearful execution. And he knows also, that
till the Spirit of regeneration puts him within the verge of the
second covenant, he is responsible for the breach of the first, which
makes all that his portion, that the law awards, and the wrath of
God inflicts upon transgressors.
Now surely he that lives with these apprehensions quick upon
his mind, with the terrors of the Almighty fresh upon his con
science, must needs carry about him all the dejection, poorness,
and lowness of spirit before God, that we can imagine in a male
factor convict, and ready to suffer before men. His heart fails
and sinks, and is utterly at a loss where and upon what foundation
to fix. Only he knows that the hands of mercy are not tied, nor
the bowels of divine goodness wholly shut up against sinners ;
and that, as it is enough to rescue him from despair, so
on the other side it is far from ministering to confidence and os
tentation.
/ This is properly the person who works out his salvation with
trembling and continual fears ; as knowing that corrupt nature has
treasured up fuel enough in his breast for the wrath of God to
feed upon for ever : between which and himself nothing can in
terpose, but the free unmerited relentings of the divine compas
sion ; which, like tbe wind, blows were it lists, and lays itself
out upon whom it will, as being above the claim and challenge of
any sinner under heaven, whose title lies clear and questionless
to nothing but the curse. Now the sense of a great misery im
pendent upon a man, naturally casts his mind into a depressed
and an abject posture. For what person living can be bold, free,
and cheerful, who knows that he lives every minute upon cour-

POVERTY OF SPIRIT ENJOINED BY THE GOSPEL. 169
tesy, that he breathes by the connivance of his great judge, and a
suspension of that sentence that the law has already pronounced,
and justice may execute when it pleases. Such must needs look
Upon themselves as lost and undone by nature : and those whose
eyes God has never yet opened, to see themselves in such a woful
forlorn estate, but have ,passed their days with a blind assurance,
void of the least grudging, doubtful, or suspicious thought about
the safety of their spiritual condition, are not yet arrived to that
poorness in spirit that all must come to, before they arrive to
heaven. For indeed it would be but salvation and redemption thrown
away, for Christ to save any, who are not convinced that they are
ruined without Christ. None shall enter the gates of heavenX
whose fears and apprehensions have not sometimes placed thenv
Upon the brink of hell. For the vastness of such a change is that
which sets a price and a crown upon mercy ; and the apprehended
nearness of utter perdition, that which enhances and endears sal
vation. Having thus shown the nature of this poverty of spirit, and that
both negatively, by distinguishing it from what it is not, as also
positively, by declaring wherein it does consist :
2. I proceed now to the next thing, which is to show by what
means this frame of spirit is to be obtained.
As for the cause from whence it must flow, that is evident
without inquiry. For being a supernatural grace, it springs not
from the stock of nature, but descends from above, from that
eternal Spirit, that is " the author and giver of every good and
perfect gift." Reason is too weak a principle to discourse a man
into so excellent a disposition. A disposition that holds no inter-
Course with the flesh and the world, but raises the mind to such
desires, such ways and courses of acting, as not only transcend,
but also thwart and oppose all his earthly affections. But still,
though the Spirit be the only productive cause of this evangelical
virtue, yet there are certain means to be used by us, with the use
of which he concurs, in the production of it ; for God will treat
us like rational agents, and not like senseless logs, requiring us
to bear an active share in the promoting and carrying on of that
great affair of our eternal happiness. Now there are three ways,
by which, through the concurrence of the Holy Ghost with our
endeavours, we may at length bring ourselves to this blessed
poorness of spirit, a quality of so much value in the eyes of our
Saviour, of so much worth and weight in the balance of the
sanctuary. (1.) The first is a frequent, deep, and serious considering of
the relation we stand in towards God. The contemplation of
which will show us that unmeasurable distance that is between
him and us. It will convince us what nothings we are in com
parison of him1 that first raised us out of nothing. When we
Vol. IV.— 22 , P

170 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XII.
consider the unlimited perfections of his nature, we shall find our
thoughts even swallowed up, and our understandings dazzled, as
not being able to fathom so great an abyss, or to behold so radiant
a brightness. And this must needs dash all esteem of ourselves,
and bring us out of love with our own little supposed excellencies.
He that accustoms himself to meditate upon the greatness of God,
finds those questions continually rising and stirring in his heart,
How shall dust and ashes ever be able to stand before him?
how shall weakness and imperfection enjoy that nature that it is at
a loss even to think of, and never contemplates upon without
amazement? The creature never appears so pitiful and incon
siderable, as when it views itself with one eye, and its Creator
with the other.
Every thing is more apparent as it stands compared with its op
posite. Man is but a weak and a contemptible thing at the best ;
but much more contemptible, if compared to an angel, and yet
infinitely and inconceivably more despicable must he be, if com
pared to God. A glow-worm signifies little if compared but to a
candle ; but set it before the stars, consider it in emulation with
the sun, and the ruling lights of heaven, and what a silly ridicu
lous thing must it appear !
While men consider nothing but themselves, they may grow
proud and conceited; for little things may be valued by those
who never saw greater. He that never saw the day, may admire
and dote upon his lamp. But consideration and experience of
great things reduces and degrades little petit matters to their own
proper dimensions. " Those that measure themselves by them
selves," says the apostle, " are not wise." For when we make a
thing its own measure, it is impossible to discover any defect in
it. But bring it to another thing that excels and outshines it ;
and then we shall quickly see how much a tree is taller than a
shrub, and a royal palace greater and nobler than a country
cottage. Men are enamoured with their own reason ; but let them com
pare it with omniscience, and it is nothing. They perhaps value
themselves upon their dominion over these inferior things, but
what is all their grandeur to the royalty and universal empire of
Providence? what is their policv to the wisdom of him that
governs the world, and " charges'the very angels with folly ?" It
:s impossible for a man, that frequently and seriously thinks of
God, to value himself.
Now to these considerations we may add that also of our un
profitableness to God. For by all that we either are or do, we
can contribute nothing to that immense fulness that is in him.
And if it were possible that some emolument might rise to him
from our services, yet it were infinitely needless ; for what want
could there be in all-sufficiency? What need could his ocean
have of the drops of our bucket ? " Thou desirest not sacrifice,"

POVERTY OF SPIRIT ENJOINED BY THE GOSPEL. 171
says David. And God himself gave the reason why he does not,
in Psalm 1. 9 — 12, " I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor
he-goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is mine,
and the cattle upon a thousand hills. If I were hungry, I
would not tell thee, for the world is mine, and the fulness
thereof." We need not ply his altar with sacrifices, or spread a
table before the Almighty, as if he ate the flesh of bulls, or
drank the blood of goats. It is like that in the Jewish economy,
many were so stupid and gross in their opinions of God, as to
think that they gave him a repast, and a large meal in all their
burnt-offerings ; for certain it is that many of the heathens
thought so. And therefore, God upbraids' them with those
absurd discourses, by vouching his dominion over all the stores of
nature, by which, if he had thought fit, he could easily have
supplied himself without the ministry of any of the sons of men.
Now what those absurd persons thought of their sacrifices in
relation to God, the same now-a-days think many of the Chris
tians of their prayers, their services apd religious works, that
from these is imported so large a revenue to the divine honour,
that God is much the better and the richer for them, and could
not maintain his glory to the same height in the want of them.
This is the philosophy of the popish operators in all their religious
performances. But may not God answer these men, about their
so 'much valued services, as he did the Jews about their sacrifices ?
— I need none of your prayers, none of your humiliations, my
glory is above them, and entire without them. But if the ser
vice of any of my creatures might be of advantage to me, is not
the whole host of heaven mine ? Have I not thousands and ten
thousands of angels, ready at a word to fulfil my will, to execute
my commands, and to speak my praises ?
Surely if these men dwelt much upon the contemplation of
God's glorious nature, they could never esteem themselves for
paying God those services, of which he stands in no need, and
by which the substantial greatness of his honour is not at all
increased. For most true it is, that there is no accession to the
divihe perfections,, by the very best and utmost that the holiest
person in the world can do. And if there was no other rational
end and use of our obedience than this, God would never exact
it. For the ends why he exacts and requires it of us are, that
it may be both a testification of our homage to him, and an
instrument of good to ourselves. That is all, for there is no end
of profit or advantage on our Creator's part served by it, who is
neither a greater God or a mightier Lord, because we serve him
or pray unto him. Since, if we did not, he could equally maket
good his honour upon us, and fetch his pennyworths out of us byj
damning us for our disobedience.
Let a man think much of this, ahd make God the measure of
his perfections and his services ; and he cannot but see cause to

172 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XII.
bring down his spirit, and to make it poor, and humble, and base,
in all his reflections upon himself: it will show him how mean
and useless a thing he is, as to the compassing of the great ends
and designs of heaven ; how easily Providence can be without him,
without any straitening of itself ; and how far he is from being
necessary to the setting forth of the glory of his Maker. We
know how high Job bore himself, in the apprehension of his own
integrity, which he thought gave him the vantage ground so far,
as to be able to expostulate and to reason it out with the
Almighty ; nor could all the discourses of his friends reduce him
to a right understanding of himself, so as to bring him upon his
knees in a submissive acknowledgment of the righteous pro
ceedings of his great Judge. Nothing could control either the
risings of his spirit, or the insolence of his speech, till God
himself undertook and encountered him out of the cloud, dis
playing his greatness, his power, his wisdom, and his other sur
passing perfections, laying all these before his astonished eyes, as
we have them fully described in those four excellent chapters,
xxxviii., xxxix., xl., and xii., of Job: and the man's stubborn
heart began to bend, and to come down from its heights ; then
he presently knows himself, and his distance from God ; his
deplorable weakness, and his vileness, and so breaks forth in those
expressions, Job xiii. 5, 6, " Behold," says he, " I have heard of
thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee."
What follows? "Wherefore," says he, "I abhor myself." It
was the clear sight of the glory and greatness of the divine
nature that humbled him to this self-abhorrence, and altered the
tune of his former self-justification. Now let every confident, self-
valuing person, compare himself with those descriptions of God
in the forementioned chapters ; and if he has but his under
standing and his judging faculties about him, I doubt not but
they will have the same effect and impression upon him, that
they had upon Job, and make him descend some steps lower, till
they have brought him to the level of " the poor in spirit."
Let this .therefore be one way for the obtaining of this evan
gelical virtue, for a man to think much of the transcendent
greatness and majesty of God, and his own unspeakable distance
from him.
(2.) The second course that he is to take for the same purpose,
is for him to be much in comparing himself with the exceeding
exactness, perfection, and spirituality of the divine law. Self-
esteem, which is the thing properly and directly opposite to this
poorness of spirit here spoken of by our Saviour, is the effect of
men's rating themselves by false measures ; and, as I show, that
men's not measuring themselves by the infinite perfection of
God's nature brought them to overvalue their persons, so now
their not measuring themselves by the sublimity and exactness
of God's law, will bring them to the same false valuation of their

POVERTY OF SPIRIT ENJOINED BY THE GOSPEL. 173
actions and services. "The law ofthe Lord is perfect," says the
psalmist, Psalm xix. 7. But certain it is, that no mortal man is
so ; and yet it is as certain, that thousands think that they are, and
accordingly entertain thoughts of pride, naturally .consequent upon
thoughts of perfection.
But now what is the cause of this error, and where and how do
men gather up these unreasonable thoughts ? Why it is from their
ignorance of, or non-attendance to the law, which requires a per
fect original uprightness and rectitude in the whole man, and
throughout all his natural faculties ; it requires also a constant holi
ness and purity in his very thoughts and first inclinations ; it re
quires a universal, uninterrupted practice of the same in all his
actions, and through the tenor of his whole life : and this it does
with that unrelenting strictness and rigour, as not to allow of the
least deviation or turning from the rule ;' but inexorably curses
every the least and most minute transgression of it in thought,
word, or deed. This is the economy and constitution of the law :
" but who is sufficient for these things ?" What man can answer
all these demands, or live up to these heights ? What merit-
monger among all the sons of supererogation will promise and en
gage, upon the utmost peril of his soul, that from the first to the
last minute of his breathing in the world he will never do, or de
sire, or so much as think any thing amiss ? But if this be an un
dertaking too vast for weak flesh and blood, that will have its
failings, and lives merely upon the stock of grace and pardon ;
theh let every man let fall his crest, forget his pride, and learn to
h# poor in spirit, till he is richer in good works.
Let him come off from those false weights and wrong measures,
that pervert him in his judgment about all his actions. Some have
contrived the body of practical divinity into easy and flesh-pleas
ing propositions ; such as make salvation attainable by something
less than a good life. Now, so long as men trust to, and steer by
such directions, they may quickly and easily grow into a very good
opinion of their own piety and perfection, when to be pious and to
be perfect, is only to live up to an imperfect and a faulty rule : but
it is a ready and easy way of proficiency, for a man to learn as
much as he is taught, when he is taught but very little.
Others again there are, who measure the piety of their own
lives by the scandalous and enormous impiety of other men's ;
and will therefore conclude themselves holy, because they neither
revel it with the drunkard or the epicure, swear with the profane,
or grind the face of the poor with the tyrant or extortioner : all
which are heights and great improvements of villany, and such
as have many degrees under them, many impieties of a lesser
guilt and malignity, yet enough, unrepented of, to damn and
destroy the person in whom they are found. No wonder there
fore if men take1 up a fair opinion of themselves and their own
righteousness upbn these grounds ; and if they count themselves
p2 •

174 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XII.
very good indeed, so long as the being good is only not to be as
bad as the worst. .
But now what course is to be taken to dispossess men of this
false and flattering opinion? Why, surely, that course prescribed
by the prophet, Isaiah viii. 20, " to the law and to the testimony.
The doctrines of men may deceive us, and examples may blind
us ; but there is no trick, or fallacy, or imperfection in the law,
which issues from the fountain of infinite truth and goodness, and
so is reached forth to the wqrld as that absolute indefective copy
of divine holiness, that all mankind is to write after. This is a
glass in which the fairest soul may see its spots and deformities ;
a glass that will not, that cannot flatter : and therefore he that
shall view himself in it frequently and attentively, shall see
enough to shame and humble him into poorness of spirit : he shall
see how many flaws and defects there are in his choicest and
most accurately performed duties; how many infirmities cleave
to his warmest devotions, that the letter of the law would curse
and condemn. And surely, upon a due survey of this, if he
has but a spiritual sense of spiritual things, he cannot but loathe
and despise his own righteousness, as a torn and ragged gar
ment, utterly unable to cover the nakedness of his soul ; and
consequently think himself the most miserable person in the
world, if there were no other righteousness for him to trust to.
This therefore is a second way of obtaining this evangelical
poorness of spirit ; namely, for a man to compare himself and
his actions with the high and absolute perfection of the divine
law. (3.) The third and last that I shall mention is, for a man to
make a due and a spiritual use of all those afflictions and cross
events, that the providence of God is pleased to bring him under ;
for every man shall assuredly have his share of these sooner or
later, before he quits the world. And, as the scripture says,
"affliction springs' not out of the dust;" though it may seem to
us an accident, yet God does it by design : and what should he
design by it, but to discipline and cure the soul by the adversity
of the body ? Though the subject-matter of most calamities is
something temporal and external, yet the end of them is certainly
spiritual ; and this end can be no other, than by this means to
bring us to a sight of our own wretchedness, and great obnoxious-
ness to the anger of God, whensoever he shall be pleased to let
it loose upon us. For such is the blindness and stupidity of man's
heart, that while these outward enjoyments flow in fast upon
him, he never thinks of those things : spiritual pride and secu
rity drive all these thoughts out of his mind ; and he cannot
frame himself- to a thorough practical and severe consideration of
that woful and forlorn estate that he was born in, and that he
lives and continues in, so long as ease and prosperity keeps him
from feeling any of the penal effects of it : but he is cheerful,

POVERTY OF SPIRIT ENJOINED BY THE GOSPEL. 175
frolic, and gay, and while he thrives in this world, questions not
his happiness in the other.
But when a mighty blow from heaven strikes away all his com
forts, and leaves him stript and naked, despised and trampled
upon ; then other thoughts naturally begin to take place ; then the
ministers of his outward man minister to him sad and misgiving
reflections upon the condition of his inward, and make him doubt
where the great calamity may end. For his heart must needs tell
him, that affliction is but the consequent of sin, and that also such
a one as will determine where the worse and greater consequents
of sin shall but begin : and then how unspeakably miserable
would his lot be, should all these temporal hardships be but prelu-
diums and beginnings of an intolerable weight of wrath reserved
and treasured up for him hereafter ! Every affliction carries in it
many excellent instructions to a considering mind, when it hum
bles him under the feet of the insulting world, and covers him
with contempt and scorn. It can tell him also, that sin makes him
infinitely more contemptible and vile in the sight of God, who
despises a wicked person more than the world can undervalue a
man for his poverty, while it scoffs at his thread-bare clothes and
his empty purse. For God knows that the penury and bareness
of a soul unjustified, and uncovered with the robe of Christ's
righteousness, represents it more shameful than Job in his utmost
misery appeared to be, when he sat naked and afflicted, full of
noisome sores and ulcers, upon the dunghill, a mock to others,
and a burden to himself.
When men feel the afflicting hand of God pressing them, there
is also a voice from the same God, calling upon them to search
for the cause of that grievance in their own sinful breasts ; and
since they so much abhor the bitterness of the stream, to bethink
themselves of the overflowing malignity of the fountain, and
to hate and abhor that much more. For this is the only thing
that God drives at : it is not so much the poverty of our purses,
as of our spirits, that he regards ; and if the former does not
produce and occasion the latter, there is an affliction ; that is, an
opportunity' of grace lost and misspent upon us. But he that will
husband every temporal calamity to a spiritual advantage, will
strike in with the divine methods, and being humbled by God,
will humble himself yet further. Every judgment shall read
him a lesson of himself, discover to him the vanity of his con
fidence, make him low and destitute in his own eyes, and so
impoverish him into the best, the fullest, and the most abiding
riches. And thus I have finished the first general head proposed from
the words ; namely, the quality or disposition here recommended
by our Sayiour, which was poorness in spirit.
II. I shall now speak something briefly of the second ; to

176 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XII.
wit, the ground or argument upon which this poorness of spirit is
recommended : which is, that it entitles him that has it to the king
dom of heaven.
Christ never enjoins us any duty, though ever so irksome, so
harsh, and sp displeasing to flesh and blood, but still he makes it
worth our pains to comply with him, even in those his severest
and most unpleasant commands. For a man to loathe and despise
himself, to whom nature has made self-love so delightful, and
almost inseparable, must certainly be a hard lecture, and not easily
learned, because so little liked ; yet Christ invites us to it, with no
less a recompence than the gaining of a kingdom ; he calls upon
us to exchange an airy conceit for a substantial enjoyment, pride
for glory, and opinion for possession. If to be poor is a frightful
word, and such as carries but little allurement in it to persuade,
yet surely a kingdom sounds big and high, and the kingdom of
heaven yet higher ; and this is that which is held out and offered
to us to reconcile us to the former. To be poor for a time is but
an easy task, when the reward that follows it is to be rich for
ever : it is a duty that carries a blessing in its front, and is con
trived into such words, that it exhibits the reward before it enjoins
the work. Heaven is the first thing that it sets before us, and
thereby seems not so much to exact as to purchase our obedience.
Upon which account, though there is required poorness of spirit
in point of duty, I am sure there is requisite largeness of spirit to
make us capable of the reward. Now in these words, " Theirs
is the kingdom of heaven," two things are worthy of our re
mark. 1. The thing promised, the " kingdom of heaven," which I con
ceive does not here precisely signify the future state of glory
allotted for the saints in the other world ; but that whole com
plex of blessings that is exhibited to mankind in the gospel, the
economy of which is frequently styled by the evangelists, " the
kingdom of heaven." So that the meaning of the words is, that
those great and glorious things that the gospel is big with, belong
only to the humble, lowly, and full of the sense of their own
un worthiness, as being the only proper and capable subjects of
them. But now the gospel offers grace as well as glory ; it gives
the Spirit, with all its helps and assistances, to recover the soul
of man to some measures of the divine image, worn out and
defaced by original sin. There is a great deal of heaven that
the gospel imparts to believers in this world, giving them the
first fruits of glory in the sanctification and justification of their
persons, and those high privileges of sonship and adoption, by
which they are re-possessed of, and reinstrated in all those rights
that had been forfeited by sin, and so come to have a new claim
to what they enjoy here upon earth, as well as what they hope
for in heaven; for they are the saints only to whom even
these temporal blessings descend by covenant and filial relation

POVERTY OF SPIRIT ENJOINED BY THE GOSPEL. 177
to God ; which the rest of mankind receive only as his vassals, by
thediberality of a general and promiscuous providence.
2. The second thing to be remarked is, the manner in which
heaven is here promised ; which is in words importing the
present. I show indeed that the future state of blessedness was
not the only thing here intended, yet it is undoubtedly the prin
cipal ; and Christ here conveys it to the saints in terms not
expressing future, but actual possession ; not " theirs shall be,"
but "theirs is the kingdom of heaven." They do not so much
expect, as grasp it : it is not so much set before their hopes, as
put into their hands, and from expectation passes into fruition. By
this way of speaking, Christ designs to seal to us the certainty of
the promise, and to assure us that we have firm hold of heaven,
before we find an entrance into it.
The world surely would think that the poor man is of all
persons living the most unfit to make a purchase, especially to
buy kingdoms, and to bid a price for a crown and a sceptre.
But it seems that the evangelically poor man can do all this, and
yet not exaust himself; which shows that the spiritual person
is never so indigent, but that he can still outbid the world, and
possess himself of that which all the riches upon the earth cannot
compass ; for immortality and heaven, and not only heaven but
also the God of heaven himself, is his possession.
To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise,
might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore.
Amen.

Vol. IV.— 23

178

SERMON XIII.
PART I.
THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE DELUSIVE.
Job viii. 13.
The hypocrite's hope shall perish.
There is nothing in the world, though never so excellent, but
it has its counterfeit : religion and grace itself are not exempted :
so that in these matters, as well as in others, we often suffer a fal
lacy in our choice, by embracing resemblances instead of things.
Sincerity and hypocrisy are the two great things about which the
whole stress and business of the gospel is laid out ; namely, to
persuade and enforce the one, and to discover and detect the other.
And here we have hypocrisy presented in its greatest and most
flourishing enjoyment, which is hope ; and in its greatest misery,
which is utter frustration.
There are only two things that can require any explication, and
the words will be very clear. 1st. What is meant by the hypocrite.
And, 2ndly. What by " the hypocrite's hope."
As for the first, all hypocrites in the world may be comprehended
under these two sorts.
The first is the gross dissembler, who knowingly, and against
his conscience, pursues some sinful course, endeavouring only to
conceal it from the eyes of men : such a one was Gehazi, who
concealed his sharking, covetous arts from his master Elisha,
2 Kings v. 25. Such a one also was Judas, while he plotted the
betraying of his Lord ; he could eat and converse with him, and
yet carry on a design against him at the same time ; he could
bring the guest and the traitor to the same table. Such a one
was the lewd woman, in Prov. xxx. 20, who took secresy for
innocence ; and putting a fair face upon a foul fact, " wiped her
mouth, and said she had done no wickedness." Such were also
the scribes and pharisees, whom our Saviour upbraids so severely,
Matt, xxiii. 27 ; for as they had the outward varnish, so they had
also the inward rottenness of a noisome sepulchre. In short,
this sort of hypocrites, the utmost of whose religion is to conceal,
not to renounce their sins, comes within the number of those
that are even stigmatized by the heathen, qui famam, non con-
scientiam verentur : such as prefer credit before conscience, an
outward, lying, pompous appearance before an inward, sincere
reality.

THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE DELUSIVE, 179
The other sort is the formal refined hypocrite, who deceives his
own heart. He is many degrees above the other; for his con
science and his convictions will not let him take up in a course of
professed dissimulation. And therefore he makes some advances
into the practice of holiness ; but not being sound at the heart,
not being thoroughly divided from his sin, he takes that for grace
which is not sincerity, and therefore much less grace ; and being
thus deceived, he misses of the power of godliness, and embraces
only the form. Such a hypocrite we have described in Matt. vii.
26, 27 ; he raised a very fair building, but he laid the foundation
of it in the sand. Now both' these hypocrites agree in this, that
they are deceivers ; for deceit is the formal, constituent reason of
hypocrisy : only the difference lies here, that one deceives the world,
the other deceives himself; one resolvedly goes towards hell, the
other sets forth for heaven, but misses of his way ; one is a mere
shadow, the other is a rotten substance.
I conceive, the hypocrite here spoken of in the text is to be
taken in the latter sense ; for the gross palpable dissembler neither
does nor can rise so high as to entertain any seeming rational hope
of 'a future felicity. For he who knows his present estate to be
totally bad, and knowingly persists in it, cannot, with any colour
of reason, hope that his future condition should be good. And thus
much for the first thing to be explained. As for the
Second, By " the hypocrite's hope 2' is here meant those persua
sions that a man has of the goodness and safety of his spiritual
condition, whereby he strongly persuades himself that he is now
in a state of grace, and consequently shall hereafter attain to a state
of glory.
Yet, since it is not to be imagined that this hope is in the same
proportion in all hypocrites, we may justly distinguish in it these
two degrees.
1. A probable opinion. Now opinion, we know, is but the
lowest degree of assent ; nay, it is rather thought than assent ;
it is the understanding, as it were, halting between doubt and be
lief; rather catching at, than embracing its object. So that if
opinion at best be so weak, what is that that is commenced upon
a false ground ? that hangs upon the thin, rotten thread of a bare
peradventure ? for the voice' of the hypocrite is generally but the
same with that of the king of Nineveh, " Peradventure the Lord
will be gracious."
2. The second degree is a peremptory persuasion. This is its
highest pitch and perfection ; and it seems seldom to be enter
tained, but where hypocrisy is in conjunction with gross ignorance
or judicial searedness. It is hope raised into confidence, and con
fidence, as it were, screwed up to a kind of plerophory ; when a
man is so confident of his future happiness, that nothing seems
wanting but an actual possession.

180 »R. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XIII.
These things premised briefly by way of explication, the words
naturally cast themselves into these two propositions:
First, That a hypocrite may proceed so far as to obtain a hope
and expectation of a future blessedness.
Secondly, That all the hypocrite's fairest expectations and
hopes of such a happiness, will in the end vanish into miserable
disappointment. For the prosecution of the first of these, I shall do these three
things. I. I shall prove that hypocrites have such hopes.
II. I shalt show how and by what ways these hopes are first
produced in the hypocrite's mind. And,
III. I shall show how they are cherished and preserved there.
I. And for the first of these ; to wit, that the hypocrites have
and do obtain such hopes, may be evinced by these two argu
ments. 1. The first of which shall be taken from the nature and con
stitution of man's mind, which is vehement and restless in its
pursuit after some suitable good. Now the happiness of man is
not from within, from himself, but from without. And all the good
he takes in from thence, is conveyed, and, as it were, drained
through the apprehensions of his mind : and the mind, or reason,
not only apprehending its present state, but also caring for the
future ; it is accordingly put to seek out for a good that may bear
proportion to both these conditions, that is, both a present and a
future ; and a present good it takes in and enjoys by actual pos
session, and a future only by its hope. Now it is natural for
every man, both in his desires and designs, fo build chiefly upon
the future ; and that, I suppose, for this reason, because he looks
upon the future only as his life. For so much of our life as is
past is gone, and to be reckoned with that which is not : and the
present we know is a narrow, indivisible point, enjoyed and spent
in an instant : so that all our treasure and reserve is wrapped up in
the future.
And that men's desires chiefly run out after things future, is
clear, because the most ardent and natural of all desires, which is,
that of knowledge, chiefly catches at and pries into futurities.
Man naturally looks forward ; the eye of the soul is like that of the
body, though it passes through things immediately before it, yet
it always terminates in something distant. When a man is
dejected upon the sight and consideration of what he is at present,
he is naturally apt to relieve himself with the hope and expecta
tion of what he shall or may be hereafter: and it is not to be
questioned, but that all the world live more by hope, than by
fruition. Whence it is, that a person condemned, or mortally
wounded, will say that he is a dead man ; because he dates his

THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE DELUSIVE. 181
death, not from the expiration of his life, but of his hopes. And
this is so evident, that though in things of a most different nature,
yet the truth is still the same. For as in temporals no man looks
upon himself as rich or happy in the present possession of lands,
unless they are secured, and made over to him for ever ; so in
spirituals, a man that is acted but by his bare reason, finds no
relish or satisfaction in any thing at present, but as it is seasoned
and set off with an expectation of a future blessedness.
Every man naturally carries on some particular design, upon the
event of which he builds his satisfaction ; and the spring that
moves these designs is hope. Hopes of the future are the causes
of present action : for that the hypocrite performs some duties,
wades through some afflictions, and that he makes some imperfect
essays of obedience, it is all from the strength and activity of his
hope : this first excites and quickens him to the work, and then
animates and upholds him in it. Otherwise, the natural weakness
of his mind would quickly cause him to quit the field, and put
an end to such uncomfortable labours ; for when the sight and
expectation of good fails, it is natural for endeavour to cease.
Hope is that which antedates and prepossesses a future good ;' that
sets it in the view of the will, which alone puts all the faculties
in motion. From hence therefore it follows that the hypocrite has
his hope, for he has his course, and his way, according to which
he acts, and without hope there can be no action.
2. The other argument, proving that hypocrites have their
hopes, shall be taken from that peace and comfort that even
hypocrites enjoy ; which are the certain effects, and therefore the
infallible signs of some hope abiding in the mind. We may take
a view of the profound peace and security enjoyed by hypocrites
in several instances ; and first, we have the old world", though
polluted with a general corruption, yet enjoying a general peace
before the flood, so that in Matt. xxiv. 38, 39, they were "eat
ing and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and knew
not till the flood came, and took them all away." Strange was
the security of conscience that had seized upon these sinners ; it
was so great, that though death and destruction were even at the
door, yet they ruffled it in the highest actions of jollity that
human life was capable of. And in Matt, xxv., we have the
foolish virgins at so firm a peace with their own conscience, that
they could even sleep securely; shutting both heart and eyes
against all thought of danger. And in Amos vi. 3, 4, we have
some " putting far away from them the evil day, lying upon beds
of ivory, and stretching themselves upon their couches :" free
from all thought or care ; unless possibly how to make their
visits, or to contrive some revel, or to prepare and dress them
selves for some ball or lewd meeting. Also in Zech. i. 11, we
have the angel of God giving an account of the state and posture
of an unsanctified world. " Behold," says he, " the whole earth
Q

182 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xiii.
sitteth still, and at rest." To all which scriptures we may add by
way of overplus the verdict of our daily experience and observa
tion. For who so much at ease and quiet, who so jocund and
free from anxious distracting cares, as those that are visibly
strangers to the sincerity of religion, apparently unacquainted
with the ways of God ? From which temper and state of mind,
we may undeniably collect and argue, that they have their hopes.
For where there is comfort, there must be hope : since it is built
upon this foundation, it grows out of this stock, as it is in
Job viii. 11, "Can the rush grow up without mire, or can the
flag grow without water ?" The hypocrite's hope is indeed both
a water that will fail, and a mire that will defile him ; yet it is
this alone, that for a while gives growth and greenness to his
comforts. If the heart of man were not pitched upon some
bottom, it would of necessity be continually sinking. Now hope
is the great and only bottom of a hypocrite's tranquillity. It is
this alone that feeds all his contents, that gives continual supplies
to all his satisfactions. And if hope did not, as it were, by main
force stand and guard the heart, a deluge of despairing thoughts
would immediately and irresistibly break in upon it. For if sinners
were assured of wrath, and had certain presumptions of future
vengeance, despair and rage would waste tht world, and men would
sin with a high hand, that they might not only merit, but, as it
were, even revenge their future sufferings.
Whence it is, that though God's decree concerning the final
estate of every impenitent sinner be Certain, yet it is also secret,
to prevent despair. And because God may intend even those
that stand sentenced by it, the transitory reprieve of a little
worldly comfort, he keeps them in ignorance of it; and so long
they keep themselves in hope. However, every reprobate is in
this respect before God, like a condemned person with a veil
drawn before his eyes. For if a man did really apprehend his
case utterly hopeless, he could not master the apprehensions of
common humanity so far, as to admit of the least comfort. For
did we ever see a condemned person (if in his wits) dancing and
ranting the day before his execution ? Certainly that man must
needs be far overgrown with stupid ignorance, or epicurism, who
could eat and drink heartily to-day, when he knew that to-morrow
he should die. Assuredly if it were not for hope, the heart
of the merriest and most secure hypocrite in the world would
break. Other reasons of the point might be assigned ; but I think
these two sufficiently prove, that hypocrisy and hope may dwell
together, that danger and confidence of safety are consistent, and
that a man's persuasions may both be and often are much better
than his condition. I come now to
II. The second general thing proposed, which is to show by

the hope of the hypocrite delusive. 183
wfiat ways and means the hypocrite comes first to attain this hope.
I shall instance in four.
1. The first is by misapprehending God. The first foundation
of this hope is laid in ignorance : for as hereafter it must end, eo
here it begins in darkness. Caution, experience, and accurate
meditation are apt to check hope ; because they lay open the diffi
culties of the thing we hope for. But the persons here spoken of
fetch their hope not from their judgment, but their fancy. The
sum of the hypocrite's creed and hope may be delivered in that of
Tacitus, fingunt creduntque ; they first feign things, then believe
them. And their grand leading mistake, which draws after it all
the rest, is about God.
It is indeed our unhappiness in this state of weakness and mor
tality, that the most advanced in knowledge and improved in
piety have yet but very lame and imperfect conceptions of the
great God. And the reason of it is manifest ; because we are
forced to understand that which is infinite after a finite manner.
For philosophy teaches, that intelligere est pati, et pati est recipere.
And one thing receives another not according to the full latitude
of the object, but according to the scanty model of its own capa
city. If we let down a vessel into the sea, we shall bring up, not
what the sea can afford, but what the vessel can hold : and just so
it is in our understanding of God. Besides, it is the proper quality
of the intellect in apprehending naturally to assimilate the
thing apprehended to itself. And these are the true grounds
of the natural, unavoidable imperfection of our apprehensions of
God. However, God is pleased to bear with our apprehensions of
him, though imperfect, so long as they are not impious and
absurd ;' and to accept of them, though below him, so long as
they are not contrary to him. But the hypocrite frames to him
self such notions of a God, as have no foundation either in his
nature or his word. He does, as it were, create to himself a
deity, and set up a god according to the model of his own sense
less imaginations. I know nothing that does so lively charac
terize and express those gross, carnal, grovelling conceptions that
hypocrites entertain of God, as that signal place in Psalm 1. 21,
" Thou thoughtest," says God, " that I was altogether such a one
as thyself." That is, he took the measure of God's thoughts of
sin by his own ; he rated God's esteem of duty by his own in
difference. Every man, through the native pride of his heart,
and the deceitfulness of sin, is naturally very prone rather to
bring down God to his thoughts, than to raise up his thoughts to
God. Now the soul in its course and practice of religion, having im
mediate intercourse with God, according to those thoughts it
takes in concerning him, it is suitably affected either with fear or
hope, comfort or distraction : and when it has once got this cursed

!84 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xm.
fallacious way of misrepresenting God to the conscience there is
nothing in him from whence it will not draw an argument of hope.
It will suck poison out of every attribute, strain every perfection to
make it subservient to the interest of its hypocrisy.
And first, for that sin-devouring attribute of God's justice, which
one would think should rout the hypocrite out of all his satisfac
tions ; yet even this attribute (which carries in it nothing but fire
and brimstone, speaks nothing but lightning and claps of thunder
to the secure sinners), as it is qualified and allayed by the shifts
and evasions of a treacherous heart, shall not at all disturb his
quiet, or entrench upon his hope. The hypocrite indeed does and
must acknowledge that God hates sin, and that his jealousy burns
against the sinner, that his law is violated, and his justice provoked;
but then he has this evasion, that justice is God's strange work,
that he does not afflict willingly, nor take any delight in the exer
cise of that severe attribute ; and that if at any time he does think
fit to exercise it, it is only upon gross, scandalous sinners, such as
wallow in the enormities and pollutions of the world ; such whose
damnation is visibly writ upon their present lives, as swearers,
atheists, whoremongers, and such like modish fashionable sinners.
But as for those who are civilized in their manners, and stand
guilty of no such clamorous sins, who carry a fair profession, and
keep the church constantly, though perhaps it is chiefly to see and
to be seen ; to such the hypocrite concludes that there is no con
demnation. But now, if after all these debates and reasonings, conscience is
still unsatisfied, and God's justice appears terrible, and his power
grim and dreadful, yet then the thoughts of mercy shall come in
and clear off all. So that if conscience and sins unrepented of
begin to cry out, mercy shall cry louder : if vengeance seems ready
to strike, mercy shall divert the stroke. Whatsoever objections
the hypocrite can make against himself from God's justice, he
will answer from the topic of his mercy.
But then here the fallacy lies : the hypocrite considers God's
justice appeased and his mercy enlarged ; but he does not con
sider the qualifications of those persons to whom these attributes
bear such a gracious aspect. It is confessed, God's justice is satis
fied and his anger is disarmed, but it is so to those only whose
sins are remitted, and whose persons justified ; and whose burden
is entirely transferred, and cast upon the person of Christ their
great surety, whose satisfaction wards off the sin-revenging justice
of -God only from the penitent and truly pious. But what is this
to the hypocrite, who was never translated and implanted into
Christ by a true and lively faith ?
And then, for that other attribute of mercy ; it is indeed infi
nite and boundless in its outgoings ; it covers all sin, keeps off
the law, and evacuates the curse. But it does these great things
only for such as are true believers and regenerate, and to be so

THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE DELUSIVE. 185
is a harder matter than the world generally takes it for. But this
the hypocrite does not consider, and therefore he retains his con
fidence ; he catches at the mercy, but overlooks the condition;
and so no wonder if he has hope, where he has no interest.
And thus much for tjie first way by which the hypocrite raises his
false hope, namely by his misapprehensions of God, and particu
larly in respect of those two great attributes, his justice and his
mercy. 2. The second way by which he raises the same false hope is
by his misunderstanding of sin. Sin, one way or other, is the
true cause of all the trouble, anguish, and despair, that is incident
to the mind of man. Every tear springs from this fountain.
Every thought of terror and distrust issues from sin, as from its
first occasion and original. But now these troubles and despairs
about the main issues of a man's future happiness, being very
irksome and contrary to the heart's content, a man is willing
to gratify his heart so far", as to endeavour their removal, by
winking at sin that is their cause. Hence it is, that men
hold fast their confidence of life, though they walk in the ways
of death : for they studiously cast a mist before their own eyes,
that they may go on securely, and not to be forced to see that
which, being seen, would certainly constrain them to lay down
their hopes. Sin rightly apprehended would quickly confound
all their comforts, dash their peace and security, and lay their
fairest confidence in the dust.
Wherefore the hypocrite, to establish his heart in hope,
labours with all his might, and casts about to relieve his con
science with such easy conceptions of sin, as may not at all grate
or fall foul upon his comforts. He cannot persuade himself, that
that can be so henious and dreadful, that is committed with so
much facility. Many are apt to look upon actual, as some do upon
original sin, not as the error, but as the condition of their nature.
Love to sin naturally covers all its deformities.
And first, for the nature of sin in general, as stript of all its
circumstances and particularities. The hypocrite does not look
upon it in its native filth, as contrary to the infinite purity of
God's nature and his law, as leaving an everlasting indelible
stain -upon the conscience ; no, nor yet in its dangerous effects,
as dooming the sinner to all the curses that an infinite wrath can
inflict : but because punishment is only threatened while pleasure
is presented, the colour ofthe serpent covers his poison, the danger
is overlooked, and the proffer accepted, and so the pardon of sin is
counted as easy as the commission.
And from this undervaluing of the nature of sin in general,
he quickly passes into a cursed extenuation of particulars.
Some, indeed, hold and maintain a distinction of sins into mortal
and venial ; calling those mortal, that for their greatness and
enormity deserve death ; and those venial, that for their small-
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186 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xiii.
ness naturally deserves pardon : which distinction, as some assert
in doctrine, so all hypocrites own in practice, and it is the inward
language of all their hearts. For though perhaps they may
" strain at camels," yet they can easily " swallow gnats;" though
blasphemies, thefts, and murders may be shunned, yet sinful,
impure thoughts, words, and desires are passed over by the hypo
crite not only without remorse, but without notice, as things
below his sorrow, and not deserving repentance, much less con
demnation. Gross external acts of sin, he knows, are visible,
and therefore noways for his advantage ; so that no wonder if the
hypocrite avoids these: but this is not 'his penitence, but his
prudence ; not because he hates the nature of sin, but because he
fears the consequence.
And thus I have shown the first two ways by which the
hypocrite gains his hope, namely, by misapprehending God, and
misunderstanding sin. And when he has wrong apprehensions
of that which deserves punishment, and of him who is alone able
to inflict it, I suppose it will be no hard matter to conclude, that
he may easily shuffle himself into hopes of an escape.
3. The third way by which the hypocrite first attains this
false and spurious hope, is by mistakes about the spiritual rigour
and strictness of the gospel. God at first gave man a righteous
law, and entered with him into a covenant of works. According
to the tenor of which covenant, the law required exact obedience,
universa] holiness, and perfection : and this in the greatest rigour,
not admitting any grains of allowance for the least defect or
deviation. But man having sinned, and thereby broken this
covenant, " the law became weak through sin ;" that is, weak and
unable to justify, and powerful only to condemn : so that now all
legal dispensations are dispensations of terror ; and to tell sinners
of the law, is only in another word to tell them of the curse.
Hereupon God was pleased to introduce a new covenant, and
instead of works to establish our salvation upon a law of faith,
as it is in Rom. iii. 57. So that no breach of the law whatsoever
should be able to condemn him that believes.
Now the hypocrite seeing this, and reflecting upon the former
unsupportable severity of the law, he naturally dashes upon the
other extreme, and thinks that if the law were all justice, then
certainly the gospel must be all mercy, without justice. Thus
making it so the law of liberty, as not of duty ; and getting a
full liberty, or rather licentiousness of conscience, together with
a plentiful stock of faith without good works, he looks upon
himself as perfect and evangelical : and henceforward in the
business of justification, but to think any more of a holy life, he
calls it (as the phrase of some is) a returning to Egypt. And
therefore as for duty, obedience, and such other legal things, they
must belong only to moral men, who are not acquainted with this
sublime mystery of the gospel.

the hope of the hypocrite delusive. 187
Hereupon, having made so fair a progress, he proceeds further,
and proposes to himself the gospel, as it is held forth in the most
lax and favourable expressions, in sbme scriptures, which he first
misunderstands, and then draws to his own purpose.
As for instance, that in 2 Cor. viii. 12, where God is said to
accept the will for the deed. From whence, though he lives in a
continual omission - of known duties, and a frequent commission
of known sins ; yet he will comfort himself in this, that his heart
is good, that he means well, that his will is upright ; and God
accepts of this as well as the strictest obedience. But to rectify
so perverse a mistake,- such a one must know that God never
accepts the will for the deed, where he puts it into a man's
power to do as well as to will : but this holds only where a
man is disabled from the performance of his duty, in which
case the inward sincerity of the will supplies the want of the
outward action. As for instance, it is a man's duty both to fre
quent the public worship of God, and to worship him in private
with the humblest postures of body, as kneeling and the like ;
but if God casts him upon his bed of sickness, and the man is
not able to stir a hand or a foot, there is no doubt but God
accepts of his desire to do these outward acts of reverence as
much as if he actually did them. And if a man would receive
the blessed sacrament, but is in a place where he cannot have
it administered to him, it is as little to be questioned but that
God accepts the devout pantings and breathings of his soul after
that heavenly ordinance,1 as much as if he were really a par
taker of it in the outward elements. But what is this to the
hypocrite's case, who pretends will in contradiction to practice,
when both are in his power ? thus deluding himself and abusing
the grace of God, and withal not considering, that such kind of
expressions as this, that God accepts the will for the deed, and
the like, are not proposed to us as the standing rules of our
obedience, in our ordinary Christian course, but as special
arguments of comfort in cases of extraordinary distress : not as
our spiritual diet to feed and to sustain, but as cordials to re
cover us.
Again, when the hypocrite reads in Rom. x. 9, that " whoso
ever shall confess with his mouth, and believe with his heart,
that God hath raised Christ from the dead, shall be saved ;" he
finds that it is no hard matter to own such a belief and profession,
to carry the name and wear the colours of Christ, and so long
he concludes that this scripture warrants his salvation. And
again, 1 John ii. 1, " If any one sin, we have an advocate with
the Father." Hence with much confidence he can cast all his
sins upon Christ's intercession ; and though he continues to sin,
yet as long as Christ continues to intercede, he doubts not but
the interest of his soul stands sure. Now these scriptures, with
many others, being improved by a subtle, crafty, self-deceiving

188 DR. SOUTH'S , POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XIII.
head, and a wicked, unsanctified heart, lay the foundation of all
the hypocrite's hope. But if he would undeceive himself, and
consider that obedience is still necessary, and that Christ came
not to destroy, but to establish the law," as the rule of that obe
dience ; that he came not to give any new law (as Socinus and
his school would have it), but to vindicate and clear the old in its
just purity and extent ; I say, the thought of this would make
him begin to question the soundness of his hope, and try the foun
dation before he finished the superstructure.
Christ's yoke is indeed easy, but it is still a yoke ; and his
burden is light, but it is still a burden, and will be so as long as
we carry flesh and blood, and a body of sin about us. That one
gospel precept of self-denial seriously considered, how difficult it
is to our corrupt nature, how contrary to our most native inclina
tions, would make the hypocrite confess, that notwithstanding all
these gracious concessions and abatements of legal rigour, that
shine forth upon mankind in the gospel, he must yet be forced
to purchase heaven and happiness at a far higher rate than he did
imagine. 4. The fourth and last way that I shall mention, by which the
hypocrite attains his false hope, is by his mistakes about repent
ance, faith, and conversion. And it is not to be questioned, but
that mistakes about these have been the deplorable cause of the
ruin of many thousands : for, as Quintilian says of eloquence,
Multi ad eloquentiam pervenire potuissent, nisi se jam pervenisse
piltdssent; so many, in all probability, might have attained to re
pentance, but that they thought they had repented already ; many
might have believed and been converted,' had they not preferred
speed before certainty, and too erroneously and hastily presumed
upon these works, before they were ever thoroughly wrought
upon them.
The carnal hypocrite is apt to think every fit of sorrow for sin,
every grumbling of natural conscience, to be repentance ; and
therefore here he rests, thinking his sorrow to have atoned his
sin, and his tears to have washed away his impurities : not
considering the great and vast difference that is between fitta/ie-
¦kiadat, and aetavoiiv ; between a bare regret and anguish for sin,
causing the soul to wish only that it had not been committed,
and between such a sorrow as is attended with a total change and
renovation of the heart. The first may proceed from the prin
ciples of nature awakened, and so is common to those that finally
perish and prove castaways ; the latter is a product of the
special working of God's Spirit infusing grace into the soul, and
therefore peculiar only to believers. Now, if the hypocrite
would warily observe, whether the sorrow he so much trusts in
did ever yet cleanse his heart, so as to turn the full bent and
propensity of it to the commands of God, he would find little
cause for hope, and see that his very repentance was to be re-

THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE DELUSIVE. 189
pented of; and that all his penitential showers were like the
rain upon the streets, that does not cleanse, but foul the ways.
Also foe- conversion : if the hypocrite can strain his heart so
high as to relinquish some sins, to make some confession, and to
engage in some brittle, uncertain promises of future amendment,
he imagines now that the great work has passed upon him, and
that he is taken from the portion of sinners to the privilege of
saints. But if he would impartially read his own case in the
examples of others, and see Judas confessing his sin, and that
with much bitterness, and yet for all that a son of perdition ;"
if he would view Herod doing many things upon John's preach
ing, and yet continuing an unconverted, bloody Herod still ; if
he would consider Agrippa in the very borders of conversion,
and almost become a Christian, and yet for all that never con
verted, nor made a Christian ; he would find just cause to change
his hopes into fears ; and, instead of being confident of this work,
with much humility and trembling to seek after it.
And then lastly, for that grand deciding work of faith : be
cause the hypocrite, by a blind, irrational boldness, is confident
that Christ will save him, and redeem him from God's wrath ;
therefore he thinks that he believes, and that he relies and de
pends upon Christ ; but if he would examine his faith by these
interrogatories ; as, 1st. Whether or no he has overcome the
world ? for every believer does so ; 1 John v. 4. He triumphs
over Satan, he conquers his corruptions, and repels temptations.
And, 2dly. Whether he can say, not only that he does not sin,
but that he cannot sin ? not that he cannot commit, but that he
cannot approve or delight in sin ; and that he never sins with
such a full consent of will, but that it is still with some secret
reluctancy and remorse of the renewed principle : every true
believer is able to say so, as is evident from 1 John iii. 9, " Who
soever is born of God doth not commit sin : for his seed remain
eth in him : and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." It
is as impossible for the spiritual man to relish sin, as it is for the
natural man to feed upon stones or dirt. Now, I say, if the
hypocrite would bring his faith to the test of these questions,
and let his conscience truly and fairly return an answer, he
would find that there is as great a , difference between a well-
grounded gospel-hope, and his hope, as there is between believ
ing and presuming.
This therefore is the fourth way, by which the hypocrite pro
cures his hope : he reads that those who repent, believe, and are
converted, shall be saved ; and hereupon he remembers, that he
has been sometimes troubled about sin, and this he calls repent
ance. Also he finds himself full of confidence, that Christ will
undertake for his salvation, and this he persuades himself is faith.
And lastly, he finds that there is some outward change made in
his life; some duties performed. that were before neglected, and

190 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XIII.
some sins avoided that were before committed; and this i he
styles conversion. And herein is the whole stock upon which
the hypocrite trades to secure himself some hope of eternal
happiness. And now, to make some use and improvement ot what has
hitherto been delivered : if in this grand business of salvation,
the hypocrite may and does entertain a hope, then let none, from
the confidence of their hopes, conclude that they are not hypo
crites ; but consider at least, if not suspect the safety of their
condition. It is indeed the custom of some to put the super
structure in the room of ihe foundation, and first of all to urge
assurance ; but such persons measure their safety by their con
fidence, and so may very fitly have that speech of Solomon
applied to them in a spiritual sense, in Prov. xiv. 16, " The fool
rageth, and is confident:" for certainly where the venture is of
eternity, the greatest "caution is the best security. The apostle
indeed says, in Rom. xiv. 23, that "he that doubteth is damned :"
but this is quite upon another occasion ; and I am afraid that it will
one day be found, that many have been and shall be damned, be
cause they never doubted. For since there are so many ways for a
man to delude himself about his spiritual estate, since hypocrisy is
so connatural to us, and the heart not only easy, but willing ; and
not only willing, but also industrious to cheat itself into such
a vain hope ; can there be any thing more seasonable and rational,
than to caution such as think they stand, to beware lest they fall,
and still to fear that that hope is scarce sure enough, that can never
be too sure ?
And thus to persuade doubting is not to persuade scepticism in
religious matters ; for scepticism is properly a doubting of the
truth of universals, and of the articles of religion ; but the
doubting here spoken of is concerning the safety of a man's own
particular condition : nay, this doubting presupposes a certain
assent to the former; for if a man were not persuaded of the
general truth of religion, he would never doubt or be solicitous
about his .own personal concern in it. This doubting therefore is
so far from weakening, that it does indeed establish our hope :
for as it is said of knowledge, Firmissimam esse scientiam qua
oritur ex dubitatione; so the same may be said of our hopes of
future happiness, that those are the most sure and rational, that
were first ushered in with doubting and distrust. I say distrust,
not of God, but of ourselves ; for this kind of doubting causes
trial, and trial produces knowledge, and knowledge brings assur
ance, and assurance so obtained maketh not ashamed.
He that shall observe what the scripture says of the deep,
unconceivable treachery of man's heart, will have sufficient
warrant from thence to bid the most holy in appearance suspect
his condition. Let none say that he was converted so many
years since, and that therefore, though he knows himself under the

THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE DELUSIVE. 191
present power of some sin, yet his hopes of heaven stand sure and
good, in the strength of that his former conversion ; but let him
consider rather, how easy it is for a man to think that he is con
verted, when he is yet in the very gall of bitterness and the bonds
of iniquity ; and to take that for assurance, that it is only self-
flattery, and to think that he has a lively faith, and a lasting hope,
which yet being spurious and unsound, will one day miserably
deceive him ? and, having raised him up to heaven, leave him in
the lowest regions of hell : much like the flattering disappointment
of the hungry man's- dream in Isaiah xxix. 8, " The hungry man
dreameth, and behold he eateth ; but he awaketh, ahd his soul is
empty." This know for certain, that the only way for a man to
make his hopes sure and lasting is to be sincere ; and the next way
to attain sincerity, is first thoroughly to know and understand his
hypocrisy. And thus much concerning the second thing proposed, which
was, to show by what means the hypocrite takes his first rise, and
how he gets and obtains this hope. The third and last will be to
show how he maintains and preserves it.

192

SERMON XIV.
PART II.
the hope of the hypocrite delusive.
Job viii. 13.
The hypocrite's hope shall perish.
I formerly made an entrance upon these words, in which, after
some brief explication of the terms, I showed that they naturally
cast themselves into these two propositions :
First, That even a hypocrite may proceed so far as to entertain
hopes and expectations of a future happiness.
Secondly, That the hypocrite's fairest and most promising expec
tation of a future blessedness, would in the end vanish into mise
rable disappointment.
For the first of these, I cast the prosecution of it under these
three heads.
I. To prove that a hypocrite may and does entertain such
hopes. II. To show by what ways and means he comes .first to obtain
them. III. And lastly, to show how he continues and preserves
them. For the first ; that a hypocrite may and does entertain such
hopes : I proved it by two reasons, the first of which was taken
from the nature of man's mind, which was vehement and rest
less in its pursuit after a suitable good, and accordingly was put
to seek out for a good that might bear proportion to both its
conditions : that is, both a present and a future : and a present
good it takes in by actual possession, and a future only by its
hopes. The second reason was taken from that peace and tranquillity
of mind that even hypocrites enjoy : which are the certain effects,
and therefore the infallible signs of some hope abiding in the
mind. As for the next thing, which was to show by whdt ways and
means the hypocrite comes first to obtain this hope : I mentioned
four. 1. By his misunderstanding of God, especially in his two

THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE DELUSIVE. 193
great attributes, his justice and his mercy. 2. His misappre
hending of sin. 3. By his ignorance of the spiritual rigour and
strictness of the gospel. And 4. By his mistakes about the nature
of repentance, faith, and conversion.
These things I then insisted upon at large, and so far I have
gone ; and I shall not prevent myself in what remains by any
further repetitions ; but shall now proceed to
III. The third and last thing proposed for the prosecution of
the first proposition, which was to show by what ways and means
the hypocrite preserves and continues this false hope. And here we
must observe, that those methods by which he first gets it, have
in them also a natural fitness to continue, cherish, and foment it :
the same thing being usually the producing and the preserving
cause ; as the parent that begot the child will also foster and
maintain it.
But I shall instance in three ways more especially, by which the
hypocrite keeps up -and continues those hopes, which upon the
former false grounds he took up.
1. The first is, by keeping up a course of external obedience,
and abstaining from gross, scandalous sins. Now the hypocrite's
confidence having no reality or ground in being, but only an
imaginary foundation in his own apprehensions, it concerns him
by all means to keep fair with conscience ; forasmuch as that has
the keeping of, and the power over all his contents. And it is
withal of a lively, active nature, apt to discern sin, and apt to
pursue and vex the soul for it ; it will be flying in a man's face,
if not pacified, or at leasf deluded by some seeming pursuit of
religion. It is fo the soul as the disease called the wolf to the
body, if it be not continually fed, it will gnaw and prey upon
the body itself, devour and consume the flesh. - So if conscience
be not gratified by some outward services, it will recoil upon the
soul, and with much rage and bitterness torment and feed upon
that. Wherefore the hypocrite, that his conscience may not pass the
condemning sentence upon him, will be often bribing it with
some specious outward performances ; and that he may pacify it,
his chief work and business must be to possess it with this per
suasion, that he is in a state of grace : which being that which
the scripture in other words calls spiritual life, it does by conse
quence imply in it two things ; first, the principle and fountain of
this life, which is faith : and this the hypocrite thinks himself
endued with, from his forementioned mistakes about conversion.
The second is the acting and exercise of this principle, which is
called gospel obedience ; and of this the hypocrite must endeavour
to assure himself by his behaviour, in the continued track and
course of his life. Hereupon he is careful to conform himself to
the exact letter of the law, and -not to pursue those practices that
Vol. IV.— 25 R

194 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xiv.
carry in them an open, barefaced opposition to it. And so long
as he does this, his conscience is silent, and his hope continues.
The young man in the gospel was a pregnant instance of this,
who, reflecting upon his strict and unblameable conversation,
according to the several precepts of the law, vaunted himself in
that confident reply to Christ in Matt. xix. 20, " All these things
have I kept from my youth." See St. Paul also before his con
version : questionless his hopes of heaven were as full and fair,
as large and promising as his heart could desire, and the foundation
of them all (as we may collect from his own writings) was only
his external conformity to the words of the law. .Phil. iii. 6,
" Touching the righteousness " (says he) " that is in the law, I was
blameless." That is, according to the doctrine of the Pharisees,
of which sect he was, he placed a legal righteousness in abstaining
from those external commissions of sin, that were prohibited in
the letter of the law, and in the performance of those outward
acts of duty that were there enjoined : whereupon, leading his
conversation in an accurate observance of the outward letter,
he pronounces himself blameless ; and therefore doubtless, while
he thought himself thus blameless, he had all those hopes of
happiness that it is natural for a person, that thinks himself
blameless, to entertain. And that he gathered this opinion of
himself and of his condition only from his fulfilling the outward
letter, without insisting upon the inward, spiritual, stricter part of
it, is clear and manifest from Rom. vii. 7, " I had not known sin,"
says he, " but by the law : for I had not known lust, unless the
law had said, Thou shall not covet." In which words he considers
the law not barely according to the letter, but according to the
spiritual scope and intention of it : and though the law taken in
the former sense did acquit and absolve, yet in this latter sense
it did condemn him. And the reason is, because the law consi
dered in the letter did only regulate external actions ; but thus con
sidered, it was a searcher into, and " a discerner of the thoughts
and intents of the heart ;" and consequently did arraign the very
desires of sin, the first risings and movings of concupiscence.
Now that this external obedience to the law, and refraining from
gross notorious sins, is a singular preservative of the hypocrite's
hope, and a strong maintainer of his confidence, as it has" been
sufficiently proved by these scripture instances : so the same is
yet further manifest, from that strange method that God has
sometimes used for the conversion of formal hypocrites. He has
let them fall into some gross, open, scandalous sin, the cry of which
has exceedingly troubled and disquieted them, and beat them out of
all those refuges of hope, which the former civility of their con
versation has afforded them. Whereupon, being utterly bereaved
of their confidence, God has taken this occasion to let into their
hearts a full sense of all their sins, even so far as to discover and
rip open to them their sinful nature, their original corruption,
and thereby to convert and cause them to repair to Christ, and

THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE DELUSIVE. 195
by a lively faith cast all their hopes upon his satisfaction. And
no doubt, but it was upon this account that our Saviour said,
that the publicans and harlots, persons of scandalous lives and
prostitute reputations, yet went to heaven sooner than those glori
ous but rotten counterfeits, the scribes and pharisees. This there
fore is the first way by which the hypocrite continues and preserves
his false hope, viz. by the civility and outwardly blameless car
riage of his conversation.
2. The second way by which the hypocrite keeps up his hopes,
and maintains the good opinion he has conceived of his spiritual
estate, is by comparing himself with others, who are openly
vicious, and apparently worse than himself. There is no way
more effectual for a man to argue. himself into a delusion. It is
an easy matter to enhance our apprehensions of the value of any
thing, while there is a worse in our view. Clipped money may be
accounted good, if compared to counterfeit. The hypocrite thinks
himself religious, not from any goodness of his own, but from the
badness of others. He raises a structure of reputed holiness upon
the deplorable ruins of other men's, and so entertains both hope
and comfort, not upon judgment, but comparison. But as in other
things comparisons are justly accounted odious, so here they
are dangerous and pernicious. For it is this that makes him
overrate his condition, and set that price upon it, that God will
never come up to. This makes him overvalue his own estate,
and despise others ; while he should pity and lament theirs, and
amend his own.
This was the chief ground of the pharisee's hope and confi
dence, "that he was not as other men;" an adulterer, covetous,
swearer, or the like. When he sees the enormous intemperance
of the drunkard, and compares it with his own strictness, he
blesses himself with all the promises and assurances of heaven,
because he sees the other directly posting to hell. When he
sees the open profaneness of some, then he reflects on his own
religious duties and fastings, and so by a fallacious comparison
concludes himself happy, because he sees another very miserable.
He does not measure the holiness of his actions by their con
formity to the law* of God, but by their unconformity to the
actions, of others. In short, the hypocrite could never with any
colour of confidence think himself holy, if others were not ex
ceeding wicked.
But he that is apt to overvalue himself upon such deceiving
grounds, and to owe his perfection not to any worth of his own,
but to a foil, should consider that sin admits of a large latitude
of degrees, the least of which will ruin and condemn as surely,
though not so de_eply, as the greatest ; and withal, that there are
as many degrees of sinners as of sins. There are many paths in
the broad way, some of which are more cleanly, some more foul ;
yet they all tend to the same end ; and those shall in the issue

196 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XIV.
as certainly arrive at hell, that tread the cleanlier paths of a re
fined hypocrisy, as those that trash through the mire and dirt of
the grossest abominations. And therefore let not the hypocrite
think himself in a good condition, because others are in a worse ;
let him not compare his life to theirs, but let him rather bring
and compare it "to the law and to the testimony," and there he
shall read the vanity of his hopes, the deplorable defects of his
most exact righteousness, and find that it is infinitely more be
low the perfect purity required in God's commands, than it is
above the foulest practices of the most scandalous, shameless
transgressors. 3. The third way by which the hypocrite keeps up and main
tains his hopes, is by forbearing to make a strict and impartial
trial of his estate. That which first raised his hope, I show, was
ignorance ; and that which continues and foments ignorance, is
want of ^elf-trial. He that would thoroughly understand himself,
must first thoroughly try himself. For it is this that dives into
the retired depths of a deceitful heart, that does, as it were, sift
and winnow the soul, and singles out the precious from the vile,
that before lay in a confused heap, and placing them under a
distinct view of the judgment, give it a full and a clear prospect
into them.
No wonder if the hypocrite discerns not his condition, when
he never turns his eyes inwards by a thorough faithful examina
tion. For as in a trade, a man may go on and traffic, thinking
himself to be rich, when indeed he is poor and near breaking,
only because he does not examine his stock, nor take a survey of
his accounts ; so is it in the hypocrite's profession of religion, he
proceeds in it, and thinks himself in a thriving condition, while
in the mean time he withers and decays, and is ' near to cursing :"
and all this befalls him because he considers not whether he has
a sufficient stock of grace to carry him through his Christian pro
fession. A man must descend into himself, and retreat into his
own bosom by a severe inquiry, or live and die a stranger to his
spiritual estate, and at as great a distance from his own heart a§
that is from a sure peace. We know how apt every man is to
think his case good, and such as will abide the law, till the weak
ness of it be made manifest in the trial. "The rich man," says
Solomon, " is wise in his own conceit : but he that has under
standing searches him out." And so may it be said of the hypo
crite, that he conceits himself holy and happy, and in a state of
grace and favour with God, till such time as an awakened con
science searches him out, and discovers to him the vanity of his
groundless imaginations.
The foulest soul may think itself fair and beautiful, till it
comes to view its deformity in the glass of God's word. No
man can discover the depth and danger of his spiritual wounds,
but by searching them. But it is not to be wondered, that a

THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE DELUSIVE. 197
hypocrite is so fearful to engage in this work, for he has a shrewd
suspicion that it will overthrow and put an end to all his com
forts : and every man is naturally averse' from seeking after that
which he is unwilling to find. He that would fain be holy,
will hardly be brought to set about that duty, that will certainly
convince him of his unholiness. But how irksome and unpleas-
ing soever this work is, the hypocrite must know that it comes
authorized both with God's counsel and command : and 1 shall
here add only this argument to enforce this duty upon him, that
if his hopes and confidence will not abide the examination of his
own conscience, he must not expect that they should ever endure
the trial of God's tribunal.
And thus much for the third way or means by which the hy
pocrite continues and preserves his false hope ; which was the last
thing proposed for the prosecution of the first proposition : I
proceed now to the
Second, viz. That the hypocrite's fairest and most promising
expectation of a future happiness will in the and vanish into
miserable disappointment.
For the prosecution of which, I shall,
I. Prove the proposition, and show that the hypocrite's hope
and expectation of a future happiness will perish and be disap
pointed. II. I shall show those critical seasons and turns, in which more
especially the hypocrite's hope will be sure to fail him.
III. And lastly, make some application of the whole.
I. For the first of these, I shall prove the proposition two
ways. 1. From clear testimony of scripture. And here, though the
text itself be sufficient to prove the doctrine drawn from it, this
being only a variation of that into other words ; yet, for the
more clear and evident illustration of the truth in hand, we will
take in also the suffrages of other scriptures. And first, in this
very chapter we have seen the hypocrite's hope compared to flags
and rushes, which in their most flourishing condition are not far
from fading: but while they have one part in the spring, have
another usually in the fall. To-day they are fresh and verdant,
to-morrow they wither and die, and are cast into the oven : you
may spare the sickle, they will droop and fall of themselves.
And in the 14th verse of this 8th chapter of Job, we have the
hypocrite's hope compared to a spider's web ; a similitude of great
elegance and significance, and we may observe a great analogy
between the spider's web and that in a double respect. 1st. In
respect of the curious subtilty and the fine artificial composure of
it. * The spider in every web shows itself an artist ; so the hypo
crite spins his hope with a great deal of art, in a thin, fine thread.
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198 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xiv.
This and that good duty, this good thought, this opposing of
some gross sin, are all interwoven together, to the making up a
covering for his hypocrisy. And as the spider draws all out of
its own bowels, so the hypocrite weaves all his confidence out of
his own inventions and imaginations. 2dly. It resembles it in
respect of its weakness ; it is too fine spun to be strong. After
the spider has used all its art and labour in framing a web, yet
how easily is it broken, how quickly is it swept down ! So after
the hypocrite has wrought out a hope with much cost, art, and
industry, it is yet but a weak, slender, pitiful thing. He does
indeed by this get some name and room amongst professors ; he
does, as it were, hang his hopes upon the beams of God's house.
But when God shall come to cleanse, and, as it were, to sweep his
sanctuary, such cobwebs are sure to be fetched down. Thus the
hypocrite, like the spider, by all his artifice and labour only dis
figures God's house. A hypocrite in a church is like a cobweb
in a palace : all that he is or does serving only to annoy and
misbecome the place and station that he would adorn.
Sundry other* scripture expressions there are, that cast much
light and evidence upon this truth ; as in Job xx. 5, " The tri
umphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but
for a moment." The hypocrite takes a great deal of pains, and
by much ado pieces up his broken evidences for heaven, bolsters
up his decaying hopes, and by many shifts keeps up a contented
heart for the time of a transitory life. But, alas ! what is hope
lengthened out for a few moments to an eternity of despair!
when he shall be swallowed up in that black abyss of darkness
and despondency, from whence he shall never enjoy the least glim
mering hope of an after-delivery. Could he prolong his hopes
beyond the years of Methuselah, yet all these together, put into
the balance with perpetuity, are but as a moment, as an instant
that vanishes as soon as present. Hence in Job xiii. 16, Job
making mention of God says, that " the hypocrite shall not come
before him." Such a one indeed, while he jogs on in a formal,
seemingly pious course, may think that every step sets him nearer
and nearer to God ; but it is with him here, as with a man out of
his way, the further and faster he goes, the wider he is from his
intended journey's end. Again, in Job xxvii. 8, there is a pathe-
tical interrogation made ; ' What is the hope of the hypocrite,
when God taketh away his soul?" A sad exchange certainly!
But that which begins in vanity must needs determine in vexation
of spirit, horror of conscience, and eternal confusion. And to
show yet further how contemptible and vain a thing it is, we have
the wise man emphatically comparing it to a candle, in Prov.
xxiv. 20, where he tells us, that " the candle of the wicked shall
be put out." And what is a lamp or candle, but a diminutive,
dwindling, contracted light at best ? made only to measure out a
few moments, and to burn for a little time, both shining and

the hope of the hypocrite Delusive. 199
spending itself at once : so that, although it should not be blown
out or extinguished by any violent accident, yet it would at length
go out of its own accord, and that with an offensive farewell too
left behind. In like manner, though God should not, by any se
vere and boisterous dispensation of judgments, forcibly rend and
tear the hypocrite's hope out of his heart ; yet through its own
native weakness, having lasted its term, and, like a lamp or candle,
having consumed its little stock, it must die, and sink, and drop
away of itself. In short, we have Christ's own word, assuring
us that it cannot last, in Matt. xv. 13 ; " Every plant," says he,
" that my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up."
But the hypocrite's hope is a slip of his own planting, of his own
watering and dressing; and therefore, when God shall come to
purge his garden, such weeds and nuisances are sure to be cast
out. Thus, we see the whole current of the scriptures directly
set against the hypocrite's confidence ; we may read its doom al
most in every page and period of God's word : so that if this be
certain, that the word of God shall stand and abide, then this
must be also as certain, that " the hypocrite's hope shall perish."
2. That the hypocrite's hope of future happiness / shall as
suredly perish, may be proved from the weakness of the founda
tion upon which it is built. And we know, that in all buildings,
if this be rotten, the superstructure cannot be lasting ; if the
supporters reel, that which is supported must needs shake. I
have already shown that ignorance and misapprehension were
the grounds upon which the hypocrite's fairest confidences were
raised, and the only pillars upon which they were borne up : and
can we imagine that errors and mistakes are such foundations, as
to rear upon them a hope that must stand and last to eter
nity ? I have made it appear that all the hypocrite's hopes are
taken up from erroneous, mistaken conceptions of God, of sin,
of the gospel, and of repentance, faith, and conversion. And are
these, think we, likely to bear him out ? Because the hypocrite
builds an unreasonable, presumptuous confidence upon God's
mercy, do we think that this will secure him from the dreadful
blow of his justice ? Because the hypocrite never truly appre
hended sin, will it therefore follow that he shall never smart for
sin ? Will shutting our eyes against a danger secure us from
it ? Because the gospel, through the deceit of his ignorant mind,
seems to favour and release him from duty, will this warrant
him in the neglect of it ? Will ignorance of the spirituality and
strictness of the gospel discharge him from the curse of the law ?
Or because he falsely thinks he has repented, will this entitle
him to the privileges of the penitent ? Because he mistakes the
nature of faith, shall he therefore inherit the portion of be
lievers ? Thus we see how the whole fabric of his hope bears
upon the false and treacherous bottom of ignorance and mistake,
which support and hold together all the parts and parcels of it.

200 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xiv.
And as ignorance is one of its main foundations, so it equally
rests upon another altogether as weak and as uncertain ; which
is self-love. For as wicked and as confident as such persons are,
they are yet afraid to be damned ; and therefore they are wil
ling to believe that they shall not. And howsoever they live
here, they are very desirous to be happy hereafter ; and therefore,
they find their hearts very prone to be persuaded that they
shall be so. For I challenge the most confident and improved
hypocrite in the world to show any other ground for his hope of
ever coming to heaven, but only because he thinks so, and be
cause he would have it so. But can bare thought or desire alter the
-eality and state of things ? Well, therefore, may we conclude,
that that which is founded only upon ignorance and self-love,
must needs end in disappointment and shame. And thus much
for the first thing, which was the proof of the proposition : 1
proceed now to
II. The second, which is to show what are those critical seasons
and turns, in which more especially the hypocrite's hope will be sure
to fail him. I shall mention two.
1. The first is in the time of some heart-breaking, discourag
ing judgment from God. And here we must know that the
hypocrite has two supports upon which jointly he casts the
whole burden of his spiritual estate ; namely, his hope in God,
and his enjoyment of the creature. With the former he quiets
his conscience, with the latter he comforts his heart. For what
soever he pretends, and howsoever he seems to place all his
expectations above ; yet he draws all his content, his delight and
satisfaction, from the world. Like a tree, though he seems to
flourish upwards and rise towards heaven, yet his root is in the
ground, and he lives from beneath. He cannot place his joys
entirely in God, but he must have something else besides.
Ananias and Sapphira will cast in their estate into the common
stock of the church ; but the public faith will not satisfy them,
unless they reserve a secret portion to themselves. The hypo
crite cannot hope for another world any longer than he enjoys
this. Wherefore when God strips him of all his temporals, then
he is utterly cast down, his heart breaks, his hope fails, and his
confidence of future happiness vanishes before his present afflic
tions. He can look up to heaven no longer than he stands firm
upon the earth. Had Job been a hypocrite when he was
brought so low, and utterly spoiled of all earthly comforts, no
former hope he had in God could have kept him from following
his wife's advice ; but he would have been ready to curse God,
and spit the venom of his discontented heart in his face, though he
died for it. No hypocrite is so far of Job's temper as to be
able at the same time to hold fast his hopes, and to " embrace a
dunghill," and (according to his phrase) to " trust in God

THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE DELUSIVE. 201
though he kills him." He cannot heartily call God father, while
he whips and chastises him.
Hence Job clears himself of hypocrisy by this notable question,
Job xxvii. 10, " Will the hypocrite delight himself in the Al
mighty ?" God indeed is usually made the prop of his presump
tion, but never the object of his delight. He never attains to
those well-tempered, durable, victorious hopes of the righteous, so
excellently set forth in Hab. iii. 17, 18, " Although the fig-tree
shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vine, and the labour
of the olive shall fail ; yet I will rejoice in the Lord, and joy in
the God of my salvation." No, the hypocrite's hope and joy is
quite of another make and mould. He finds no taste or relish in
celestial joys, abstracted from the plenties and jollities ofthe world.
He finds no feast in a good conscience, any longer than he sits
down to a full table. Come to such a one while he is flushed in
honour, strong in interest, and all things flow in full and fair to
his ambition, and what devout discourses shall you hear from
him, especially sifter a large meal ; and what contempt of the
world, and affiance in God, as if his heart were already lodged in
Abraham's bosom ! But let God once put forth his hand and
touch him in his beloved name or interest, toss him upon the
tongues of his enemies, and lay him low in contempt and disgrace ;
and then come to him, and see whether he can now live upon his
former talk, and support his spirits, with those glorious pretences
he used to flourish his discourse with, in the midst of his former
affluence. No ; the case is quite altered, and you shall find him a
pitiful, abject, dispirited lump of clay : pale and whining, and
creeping into every company to tell doleful stories of himself and
his sufferings. Or, as the prophet Isaiah, li. 20, much better ex
presses it ; you will find him " like a wild bull in a net :" tum
bling and tossing, hampered and impatient, and fit for nothing but
to let the world see the strange and ugly difference between the
way and postures of a1 hypocrite in a prosperous and in a calami
tous condition. It is clear, therefore, that in the time of such
severe judgments, the hypocrite's confidence leaves him, deserts
and utterly fails him : for he cannot hold his hope in one hand,
unless he grasps the world in the other.
2. The other season in which the hypocrite's hope will be
sure to fail and to forsake him, is at the time of death. Al
though he has by many arts and shifts prolonged his confidence
hitherto, yet this hour will put a period both to his life and his
expectations at once : for the hypocrite's hope is but an annuity at
the best, he has it but for term of life at the longest. When a
few days in the flesh" shall be passed, he must be forced to lie
down, and breathe out his soul and his hopes together. And
though it might be said of him, that as long as there was life
there was hope ; as long as his body breathed, his soul hoped ;
yet at this time that saying of the psalmist must pass upon him.
Vol. IV.— 26

202 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xiv.
Psalm cxlvi. 4, " His breath goes forth, he returneth to his earth,
and in that very day all his thoughts perish." All his fond ex
pectations shall then upbraid him to his face ; Satan, his greatest
flatterer, shall then laugh him to scorn ; death shall confute all
his confidences, and hell convince him that his hopes of heaven
were groundless and irrational. He now steps out of an old world,
and finds that old things are passed away, and all things presented'
to him in a new state and dress : his old thoughts, his old reason
ings, hopes, and confidences vanish, and he has new apprehen
sions of God, new conceptions of the nature of sin, and of his
own state and condition.
For as soon as the soul is once dislodged from the body, it is
also freed from many causes of ignorance and deception that did
encumber it in that estate ; so that now its reason is quicker, and
its discernment clearer, both to perceive other things, and tho
roughly to reflect upon itself. It now spies out all the flaws and
fallacies of its former fair but deceiving hopes ; it sees the non-
concludency of those arguments that it rested upon before. Death,
as it shuts our bodily eyes, so it opens and enlarges our spiritual.
One moment after death shall discover the errors of many
ages : for the time of this life is a time in which all things are,
as it were, huddled up in a kind of mixture and confusion.
The righteous own and profess Christ, and so do the hypocrites ;
the righteous have their hopes, and so have they ; and both of
them live, and act, and are supported by their hopes ; and as to
any outward appearance, we cannot discriminate the unsound
from the sincere. But when death comes, that divides them by
an open and a manifest distinction; the hope of the righteous
is crowned, and the hope of the wicked is confounded : a line
of eternal separation is then drawn between them ; the hypocrite
must then let go his hold, bid an everlasting farewell to all his
comforts, renounce his usurped confidence, and take up his
portion in those mansions of endless despair, where he shall
have abundant cause to wish, but no grounds to hope for the least
redemption. And thus much for the second thing proposed ; which was, to
show those critical seasons and turns, in which more especially the
hypocrite's hope will be sure to fail him. I come now to
III. The third and last thing, which is to make some- use and
improvement of the whole foregoing discourse. And it shall be to
display and set before us the transcendent, surpassing misery of
the final estate of all hypocrites ; whose peculiar lot it is, not
only to be damned, but what is infinitely more, to hope them
selves into damnation, and to perish with those circumstances
that shall double and treble the weight of their destruction.
Hope is the last refuge and retreat of an afflicted soul, the last
support of a sinking mind. And in this life the heart of man is

THE hope of the hypocrite delusive. 203
not capable of such absolute, entire misery, but that some glim
merings of hope will still dart in upon him, and buoy up his
spirits from an utter despondency. But when it shall come to
this, that a man must go one way, and his hopes another, so
parting as never to meet again, human nature admits not of any
further addition to its sorrow ; for it is pure, perfect, unmixed
' "misery, without any allay or mitigation. The strongest affections
and the greatest hopes, if not answered, do of necessity leave
behind them the quickest pain : for if, as the wise man says in
Prov. xiii. 12, " hope only deferred be so grievous," what then
must be hope utterly disappointed ? If delay be so irksome,
what then must be total frustration ? Nothing is more contrary
and tormenting to the nature of man, than to be degraded ; to be
low is sad, but to be brought low is much worse. Poverty is
troublesome, but poverty after riches is insupportable. Former
happiness is the greatest ingredient of present misery : for look
what comfort springs from past sorrows heretofore endured, the
same degree of misery arises from past happiness heretofore
enjoyed. In Lam. i. 7, it is represented as the height and sting
of the calamity of Judah, that in the day of her affliction, and
of her misery, she remembered all her pleasant things that she
had in the days of old." It would be some relief to a condemned
sinner, if with the loss of his hope he could lose his memory
too : but alas ! when he shall lie down in sorrow and torment,
this will recall to his mind all that peace, comfort, and tran
quillity that his false hopes formerly fed him with, and then force
him to write this emphatical character of misery upon all : Thus
and thus I was; these things I did enjoy. No voice will be
heard in hell so loud and frequent as this sad and doleful one,
My hopes deceived me, my confidences deluded me. And, believe
it, this will make it ten times more hell, than the " wailing and
gnashing of teeth," and all the other torments of it put together.
For take the ease in a similitude : when a poor traveller, dis
heartened with bad ways and weather turmoiling him, and fear
of thieves besetting him, shall yet comfort himself with this
thought, that when he comes to his journey's end he will re
fresh himself at his inn ; and as soon as ever he comes thither,
he is set upon, stabbed, and cruelly murdered : does not such
a one, think we, die with a strange horror and surprise? So
the hypocrite cannot pass the stage of this world, but he will
meet with many crosses and discouragements, under which he is
apt to think, through the flattery of his hopes, that he shall find an
end of all these sorrows in another world. But then, alas!
they chiefly begin ; - then he enters upon them in their height,
fulness, and perfection. Hopes of heaven, therefore, by those
that either tender their own happiness, or dread the extremity
of misery, are to be entertained warily ; for if they are not
genuine, and of the right stamp, they will only end in a

204 tfR. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xiv
greater load of sorrow and confusion. They may indeed for a
little time support and keep us up in this world : just as a
man's clothes, when he falls into the water, will for a while hold
him up from sinking ; but when they are once thoroughly wet and
heavy, then they drown and sink him so much the faster and
deeper. . .
This we may observe, that those appetites and desires, the
satisfaction of which brings the greatest delight ; the defrauding
or disappointment of them, according to the rule of contraries,
brings the greatest and the sharpest misery. Now a strong hope,
suitably and luckily answered, comes, as it were, rushing into the
heart with a fulness of content ; it bears in upon it like a fa
vorable wished-for wind upon a spread sail. It is, according to
Solomon's expression, "health to, the navel, and marrow to the
bones." Satisfaction added to a longing expectation, is like a
refreshing shower upon a dry, gaping, thirsty ground. Nothing
so comfortable as hope crowned with fruition ; nothing so tor
menting as hope snapped off with disappointment and frustra
tion. And were it lawful to wish an enemy completely miserable,
I would wish that he might vehemently desire, and never enjoy ;
that he might strongly hope, aud never obtain.
Now, from what has been delivered, I think we may truly con
clude, that of the two, the despairing reprobate is happier than
the hoping reprobate. They both indeed fall equally low ; but
then he that hopes has the greater fall, because he falls from the
higher place. He that despairs goes to hell, but then he goes
thither with expectation ; though he is damned, yet he is not
surprised : he1 has inured his heart to the flames, and has made
those terrors familiar to him, by the continual horror of his
meditation ; so that when he dies, he passes but from one hell
into another ; and his actual damnation is not the beginning, but
the carrying on of his former torment. In short, to express the
wretchedness of the hypocrite's hope, I shall only add this, that
certainly that must needs be exceeding dismal, in Comparison of
which despair is desirable.
And now, 0 God, thou that requirest truth in the inward parts,
cleanse us inwardly and thoroughly from the leaven of hypocrisy :
sanctify us by thy truth ; thy word is truth ; and let our obedience
to thee, justify our hopes in thee, that so trusting in thee we may
never be confounded.
To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise,
might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore.
Amen.

205

SERMON XV.
PART I.
the duty of resignation.
Psalm xxxix. 9.
I was dumb, I opened not my mouth ; because thou didst it.
If we would give one general account of all the duties that are
incumbent upon a Christian, we shall find them reducible to these
three, faith, obedience and patience; and the vital principle that
animates and runs through them all is submission. Faith being a
submission of our understanding to what God commands us to
believe : obedience being a submission of our will to what God
commands us to do : and lastly, patience being a submission of
the whole man to what God commands us to suffer. Concerning
which excellent virtue, glorious things are every where spoken, not
only by the penmen of holy writ, but also by the sons of reason
and philosophy : and great eulogies of it might be drawn both from
their writings and examples. But, as we need not, so we shall
not seek for any beyond the compass of the church. And here
we have this virtue represented to the full, in that great hero in
the ways of God, king David ; a person signalized with that
eminent character, of being " the man after God's own heart,"
and therefore certainly a most fit example to make an impression
upon ours.
It is impossible that a discourse of patience should ever be un
seasonable : for to such as are in adversity it will be a cordial to
support them ; and to such as are in prosperity it will be an amulet
to preserve them. For since no mortal man can be so happy, as
to hold his happiness by a lease for life, every Christian, even in
the height of his enjoyments, ought in habit and disposition of
mind, at least, to be a sufferer ; that is, to have cast his resolu
tions into such a well-ordered, confirmed posture, as no calamity,
how sudden or great soever, shall be able to surprise or shock him,
either in point of courage or submission. It is one of the arts of
patience still to be beforehand with an affliction, and to expect that
all times, which a man may endure at any ; and since the healthiest
of men may be sick, it is but prudence, while they are well, to
have a remedy about them.
In the text we have these two general parts.
S

206 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XV.
First, David's submissive deportment under a sharp affliction,
" I was dumb, I opened not my mouth."
Secondly, The ground and reason of such his deportment,
which was the procedure of that affliction from God ; ' I opened
not my mouth, because thou didst it."
And thus, the words being a full lecture of patience, recom
mending it to us by a great pattern, and consequently being de
signed to argue us into an absolute submission to the divine will,
in our most pressing and severe distresses, we shall endeavour the
prosecution of them in these two following things.
I. In declaring the nature and measures of this submission.
And, II. In showing the reasons and arguments for it, as the suffer
ing person stands related to God. And,
I. For the nature qfthis submission ; which I shall declare,
1. Negatively, by showing wherein it does not consist ; and,
2. Positively, by showing wherein it does.
1. As for the negative part, that we may distinguish this great
virtue from all false and mistaken resemblances of it, we shall
observe first of all, that this submission, or rather submissive
frame of spirit, consists not in an utter insensibility of, or an un-
concernment under an affliction. For God, who gave us a being,
did therewithal give us a connate desire to a well being ; which
every affliction in some measure robs us of, and, as it were, rends
away a piece of our happiness ; the entireness of which consists,
not only in a freedom from sin, but also from sorrow. It can be
no man's duty to be above the laws of his creation, and to con
tradict his nature, by a senselessness in the midst of those suffer
ings which oppress it. We read in Ecclesiastes of " a time to
mourn ;" a time in which mourning is so peculiarly in season, so
proper, and so decent, that the contrary is absurd and unnatural.
God, who calls and commands us to sympathize with our friends
in their distress, surely will not forbid us to sorrow for our own.
It was noted for one of the most inhuman pieces of tyranny in a
Roman emperor, that when he had cruelly put some to death,
with a greater cruelty he forbad their relations to lament for them ;
thus, by the former act destroying the men ; by the latter,
humanity itself.
A pensive consideration therefore of the sharpness of an afflic
tion does not at all lessen our submission to it : for God never
heaps such loads of grief upon us, but that he still leaves us the
relief and pleasure of weeping, the privilege of free vent of our
sorrows. He never turns children of Abraham into stones ; but
whensoever he strikes, not only permits, but also commands us
to feel the smart. And indeed, how could we evidence to the
world a due sense of the favours and smiles of God, if we should
not droop under his frowns? For to be asleep with Jonas

THE DUTY OF RESIGNATION. ^207
while a tempest is rattling about our ears, is not submission, but
stupidity. . Nay, let me add this further, that there cannot be a
more dreadful sign of a man left to himself, and hardened by God,
than to be unconcerned in the midst of his afflictions. For he who
is so, certainly incurs these two great and fatal evils :
(1.) That he robs God of that honour which he particularly
designs to himself by that afflicting dispensation : for God re
quires that men should fear him for his judgments, as well as love
him for his mercies ; and regard the strokes, as well as the other
operations of his hands. Besides, that this insensible frame of
spirit clearly frustrates another great end of these severities ; which
is antecedently to fright and deter men from sin. For he who
does not feel God when he strikes, will hardly fear him when he
threatens. (2.) Such a person, by such an insensibility, renders every
affliction befalling him utterly useless to all spiritual purposes
whatsoever. For his heart, like an anvil, by bearing many strokes,
and feeling none, grows so much the harder by every blow.
Afflictions are some of God's extraordinary ways of reclaiming
sinners ; but can have no effect where they can imprint no sense.
He that can overcome and digest his physic like his daily food, is
not like to be purged or cured by it. In like manner, when
God takes in hand the cure of an overgrown sinner, and to that
purpose applies the corrosive of some afflicting providence,
whether of poverty, banishment, or disgrace, to eat away his
proud, dead flesh, and so to restore him sound ; if this man now
can lightly pass over, outface, and wear off the sense of these
severe applications, let him never expect any medicinal, healing
virtue from them : but conclude with himself, that being too
sturdy to feel God's rod, he is certainly too bad to be mended
by it.
Let this therefore be fixed upon in the first place, that the sub
mission here spoken of in the text is not a stupid indolence or
insensibility under such calamities as God shall be pleased to bring
upon us. Nor
Secondly, does this submission lay any restraint upon /is, from
praying against any calamity, either actually inflicted upon us, or
as yet but approaching towards us. For to pray against such
things is not only lawful, but indeed our duty ; forasmuch as God
has commanded us to pray : and prayer ought to contain, not only
a petition of things good and suitable, but also a deprecation of
whatsoever is evil or noxious to us, as an integral part of it. For
though possibly God may have designed to bring the evil we pray
against upon us ; yet, till providence has decided this to be the
will of God, by the event, we are, as much as in us lies, to pre
vent it by our prayers.
And the reason is, because though God's secret will and pur-
* ose be the rule of his own actions, yet his revealed will ought

208 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XV.
to be the sole director of ours. And God has written this in large
characters upon every heart, that we ought to preserve our being
from whatsoever may annoy it, by all lawful means ; and surely
there is none more lawful or approved by God than prayer. We
have an eminent instance of this in David, in 2 Sam. xii., who
though he had received a special revelation from God himself,
that his child should die, yet ceased not for a while to fast and
pray, and importune God, that it might live: but when God
took away the child, then presently he rose up, and turned his
mourning for that into a submission to the hand that took it
from him.
In this case therefore, we are not to inquire into the counsels of
God, what he intends to do ; it being impossible that they should
be a rule for us to steer our course by, forasmuch as they are hid
den and concealed from us ; and it is implied in the very essence
and nature of a rule, that it should be known. From whence it
follows, that till we know that it is God's will to bring an affliction
upon us, we are not bound to suppose it to be his will ; and con
sequently both may and ought to pray against it ; it being noways
inconsistent for the same heart to have a spirit of supplication to
pray against an affliction before it comes, and yet a spirit of sub
mission to endure it when it does come.
Thirdly and lastly : To advance yet higher, this submission is
not such a thing as excludes all endeavour to prevent or remove an
affliction. That we may lawfully pray against it has been already
proved ; and it is certain that we may, within our compass, law
fully engage our endeavours against whatsoever we may engage
our prayers : prayer being a duty of that nature, that neither in the
accounts of God or man will it pass for serious, but as it is second
ed with proportionable action. He who is visited with sickness
may solicitously use all direct means for his recovery ; and he who
has lost his estate may vigorously endeavour to regain it from the
spoiler's hand ; and he who has been defamed may use all imagi
nable industry to clear his reputation ; and yet, for - all this,
never in the least transgress the bounds of submission prescribed
him by God, in any of these visitatic-ns. For God seldom delivers
men but by the mediation of their own endeavours, where these
endeavours may be used. But patience has its sufficient scope
and proper sphere of showing itself, even where the powers of
action cease. And that man who does the utmost to rid himself,
from any pressure, which the laws of God and nature allow him
to do, and when he finds the evil too big for him to master, hum
bly and quietly sits down under it, has fulfilled all the measures of
a pious submission. For God casts no man under such circum
stances as shall make idleness and pusillanimity his duty ; but bids
every man, upon the arrest of any sad calamity, "up and be
doing," for the removal of it ; though perhaps after he has done
all, his lot may be to lie down and suffer under it.

I*HE DUTY OF RESIGNATION. 209
And thus I have done with the negative part ; and shown what
the submission spoken of in the text, is not ; as namely, that it is
not any such thing as ought to restrain us, either from entertaining
a tender sense of, or from using our prayers, and, what is more, our
endeavours against any disaster or calamity inflicted by the hand
of Providence upon us.
2. Come we now, in the next place, to show positively what this
submission is, and wherein it does consist.
And in order to this, we are to observe, first in general, that it
is a quiet composure of the whole man under any cross or mis
chievous accident befalling him, either in his person, interest, or
any of his concerns whatsoever. And since every man is a com
pound of several parts and faculties, both of body and soul, which
are all respectively to bear their share in this present affair, we will
therefore trace the nature of this submission severally and distinctly
through them all. And,
(1.) For the understanding ; there is required a submission of
that to God, by a perfect approbation of the justice and equality
of all his proceedings with us. And as the understanding is the
governing and first moving principle of a man's whole behaviour ;
so is it a matter both of the greatest difficulty, and importance
too, rightly to state and settle the apprehensions and resentments
of it : it being to the other faculties of the soul, like the foreman
of a jury to his fellows, all are apt to follow its verdict.
And therefore our submission must begin here ; it must move
upon this great wheel ; for in vain do we expect that the other
parts of the soul should keep the peace, while the understanding
mutinies and rebels. To prevent which, we must endeavour by
all means to possess it with a full persuasion of the infinite
reasonableness of all God's transactings with his creature, though
the particular reason of them 'does not always appear. It being
but suitable to the majesty of heaven to exact our submission
without assigning any other reason for it but his own will : for
sic volo, sic jubeo, howsoever harsh and tyrannical it may sound
from a sinful man, like ourselves, though never so great ; yet
from God, who is as essentially good as he is great, it is the
highest reason and the most rational divinity : upon which ac
count, let every man silence the disputes of his froward reason,
not only with an ipse dixit, as the very disciples of Pythagoras
could do, but also with an ipse voluit : an answer and a solution
becoming the most improved and eminent proficients in the
school of Christianity.
For what was it that raised Job to such a degree of insolence
and indiscretion, as to venture to hold an argument with his
Maker, and to dispute the case with the Almighty, but the
sturdiness of his blind and saucy reason, falsely so called, that
could not subscribe to the equity of those severe usages which
he smarted under? He could not comprehend how the divine
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210 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [ SERM. XV.
justice could degrade so much uprightness and integrity to a
dunghill • and to all the miseries that a diseased body, and a
distressed mind, and a desperate fortune could reduce him to :
no he thought he had holiness enough to have prescribed gentler
methods to Providence. But at length, when religion had cooled
the boilings of his passion and discontent, and taught his reason
more sober discourses, then he sinks many notes lower, ^ and
utters himself in a quite differing strain ; in Job xl. 4, 5, " Be
hold," says he, " I am vile, what shall I answer thee ? I will lay
my hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken, but I will not
answer." And thus, what conviction and satisfaction he could
not gain by disputing, he arrived to by obeying : submission was
his casuist, and patience the best resolver of his doubts. And
indeed, what can we account disputation in such a case, but the
hostility of the mind, and a kind of rebellion of the soul against
God ; opposing reason and argument, or rather argument without
reason, to Providence ? So that a man can never be said truly to
submit till he lays down these arms, and acknowledges a sufficient
reason of any dispensation in the sole good pleasure of the dis
penser ; and, in the midst of all his misery, can confess that things
ought to be so, because actually they are so. And thus much for
the submission of the understanding.
(2.) This submission requires in the will also a perfect acquies
cence and resignation of itself to God's will. For the will being
properly the seat both of sovereignty and activity, the resist
ance which this makes must needs be the greatest and most con
siderable. The reluctancy of the understanding in opposing
God, and complying with sinful objects, is like Adam's seeing
the forbidden fruit and liking it : but the will's embracing them
is like Adam's putting forth his hand and taking it. So that by
our submission of the former to God, -in any of the perplexing
passages of our lives, the soul may be said as it were to keep
silence ; but by this latter, it also gives consent. By that it
confesses the reasonableness, by this also the suitableness of the
dispensation. By the former it could say, It is just : by this
latter it can say also with David, " It is good that I have been
afflicted." And how necessary an ingredient of our submission this is,
will appear to any one who shall consider the absoluteness and
autocracy of this faculty : whereby the will is free either to follow
or not to follow the advice of the understanding :, so that when that
has done its utmost in the way of counsel and instruction, the issue
of the execution follows wholly the resolves of this. For it is this
which commands and lords it in the soul ; every thing that a man
does or desires being entirely at its beck.
Upon which account it is, that the overpowering efficacy of
the Spirit of God in the conversion of a sinner, appears in
nothing so much, as that it conquers and subdues this free, self-

THE DUTY OF RESIGNATION. 211
governing faculty, to a perfect compliance with all its motions ;
and that without the least entrenchment upon its freedom. For
it makes us willing, and draws us in that manner, that we yet fol
low of our own accord. Now such a readiness is here required in
the business of our submission : it must be perfectly free and
voluntary ; and that not only as to an exclusion of all force, but
also of the servilities of fear and terror ; which take off some of
the perfection of our freedom, in respect of the motive or induce
ment to an action, though they cannot in respect of its produc
tive principle. As when a man throws his rich wares into the
sea, to prevent a wreck, and to save his life, he does indeed
will what he does, but yet it is with an unwilling kind of wil
lingness: for though the will absolutely commands the thing to
be done, yet still the motive of doing it is full sore against its
inclination. But such a submission to the hand of God will not suffice us
here, nor turn to any account in the reckonings of heaven : where
every performance is rated chiefly by the manner of it ; and the
spring of principle as much considered as the object. God re
gards not that submission that is not out of love to him. And
" perfect love," we know, " casts out fear ;" that is, God will
have us submit, not as slaves, but as sons: so as to kiss the rod
that corrects us ; and knowing from whom the blow comes, to re
ceive it not only with quietness, but complacency. And thus to
dejnean ourselves in our sufferings, is the very soul and spirit of
a filial submission.
(3.) There is required also a submissive composure and serenity
in our passions and affections. For naturally these are the most
unruly and outrageous faculties of the soul ; and such, indeed, as
set the whole world in a combustion. For how insolent is pride,
how intolerable is anger, and how noisome and imperious is lust !
No confusion in human affairs ever falling out, but the cause of it
always lies here ; and still the commotion begins in the fury and
violence of the affections, those great masters of misrule, which,
like the waves of a troubled sea, swell and rage, and rise up
against heaven, when any thing from thence blows rough and
hard upon them. It is impossible that either a proud, a lustful,
or an angry man, so continuing, should be patient ; forasmuch as
the same frame of spirit, which disposes him to one, directly in
disposes him to the other. Patience is the effect and consequent
of self-denial and mortification ; and the passions and affections
are the proper objects of that, they are the things that are to be
denied and mortified ; so that a man must have passed many
stages in this excellent course, before he can arrive at the per
fection of making the duty of submission his practice, and much
less his pleasure. For how hard is it to maintain a smooth and
equal temper in one's mind, when there is nothing but cross
and rugged accidents in the whole affairs of a man's life ! How

212 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XV.
hard is it to see and feel great disturbances without, and yet to
keep all quiet within ! to behold the prosperity of the wicked,f the
false, and the treacherous, and not to say in our haste, that we
have cleansed' our hands in vain," and retained our innocence to
no purpose! It is infinitely difficult so to conquer and keep
down the insurrections of a furious passion, as to command and
hold it within compass, when it meets with fuel and provocation.
The faculties of the soul do much resemble the economy and
constitution of a commonwealth, in which the passions are like
the vulgar rout, or meaner sort of people, who are always the most
impatiently sensible of any the least burden : and when the
government imposes any thing upon them, are presently apt to
tumultuate, to rise, and to rebel : so when the least chastisement
from God pinches us, forthwith the unruly passions are apt to
clamour, and cry out, grievance and oppression. But now God
will have all these clamours hushed, all these resistances quelled,
and an humble subjection paid to the most grating edicts of his
will, proclaimed and made known to us by the events of his
providence. And indeed, thus to compose and master our rebellious passions
is a duty that may commend itself to us, not only from the neces
sity of a strict command, but also from the excellency of the work
itself. For it was this alone, which the greatest philosophers, and
particularly the Stoics, placed their highest happiness and perfec
tion in ; namely, to regulate and subdue their passions to such a
degree, as to bring themselves to a perfect apathy, to stand fixed
and unmoved, when any thing thwarted either their interest or
desires ; which glorious (and perhaps more than human) frame
of mind, though it was not their felicity to reach, yet it was
their commendation to aim at. But surely Christians, who act
by higher principles and greater helps, should think it but rea
sonable, with such advantages, to go a pitch beyond bare, unas
sisted nature ; and, by their actions, to make good the heathens'
pretences, and to count it a shame for themselves not to attain, in
part at least, what the philosophers were so generous as to
attempt. (4.) There is required yet further to this submission, a sup
pressing of all hard and discontented speeches ; and this is so
absolutely necessary, that the whole work of submission is set
forth and expressed to us by " silence," and " not opening our
mouths," as here in the text, and elsewhere, by " putting our
mouths in the dust ;" that is, by shutting, and, as it were, even
stopping them up, from letting fly at any of the cross, irksome,
and severe passages of providence. " He that ruleth his tongue,"
says St. James, " is a perfect man ;" forasmuch as by this lie
declares himself lord and master of his passions, which, when they
domineer, chiefly make use of this member, as the prime instru
ment of their rage. In like manner, he who can submit without

THE DUTY OF RESIGNATION. 213
noise and murmur, proves his submission perfect, as springing
from a complete conquest of all unruly motions within. While
Job let loose the reins to his impatience, he let the same loose
also to his language ; filling heaven and earth with querulous
outcries, vehement imprecations upon himself, and expostulations
with heaven : sometimes questioning the equity of the divine
proceedings with him ; sometimes cursing, and bitterly exclaim
ing against the day of his birth, and the unhappy hour of his
conception. Thus, so long as his towering passion was upon the
wing, it beat the air with loud and vain complaints : and, like a
froward child, was always crying, and nothing could still his
peevish and impertinent rage. But the same temper of mind
which reduced him to submission, reduced him also to silence,
and checked the sallyings out of such wild, ungoverned expres
sions, as could tend to no other effect, but to increase the guilt
of him that .spoke, and the indignation of him that heard them.
A lamb, we know, suffers with silence, and parts not only with
its fleece, but even with its life also, without noise ; but it is the
unclean swine which roars and cries when any one lays hold of
him, and we read of no such creature in the flocks of Christ ; they
are only the innocent, silent, suffering sheep, that have a title to his
care and protection.
'Any kind of impatience under God's hand does indeed offend
him ; but the impatience of the tongue has this peculiar malignity
in it above all others, that it also dishonours him in the face
of the world : for while our impatience bounds itself within the
understanding, will, or affections, so long it lies retired from the
observation and eye of men, which pierces not into the secrets of
the heart ; but when it once comes to proclaim itself in words
and noise, the multitude round about is called in as witness of
our insolent deportment towards God ; the sin becomes loud and
clamorous, public and provoking ; and so puts God upon new
severities to revenge upon us the affront openly passed upon his
honour ; a thing which he is too jealous of, to prostitute and expose
it to the scorn and arrogance of every bold sinner.
Silence is a thing of great decorum in a suffering person,
whose condition properly calls him to sorrow ; the most natural
and becoming dialect of which is, to say nothing. For even the
common and received measures of human converse allow it only
to the prosperous, the gay, and the rising persons of the world to
talk high, and argue, and expostulate much to no purpose ; but
where affliction has brought a man so low, as to make it difficult
for him to be heard, it has made it also fit for him not to speak.
Besides, no man ought to be endured to complain, who is not
presumed to have right on his side. But can any man have a
right against God ? can he implead his Maker ? or prefer a bill
of grievances against his Preserver ? I am sure, if his plea be
traversed in the court of conscience, that must and will pro-

214 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XV.
nounce on God's side, and vote the accuser the only criminal.
" Why should a living man complain ; a man for the punishment
of his sins ?" says the prophet Jeremy, in Lam. iii. 39. In which
piece of scripture there are more arguments than words or sylla
bles to demonstrate the unreasonableness of any man's complain
ing against God. For first, shall any one complain of his
benefactor ? and does not God abundantly prove himself so, even
by this, that the person complaining is yet alive, and thereby
able to complain ? or shall a guilty person complain of his judge ?
and complain also while he is punished, which implies demerit ?
and, what is more, punished less than he deserves, which imports
mercy ? For every sin revenged upon the sinner, according to
the full measure of its guilt, would quickly put him out of all
possibility of complaining in this world, or bemoaning his case on
this side hell ; where, that he is not disposed of already, is enough
to teach him, that it were much fitter for him to turn his com
plaints into gratulations ; and, instead of crying out of the hard
ship of his condition, to magnify the divine goodness, that it is
not remediless and intolerable. Let every afflicted person there
fore " set a watch before the the door of his lips," and beware that
the intemperance of his tongue robs him not of that crown, that is
prepared only for such as suffer with silence and discretion.
(5.) And lastly, to complete our submission to God in a suffer
ing estate, there is required also a restraint of all rage and
revenge against such as are the instruments by which God is
pleased to humble and afflict us. A perfect submission to the
will of the first cause is naturally apt to reconcile us to the
second ; though not for his own sake, yet for his, at least, who
was pleased to make use of it. For what is an enemy, when he
acts the utmost of his fury and barbarity, but a scourge in the
hand of the Almighty, either punishing a sinner, or chastising a
son ? And therefore we find David, when he was cursed and
railed at by Shimei, in that villanous, lewd, insufferable manner,
yet utterly refusing to revenge upon him that high indignity,
though passed by a subject upon his prince, and his prince in dis
tress ; that is, against all laws, not only of loyalty, but of nature
and common humanity. But now, what could it be that induced
David to demean himself in such a manner to so bitter an enemy
and so mean a wretch ? Surely nothing either desirable or for
midable in the person himself; no, nothing but this one con
sideration, that at that time Shimei came, as it were, upon an
errand from heaven, and cursed David by commission from God
himself. " God has bid Shimei curse," says David, 2 Sam. xvi.
10. Not that God did directly and indeed give him any such
command ; but that, by his providence, he had then cast David
under such circumstances of misery and distress, as would infal
libly provoke an adversary of a malicious and a base spirit to in
sult over him. Now this quiet and meek deportment of David

THE DUTY OF RESIGNATION. 215
towards so vile and so provoking an object, was a direct act of
piety and submission to God himself; who never accounts him
self more honoured by us, than when our rfeverence to him can
command us to compliances so much against the grain of our
nature ; and tie up our hands from those violences, which the
fierce appetite of revenge would otherwise so passionately and
easily, and many times so creditably, carry us out to.
If, upon any injury done us, we can but prevail with our
selves to see the hand of God principally acting in the whole
affair, it will certainly much allay our spleen against the imme
diate workers of the mischief: and if we can but cease to be
angry with the judge, and the condemning sentence itself, surely
We shall not much concern ourselves to rage at the executioner ;
who is but a servant, and only ministers to the will and command
of a superior.
But on the other side, all bitter and vindictive treating of an
injurious person, is in its proportion a contest with Providence ;
even that Providence that not only overrules, but also employs
the worst of events and the wickedest of persons. And he
whose spirit frets, and boils, and raves against his enemy, because
of the calamity that he feels himself brought under by his means,
strikes as high and as far as he is able. The dog that bites the
stone that is flung at him, would do as much > to the hand that
flung it, if he had it within' his reach. But the temper of a
Christian prompts him to quite other things, and teaches him to
measure his behaviour, not by what his enemy has deserved, but
by what the grand exemplar of patience has both commanded, and
himself in the same case practised.
And yet I do not say, that it is any man's duty to account his
enemy his friend ; to court or embrace a tyrant ; or to take him
into his bosom, who would have taken the bread out of his
mouth. Some indeed may think it a policy so to do ; and
perhaps, by so thinking, may prove just such politicians, as the
man that took a frozen snake into his house, and cherished and
warmed it, till at length it hissed, and bit, and stung him to
death for his absurd compassion. But be it a policy, I am sure
it is no duty for a man to caress, and hug, and be fond of his
mortal adversary ; nor to fawn and cringe, and lick the foot that
basely and barbarously tramples upon him. No man is forbid by
any law of God or man to look upon an enemy as an enemy,
howsoever he may be bound to treat him. Forasmuch as no law,
human or divine, can oblige a man to entertain a false judgment,
either of things or persons. But he who supplants a man in his
estate, or any of his lawful interests, is and ought to' be looked
upon by that man as a malicious underminer. And he who by
unworthy calumnies blasts his neighbour's reputation and good
name, may and ought to be accounted (as in truth he is) a black-
mouthed, virulent backbiter : and the name of friend is by no

216 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XV.
means to be fouled or abused by being applied to such a one. Yet
still for all this, I own it to be every man's duty to leave such a
person to the vengeance of heaven, and not to act himself as
judge in his own cause, by carving out his own measure of re
venge upon him. It is his duty to " stand still," as Moses bade
the Israelites, " and to see the salvation of the Lord." All the
pains that he is to take in this case, is to prevail with himself to
do nothing, and to be only a spectator, not an actor in his enemy's
confusion. And indeed this is sometimes pains enough: and no small
piece of self-denial and submission, thus to keep within the
strict line of God's commands, when either passion or interest
would tempt him to leap over it ; as it will do very importunately,
when a man finds himself grieved, and ill-used in his person,
name, or estate ; and disturbed in any of those interests, which
God and nature have made it his birthright to enjoy. Yet since
it often so falls out, that God is pleased to let loose the oppressor
upon all these, he also calls upon us to behave ourselves as
persons having no authority to right ourselves, but depending
wholly upon the supreme justice of heaven both for deliverance
and reparation.
And thus I have finished the first general head proposed for
the handling of the words, which was to declare the nature of
the submission spoken of in the text : and that both negatively,
by showing what it is not ; and also positively, by showing what
it is. As namely, that it is a suppressing of the restiness and
contradiction of our understandings, the rebellion of our wills,
the tumult of our passions, the querulous outcries of our
tongues, and lastly the vindictive fierceness of our actions or
behaviours, under any calamity or distress, injury or provocation
whatsoever. Now by way of consequence and deductions from what has been
delivered, we shall from the foregoing particulars naturally infer
these three things :
1. The worth and excellency of such a submissive, composed
frame of spirit.
2. The difficulty of attaining to it. And,
3. And lastly, the necessity of an early and long endeavour after
it. And,
1. For the excellency of it. It is that which all the great and
wise men in the world have both striven after in themselves, and
admired in others : and it is as impossible for a man to be great,
as to be good without it. It is the practice of the truest and the
highest philosophy. And there is nothing that draws so much
contempt upon a man, as the want of it. For how uncomely
a sight is a man in a rage ! a man fretting, and fuming, and
suffering his passion to ride his reason ; indeed so uncomely js it,
that there is no man living who allows it in himself, but will

THE duty of resignation. 217
condemn and despise it in another. Nor is there any thing that so
peculiarly unfits a' man for business, and doing such things as
may render him considerable. Business is to be carried on with
counsel, and a calm, sedate conduct of things ; which can never
take place, where passion hinders all foresight, and fury and
fluster make thinking and contriving utterly impossible. It is
not the storm, but the gentle wind that must carry the vessel to
its designed haven. And to lead and govern an army, requires
another kind of spirit from that which heats and acts a man in the
battle. On the other side, patience is, as it were, the girding up of the
soul, which, like the girding up of the body, gives it both strength
and decency too. In the judgment of all the intelligent part of
the world, patience is conquest ; and in St. Paul's esteem, Rom.
viii. 37, it is sometimes more ; it being hardly possible to conceive
any condition that a man can fall into so miserable, nor any injury
or contumely that can pass upon him so sharp and provoking,
in which patience does not at length get the better. And he that
quietly suffers the ill turn will in the end both shame and weary
him that does it. For all violence is its own executioner : and in
dignation, not enlivened by resistance, like a flame not blown up,
goes out of itself.
But the excellency of this great virtue appears yet further from
this, that the greatest persons that ever lived, and whom Provi
dence sent into the world upon the most important messages that
ever were delivered to mankind, have been signal and remarka
ble for it. And those were Moses and our Saviour Christ him
self; both of them, in their several times, the meekest persons
upon the earth : and such as (according to the true measures of
greatness) were of too great and high a mind to do any violence,
but not of too great to suffer it. Both of them show their mag
nanimity in this, that " being reviled," and that by persons ex
tremely their inferiors, "they reviled' not again." And for the
latter of the two, did the royal diadem ever sit so gloriously
upon the head of any earthly ^prince, as the crown of thorns did.
upon the head of our Saviour ? or could any thing so fully prove
him more than a man, as to be buffeted, scourged, scoffed at,
spit upon, and at length crucified, without so much as one im
patient word ?
The achievements of passive Valour 'are upon many accounts
more glorious than those of active : forasmuch as there is a great
force and inclination in nature, pushing it on to exert itself in the
way of action, but not at all to dispose it to suffer. This is a thing
which mere nature flies from and abhors. And if we compare
these two together, whether doing or suffering duly circumstantiated
ought to have the preeminence, still let us remember this in behalf
of the latter, that it was suffering which redeemed the world.
2. From the foregoing particulars we learn also the difficuly
Vol. IV.— 28 T

218 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XV.
of attaining to such a submissive frame of spirit. Which difficulty
will appear from these two things: (1.) From that opposition
which a man is to conquer, before he can attain to it. And, (2.)
From that mean, though mistaken opinion, which the generality of
men have of such a temper. And,
(1.) For the opposition that a man is to conquer, before he can
arrive to it. He is to force and fight his way through all the
resistance that the strongest powers of nature can make against
him. For no man is born a patient man ; whatsoever personal
advantages and dispositions some particular constitutions may
afford towards it, more than others. But every man comes into
the world with something of pride and passion about him, which
is to be subdued and mortified, before he can be fit to live in the
world, and much more before he can be fit to leave it. But now,
it is patience, which must take down these heights, and level these
mountains into valleys. It is patience, which must smooth off the
ruggedness of passion and the unruliness of appetite ; and so make
plain a way for reason and religion to run their course in. I
showed before, that there was a natural stubborness and averseness
in every faculty of the soul, to a compliance with the divine will,
especially in those severer instances of it, which call upon a man
to take the yoke upon his neck, and the burden upon his shoul
ders, and to be quiet, humble and content in the most calamitous
condition. It is a hard lesson to do God's will, but a much
harder to suffer it. Nature has not only an insufficiency for, but
also a contrariety to this. For reason will be disputing, the will
disobeying, and the passions will murmur and rebel : and what is
there in bare nature, that can overrule all these ? and from such a
posture of defiance, compose and quell them into the contrary
posture of the meekest submission ? This is that which both
scripture and philosophy style a man's conquering of himself. A
victory, in the judgment of all wise and sober men, more glorious
and more difficult too, than any that crown the memory of Caesar
and Alexander. So much harder, and consequently so much
greater a thing is it, for one to endure another man's rage, than to
vent his own.
(2.) The other cause of the difficulty of attaining to such a
patient, submissive frame of spirit, is from the contempt and dis
regard attending it, through the false estimate which the .generality,
or rather, vulgarity, of men have of it. For when patience must
pass for pusillanimity, who would take pains to procure himself so
disadvantageous a character ? and endeavour to conquer his pas
sions, if for the greatest conquest in the world he must be ac
counted a coward ?
Desire of glory is generally the great principle that animates
men to high and difficult attempts. But when huffing and hector
ing must be looked upon as the only badges of gallantry and
courage, what can recommend the exercise of patience against

THE duty of resignation. 219
the disgrace of it ? or induce a man to put up an affront, when
the result of virtue shall be reputed the want of spirit? This
indeed is. a discouraging consideration ; but it is so only from a
most unjust and false judgment of things. For patience is not
the want of spirit, but the government of it. It is a virtue ;
and therefore the ingredients of it are choice in the agent, and
difficulty in the object. And he only is or can be a patient man,
who is first a man of courage ; who has sense enough to resent a
provocation, spirit enough to prompt, and opportunity to enable
him to revenge it: and yet in the midst of all these tempting
circumstances, chooses rather to offer up his passion a sacrifice to
his virtue ; and by a fixed, settled judgment of mind, thinks it as
much nobler to pass by an injury, than to repay it, as it is to
slight an unworthy person, than to strive to be like him. But
still, I say, when the generality of men judge otherwise, though
by error and mistake, yet the tyranny of a general mistake is so
imperious and intolerable, that for the most part it is too hard for
an ordinary virtue to contend with. And that which puts patience
out of credit, will, with some, quickly put it out of countenance too ;
unless grace comes in as a second to nature, and the conscience
of a practice overcomes the disrepute of it.'
3. And lastly, we learn from what has been delivered, the
necessity of an early and long endeavour after such an excellent
frame of mind. The conquest which the patient man is to make
is not by battle, but by siege ; one is quickly over, but the other
is often a long and a tedious task. The apostle calls upon us to
" let patience have its perfect work : and few things, we know,
arrive to perfection, but by degrees. It is a high and a glorious
ascent, and there is no getting up to it but by steps. It must
make its entrance into the soul by a total extirpation of the con
trary habits ; and no habit can be presently rooted up, where
nature is the soil in which it grows. For do we think it possible
for a proud man to grow humble in a day ? or for a passionate
man to get the absolute command of his passions in a few weeks ?
It is, I confess, possible with God, and omnipotence can effect it ;
but what God can do is not the measure of what he will. Ac
cording to the stated method of the divine actings upon the soul
of man, the Spirit of God proceeds gradually, and grace imitates
even where it exceeds the course of nature. So that where it
rids the soul of any vicious habit, it destroys it insensibly and
by degrees ; and where it infuses good habits, it instils them into
the soul by small proportions, they are an oil that is dropped, not
poured into it. And it is the judgment of all divines, that in
fused habits come into the soul after the same manner with' those
that are acquired. Grace acts like nature, even where the effect
is above it.
He therefore who would co-operate with the grace of God, for
the working of so noble a change upon himself, as to keep his

220 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XV.
passions calm and regular, in spite of all provocations that would
inflame them ; he who, in all the cross accidents of life, would
have his own will, as it were, wrapped up in the divine, will, and
be able to say with his great master and example, Christ himself,
"Not my will but thine be done:" he, I say, who would arrive
to such a height of Christianity, let him begin early ; let him
consider with himself the length, the difficulty, and the fatigue
of " the race that is before him," and set out betimes. Let him
inure himself in his minority to lesser self-denials and mortifica
tions ; let him learn to put up and pass by a slighting, under
valuing word, and in time he shall find himself strong enough to
conquer and digest an injurious action. Let him learn to overlook
his neighbour's incivility, and in time he shall be able with patience
and firmness of mind to endure his insolence and his cruelty, and
that without being discomposed by any instigations to revenge : and
let him accustom himself to do this often, and at length he shall
be able to do it always.
But if a man suffers his impatience to grow up with him, and
gives it its free, outrageous, unbounded scope to the greatest
part of his age, he must not hope to master and dispossess such a
giant of his strong hold by a few assaults ; he must not think
wholly to alter and transform himself, and pick up such a virtue
as patience on a sudden. He who has allowed his passion to. live,
and rage, and domineer to the age of forty or fifty, must not ex
pect, without a very extraordinary grace indeed to be patient at
threescore. So infinitely sottish and ignorant of human nature
are those men, who think it in their own power to change and
reform their manners when they please. No ; it is a long and a
severe discipline ; and the wisest and best of men have found it
task enough for their whole lives. And therefore certainly none
deceive themselves so foolishly, and so fatally too, as those who
design to learn, just as they are leaving off to live. The times
of youth and prosperity are the proper times to strengthen and
to ballast the mind with pious principles and wise customs, against
the trying, searching times of age and adversity. For if these
seasons do not find a man patient, they seldom make him so.
They are the seasons to spend upon a stock, and not to gather
one ; to crop the fruits of a virtuous habit, and not to plant it.
For surely no man goes about to careen and fit up his ship in
the midst of a storm, nor to buckle on his armour in the heat
and fury of the battle. No ; this is a work that should have
been done before. It is a work of preparation ; and it can be
no time for a man to prepare a thing, when he is just about to
use it.
This is certain, that afflictions will come, trials and perplexing
providences will some time or other overtake us, and God knows
how suddenly and how severely. And then happy, and only
happy, is that man, who by a long and daily exercise of this great

THE DUTY OF RESIGNATION. 221
virtue, has forearmed and fortified himself against the fierce and
critical day of trial ; who to temperance has added patience,"
that is, to the proper virtue for prosperity, has joined the proper
one for ' adversity. I say, "blessed is that faithful and wise ser
vant, whom his Lord, when he cometh, shall find so prepared."
Verily, as patience has made him ruler over himself; so accord
ing to our Saviour's own expression, " his Lord shall make him
ruler over all his goods."
To which our great Lord and Saviour, together with the
Father and the Holy Ghost, be iendered and ascribed, all praise,
might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore.
Amen.

222

SERMON XVI.
PART II.
THE DUTY OF RESIGNATION.
Psalm XXXIX.
/ was dumb, I opened not my mouth ; because thou didst it.
I formerly made an entrance into these words, and observed in
them these two parts.
First, David's submissive deportment under a sharp affliction :
" I was dumb, I opened not my mouth."
Secondly, The ground and reason of such his deportment, which
was the procedure of that affliction from God ; " I opened not my
mouth, because thou didst it."
And so I showed the words were a full lecture of patience,
recommending to us a great virtue by a great example, and con
sequently designed to argue us into an absolute, entire submission
to the divine will, in our most pressing and severe distress. The
prosecution of them I cast under these two general heads :
I. To give some account of the nature and measures of this
submission. II. To show the reasons and arguments for it, as the suffering
person stands related to God.
The first of these I have already despatched, and proceed
now to
II. The second, which is to show what reasons and arguments
may be produced for the submission here spoken of, as the suffering
person stands related to God. And for this, I think, we may lead
our way with this general assertion : that there is no thought,
which a man can possibly conceive either of God or of himself
aright, but will afford a strong argument to enforce this submis
sion upon us. He that duly considers both what God is, and
what he himself is, can need no other demonstration of the infi
nite folly and absurdity of opposing or contending with him.
But yet to give light and life to this general proposition by par
ticular instances, there are six things in God that offer themselves
to our consideration ; which are so many invincible arguments to
quiet and compose all those unruly motions, that are apt to dis
turb the spirit of a man, when God by any severe passage of his

THE DUTY OF RESIGNATION. 223
providence calls him to a state of( suffering : and this is certain,
that every call from God to suffer, is a command also to submit.
1. The first is God's irresistible power. And there are some
who place God's very right of sovereignty in the boundlessness of
his power ; affirming that the great reason why God may do any
thing is, because he can do any thing. But far be it from any
sober person to discourse of the divine nature and actings upon
the stock of such a principle. But yet to illustrate and make
out the absurdity of any thing that looks like a non-submission
or repugnancy to the afflicting hand of God, were it possible for
us to imagine or suppose that God had no right to treat his crea
ture in so severe a manner, yet the surpassing greatness of his
power has rendered it impossible for the creature to receive any
benefit by demurring to his right. Such a plea being like a poor
conquered captive's impleading a victorious sword, absolutely
senseless and ridiculous ; it being certainly absurd to resist, where
it is impossible to conquer or escape. A good cause itself, against
an overpowering force, is an impotent, insignificant thing ; impotent
as to self-support, insignificant as to success. For power is
the great disposer of the issues and events of things : and where
soever there is any effect, it is certain that some power or
other is the cause. And therefore all acts of hostility or oppo
sition upon a mischief done or offered, suppose in the person who
makes the opposition, an opinion at least of power in himself
able to repel or revenge that mischief; and all complaint supposes
a likelihood of engaging the strength and power of such as hear
it, in the help and vindication of him who makes it ; and is indeed
used only as a means or instrument to supply the defect of
a man's own personal power by the conjunction of other men's.
But now, where neither of these considerations can take place,
both resistance and complaint are utterly irrational: as in the
case of the divine power's dealing 'with man, it must needs be.
For what is all the world to him that made the world ? 1 Cor. x. 22,
" Do we provoke God to jealousy ? are we stronger than he ?" All
the nations, all the armies of the whole earth are to him but as
" the drop of the bucket," or " the small dust of the balance :"
and can we possibly think or speak of things under a greater dis ¦
parity ? And if so, will reason allow that there should be any
contention where there can be no proportion ? , " He has done
whatsoever pleased him both in heaven and earth," Psalm cxxxv.
6. As soon as his will gives the word, his power executes
" No god can deliver as he can," says Nebuchadnezzar, Dan. iii.
29 ; nor can any one destroy as he can, says our Saviour, Matt.
x. 28. He gives away kingdoms and empires, disposes of crowns
and sceptres, with the breath of his mouth. And after all this,
can a pitiful piece of animated dirt be fit to quarrel and expostulate
with a power infinitely greater than his very thoughts, and
therefore certainly in no degree to be matched by his strengths ?

224 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xvr.
But to what purpose is it thus to argue or dispute the matter? to
light a candle to the sun ? or with much ado to prove a finite no-
wavs equal to an infinite ? For that in effect is the thing now
before us, while we are disputing, whether a man may contest
with, or ought to submit to his Maker ; and whether he should be
permitted to talk high and loud, who can do nothing ; and to be
still upon the offending part, who is wholly unable to defend
himself. A man so behaving himself is nothing else but weak
ness and nakedness setting itself in battle-array against omnipo
tence ; a handful of dust and ashes sending a challenge to all the
host of heaven. For what else are words and talk agauist
thunder-bolts ? and the weak, empty noise of a querulous rage
against him who can speak worlds, who could word heaven and
earth out of nothing, and can when he pleases word them into
nothing again.
What can we utter or express greater of the vast distance be
tween God and man, than by a kind of tautology to say, that
God is God, and man is man ? For it is certain that the first can
have no predicate but himself; since he that is pure act, and per
fect simplicity, can be said to be nothing, but by an identical re
petition ; in which both predicate and subject are no more than
one and the same thing set forth in two several words : an evi
dent demonstration, that words cannot keep pace with things,
when we discourse of God. In short, since matters stand thus
between God and us, let us consider what hands we are in, and
what an irresistible gripe has hold of us ; and let that teach us,
even for our sakes to be quiet under it. There is indeed one,
and but one way of encountering an infinite power ; and that is,
by an extraordinary, and (if it were possible) an infinite pa
tience. 2. The next thing to be considered in God, as another argu
ment for our submission to him, is his absolute, unquestionable
dominion and sovereignty over all things. And this, according
to the true and exact notion of things, differs formally from his
power, though sometimes they are unskilfully confounded. For
the difference between them is as great as between ivvauii and
itmala, between strength and authority ; between a bare ability
to act and a right to act ; which may be often one without the
other ; for there may be force and power without authority, and a
rightful authority without any force or power ; both of which we
have known by woful experience.
But to the subject before us. This dominion of God is founded
upon the best, the greatest, and most undeniable title ; which is
that of creation and providence. It being infinitely reasonable,
that the first cause should upon that account be the supreme
governor ; and that whatsoever has been made and preserved by
God, should be also commanded by him.
And besides, as God is the first cause, so he is also the last end

THE DUTY OF RESIGNATION. 225
of all things ; they terminate in him, as well as they issued from
him ; they were produced by his power, and designed for his
pleasure: Rev. iv. 11, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive
glory, and honour, and power ; for thou hast created all things,
and for thy pleasure they are and were created." God might
have chosen whether he would have made the world or no ; for
he had no need of it, to complete or add to his happiness, which
was infinitely perfect within the compass of his own glorious being.
Yet he was pleased, by a most free and unconstrained motion of his
own will, to communicate and diffuse some little shadows of those
perfections upon the creatures, and more especially upon those
nearer resemblances of himself, men and angels.
Upon which account it is certain, that God has the entire dis
posal both of our persons and concerns ; which, giving him a full
propriety in all that we are or have, it is also as certain that he
can do us no wrong. God's pleasure is his sufficient warrant,
and therefore ought to be our undoubted law : for being vouched
by the supremacy of heaven, there can be no appeal from it, no
address to any higher tribunal ; for as it is in Job ix. 12, " Who
may say unto God, What doest thou ?" It is not for the clay to
expostulate with the potter, though instead of making it a vessel
of honour, he treads it under foot, from whence he took it.
Men indeed may contest their rights one against another ; even
an inferior against his superior ; because there is none so abso
lutely superior to, or lord over another, but holds that superiority
or preeminence by a limited right, and by concession from him
who is equally a lord and master to them both ; and consequently
will treat them as fellow-creatures and fellow-servants, and with
an impartial hand exact an account of the behaviour of him who
rules as well as of him who obeys. But it is not so with God,
who being absolutely first and supreme, must needs upon the
same score also be absolutely unaccountable : for none can stand
obliged to render an account of his actions to his inferiors ; such
as we are all to God, and that by vast and unmeasurable dispro
portions. 3. Together with God's irresistible power, and his absolute domi
nion, let the afflicted person consider also his infinite and unfailing
wisdom : that wisdom by which he first made the world, and by
which he does and always will govern it : that wisdom by which
all the strange events and odd contingencies which sometimes
occur, are cast into a regular method and an exact order ; though
the short reach of sense and natural reason is not always able to
fathom the contrivance, or to discern the rare and curious disposal
of them.
But how much soever we are in the dark as to this, still
we are sure, that a being essentially wise cannot do any thing
but wisely. Our ignorance of the particular reason of God's
actings cannot infer or make them in the least unreasonable. It
Vol. IV.— 29

226 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xvi.
is not accounted discretion to quarrel or find fault with the
actions of a wise man ; and much less can it be so to ques
tion the proceedings of an infinitely wise God ; who is wise
without any mixture of folly or imperfection, a privilege granted
to no created nature : for he has " charged his very angels with
folly," Job iv. 18. And be they ever so wise, it is certain that
they are not wisdom itself.
It is arrogance in us to pretend so much as to understand
the counsel of God, in his managing the great affairs of the
world, and much more to blame or carp at them. Provi
dence is more honoured by our admiration, than pur inquiries :
for these latter are for the most part the effects of pride, but
always of curiosity ; whereas the former always produces, or at
least accompanies humility. We cannot pierce into the designs
which God may have in every passage, every accident, that befalls
us ; we cannot look through the long and intricate train of causes
and effects, and see by what strange, mysterious ways the smallest
things are oftentimes directed by a sure hand to an accomplishment
of the greatest ends. Providence is nothing else but infinite power
managed by infinite wisdom, and the divine knowledge displaying
itself in practice.
The consideration of which alone, one would think, should be
abundantly enough to compose all our murmurings and repinings
under any calamity that can possibly happen to us ; and to
reduce us to an acquiescence in our present condition, be it what
it will. For while we fret and repine at God's will, do we
not say in effect, that it is better for us to have our own ? that is,
in other words, that we are wiser than God, and could contrive
and project things much more to our own advantage, if we had
the disposal of them ? Do we not as good as complain, that we
are not taken in as sharers with God in the government of
the world ? that our advice is not taken, and our consent had
in all the great changes which he is pleased to bring over
us? These indeed are things that no man utters in words;
but whosoever refuses to submit himself to the hand of God,
speaks them aloud by his behaviour ; which by all the intelligent
part of the world is looked upon as a surer indication of man's
mind, than any verbal declaration of it whatsoever. God
perhaps is pleased to visit us with some heavy affliction, and shall
we now, out of a due reverence of his all-governing wisdom,
patiently endure it, or out of a blind presumption of our own,
endeavour by some sinister way or other to rid ourselves from it ?
Passengers in a ship always submit to their pilot's discretion, but
especially in a storm ; and shall we, whose passage lies through a
greater and more dangerous deep, pay a less deference to that
great pilot, who not only understands, but also commands the seas?
It is sometimes so far from being a privilege for a man to be
governed by his own will without the conduct of a wiser that it

the duty of resignation. 227
is indeed his misery, and his great unhappiness, and a direct
throwing himself into the very mouth of danger: forasmuch as
no human wit or wisdom can always distinguish between what
will help and what will hurt us. If children might have their own
wills, and be their own choosers, they would certainly choose
poison before a cordial, if that were but sweet, and this bitter.
And so it is with men themselves in reference to the dealings of
God's providence ; every dispensation of it may prove our physic
or our bane, according as it is ordered and applied. God can
make our most pleasing and promising enjoyments become a
plague and a destruction to us, and "turn our very table into a
snare :" and on the other hand, he can make us " gather grapes
of thorns, and figs of thistles," and reap comfort from the sharpest
affliction. God's wisdom still warrants all his actions to be for
the best.
And as his glory is the grand end of all that he does, and con-
sequentiy ought to be so likewise of all that we either do or
suffer ; so this is most worthy our observation : that whatsoever
befalls any man, that makes most for God's glory in respect of
that man ; and if he be a child of God, most for his own good
too. For in this case, things must not be estimated according
to their bare natures, but according to their use and tendency ;
and as they lie under the direction of that Providence which
guides things to effects much beside and beyond what their mere
nature, left to its own course of acting, would carry them out to. *
Poison itself, by art, may be made an ingredient in the composition
of an antidote ; and things in themselves really good, yet, by
ill circumstances and misapplication, may become hurtful and
pernicious. Prosperity, considered absolutely and irrespectively,
is better and more desirable than adversity ; and yet, perhaps, as
our spiritual estate and condition stands, adversity may be better
for us ; for that may harden, and this may humble us ; that may
prepare us for judgment, this for mercy. As the having blood in
our veins is in itself naturally better than losing it, and yet in
some cases, and under some distempers, the very principle of life
becomes the occasion of death ; and that blood kept in destroys,
which being let out would recover and preserve us. Now the divine
wisdom best knows all the maladies, all the weaknesses and dis
tempers of our souls, and consequently ought to claim and challenge
our sole and absolute dependence upon it, even in its harshest and
most amazing prescriptions.
4. Let the afflicted person consider the great goodness, the
benignity and mercy of God to all his creatures; which is so
great, that the psalmist tells us, in Psalm cxlv. 9, it spreads itself
with a universal extent " over all his works ;" but especially the
noblest and most beloved piece of his workmanship, mankind ;
which seems to have been created by God purposely to show how
much he delighted in mercy. God is the greatest of kings and

228 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xvi.
potentates, but yet has nothing of a tyrant in his nature how ill
and tragically soever some may represent him : he takes no
delight in our groans, no pleasure in our tears, but those that
are penitential. It is no pastime to him to view- the miseries of
the distressed, to hear the cries of the orphan or the sighs of the
widow. The prophet tells us, in Lam. in. 33, that God does
not willingly afflict the children of men;" he seems to share in
the suffering, while he inflicts it ; and to feel the very pain of his
own blows, while they fall heavy upon the poor sinner. And
again, in Isaiah xxviii. 21, judgment is called God's strange
work ;" a work that he has no proneness to, nor finds any com
placency in : and therefore, whensoever he betakes himself to it,
we may be confident that it is not for the sake of the work itself,
but that he has some secret, overruling design of love, which he
is to compass after an unusual, extraordinary way. He never
lops and prunes us with his judgments, because he delights to see
us bare, and poor, and naked, but because he would make us
fruitful ; nor would he cause us to pass through the fiery furnace,
but to purge and to refine us. For can it be any pleasure to the
physician to administer loathsome potions or bitter pills ? or can
it be any satisfaction to a father, to employ a chirurgeon to cut
off his child's arm, were not the taking away a part found
necessary to secure the whole? Common humanity never uses
Jhe lance to pain and torture, but to restore the patient. But
now the care and tenderness of an earthly parent or physician is
but a faint shadow and resemblance of that infinite compassion
and affection which God bears to his children, even in the midst
of his severest usage of them. For what is or can be that affliction,
through which God's love does not shine and show itself to an
eye spiritual enough to discern it? God sometimes dashes a
man's beloved reputation, and exposes him to the scorn of those
who are a juster object of scorn themselves. Sometimes he
lessens a man's estate, and, after he has grown old in wealth and
plenty, brings him, at length, in his declining years, to the irk
some change of a poor, low, necessitous condition ; and sometimes
again, God breaks in upon a man's family, his dearest friends and
relations, and so bereaves him of a right hand, or a second self.
But still, as grievous as all these things may seem at first view,
may not yet the traces and footsteps of divine love be discernible
in all these strokes ? For some perhaps may value more the
esteem of men than that of God ; and then is it not better
for such a one to have his name blasted amongst men, than blotted
out of the book of life ? Another may idolize his money, and
make his gold his god ; and in such a case, is it not really more
profitable for him to lose an earthly estate, than to have no
treasure in heaven? And a third may dote upon friends, and
place his whole heart and confidence in his relations ; and if so, is
it not indeed his advantage to be stripped of a perishing, mortal

the duty of resignation. 229
friend, and taken into the bosom of an everlasting father?
Certainly every such person may write upon all his losses,
Periissem nisi periissem. For be it reputation, estate, friends, or
whatsoever else is or can be desirable to a man, that he has lost ;
yet, if by all this God has given laws to his outrageous appetites,
and bounds to his ambitious designs ; if by this he has extin
guished in him the spirit of pride, and stirred up in him the spirit
of prayer ; and lastly, if by this he has mortified his worldliness
and sensuality, and convinced him of the infinite vanity, the empti
ness, and dissatisfaction that is in all created enjoyments ; how much
soever such a man has been a sufferer, it is certain that he has been
no loser. He has indeed been upon a great traffic, he has driven
the gainfullest bargain in the world, having exchanged his pence
for pounds, things carnal for things spiritual ; things which perish
in their very use, for things that never fade.
5. Let the afflicted person consider God's exact and inviolable
justice ; so that, if he had no kindness for us to do us any good, it
is certain that this alone would keep him from doing us any wrong ;
for this is the thing which omnipotence itself cannot do.
God never strikes without a cause, nor wounds us till our own
sins draw the sword; All punishment essentially supposes and
implies, one way or other, a guilt in the party punished ; and
every man's sufferings are a true comment upon his deserts. God
punishes no man beyond the rate and proportion of his own de
merit, though short of it he does very often; accepting small
payments for great debts, and setting down fifty in the punish
ment, where sin has run us in arrears to him many thousands in
the guilt. And can we then think it reasonable to maunder and
repine at him, who treats us with such abatements ? chastising us
with whips, when he might lash us with scorpions ; and only cor
recting, when he might with full warrant from his justice, con
found us? The divine' justice never acts up to its highest pitch,
in its dealing with sinners in this world ; but still proceeds with
some temper and allay of mercy, which makes it quite another
thing from what it would be, if it should flame out in its own
native, proper, unrelenting severities. And sinners who taste of
it, both in this world and the other too, find the vast difference
of it here and there, by woful experiesce ; for here it smites us
only with the rod of admonition, and puts just so much sharpness
into the blow, as may embitter sin to us, not thoroughly revenge
it upon us. And therefore, in scripture dialect, God's righteous
ness is oftentimes but another word for his mercy ; mercy being
still predominant in the exercise and manifestation of it. So that
at the same time God punishes men both for, and yet beneath
their sins ; and with great lenity still proportions his judgments
rather to the measure of their strengths, than to that of their
deserts. 6. And lastly, let the afflicted person consider the method of

230 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xvi.
Providence, in its dealing with such as have been eminent for
their submissive deportment under God's afflicting hand, and he
shall see how mightily God has turned all to their advantage at
last • and that not only in- the next life, but oftentimes very sig
nally even in this too. The consideration of which alone may and
ought to administer no small support to any one, who has under
standing enough to compare past events with present, and so to
read his own case in other men's. For in things of this nature,
examples are the best arguments, and precedents the strongest per
suasives : and therefore St. James, in his last chapter, having
several times pressed this grand duty of patience, seals his exhorta
tion with this argument, in verse 11, "Ye have heard ofthe
patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord." And such
an end and issue did God put to Job's calamity, that we find his
prosperity returning, or rather with a full tide flowing in upon him
in a more than treble increase : nay, and we read of his losses made
up to him even in kind ; besides the peculiar advantage accruing
to his condition from the circumstance of his restitution, that by
thus immediately passing from one extreme to another, the very
neighbourhood of his sufferings gave him so much a quicker and
livelier taste of his returning felicity. And then for David, who
so quietly endured the rage and contumelies of Shimei, did he
not presently see a merciful turn of providence restoring him to a
more established royalty than ever he was master of before ; and
bringing that base tongue to lick the dust under his feet, that a few
days before had so foully thrown dirt in his face ?
Could we but trust God to do our business for us, to assert our
cause, and to vindicate our innocence, we should find that he would
not only answer, but also outdo our hopes ; we should find that our
sorrows would prove our harvest, and our sowing in tears make
us reap sevenfold in joy.
Men are apt to think both themselves and others miserable,
because they pronounce and pass judgment hastily, from the pre
sent sense of a grievance, without expecting its issue ; which
usually converts the sighs and lamentations of a pious mourner,
into the triumphal songs of a joyful conqueror ; and having led
God's chosen ones through a Red sea and a " howling wilder
ness," plants them at length safe and free, in all the wealth and
affluence of a promised Canaan. No person that ever heartily
submitted to the rough dealings of Providence, could upbraid it
with unkindness at the last ; but has still found the same hands
more bountiful in rewarding, than ever they had been severe in
striking. The ways of patience may at first indeed appear rugged and
frightful, full of terror and discouragement ; but it is the end, we
know, that still crowns the work, and the issue and conclusion,
from whence all things take their estimate. A welcome recep
tion at our journey's end is a sufficient recompence for all the

THE duty of resignation. 231
fatigue and tediousness of the way ; and the scripture tells us, that
as soon as a woman in child-bed is delivered, all the pangs and
travails of her labour presently vanish, and are swallowed up in
" the joy that a man is born into the world." True wisdom in
taking the worth and value of things, never terminates in the
present state of them, but casts its eye chiefly upon the future.
And therefore, as no man can be accounted truly happy, even as
to the things of this world, till his death ; so neither can any one
pass for truly miserable (and that even upon a temporal account)
till he has finished his course here ; for every thing is well or ill,
as it ends : and this let every afflicted person cause his meditations
chiefly to dwell upon, still directing his observations to the final
issue of God's dealing with such as have signalized their patience,
by suffering his sharpest rebukes with all the stillness and com
posure, constancy and firmness of a pious, humble, and well-re
solved submission.
Now these six things in God being seriously thought upon ;
namely, his irresistible power ; his absolute, unaccountable sove
reignty ; his infinite, unerring wisdom ; his boundless goodness
and benignity ; his exact and inviolable justice ; and lastly, his
gracious way of treating all patient and humble sufferers, are so
many mighty and irrefragable arguments to enforce this great duty
of submission upon us, as the most rational thing imaginable : and
that upon the account of three great and noble qualities constantly
attending on, and naturally resulting from it, as it stands related
to, and grounded upon those six foregoing considerations. And
these are, 1. The necessity; 2. The prudence; and 3. The
decency of such a submission ; all which jointly and severally
prove and demonstrate the high and transcendent reasonable
ness of it. I shall speak something of each of them, and so close
up all. And,
1. For its necessity. It is most certain, from what has been
discoursed, that in this, as in all other cases, God will have his
will ; »and how should it be otherwise, when nothing can with
stand it ? Submit we must to the calamity inflicted on us, unless
we could be too wise or too strong for him that inflicts it ; for
other ways of escape there can be none, but either by wisdom to
contrive, or by force to wrest ourselves out of God's hand : but he
that does the former must outwit omniscience ; and he that does
the latter must overpower omnipotence. But all such counsels
are vain, and ridiculously impossible ; for there is no contending
with heave,n, no wrestling with God, but by prayer. We know
what a weak, pitiful thing a subject is, if contending with his
earthly prince ; but much more so, opposing himself to the
almighty King of kings, before whom the powers of the whole
earth are as nothing, and all the empires and kingdoms of the
world ' but as so many bubbles before the fury of the wind.
He who carries "his breath in his nostrils" surely should be

232 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xvi.
careful to carry a pious and a discreet tongue in his mouth.
" Who," says the prophet . Isaiah, speaking of the dreadful power
of God, " would set briars and thorns against him in battle ? he
would go through them, he would burn them together," Isaiah
xxvii. 4. Briars indeed may be sharp and troublesome, but not
to the fire that feels them not, but in a moment devours and con
sumes them. In like manner men may snarl, and Word it high
against Providence ; but we have already observed what silly,
senseless things such verbal assaults are against the Creator and
Governor of the universe, and to what little purpose we spend
our breath against him who gave it, and can take it away when
he pleases. Expostulations and invectives may perhaps affect
and move a weak man like ourselves, but they are lost before
they can get to heaven ; they cannot reach, and much less pierce
those glorious mansions. Words of rage and impatience can hurt
none but him that speaks them, especially when they are shot at
God: and therefore, as the same prophet says again, inch. xiv.
9, " Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker ! Let the pot
sherd strive with the potsherds of the earth," and then possibly
they may strike one another in pieces. But a potsherd is a very
unfit thing to run against a brazen wall, or to dash itself upon the
" rock of ages."
All affronts put upon God by such a refractory, contumelious
behaviour as we have been speaking of, are to be reckoned
amongst the absurdities, as well as the impieties of our actions ;
such as reason itself would decry, should religion be silent.
Things so full of paradox and brutish irrationality, that could great
sins be fit to be laughed at, they were fitter to be run down with
scoff and sarcasm, than to be thought worthy of a serious confuta
tion ; but though it is not for us to laugh at them, we may be sure
that God does.
In fine, this we may rest satisfied of, that whensoever God's
hand is upon us, we must either yield a voluntary, or be forced to
a violent submission. If our stubbornness is such, that we will
not bend, it is certain that our weakness is also such, that we must
needs break. If God's message will not win upon Pharaoh, his
plagues shall compel him ; and therefore, when he sent Moses to
him, he put a rod into his hand, as, well as a word into his mouth.
When God fully purposes to afflict a man, he is like a bird in a
net, the more he strives and flutters, the more he is entangled ; for
the Supreme Judge of all things is resolved to go through with
his " great work of judgment," and to make all obstinate, sturdy
sinners know, that he has power to constrain, where his goodness
will not persuade.
2. The second qualification of the submission here spoken of,
which also is a further argument to enforce it, is the great pru
dence, as well as the necessity of it. There are few things in
the world so totally and entirely bad, but s6me advantage may

the duty of resignation. 233
be made of them by a dexterous management ; and it is certainly
a man's wisdom to make the best of a bad condition : there being
a certain kind of pious and prudential husbandry, by which a
man may so improve a calamity, as to make the endurance of that
the performance of a duty, and, by his behaviour under it, to pro-*
cure a release from it. We should with Isaac take the wood upon
our shoulders, though we ourselves are designed for the sacrifice ;
and who knows, but as in his case, so in ours also, a patient resig
nation of ourselves to the knife may be the sure and direct way to
rescue us from it? For, according to the commerce that God
has established between this and the other world, momentary sor
rows are improvable into everlasting joys ; and we may build as
high as heaven, if we lay the foundation deep and low in patience
and humility. In 2 Cor. iv. 17, " Our light affliction," says the
apostle, " which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory." In which words, it is
worth our while to observe the peculiar force and emphasis of
the comparison, and the vast difference of the things that the
apostle here confronts one against another : it is a " light afflic
tion," set against a " weight of glory ;" " a light affliction for a
moment," against " an exceeding and eternal weight of glory :"
so that it is impossible to word things to a higher disproportion.
And now, when the case stands thus, if a man would not en
dure so much as the smart of a cut finger to gain a crown ; or,
as I may so speak, would not lose a hair to save his head ;
should we not question his wisdom as much as his courage ?
and look upon him as one so far from living by faith, that he
does not so much as live up to common sense ? For as Naa-
man's servant said to him, when he refused in scorn to follow
the prophet's advice, " Had the prophet bid thee do some great
thing, wouldest thou not have done it ?" So, where heaven is
the prize, who would not endure hell itself for a while, to obtain
that at last ? But upon how much easier terms are we treated by
God, when he says only, Suffer a few inconsiderable grievances
here patiently, and that for a very short time, and then be in
finitely, unchangeably happy for ever? It is wisdom, wisdom
upon the truest and strictest estimate of things, not only to en
dure, but even to choose a temporal evil, which leads to an
eternal good.
But admit that such a submission to the hand of God should
not rid us from the calamity he is pleased to bring upon us, yet
this we may be sure of, that it will give us ease and relief under
it ; and if it takes off nothing of our load, yet it will certainly
add to our strength. For it is really armour to the inner man,
and (if you will admit the expression) it is a kind of breast-plate
within us : it being the nature of patience to make heavy things
seem light, and of impatience to make the lightest things become
really heavy. It is this that renders every affliction, according to
Vol. IV.— 30 u 2

234 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xvi.
the prophetic phrase, truly and properly " the burden of the
Lord." And still, the more we strive to cast off God's yoke, the
more it galls us. The sum of all is this, that since there is an
inevitable necessity of our suffering, when God calls us to suffer,
it must needs be the highest piece of Christian policy, by our sub
missive demeanour to make a virtue of necessity, to extract good
out of evil, and to endure that with patience, which we cannot
remedy by power.
3. And lastly, to the necessity and prudence of such a sub
missive deportment under the hand of God, let us add also the
decency of it, as none of the least enforcing considerations to
oblige us to it : for we may trust it to the decision of any ordi
nary, if unprejudiced reason, whether it can be comely for a sin
ful, obnoxious creature to contend with him in whose hand his
very life and soul is, and " whose are all his ways," as Daniel ex
presses it to Belshazzar, Dan. v. 23 ; and whether it can be fit for
a slave, a vassal, to quarrel and contest the will and pleasure of
his absolute lord and sovereign.
Add to this the follies and absurdities of impatience, considered
simply in itself, and abstracted from those aggravations that it
receives from the peculiar quality and condition of some persons :
for in the very nature of it, as such, it degrades a man, not only
from the degree of a Christian, but also of a man, stripping him
of his very understanding and consideration ; and so turning not
only religion, but also reason itself out of doors. " In patience
possess ye your souls," says our Saviour, Luke xxi. 19. It is
this that gives a man the possession of himself ; for impatience
does, as it were, thrust him out of the present possession of his
senses : it invades the capitol, reason is enslaved, and passion
domineers ? During the furies of which, he ceases for that time
to be rational, and passes into the rank and order of brutes, which
are wholly governed by appetite, and the present impulse of
sense, in opposition to the sober conduct of reason, discourse, and
deliberation. Impatience has always these two ill ingredients in the very con
stitution of it, pride and anger ; and can any thing possibly be
more indecent, more absurd, and more to be exploded, than a
proud beggar, an aspiring lump of dirt ? or can there be a greater
paradox in manners, than at the same time to be saucy, and
to depend ; to be arrogant, and yet indigent ? And then for
anger, it is a monstrous, irregular, unbecoming passion, even
when it shows itself against an equal, but how much more
against a superior ; and yet incredibly, unconceivably more,
when it fumes and rages against the immense power and the
unquestionable prerogative of the supreme Sovereign of all
things, whom our anger cannot reach, but the least spark of
whose anger can for ever consume us! What a discomposure
does this ungovemed affection work in the whole intellectual

THE DUTY OF RESIGNATION. 235
frame, turning the mind topsy-turvy, clouding its apprehensions,
entangling its counsels, and confounding its reasonings, till it has
turned that little light which is in it into darkness, and so quite
blown out " the candle of the Lord." And can this be a dispo
sition of mind becoming a rational nature ? a nature that God has
made but one pitch lower than that of the angels ?
But so much the more intolerable is such a stubborn, unsub
missive frame of .spirit in men ; when the whole host of the crea
tion besides, are with the highest readiness and alacrity continually
intent upon the execution of their great master's commands. The
whole 104th Psalm, that noble and sublime piece of sacred poetry,
is a full description of, and a panegyric upon the creatures' readi
ness to serve their great Lord ; in verses 6 and 7, " The waters,"
says the psalmist, stood upon the mountains ; but at thy rebuke
they fled, and at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away."
Nothing to be seen but absolute obedience, even in these inani
mate creatures, which, it seems, can obey a command, though
they cannot so much as hear it. And then for other creatures, en
dued with a bare principle of life and sense, they also act in a
constant compliance with the divine will, and that sometimes
against the most natural inclination of their own. What more
ravenous than a hungry lion ? and yet he shall restrain his furious
appetite, when God commands him not to touch a Daniel ? What
more devouring than the ravens ? and yet even they shall part
with their own food to an Elijah, when God bids them purvey for
a servant of his in distress. And shall men, after all this ; man,
that has been so signally obliged by heaven, above all the rest of
the creation ; shall he, I say, be the only thing that shall resist and
oppose the proceedings of the Almighty, by fretting and striving
against every passage of Providence that comes athwart either his
desires or designs ? If this be not the highest transgression of the
rules of decency, then surely there is no such thing as decency or
regularity, order or proportion, in the whole frame and economy of
this visible world.
And thus having further enforced this grand duty of submission,
upon these three several accounts ; to wit, of its absolute necessity ;
its high prudence and policy ; and lastly, its great decency : I sup
pose there can need no other arguments to bind it fast upon the
consciences of those who, besides their indispensable duty to God,
hold it their no small concernment to acquit themselves to the
world also, in all these considerations.
In the mean time, the foregoing discourse may teach us an art
that all the wisdom of the world cannot teach ; which is, to know
how to make ourselves happy in the most afflicted, abject, and
forlorn condition of life : and that is, in short, to acquiesce
cheerfully and entirely in the good pleasure of Almighty God,
whatsoever our estate or condition in this world falls out to be :
for, to put all into one word, could men be but willing to do

236 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xvi.
what God commands, and to suffer what God inflicts, there could
be no more room for any such thing as discontent or misery, in the
whole course of things here below. The killing force of the
greatest and the fiercest judgments, is even broken by yieldance
and submission ; for still it is opposition that strengthens a calamity.
And when the creature will needs wage war with God, God acts
with the greatest reason and equity that can be expected, even
from men warring against men ; those that will fight it out, he
kills ; and those that will yield, he spares.
The felicities and miseries of this world are dispensed by God
variously, and the changes of our lives are, for the most part,
much more numerous than the years of them : so that he who
now flourishes with all the plenty and glory that Providence can
heap upon him, may, in a short time, see himself stripped and
disrobed of all ; and then the use, the worth, and value of a
patient submissive spirit will come to be understood ; since,
without it, it will be impossible so to behave ourselves under
God's afflicting hand, as not to add provocation to provocation,
or to fall under one calamity, without making it the occasion of
another. Which consideration surely should be sufficient to beget in us a
readiness, not only to bear, but even to "take up our cross;"
and to make every suffering free and voluntary, by a subsequent
act of choice, " looking unto Jesus," our great pattern and ex
ample, who, in obedience to his Father's will, " endured the
cross, and despised the shame, and is now set down at the right
hand of God."
To which he, of his mercy, vouchsafe to bring us all ; to whom
be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all puise, might,
majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

237

SERMON XVII.
PART I.
christians exhorted to live peaceably.
Romans xii. 18.
If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
Christianity, if we well weigh and consider it, in the several
parts ana1 members of it, throughout the whole system, may be
justly called the last and the most correct edition of the law of
nature, there being nothing excellent amongst the heathens, as
deducible from the external light of nature, but is adopted into
the body of Christian precepts. Neither is there any precept in
Christianity so severe and mortifying, and at the first face and
appearance of things grating upon our natural conveniencies,
but will be resolved into a natural reason ; as advancing and
improving nature in the higher degrees and grander concerns
of it.
And of so universal a spread is the benign influence of this re
ligion, that there is no capacity of man, but it takes care for ; not
only his religious, but his civil and political. It found the world
under government, and has bound those bonds of government
faster upon it, by new and superadded obligations. And by the
best methods of preservation, it secures both the magistrate's
prerogative and the subject's enjoyment, by the happy provisions
of peace ; the encomiums of which great blessing I shall not
now pursue, nor forestal here what will more aptly be inserted
hereafter. The text, we see, is a vehement, concerning, passionate exhor
tation to this blessed duty, and great instrument of society, peace :
" If it be possible, live peaceably." It is suspended upon the
strictest conditions, stretching the compass of its necessity com
mensurate to the utmost latitude of possibility.
The words are easy, but their matter full ; and so require a full
and a large, that is, a suitable prosecution ; which I shall en
deavour to give them in the discussion of these four particulars.
I. The showing what is implied in the duty here enjoined.
II. What are the measures and proportions by which it is to be
determined. III. What are the means by which it is to be effected.
IV. What the motives by which it may be enforced.
I. And for the first of these, the duty here enjoined is, " Live

238 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xvii.
peaceably;" which expression is ambiguous, and admits of a
double signification. 1. It may be taken for the actual enjoyment
of peace with all men : in which sense he only lives peaceably,
whom no man molests. 2. It may be taken for a peaceable be
haviour towards all men : in which sense he lives peaceably, by
whom no man is molested.
The first of these senses cannot be here intended by the apostle,
and that for these two undeniable reasons.
(1.) Because so to live peaceably is impossible ; and what can
not possibly be done, cannot reasonably be commanded. The im
possibility of it appears upon these two accounts.
1st. The contentious, unreasonable humour of many men. Upon
this score, David complains of his enemies, that " when he spoke
of peace, they were for war." Many of the enmities of the world
commence not upon the merit of the person that is hated, but
upon the humour of him that hates ; and some are enemies to a
man for no other cause in the earth, but because they will be
his enemies. The grounds of very great disgusts are not only
causeless, but oftentimes very senseless. Some will be a man's
enemies for his looks, his tone, his mien, and his gesture ; and
upon all occasions prosecute him heartily with much concern
ment and acrimony. And therefore that argument is insignificant,
which I have often heard used by some men to others ; who,
when they complain of injurious dealings, think they have irre-
fragably answered them in this, Why should such a one be your
enemy ? what hurt have you done him ? or what good can he
do himself by injuriously treating of you? All which supposes
that some reason may and must be given for that which, for the
most part, is absolutely unreasonable. A little experience in the
world would quickly and truly reply to these demands, that such
or such a one is an enemy, not upon provocation, but that his
genius and his way inclines him to insult and to be conten
tious. And nature is sometimes so favourable to the world, as
to set its mark upon such a person, and to draw the lines of
his ill disposition upon his face ; in which only you are to look
for the causes of his enmities, and not in the actions of him whom
he prosecutes.
There are some persons, that, like so many salamanders, can
not live but in the fire, cannot enjoy themselves but in the heats
and* sharpness of contention : the very breath they draw does
not so much enliven, as kindle and inflame them ; they have
so much bitterness in their nature, that they must be now
and then discharging it upon somebody; they must have
vent, and sometimes breathe themselves in an invective or
a quarrel; or perhaps their health requires it: should they
be quiet a week, they would need a purge and be forced to take
physic. And now, if any one should be molested and have his peace

CHRISTIANS exhorted to live peaceably. 239
disturbed by such a person, would he be solicitous to find out the
cause, and satisfy himself about the reason of it ? When you see
a mad dog step aside out of his walk only to bite somebody,
and then return to it again, you had best ask him the reason why
he did so ? Why, the reason is, that he is mad, and his worm
will not let him be quiet, without doing mischief when he has
opportunity. Now such tempers there are in the world, and always were, and
always will be ; and so long as there be such, how can there be a
constant, undisturbed quietness in societies ? We may as well ex
pect that nobody should die when the air is generally infected, or
that poisen should be still in the stomach, and yet work no effect
upon the body. God must first weed the world of all contentious
spirits and ill dispositions, before a universal peace can grow in it.
And this may be one reason to prove that a " living peaceably
with all men," as it signifies the actual enjoying of such a peace,
is utterly impossible.
2dly. The second reason is from the contrary and inconsistent
interests of many men. Most look upon it as their interest to
be great, rich, and powerful; but it is impossible for all that
desire it to be so ; forasmuch as some's being so is the very cause
that others cannot. As the rising up of one scale of the balance
does of necessity both infer and effect the depression of the
other. This premised, we easily know further, that there is nothing
which men prosecute with so much vigour, vehemence, and
activity, as their interest, and the prosecution of contrary interests
must needs be carried on by contrary ways and motions ; which
will be sure to thwart and interfere one with another : and this
is the unavoidable cause of enmity and opposition between persons.
Sometimes we see two men pecking at one another very eagerly,
with all the arts of undermining, supplanting, and ruining one
another. What ! is it because the one had done the other an in
jury ? or because he is of a quarrelsome temper ? Perhaps neither ;
but because he stands in his way ; he cannot rise, but by his dis
grace and downfall ; he must be removed, or the other person's
designs cannot go forward. Now as long as both these interests
bear up together, and one has not totally run down and devoured
the other, so lbng the persons will be engaged in a constant enmity
and contest.
The ground that the poet assigned as one great cause of the
civil wars between Csesar and Pompey, Multis utile bellum, is that
into which most men's particular quarrels and enmities are resolved.
In peace every man enjoys his own ; and therefore he that has
nothing of his own will be ready enough to blow the trumpet for
war, by which he may possibly gain an estate, being secure
already that he can lose none.
What is the reason that it is observed in tradesmen and arti-

240 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xvn.
ficers, that they are always almost detracting from one another ;
but that it is the apparent interest of one, by begetting in men a
vile esteem of the other, to divert his custom to himself, or at
least to secure that in his own hands which he has already ? If
the other person is the only workman, why then he shall mono
polize all the custom ; if he be as good as this, then this shall have
the less ; and this is that which sets them upon perpetual bicker
ings and mutual vilifications.
The sum of all is, that most men's interests lie cross, their ad
vantages clash, or at least are thought to do so : and contrary
qualities will prey upon one another. Where men's interests fight,
they themselves are not like to be long at peace. But now God,
in his wise providence, is pleased to cast the affairs of mankind
into such a posture, that there will be always such inequalities
and contrarieties in the conditions and estates of men. And this is
the other reason, why to enjoy peace with all men is impossible.
(2.) But in the next place, admitting that it were not impossible,
yet thus to " live peaceably with all men " cannot be the sense of
the apostle's exhortation, forasmuch as it can be no man's duty.
That which is the matter of duty ought to be a thing not only pos
sible in itself, but also in the power of him to whom it is enjoined.
But it is not in my power to enjoy peace with all men, since this
depends upon their behaviour towards me, and not immediately
upon mine towards them. And therefore it can be no more my
duty, than it is my duty that another man should not be a thief or
a murderer. If he will be so, I cannot prevent him, he only is
the master of his own will and actions : and where the power
of acting is seated, there only lies the obligation of duty ; other
wise, if I should be obliged to that which depends not at all upon
my power, a man might as well tell me that I am obliged to see
that it does not thunder, or that the Turk does not invade Ger
many. Wherefore it is clear that the words of the text are to be
understood only in the second sense propounded ; and that living
peaceably imports no more than a peaceable behaviour towards
all men : which being the duty here enjoined, we are to see what
is included in it.
And for this it seems adequately to consist of these two things :
l.'A forbearance of hostile actions. 2. A forbearance of inju
rious, provoking words.
This seems to take in the whole scope of it, as comprehending
all that makes up the behaviour of one man towards another,
which are his actions and his words ; what he does and what he
says. And if those unruly instruments of action, the tongue and
the hands, be regulated and kept quiet, there must needs ensue an
entire peace.
1 . And first, the hving peaceably implies a total forbearance of
all hostile actions ; and that in a double respect: (l.) In away
of prevention. (2.) In a way of retaliation.

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 241
(1.) For the first, I call that prevention, when a man unpro
voked makes an injurious invasion upon the rights of another,
whether as to his person or estate. God, for the preservation of
society, has set a defence upon both these, and made propriety
sacred, by the mounds and fortifications of a law. For what
living were there, did not the divine authority secure a man both
in his being, and in the means of his being ; but should leave it
free for the stronger to devour and crush the weaker, without
being responsible to the almighty Governor of all things, for the
injury done to his fellow-creature, and the contempt passed upon
the divine law? And certainly one would think it not only a
reasonable, but a very easy thing for a man wholly unprovoked
to keep his hand from his brother's throat, to let him live and
enjoy his limbs, and to have the benefits of nature, and the common
rights of creation. It is a sad thing for a man not to be safe in
his own house, but much more in his own body, the dearer earthly
tabernacle of the two. How barbarous a thing is it to see a Romu
lus imbruing his hands in the blood of his brother ! and he that
kills his neighbour kills his brother, as to the common bonds and
cognation of humanity. Now all murders, poisons, stabs, and un
just blows, fall under this violation of the peace in reference to
men's persons ; which God will avenge and vindicate, as being parts
of his image : for there is none who requires to be honoured in
himself, who will endure to be affronted so much as in his picture.
It is looked upon by some as a piece of gentility and height of
spirit, to stab and wound, especially if they are assured that the
injured person will not resist ; and so secure them the reputation
of generosity without the danger of betraying their cowardice.
The other instance of violence, is the forcible wringing from
men the supports of life, their estates, their revenues, or whatso
ever is reducible to this notion, as contributing either to their
subsistence or convenience. And this is not to be understood
barely of oppression managed by open and downright defiance ;
but by any other sinister way whatsoever, as the overbearing
another's right by the interest and interposal of great persons,
by vexatious suits and violence cloaked with the formalities of a
court and the name of law. And whosoever interverts a profit
belonging to another by any of these courses, is a thief and a
robber ; perhaps a more safe and creditable one indeed, but still
a thief; and that as really as if he did it by plunder and seques
tration ; which is only a more odious name, but not a more unjust
thing. And he is no less a disturber of the peace, and a breaker of
this law, who oppresses the widow, and grinds the face of the
fatherless and the poor, than he who forages a country with an
army. For that is only violence with a greater noise, and more
solemnities of terror. But God, who weighs an evil action by
the* malignity of its principle and the unjustness of its design,
Vol. IV.— 31. X

242 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS [sERM. XVII.
and not by those exterior circumstances which only clothe its
appearance, but not at all constitute its nature, has as much ven
geance in store for an oppressing justice (if that be not a con
tradiction in the terms) as he has for the pillaging soldier or the
insolent decimator : it being as truly oppression in the accounts
of heaven, when proclaimed by the groans and cries of the
orphan, as when ushered in with the sound of the trumpet and
the alarm of war.
For wherein should consist the difference ? Is it because one
stands upon his ground and repels the invasion, and the other
opens his bosom to the blow, and resigns himself to his oppressor
with patience and silence ? Is it peace, because the man is gagged
and cannot, or overawed and dares not cry out of oppression ?
Or is he therefore not wronged, because his adversary, by his
place or greatness, has set himself above the reach of justice, and
is grown too big for the law? It was an acute and a proper
saying of one concerning a prevailing .faction of men, Soljtudinem
cum fecerint, pacem vocant ; when they have devoured, wasted,
and trampled down all before them, so that there is none indeed
so much as left to resist, that they call peace. But certainly
neither are the peace-makers blessed, nor is the peace a blessing,
that is procured by such dismal methods of total ruin and deso
lation. And thus much for the forbearance of hostility in point
of prevention or provocation.
(2.) In the next place, there is required also a forbearance of
all hostile actions, as to retaliation. I shall - not run forth into
the common place about revenge, it being a subject large and
important enough to be treated of in a discourse by itself. ' But
this I shall say, that according to the weights and measures by
which Christianity judges of things and actions, he that revenges
an injury will be found as truly a malefactor, in the court of
heaven, as he that does one. And he that requires " an eye for eye,
and a tooth for a tooth," is a Jew, and not a Christian ; a person
of a mean spirit and a gross notion, unacquainted with the subli
mity and spirituality of so refined and excellent a religion.
A peaceable deportment is one of the great duties enjoined in
it : and the rule and measure of that is to be charity, of which
divine quality the apostle /ells us in 1 Cor. xiii. 7, that it " suffers
all things, hopes all things, endures all things." The very genius
and nature of Christianity consists in this, that it is a passive re
ligion ; a religion that composes the mind to quietness, upon the
hardest and the most irksome terms and conditions. And the
truth is, if it drives on a design- of peace, we shall find, that the
consequences of revenge make as great a breach upon that as a
first defiance and provocation. For were not this answered with
resistance and retribution, it would perhaps exhale and vanish;
and the peace would at least be preserved on one side. For be
the injurious person never so quarrelsome, yet the quarrel must

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 243
fall, if the injured person will not fight. Fire sometimes goes
out as much for want of being stirred up, as for want of fuel.
And therefore he that can remit nothing, nor recede, nor sacrifice
the prosecution of a small dispensable right to the preservation
of peace, understands not the full dimensions and latitude of this
great duty ; nor remembers that he himself is ruined for ever,
should God deal with him upon the same terms.
The great God must relax his law, and recede from some of his
rights ; and every day be willing to put up and connive at many
wrongs, or I am sure it is impossible for him to be at peace with
us. He shines upon his enemies, and drops the dew of heaven
upon the base and the unthankful. And in this very instance of
perfection, Matt. v. 48, he recommends himself to our imitation.
If revenge were no sin, forgiveness of injuries could be no
duty. But Christ has made it a grand and a peculiar one ; indeed
so great, as to suspend the whole business of our justification
upon it, in Matt, xviii. 35. And in the foregoing verses of that
chapter, treating of the unmerciful servant, who exacted a debt
from his poor fellow-servant, we find that " his lord was wroth
with him, and delivered him to the tormentors." Neither could
it have profited him to have said, that he exacted but what was
lawfully his own ; what was due to him upon the best and
the clearest terms of propriety. No ; this excused not the rigour
of a merciless proceeding from him, who had but newly tasted of
mercy, and being pardoned a thousand talents, remorselessly and
unworthily took his fellow by the throat for a hundred pence.
It is or may be the case of every one of us. We pray every
day for forgiveness ; nay, we are so hardy as. to pray that God
would "forgive us just so as we forgive others;" and yet often
times we can be sharp, furious, and revengeful^ prosecute every
supposed injury heartily and bitterly ; and think we do well and
generously not to yield nor relent : and what is the strangest
thing in the world, notwithstanding an express and loud declara
tion of God to the contrary, all this time we look to be saved by
mercy ; and, like Saul, to be caught into heaven, while we are
breathing nothing but persecution, blood, and revenge.
But as to the great duty of peaceableness which we have been
discoursing of, we must know, that he who affronts and injures
his brother breaks the peace ; but withal that he who owns and
repays the ill turn, perpetuates the breach. By the former, a sin
is only bom into the world, but by the latter it is brought up,
nourished, and maintained. And perhaps the greatest unquiet-
ness of human affairs is not so much chargeable upon the injuri
ous, as the revengeful. The first undoubtedly has the greater
guilt ; but the other causes the greater disturbance. As a storm
could not be so hurtful, were it not for the opposition of trees
and houses ; it ruins no where, but where it is withstood and re
pelled. It has indeed the same force when it passes over the

244 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xvii.
rush, or the yielding osier: but it does not roar nor become
dreadful, till it grapples with the oak, and rattles upon the tops
of the cedars. And thus I have shown the first thing included
in a peaceable behaviour, viz. a forbearance of hostile actions,
and that both as to provocation and retaliation. But whether all
kind of retaliation be absolutely unlawful, shall be inquired into
afterwards. 2. The other thing that goes to constitute a peaceable beha
viour, is a forbearance of injurious, provoking words. I know
none that has or deserves a reputation, but tenders the defence
of it as much as of his person or estate. And perhaps it has as
great an influence upon his contents and emoluments, as both of
them. It is that which makes him considerable in society. He
is owned by his friends, and cannot be trampled upon by his ene
mies. Even those that will not love him, will yet in some manner
respect him. For till the enclosures of a man's good name are
broken down, there cannot be a total waste made upon his
fortunes. Upon this it is, that abusive language, by which properly a
man's repute is invaded, is by all men deservedly looked upon as
an open defiance, and proclaiming of war with such a person:-
and consequently, that the reviler is as great a disturber as an
armed enemy ; who usually invades a man in that which is much
less dear unto him. Rabshakeh broke the peace with Hezekiah
as much by his railing, as by the army that besieged him. And
he that flings dirt at a man affronts him as much as he that flings
a stone at him. A wound upon the skin is sometimes sooner got
off than a spot upon the clothes.
I would fain know, what man almost there is, that does not
resent an ugly reflexive word, with more acrimony and impa
tience, than he would the stab of a poniard. He remembers it
more tenaciously, prosecutes it more thoroughly, and forgets it
much more difficultly. And the reason is, because a blow or a
wound directs an evil only to a man's person, but an ill word de
signs him a wider calamity ; it endeavours the propagation and
spreading of his unhappiness, and would render him miserable as
far as he is known. Besides, it hurts him so as to put the repa
ration of that hurt absolutely out of his power: for it lodges
his infamy in other men's thoughts and opinions, which he cannot
command or come at, so as to rectify and disabuse them. But
admit that the defamed person by a blameless and a virtuous de
portment wipes off and confutes the calumny, and clears himself
in the esteem of men ; yet it is of those only with whom the
scene of his converse lies : but in the mean time the slander
spreads and flies abroad; and many hundreds come to hear the
ill words, by which the man is abused, who never come to see his
own behaviour, by which he is righted.
I conclude therefore, that this great duty of living peaceably

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 245
is not consummate, without a constant and a careful suppression
of all offensive and provoking speeches. And he who does not
acquit himself in this instance of a Christian behaviour, will find
hereafter, that men will meet with as certain a condemnation for
what they have said, as for what they have done.
And thus much for the first general thing proposed for the
handling of the words : namely, to show what was implied in the
duty enjoined in them. I pass now to
II. The second, which is to consider, what are the measures and
proportions by which it is to be determined. And those are ex
pressed in these words : " If it be possible, live peaceably." Now
possible may be taken two ways.
1st. As it is opposed to naturally impossible, and that which
cannot be done. Which sense cannot be here intended, as being
supposed in all just and reasonable commands. For none can
rationally command or advise a man to that which is not natu
rally within his power, as has been already observed.
2dly. It may be taken as it is opposed to morally impossible,
and that which cannot be done lawfully : for it is a maxim in the
civil law, Id possumus quod jure possumus ; which was the sense
of Joseph's answer to his mistress, in Gen. xxxix. 9, " How can
I do this great wickedness, and sin. against God?" and of that of
the apostle, 2 Cor. xiii. 8, " We can do nothing against the truth,
but for the truth." In both which places, not the possibility, but
the lawfulness of the action is specified ; and that is the sense
here intended.
But now the observance of peace being limited by the measure
of lawful, it follows, that where the breaking of the peace is not
unlawful, there the maintaining of it ceases to be a necessary
duty. It is of some moment therefore to satisfy ourselves when
it is lawful, and when unlawful to break the peace. And all in
quiries concerning this are reducible to these two.
1. Whether it can at all be lawful ?
2. Supposing that it may be lawful, when and where it ought
to be judged so ?
Under the first of these I shall discuss that great question,
Whether war can be lawful for Christians ? Under the second, I
shall show those general grounds that may authorize a war, and
from thence descend to the resolution of particular cases. As,
(1.) Whether it can be lawful to break peace with the magis
trate ?
(2.) Whether it may be lawful for one private man to make
war upon another, in those encounters which we commonly call
duels ?
(3.) Whether it be lawful for a man to repel force with force,
so as to kill another in his own defence ?
(4.) And lastly, since the prosecution of another in courts of
x2

246 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. LsERM. XVII.
judicature, is in its kind a breach of the mutual bond of peace, I
shall inquire whether it be allowable for Christians to go to law
one with another ?
All these things admit of much doubt and dispute ; and yet,
being matters of common and daily occurrence, it concerns us to
have a right judgment of them.
1. I shall begin with the first question, which is concerning
the lawfulness of war, in order to the resolution of which, I shall
premise what it is. War may be properly defined, a state of
hostility, or mutual acts of annoyance, either for the preservation
of the public from some mischief intended, or in the vindication
of it for some mischief already done to it.
The ground of war therefore is some public hurt or mischief;
and since this may be twofold, either intended or actually done,
there are accordingly two distinct kinds of war, defensive or
offensive. 1st. Defensive is in order to keep off and repel an evil
designed to the public ; and therefore is properly an act of self-
preservation. 2dly. Offensive is for the revenging a public injury done to a
community, and so is properly an act of justice.
It is clear, therefore, that the lawfulness and justness of war is
founded upon the justness of its cause ; and this being once found
out, and rightly stated, I affirm, that it is allowable before God
to cease from peace, and to enter into a state of war; and that
upon the strength of these arguments :
(1.) That which is a genuine, natural, and necessary conse
quent derived from one of the chief principles of the law of
nature, that is lawful : but so is war, namely, from the principles
of self-preservation, the noblest and the most acknowledged of
all those principles, by which nature regulates and governs the
actions of the creature. Hoc et ratio doctis, necessitas barbaris,
feris natura ipsa prcescripsit, ut omnem semper vim qudcunque ope
possint, it corpore, il capite, it vitd sud propulsarent. Cicero, in his
Defence of Milo. And that self-preservation cannot be maintained
without war, is too evident to be proved. The Jews, when they
were set upon by their enemies on the sabbath day, and then
murdered and massacred, because they thought it unlawful to
make any resistance, or to defend themselves on that day, have
transmitted the sad truth of this assertion in bloody letters to
posterity. That men will sometimes invade the rights and the lives of
others, is certain ; and it is also as certain, that the naked breast
is not the surest armour, nor patience the best weapon of
defence. Do we expect a rescue from heaven? and that God should
send down fire from the clouds, and work miracles for our pre
servation? Experience sufficiently convinces us that such an

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 247
expectation is vain. God delivers men by means, when means
are to be had, and by the interposal of their own endeavours :
and therefore he that flies to the church, when he should be in
the field, and takes his prayer-book in his hand, when he should
take his sword, tempts God and loses himself; and, according to
a due estimate of things, becomes a murderer, by so patiently
suffering another to be so.
Victrix patientia is a puff and a metaphor ; and may, perhaps,
in the issue of things, bear a man through a domestic injury or a
private affront ; but I never read that it put an army to flight,
or rebated the courage or controlled the invasion of a fighting
enemy. Besides, patience is properly the suffering quietly when God
in his providence calls us to suffer ; but it is not a suffering when
God calls us to act and to stand upon our own defence. As in some,
men we see it usual to veil their cowardice and pusillanimity with
the names of prudence and moderation ; so that which some call
patience, will be once found nothing else but a lazy relinquish-
J ment of the rights and privileges of their nature ; and that a fife
and a being was much cast away upon such as would not exert
the utmost power they had to defend it. This argument is pro
perly for defensive war.
(2.) The second is for offensive ; and it proceeds thus : That
which is a proper act of retributive justice is lawful ; but such a
thing is war, it being a retribution of punishment for a public
hurt or injury done by one nation to another. That he who does
a wrong should suffer for it, is a thing required by justice, the
execution of which is committed to the supreme power of every
nation : and why justice may not be done upon a company of
malefactors defending themselves with arms, as well as upon any
particular thief or murderer, brought shackled and disarmed to
the block or the gallows, I cannot understand.
The case in a civil war is clear between a magistrate assisted
by his subjects, against another rebel part of his subjects : for he
being the supreme power, the right of punishing offenders,
whether single or in companies, is undoubtedly in him. But
since to punish is properly an act of a superior to an inferior, and
two kingdoms or nations seem to be equal, and neither to have
any superiority or jurisdiction over the other, it may be doubted,
how the one's making war upon the other can be properly an act
of punitive justice?
To this I answer, that though these two kingdoms or states be
in themselves equal, yet the injury received gives the injured
people a right of claiming a reparation from those that did the
injury ; and consequently, in that respect, gives them a kind of
superiority over the other. For, in point of right, still the
injured person is superior: and the reason is, because common
justice is concerned in his behalf; to whose rules all nations in

248 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xvii.
the world owe a real subjection. If it were not for war, there
fore there could be no provision made of doing justice upon an
offending nation: justice would only prey upon particular per
sons- but national robberies, national murders, must pass in
triumph, with the reputation of virtues, as high and great actions,
above the control of those common rules that govern the particu
lar members of societies. In a word, society could not consist, if
it were not lawful for one nation to exact a compensation for the
injuries done to it by another; and, upon the refusal of such
compensation, to endeavour it by force and acts of hostility.
Wherefore I conclude, that war must needs be just, when the
instrument of its management is the sword of justice. And this
argument is for offensive war.
But before I dismiss it, there is one doubt that may require
resolution, and it is this ; that admitting that an injured nation
may lawfully make war upon the nation that injured it, yet is it
lawful for the injurious nation, being thus justly assaulted by war,
also to defend itself?
I answer, that it is; and that upon this ground, that be a
man's delinquency against the laws of society never so great, yet,
as long as he retains the nature of a man, he also retains the
natural right of self-defence and preservation ; unless where, by
his own consent, he has quitted it.
But you will say, a particular malefactor is bound to resign up
his life to the punishment of the law without resistance : and the
case, as to this, seems to be the same in a particular malefactor
and an injurious nation ; war being a doing of justice upon one,
as the execution of the gallows is upon the other: and conse
quently the obligation to a non-resistance seems to be the same
in both. I answer, that the case is very different; and that
upon this reason, that a particular member of a commonwealth
has consented and submitted to the laws of the nation of which
he is a member, which laws enjoin malefactors to surrender up
their lives to justice without resistance ; whereupon, the right of
resisting is lost by his own consent. But now there is no law
imposed upon one nation by another, or owned and submitted to
by any nation, that obliges it, for having done an injury to
another nation, without resistance to endure the effects of war
and a hostile invasion ; whereupon it still keeps the right of
defending itself against all opposition, how just soever it 'be on
their sides that make it.
(3.) The third argument is for all kind of war indifferently;
and it runs thus : If St. John the Baptist, Christ himself, and
the apostles, judged the employment of a soldier lawful, then
war is lawful. The consequence is apparent ; for every employ
ment is lawful or unlawful, according to the lawfulness or un
lawfulness of the actions to which it is designed : an employment
being indeed nothing else but a constant engaging of a man's self

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 249
in such or such a way of action. And now for the assumption,
that St. John the Baptist, Christ himself, and the apostles,
judged the life and employment of a soldier lawful, it shall be
made appear particularly.
And first, for St. John the Baptist ; it was his great office to
be the preacher of repentance, and to consign it with the great
sacrament of baptism : upon which it is rational to conclude, that
he admitted none to baptism without declaring to them what sins
they were to repent of. And since the sum of his doctrine was,
that men should bring forth fruits worthy of repentance; when
any men asked him what they were to do, to fulfil this great
command, it is most consonant to reason to judge, that his an
swer taught them all that- was included in that duty, and showed
them whatsoever was inconsistent with it. But now, when the
soldiers, amongst others, asked John, what they should do,
Luke iii. 14, he speaks nothing at all of laying down their em
ployment ; but rather confirms that, by prescribing rules to them
how they should manage it: as, "Do violence to no man, neither
accuse any one falsely, and be content with your wages." In
short, it is not imaginable that the great forerunner of the Mes-
sias, even one of the greatest persons that was born of women,
should busy himself to instruct men how they should lawfully
manage such an employment as was in itself absolutely unlawful ;
and to countenance men to receive wages for a work that he
judged highly impious and unjust.
In the next place, for the judgment of Christ and his apostles
about this matter; the first we have in Matt. viii. 10, where
Christ, speaking of the centurion, said, that " he had not found
so much faith, no, not in Israel." And the like is testified of
Cornelius the centurion, in Acts x. 1, 2, that he was " a devout
man, and one that feared God with all his house."
From whence I argue thus : He whose faith Christ com
mended, and he to, whom the Spirit of God bore this testimony,
that he was " a devout man, and feared God," could neither of
them be engaged in a course of life absolutely unlawful; other
wise saving faith and the fear of God would be consistent with
a settled, constant, resolved living in sin. For he whose employ
ment is sinful, sins habitually, and with a witness ; and we
might, with as much propriety of Speech and truth in divinity,
commend the faith of a highway-man, and say 'a devout bawd
and a devout cheat, as a devout centurion. I conclude, therefore,
that war is a thing in itself lawful and allowable, and that the
proof of it stands firm, both upon the .principles of nature and
the principles of Christianity. And being so, it is a great won
der that Faustus Socinus and his school, in other things too
partial defenders of nature, should yet in this so undeservedly
desert it, as to assert all war to be utterly unlawful ; not indeed
by virtue of the law. of nature, or of Moses, but of Christ, who,
Vol. IV.— 32

250 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xvii.
they say, has perfected the two former, and superadded higher
and more sublime precepts.
But still I cannot see that this sect of men are able to quit
themselves from the charge of very great unreasonableness in this
assertion. For in those truths that concern the theory of
the Christian religion, as about the Trinity and the like, they
vehemently contend that all scriptures, howsoever in the clearest
appearance of natural construction looking that way, yet ought
to be interpreted and brought down to the analogy and rules of
natural reason. But here, in the highest concerns of practice,
in which men's lives and fortunes, their being and well-being are
immediately interested, they strip men of all the rights of nature,
and that under pretence of such an injunction from the Christian
religion. It concerns us therefore to inquire into their argu
ments ; which we shall do, first, by examining the general ground
upon which they stand; and then by traversing those several
scriptures which these men allege in the behalf of their opinion.
1. First of all then, they lay this as the foundation of all their
arguings in this particular, that God under the Mosaical covenant
made only promises of temporal possessions and blessings to his
people ; and therefore giving them a temporal Canaan, it was
necessary that he should allow them the means of defending it,
which was properly by war, and repulsing their temporal ene
mies: but now under the covenant of grace, established by the
mediatorship of Christ with the world, God has made no express
promise of any temporal enjoyments or felicities; but rather,
on the contrary, bids us despise and take our minds wholly off
from them. And therefore, according to the tenor of such a
covenant, he has made no provision to secure his people in any
such temporalities, but taken from them all right of war and
resistance. To this, which is a proposition current through the main body
of the Socinian divinity, I answer, that it is both false in itself,
and as to the present purpose hugely inconclusive.
For first, it is to be denied that God transacted with his people,
under the Mosaical covenant, only in temporal promises : he did
indeed, according to the thick genius of that people, too much
intent upon worldly happiness, express and shadow forth spiri
tual blessings under temporal ; but that they had hopes, and con
sequently promises of a better life after this, is clear from sundry
places, as particularly that in Psalm lxxiii. 24, where David says
to God, ' Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel here, and after
ward receive me to glory." And it is clear from all the forego
ing verses, that by the guidance of God's counsel, he understood
God's favour to him throughout all the whole compass of his life.
But more fully in Heb. xi. 13, where the divine author, speak
ing of the ancient heroes before the times, of the gospel, says,
that " they all died in the faith, not having received the promises,

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 251
but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and
embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and
pilgrims on the earth." What could be said more fully and ex
pressly to show the insolence of that assertion, that by taking
from the Mosaical church all promise of future blessedness,
would degrade them to the rank of brutes and swine, and epi
cures, who live only by this beastly principle : Let us eat and
drink to-day, for to-morrow we shall die.
And further, it is also false, that God has under the covenant
of- grace made no temporal provision for the persons under it.
For what mean those words of Christ, Matt. vi. 33, " Seek ye
first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto
you." God indeed did not design these temporals as parts of the
great promised blessing, as he did under the Mosaical covenant,
but only as appendages and concomitants of it, that so he might
show the spiritual nature of this covenant to be much above that
of the other : but still it follows not but God has made an allow
ance of temporal necessaries under the second covenant, though
not in the same manner and upon the same terms that he did
under the first. It is clear therefore, that the contrary proposi
tion is false ; and that it is as weak in the nature of an argument,
as it is false in the nature of a proposition, is no less manifest.
For if the only reason that made war lawful to the Jews, was
because it was a means to secure them in the possession of their
temporal Canaan, against the invasion and incursions of the
enemy, then when there was no such incursion or invasion, it
ceased to be lawful : this is a natural inference. But the con
trary is evident : for we know that they commenced a lawful
war against the tribe of Benjamin, their brethren, in which there
could be no pretence either of securing or enlarging the borders
of the promised land ; but only a just revenge acted upon them,
for a black and villanous trespass upon the laws of common
justice and humanity.
And then for the Christian church; suppose they should have
no federal or spiritual right to their earthly possessions, yet they
have a civil and a natural right ; which right they may accord
ingly defend : since, by virtue of the covenant of grace, to have
a title to heaven ; and withal to have a civil and temporal claim
to their earthly estates ; and further, to maintain that claim
against the violence of an enemy ; are not at all opposite or con
trary one to the other, but very fairly subordinate.
But that I may thoroughly pluck up this false foundation,
grounded upon the difference of the two covenants, I shall
observe this : that since in the former covenant there were some
things of moral and external right, some things only of positive
institution, peculiarly made for and restrained to the church and
commonwealth of the Jews; whatsoever alterations and abro
gations have been made by Christ under the second covenant,

252 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XVII.
were only of those positive laws, peculiar and proper to the
Jews ¦ all other things, which depended upon the eternal and im
mutable laws and rights of nature, remaining inviolately the
same under both covenants, and as unchanged as nature itself.
Now such a thing I affirm the right of war to be, as being the
result and dictate of that grand natural right of self-preservation.
It is the voice of reason and nature, that we should defend our
persons from assassination, and our estates from violence; and
he that seeks for rescue from any thing but a vigorous resist
ance, will find himself wronged to that degree, that it will be
too late for him to be righted.
Having thus removed the false ground of the arguments
proving the utter unlawfulness of war ; I come now to see what
countenance this opinion receives from scripture; from which
the abettors of it argue thus: If we are expressly commanded,
" not to resist evil, but being smitten on the right cheek, to turn
the other also," as in Matt. v. 39 ; and to " recompense no man
evil for evil," nor to " avenge ourselves, but rather to give place
to wrath," as in Rom. xii. 17, 19. If also we are commanded to
"love our enemies," as in the same Matt, v., then war, which
includes in it the clean contrary, is utterly unlawful.
Before I answer these particular scriptures, I shall premise
this : What if we should answer Socinus in his own words ?
who in his book De Jesu Christo Servatore, disputing against
Covelus for the disproving of Christ's satisfaction, has the hardi
ness to say, that the word satisfaction is not to be found in scrip
ture : which is true. But supposing that it were ; yet it being,
in his judgment, contrary to right reason, it was not, he says, to
be admitted in the sense naturally signified by it. So say I ;
these scriptures indeed, however they prohibit self-defence, yet
this being contrary to the fight of nature and right reason, they
are not to be admitted in their proper signification. Surely this,
though it were a bold and a profane speech, yet to him it were a
very full answer, who makes the very same plea upon a parallel
occasion. But we shall not need such refuges. To those scriptures
therefore, I answer, that they are to be understood only of
private revenge acted by one particular man upon another, and
not of a public, managed by the authority of the magistrate :
but such a revenge only is war. That the words are so to be
understood is clear, as the occasion of those in Matt. v. shows :
for Christ's design was to beat down that corrupt and false gloss
of the pharisees upon the law, who taught that it was lawful for
any private man to right and revenge himself with his own
hands ; provided that he observed the just measure of equality
between the evil which he suffered, and the evil which he re
turned: whereas indeed Moses committed the execution of this
law of retaliation only to the magistrate. Hereupon Christ tells

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 253
them, that it was the duty of private men not to resist evil,, nor
to revenge themselves, but being smitten upon one cheek to
turn the other; which words are not literally to be understood,
for neither Christ himself nor the apostle Paul so behaved them
selves: but being smitten upon the face, they expostulated the
injury of the blow, John xviii. 23, and Acts xxiii. 3. But they
are only a hyperbolical speech, prescribing a very great degree
of patience and composure of mind ; and that of the two, we
should rather choose, having received one injurious blow, to offe*
ourselves to another, than to sin against God by revenging it.
But that this prohibition of revenge, further urged in Rom.
xii. 19, concerns only private men, and not absolutely damns all
kind of revenge, acted by a public person, is manifest ; for not
above six verses off, namely, in ch. xiii. 4, the apostle is so far
from denying this to the magistrate, that he tells us it is the
very design of his office : and that " he beareth not the sword
in vain ;" as, being " the minister of God, a revenger, to execute
wraith upon him that doeth evil." We cannot therefore make
the apostle to forbid all revenge, without a gross and a palpable
contradicting of himself. But besides, as touching revenge,
which is properly a retaliation, or repaying one evil for another,
that this is not a thing in its nature unlawful, is invincibly
proved by this : that God, by an express law, under the Mo
saical economy, committed the exercise of it- to the magistrate.
But were it a thing in the very nature of it unjust, God could
not so much as permit or allow the practice of it, much less
countenance it by a law.
As for the next injunction, of " loving our enemies," I
answer ; 1. That it is there directed by Christ to particular per
sons, not public bodies or whole nations. 2. But secondly, ad
mitting that it extends to these also, yet I assume that the love
here commanded is not properly a love of friendship, but a love
of charity ; which consists in a freedom from any malice to, or
hatred of, our enemies' persons : and this may continue and be
maintained, even while a man, either in the defence or vindica
tion of his country, kills his adversary in the field. For I sup
pose a judge may be in charity with a malefactor while he
condemns him ; and the executioner have no design of hatred to
him whom, by the duty of his office, he makes a sacrifice to
common justice.
The case is the same in war; where, when a man kills
another, it is not because he has not a love of charity to his per
son, but because he is bound to love his prince and his country
with a greater.

254

SERMON XVIII.
PART II.
Romans xii. 18.
If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all
¦men.
2. The second argument to prove the unlawfulness of all war,
is taken from that prophecy in Isaiah ii. 4, where it is said of
those that shall live in the times of the gospel, that they shall
"beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into
pruning-hooks ;" and "nation shall not lift up sword against na
tion, neither shall they learn war any more." (
Answ. But to this I answer, 1. That prophecies only foretell
the future event of things, but determine nothing concerning
either the lawfulness or unlawfulness of those things. 2. If
these words are understood literally, that after the coming of the
Messias war shall every where cease ; then they prove nothing,
but what the Jews pretend to prove by them, which is, that
Jesus Christ is not the Messias ; forasmuch as since his coming
we have seen no such thing as a general cessation of war over
the world.
For the explication of this place therefore we must observe;
that in scripture, things have those effects ascribed to them which
they have a natural fitness to produce ; though by accident, and
other impediments, they never actually produce them. Thus,
because the gospel delivers such precepts to the world, which if
men would live up to there would certainly ensue such a uni
versal peace and tianquillity ; therefore the production of such a
peace is ascribed to the gospel, though, through the vice and
corruption of men, the case of things fall out to be much other
wise. But it may be replied, that then, however, those who obey and
live up to the precepts of the gospel, ought to /abstain from all
war ; whence it follows, that according to those precepts, war is
unlawful. I answer, that upon supposition of such an absolute obe
dience to the doctrine of Christ, war indeed would not be law
ful, because the very ground and occasion of it would be taken
away, by the inoffensive behaviour of one man towards another.
But the dispute is here concerning what is lawful to be done
when the generality of the world live not according to the tenor
of this doctrine, but invade the rights of others. In which case

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 255
I affirm, that the gospel rends not from any the privileges of a
natural defence, and the prosecution of justice in a lawful war.
As for instance, the gospel, as much as any doctrine can do,
makes provision that there should be no thieves or murderers in
the world, by' a prohibition of those unhallowed courses: but
yet when it falls out that men obey not those prohibitions, but
engage in such practices, surely it does not strip the magis
trate of all right to animadvert upon such offenders, but leaves
the axe as sharp and the gibbet as strong as ever it was under the
law. This exception therefore concludes nothing.
But then by the way, for the further clearing of the text from
the Jews' objection, raised out of it against Jesus Christ's being
the Messias ; besides what has been said, I add further, as to the
very literal impletion of the prophecy, that when it is foretold
that a thing shall come to pass in the time of the gospel, it is not
necessary to understand that it must happen immediately upon
the introduction of it, and to be always to be found in the
world during the continuance of the gospel : but it is sufficient
if it come to pass and be fulfilled in any period of it. And who
knows, but before the world ends God may give the gospel such
a progress over the earth, and withal such a mighty influence
upon the hearts of those that profess it, that there may be such a
universa] peace to be seen amongst all nations, and such glorious
halcyon days, as the very literal purport of these prophecies
seems to exhibit to us. From whence I infer, that we must first
see an end of all things, before the Jews' objection can be ad
mitted to prove what it does intend.
3. The third argument for the unlawfulness of war, is taken
from that place in Matt. xxvi. 52, where Christ commanding
Peter to put up his sword, tells him, that " all they that take the
sword shall perish by the sword." From whence it follows,
that since Christ allowed not his disciple the use of the sworcL.
and that upon such an occasion as the defence of his master,
and him also the Lord and Saviour of the world, certainly he
would not allow of it as lawful upon any other occasion whatso
ever. To this I answer, that the sense and meaning of every
speech is to be limited to the subject-matter of it, and also to be
measured by that which first occasioned the utterance of it.
Now Christ reprehends Peter, because that by an unwarranted
though perhaps a well-meaning zeal, and without any leave,
either had or asked from Christ himself, he flew upon the high-
priest's servant in that manner. The words therefore, howsoever
uttered in general terms, signify only thus much ; that those who
without any call or warrant from the lawful superior power, but
merely by the instigation of a hot zeal, and a hotter head, shall
presume to use the sword, such " shall perish by the sword."
But this concludes nothing against the lawfulness of those men's
waging war, who come to it armed with the authentic call of the

256 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XVIII.
supreme magistrate, to whom God has committed tiie defence of
the subject and the administration of justice. It is indeed a
dagger in the throat of their cause, who can dare to raise armies,
rum countries, and subvert governments, upon no other com
mission, than the impulse of a furious ambition and a pretended
4. The fourth and last argument for the unlawfulness of war
may be framed thus: that which proceeds from a sinful cause,
and produces sinful, unlawful effects, that itself is unlawful. But
so does war. For the sinfulness of its cause, we have an account
of that in James iv. 1, " Whence come wars and fightings among
you ? Come they not hence, even of your lusts ?" And for the
unlawfulness of its effects, we need only survey our own expe
rience, without recurring to any further histories to inform us,
what dismal cruelties, rapines, and outrages are the constant
inseparable attendants of war. Now for that which issues from
so evil a beginning, and draws after it such evil consequences, it
is certainly very strange if it should not be in a high degree evil
itself. But to this I answer :
'. (1.) As for that place of St. James, it speaks only of personal
quarrels and dissensions between particular men, and not of na
tional hostilities managed by the public conduct of the magistrate ;
which only is the thing here disputed of.
(2.) But secondly, admit that the words may be extended to
national hostilities and wars between people and people ; yet the
apostle speaks only of what usually are the causes of war ; and
not what are so of necessity and according to the nature of the
thing itself: which, though on one side they are unlawful,
namely on that which gives the offence ; yet on the other, the
causes of it are not always men's lusts ; but a rational defence of
their country, and a due vindication of public justice.
In a word, it is one thing to speak of war, as actually it uses to
be managed, and another to speak of it as it ought and may be
managed. And this affords also an answer to the second part of
the argument, concerning those sad and sinful effects that follow it,
as unjust violences, rapines, cruelties, and the like. Of all which
it is to be said, that they proceed only from the corruption and vice
of those who manage it, but are utterly extraneous to the nature of
war, considered precisely in itself. I know no action so good and
allowable but may derive a contagion by passing through ill hands.
But we are not to judge of the nature of. any thing or action, by
that which is only accidental to it. The nature of war consists
properly either in the repelling of an intended, or the revenging of
a received injury. But whether this be done with unjust rapines
and hideous cruelties upon the innocent, or duly and justly, the
nature of war is still the same : the quality is indeed altered from
just to unjust, but that amounts to no more than the ill performing
of a thing in itself indifferent.

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 257
And thus I have answered all the arguments that to me seem
to be of any moment to prove the absolute unlawftilness of all
war ; upon the strength of which answers, I think I may reckon
upon it as a proved assertion, that war is not a thing in itself
unlawful. I suppose nobody will conclude the foregoing discourse to
have been a commendation of war, much less an exhortation to
it. It is indeed a lawful, but a sad remedy. And I think there
is none who looks upon it as a sufficient argument to persuade
him that the cutting off a leg or an arm is a desirable thing, be
cause it is better to do so, than to have a gangrene spread itself
over the whole body. Caustics and corrosives may be endured,
but certainly the causes that make them necessary are not to be
chosen. War can be desired only in the nature of a remedy,
and a remedy always supposes an evil. And I know no argu
ment so strong to prove the lawfulness of war, but that war itself
is a stronger argument to prove the worth and the convenience of
peace. I have now done with the first general inquiry, concerning the
measures by which the great duty of peaceableness is to be de
termined: which was, whether war could be at all lawful? I
come now to the second, which is to inquire, upon supposition
that it may be lawful, When and where it ought to be judged so ?
And here I shall,
First, Lay down some general grounds that may authorize war.
And, Secondly, Descend to the resolution of particular cases.
For the first of these, I shall lay these four general grounds of
the lawfulness of it, premising first what is the nature of peace.
Peace is properly the mutual forbearance of acts of hostility or
annoyance, in order to the preservation of our nature in all its due
rights and capacities.
It is clear therefore, that peace is a means or instrument de
signed only to such an end. Now that ceasing to be able to
compass this end, to which if is designed, ceases also to be an in
strument or means, and consequently to engage us' to use it:
whereupon it is lawful to enter into a contrary estate, namely of
hostility or war. From whence follow these assertions, as so
many general grounds of it. ,'
1. When those with whom we are at peace declare that' they
will annoy us, unless we qut off our limbs, and injure and mangle
our bodies; and accordingly upon our refusal disturb us; as
Nahash the Ammonite did to the men of Jabesh Gilead, offering
them peace only upon condition that they would let him thrust
out their right eyes, 1 Sam. xi. 2 ; & is in such a case lawful to
repel and resist that force or disturbance. For every one has a
right to preserve his limbs and the faculties of his nature.
2. When those with whom we are at peace declare war with
Vol: IV.— 33 y 2

25$ DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XVHI.
us unless we will renounce our religion, and upon our refusal do
so'- which is the case of the pope's exposing the dominions of
those whom he calls heretics to the invasion of other princes ; it
is then- lawful to repel and resist that force or invasion. The
reason is, because every man has a natural right to the use of
that which he apprehends indispensably to conduce to his chiefest
good: and that is his religion.
3. When one nation injures another to that degree, as to blast
its honour and reputation ; it is lawful to revenge that public
breach of honour by a public war. The reason is, because the
honour of a nation is as absolutely necessary to the welfare and
support of it, as its trade or commerce ; it being indeed the great
instrument of both, and perhaps also of its very safety and vital
subsistence: it being seldom, known, that a government dis
honoured and despised abroad, did long preserve itself in credit
and respect at home.
4. When those with whom we are at peace declare war with
us, unless we will quit our civil rights, as our estates and fami
lies, and the protection of the laws, and accordingly upon our re
fusal do so : it is lawful to enter into war with those who make
such encroachments upon us. The reason is, because when civil
societies are constituted and submitted to, every man so submitting
to them has a natural right to the conveniences and enjoyments of
such societies.
Now the foundation of the lawfulness of war in all the fore-
mentioned cases is, because whatsoever a man has a lawful right
to possess or enjoy, he has by consequence a right to use all those
means which are absolutely necessary to the possession or enjoy
ment of that thing.
You will say now, that according to this doctrine, when the
prince encroaches upon his subjects' bodies, estates, or religion,
they may lawfully resist or oppose him.
This objection brings in the resolution of the first particular
case proposed by us to be discussed, which is: Whether it be
lawful for subjects 'in any case to make war upon the magis
trate ? My answer to it is in the negative. And the reason is,
because the subject has resigned up all right of resistance into
the hands of his prince and governor. And for this we must
observe, that as every man has naturally a right to resist any one
that shall annoy him in his lawful enjoyments ; so he has a gene
ral natural right, by which he is master of all the particular
rights of his nature, so as to retain them or recede from them,
and give them away as he pleases. Now when a man consents
to be a subject, and to acknowledge any one for his governor, he
does by that very action invest him with all the necessary means
of being a governor ; the chief of which is, a quitting and part
ing with that natural right of resisting him upon any occasion
whatsoever. And every man consents to have such a one his

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 259
governor, from whom he covenants to receive protection, and to
whom he does not actually declare a non-subjection.
This being laid down, it follows, that it is not more natural
for a man to resist another particular man, who would deprive
him of his rights, than it is natural for him not to resist his prince
upon the same occasion. Forasmuch as by a superior and general
right of nature, he has parted with this particular right of resist
ance : and consequently having given his prince the propriety of
it, he cannot any more use it, unless his prince should surrender
it back to him again ; which here is not supposed. And this is
the ground upon which I judge a resistance of the supreme
magistrate, both unlawful and irrational. But there have not
been wanting in the world scholars to teach, as well as soldiers to
act the contrary. Such as have weakened the ties of govern
ment, and shaken the supremacy of princes, by prescribing of
cases in which this duty of nonresistance binds not the subject ;
and by which they are so discharged of their allegiance, as to be
let loose to carve for themselves, and to restrain their superiors.
But before I come to survey any of their opinions, I shall
premise this rule or maxim : that those whom the people have a
right of proceeding against, so as to punish them by law ; those
also they may proceed against by war and open force, in case
that legal course of proceeding be obstructed.
The reason is, because war is a remedy upon the default of
law ; and therefore where the coercive power of the law cannot
have its effect, war is to take place, and supply the want of it :
Ubi judicia desinunt, incipit bellum, says Grotius, in his second
book De. Jure Belli, cap. i. sect. 2. Upon which ground it is,
that one private man cannot revenge an injury upon another by
open force ; the law being open for him to right himself by ; but
one nation may by force and war revenge an injury done to it by
another nation ; because there is no provision of a coercive power
stated by a law between them, by which one nation may implead
the other, and so have a reparation of an injury made it by the sen
tence of a common judge. Now I premise this observation to show,
that whosoever teaches that the people may judicially proceed
against and punish their prince, the same person does by conse
quence affirm that the people may also -take up arms against him,
when they cannot otherwise bring him to such a judicial process.
This being observed, I cannot but set before you those several
cases assigned by Grotius in his first book De Jure Belli, and
fourth chapter, in which he asserts it lawful for the people to
proceed against their prince. As,
(1.) When according to the professed constitution of the
government, the prince is accountable to the people, as in Lace-
daemon, where the people owned a coercive power over their
king, which power they deposited in the hands of their ephori ;
who, by virtue thereof, restrained the king at the people's pleasure.

260 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. XVIII.
(2 ) When a prince quits and relinquishes all right of govern
ment : after which action, he says, the prince may be dealt withal
as any other private man. .
(3.) When he would transfer and alienate the right of govern
ment to another ; in which endeavour, he says, the subjects may
hinder, and by force resist him.
(4.) When he actually attempts the destruction of all his
people. .
(5.) When he holds the grant of the sovereignty from the
people upon conditions, and fails in the fulfilling of those con
ditions. (6.) When the prince holds but part of the supreme power,
the senate or people holding the other part : in which case, if
the prince invades that part of. the sovereign power not belonging
to him, those, to whom that part does belong, may resist him.
According to this doctrine, those amongst us who taught that the
king was one of the three estates, and that the parliament was a
power coordinate with him, did by consequence teach, that in
some cases they might make war upon him ; and their practice
was not short of their doctrine.
(7.) When, in the conferring of the sovereignty to a prince,
the people declare, that in certain cases it shall be lawful for
them to resist him : and the reason is, because he who transfers
his right to another, may transfer it upon what terms or under
what reserves he thinks fit. This seems of near affinity with
the fifth instance, but it is not altogether the same: for the
former is suspended upon the prince's not doing of something
which he conditioned to do ; but this speaks not of the prince's
action, but of some events of affairs, under which the people put
in .caution, that their subjection to him should cease.
These aphorisms I had rather rehearse than animadvert upon ;
the great reputation of the author making all censures upon him,
though perhaps true, yet unhandsome. But the foundation
which he had laid a little before, in the seventh section of the
same chapter, seems large enough to bear all these super
structures, and many more. For proposing the question, Whe
ther the law of not resisting the magistrate binds the subject
in a great, imminent, and extreme danger? he answers, that
most laws, human and divine, though running in absolute
terms, yet imply a condition of relaxation in cases of ex
tremity. And for this law, of not resisting the magistrate, he
says it sprung first from the consent of the people, who for the
benefits of government and society, resigned themselves up to
the absolute disposal of a sovereign ; which people, he says, had
they been asked whether they would have chosen rather to die,
than in any case whatsoever to resist their sovereign with an
armed power, he conceives they would never have owned that to
have been their will and intention ; and consequently, that the

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 261
sense of that law, which is to be measured by the sense of those
from whose consent it took force, ought still to be supposed to
imply an exception in cases of extreme danger. And accordingly
he concludes, in page 87, that for his part he could not con
demn a people, under such a danger, so defending themselves:
that is, by a resistance of the magistrate ; for that is the thing
that he is' debating of expressly, and exemplifies it by the
Maccabees defending themselves with an army against Antiochus.
This assertion, I am apt to think, in the full improvement of
it, would widen itself to a very strange latitude. But thus
much may be said for this author, that he breathed a popular air,
and lived a member of a commonwealth, which needed such
maxims as these to justify its being so.
But David Parseus has, with a much more barefaced impu
dence, flown in the face of sovereignty, in a set and long dispute
upon Rom. xiii., a strange text, one would think, to preach re
bellion upon. His arguments therefore I shall briefly examine
and remove, and so conclude this question.
The whole discourse stands upon these two propositions.
Prop. 1. The first is, that it is lawful for the inferior magis
trates to resist and punish the supreme ; and some of the cases
in which they may do so are these. 1. If he blasphemes God,
or causes others to do so. 2. If he does the subjects some great
injury. His words are, jSS ipsis fiat atrox injuria; a term of a
very large comprehension, and it is hard if any pretence cannot
clothe itself with this name. 3. If the subjects cannot freely
enjoy their lives, estates, and consciences.
This, I say, subverts all government ; for if the prince may be
punished, it follows,
(l.) That he is not supreme ; for all punishment, as such, is
an act of the superior upon the inferior.
(2.) If the inferior magistrates may punish him, flien they
may also judge when he is to be punished ; and consequently the
prince is never secure, since it is in their power to judge this
when they think fit ; and they will undoubtedly think it fit, when
they find it for their advantage.
flis reasons for this doctrine are principally these two.
1. He lays down this division: kings are absolute, or by com
pact; and subjoins, that there is none in Europe but is by com
pact, and upon conditions. Upon this he reasons thus ; that
such a prince, violating the conditions updh which he holds the
sovereignty, may be judged by the people or senate that made
him prince, upon those cpnditions. ,
To this I answer, first, that those who hold the supremacy upon
any such conditional grant, upon default of these conditions, may in
deed be made accountable to their people ; but then I deny that
either the kings of England, France, or Spain, hold their king
doms by any such compact. Yet, because the kings of England

262 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XVIII.
take an oath at their coronation to govern by such and such laws,
which, in case they should not, Milton, and such others, are so bold
as to absolve the subject from his allegiance ; I shall, to dash that
puritan, antimonarchical tenet, lay down this distinction, that it is one
thing for a king to promise to manage his kingly office according to
such rules, and another thing to take upon him the kingly office
upon condition that he so governs : it is this latter only that would
render him accountable to his people ; but the former, if not fulfilled,
is not breach of an antecedent condition, but only breach of a subse
quent promise, for the sin of which he is answerable only to God.
2. The other reason for the inferior magistrates' resisting the su
preme is this ; because they are joined with him as associates in the
government, and God has committed the defence of the people to
them in their order ; by virtue of which commission, they are to de
fend them against the supreme magistrate himself, if a tyrant, as well
as against any other: forasmuch as being entrusted with the people's
defence, it matters not who the persons are, against whom they are
to be defended.
But to this the answer is ready, by a positive denial of that false
and base principle, that the inferior magistrates are associates with
the supreme ; and that God immediately commissions them to gov
ern and defend the people. For they are not the prince's associates,
but his instruments in government, and have no power but what
they receive immediately from him ; . and that he who acts by au
thority from another, cannot by that authority act against him, whose
will and gift is the alone cause of that authority, is too clear to need
any proof.
It would be too long particularly to insist upon his other reasons
to this purpose ; I shall reduce them therefore to general heads, an
nexing to each their respective solutions.
(1.) He argues from several scripture instances; as Ehud killing
Eglon, and Jehu killing Joram.
(2.) From many instances ofthe heathens, as the Romans depo-
posing Tarquinius.
(3. ) From several speeches of princes, acknowledging a kind of de
pendence upon, and an accountableness to their people. To which
I answer, (1.) For those scripture instances and examples, that most of
them are set down without any approbation or disapprobation,
but only by a bare historical narration; and withal that the
honesty of the person does not legalize every one of , his actions.
And perhaps it can no more be said, that to depose or kill a
prince is just,_because Ehud and Jehu did it, than because David
left Solomon in charge to revenge an old injury upon Shimei, a
man may now-a-days, having pardoned an injury, yet justly
cause his son to revenge it. Add to this, that those persons are
said to have done what they did by an especial commission or war
rant from God; which men now-a-days cannot pretend to.

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 263
(2.) In the next place, to his allegation of the example of the
Romans, I answer, that it was unlawful, and that to use it here
is to prove the lawfulness of one rebellion by, another.
(3.) And for those several speeches and concessions of princes,
acknowledging their right at the people's dispose, I answer, that
we are not to judge of the right of princes by what they may
sometimes speak in flattery, upon design, or necessity. Besides,
that the concessions this or that prince makes from his own right,
cannot prejudice or infringe the right of others. And thus -
much for Paraeus's first proposition, by which we see how he has
armed inferior magistrates, as sheriffs, bailiffs, constables, and the
like, against their prince ; and it is much that he did not take
care also for their calling of triennial parliaments. But does he
stop here ? No, he proceeds further in another proposition, which
is this :
Prop. 2. If the prince shall offer violence to the subject, as a ¦¦
tyrant, murderer, or adulterer, and there is no help to be had
from any inferior magistrate, then it is lawful for every private
man to defend himself, vi et armis, as from a common thief or
murderer. This is wholesome divinity indeed, and it was not to be doubted,
but that the former assertion would in the end produce this. His
reasons for it are these two.
1. Because what the inferior magistrates may do, that every ,
private man may do in his own behalf, in a case of necessity..
The consequence, I confess, is good, and therefore ¦ grant this to
be just as lawful as I have already proved the former ; that is,
indeed, absolutely wicked and unlawful.
2. Because otherwise God would have put it into the power of.
the magistrate to destroy the commonwealth. To this I janswer,
1. That the magistrate is but a particular man, and therefore
cannot effect such a thing by himself, but by the assistance of
others, against whom some are of opinion, that the subjects may,
defend themselves. As amongst us, let any man rob. or injure
us, and although he be ever so much commanded by the king. to,
do so, yet we have our action against him at law. But still
those who hold that the king's instruments, in any act of violence
upon the subject, may be resisted,: qualify their assertion with
these two cautions: first, that the violence offered be apparent
and notorious, such as no man endued with common reason can
doubt of or deny ; secondly, that the person of the king be still i
sacred and untouched: yet, since a king, without an absolute
obedience to those instruments whom he shall think: fit to employ,
is but a mere mockery, and an insignificant shadow; and since
to make the subjects judges,, when they are to obey persons so >
commissioned by him, and when to resist them clearly opens a ,
door to an insolent shaking off all subjection: I cannot think it
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264 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xviii.
place therefore I answer, that I see no inconvenience in granting,
that that absolute authority which kings are invested withal,
puts it within their power, by the abuse of it, to ruin the com
monwealth. For if God puts it in the prince's power to be able
to preserve, undoubtedly the same power, misemployed, will be
as able to destroy society: he indeed is to be responsible to God
for his tyrannical abuse of his trust ; but subjects, whether their
subjection makes them happy or miserable, yet still are to be
subjects. And thus I think I have answered Paraeus's discourse, in which
he sets himself as a bold arbitrator between the prince and the
subject, so stating the privileges of one, as utterly to subvert the
prerogative of the other. The usual patrons of this doctrine
against princes are the Jesuits, who are properly the pope's jani
zaries ; and those of the presbytery, whether at home or beyond
the seas. But this opinion, that the supreme magistrate may be
resisted by his subjects, I think none can confute so fully as the
supreme magistrate himself.
2. The next case that comes to be resolved, according to the
order proposed by us, is, Whether it can be lawful for one
particular man to make war upon another, in those encounters
which we commonly call duels ?
A duel, called by the Greeks tiovopaxla, and by the Latins
duellum, receiving its denomination from the persons engaged in
it, is properly a fight or combat between two persons, mutually
undertaken, appointed, and consented to by each of them.
That the action is not a thing in itself absolutely unlawful is
apparent, because otherwise it could not be lawful for two men
meeting in a battle to fight one with another ; nor for one man
to fight for the defence of his life, with the murderer that assaults
him. Since, therefore, this falls within the number of those
actions, which, being indifferent in their nature, come to be
stamped lawful or unlawful by their principles and circumstances,
and other determining ingredients of action, we are to inquire
when it is to be allowed, when not. In which inquiry we shall
set down,
1st. The cases in which a duel is lawful.
2dly. The cases in which it is impious, unlawful, and utterly
to be disallowed.
(1.) First of all then, when two malefactors stand convict, and
condemned to die, and the magistrate appoints them to fight
singly; in which fight he that overcomes shall have his life: in
this case it is lawful for persons so condemned to accept of such
a fight. The reason is, because on either side it is only a mutual
desire of doing execution upon a malefactor convict: and it is
lawful for one malefactor, upon the warrant or allowance of the
magistrate, to do execution upon the other.
(2.) When two armies are drawn out to fight, and the decision

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 265
of the battle is cast upon a single combat, it is lawful for any two
persons, upon the appointment of the generals, to undertake such
a combat ; the reason is, because it is allowable for soldiers under
command to obey their generals in all things not apparently un
just: and a general has full power to draw out as much or as
little of his army to fight, as he shall judge most conducible for
the success ; there being no ground to conclude, why he may not
as well command one single soldier, as one regiment or body of
men, to fight, how and when he shall judge fit. Besides the con
venience of this course, that it is a compendium of war, and a
redemption of the lives of thousands by the death of one, bring
ing all the advantages of a conquest, without the dismal miseries
of a battle.
(3.) When one challenges another, and resolves immediately
to kill the challenged person, unless he accepts the combat, it is
then lawful for, him to accept it ; forasmuch as this is nothing
else but a repelling of force by force, and so is resolved into pure
self-preservation: which shall be considered of by itself after
wards. But a case may be here propounded: Suppose one should
accuse another for his life falsely, offering to verify his accusation
by single fight, and the judge should declare that he would pro
ceed to the sentence immediately, unless the person so accused
would undertake thus to fight with his accuser in single combat.
In answer to this, some affirm that the accused person may law
fully accept the challenge, it seeming to be equally a repelling of
force$ and the, result much the same, whether the accuser endea
vours to kill the accused by his own hand, ,or by the unjust
sentence of the judge. But, with submission to better judg
ments, I conceive that it is not ' lawful for him in this case to
accept the combat, the instances propounded being not indeed the
same ; for in one the danger is from the sentence <of the judge,
which, however unjust, a man is bound to submit to ; in the otfier,
the danger is from the force of a private person, which no man is
obliged to submit to, but has a natural right to repel.
And if it be replied, that such a one is necessitated to fight
with his challenger in his own defence, for that otherwise he
must die ; I answer, that this very thing implies, that the neces
sity or compulsion is not absolute, but only conditional, unless he
will submit to death ; which of the two he is rather to choose,
than to commit a sin. For the man is under a judicial process,
and so has no right to defend himself by force : neither matters
it to say, that the judge, by his permission or command, gives
him a right ; for the judge, by commanding or permitting him so
to defend himself, unjustly balks his own duty, which would
roblige him to decide the case of the innocent another way; and
the judge's going against his duty, by an unjust command, can
not give any man a right to do according to that command. If
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266 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xviii.
the man is condemned, and dies, he suffers ; but if he fights with
his accuser, when the law ought to deliver him, he acts, and that
uniustly And this is to be observed, that though a man, by the
unust sentence of a judge, is obliged to suffer an unjust punish
ment; yet he cannot, by any allowance or command ot the
iudge, have any right or obligation to do an unjust action. _
The sum of this case is, that a man, under the foreipentioned
condition, is bound rather to die by an unjust sentence, than to
take an undue course for his vindication. ^
2dly. I come now to show these cases in which duels are to be
judged utterly unlawful.
(1.) As first, when they are undertaken for vain ostentation,
and that either of affection to the dead ; as it was the custom of
the Romans heretofore, upon the death of some commander or
great man, for some soldiers voluntarily to undertake a single
fight at the funeral solemnities; and to kill one another, as
it were, by way of sacrifice, in honour of the dead ; by that
declaring their loss so great, that they had no will to survive
them. It was a custom also, for ostentation of strength and
valour, at their public sights and shows, for persons to entertain
the spectators with duels, and to die like fools, to please they
knew not whom ; till at length this wretched custom so prevailed,
that some would hire themselves at the Praetorian shows, to fight
thus in single combat, as men are now-a-days hired to act upon
the stage ; and these were called gladiators, a term that grew to
as great ignominy amongst the Romans, as "thief" or "cutter" is
amongst us. I suppose I need not take any pains to prove the
unlawfulness, nay, the sottishness of such duellings, where men
sold their lives for a crown or an angel ; and by a preposterous
way of labouring earned wages, not to get their living, but to
procure their death. It argued also, by the way, a strange
savageness in the Roman temper, that men, women, and children
should come with such eagerness to, and enjoy themselves with
such delight, at those barbarous spectacles, in which their chiefest
diversion and recreation was to behold these duellers kill one
another upon the stage. From which custom, as vile as it was,
both on their parts that beheld, and on theirs that fought, most
learned men are of opinion, that the use of duels, now so
frequent, had its infamous original.
(2.) Another case in which men used to undertake single com
bats, was for the cleansing of themselves from some crime objected
to them ; which must needs be unlawful and highly irrational, as
being a means noways suited in its nature to such a purpose ;
and withal, a bold presumption upon Providence, that any one,
without any warrant from the revealed will of God, should pre
sume that he must determine the success on the right side. For
the ridiculous unreasonableness of it, besides the demonstrations
of experience, that the guilty has frequently killed the innocent,

christians exhorted to live peaceably. 267
it is further evident, from the very nature of the thing: for is
there any natural inference, from a man's strength or success, to
his innocence ? or is it any argument, that the man did not steal
another's goods, or defile his bed, because he had better skill at
his weapon than his accuser, and so slew him ? I should both
abuse my own labour and your patience, should I endeavour to
beat down this senseless custom by any further confutation.
(3.) A third case is, when two agree upon a single combat, for
the decision of the right of possessing any goods or estate,
mutually claimed by both, in which it is agreed that the right
shall fall tb the conqueror. This also is utterly unlawful, as
being a course wholly extrinsical to, and unfitted for the decision
of matters of right.
For in every doubtful case, there is yet a right on one side ;
and where there is a right, there a right may be proved : the
proving of which belongs to the law, and the courts of justice ;
and he that seeks for law from his rapier, which he should seek
from the judge, deserves to have his person instead of his case
brought to the bar. No man has a right or power to choose the
way of having his right tried, by any course not prescribed or
permitted by the law. He indeed, whose right the thing is, may
possess and defend it against him who is pleased to doubt of the
other's right ; and in the defence of it may lawfully kill him in
his unjust and violent invasion; but yet he may not voluntarily
and by choice cast the deciding of his questioned right upon the
issues of a single combat, a thing otherwise disallowed. The
reason is, because though every man is master of his own right,
yet he is not master of the way by which that right is to be
tried: that being by all laws taken out of private hands, and
vested in the person of a public judge. And to what purpose
are courts open, and tribunals erected, if causes must be tried in
the field, and inheritances conveyed by the decrees of a lawless
combat, and a contingent conquest ?
- (4.) The fourth and grand case is, when a duel is undertaken
either for revenge or some injury done, or for vindication of a
man's honour, upon the account of some affront passed upon him.
As for the first of these, all plea of lawfulness is taken from it,
by what has been already said in condemnation of private revenge.
And for the second, which is the defence of the great idol and
Diana of the duellists, called honour; it is confessed that the
case of the challenger, and of him that is challenged is very dif
ferent. And for the former, there are few that patronize or ab
solve him, under *what pretence soever he may absolve himself.
But for the latter, many fair allegations may be made : as, that
he loses his reputation upon refusal of the combat: and that, as
to the real concernments of life, and the advantage of his fortunes,
he is thought unfit for any public command or preferment which
requires a person of courage ; he is despised, scorned, and tram-

268 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xviii.
Died upon, by which the contents and comforts of life dearer
than life itself, are torn from him : but with a non obstante to all
this I affirm any acceptance of a duel in such a case to be un
lawful And, in answer to what has been alleged, I reply, first,
that it proves only to be a difficult duty ; such as the exercise of
most virtues are, especially according to those straight lines of
duty drawn by Christianity. For if every inconvenience attend
ing the performance of a duty, should change it from being a
duty, where is the difficulty of being religious? How can any
man be obliged to suffer for conscience sake, if fear of suffering
unties the obligation ?
The upshot of the dispute is, God by his providence, for the
trial of a man's sincerity, and his obedience to the divine law, calls
him to an act of duty, beset with high dissuasives, grim circum
stances, and great discouragements. So that the point lies here :
will you lose your soul, or your reputation, the favour of God,
or the opinion of men? quit your hopes of eternity, or the
momentary breath of a popular applause? I suppose here the
weight and reason of the thing is sufficient to determine his
choice, and to support his spirit in all the calamities that shall
attend it.
Besides, that which is here supposed, which is loss of honour,
is indeed no such thing : the measure of honour, is the judgment
of the knowing, and the pious, and the virtuous, who will value
and applaud the passive magnanimity of such a one, that
durst look a duty in the face, in spite of scorn, and conquer
the scoffs of the world, of which the most reputed for
valour are afraid. All that he loses is the opinion of those that
rate honour by a false rule, and measure glory by the standard of
their own ignorance, vanity, and rashness : and the same persons
who condemn him for this, would slight him as much for not
talking obscenely, nor scoffing at religion, and whatsoever is sa
cred, and for not drinking himself to the condition of a barrel or
a sponge ; or not rapping out such hideous oaths, as might even
provoke divine justice to revenge the impiety of them upon a
place or a nation. Those indeed who look upon the not doing of
these things as a pedantry, would, no question, account all refusal
of a duel poorness and pusillanimity.
It was a wise, a prudent, and indeed a valiant answer of a cer
tain commander, who being challenged by one of his enemies to
a duel, told him, that he would meet him in the head of the ene
my ; which to a soldier was the true opportunity of fortitude,
because indeed the scene of duty.
But he that has not the courage to puff at all popular surmises,
and to esteem himself superior to the riots and mistakes of hec
tors ; but by a foolish facility appears and ventures his life at the
word and challenge of a furious sot, whose life is not worth the
keeping, falls ingloriously, and descends to his grave with the

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 269
burial of an ass ; shame is his winding-sheet, and the solemnity of
his funeral, the reprehension of the wise, the pity of the good,
and the laughter of his companions ; who can make sport at the
loss of a soul, and the miseries of damnation.
And thus I have shown the several cases in which duels are
unlawful ; and I suppose I preach to an auditory that needs no
other argument against them, than the demonstration of their
unlawfulness : yet since other arguments there are, I think a
truth cannot be too much confirmed.
And amongst these, the judgment of men generally condemn
ing them is no contemptible one. I have already observed what
an ignominious name the name of gladiator was amongst the
heathen Romans : and in the laws of the Lombards, even while
they permitted the use of those duels, they branded them with a
mark of infamy. Incerti sumus de judicio Dei, et multos audivi-
mus per pugnam sine justd causd suam causam perdere. Sed prop
ter consuetudinem gentis nostra Longobardorum legem impiam vetare
non possumus. They called it an impious law, even while they
suffered it to continue, and declared that they did so, because the
corruption and vice of the nation was too strong for them,- and
beyond the control of remedies. The canon law, even to those
that died in justs or tiltings (which were but in a manner the
shadows of a duel), yet denied them the privilege of Christian
i burial, in the fifth book of the decretals of Gregory, ch. i. De
Torneamentis. And if you will, you may to these add the judg
ment of the council of Trent, orthodox enough in this matter,
where their interest gave them no cause to be otherwise, sess. 25,
chap. 19, Detestabilis duellorum usus fabricante diabolo imtroductus,
ut cruentd corporum morte animarum etiam perniciem lucretur, ex
Christia.no orbe penitus exterminetur. Were it as needful as it is
easy, many more authorities might be added, to discountenance
this profane practice ; but I suppose these are enough to give
more credit to the refusal of a duel, than can accrue upon the
acceptance of it, from the opinion and vogue of debauched per
sons ; whose infamy will not let their censure be a reproach.
But the second and chief argument shall be taken from the
wretched consequences of the thing itself, which are twofold :
1. Such as attend the conquered person. 2. Such as attend the
conqueror. As for the conquered person, he is sure of these two evils.
(1.) A disastrous death. And surely it ought to be a very
great gain that is to counterbalance the loss of life ; something
more than the reputation of not giving the wall, not enduring a
slighting word or a trivial disrespect; which might otherwise
have been confuted by silence, conquered by contempt, and out
lived by the next hour. But now all the labour and expense of
a man's former education, all the hopes and usefulness of his re
maining years, the expectations of his friends, and perhaps the
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270 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. XVIII.
supports of a family, are lopped off at a blow, extinguished in a
moment, with an overplus of misery from the sadness of the oc
casion. . .
It is a sad thing for any hopeful man, in the vigour ot his
years, to be carried off by a plague, or a fever, or an unfortunate
accident; but still all that is uncomfortable in these is, that the
man is dead; but there is no criminal circumstance, from the
manner of his death, to embitter his remembrance : he did not
die by a sin, or by any thing that might stain his surviving name
or endanger his future condition. It was the action of Provi-
dence, which piety will, and mortality must submit to. But he '
that dies in a duel, so falls to the earth, that it is to be feared he
falls much lower; and that the iron enters deeper into his soul
than into his body, and kills much further than it reaches. And
this introduces the other fatal consequence, which attends the
person thus vanquished ; and that is,
(2.) Death eternal. When two persons come into the field upon
such an expedition, they defy one another, they defy the laws
both of God and man, and they defy hell: their business is,
which shall send the other to that place of misery first. For
certainly whosoever quits the body with the marks of murder
and revenge fresh upon his soul, and passes from his conquering
adversary to his dreadful Judge, shall in that world be condemned
for a murderer, though it was his ill hap to be murdered in this.
Nay, there will lie a double charge of murder upon him:
namely, for being both the unjust occasion of his own death, and
the designer of his adversary's : for it is the design that makes the
murderer, and not the event and issue of the action, which is
wholly contingent and extrinsical to the will. For shall a man
be therefore accounted no murderer, because he had less courage,
less skill, or less luck than his opposite ? because his purpose
was stronger than his arm? or because his foot slipped, or his
misguided rapier hit upon a rib, and kept the fatal point from the
regions of life, and so gave the adversary opportunity to be more
sure and mischievous in his thrust? All which plea or excuse
amounts to no more than this, that he would have slain his ad
versary with all his heart, but was prevented, and could not.
I neither will nor dare pronounce any thing in limitation of
the extent of God's mercy; but this I shall say, that according
to the standing rule and tenor of God's revealed will, he that
dies in a duel undertaken upon an unjust cause, affords no ground
for any one to judge that he is saved: for he dies in his sin,
directing his sword to his brother's heart; so that there is
nothing but his last breath passing between his murderous inten
tion and the final giving up of his accounts to God ; before whom
he has no other cause to allege for his dying in this manner,
but that he was proud, passionate, or revengeful ; sad qualifi
cations to recommend a man to the, tribunal of such a judge

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 271
We have seen here the miserable consequences that befall the
conquered dueller. Let us now, in the next place, take a survey
of those that befall the conqueror ; and these also are three.
(1.) In case he is apprehended: the law has provided that for
him which he did for his adversary, but in a more ignominious
manner. The rope and the gibbet is to be his portion ; die he
must ; and what honour a man wins or saves, by that which gives
him an opportunity of being hanged, is hard to be understood ;
but he that mistakes the cart for a triumphal chariot, or the
gallow-tree for a triumphal arch, may apply himself to the ob
taining such victories as these.
(2.) But secondly, suppose that he escapes by flight; yet then
he quits his country, and lives a banished man, and like Cain,
having murdered his brother, he presently betakes himself to
wander about the world, leaving behind him the confiscation of
his goods, a family lamenting, and perhaps starving ; and some
of them peradventure dying for grief, and so feeling the mur
derous influence of his action, as really, though not in the same
manner, as his slain adversary. Surely these will be sad acci
dents to a man in cold blood, when the fury of his passion, which
abused his reason, and represented revenge so pleasant, shall be
over, and transmit the thing naked to his recovered judgment, to
be considered according to its real aspect and all its sharp events.
By this time, undoubtedly, he will see how much better it
had been for him to have kept himself quiet and innocent in the
peaceable enjoyment of bis friends, his estate, and country ; than
to wander as an indigent murderer in a strange land, from whence
the sense of his guilt, the severity of the laws, and 'the exaspera
tion of the murdered person's friends, ready to prosecute those
laws against him, continually terrify him from all thoughts of a
return. (3.) But, in the third and last place, we will suppose the man
to have better fortune : that he has fought and killed his adver
sary, and so satisfied his revenge: and moreover, that through
the intercession of great friends, willing to share his guilt, and
derive some of the blood upon their own heads, he has not by
flight escaped, but by a full acquitment outbraved justice, and
triumphed over the law, and so stands secure as to all temporal
retribution. But still, after all this, may we not ask concerning
such a one, is all well within ? How fares it with him in the court
of conscience ? Is he able to keep off the grim arrests of that ?
Can he drown the cry of blood, and bribe his own thoughts to let
him alone ? Can he fray off the vulture from his breast, that
night and day is gnawing his heart, and wounding it with ghastly
and amazing reflections ?
Whether it is, that God has done it for the defence of men's
lives, or whether it is the unnaturalness of the sin, or whatsoever
else may be the cause, certain it is, that there is nothing which

272 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XVIII.
dogs the conscience so incessantly, fastens upon it so closely, and
tears it so furiously, as the dismal sense of blood-guiltiness.
The man perhaps endeavours to be merry; he goes about his
business, he enjoys his cups and his jolly company; and possibly,
if he fought for revenge, he is applauded and admired by some ;
if he fought for a mistress, he is smiled upon for a day. But
when in the midst of all his gaieties, his conscience shall come
and sound him in the ear: Sir, you are to remember that you
have murdered a man, and what is more, you have murdered a
soul ; you have sacrificed an immortal nature, the image of God,
and the price of Christ's blood, to a pique, a punctilio, to the
loves of a pitiful creature, lighter than vanity, and emptier than
the air : and these are the worthy causes for which your brother
now lies in the regions of darkness and misery, without relief,
without recovery ; an eternal sacrifice to a short passion, a rash
anger, and a sudden revenge.
Now when these reasonings shall be joined with the considera
tions of the divine justice, and the retributions that heaven re
serves for blood ; these sad reckonings, that are in store for the
successful acquitted murderer : believe it, where these thoughts
shall lay hold of the conscience, they will leave their marks be
hind them. But if the man feels none of these stings or remorses,
his condition is infinitely worse : he is sealed up under a spirit
of searedness, and reprobation, and an invincible curse. And it is
a sign that God intends him not the grace of repentance, perhaps
for denying his brother the opportunities of it, by a sudden
death ; and sending him out of the world in such a condition,
that it were ten thousand times better for himself never to have
come into the world, than that he should leave it under the like.
I have nothing more to say concerning such a person, but
that his sin has put him in such an estate, that, living or dying,
he is unavoidably miserable.

273

SERMON XIX
PART III.
christians exhorted to live peaceably.
Romans xii. 18.
If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
You may remember that the second particular laid down for
the prosecution of these words, was to assign the measures and
proportions by which the duty of living peaceably was to be de
termined: which I showed were contained within the bounds of
lawful. In my inquiries into which, I undertook the resolution
of several cases. As, concerning the lawfulness of war : of
keeping or breaking the peace with the magistrate ; as also of
duels. All which I have already finished, so that there remain
only two more to be discussed. One of which is,
3. Whether it be lawful to repel force by force, so as to kill
another in one's own defence ?
The matter of which question is very different from that about
duels. For a duel is a fight freely and voluntarily undertaken
by the offer of one party, and the acceptance of the other. But
this is a sudden, a violent, and unforeseen assault, in respect of
him that is assaulted ; who thereupon enters not into combat
upon any precedent choice or deliberate appointment ; but upon
the sudden alarms of force and necessity, and the compulsions of
an extreme danger. In which condition we are to suppose the
man cut off from all 'possibility of flying, shut up from; all succour
by a rescue, or remedy by the law ; but driven into those straits,
both of. place, time, and all other circumstances, that! all evasion
is rendered desperate and impossible, but through the blood of
his adversary. In this case I affirm it to be lawful for a man to
save himself by destroying his enemy, and that upon, these two
reasons :
The first taken from that which we have already insisted upon ;
the great natural right of self-preservation : which right is as
full in particular persons as in public bodies. It is the very
first-born of all the rudiments of nature ; and the very ground
and reason of its actions : not instilled by precept, but suggested
by instinct. A man is no more instructed to this, than he is to
be hungry or thirsty, when nature wants its due refection. And
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274 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xix.
that as to this particular the rights of nature are not abridged by
Christian religion, will appear from the
Second argument, taken from that place where Christ com
mands his disciples to provide themselves swords : but to have
allowed them the instruments of defence, and at the same time
to have forbid the use of them as unlawful, had been highly irra
tional. I suppose Christ did not command those po<Jr fishermen
to wear swords for ornament only, as men do now-a-days ; but
that he might countenance them in the management of their own
preservation, amidst those many unjust violences and assaults,
that were likely enough to attend men odious to the world for
the promulgation of severe truths.
Add to this the suffrage of the civil law, where the code in the
Cornelian law De Sicariis utters itself thus: Is qui aggressorem
vel quemcunque alium in dubio vitce discrimine constitutus occiderit,
nullam ob id factum calumniam metuere debet. And further, in
the Aquilian law, to the same purpose : Vim vi repellere omnes
leges omniaque jura permittunt.
So that we have seen the verdict of nature, of Christ, and of
the civil law, in the present case ; and he whom these absolve is
a just and an innocent person, whatsoever other law may con
demn him. Yet since nature, in the present corruption of man
kind, is weak and dark, and so apt to misjudge of the necessity
of self-defence ; oftentimes making that to be so, which indeed
is nothing else but an unnecessary fear or a sinful revenge ; it
being a very easy thing to clothe an unlawful action or design
with a lawful name: therefore it concerns us so to assert the
privilege, as to take off the danger ; and this will be done by
stating, it under its due limitations. In order to which, I shall
endeavour to clear these three inquiries.
1st. What are those things, for the necessajjy defence of which
it may be lawful to kill the unjust invader ?
2dly. What are the conditions required to render that defence
lawful ?
3dly. Who are the persons against whom we may justly
manage such a defence ?
And first for the things that may be thus defended.
(1.) The first is life ; the eminent and certain danger of which
does lawfully unsheath every man's sword in the defence of it.
For where it is lawful to live, it is lawful to do all those things
without which life cannot be preserved. Life is a purchase to
be rated at the loss of all things else. He that loses it, loses all
the world with it, and every thing dies, as to the fruition of the
dying man. There is no reparation to be made for it, either in
kind or any thing else, as in some degree it may be done in all
other losses. For he that loses his friend or his honour, may he
repaid with an estate, though not to an equality of compensation.
but a lost life can be repaid with no enjoyment, since it is the

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 275
foundation of all other enjoyments ; and no man enjoys any thing
but the living. For can we think that a pompous burial or a
fine tomb will make the dead any amends, or to have a few
mournful words spoken of him for fashion-sake, as that he was
an excellent person, and that it was a loss to the public that he
should be snatched away by such a disaster ; which words, being
dead, he cannot hear ; and if alive, perhaps would not much re
gard. But all this while the man continues the portion of worms
and rottenness, and the great injury of death maintains its full
effect upon him. All after-honours and commemorations being
but like the serving up of a banquet to a grave, or like the cere
mony of courtship and compliment to the cold flints and the
insensible rocks.
(2.) When a man is in imminent danger of the mutilation of
a leg or an arm, or the like, it is lawful to prevent the loss of
either by the death of the assailant. For who knows but the
loss of a part may bring the destruction of the whole. Where
the danger is indefinite, there the utmost and the greatest is to
be feared, and proportionably to be provided against. The man
perhaps in the issue of the conflict may lose but a finger, but
thereupon his hand may gangrene, and then his arm, and from
thence the mischief reach his heart; or he may receive but a
blow only, which blow may sow the seeds of death in his body,
in an imposthume, which shall grow and prevail, and at length
break, and bear him to his grave. In which case there is no
doubt but the man is murdered, though it be ten years before he
dies, as truly as if he had breathed his last the very next minute.
For he murders a man, who gives him a hurt, upon which death
certainly and irrecoverably follows, whatsoever the time of it
chance to be. The cause may have its effect, be the distance of
time or place what it will, so long as it reaches it by the con
nexion of a certain influence. And he that pulls one end of the
chain, moves the remotest link of it as surely as if he did it by
an immediate touch.
But suppose that death should not follow upon the loss of a
limb, and moreover (wliich is yet impossible), that the assaulted
person knew so much, yet nature no less dictates the preservation
of every part ; it being as natural to a man to be entire and perfect,
as to be, and to have all his limbs, as any one of them. Besides
that it is often worse than death itself to live with the deformi
ties and pains of a shattered, mangled body : as a burden to one's
self, and a contempt to others. From which miseries there are
few, but, were it in their power, would ransom themselves with
the price of the world : and of their blood too, did not the awe
of God and the terrors of another death keep them from break
ing the uncomfortable prison of such a body, to pass to an eternal
execution. (3.) When a person's chastity is invaded by force, it is granted

276 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xix.
on all hands to be lawful to kill the person that invades it. For
this is as irreparable as life itself; it is lost but once, and if it
should come in competition with life, it would be judged more
valuable. Upon which ground Tamar, had she had strength and
courage enough, might have saved her brother Absalom the
labour of killing Amnon, and prevented an unjust revenge by a
just defence.
To lose one's life is indeed a misery, but it is no dishonour;
but the ravished person is dishonoured, her glory stained, and the
lustre of that reputation by which she lives and stands accepted
in the world, is blasted for ever. I know no parent, who deserves
to be a parent, who had not rather see a child dead, than de-
floured. Virginius rescued his daughter from the lust and vio
lence of Appius Clodius the decemvir, by stabbing her dead with
his own hand. I am not concerned to warrant his action; but
surely it argues the value that the very heathen put upon their
chastity, when the very design against it was thought fit to be
prevented by the death of the innocent, and to be revenged upon
the nocent, even to the subversion of a government.
(4.) In the fourth place, as for the preservation of estate or
goods, the case admits of some more dpubt. And there are
opinions both for the affirmative and the negative.
Those who hold the negative argue,
First, From the law of Moses, which in Exod. xxii. 2, 3, dis
tinguishes the case of a thief robbing by day and by night,
allowing it for lawful to kill him if he makes an invasion in the
night : whereas if he is killed in the day, the same law avouches
the man that killed him guilty of murder. Of which difference
these two reasons are alleged: 1. Because it cannot be dis
tinguished in the night, whether he comes barely to steal or to
murder also ; and therefore it is lawful to kill him, not considered
merely as a thief, but upon just suspicion that he might come as
a murderer. 2. Because goods taken away in the night leave the
person robbed destitute of all means by which to discover the
rdbber, and consequently of all legal means by which to recover
¦ what he had lost.
,Ans. This is true, and upon the strength of this very ground
I. answer this argument brought from the Mosaic law, by affirm
ing, that howsoever the letter runs, yet the design of that law
was not to make every killing of a thief in the day-time murder,
but that usually and ordinarily it was to be accounted so. For
since the law makes it lawful to kill a thief in the night, because
at that time all people being usually disposed to their rest, it
supposes that there are no witnesses present, by whose means
the injured man might have right against him at law: but Un
lawful to kill him in the day, because then it supposes that there
may be witnesses, as for the most part there are. Yet since
sometimes it so falls out, that there neither are nor can be any ;

christians exhorted to live peaceably. 277
lt will follow by analogy of reason, that a man under such cir
cumstances is permitted to deal with a thief as in the night;
since the very cause for which he was permitted to do it then,
does equally take place now.
In the second place, some argue against the lawfulness of killing
a robber for the preservation of our goods, from the tenor of the
gospel, and the design of Christian religion ; which bids the pro
fessors of it despise and trample upon these temporal things, and
therefore certainly permits them not to prevent the loss of them
with the blood of any one who should presume to take them.
To this I answer, that the gospel commands us only to despise
these things comparatively, in reference to spiritual and eternal
felicities. Otherwise, if the words be understood absolutely, it
could not be lawful for us so much as to defend our lives ; since
some texts in the letter of them command us no less to despise
these, than those other enjoyments.
I conclude therefore for the affirmative, that it is lawful for a
man to defend his estate and goods against an unjust force, even
with the death of him who offers that force, if they cannot be
retained and possessed otherwise. The reason is, because they
are the means and support of life, and therefore are to be
reckoned in the same account with life itself. If one should say,
that it were lawful for a man to knock him on the head, that
should offer to batter down his house to the ground before his
face ; but that he was by no means to touch him, in case he only
took away the chief pillar, upon which the house leaned ; not
withstanding that upon the removal of that pillar it must fall as
unavoidably as if it were pulled down : surely such a distinction
were grossly absurd and ridiculous.
The case is the same here. Neither does that reply take off
the argument, that a man may live though his estate be lost, as
by labour, charity, or the getting of another. For this is acci
dental, and it may fall out otherwise. And every man is to look
upon what he possesses as his only subsistence ; since he is not
certain, upon the loss of it, to have any other : nay, he is certain
that at the present he has none ; nor is like to have any for the
future, unless some accident or opportunity of a livelihood offers
itself, which he is not to suppose or build upon, it being wholly
uncertain and contingent ; especially, so as to take him off from
his dependence upon that which is certain and present.
Should a man put his whole estate into a jewel, either for con
cealment of his estate, as being otherwise in danger, or for some
other advantage or convenience ; and should be set upon for it
by a thief upon the road, so that all hope of rescue being out of
the way, there remained no other means to preserve it but by-
killing the robber upon the place : I must confess, I can see no
solid reason why he might not do justice upon him, and right to
himself, by sending him out of the world with his blood upon
2 A

278 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xix.
his own head. If any excellent and pious persons have chosen
to do otherwise, the thief was beholden to them ; and they have
only quitted their own right, which lays no injunction at all upon
others to quit theirs.
For if a man sets upon me in the highway to kill me, all grani
that I may in my own defence kill him ; but if he would only
take my money, that, it seems, I must relinquish by any means
rather than take his life. But let the reason of the difference be
assigned. If I ask, what makes it lawful for me to kill him in
the former case ? it will be answered surely, to preserve my life.
But I reply, Is not my life as much destroyed if I am starved,
as if I am stabbed ? And when my money is once gone, I ara
sure I may be starved, and none can assure me that I shall not.
For am I certain that I shall find a bag of money or a table
spread in the road, or that people will be so charitable, as upon
free cost to keep me from hunger and cold ? which annoyances,
unless they will do so, must as surely despatch me, as either a
rapier thrust into my bowels, or a bullet sent to my heart.
Neither is that further exception of any moment, that there is
no proportion in point of value between the loss of money and
the loss of a life. For in the present case my money, compared
to my enemy's life, is not to be considered barely as such a sum
of money, but as it is the necessary support of my life : so that
really, and in effect, the comparison is between his life and mine ;
in which I conclude myself warranted, by the rights and laws of
nature, to prefer my own before his. Nay, if it were but a six
pence that he would rifle me of, and I had no other visible sub
sistence in the world but that poor sum, I might lawfully defend
that, as I would myself, that is, with the death of my enemy;
and count it as equal a stake against his life, as if it were ten
thousand millions.
And thus I have shown those four things which it is lawful
for a man thus to defend ; namely, life, limbs, chastity, and
estate : where, before I pass any further, I shall add this, that
whatsoever it is lawful for a man to do in these cases for himself,
the Same also is lawful for him to do in the same danger and ex
tremity of his neighbour, The reason is, because the measure
and standard of his love to his neighbour, is to be the love that
he bears to himself. Which yet, by the way, is to be understood
under equal cases and circumstances : for though we are com
manded to " love our neighbour as ourselves," yet it follows not,
but when the danger must inevitably fall upon one of us, we
may preserve ourselves before our neighbour; because, in the
same condition, we are bound to desire no more for ourselves,
but that our neighbour should save us in the next place to him
self; and therefore, by virtue of this precept, he can desire no
more of us. In a word, we are to love our neighbour as our
selves, putting him into the same condition and circumstances in

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY.

279

reference to us, as we are in reference to him : and therefore, as
I myself could not in reason desire, but that my neighbour, in a
danger equal to us both, should first defend himself; so my
neighbour cannot deny, but that I should do as much for myself
under this condition, as I allow him to do for himself under the
same. But this by way of digression.
Certain it is, that the defence of our neighbour in his ex
tremity engages us to all those extraordinary courses that we
took for own preservation. Upon this account it was, that
Abraham armed his household, and slew kings for the rescue of
his kinsman Lot, taken captive by them, Gen. xiv. 14, 15. And
there is no man, whose concerns and obligations terminate within
himself; but he is a relative person, and must own a debt to
friendship, to consanguinity, and society. For as in the natural
body the whole is maintained by that sympathy and mutual feel
ing, that the members have of the condition of each other ; by
which, when any of them is in distress, it calls for and receives
help and relief from all the rest : so it is, according to its pro
portion, in the political body, which is only an aggregate, arti
ficial man. Every particular person lies under an obligation to
come in to the succour of his endangered brother, as the hand
would presently lift itself up in the defence of the leg or the face,
to repel and beat off whatsoever would annoy them. And the
contrary would be barbarous and absurd, a perverting of the de
signs of nature, which, by thus leaving the interest of every
part single in itself, and divided from and independent upon the
concernment of its fellows, would quickly draw a ruin and disso
lution upon the whole fabric. That man who could stand and
see another stripped or hacked in pieces by a thief or a rogue, and
not at all concern himself in his rescue, is a traitor to the laws
of humanity and religion ; he commits murder with his eyes,
and sheds blood by not striking a blow ; and shall one day-
account to God for the guilt of that action, that was as crimi
nally permitted by him as done by the other.
2dly. I come now to the second thing, which is, to show the
conditions required to legalize such a defence of ourselves and
fortunes. And they are these :
(1.) That the violence offered be so apparent, and withal so
great and pressing, that there can be no other means of escaping
it, but by killing the adversary : otherwise, if a man makes it
great by his own presumptions and fears, and so makes it
necessary to himself to repel that injury with a mortal wound
from his rapier, which he might have done with a blow of a
switch or a thrust of his arm, he is a murderer ; nor will it excuse
him to plead a danger which was only created by his own appre
hensions. Thus in the late rebellion, when some persons, by the
guilt of great villanies, had exasperated majesty, and so having
deserved, were pleased also to fear the just consequences of their

280 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xix.
actions ; they were so bold as to strike the first blow, and then
so impudent as to say that they did it in their own defence.
But that saying of Vibius Crispus, commended by Quintilian,
may be here fitly applied, Quis tibi sic timere permisitl Fear
greatens and redoubles every evil, it stretches the shadow, and
enlarges the suspicion: but blood must not be shed upon sur
mise. That which must warrant a man in this before God and his
conscience, must be a danger as manifest as the light; a life even
perishing, and in the very jaws of death : not a hazard that may
be disputed, but an extremity that calls and cries, and admits of
no answer but an immediate deliverance. And if in this case a
life be taken away, he only is a murderer that deserved, not he
that inflicted the blow.
(2.) It is required, that all possibility of recourse to the magis
trate for a legal protection be taken away. In which case the
law leaves every man to his own natural defence. For men are
not made for laws, but laws for the good and preservation of
men : and therefore though they enjoin the injured person to fly
to them for succour ; yet when he is surrounded with such cir
cumstances as render such access to them impossible ; and in the
mean time that life, for the preservation of which those laws
were designed, is under an unavoidable danger, without flying to
other remedies ; should those laws tie a man's hand in such a
case, they were only snares and traps, and means to deliver a
man naked and undefended to be devoured by his enemy.
But, as I observed before, war is a remedy upon the failure
of law. And when the supreme and fatal law of necessity comes
to be in force, all inferior obligations disband and vanish: and
the law that tells a man that no particular person's injury can
take from him his right to live, ought to take place, and both to
direct him what he is to do in this affair, and to absolve him
when he has done.
(3.) In the third place, it is required that a man in the act of
defending himself designs merely his own defence, without any
hatred or bitter purpose of revenge towards the person who thus
invades him. A lawful action may be depraved and changed by
the intervenience of an ill intention. Jehu executed the com
mand of God in extirpating the house of Ahab, and consequently
that action of his was lawful ; but yet we find that the same
action was reckoned to him for sin, because a particular malice
and design against Ahab's house mingled with it, and so altered
the whole complexion of the performance.
To discern whether a man in these defensive conflicts be acted
by a purpose of self-defence, pure and unmixed from any spice
of revenge, I confess is very difficult, in case the assault shall be
continued till it determines in the death of one party. But if
the defendant chance to prevail over the assailant to that degree,

christians exhorted to live peaceably.

281

as to be able to secure himself from him without taking of his
fife, and yet shall not be brought to give over, or acquiesce, till
he has despatched him: though his first stroke in this engage
ment was but defence, and so lawful ; yet the sharpness of re
venge growing upon his spirit in the midst of the action, it is to
be feared that the last stroke was murder, and so will pass in the
accounts of heaven.
And thus much for the second thing, namely, to show the
conditions required to render the killing of another irv- our own
defence lawful. *
3dly. The third, which I shall despatch in a word or two, is
to inquire who are the persons against whom we may lawfully
thus defend ourselves. And for this, I cannot conceive that any
doubt can be raised, but concerning these two, a magistrate and
a parent. , As for the magistrate, the grounds that I have already
laid of non-resistance, by virtue of every subject's quitting his
natural right of defending himself against the magistrate, and
resigning up all power of resistance into his governor's hands,
sufficiently proves, that this doctrine gives no countenance to the
subject in repelling any invasion made upon him by his prince.
But as for a parent; the son has made no such resignation of
his right up to him. And therefore there are not wanting some
casuists amongst the Jesuits, who have ventured to own the
lawfulness of a man's defending himself against parents as well
as kings, and all superiors whatsoever ; even with the death of
those who shall invade him. But yet I affirm, that for a son in
any case whatsoever to take away his father's life, from whence,
under God, he received his own, seems to imply such a turpitude
in the thing itself, and to offer such a grievance to nature, that
he is to choose to die rather than, upon any inducement of
extremity, to stain his hands in the blood of his father. This I
will grant, that in case a father shall unjustly assault the life of
his son, his son may proceed to defend himself so far as to dis
arm him, shut him up, and bind him ; but to kill him is unna
tural and intolerable. And if a son cannot otherwise secure his
fife from his father's violence, it is more eligible to die a thousand
deaths, than to make such a monstrous and inhuman trespass
upon so sacred a name and relation.
And thus I have endeavoured both to clear and to assert the
doctrine of self-defence in its due latitude. In all which dis
course I am not sensible that I have uttered any thing but the
voice of nature, and the rightly explained sense of religion.
As for those who assert the contrary, and by taking from
mankind all right of self-preservation, would have them still live
in the world as naked as 'they came into it : I shall not wish
them any hurt, but if I would, I could scarce wish them a
greater, than that they might feel the full effect and influence of
their own opinion.
Vol. IV.— 36. 2 a 2

282 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xix.
4thly. The fourth and last case to be resolved is, Since to
prosecute another in courts of judicature is in its kind a certain
breach of the mutual bond of peace, whether it be allowable for
Christians thus to prosecute and to go to law one with another ?
It may, perhaps, at first sight seem a strange and an insolent
design, to bring a thing vouched by custom, owned by practice,
and established by authority, under dispute: yet since it is no
less our duty to be able to give a reason of what we do, than of
what we believe; and since there are not wanting scriptures, to
whose rules we profess to submit our practice, yet in appearance
contrary to this; and since there are also some in the world,
who think they have sufficient ground from those scriptures to
entertain a contrary opinion: I conceive I may, without blame,
enter into a disquisition of a thing already controverted ; that so,
by an impartial survey of the reasons of both sides, we may
settle our future practice upon such sure grounds, that if it ap
pears we have been in the wrong, we may be convinced, and
brought off from, but if in the right, we may be confirmed in the
thing hitherto allowed by us.
As for those who have been so bold as to arraign the courts of
law themselves, they are the anabaptists ; who succeed into all
the principles and opinions of the old anabaptists, those sons of
confusion, that once so infested Germany: concerning the nature
of whose opinions I cannot but judge this, that those who own a
design to remove and cast down all human laws and judgments,
ought to be persons either absolutely, and even to a necessity
innocent, or very highly malefactors ; the former of which might
oppose them as needless ; the latter, as dreadful and destructive.
As for their innocence ; the stories of their barbarous rebellions,
murders, and the desolations made by them, have settled men's
judgments concernrng that. And, therefore, if their opinions
grow from their guilt, in conjunction with their ignorance, as it
cannot appear from what root else they should grow, I shall
endeavour to remove the latter, leaving the laws themselves to
deal with the former.
In the management of this question, I shall, 1. Examine the
arguments brought against the allowableness of Christians going
to law. 2. Consider what may be argued and alleged for it.
3. Propose the conditions required to warrant men in such a
practice. #
First of all then, their arguments seem principally to bear
upon two places of scripture.
(1.) The first is, that formerly hinted by me, and reserved to
be discussed in its proper place here, which is in Matt. v. 40,
where Christ determines that general precept of not resisting
evil, to an utter abolition of all law-suits ; commanding every
disciple of his, that in case any man will " sue him at law, and
take away his coat, he should let him have his cloak also." And

christians exhorted to live peaceably. 283
certainly there is scare any thing more indispensably necessary
to a man's subsistence, than his raiment. But now if a man
shall be obliged even to relinquish this, and resign it up to the
. hand of violence, rather than to recover it by a legal trial, it
must needs follow, that the rigour of this command cuts off all
pretences of going to law whatsoever.
In answer to this, I cannot but observe, that it is the custom
of this sort of men still to argue from the letter of scripture, in
abstraction from the sense ; and without any pondering either of
the occasion, circumstances, or coherence of the text, immediately
to fly and fasten upon the bare outside of the expression. Two
things, therefore, may be answered to this text.
1st. That it is not certain, that what we render by " suing at
law" signifies any such thing; the Greek is *v ei%ovtl aoi xpieipai;
but xplvopai signifies to strive, war, and contend with another by
force ; so that it is all one with udzsaSai, xai ipl^saBal, aoi. But to sue
another at law is xplvsiv • and that with an accusative case, *9 6h.ovti
as xplvsiv ; and to be sued, in the passive, xpLvopai • according to
which, *§ Bitjwtl aoi xpiBrfvai, taking oot, for irtb aoi, must signify, " to
him that is willing to be sued by thee at law :" the meaning being
this ; he that has taken thy coat from thee, and is willing to be
brought by thee into a trial for it, to him give thy cloak also.
Which sense besides that it is highly incongruous, *°v i«"» aov %a-
fitiv should have gone before aoi xpidrfvai, and so the words have run
thus: "To him that is desirous to take thy coat, and then to go to
law with thee for it :" and not preposterously, " To him that is desi
rous to go to law with thee, and to take thy coat, to him give thy
cloak also ;" which is to make the going to law antecedent to the
wrong or injury about which men go to law.
It is more probable therefore, that the sense of the text is this ;
" If any one would unjustly contend with thee, and forcibly take
away thy cloak, let him have thy coat also." According to which
sense, the words speak nothing at all of the suits or trials at law.
And this interpretation, grounded upon the propriety of the word,
and so fully agreeing both with what goes before, and with what
follows after, if any one will positively insist upon it, I do verily
believe, cannot by any solid reason be disproved.
2dly. But because I think such respect is to be had to the
translation, that it is not, but upon very urgent necessity, to be
receded from ; therefore, in the second place, I add, that these
words are to be interpreted with analogy to the design carried
on by Christ throughout this whole chapter, which is, to show
the perverse and sinful practice of the Jews, in which they were
abetted by the pharisees; and withal to declare, x>£ how much
contrary a temper his disciples and followers ought to be.
Now the custom of the Jews was, upon the receiving any in
jury, to pursue that law of retaliation so fiercely and bitterly,
that sometimes (as I have observed before) one private man

284 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xix.
would execute it upon another; and when they could not safely
or conveniently do it themselves, but were forced to implore the
help of the magistrate, and to drag the injurious person before
hirn • yet they did it with so much acrimony and gall, and such
designs of personal revenge, that it sufficiently appeared to any
impartial or judicious eye, that in all their prosecutions of
offenders, they did not so much consult either the satisfaction of
justice, or their own necessary reparation, as indeed seldom need
ing any at all, as they did the fruitless gratification of a remorse
less, vindictive humour.
Hereupon Christ reads a contrary lecture of patience, meek
ness, and quietness, to his disciples, telling them, that in case
they should have any thing injuriously purloined from them,
they should rather sit down under the loss of that and a much
greater thing too, than with so much virulence and exasperation
of mind, as was common amongst the Jews, and unreprehended,
not to say countenanced by the pharisees, pursue the recovery.of
their former right. These words therefore do not absolutely pro
hibit them, being injured, to endeavour a just reparation; but
conditionally rather to quit the benefit of justice, than to follow
it in a sinful manner. They are a sublime precept of patience,
upon a wrong offered to our goods, parallel to those words, " If
any one smite thee on the right cheek, turn the other also;"
which enjoins the same measure of patience upon a wrong offered
to our persons. And consequently, as heretofore, in the exposi
tion of those, I showed from Christ's own practice, the best com
ment upon his precepts, that they were not to be understood
according to the rigid import of the letter, as if every man were
bound to covet injuries and to court affronts ; so I affirm also,
that this command is not to be exacted according to the bare sur
face of the words, but to be enlarged to the allowance and lati
tude of a figure, as being indeed just such another hyperbole:
which is a trope, that to set forth the greatness of a thing more
emphatically, words it in expressions greater than really it is.
And thus much in answer to what they argue from this place of
scripture. (2.) The next great place, which some think to speak as fully
to their purpose as this, is that in 1 Cor. vi. 7, "Now there is
utterly a fault amongst you, because ye go to law one with ano
ther. Why do you not rather take wrong? Why do you not
rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?" Which words cer
tainly amount to a pregnant and full prohibition of all going to
law, since they declare it to be our duty rather to suffer, nay,
even to embrace any wrong, than by such means to recover our
right. But to this I answer,
1st. That what we render " a fault," is in the Greek not ««
*yi*a, but only nttnua, which signifies properly a weakness or

christians exhorted to live peaceably. 285
defect ; and such do not always, or of necessity, carry sin along
with them. According to which sense, the apostle does not con
demn their going to law, as a thing in itself sinful or unjust;
but as low and weak, and not answerable to that greatness and
generosity of spirit, which became persons owning so excellent a
profession. 2dly. But in the second place, admitting that the apostle's de
sign here is to discountenance this practice, not only as weak and
illaudable, but also as sinful and disallowable ; yet I affirm, that
he accounted it not sinful from the very nature of the action,
but only the irregularity of the circumstance ; that they went to
law upon every slight occasion, before unbelievers, in ver. 1.
And though to go to law be very allowable, yet for Christians to
prosecute one another before the tribunals of infidels, for those
injuries which -they might fairly compromise by the arbitration
and decision of persons of their own body, was a thing that re
flected a high disgrace, and left a great scandal upon Christian
religion; and consequently as great a guilt upon those who
brought the scandal.
In short, the apostle . here either reprehends them only for
going to law before unbelievers, or barely for going to law, as
being a thing utterly unjust in itself. If he designs only the
former, as it is clear from the whole chain of the context from
the first verse to the ninth, that he does ; then it concludes
nothing against the latter, but that before a believing judge, and
a Christian court, with a due observance of other circumstances,
Christians may right themselves at law. But if it be said,
that the apostle directs the edge of this reproof against the
very action itself; then let it be made out, how the apostle
can accord himself with himself, who suffers Christians to go
to law before the saints, in ver. 1 : " Dare any one of you,
having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust,
and not before the saints?" Which shows, that what he pro
hibits under one, in the very same breath he permits under
the other. Nay, he proceeds to give reasons why they should
manage the judgment of these things themselves, in ver. 2, 3,
"If the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge
the smallest matters ?" And " Know ye not that ye shall judge
angels? how much more things pertaining to this life?" And
again, in ver. 5, " I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is
not a wise man amongst you ? no, not one that shall be able to
judge between his brethren ?" And now, is it not as clear from
all these places, as if they were writ with a sunbeam, that the
apostle's intention is not levelled against their going to law, but
against the persons before whom they did it ? That they chose
to discover and rip up the sores of the church, before such infi
dels as would deride them, rather than before Christians, who
would endeavour to conceal and cure them.

286 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xix.
The only thing that can be replied here, is, that in those
primitive times of Christianity, the Christians had no tribunals
or power of judging, as being under the jurisdiction of heathen
potentates : and therefore what they did in order to the deciding
of controversies and suits between man and man, they did not
do as judges armed with the civil power, but as arbitrators chosen
and consented to amongst themselves, for the ending and com
posing of differences. And therefore, though it might be lawful
to bring one's cause before such judges, yet it cannot now be
lawful to sue a brother in any of our courts, properly so called,
as holding a power of jurisdiction from the magistrate.
But to this I answer ; that this is so far from overthrowing or
weakening the thing which it is brought to disprove, that it is a
notable argument to confirm it : for if the apostles allowed it as
lawful for them to bring their causes before Christians, that
they might exercise a judicial act in deciding them, who yet were
not endued with any legal, judicial authority from the magistrate;
certainly it were highly strange and irrational, to prohibit men
to seek for the same judicial acts, from such as were both Chris
tians, and also empowered with such a judicial authority from the
civil governor. In a word, it would amount to this; that Chris
tians might try their causes before Christians, not having any
legal jurisdiction for that purpose, but only the consent of the
contending parties. But when the same persons come to have
the stamp of public authority, enabling them so to do by virtue
of their office ; why then, ali trials before them must presently
cease to be lawful, and become only a betraying of the rights
and privileges of believers. I shall say no more of this wild and
inconsequent deduction, but that it is an argument fit to be found
only in the mouth of those, whose custom it is to dispute against
reason, and to fight against government.
(3.) The third argument against the allowableness of Chris
tians going to law, is that strict command that lies upon them to
forgive injuries, and consequently not to prosecute them in courts
of judicature, forasmuch as these two seem utterly inconsistent.
But to this also I reply, that in most injuries we are to con
sider and distinguish two things : first, the right that is lost ;
secondly, the offence done to whom it is lost. And though it
may be my duty to forgive the offence done me by him that
violently takes away my right; yet it follows not that I must
therefore quit my right ; but may, with full allowance of equity
and piety, endeavour the regaining of that, while I fully remit
the other. And that this is not a mere verbal distinction with
out a difference, is evident from hence : that supposing that
somebody robs me of my goods, and I recover them all to the
value of the utmost farthing; yet still after this recovery it is
certain that the man has done me an injury, and reason and re
ligion will oblige him to ask me forgiveness ; which it could not

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 287
do, supposing that the wrong did not continue, even after I was
repossessed of what I had lost. It is clear therefore, that the
prosecution of one's right at law does yet leave a fair scope for
the exercise of forgiveness; and consequently that they may not
exclude or justle out one another.
I cannot think of any thing else in scripture that seems to
cast any probability of favour upon this opinion: and therefore
looking upon the proof of it as desperate upon this account, I
proceed to the second thing; which is, to show what may be
argued for the allowableness of Christians prosecuting their
rights in courts of judicature.
But beforehand I shall premise this : That the ground upon
which all such prosecutions proceed is twofold: 1. Restitution;
and, 2. Punishment. That is, a man is sued either to restore
what he has taken from another ; or brought into court for some
offence or mischief done by him, for which, since no restitu
tion can be made, he is to sustain some penalty for the satisfac
tion of the law. In which two cases, though it is obvious to see
that a man m^y prosecute another for the restitution of some
thing taken from him, without any thoughts of bitterness or
revenge ; yet since the punishment of another cannot at all
redound to my advantage or reparation, it may be inquired,
what can warrant a man in his prosecution of another, only to
bring him to this, without being chargeable with the designs of
revenge. To this I answer, that this obligation and subjection
to the community, of which he is a member, engages him to this.
For every man is bound to endeavour the good and preservation
of the public, and consequently to prosecute a thief or a mur
derer, though personally they have not injured him, forasmuch
as such persons have made a breach upon society and common
justice ; which requires a reparation : yea, and that so strictly,
that if a man is robbed, though being master of his own right,
he might choose whether upon that score he would prosecute
him for such robbery ; yet since by the same there is an injury
done to the public, which he cannot pardon, the law binds him to
prosecute the robber, and makes him liable to be prosecuted
himself, in case he should not. I conclude therefore, that all
these prosecutions of a man in the courts of law are just and
allowable. And so I pass to the arguments for the proof of the
assertion ; which are these :
(1.) To endeavour the execution of justice in the proper acts
of it between man and man, is allowable before God, and not
repugnant to religion : but without going to law, there can be
no such endeavour for the execution of justice, and consequently
it is to be admitted. That the former is not repugnant to reli
gion is clear ; for then justice and religion would be contrary,
which would be to cast a high aspersion upon both.
Justice is the noblest dictate issuing from the principles of im-

288 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xix.
proved nature ; and nature, which is the law of God written in
our hearts, cannot contradict his law as it is written in his word.
God cannot write the same thing a duty in one law, and a sin in
the other. Justice came down from heaven, and descended upon
mankind, as a communication of a divine perfection flowing from
him whose great attribute is to be the Just One, and the re-
warder of every man according to his works.
As for the assumption of the argument, that the exercise of
this great blessing of the world, justice, cannot take place, unless
it be lawful to prosecute offenders before courts and judges; it
is a thing that requires no laborious proof. For can we expect
that thieves and murderers should come and surrender their per
sons to the vengeance of the law freely, and of their own accord,
as scorning all arrests, and preventing attachments by sheriffs,
constables, and such other necessary instruments of force?
Will they arraign themselves, be both jury and evidence, and
stand convict by the generous openness of their own confession?
When and where do we read of any instance or example of such
strange transactions ? When men by frequent villanies have lost
even common honesty, may justice expect satisfaction from their
ingenuity? But these are unlikelihoods not to be insisted upon;
and we may well venture the issue of the whole controversy upon
this, that when these things come to pass, then the prosecution
of causes at law will cease to be allowable.
(2.) The second argument is this; that if Christian religion
absolutely prohibits and disallows all pursuit of a man's right at
law : then the strict observance of this religion unavoidably draws
after it the utter dissolution of all government and society; a
sad consequence, but naturally issuing from such an antecedent.
For does not society consist in a due distinction of propriety
amongst men, and in their peaceable and secure enjoying that of
which they are proprietors ? Do not all public bodies bear upon
the great basis of meum and tuum between particular persons,
and upon the provision it makes to protect those persons in their
respective titles to what they possess ? And moreover, is not the
foundation of all just possession, a just acquisition; as by gift,
labour, or the like, by which the world shares the common bene
fits of nature, dividing to each man his portion, and enclosing it
to him from the encroachments and pretences of all others? These
things, I suppose, must be granted to be the very fundamentals
and first uniting principles of society.
But now, if there be no coercive power to call men to account
for their actions ; when the world shall be infested with the vio
lent and the unjust, who will not labour, but yet possess ; who
are nobody's heirs, and yet will inherit ; raising a new claim, upon
force, rapine, and oppression : what will become of order, of pro
priety, and right? all those hinges upon which the affairs of
mankind and the peace of nations move and depend ?

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 289
He that has the strongest arm, the sharpest sword, the boldest
front, and the falsest heart, must possess the world. Whatsoever
he grasps must be his own: right and possession will be terms
convertible. The meek and the injured part of mankind shall
retain a right to nothing, but to patience under the insultations
of the mighty and the unjust, and shall see that they can be
lawfully nothing else but miserable, when the very plea of the
law itself is rendered unlawful. And, what is the greatest
misery of all, these bonds of oppression must be bound upon
men by the ties of religion. Thieves rob us of our goods, and
then this robs us of our remedies. And men will persuade us,
that Jefeus Christ makes it our duty to be poor, wretched, injured,
forlorn, and destitute, as often as it shall please the lawless ava
rice and insolence of our enemies to make us so.
Had the primitive Christians owned this to have been the
genius and true intent of what they professed, it would quickly
have hissed Christianity out of the world, as the bane of govern
ment, and the destroyer of whatsoever was settled, regular, and
excellent amongst men. It would have exposed it both to the
scorn and hatred of all governors. And the setting up the pro
fession of it in any kingdom would have been like (the bringing
of a public plague into the bowels of a nation ; or the courting
of a foreign invasion, to trample down all before them with ruin
and confusion. For surely the removal of all courts of judica
ture would have had no less mischievous effects upon a people,
than either of those annoyances. But had this been the design
of Christianity, there is no doubt but all nations would have
stood upon their guard, and kept it off like a pest; and courts
of judicature would sooner have suppressed this religion, than
this religion could have beat down those courts..
I conclude therefore, that it is far from the purpose of Christ's
doctrine to forbid injured persons to take their course at law ;
under the gospel, courts are to be as much open as churches.
And to plead the cause of the afflicted, the fatherless, and the
widow, is but part of that great office which God has honoured,
by sometimes assuming it to himself. Christianity came to in
vest the world with new helps and privileges, and not to abridge
men of their old. This religion has provided no asylum for
thieves or murderers ; it neither secures nor sanctifies wrong or
oppression., And therefore that opinion, which lays this as a
block in their way, who would proceed to a legal recovery of
their rights, is to be rejected, as absurd and insufferable.
Yet since men are too prone to stretch their just allowances
beyond their bounds, to abuse privileges, and to spoil a due ac
tion by undue circumstances of prosecution ; I shall therefore, in
the third and last place, briefly propose those conditions that are
required to warrant men in their law proceedings and contentions.
And they are three.
Vol. IV.— 37 2 B

290 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xix.
(1.) First, that a man takes not this course against any one,
but upon a very great and urgent cause. Every little wrong and
trespass is not a sufficient warrant for me to disturb my neigh
bour's peace, and to make him miserable. It must be a loud and
a clamorous injury, that has broken in upon a man's reputation
or estate, so that one cannot be entire nor the other safe without
a reparation, which must give him a lawful call, to use so sharp
a remedy. But those uncharitable, unworthy motives, that
usually act men in these prosecutions, sufficiently declare how
much they deviate from the rules of religion: for what more
usual than such kind of speeches, "I will spend five hundred,
a thousand pounds, but I will have my will." So that, it seems,
it is not so much to have right, as to have their will, for which
some go to law. But let me say to such, that God will spend a
thousand, nay, ten thousand curses upon them, but that he will
fully punish such a wicked and unmerciful disposition.
(2.) Supposing that the wrong is great, and calls for repara
tion, yet in the next place it is required that a man be willing,
upon any tolerable and just terms, to agree with his adversary,
rather than to proceed to a suit : otherwise he does not sacrifice
to justice or to necessity, but to a litigious humour and an ill-
nature, that loves contention for contention's sake, and descends
to it, not as a remedy, but a recreation : he designs not to advan
tage himself, but to afflict and harrass his adversary ; and there
fore is willing to undergo the trouble and misery of following
the suit himself, only for the base pleasure of seeing another
miserable. For surely it must be a very strange height of virulence, that
shall make a man thus prefer the continuance of a quarrel before
an amicable composure of it! when Providence is pleased to
order the state of things so, that litigiousness is not only a great,
but also a very troublesome, laborious, and costly sin. A man
cannot be wicked in this respect, but with the expense of much
money, the labour of long attendances, and the anxiety of much
care. And when a man has wisely made a shift to recover one
hundred pounds with the expense of three, and for many terms
run up and down, backwards and forwards, sedulously and indus
triously to no purpose ; he will find those words of the apostle
to the Corinthians, ready upon every slight cause to prosecute
one another at law, " Why do you not rather take wrong ? why
do you not suffer yourselves to be defrauded ?" to have been not so
much a lesson of piety, as of policy, thrift, and good husbandry.
And surely if we compare the charges, vexation, and noise of a
suit, with that pitiful design which for the most part is driven at
by it ; if thus contentiously to go to law be a sin, as undoubtedly
it is; why then we need look no further, nor enjoin such a one
any other penance, but that he should go to law again.
(3.) But thirdly and lastly, supposing that both the wrong is

christians exhorted to live peaceably. 291
in itself very great, and no satisfaction or conditions of agree
ment are offered by him that did it, but that the injured person
must of necessity commence a suit against him ; yet then it is
required, that he manage it by the rule of charity, and not with
any purpose to revenge himself upon his adversary. But certainly
it is a very rare thing, and seldom found, to see a man of so clear a
breast, so sincere a design, as to have waded through such pro
secutions without any interposal of vindictive thoughts. The
action indeed, as I have proved, is in itself lawful, but the person
that is to manage it is weak and sinful, and it is ten to one but
his corruption strikes in, and bears a share in what he does ; and
then the issue of the whole business turns but to the accounts of
sin : and when the suit is ended here below, there is an action of
revenge brought against him in the court above. And there
fore, though he who thus chooses to right himself does lawfully ;
yet (except in cases of extremity) certainly that man does more
safely, who considers that he is but weak, and so offers not him
self to the temptation.
And thus I have finished the resolution of the last case pro
pounded, and I hope have stated the controversy with that truth
and equality, that I have not at all derogated from the law of
God, while I asserted the laws of men.

292

SERMON XX.
PART IV.
christians exhorted to live peaceably.
Romans xii. 18.
If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all
men.
When I first entered upon these words, I laid the prosecution
of them in the discussion of these four particulars.
I. To show what was included in this great duty of living
peaceably. II. What were the measures and proportions by which it was
to be determined.
III. What were the means by which it was to be effected.
IV. What were the motives and arguments by which it might
be enforced.
The first two of these I have at length despatched ; and the
last two, as containing nothing of controversy, but being of plain
and practical consideration, I shall finish in this discourse, and
conclude this subject.
III. And first, for the means conducible to our performance of
this excellent duty, I shall, amongst those many that possibly each
man's particular experience may better suggest to him, select
and reckon these.
1. A careful suppression of all distasteful, but however of all
aggravating apprehensions of any ill turn or unkind behaviour
from men. He that will preserve himself in a regular course of
acting, must not only attend the last issues of the performance,
but watch the beginnings, and secure the fountains of action ;
and he will find it but a vain attempt to oppose it in its birth,
when he should have encountered it in its conception. A great
sin or a great virtue is a long time in forming and preparing
within, and passing through many faculties before it is ripe for
execution. And when that chain of preparations is laid, this
perhaps is then necessary and unavoidable. As when aman has
fixed his thoughts upon an affront offered him, resented it sharply,
and rolled it in his mind a long time, so that the rancour of those
thoughts begins to reach and infect the passions, and they begin
to rise and swell, and those also to possess the will, so that this

I
christians exhorted to live peaceably. 293
espouses it into full resolves and purposes of revenge : it is then
too late to command a man under these dispositions and proxi
mities of action, to be peaceable ; he is possessed and full, and
admits of no advice. The malicious design has got head and
maturity; and therefore will certainly pass into act, and rage in
a man's behaviour, to the degree of railing, or downright blows,
or perhaps bloodshed ; or some other instance of a great mis
chief. But had a man, by an early wariness and observance of his
teeming thoughts, crushed those infant sharpnesses, those first
disgusts and grudgings, that begem to sour and torment his whole
mind ; he would have found the humour curable and conquerable :
and for all these seeds and little essays of disturbance, yet as to
the main event of practice, he must have passed for a peaceable
man. Has a man therefore received an injury, a disrespect, or some
thing at least that he thinks to be so ; if he would now maintain
himself in a due composure of spirit, and stop the sallyings out
of a hasty and indecent revenge, and all this with success and a
certainty of effect; let him first arrest his thoughts, and divert
them to some other object. Let him but do this easy violence
to himself, as to think of something else : amongst those thou
sand things in the world that may be fhdught on, let him fix
upon any one ; as his business, his studies, or the news of the
time: but amongst other things, let the thoughts be directed
rather to reconciling objects, such as are apt to leave a pleasure
and a sweetness upon the mind ; as a man's lawful and innocent
recreations, the delights of a journey, of a cured sickness, or an
escaped danger, or the like. But chiefly, let the thoughts be
busied upon such things as are peculiar and proper antidotes
against the grudge conceived. As, let a man remember whether
he never received a courtesy from that person who he thinks
has provoked him; and let him consider, whether that courtesy
did not outweigh the present injury, and was not done with
greater circumstances of kindness, than this of disrespect. Now
by such arts and methods of diverting the thoughts, the quick
sense of the injury will by degrees be eluded, weakened, and
baffled into nothing: and the grudge will strike a man's appre
hensions but as a gentle breath of air does his face, with a tran
sient, undiscernible touch, leaving behind it neither sign nor
impression. For we must know that it is the morose dwelling of the
thoughts upon an injury, a long and sullen meditation upon a
¦Wrong, that incorporates and rivets it into the mind. And upon
this reason it is ill affronting the melancholy and the thinking
man, whose natural temper and complexion lays what he has ob
served before him, by more frequent rerrfembrances, and more
stable and permanent representations; so that the mind has
2b2

294 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XX.
opportunity to carry its examination to every particular circum
stance, part, degree, and occasion of the affront, brooding upon
it with such a close and continued intention, till it binds the
remembrance and resentment of it upon the soul, with bands of
iron and links of brass, never to be dissolved, or fetched asunder,
by time, or kindness, or any after-attempts of reconciliation.
If a man will indulge his thoughts upon a disrespect offered
him ; he will find . how by degrees they will raise and advance,
and get the mastery of him. That which first did but lightly
move, shall presently warm, then heat, afterwards chafe, and at
length fire and inflame him : and now the evil is grown mighty
and invincible, and swelled into a strange unlimitedness, so that
that which perhaps but a week or two ago was no more than a
slight displeasure, and to be smiled, or talked, or slept away, is
now like to go off like a clap of thunder, to scatter a huge ruin,
and determine in something dismal and tragical.
We shall find that this way of thinking had the like effect
upon David, but upon a better subject, in Psalm xxxix. 3, "My
heart was hot within me ; while I was musing the fire burned :
then spake I with my tongue." We see here the gradation by
which this holy man's thoughts led his zeal up to its full height.
In like manner, when an injury has passed upon a man, he begins
to muse upon it, and upon this his heart grows hot within him,
and at length the fire burns, and then he speaks with his tongue ;
perhaps railing and reviling: and it is well, if in the issue he
does not also strike with his hand. The lion has not always such
a present supply of fierceness, as to fit him to fly upon his prey,
till by the echoes of his own roarings, and the frequent striking of
himself with his train, he has called up his drowsy spirits, and
summoned his rage to attend his appetite, and so fully chafed
himself into his natural fury ; and then he is a lion indeed, and
to meet him is death, and to behold him a terror next to it.
This is exactly the case of the angry and contentious man ; he
provokes and works up himself to a passion by a restless employ
ment of thought upon some injury done him ; till from a man he
grows into a beast of prey, and becomes implacable and intoler
able. Surely therefore it concerns the virtuous and the wary,
and such as know how absolutely necessary it is to conduct every
action of piety by the rules of prudence, to endeavour peace-
ableness, by keeping down the first inconsiderable annoyances
and disturbances of it, which like the mustard-seeds in their first
sowing are very small and contemptible, but being grown up,
shoot out into branches and arms, spread into a vast compass,
and settle into a firm strength and consistency of body.
Compare a disgust in its beginnings and after its continuance,
in the first appearance and the last effects of it; and we shall
find the disproportions monstrous and unmeasureable. No man is
able to give laws to an overgrown humour, and to grapple with

christians exhorted to live peaceably 295
a corruption ripe and armed with all its advantages; Who would
think, when he sees a little spring-head, and beholds the narrow
ness of its circle, its quiet bubblings and small emissions, that by
that time this little thing had crope three or four miles off, it
should be spacious in its breadth, formidable in its depth, grow
insolent in a tempest, rise and foam and wrestle with the winds,
laugh at every thing in its way, and bear its conquering stream
over dams and locks, and all opposition. Why thus also it is
with the mind of man : after he is offended, if he will not be
brought to discharge his thoughts of the offence, he may think
and think so long, till he has thought a distasteful apprehension
into an action of murder.
But as in order to a man's keeping of the peace, both with
himself and others, it highly lies upon him to give no entertain
ment to disgustful thoughts, conceived from the behaviour of
men towards him ; so he is much more to abandon and take heed
of all aggravating thoughts. If he will not pass over and forget
an offence, at least he is not to heighten it; to make that great,
which is but small ; and numerous, that is but single. If a
man were to chastise a child for a fault, and presently by an
error of fancy should persuade himself, that certainly that child
was some great porter, and should measure out stripes to him
accordingly; there is ner doubt but the injury would quickly
appear in a sad effect.
There are indeed no venial sins towards God, but there are
between men ; and therefore he who shall prosecute a venial
offence with a mortal hatred, and swell a mole-hill into a moun
tain, beholding every thing under new created heights and
additions; he betrays a turbulent disposition, and a mind to
which peace and the spirit of peace is wholly a stranger.
It is not unusual to hear such speeches fall from some mouths :
He did sUch a thing purposely to spite me ; had he not known that
I disgusted it, it had never been spoken or done by him. Whereas
perhaps the man, in the word or action for which he is censured,
thought no hurt, much less designed any ; but did it by an innocent
carelessness, not sufficiently alarmed by an experience of the base
ness, the falseness, and the exceptiousness of men, to set a greater
caution or guard upon his behaviour ; or perhaps, take it at the
worst, it was a word extorted from him by the exasperation of his
spirit, and before he was aware, borne upon the wings of passion,
and so quickly out of his reach, and not to be recalled.
But shall we now play the exactors and the tyrants, squeezing
every supposed irregularity till we fetch blood, and according to
that unworthy course condemned in Isaiah xxix. 21, "make a
man an offender for a word ?" Are we so perfect ourselves, as
to need no allowances, no remissions, no favourable interpreta
tions of what we do or say ? Or are we so unjust, as when we
need these things ourselves, to deny them to others ?

296 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XX.
Would any one be willing to be taken upon an advantage ? to
have every slip and weakness of his discourse critically observed,
every inadvertency in his behaviour maliciously scanned, and at
length heightened, and blown up to a crime, or a great accusation ?
Surely there is no man so privileged from the common lot of
humanity or natural affections, but that he is sometimes more
open and gay, free and unconcerned, and so obnoxious to the
unseasonable rigours of a watching ill-natured adversary. And,
on the other side, there is no man but sometimes suffers the
vicissitude of trouble, business, thought, and indisposition of
mind, that may cast a roughness upon his deportment, and for a
while interrupt the complaisance of his converse. And shall
these things be now counted grounds sufficient to build a dislike
upon, that shall vent itself in the disturbance of a man's peace,
the hatred of his person, the undermining of his interest, and
the extinguishing his reputation ? It is as certain as certainty it
self, that oftentimes they do so : and therefore I have nothing to
say more as to this particular, but to make use of that prayer of
St. Paul, 2 Thess. iii. 2, " God deliver us from unreasonable
men :" for " the way of peace such have not known."
And thus much for the first means to help us in the duty of
living peaceably ; namely, a mature and careful suppression of
all distasteful, but especially of all aggravating apprehensions,
either of the defective or faulty instances of men's behaviour
towards us.
2. A second sovereign means conducing to the same great
purpose, is the forbearing of all pragmatical or malicious informa
tions against those with whom we converse. It was a worthy
saying of Solomon, well beseeming that reputation of wisdom
which he stands renowned for in holy writ, that " he that repeat-
eth a matter separateth very friends." The carrying of a tale,
and reporting what such a one said or such a one did, is the way
to sow such grudges, to kindle such heart-burnings between per
sons, as oftentimes break forth and flame to the consumption of
families, courts, and perhaps at length of cities and kingdoms.
The mischief such incendiaries do is incredible, as being indeed
for the most part inevitable. And a vine or a rose-tree may as
well flourish when there is a secret worm lurking and gnawing
at the root of them ; as the peace of those societies thrive, that
have such concealed plagues wrapped up in their heart and
bowels. For let us consider the case a little. There is perhaps in some
united body, collection, or society of men, some pick-thank cater
pillar or other, who, either, to ingratiate himself with some great
one, or to mischief some whom he maligns, or peradventure both,
comes and cringes and whispers, and tells his story, and possibly
with some dissembled expressions of respect to the person whom
he is about to ruin ; as that he is heartily sorry that such a one,

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLYi. 297
whom he had always an esteem for, should so misbehave and for
get himself, as to be guilty of such things as he found and heard
him to be; and indeed was a long time before he could believe
any such matter of him, out of the great honour he bore him.
Nevertheless thus and thus it is, and he is troubled that he should
be forced to be the messenger of any thing to his disadvantage.
Well, the good man has told his story, and the secret bolt is
shot : let us now see into how many cursed consequences this
viperous piece of villany is like to spread itself; and that,
whether we consider the accusation as true or as false; as re
lating to the person accused, or to him before whom he is accused.
And first we will take the allegation that such informers usually
make in their own behadf, that truly they said nothing but what
was truth, and they conceive truth may be lawfully spoken.
Very good ! Be it therefore a truth. But yet give me leave to
ask such persons a few questions : as whether a truth may not
be reported with as malicious a design as the greatest falsity that
ever was hatched in hell ; and whether to tell a truth with the
purposes of malice, be not a sin of as black a hue in the accounts
of heaven, as to contrive and tell a downright lie. I would also
ask, whether the person who told this truth would have been as
ready to tell it, had it made for the other's advantage as much as
it does for his prejudice : and whether he would be willing that
every thing should be told and published which is true of himself.
I believe the answer to these interrogatories would appear but
very lame and imperfect.
But since truth is a thing that seldom dwells in the mouths
and discourses of informers, we will suppose the accusation to be,
as for the most part it is, really false. And that either as to the
very matter of it, there being absolutely no such thing as is re
ported ; or at least in respect of some portion and circumstance
of the narration ; some little thing being added, over and above
the true state of the matter, or something being concealed that
should have been mentioned : either of which may make such
an alteration in the case, that that which one way is innocent
and allowable, the other way becomes impious, vile, and criminal.
It is in such reports as it is in numbers, the addition or detrac
tion but of one unit makes it presently another number.
But now if we proceed further, and direct the consequences of
this degenerous practice to the persons concerned in it ; as first,
to him that is informed against : we shall find that whether the
information be true or false, his condition is very miserable.
For if it be true, all opportunities of deprecating his offence, and
of reconciling himself to the person offended, are cut off and taken
out ofhis hands ; but in the mean time, the accusation lies festering
in the other's mind to whom it is delivered, waiting only for an
occasion suddenly to attack or ruin the poor man, who knows not
of the cloud which hangs over him, nor of the snare that is
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298 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XX.
spread under him; but is snapped and destroyed before he is
aware, without any remedy or escape. But if the things deposed
against him be false, as .frequently they both are and may very
well be, by reason of the accuser's presumption that he shall
never be brought to vouch or prove what he has said ; why then
an innocent person, unheard, untried, and bereaved of all power
to clear himself, and to confute his accuser, is concluded against,
and condemned ; his sentence is passed, the purpose of his ruin
sealed, and the man is blown up before ever he understands that
there is so much as amy crime, accusation, or accuser of him in
the world. And is not this a horrid and a barbarous thing, and
a perversion of the very designs of society? For to what pur
pose do men unite and convene into corporations, if the mischiefs
they suffer under them are greater than those that attend them
in a state of dispersion and open hostility ?
Certainly it is a grievance to nature, and to that common
reason and justice which presides over mankind, to see a brave,
an upright, and a virtuous person fall by the informations and
base arts of an atheist, a sycophant, and an empty dressed
fellow ; such a one, that if but one third part of mankind were
like him, neither God nor man would think the world worth
preservation. And yet such are the men that overthrow virtue,
disappoint merit, and render the rewards of the good and the
vicious accidental and promiscuous : and in a word, are the pests
and vermin that disturb and infest society.
But neither is the poor, accused, ruined person the only one
that is abused and injured by the false and malicious informer,
but even he who by such information is brought to rain him.
For is it not the worst of injuries, that such a wretch should
make a great person the instrument of his sin, and the prosecutor
of his malice, and all this by abusing his intellectuals with a lie ?
deceiving and cheating him with false persuasions, in order to a
gaining him to a base or a cruel action ; first blinding his eye,
and then using his hand, and making him to do that upon a false
representation of things, which, had he been rightly informed of,
he would not have done for a world. It is like the making of a
man drunk, and then causing him to sign a deed for the passing
away of his estate. In short, it is a daring encroachment and an
intolerable injury. And if there were any one that might law
fully not be forgiven, it is this.
But the abuse rests not here ; for such sycophants by these
practices do not only abuse men in their understanding, their
interest, and their peace, by first making them to believe a
falsehood, and then to sacrifice a friend or an innocent man to
such a belief; but further, they abuse them in that very instance
for which they accuse others. It being very frequent, nay my
own little experience has observed it, that those who are so offi
cious, by the traducing of others, to fawn, cog, and -flatter men

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 299
to their faces, are as apt to vilify them behind their backs as any
other whatsoever : nay, the matter of the accusation by which
they secretly stab others, are usually some unwary expressions
slipped from those persons, while they have been trepanned into a
compliance with the informer's discourse, in his undervaluing,
upbraiding, and detracting from the same men, before whom
afterwards he is so diligent to accuse them.
Now in this case there is nothingso much tobe wished for, as
that some lucky hand of Providence would bring the person
informed against, and the person to whom he was informed
against, together; that they might compare notes, and confer
what the informer had said on both sides. And the truth is, so
it falls out by a strange connexion and trace of events, that
usually such whisperers are discovered, and that that which
passing from the mouth is but a whisper, from the echo and
rebound becomes a voice : the effect of which is, that a vile per
son comes to be understood, and then to be abhorred, and to be
pointed at as he passes by, with such kind of elogies as these :
" There goes a person for whom no one breathing was ever the
better, but many ruined, blasted, and undone ; the scourge of
society, a spit-poison, a viper, and to be abandoned and shunned
by all companies, like a mortal infection : and yet withal so
despicable, so detested, and that amidst the greatest successes of
his base projects, that the condition of him who is most ruined
by him, even while he is ruined, is much more eligible and de
sirable ; as of the two, I know no man, but had rather be spit upon
by a toad than be a toad."
I wonder what such persons think, or propose to themselves,
when they come to affront God in his house, praying, hearing
sermons, and receiving sacraments ; when there is no sin or cor
ruption incident to the depraved nature of man, that more pecu
liarly unfits them for this divine and blessed duty, than the sin
that we have been discoursing of. And I am confident, that
when such a person thrusts himself upon the ordinance, and
receives the consecrated elements ; he yet partakes no more of the
body and blood of Christ, or the real benefits of them, than the rat
that gnaws the bread, a creature like himself, close, mischievous,
aind contemptible.
We have seen here how much such persons and practices inter
rupt the peace of societies ; but yet we are to know that the
burden of this charge is not so wholly to lie upon the framers
and bringers of such informations, but that some is to rest upon
those also who are ready to hear them. For as there is a parity
of guilt between the thief and the receiver, so there seems to be
the like between the teller and the hearer of a malicious report;
and that upon very great reason. For who would knock, where
he despaired of entrance? or what husbandman would cast his
seed but into an open and a prepared furrow ? so it is most cer-

300 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XX.
tain, that ill tongues would be idle, if ill ears were not open.
And therefore it was an apposite saying of one of the ancients,
that both the teller and the hearer of false stories ought equally
to be hanged, but one by the tongue, the other by the ears:
and were every one of them so served, I suppose nobody would
be so fond of those many mischiefs brought by such persons upon
the peace of the world, as to be concerned to cut them down,
unless, perhaps, by cutting off the forementioned parts, by which
they hung.
But when there is a conspiracy and an agreement on both sides,
and one ill-nature tells a tale, and another ill-nature thanks him
for it ; and so encourages him in the custom, by showing how
ready he is to hear his words, and to do the intended mischief; so
that the ball is kept up, by being tossed from one hand to the
other ; let not that society or company of men, who are blessed
with such persons amongst them, expect any such thing as peace ;
they may as well expect that the winter sun will ripen their
summer fruits, or the breath of the north wind preserve their
blossoms. No ; they will find, that the blasts of contention
will blow and whistle about their ears, and a storm arise which
shall endanger their tranquillity to an utter shipwreck, without
amy possibility of being appeased, but by throwing such wretches
and renegadoes from God and good-nature overboard.
Let this therefore be the second means to advance us in the
duty of living peaceably; namely, to abominate such practices
ourselves, and to discountenance them in others. It is a prescrip
tion easy and sovereign, and such a one as will not fail in the ex
periment : but according to the proportions of its efficacy, will
mamifest a certain and a happy influence, for the restoring of
peace, auid the refreshing of human converse : for when the
troublers of Israel are removed, the trouble of it must needs
cease. And thus much for the second means of maintaining the duty
of peaceableness.
3. The third that I shall prescribe is, that men would be will
ing in some cases to wave the prosecution of their rights, and not
too rigorously to insist upon them. There are some things which
it may be lawful for a man to do, but falling under cross circum
stances, may be infinitely inexpedient. To require reparation
for a wrong, is a thing good and lawful ; but sometimes it may
be done so unseasonably, that peace, which is a much better thing,
is lost by it. That same stomachus cedere nescius found in most,
is the thing that foments quarrels, and keeps men at such un-
peaceable distances. I will not lose my right, says one ; and I
will suffer no wrong, says another : and so they enter into a con
flict, both pulling and contesting, till the quietness of society is
torn asunder betwixt them. Now it is here apparent, that unless
one of these shall relinquish what he supposes to be his right, the

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 301
controversy must of necessity be perpetual. But certainly peace
is an enjoyment so high, that it deserves to be bought at the rate
of some lesser abridgements ; and a man shall find that he never
does himself so much right, as when upon such an occasion, he
parts with his right. It may possibly be of some difficulty to
assign all those instances in which peace may challenge this of
us, as to surrender a right for its preservation ; and though cases
of this nature are as numberless, and indefinite, as particular ac
tions and their circumstances ; yet to contribute something to the
conduct of our practice in so weighty and concerning a matter, I
shall presume to set down some.
(1.) As first, when the recovery of a right, according to the
best judgment that human reason can pass upon things, seems
impossible : prudence and duty then calls upon a man to surcease
the prosecution of that, and rather to follow peace. It will per
haps be replied here, that this case is superfluous and absurd, for
no rational man will endeavour after that which he apprehends
impossible. I answer, that this seems true indeed, did all that
were rational act rationally. But besides, supposing this also ;
yet unless a man acts virtuously as well as rationally, he may
propose to himself the prosecution of a thing impossible, not in
deed with a design to obtain that thing, but for some other end
or purpose : as either to gratify a humour, or to annoy an enemy,
or the like. As for instance, he that should prosecute a poor
widow, not worth above two mites, for the debt of a thousand
talents due to him from her, yet by reason of this her great po
verty, contracted by losses and misfortunes, utterly unpayable;
that man prosecutes am impossible thing, and at the same time
knows it to be so, and accordingly despairs of the recovery of his
debt, yet he continues the suit, because his disposition may in
cline him to be troublesome, vexatious, and unmerciful ; and
where money is not to be had, to pay himself with revenge. He
may be one that tastes the calamities of a ruined adversary with
a high relish, and finds a music in the widow's sighs, and a sweet
ness in her tears.
But now, in such a case is it not rational to conclude, that
Christianity calls us to peace, rather than to a fruitless prosecu
tion of a desperate right? where Providence, by taking away all
possibility and means of payment, seems to have decided the case
for pardon, and the opportunities of exercising a Christian grace.
We may be also called to the same duty of not demanding our
right, when the power and villany of the oppressor put the re
gaining of it under an impossibility. But you will reply ; This
is a very hard saying : for ought any one's injustice to prejudice
me in the claim of my right ? I answer, no : if that claim had
any likely prospect of a recovery. Otherwise, what rational ef
fect can follow it ? for by all a man's clamours and suits for right,
he is not at all benefited, and yet the peace is disturbed ; nay, it
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302 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XX.
is enough to stamp his action irrational, that he loses his own
peace without the least recompence ; all his endeavours expiring
into aur, and varnishing with no effect: for the door of justice is
shut, and his little attempts cannot force it open.
It is in a thing in itself lawful and commendable, for a subject
to vouch and assert the title of his prince. But should it so fall
out, that a tyrant and a usurper steps up into his throne, and
there surrounds himself with armed legions and a prevailing in
terest, so that justice and loyalty are forced to shrink in their
heads, and so all purposes of resistance become wholly insignifi
cant ; will any one say that it is here the duty of any particular
person to stand forth and defend his prince's claim, in defiance of
the usurper, by which neither his prince's right is in the least ad
vantaged, nor the oppressor's power at all weakened or infringed ;
but yet the common peace is interrupted, and a ruin brought
upon his own head, and the head of his confederates ?
Thus, when a bird comes to be immured in the cage, being
taken from its natural range in the air and the woods, and begins
to feel the injury of a restraint and the closeness of a prison, it
strives and flutters to recover its native liberty ; and perhaps with
striving breaks a wing or a leg, amd so pines away : and after all
this unquietness, is yet forced at last to die in the cage. It is so
with a person overpowered in his right, and bereaved of it by
those with whom he cannot grapple. Christianity and reason
command him not here to labour in vain, but to make a virtue of
necessity, and to acquiesce, expecting the issues of Providence,
which disposes of things by a rule known only to itself. And by
so doing, a man is no worse than he was before ; but the peace is
maintained, and the rewards of patience may be well expected.
(2.) In the second place, it seems to be a man's duty to quit
the claim of his right, when that right is but trivial, small, and
inconsiderable, but the recovery of it troublesome and conten
tious. That which being lost makes a man not much the poorer,
nor recovered, much the richer, cannot authorize him to enter
into the turmoil, the din, and noise of a suit, or a long contest.
Nothing can warrant a man in these courses but necessity, or a
great inconvenience ; which in the supposed instance, is not plead
able. But he proceeds upon the dictates of humour, the sug
gestions of revenge, and the instigations of an unquiet disposition :
the consequences of which, in this world, are but ill ; and the
rewards of them in the next much worse. This whole method
is like the applying of corrosives, and caustics, and the most tor
menting remedies, to remove the pain of a cut finger, or like the
fisting of armies to chase away flies : the means and the design
are hugely disproportionable.
(3.) In the third place, it seems to be a man's duty to recede
from his claim of any particular right, when for the injury done
him he hais a recompence offered him, in some good equivalent,

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 303
W
and perhaps greater, though of another kind. A man has depo
sited a jewel in another's hand ; the jewel comes to be lost or
stolen : but the person to whose keeping it was entrusted is will
ing to make him satisfaction, in paying him the full value of it
in money, or in giving him another of a greater price. In which
case, should the person endamaged utterly refuse all such satisfac
tion, and rigidly insist upon the restitution of that individual
thing, he declares himself a son of contention, an enemy of peace,
and am unreasonable exactor.
Nay, the equity of this extends even to those losses, for
which, perhaps, no recompence perfectly equivalent can be
made ; yet when the utmost that the thing is capable of comes
to be tendered, justice, acting by the rules of charity,- will tie up
the injured man from righting himself by any further prosecu
tions. As for instance, we will suppose a man defamed, and
injured in his reputation ; in this case, the word that gave him
the wound cannot be unsaid again, or revoked, any more than a
spent hour be called back, or yesterday brought again upon the
stage of time, but it is gone and past recovery. Yet the mis
chief done by this word is permanent and great, it has spilt a
man's good name upon the ground ; which, like spilt water, can
not be gathered up again. But after this, the slanderer comes
to be touched with remorse and sorrow for what he has done,
acknowledges and deprecates his fault before his slandered
brother ; retracts his words, as publicly as they were spoken,
offers him a large sum of money or a great advantage : what
now is the injured person to do in this condition ? True it is
that a good name is unvaluable ; and all the pelf in the world is
not' an equal ransom for it. Yet it is also as true, that no quar
rel, how just soever, ought to be immortal ; but ought to be let
fall upon due reparation : and the very nature of this case ad
mits of no other or greater reparation than what has been
offered. Should it therefore be flung back in the offerer's face,
and the action of slander go on rigorously and inexorably, I am
afraid the scene would be altered, and that he who prosecutes
his right, having yet more malice than right of his side, would,
in the estimate of the supreme Judge, from the injured person
turn to be the injurious.
The like may be said in the loss of a limb, or any part of the
body, as an eye or an arm. Certain it is, that he who has struck
out my eye, or cut off my arm, has not the magazines of nature
so in his power, as to be able to give me another ; nor will all
his estate recompence the injury of a maimed, deformed body
yet if he will endeavour to give me the best recompence my saa
condition will receive ; and make up the loss of these with sup
plies of other advantages: I must be contented, and lie down
patiently under my calamity, no longer owning it under the
notion of an injury, from the man that did it, but as a sad pro-

304 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XX.
vidence from heaven, as an arrow shot from the bow in the
clouds, to punish my sins and to exercise my patience. And
therefore all suits, and actions, and endeavours after a severe
retribution must be let fall ; I must not vex, worry, and undo
him. The eye that God has left me must not be evil, because
man has robbed me of the other ; nor the remaining arm
stretched out to revenge the blow that lopped off its fellow.
And thus I have shown the cases in which the duty we all
owe to peace may command us sometimes to remit the rigid pro
secutions of our right ; which was the third means proposed to
give success to our endeavours aifter peaceableness. ,
4. A fourth is, much to reflect upon the great example of
Christ, and the strict injunction lying upon us to follow it. We
shall find that his whole life went in a constant recession from
his own rights, in order to the tranquillity and peace of the pub
lic : he was born heir to the kingdom of the Jews, yet never
vouched his title, but quietly saw the sceptre in a usurper's
hand ; and lived and died under the government of those who
had no right to govern. When tribute was demanded of him,
he clearly demonstrated the case to Peter, in Matt. xvii. 24 — 26,
that they had neither right to demand, nor he obligation to pay
any ; yet in ver. 27, we find that he would be at the expense of
little less than a miracle, rather than, by refusing to obey an
unjust exaction, to disturb the peace. " Lest we should offend
them," says he to Peter, " go thou to the sea, and cast an hook,
and take up the fish that first cometh up : and thou shalt find a
piece of money in his mouth ; that take, and give for me and
thee." But what if they had been offended, it had been but an
offence taken, not given : for where nothing is due, nothing was
to be paid, nor consequently to be demanded; yet so tender was
he of the public peace, that he waved all these pleas and argu
mentations, and complied with the common practice.
Nay, and what is more, in the great concernment of his life,
rather than occasion a tumult, or any unpeaceable disorder,
though amongst persons then about the greatest villany that
ever the sun saw ; he quitted the grand right of self-preserva
tion : which case, though it was peculiar and extraordinary, and
so obliges not us to every particular of the action ; yet the
design of peaceableness, which induced him to such a behaviour,
calls for our imitation in general, that we should be willing to
break many high inconveniences, rather than be the occasions of
any public disturbance. They sent out an inconsiderable com
pany with swords and staves to apprehend him ; but what could
this pitiful body of men have done to prejudice his life, who,
with much more ease than Peter drew his sword, could have
summoned more angels to his assistance, than there were legions
of men marching under the Roman eagles ? But he chose rather
to resign himself silently and unresistingly, like a lamb to the

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 305
slaughter, and so to recommend the excellency of patience to all
his disciples, in a strange instance and a great example.
Now I suppose that it needs not much labour to evince, that
what Christ did, upon a moral account, equally engages the
practice of his disciples, according to their proper degree and
proportion. And therefore we are to study those divine lessons
of peace, to admire and conform to his behaviour, to transcribe
his copy, and to read a precept in every one of his actions. And
this is the fourth meams to enable us to quit ourselves in the
great duty of peaceableness.
5. The fifth and last which I shall propose, which surely, for
its efficacy and virtue, will be inferior to none of the former, is
this; not to adhere too pertinaciously and strictly to our own
judgments of things doubtful in themselves, in opposition to the
judgment of our superiors, or others who may be rationally sup
posed more skilful in those things. If we pursue most of those
contentions which afflict the world, to their first principle, we
shall find that they issue from pride, and pride from self-opinion,
amd a strange persuasion that men have of their knowledge of
those things of which they are indeed ignorant. I am not for
the implicit faith of the papists, or for any man to pluck out his
own eyes, and to be guided by another man's, in matters -plain,
obvious, and apprehensible ; and of which common reason, with
out the assistance of art and study, is a competent judge. But
surely in things difficult and controverted, the learned, who have
made it their business to wade into those depths, should be con
sulted and trusted to, before the rash and illiterate determinations
of any particular man whatsoever.
The not doing of which, I am sure, has ruined the peace of
this poor church, and shaken it into such unsettlements, that the
youngest person alive is not like to see it recovered to its full
strength, vigour, and establishment. There is not the least re
tainer to a conventicle, ¦ but thinks he understands the whole
business of religion, as well as the most studied and profound
doctor in the nation. And for those things that by pious and
mature deliberation, grounded upon the word of God and the
constant practice of antiquity, have been ordained for the better
and more decent management of divine worship, there is scarce
any preaching, discontented ignoramus, > any groaning old woman,
or any factious shopkeeper, who, for want of custom, sits reading
the bible, but will very pertly, and, as they think, also very
judiciously, call them in question. For of those many tho'usands
who use to read the scripture, there are few who understand
it, and fewer who think they do not; whereupon they venture
on all occasions to affix such bold interpretations on the most
concerning passages, as either their interest or their ignorance
shall suggest.
And having, upon such pitiful grounds, taken up an opinion,
Vol. IV.— 39 2c 2

306 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XX.
they are as ready to fight for it, and to assert it with the last
drop of their blood. Armies shall be raised, swords drawn, and
the peace of a kingdom sacrificed, to a notion as absurdly con
ceived as impudently defended. Laws must be repealed, or lie
unexecuted, customs abrogated, and sovereignty itself must be
forced to bow before the exceptions of a tender conscience ; and
to give way to every religious opiniator, who is pleased to judge
his peculiar sentiments in sacred matters tlie great standard of
truth, to which all must conform. For though they deny a con
formity to the church in its constitutions, yet they think it very
reasonable, nay necessary, that the church should conform to
them ; whereas it is most certain from experience, that such per
sons seldom persist so steadily in any one opinion, as for a year's
space to conform thoroughly to themselves.
I .conclude therefore, that there is no such bane of the common
peace, as a confident singularity of opinion: for men's opinions
shall rule their practices, and when their practices shall get head
and countenance, they shall overrule the laws. If when men shall
refuse to yield obedience to statute and government, amd for such
refusal plead that their conscience will not give them leave to think
such obedience lawful, and for this assign no other reason, but be
cause they are resolved to think so, or allege some places of scrip
ture, which they will be sure to understand in their own sense,
though persons much more numerous and knowing than they un
derstand them in a far different one ; and then, after all, shall have
this accepted by governors, as a sufficient reason to exempt them
from the common obligation that the law designs to lay upon
every subject ; there is no doubt but that, by this course, the very
foundation of peace and government will quickly be unsettled,
and the whole fabric of church and state thrown back into its
former confusion.
And thus much for the third particular proposed for- the
handling the words, namely, to show by what means we might be
enabled to the great duty of living peaceably. I come now to
IV. The fourth and last ; which is to show, what are the mo
tives and arguments by which this duty may be enforced. I suppose,
many may be gathered here and there from what has been al
ready delivered, and therefore I shall be the briefer in this.
1. The first enforcing argument that I shall propound, shall
be taken from the excellency of the thing itself; which indeed
is so great, that the highest appellations of honour recorded in
scripture are derived from peace. God himself is pleased to in
sert it amongst his own titles, and to be called "the God of
peace," Rom. xv. 33. It is also the honourable name of the
Messiah, that he was to be " the Prince of peace," Isaiah ix. 6 ;
and that in the most eminent manner that could be: for he
designed the time of his nativity when there was a general peace

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 307
over the whole world in the reign of Augustus Caesar. And the
first message that was sent from heaven upon his nativity was a
message of peace, Luke ii. 14, " Glory be to God on high, and
on earth peace, good- will towards men." The whole doctrine
that by himself and his apostles he preached to mankind, is
called "the gospel of peace," and " the word of peace," Rom. x.
15. The last legacy that he bequeathed to his disciples at his
departure out of the world was a legacy of peace ; John xiv. 27,
" My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you : not as
the world giveth, give I unto you." And the works of the Holy
Ghost in the hearts of believers are expressed by the same thing,
Gal. v. 22, " The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace." And
in the last place, both the effects and rewards of piety are set
forth by this, Rom. xv. 13, " The God of hope fill you with all
joy and peace in believing." In a word, there is no one virtue
or excellent quality in the world, from which there be half
so many denominations of honour and expressions of blessing
taken by the penmen of holy writ, as from peace. It is the
very style and phrase of scripture ; and if I should endeavour
to mention how often it is thus used in it, I must not so much
quote particular texts, as transcribe books amd chapters.
Now certainly that must needs be a glorious thiner, that thus
gives titles of glory to the Prince of glory> that thus fills the
heraldry of heaven, and calls gifts, graces, blessings, and every
good thing, after its own naune. The heathen custom was to
derive their names of honour from the triumphs of war, as
Numidicus, Asiaticus, Africanus : but Christian religion, that
came to unite and cement society, to compose differences, and to
conquer minds only, has made up its catalogue of honours with
natmes of peace, a virtue of a more benign nature, that can adorn
one man without the disgrace of another.
2. The second motive to peace shall be taken from the excel
lency of the principle from which peaceableness of "spirit pro
ceeds. It is from a pious, a generous, and a great mind. Little
things are querulous; atnd the waisp much more angry and
troublesome than the eagle. He that can slight affronts, despise
revenge, and rather suffer an inconvenience than employ his
passion to remove it, declares himself above the injuries of men,
and that though others would disturb him, yet he will not be dis
turbed, he is too strong to be shaken ; and so, has both his quiet
ness and his reputation in his own keeping.
Now certainly it is more desirable to be such a person, than to
be a subject and a slave to every man's distemper and impru
dence ; for so he is whom every man is able to exaisperate and
disquiet: he has let go his happiness, and put it into the power
of those who regard not their own, and therefore is forced to be
miserable, whensoever any other man may think fit to be proud,
insolent, and passionate. I suppose I need no greater argument

308 DR. SOUTH1S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XX.
to recommend a peaceable temper, than the misery of such a
condition. 3. The third motive to peace shall be taken from the con
sequent blessing entailed upon it by a peculiar promise, Matt. v.
9, " Blessed are the peace-makers ;" and I may add, by a parity
of reason, no less blessed are the peace-preservers. The treasures
of heaven are opened, and the designs of Providence laid to serve
the interest of the peaceable. All contingencies, unusual passages
and casualties of affairs, shall conspire into a happy event, in
reference to such persons. For when God intends a blessing, a
blessing with an emphasis and a peculiarity, as he does here, he
takes a man into a nearer tuition, espouses his concerns, directs
his actions, and orders his occasions.
I do not doubt but the blessing here pronounced to the peace
able is such a one as reaches heaven, and runs forth into eternity,
and does not determine in these transient enjoyments and earthly
felicities; yet since these also lie in the bowels of the promise,
and may come in as a fair overplus, or serve as a comfortable
earnest of those great happinesses that as yet are but within our
prospect ; I shall take notice of two instances of this blessing, that
will certainly attend the peaceable in this world.
(1.) The first is an easy, undisturbed, and quiet enjoyment of
themselves. While a man is careful to keep the peace with
others, he will in the rebound find the influence of it upon him
self. He has no enmities to prosecute, no revenges to beware of,
no suspicions to discompose his mind. But he that will disturb
others, of necessity casts himself under all those evils. For he
that affronts or injures a man, must be at the trouble to make
that affront good ; he must also expect that the affronted person
waits for an opportunity to repay him with a shrewd recom
pence : whereupon he is to be always upon his guard, to hearken
and look about, and contrive how he may frustrate the intended
blow. All which is a continual torment and a sad vexation ; and
like being upon the watch every night, white others are at their
rest. But then the chiefest misery of all is this, that as it is a very
restless, so it is a very needless condition. For what necessity is
there that I should undertake the trouble of troubling another?
Why should I take so much pains to be disturbed and out
of order, when the charge at which I may purchase my own
quietness is no greater than only to let other men enjoy theirs ?
If I should strike any one a great blow on the teeth, it is very
probable that I may bruise my own hand, as well as hurt his
face. But the peaceable man is composed and settled in the
most of those disturbances that embroil the world round about
him. He can sleep in a storm, because he had no hand in the
raising it. He conjured no evil spirit up, and so is not put upon
the trouble to conjure him down again. He is like a sword rest-

CHRISTIANS EXHORTED TO LIVE PEACEABLY. 309
ing in its scabbard, which by that means both hurts nobody and
preserves itself.
(2.) The other instance of the great blessing attending the
peaceable in this world, is that honour and reputation which such
a temper of mind and course of life fixes upon their persons.
Every one looks upon such a man as a public blessing, as a gift
from heaven, as a help amd remedy to the frailties and miseries
of mankind. There is none but is forced to confess, that he has
been the better for such a one ; and consequently, to acknowledge
a debt to Providence, that ever he knew him or conversed with
him. But on the contratry, is there any one that prays for or honours
a plague, a rat, a serpent, or, which is worse than all, a false and
a malicious informer ? As amongst all the trees and plants of the
earth the bramble is the most troublesome, so it is also the most
contemptible. It is the great and notable curse of the earth to
bear briers and thorns : and it is also their doom to be burnt ;
and I know nobody that would find a miss of them. For when
such persons are removed, afflicted society seem to have a little
respite and time of breathing : for while they have scope to act
the mischief offheir temper, they are like some flies, that first by
their venom make a sore, and then set upon it and afflict it.
But it being the nature of mankind to fasten an honour there
only where they find either something like to God, or beneficial
to themselves; let not such nuisances think, that any generous
mind can either honour or effect them ; for such can be consider
able for nothing, but because they are able to do mischief; and I
know nothing so vile or base in nature, but that sometimes it has
power to do hurt. Is there any thing more weak and pitiful than
a flea or a gnat ? and yet they have sting and sharpness enough
to trouble a wise man.
It is therefore the peaceable mind only, the mind which studies
how to compose, and heal, and bind up the bleeding wounds of
society, that is truly great and honourable. The name of such
is like an ointment poured forth, which we know is both healing
and fragrant. Honour and respect court them and pursue them ;
and when they have finished a glorious life here, ennobled by the
good offices done by them, their report survives them, and their
memory is blessed. Their name is glorified upon earth, and
their souls in heaven.

310

SERMON XXI.
death the wages of shv.
Romans vi. 23.
The wages of sin is death.
The two great things which make such a disturbance in the
world, are sin and death ; the latter both the effect and punish
ment of the former. Sin, I confess, is an obvious subject, and
the theme almost of every discourse ; but yet it is not discoursed
of so much, but that it is committed much more: it being like
that ill custom spoken of by Tacitus in Rome, semper vetabitur,
semper retinebitur. But while the danger continues, we must not
give over the alarm ; nor think a discourse of sin superfluous,
while the commission of it is continual, and yet the prevention
necessary. In the words, we have a near and a close conjunction between
the greatest object of the world's love, which is sin, and the
greatest object of its hatred, which is death. And we see them
presented to us in such a vicinity, that they are in the very con
fines of one another ; death treading upon the heels of sin, its
hateful, yet its inseparable companion. And it is wonderful to con
sider, that men should so eagerly court the antecedent, and yet
so strangely detest the consequent ; that they should pour gall
into the fountain, and yet cry out of the bitterness of the stream :
and lastly, which is of all things the most unreasonable, that a
workman should complain that he is paid his wages.
The scope and design of the words I shall draw forth and
prosecute in the discussion of these three following things.
I. I shall show what sin is, which is here followed with so
severe a penalty as death.
n. I shall show what is comprised in death, which is here
allotted for the sinner's wages.
III. And lastly, I shall show in what respect death is properly
called " the wages of sin." Of each of which in their order.
And, I. For the first of these, what sin is. And according to the
most known and received^ definition of it, it is avopla, a breach of
the law ; a transgression, or leaping over those boundaries which
the eternal wisdom of God has set to a rational nature; a

DEATH THE WAGES OF SIN. 311
receding from that exact rule and measure, which God has pre
scribed to moral actions. This is the general notion of it ; but
as for the particular difficulties, disputes, and controversies, which
some have started upon this subject, and by which they have
made the law of God almost as ambiguous and voluminous as
the laws of men, I shall waive them all ; and not being desirous
to be either nice or prolix, shall speak of sin only under that
known division of it, into original and actual.
1. And first, for original sin. It may seem strange perhaps
that sin bears date with our very being: and indeed, in some
respectrprevents it. That we were sinners before we were born ;
and seem to have been held in the womb, not only as infants for
the birth, but as malefactors in a prison. And that if we look
upon our interest in this world, our forfeit was much earlier than
our possession : " We are," says the apostle, " by nature children
of wrath," Eph. ii. 3. Not only by depravation, or custom, and
ill-contracted habits, but by nature ; the first principle and source
of action. And nature we know is as entire, though not as
strong in an infant,, as in a grown man. Indeed the strength of
man's natural corruption is so great, that every man is born an
adult sinner. Sin is the only thing in the word which never had
an infancy, that knew no minority. Tantillus puer, tantus
peccator, says St. Austin. Could we view things in semine,
and look through principles, what a nest of impurities might
we see in the heart of the least infant ! like a knot of . little
snakes, wrapped up in a dunghill! What a radical, produc
tive force of sin might we behold in all his faculties, ready
upon occasion, and the maturities of age, to display itself with a
cursed fertility !
There are some, I know, who deny that which we here call
original sin, to be indeed properly any sin at all ; and will have
it at the most, not to be our fault, but our infelicity. And their
reason is, because nothing can be truly and properly sin, which
is not voluntary; but original corruption in infants cannot be
voluntary ; since it precedes all exercise of their rational powers,
their understanding and their will.
But to this I answer, that original corruption in every infant
is voluntary, not indeed in his own person, but in Adam his re
presentative; whose actions, while he stood in that capacity, were
virtually and by way of imputation the acts of all his posterity :
as amongst us, when a person serves in parliament, all that he
votes in that public capacity or condition is truly and politically
to be esteemed the vote of all those persons, for whom he
stands, and serves as representative. Now inasmuch as Adam's
sin was free and voluntary, and *also imputed to all his posterity ;
it follows that their original corruption, the direct and proper
effect of this sin, must be equally voluntary ; and being withal
irregular, must needs be sinful. Age and ripeness of years does

312 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXI.
not give being, but only opportunity to sin. That principle,,.
which lay dormant and unactive before, is then drawn forth into
sinful acts and commissions. When a man is grown up, his cor
ruption does not begin to exist, but to appear; and to spend
upon that stock, which it had long before.
Pelagius indeed tells us, that the sons of Adam came to be
sinners only by imitation. But then, I would know of Kim
what those first inclinations are, which dispose us to such bad
imitations ? Certainly, that cannot but be sinful,' which so power
fully, and almost forcibly inclines us to sin. We may conclude
therefore, that even this original, native corruption renders the
persons who have it obnoxious and liable to death. An evil heart
will condemn us, though Providence should prevent its running
forth into an evil life. Sin is sin, whether it rests in the in
clinations, or shoots out into the practice: and a toad is full of
poison, though he never spits it.
2. The other branch, or rather sort of sin, is that which we
call actual. This is the highest improvement of the former: the
constant flux and ebullition of that corrupt fountain in the course
of a vicious life ; that " abundance of the heart" declared in
expressions, and made visible in actions. It is that which St.
John calls "the works of the devil," 1 John iii. 8, and the
apostle Paul, "the deeds of the flesh," Rom. viii. 13, and "a
walking and living after the flesh ;" with other such like de
scriptions. Now actual sin may be considered two ways:'l. According
to the subject-matter of it. 2. According to the degree.
1. For the first; considered according to the subject-matter of
it, it is divided into the sin of our words, the sin of our actions, and
the sin of our desires; according to that short, but full account
given of it by the schools, that it is dictum, factum, aut concupitum
contra legem Dei; something said, done, or desired, against the
rule of God's law.
(l.) And first for the sin of our words; the irregularity of
them is no doubt sinful, and imprints a guilt upon the speaker.
We cannot say in that lofty strain of those in Psalm xii. 4,
" Our tongues are our own : who is lord over us ?" No ; we
have both a lord and a law over us ; and our tongues are not
so much our own, as to privilege the greatest princes and
the most illustrious drolls from being responsible for their
extravagance. A word is quickly spoken, but the guilt of it
abides: hke an arrow, it flies swift, and it sticks fast. And
our Saviour assures us, that " every idle word" stands upon re
cord to be one day accounted for. And that word is such, which
is either directed to no end, or not to a right one. A defect in
either of which leaves an immorality behind it. For, as it is in
Matt. xii. 37 By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy
words thou shalt be condemned." Thy own tongue shall give in

DEATH THE WAGES OF SIN. 313
evidence against thee ; and thy soul shall pass to hell through
thy own mouth.
(2.) The second sort of actual sin is the sin of our external
actions ; that is, of such as are performed, not by immediate pro
duction or emanation from the will, but by command of the will
upon some exterior part or member of the body, as the proper
instrument of action. Such as are the acts of theft, murder, un
cleanness, and the like. To prove which to be sins, no more is
required, but only to read over the law of God, and to acknow
ledge its authority. They being written in such big, broad, and
legible characters, that the times of the, grossest ignorance were
never ignorant of the guilt and turpitude inseparably inherent in
them. And where the written letter of the law came not, there,
according to the apostle's phrase, men, as to these particulars,
" were a law to themselves," and by perusing that little book,
which every man carried in his own breast, could quickly find
enough both to discover and to condemn those enormities.
(3.) The third sort of actual sin, is the sin of our desires.
Desires are the first issues and sallyings out of the soul to un
lawful objects. They are sin, as it were, in its first formation.
For as soon as the heart has once conceived this fatal seed, it first
quickens and begins to stir in desire : concupiscence is the prime
and leading sin, which gives life and influence to all the rest, so that
the ground and the principal prohibition ofthe law is, " Thou shalt
not covet." And in Matt. v. we see how severely the gospel
arraigns the first movings of every irregular appetite, making
them equal to the gross perpetration of the sin. And indeed
action is only a consummation of desire; and could we imagine
am outward action performable without it, it would be rather the
shell and outside of a sin, than properly a sin itself.
Now all these three ways, namely, by word, action, and desire,
does sin actually put forth itself. And this is the division of it,
as considered according to its subject-matter.
2. The other consideration of actual sin is according to the
degree or measure of it ; and so also it is distinguished into several
degrees and proportions, according to which it is either enhanced
or lessened in its malignity.
(1.) As first, when a man is engaged in a sinful course by
surprise and infirmity, and the extreme frailty of his corrapjt
nature ; when the customs of the world, and the unruliness of his
affections, all conspiring with outward circumstances, do, like a
torrent, beat him out of the paths of virtue, and, as it were,
whether he will or no, drive and bear him forward in the broad
road to perdition : which I take to be frequently the condition of
the dangerous, unwary, hardy part of a man's life, his youth ; in
which generally desire is high, and reason low ; temptations ready,
and religion afar off. And in such a case, if a strict education,
and an early infusion of virtue does not prepossess and season the
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314 DR. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxi.
heart, and thereby prevent the powers of sin in their first and
most furious eruptions; how is a desperate wretch drawn forth
into open rebellion against his Maker, into a contempt ol all
goodness, and a love of those ways that can tend to and end in
nothing but his confusion! And yet this is the most tolerable
condition that sin designs to bring the sinner into. I call it the
most tolerable, because sin, left to its natural course and ten
dency, would and may plunge him into a much worse. Neverthe
less, if a remedy does not maturely interpose, this must certainly
prove fatal, and the end and wages of it will be death.
(2.) The second degree of actual sin is, when a man pursues a
course of sin against the reluctancies of an awakened conscience,
and the endeavours of his conversion : when salvation waits and
knocks at the door of his heart, and he both bolts it out and drives
it away : when he fights with the word, and struggles with the
Spirit; and, as it were, resolves to perish in spite of mercy itself,
and of the means of grace. This we may see exemplified by
several instances, both in the Old Testament and the New. Thus
God upbraids the house of Israel, Isaiah i. 5, " Why should ye
be stricken any more, ye will revolt yet more and more ?" And
is there any thing more frequent, than complaints of their back
sliding, their playing fast and loose with God, and their sinning
against all God's methods of reclaiming sinners ? Isaiah lvii. 17,
" I was wroth," says God, " and smote him : I hid myself, and
was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his own
heart." Here we see God angry, and the sinner unconcerned,
God smiting, and yet the sinner still proceeding.
And the like examples we find of the Jews sinning in our
Saviour's time : they sinned against clear light and irresistible
conviction ; with a hard heart and a daring hand. "If ye were
blind," says our Saviour, John ix. 41, "ye should not have had
sin." No, they sinned knowingly and resolutely, with an open
eye and a bare face, as if they would even look conscience itself
out of countenance. If our Saviour did wonders and miracles
before them, they encountered miracle with miracle, and were as
miraculous in their obstinacy as he in his mighty works.
Now this is a more robust, improved, and confirmed way of
sinning, than any sinner, upon his first entrance into and en
gagement in the service of sin, ever rises to; and it takes in
many grains of guilt and malignity, which were not in the former ;
it inflames the sinner's reckoning ; it alters the nature and changes
the colour of his sin, and sets it off with a deeper stamp and a
more crimson dye.
(3.) The third and last degree of actual sin is, when a man
Sins, not only in opposition, but also in defiance to conscience •
so breaking all bonds, so trampling upon all convictions, that he
becomes not only unruly and untractable, but finally obstinate
and incorrigible. And this is the utmost, the ne plus ultra of

DEATH THE WAGES OF SIN. 315
impiety, which shuts the door of mercy, and seals the decree of
damnation. For this we are to reckon upon, that there is a cer
tain pitch of sin, a certain degree of wickedness, though known
to God himself alone, beyond which, God never pardons (not
that it is in its nature unpardonable, but that God, according to
the wise and unsearchable economy of his dealing with sinners,
after such a height of provocation, withdraws his grace, and sur
ceases the operations of his Spirit, by which alone the heart can
be effectually changed or wrought upon). So that these being
thus withdrawn, the sinner never actually repents or returns ;
but being left to himself, and the uncontrolled sway of his own
corruptions, he still goes on sinning, till he ends his wretched
course in final impenitence.
And this, no doubt, is the true sense of all those scriptures
that represent God limiting his grace to a certain day: the
neglect of which, like the last and fatal line drawn under the
sinner's accounts, leaves him nothing more to expect, but a
dreadful payment ; or, as the apostle calls it, " a fearful looking
for of judgment." For as soon as ever the sinner has filled the
cup of God's wrath, the next infusion makes it run over.
And thus I have shown the several degrees of actual sin, the
several steps and descents by which the sinner goes down into
the regions of death and the bottomless pit.
Now this differs from original sin thus, that that is properly
the seed, this the harvest; that merits, this actually procures
death. For although as soon as ever the seed be cast in, there is
a design to reap ; yet, for the most part, God does not actually
put in the sickle, till continuance in sin has made the sinner ripe
for destruction.
n. Come we now to the second general thing proposed ; which
is, to show what is included and comprised in death, which is here
allotted for the sinner's wages ? Death is the great enemy of
nature, the devourer of mankind ; that which is continually
destroying and making havoc of the creation : and we shall see
the full latitude of it, if we consider it as it stands divided into
temporal and eternal ?
1. And first, for death temporal. We must not take it in
that restrained sense, as it imports only the separation of the
soul from the body : for that is rather the consummation of death,
than death itself; it is properly the ending stroke, the last blow
given to the falling tree. But we must take it in a larger com
pass and comprehension; as it is a summary and compendious
abridgment of all those evils which afflict human nature ; of all
those calamities and disasters, which by degrees weaken, and at
length dissolve the body.
Look upon those harbingers and forerunners of death, dis
eases; they are but some of the wages of sin paid us beforehand.

316 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM.

XXI.

What are pains and aches, and the torments of the gout and of the
stone, which lie pulling at our earthly tabernacle, but so many
ministers and under-agents of death? What are catarrhs and
ulcers, coughs and dropsies, but so many mementos of a hasten
ing dissolution, so many foretastes of the grave ? What is a con
sumption, but a lingering, gradual rotting, before we are laid
under ground? What is a burning fever, but hell in a shorter
and a weaker fire ? And to these diseases of the body, we may
add the consuming cares and troubles of the mind ; the toil, and
labour, and racking intention of the brain; all made necessary
by the first sin of man ; and which do as really, though not as
serisibly impair and exhaust the vitals, as the most visible
corporeal diseases do, or can do ; and let in death to the body,
though by another door.
Moreover, to these miseries, which reach us in our persons,
we may subjoin those which attend our condition ; those which
we are liable to in our names and estates ; as the shame and in
famy, which makes men a scorn to others, and a burden to them
selves ; which takes of the gloss and air of all other enjoyments,
and damps the quickness, the vigour, and vivacity of the spirit.
Also the miseries of poverty and want, which leave the necessi
ties and the conveniencies, that is to say, the second necessities
of nature unsupplied : when a man shall be forced to make his
meals upon hunger and expectation ; to be clothed with rags, and
to converse with filth ; and to live only upon those alms which
the covetousness or the surfeit of other men can spare.
Now all these things are so many breaches made upon our
happiness and well-being, without which life is not life, but a
bare, thin, insipid existence ; and therefore certainly we cannot
deny them to be parts of death, unless perhaps from this reason,
that upon a true estimate of things, they are indeed much worse.
And thus we have seen death in the first fruits of it ; how by
degrees it creeps upon us, how many engines it plants against us,
how many assaults it gives, till at length it ends its fatal progress
in the final divorce which it makes between soul and body, never-
resting, till it has abased us to our primitive earth, and to the
dishonours of stench, rottenness, and putrefaction.
2. But secondly, the grand payment of the sinner's wages is
in death eternal : in comparison of which, the other can scarce
be called death ; but only a transient change, a short darkness
upon nature ; easily borne, or at least quickly past. But when
eternity comes into the balance, it adds an infinity to the weight,
and sinks it down to an immense disparity. Eternal death is not
only the sinner's punishment, but his amazement : no thought,
no created reason can take the length of an endless duration.
But there are also some other concomitant properties of this
death, which vastly increase and aggravate the horror of it, be
sides the bare considerations of its eternity.

DEATH THE WAGES OF SIN. 317
(1.) As first, that it bereaves a man of all the pleasures and
comforts which he enjoyed in this world ; the loss of which,
how poor amd contemptible soever they are in themselves, yet
surely must needs be very afflictive to him who had placed his
whole entire happiness in them ; and therefore to be stripped
of all these, and to be cast naked and forlorn into utter darkness
amd desertion, cannot but be infinitely tormenting, though a man
should meet with no other tormentors in that place. For to
have strong, eager, immense desires, and a perpetual bar and
divorce put between them and their beloved objects, will of
itself be hell enough, though the worm should die, and the fire
should be quenched.
For how will the drunkard, the epicure, and the wanton bear
the absence amd removal of those things that alone used to please
their fancy and to gratify their lust! For here will be neither
ball nor masks, plays nor mistresses, for the gallant to entertain
himself with ; here will be company indeed good store, but no
good-fellowship ; roaring enough, but no ranting in this place.
With what a killing regret must the condemned worldling look
back upon his rich manors arid his large estate, his parks and his
pleasant gardens ! to which there is now no return for him, but
only by thought and remembrance; which can serve him for
nothing, but to heighten his anguish by a bitter comparison of his
past and present condition. And this is some of the fruit of sin,
which, by carrying out the heart to a vicious, irregular enjoyment
of the things of this life, which quickly have an end, treasures
up in the same heart materials for such a sorrow as shall have
none. (2.) Eternal death bereaves the soul of that infinite, inexpres
sible good, the beatific fruition of God. The greatest and the
quickest misery of a condemned sinner is the sense of loss. And
if the loss of those puny temporal enjoyments makes so great a
part of his punishment, as I have shown it does, what then shall
we say of the loss of that, which was the only thing which gave
life and spirit to all those enjoyments! which gave them that
substance and suitableness to our nature, as to render them pro
perly felicities! For all the comfort that God conveys to the
creature, comes from the sensible, refreshing discoveries of his
presence. "In thy presence," says the psalmist, "there is ful
ness of joy," Psalm xvi. 11. This is the reviving light, which
scatters all the darknesses and dismal blacks of sorrow ; that
wipes off all tears : the happy sunshine which dries up those dis
consolate dews. For as it is the presence of the king which
makes the court; so it is the peculiar presence of God which
makes heaven ; which is not so much the name of a place, as of a
state or condition.
But now, there is an everlasting cloud drawn between this
and a sinner under damnation. God iiides himself for ever ; so
2d2

318 dr. sodth's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxi.
that this is the sum and height of the sinner's doom, that he is
condemned eternally to feel God's hand, and never to see his
(3.) And lastly, eternal death fills both body and soul with
most intense pain, and the highest torment and anguish which
can be received within a created, finite capacity. All the woes,
griefs, and terrors which humanity can labour under, shall then,
as it were, unite, and really seize upon the soul at once. " I am
tormented in this flame," says the rich man, Luke xvi. 24. And
surely a bed of flames is but an uneasy thing for a man to roll
himself upon to all eternity. The sufferings which shall attend
this estate, no tongue can express, no heart can conceive. Pain
shall possess the body; horror, agony, and despair shall rack the
mind : so that the whole man shall be made the receptacle and
scene of misery, the tragical scene for vengeance to act its
utmost upon, and to show how far a creature is capable of being
tormented, without the loss of its being ; the continuance of
which, under those circumstances, is but a miserable privilege,
and would gladly be exchanged for annihilation. For every
lash which God then gives the sinner shall be with a scorpion ;
every pain which he inflicts shall be more eager than appetite,
more cruel than revenge ; every faculty, both of soul and body,
shall have its distinct, proper, and peculiar torment applied to it,
and be directly struck there, where it has the quickest, the
tenderest, and the sharpest sense of any painful impression.
God seldom punishes or afflicts in this world, but it is with
some allay of mercy ; some mixture of clemency, which even in
the midst of misery may yet support hope. But when sin has
lodged the sinner in hell, the cup which God then administers
shall be all justice without mercy, all wrath and venom, all dregs
and yet no bottom ; a cup never to be drank off, inexhaustibly
full, inconceivably bitter. But I shall use no other argument to
evince the greatness of those torments but only this, that the
devil shall be the instrument of their execution. And surely a
mortal enemy will be a dreadful executioner : and the punish
ment which an infinite justice inflicts by the hand of an implaca
ble malice must needs be intolerable.
And thus I have despatched the second general thing pro
posed ; which was to show what is included and comprised in
death, which is here allotted for the sinner's wages. I proceed
now to the
in. And last ; which is to show in what respect death is pro
perly called " the wages of sin." I conceive it may be upon these
two following accounts.
1. Because the payment of wages still presupposes service and
labour. And undoubtedly the service of sin is of all others the
most painful and laborious. It will engr6ss all a man's industry

DEATH THE WAGES OF SIN. ¦ 319
drink up all his time ; it is a drudgery without intermission, a
business without vacation.
We read of "the mystery of iniquity:" and certainly the
mystery of no trade can be attained without a long and a con
stant sedulity. Nemo repente fit turpissimus. It is the business
of a life to be a complete sinner.
Such, as are the commands of sin, such must be also the service.
But the commands of sin are for their number continual, for
their vehemence importunate, and for their burden tyrannical.
Sin is said to conceive, and to bring forth ; and there is no
birth without padn and travail. God condemned Adam upon his
transgression to the turmoils of sweat and labour : but one would
have thought that he might have spared this malediction, when
labour is not only the consequent, but the very nature of sin.
To dig the earth is man's punishment; but the sin which
deserves it is the greater labour. For is there any work so toil
some, so full of fatigue and weariness, as to be always at the call
of an unlimited appetite, at the command of an insatiable corrup
tion? The Greek is emphatical, and describes the nature of sin
in its name ; for itovrjpla, which signifies sin or wickedness, takes
its derivation from *6yos, which signifies labour. So that the
readiest way, it seems, to fulfil the apostle's precept in 1 Thess.
iv. 11, of " studying to be quiet," is to study to be innocent.
And were there nothing else in sin but the discomposing and
ruffling of that serene, quiet, and undisturbed frame of spirit,
which naturally attends a true and steady virtue, it were enough
to endear the one, and to discommend the other. For sin seldom
acts, but in the strength of some passion ; and passion never
moves but with tumult and agitation: there being scarce any
passion but has its contrary to thwart and to encounter it ; so
that still the actings of them represent a kind of little war in the
soul : and accordingly, as the prophet Isaiah says of every battle
of the warrior, so we may say of every stirring of a high passion,
that it is "with confused noise." The still voice of reason is
drowned, the sober counsels of religion are stifled, and not heard.
And must not that man, think we, needs be very miserable, who
has always such a din and hurry in his breast ? His passions rag
ing, and his vicious appetites haling and pulling him, sometimes
to this object, sometimes to a contrary! So that what through
the clamour, and what through the convulsion of exorbitant
clashing desires, the soul is in a rent, distracted condition ; like
Actaeon amongst his dogs, that first bawl about his ears, and then
tear him to pieces.
The truth of this is sufficiently manifest, from the general
theory of the thing itself; but the same will appear yet more
evidently by running over particular instances.
And first, take the voluptuous, debauched epicure. What
hour of his life is vacant from the slavish injunction of his vice ?

320 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXI.
Is he not continually spending both his time and his subsistence,
to gratify his taste ? and, as it were, to draw all the elements to
his table, to make a sacrifice to the deity of his belly ? And then,
how uneasy are the consequences of his luxury! when he is
to grapple with surfeit and indigestion, with his morning fumes
and crudities, ?nd other low and ignoble distempers, the effects
of a brutish eating? thus having his stomach always like a
kitchen, both for fulness and for filth.
And next, for the intemperate drinker ; is not his life a con
tinual toil? To be sitting up when others sleep, and to go to bed
when others rise ; to be exposed to drunken quarrels, and to
sordid converse ; to have redness of eyes, rheums, , and distilla
tions ; a weakened body and a besotted mind ?
And then for the adulterer and unclean person ; upon what
hard employments does his lust put him ! first to contrive, plot,
and compass its satisfaction, and then to avoid the furies of an
enraged jealousy, and to keep off the shame of an infamous dis
covery ? We find the adulterer in Job xxiv. 16, " digging
through houses," till at length, perhaps, he digs his own grave
too ; and by a laborious pursuit, comes to an ignominious end.
And lastly, for the covetous, scraping usurer : it, is a question
whether he gathers or keeps his pelf with most anxiety; he is
restless to get, and fearful to lose, but always solicitous, and at
work. And perhaps those who labour in the mines are not so
busy as those who own them. But I need say no more of such a
person but this, that his business is as vast and endless as his
desires ; and greater it cannot be.
And thus I have shown the toil of sin, in several particulars,
to which many more might be added. In short, if idleness were
not a sin, there was scarce any sin but what is laborious.
So that now the retribution of death following such hard and
painful service, may properly bear the denomination of wages;
and be reputed rather a payment than a punishment.
2. The other reason, why death is called " the wages of sin,"
is, because wages do always imply a merit in the work, requiring
such a compensation. Sin and death are compared together as
sowing and reaping : and we all account it a thing of the highest
reason and equity in the world, that he who sows should also
reap : " He who sows to the flesh," says the apostle, Gal. vi. 8,
" shall of the flesh reap corruption." The evil of sin is every way
commensurate to the evil of death ; retaliation is the very nature
and spirit of justice ; and that a man, who does an action con
trary to another's good, should be made to expiate it by a suffer
ing contrary to his own, is but proportion.
But to this some make that trite and popular objection; that since
the same is the measure and extent of things contrary ; and since
our good works cannot merit eternal life ; it should follow also, that
neifcer can our sins, our evil works, merit eternal death.

DEATH THE WAGES OF SIN. 321
But to this I answer, that the case is very different in these
two. For to the nature of merit, it is required that the action
be not due : but now every good action being enjoined and com
manded by the law of God, is thereby made due, and conse
quently cannot merit: whereas, on the contrary, a sinful action
being quid indebitum, altogether undue, and not at all com
manded, but prohibited, it becomes properly meritorious; and,
according to the malignity of its nature, it merits eternal death.
But some will yet further urge, that in regard a sinful action
is in /itself but of a finite nature, and withal proceeds from a
finite agent ; there seems to be nothing of proportion between
that, and an endless, eternal punishment. For what is man but
a weak, mutable creature at the best ? And what is sin, but a
vanishing action, which is performed in the compass of a few
minutes, and not to be laid in the scale with the inexhaustible
measures of perpetuity ?
But to this adso we answer, that the merit of sin is not to be
rated, either by the substance of the act, or by the narrowness
and poorness of the agent ; but it is to be measured by the pro
portions of its object, and the greatness of the person against
whom it is done. And therefore being committed against an
infinite majesty, it greatens, and rises to the height of an infinite
demerit. Nevertheless, because men are apt to think that God
treats them upon hard terms, and to view sin with a more
favourable eye ; I shall in a word or two show what there is in
the nature of sin, which renders it so highly provoking, as to
deserve the greatest evil that omnipotence itself can inflict upon
the creature. And,
1st. Sin is a direct stroke at God's sovereignty. Hence we
read of the kingdom of Satan, in contradistinction to the king
dom of God : and in the conversion of a sinner, when grace is
wrought in the heart, the kingdom of God is said to come into
it : and the whole economy of the gospel is styled " the kingdom
of heaven." So that sin had translated God's subjects into a new
dominion: as amongst men, he who has committed a felony or
a murder, usually flies the territories of his lawful prince ; and so
living in another kingdom, puts himself under the necessity of a
new subjection. Thus sin invades the throne of God, usurps his
royalty, and snatches at his sceptre. But now there is nothing
so tender, and sensibly jealous of the least encroachment, as pre
rogative ; the throne admits of no partner, endures no competitor.
Rule and enjoy all Egypt, says Pharaoh to Joseph, but still with
this reserve, that "in the throne I will be greater than thou."
No wonder therefore if God punishes sin, which is indeed treason
against the king of kings, with death ; for it puts the question
" Who shall reign ?" It grasps at all, it strikes high, and is pro
perly a blow given to the supremacy.
2dly. Sin strikes at God's very being. In Psalm xiv. 1, The
Vol. IV.— 41

322 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXI.
fool," that is, the sinner, "has said in his heart, There is no
God;" and if this be his belief, it is so because it was first his
desire. Sin would step not only into God's throne, but also into
his room. And it matters not, that the infinite perfection of
God sets him far above the boldest reaches of his rebel-creature.
For it is enough to see the attempts of malice : God takes an
estimate of the sinner by his will ; he is as much a serpent now
he hisses, as if he stung : for whatsoever a man has a heart to
wish, if he had power, he would certainly effect.
And now, if all this malignity lies wrapped up in the bowels
of sin, let none wonder how it comes to deserve death ; but ad
mire rather that God has not invented something greater than
death (if possible) to revenge the provocation.
And thus I have finished the third and last general thing pro
posed to be handled from the words : from which, and all the
foregoing particulars, what can we so naturally and so directly
infer and learn, ats the infinite, incredible folly, which acts and
possesses the heart of man in all its purposes to sin ! still pro
posing to the sinner nothing but pleasure and enjoyment, advan
tage and emolument, from the commission of that which will in
fallibly subject him to all the miseries and killing sorrows that
humanity is capable of. Sin plays the bait before him, the bait
of a little, contemptible, silly pleasure or profit ; but it hides
from his view that fatal hook, which shall strike through his
heart and liver, and by which that great catcher and devourer of
souls shall hold him fast, and drag him down to his eternal exe
cution. The consequent appendant miseries of sin are studiously
kept from the sinner's notice ; his eye must not see what his
heart will certainly rue ; but he goes on pleasantly and uncon
cernedly, and acts a more cruel, inhuman butchery upon his own
soul, that ever any self-murderer did upon his own body.
I shall close up all with that excellent saying of the wisest of
men, in Prov. xiv. 9, that "fools make a mock at sin." Fools
they are indeed, for doing so. But is it possible, for any thing
that wears the name of reason, to be so much a fool, as to make
a mock at death too ? Will a man play with hell, dally with a
scorpion, and sport himself with everlasting burnings ?
In every sin which a man deliberately commits, he takes down
a draught of deadly poison. In every lust which he cherishes,
he embraces a dagger, and opens his bosom to destruction.
In fine, I have endeavoured to show what sin is, and what
death is, the certain inevitable wages of sin ; and so, have only
this short advice to add, and to conclude with : he who likes the
wages, let him go about the work.

323

SERMON XXII.
heaven promised to the pure in heart.
; Matthew v. 8.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
It may at first seem something wonderful, especially since the
times of the gospel, that there should be so few men in the world
happy, when happiness is so freely offered, and proposed by God,
and withal so universally and eagerly desired by men. But the
obviousness of the reason will quickly supersede the wonder; if
we consider the perverse and preposterous way of men's acting:
who, at the same time, passionately pursue the end, and yet
overlook the means ; catch at the good proposed, but abhor the
condition of the proposal. For all would enjoy the felicity of
seeing God, but scarce any can brook so severe a duty as to
maintain a pure heart; all would behold so entertaining and
glorious a sight, but few are willing to crowd for it into the
narrow way. Men would reconcile their future happiness with
their present ease, pass to glory without submitting to the
methods of grace. So that the grand reason that so many go to
hell, is because they would go to heaven for nothing: the truth
is, they would not go, but be caught up to heaven ; they would
(if I may use the expression) coach it to the other world, as
Elias did ; but to live as the same Elias did in this world, that
they cannot bear. In fine, if we could peruse the black roll of
all those who have perished eternally, we should find that the
generality of men are lost, because they cannot eat, drink, sleep,
and play themselves into salvation.
But this great sermon of our Saviour teaches us much other
things ; a sermon fraught with the most refined and elevated
doctrine, the most sublime and absolute morality that ever was
vented into the world ; far before all the precepts and most
applauded doctrine of the philosophers ; yea, as far before them
in perfection and purity, as they were before Christianity in
time. For they only played upon the surface and outside of
virtue, gilding the actions, and giving some little varnish to the
external behaviour of men : but Christianity looks through all
this, searches the reins, and pierces into the inmost recesses of
the soul, never resting till it stabs sin, and places virtue in the
very heart. An eminent instance of which we have in these
words ; which being so very plain and easy in themselves ought not

324 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxii.
to be encumbered with any superfluous explication: and there
fore I shall pass immediately to the discussion of them ; which I
shall manage under these four following heads. As,
I. I shall show what it is to be " pure in heart."
II. What it is to "see God."
III. How this purity of heart fits and qualifies the soul for
the sight or vision of God.
IV. And lastly, make some brief use and application of the
whole. I. And for the first of these, we must know that the nature of
purity in general cannot be better explained, than by its oppo
sition to these two things : 1. To mixture. 2. To pollution.
1. And first of all, it excludes mixture : that is to say, all
conjunction with any different or inferior nature ; purity still
infers simplicity : gold cannot be called pure, though never so
great in bulk, if it has but the least alloy of a baser metal.
Though there be in the heart seeds of virtue, principles of good
ness and morality ; yet if blended with a greater or an equal
degree of corruption, that heart cannot challenge the denomina
tion of pure : for, as Solomon says, Eccles. x. 1, even so small a
thing as "a fly falling into the apothecary's ointment, .will give
it an offensive savour ; and one grain of folly will taint all the
honour of him who has a reputation for wisdom." In this sense
also is purity ascribed to the word or law of God in Psalm cxix.
140, "Thy word is pure, therefore thy servant loveth it:" which
is an elogy that cannot be truly given to any other laws in the
world, no, not to those of the most renowned lawgivers, as of
Lycurgus, Solon, or Plato in his commonwealth, whose laws,
though they enjoined many worthy, virtuous, and noble actions,
yet still were debased by the addition of something vile and
filthy, not only allowed, but sometimes also commended by them;
still there was a vein of immorality running through them, that
corrupted and defiled the whole channel, and the best of human
laws have still some mixture of imperfection.
But now all mixture or composition is a kind of confusion :
attempting unity, where nature has made variety and distinction.
It raises a certain war or faction in the same compound ; and the
very cause of death, dissolution, and putrefaction in all sublunary
bodies, is from the contest and clashing of contrary qualities upon
mixture ; which never takes away the innate enmity of contra
ries, though it may compose their present quarrel. Christ states
this matter fully in Matt. vi. 24, " No man," says he, " can serve
two masters ; for he will love the one, and hate the other." In
like manner, it is impossible for two opposite principles so to unite
and mix themselves in the same heart, as equally to command and
share its obedience by such just proportions, that it should at the
same time seriously intend the service of virtue and the gratifi-

' heaven promised to the pure in heart. 325
cation of a vice. Now to give things their due and exact appel
lations, I conceive, in the sense hitherto spoken of, a pure heart
is properly the same with that which is called in scripture a
" single heart."
2. Purity excludes also pollution, that is, all adherence of filth
and outward contagion ; as a fountain is said to be pure, when
there is no dirt or soil cast into it, that may discolour or defile it.
If the guilt of any gross sinful act cleaves to the conscience, that
conscience presently loses its purity and virginity. Every such
sin falls upon it like a blot of ink upon the finest linen or the
cleanest paper. In this sense St. Paul enjoins purity to Timothy,
1 Tim. V. 22, " Keep thyself pure," that is, free from the least
taint of vice or scandal. In this sense also St. Paul declares'
himself in Acts xx. 26, " pure from the blood of all men ;" that
is, cleair from the guilt or charge of the murderous neglect of
souls. So that a pure heart thus taken, is properly the same
with that which David calls a " clean heart," Psalm li. 10, " Create
in me, 0 God, a clean heart." For so much of inherent sin, so
much of filth and foulness. The very frame and make of man's
heart is but dust ; but sin degrades it still lower, and turns it
into dirt.
Having thus shown what purity is in the general notion of it,
I shall now endeavour to show wherein the purity of the heart
consists. And that,
1. By way of negation. It does not consist in the external
exercise of religion ; the heart does not always write itself upon
the outward actions. These may shine amd glister, while that in
the mean time may be noisome and impure. In a pool you may
see the uppermost water clear, but if you cast your eye to the
bottom, you shall see that to be dirt and mud. To rate a man's
internals by his externals, and what works in his breast by what
appears in his face, is a rule very fallible. For we often see spe
cious practices spread over vile and base principles : as a rotten,
unwholesome body may be clothed and covered with the finest
silks. There is often a pha xda^a, many leagues distance be
tween a man's behaviour and his heart. In Isaiah xxix. 13, we
have some " drawing near to God with their mouth, and honour
ing him with their lips," of whom it is said in the very next words,
that " their heart was far from him." Lip-devotion signifies but
little. Judas could afford our Saviour the lip, while he was ac
tually betraying him to his mortal enemies. It is in this case
with the soul as with the body, the inward vital state of it is not
always known by the colour or complexion. For, I suppose, we
are not now to learn that the grand governing principle of the
world is hypocrisy. And while it is so in judging of men's words
and actions, it is but too often necessary to read them backwards
For though, naturally indeed, they are signs^ and signs of the
thoughts and affections of the mind ; yet art may, and usually
2E

326 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxii.
does make them much otherwise. And it is odds, but he mistakes
seldomest, who judges of men quite contrary to what they ap
pear : so seldom do the inward and the outward man correspond
with one another. And if this were riot so, the prerogative of
divine knowledge in judging of a man's internals would not be
much superior to the sagacity of a human inspection. For that
can read all that is legible to the eye, all that can incur into the
outward senses.
But still we must observe, that this assertion of not judging
by the outward actions, is to be understood only of good actions,
not of bad. For although am act materially and outwardly good
may proceed from a heart which is stark naught ; yet where the
outward actions are bad, it is certain that the heart cannot be
good. For the matter of the action, which is properly that
which comes into the outward view, may be good, and yet the
action itself, upon other accounts, be absolutely evil : but if the
matter of the action be evil (since evil is from any defect), the
whole action must be so too. And consequently, since "a good
tree cannot produce evil fruit," it is manifest that the heart
which produces and presides over those actions, is and must be
evil. But to return to what we were before about : that the outward
piety of a man's behaviour cannot certainly argue a pious and a
pure heart, is evident, because there may be assigned several other
principles, short of real piety, and yet sufficient to produce such
a behaviour. As,
(1.) A virtuous and strict education. Many are born into the
world, not only with the general taint of original sin, but also
with such particular propensions, such predominant inclinations
to vice, that they are as fruitful a soil for the devil to plant in,
and afford as much fuel for sin to flame out upon, as it is possible
for the utmost corruption of human nature to supply them with.
But God, who in his most wise providence restrains many whom
he never renews, has many ways to prevent the outrageous erup
tion of this vicious principle. And one great one is this of a
pious education ; which may lay such strong fetters, such power
ful restrictions upon the heart, that it shall not be able to lash
out into those excesses and enormities, which the more licentious
and debauched part of the world wallow in! yet still, though
by this the unclean bird be caged up, the uncleanness of its na
ture is not hereby changed. For as no raking or harrowing can
alter the nature of a barren ground, though it may smooth and
level it to the eye; so neither can those early disciplines of
parents and tutors extirpate the innate appetites of the soul, and
turn a bad heart into a good : they may indeed draw some plau
sible lines of civility upon the outward carriage and conversation,
but to conquer a natural inclination is the work of a higher power.
Nevertheless it must be always looked upon as a high mercy,

heaven promised to the pure in heart. 327
where God is pleased to do so much for a man as this comes to ;
and whosoever he is, who in his minority has been kept from
those extravagances which his depraved nature would otherwise
have carried him out to, amd so has grown up under the eye of a
careful and severe tuition, has cause with bended knees to ac
knowledge the mercy of being born of religious parents, and
bred up under virtuous and discreet governors ; and to bless God
without any danger of pharisaical arrogance, that upon this ac
count "he is not as many other men are." But still, as I have
noted, all this is, but the sweeping and garnishing of the house ;-
and though education may sometimes do that, yet it is grace only
that can keep out the unclean spirit. And consequently such a
person, notwithstanding all this outward flourish of behaviour,
must yet know that his heart may be all this while as really un
renewed, and upon that score as impure, as the heart of those
who, not being' hampered with such early preventions, break
forth into the most open and flagitious practices.
(2.) The circumstances and occasions of a man's life may be
such as shall constrain him to appear in an outwardly pious dress.
As when a man's dependence is upon persons virtuous and reli
gious ; and the whole scene of his life cast under those eyes that
shall both observe and hate his impiety, there it is npt for his in
terest to uncase and discover himself, and to follow the lure and
dictates of a voluptuous humour. While Judas was to associate
himself with Christ and his disciples, it concerned him, though
he was really a devil, yet to personate and act the saint.
Moreover, when Providence has put a man into a low, a mean,
or an afflicted condition, the supplies and opportunities of many
vices are thereby cut off, and the man is not able to show him
self, or to draw forth those base qualities which lie lurking in his
breast. He neither drinks, nor whores, nor goes to plays ; but
he may thank his purse, not his heart for it. Want and poverty
bind him to his good behaviour : and Providence thinks fit, in
kindness to the world, to chain up the fury and violence of his
passions by the straitness of his fortunes. For such is the
boundless pride and insolence of some natures, that should
they meet with estates equal to the grasp of their desires, and
have the plenties of the world flow in with the full swing and
career of their appetites, they would be intolerable. Society
would even groan under them, and neither heaven nor earth
would endure them ; so that there is a necessity, that penury and
scarcity should discipline, and, as it were, diet them into sober
courses. But still, amidst all these restraints, the mind of such
a one may be as base, as filthy, and as prone to all lewdness, as
the mind of a thorough-paced rebel may be to his old game, after '
an act of oblivion. For by all this, Providence only ties his
hands, grace does not change his heart.
(3.) The care and tenderness a man has of his honour, may

328 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxii.
engage him to demean himself with some show of piety and
religion. For there is scarce any one so vicious (some few
monsters, some years since amongst us, excepted) as to 'desire or
judge it for their credit to be thought so. But generally, as
every such person would gladly " die the death of the righteous,"
so he would willingly live with the credit and reputation of the
righteous too. The principle of honour (even with persons not
styled honourable) will go a great way ; and a man will be at the
cost of a few seemingly virtuous actions to be reputed a virtuous
person. Men use to go to church in their best clothes, and it is
for their credit to put on the fairest appearance in a religious
performance. We read how far this principle carried the
pharisees ; and what a glorious outside the love of glory put
upon them. They prayed, they fasted, they gave alms, and in
short, had the very art of mortification ; and yet within were full,
of all fraud, extortion, and excess, and, in a word, of themselves.
There were none, whose behaviour shined brighter in the eyes of
men, nor whose heart was more loathsome in the eyes of God ;
for they did all to be seen and talked of; and, as it were, to ride
in triumph upon the tongues of men ; and in fine, were' the
arrantest puritans in the world, those only of a later date
excepted, who it is confessed have infinitely outdone their
original. For all the religion of those pharisees flowed only from
the beholder's eye, and not from their own heart. They "made
broad their phylacteries, and enlarged the borders of their gar
ments," taking the measure of both by the breadth and largeness
of their latitudinarian consciences : which were of such ample
and capacious dimensions, that after they had breathed them
selves into a stomach by a long prayer, they could easily swallow
a thousand widows' estates, lands, tenements, and all, for the first
course, and the revenues of a crown and church for the second,
of which we can bring a probatum est for a demonstration.
Machiavel himself, though no great friend to religion, yet
affirms, and very frequently too, that the appearance and reputa
tion of religion is advantageous ; and that, we know, is not to be
acquired without many instances of practice, which may affect
and dazzle the spectators into admiration, and then make them
vent that admiration in applause. But what is all this to the
purity of the heart, to the sanctity of the inner man? It is all
but the acting of a part, a piece of pageantry, a mere contrivance
of ambition, nothing but dress and disguise, and may possibly
procure a man some glory in this world, but none in the next.
Now in all these motives to a religious behaviour, we may
observe this of them, that they are forced and preternatural ; and
raise a motion which they are not able to keep up. As when we
see a stone thrown upwards, it moves only from the impression
of an outward force, and not from the activity of an inward
principle ; and therefore it quickly sinks, and falls to the ground.

HEAVEN PROMISED TO THE PURE IN HEART. 329
In like manner, when there is not a stock or habit of purity in
the heart, constantly and uniformly to diffuse the same into the
outward actions, the appearance of piety will be found too thin
and weak to suppbrt itself long. And let that man, whosoever
he is, who acts in the ways of piety and virtue only upon the
force and spring of external inducements, be warily observed and
attended to, and it is a thousand to one but that some time or
other his vice gives his hypocrisy the slip, and lays him open to
the world, and convinces all about him, that how fair and specious
soever the structure seemed to be which he had raised, yet the
foundation of it was laid in the sand, or, which is worse, in the
mud. From all which I conclude, that purity of heart neither con
sists in, nor can certainly be proved by any external religious
performamces whatsoever.
2. In the second place, therefore, to show positively wherein
it does consist : it consists properly in an inward change and
renovation of the heart, by the infusion of such a principle into
it, as naturally suits and complies with whatsoever is pure, holy,
and commanded by God. It is not a thing born, or brought into
the world with us, nor yet reared upon the stock of nature by
any art, industry, or cultivation of our own whatsoever. No, it
is and must be the product of a new creation. Nor can all our
sorrows and tears of themselves wash or purify the heart ; but
the Spirit of God must move upon the face of those waters, and
form in it the new creature; or the heart will continue in its
native filth, chaos, and confusion for ever. Now where such a
principle of purity is, it will be like a strong bias, continually in
clining and carrying out the soul, and that even in its most
vigorous appetites, to what is pure. For as we rationally gather
and learn the nature of a thing, from the quality of those things
which agree or disagree with it ; so when the heart kindly and
naturally closes with the purity and excellency of the divine pre
cepts, but on the other side carries a certain aversion to, and
loathing of the sordid, unclean suggestions of sin, it is an argu
ment that it is advamced into new principles and inclinations, and
purified from those foul habits, which it was originally polluted
witli. Now there are three things more especially (amongst many
others that might be mentioned) in which this purity of the heart
does certainly and infallibly manifest itself. As,
(1.) In the purity and untainted sanctity of the thoughts. The
range of the thoughts is free, and may defy the inspection of the
most curious and inquisitive mortal beholder : they walk in such
a retirement,, as is open to no eye, but to that alone, to which
nothing can be hid. Now when a man shall carry so strict a
hand over these, as to admit of no parley with vice, no, not in his
thoughts ; when yet he knows, that if he should be never so free
Vol. rV.— 42 2e2

330 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXII.
and familiar with it there, no man breathing could either observe
or reproach him for it : this surely argues, that he loves virtue
for itself, and that purity, instead of being his design, is become
his nature. For what Solomon says of the dissembling churl in
Prov. xxiii. 7, " that as he thinketh in his heart, even so is he ;"
the same may be said of every man living, in respect of that
principle which sways and governs his mind, be it what it will.
For since the thoughts are so quick as to prevent all delibera
tion, and withal so unruly, as for the most part to admit of no
control from reason, when it would either command or carry
them out to, or remand, and take them off from any object ; it
follows, that whatsoever they run out freely and spontaneously
upon, that the mind is full of, taken up and possessed with, so
that it is, as it were, a mighty spring, incessantly and powerfully
possessing and bending the thoughts that way. And therefore
let a man's outward actions seem never so pure, never so un-
blameable ; yet if the constant or main stream of his thoughts
runs impure, if they take a liberty to rove over and delight in
filthy, unclean objects ; and if where the practice of villany is
restrained, it is yet supplied by an active imagination ; there a
man may be said to be more cautious and reserved indeed, but
not at all the more holy. For it is an undoubted argument, that
his heart is of the same temper : since wheresoever the main
haunt of the thoughts is, there must the heart be also.
(2.) The purity of the heart is infallibly seen in a sanctified
regulation of the desires. The first step and advance of the
soul is into thought, the second into desire. Now the desires
have the same privilege of secresy and freedom with the thoughts ;
and if you would collect and argue the nature of the mind from
either of them, the argument from these is as evident, and per
haps more forcible, than from the other. For the will is the
great scene and subject of vice and virtue: and the desires are
the immediate issues of that. No outward force or art whatso
ever can stop the vent and passage of desire : but the whole
soul flows forth in its inclinations ; and therefore, wheresoever
they may be discerned, they are the most true, proper, and un
failing interpreters of the heart. For what else means the Spirit
of God by that noted expression in Prov. xxiii. 26, " My son,
give me thy heart ;" but that a man should give God the strong
est and most forcible operations, and (as I may so express it) the
first-born of his heart, his desires.
There was nothing from which David gathered the sincerity
and goodness of his heart so much as from the free and natural
flow of his desires ; in Psalm cxix. 20, " My soul," says he,
"breaketh for the longing desire that it hath to thy judgments
at all times." And in Psalm lxxiii. 25, " There is none upon
earth that I desire in comparison of thee." Also in Isaiah xxvi.
9. " With my soul have I desired thee in the night-season " says

HEAVEN PROMISED TO THE PURE IN HEART. 331
the holy prophet. And again in Psalm xxxviii. 9, David sums
up his final appeal to God, concerning the integrity of his heart,
in these words, " Lord, adl my desire is before thee."
So that if any man now would certainly know whether his
heart be pure, he has here a compendious and sure way of trial :
let him read over his desires, and strictly observe the motions of
his will and affections. When he is upon the performance of any
holy duty, let him see whether or no his desires keep him com
pany in it ; when the allurement of any sinful pleasure or profit
plays itself before him, let him see whether his desires do not
reach out after it, though perhaps his hand dares not. And this
will give him faithful information, and such as will never deceive
him ; for desire is properly the pulse of the inner man, and as
the heart is aiffected, so that beats.
(3.) The third, and that not the least argument of a pure
heart is a fearful and solicitous avoiding of every thing that may
tend to sully or defile it. It perfectly hates sin, and therefore
dreads the occasions of it : it makes a man know no other way
of "working out his salvation," but "with fear and trembling."
And in this great work, the trembling hand is still the steadiest,
and the fearful heart the most likely to be victorious. For we
must know, that there is nothing almost which we meet with,
nothing which comes before us, but may be to us an occasion of
sin : some things, indeed, are so directly, and others are so by
accident. And therefore, whosoever he is, who would be wise
unto salvation, must absolutely fly from the former, and warily
observe himself in the use of the latter. For as the apostle sayn,
that "the wisdom from above is first pure;" so we may, with
equal truth, affirm convertibly, that the purity which is from
above is first wise ; that is to say, it considers and casts about for
the best methods, how to guard and secure itself against the
assaults and stratagems of the grand enemy, who would destroy
it. And for this cause, be a thing or practice never so lawful in
itself, yet if, either through human frailty or the devil's subtlety,
it is like to prove a snare to a man, and to engage him in some
course or other which is not lawful ; a principle of true genuine
purity will be sure to keep aloof off from it ; and by no means
admit the enemy into the outworks, where it is careful to defend
the main fort. A man of a heart so disposed, will say within
himself, " I will not venture into such a company, I will not use
such a recreation, I will not go to this ball nor to that play, for
I know not how my mind may serve me under such circum
stances ; God may leave me to myself, and my strength may fail
me, and my own heart betray me. If I tempt God, God may com
mission the devil to tempt me, and so the serpent slide into my
bosom before I am aware." No, such a one will carefully avoid
those spiritual pest-houses, where scarce any thing is to be heard
or seen, but what tends to the corruption of good manners ; and

332 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXII.
from whence not one in a thousand returns, but infected with
the love of vice, or at least with the hatred of it very much
abated from what it was before. And that, I assure you, is no
inconsiderable point gained by the tempter ; as those who have
any experience of their own hearts sufficiently know. He who
has no mind to trade with the devil, should be so wise as to keep
away from his sh.op.
In vain, therefore, does any one pretend to a pure heart, who
puts himself into the tempter's walk, into the very road and
highway to sin and debauchery. For can any one really hate to
be defiled, and yet handle and embrace pitch ? abhor all im
purity, and yet plant himself in the very neighbourhood and
confines of it ? A pure heart is a tender heart, and such a one
as will smite the breast that holds it, upon sight of " the very
garment that is spotted with the flesh ;" such a one as feels the
leatst breath that may blow upon its innocence, and, in a word,
dreads the very first approaches and remote dangers of that fatal
contagion. And thus much for the first general thing proposed ; which
was to show, what this purity of the heart is, and wherein it
does consist. I proceed now to
II. The second, which is to explain what it is to see God.
The enjoyment which blessed spirits have of God in the other
world is, both in the language of scripture and of the schools,
generally expressed to us by their "seeing God;" as in Matt.
xviii. 10, it is said of the angels, that "they always behold the
face of God in heaven." And in 1 Cor. xiii. 12 it is said, that
hereafter " we shall see God face to face ;" with several other
places to the same purpose.
Now, concerning a man's thus seeing God, the schools raise
several disputes, but the most considerable of them may come
under these two heads.
1. In regard every man shall be raised with a body as well as
a soul, they question, whether this vision shall be wholly mental,
and transacted within the soul, or whether the body shall be
refined and sublimated to such a perfection, and nearness to the
spiritual nature, as to be also made a sharer in it ? And whether
it be possible for a corporeal substance to see an incorporeal?
To which, those who had rather be wise unto sobriety, than pro
nounce boldly of such things as their present condition renders
them uncapable of judging of certainly, give these answers:'
(1.) That the knowledge of this is mere curiosity, and conse
quently such as a man may be without, and yet know never the
less of what he is really concerned to know. (2.) That there is
no express scripture to decide it either way; and natural phi
losophy is an incompetent judge in matters which can be known
only by revelation. But,

HEAVEN PROMISED TO THE PURE IN HEART. 333
2. In the next place, they put tike question, whether the soul
shall enjoy God, its chief good, by an act of the understanding
in its intuiton of him, or by an act of the will in its adhesion to
him. And there are those who fiercely dispute it on both sides.
But to this also it may be answered, that as the soul shall
enjoy a perfect good, so it must enjoy it after a perfect manner ;
so as to diffuse the enjoyment into every faculty that is capable
of it: that is to say, it must enjoy it agreeably to a rational
nature ; which first receives a good by the apprehensions of the
intellect, and then transmits it to the adhesion and embraces of
the will. For a rational soul cannot love any good heartily, but
it must first understand it ; nor cam it understand an excellent
good thoroughly, but it must also love it. And consequently, I
conclude, that the soul's fruition of God is neither precisely by
an act of the understanding, nor yet of the will, but jointly and
adequately of both. But I shall not run out any further into
these controversies, as bearing no such necessary relation to the
matter before us.
Briefly therefore, by our " seeing God" is meant, and under
it comprised, the whole enjoyment of the felicities of the other
life ; as by " seeing the sun," is set forth the entire, total enjoy-,
ment of this life ; as in Eccles. vii. 11, " By wisdom," says the
preacher, " there is profit to those who see the sun ;" that is, to
those who are alive in the world. The Greeks also use the same
phrase, iSeiv fdos *is%loi,o being frequently used by Homer for the
whole enjoyment of this life ; and the Latins have the like expres
sion, luce privari, " to be deprived of the light," being with them
a usual phrase for a man's losing his life.
Now our enjoyment of God is expressed to us by our seeing
him, rather than by any other way, I conceive, for these reasons.
(l.) Because the sense of seeing represents the object with
greater clearness and evidence, than any of the other senses.
Light, the great discoverer both of itself and of all things else,
is apprehended only by seeing ; and the eye-witness, we know,
is still the most authentic. God will then show himself to the
soul so plainly and manifestly ; he will so ,open and display his
divine perfections to the understanding, that we shall know him
as fully and clearly, as we do now those things which we actually
see before our eyes ; though still, as we must all along suppose,
after much another way.
(2.) A second reason is, because the sense of seeing is of all
the other senses the most universally exercised and employed.
For as long as a man lives, every moment that he converses in
the world, he is still looking upon something or other ; except it
be when he is asleep, during which time he can scarce be said to
live. And therefore, since our enjoyment of God hereafter shall
be so continual and without interruption, as to leave no vacant
minute which shall not be taken up and filled with that glorious

334 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxii.
fruition, it is upon this account most appositely and properly
described to us, by our seeing him. For in sight and thought
(if in any thing) we have the perpetual motion.
(3.) A third reason of this expression may be, because the
sense of seeing is the sense of pleasure and delight ; and that
upon which the whole comfort of our life principally depends.
For, says the wise man in Eccles. xi. 7, " tbe light is sweet, and
it is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun." And we
know, that it is much a greater pleasure for a man to see his
friend, than only to hear from him. Put out the eyes, shut but
those windows, and the soul will presently be filled with sadness,
and horror, and a dismal Egyptian darkness ; which we know is
to be reckoned amongst the greatest of the Egyptian plagues.
Since therefore the enjoyment of God is the highest bliss and
pleasure, the most sublime and ravishing delight ; for so the
scripture speaks of it, in Matt. xxv. 23, "Enter thou into the
joy of thy Lord:" and in Psalm xvi. 11, "In thy presence
there is fulness of joy, and at thy right hand there are pleasures
for evermore :"• — I say, since the nature of this blessedness carries
in it the height of joy and rational pleasure, by what could it be
more livelily set forth to us than by the perceptions of that sense
and faculty, which conveys the most quickening and exalting
refreshments to the soul.
(4.) And lastly; our enjoyment of God is expressed to us by
our seeing him, because the sight is of all other senses the most
comprehensive and insatiable. In Eccles. i. 8, " the eye," says
the wise man, " is not satisfied with seeing." That is to say, let
it take in never so much of its object, it never surfeits. It is
neither subject to satiety nor lassitude. It could presently run
over and drink in the beauties of one world, and in the strength
of that repast travel fresh into another. For still the more it
takes in, the greater is its capacity to take in more. And in a
word, it is the only sense to which satisfaction procures an
appetite. In this respect therefore it gives us the fittest representation
of our enjoyment of God in glory : who is a good of that im
mense latitude, that inexhaustible fulness, as to satisfy, or rather
satiate the greediest and most grasping appetites of the soul.
It is he only who can fill the eye, and keep pace with desire ;
and, in a word, answer all those cravings and emptinesses of a
rational nature, which the whole creation together could never
yet do. There will then flow in such a torrent of delight upon
all our apprehensive faculties, that the soul will be even over
come, and lost in the enjoyment. As when a vessel is thrown
into a river, the river first fills it, and then swallows it up. This
therefore is the sum of our happiness in the next world, that we
shall see God, and experiment that which we never could in this
world ; namely, that we shall so see as to be filled with seeing.

HEAVEN PROMISED TO THE PURE IN HEART. 335
And thus I have despatched the second general head proposed
from the words ; which was to explain what is meant by our
" seeing God :" I come now to
III. The third, which is to show, how this purity of heart fits
and qualifies the soul for the sight or vision of God. And to give
you a short state and account of this, it does it, in a word, by
causing a suitableness between God and the soul, and by re
moving whatsoever may debar or hinder that intimate communion
and intercourse, which ought to be between such a creature amd
its Creator: now during the soul's impurity, God is utterly un
suitable to it: amd that in a double respect: 1. Of the great
unlikeness ; and, 2. Of the contrariety which is between them.
1. And first, for the unlikeness. It is evident, from the
clearest and most acknowledged principles of reason, that there
can be no true enjoyment, but where there is a certain agree-
ableness or congruity between the object and the faculty ; and if
so, what pleasure can it be to a filthy, polluted person to converse
with those glories which shall both astonish and ' reproach him ?
What enjoyment can dirt have in the embraces of a sunbeam?
God is infinitely pure, and till the soul has some degrees of
purity too, it is no more fit nor able to behold him, than the
black mire of the streets to reflect the orient colours of the
rainbow upon the sun which shines upon it. God loves not to
look upon any spiritual being, unless he can see his. own image
and likeness in it ; and that cannot be seen, where the mirror is
foul that should represent it.
2. The next ground of the unsuitableness between God and
the soul, is that great contrariety which a state of impurity
causes between them. For it is this which makes the soul look
upon God as an enemy; as clothed with terror, and as " a con
suming fire ;" and upon itself as obnoxious, and fit fuel to be
preyed upon and devoured by such a fire. The divine holiness
is indeed in itself most amiable, but yet a dreadful and con
founding sight to a guilty and defiled soul ; as the very light it
self, we know, though it be the glory of the creation and the joy
of the universe, is yet a frightful and an abhorred thing to thieves
and robbers, and to such beasts of prey as lie only in caves and
dens, and converse with nothing but filth and darkness under
ground. Heaven is set forth to us as the great mansion of happiness
and pleasure, but it is so only to the soul which is prepared for
it, and by the renovation of its qualities made congenial to it.
But to a soul possessed with the power and guilt of sin, it can
be no more a delight, than the openest and sweetest air can be
to the fish ; which perishes in the region and element which pre
serves its proper inhabitants; and dies by that which keeps us
alive.

336 DR. SOUTH'S -POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXII.
And thus we have seen how want of purity utterly incapaci
tates the soul to enjoy God : namely, by rendering it both unlike
him and contrary to him. God's infinite holiness, and his trans
cendent, amazing brightness, meeting with an impure nature,
both shames and consumes it ; as the day not only discommends,
but also expels and drives away the night. " Thou art of purer
eyes than to behold iniquity," says the prophet Habakkuk, i. 13.
In a word, God is too pure either to see it, or to be seen by it ;
and therefore none but the pure in heart can behold him. And
so I pass to
IV. The fourth and last thing proposed ; which was to make
some brief use and application of the foregoing particulars. And
what better use can be made, of them, than to correct our too
great easiness and credulity, in judging of the spiritual estate
either of ourselves or others. To judge indeed too favourably of
others is an error on the right hand : for charity is to pass sen
tence there, which is a virtue of a benign nature, and whose
office is still to think, as well as speak the best of things and
persons. Nevertheless, it is one thing to believe charitably, and
another to pronounce confidently ; and more than the former we
cannot do, where the knowledge of the heart is locked up from
us ; as it is of all men's hearts, besides our own. And in judging
of ourselves, I am sure it is charity to suspect the worst ; and
for every man to probe and descend into his own heart by a
strict, accurate, and impartial examination of it. For, " from the
heart are the issues of life and death," and from the same must
be fetched the evidences of our title to either.
We see many frequent our churches, hear sermons, and attend
upon prayers ; they are civil in their carriage, upright in their
dealings, and there is no great blot or blemish visible upon their
conversation ; and God forbid, but a due value should be put
upon such excellent preparatives to religion : but after all, will
these qualifications certainly prove and place us amongst "the
pure in heart ?" Will men set up for heaven and eternity upon
this stock ? and venture their salvation upon this bottom ? If
they do, it may chance to prove a venture indeed. For do not
our Saviour's own words convince us, that the outside of the
platter may be clean, and bright too, and yet in the inside remain
full of all filth and nastiness ? So that while one entertains the
eye, the other may turn the stomach.
If we would prevent the judgment of God, we must imitate
it; and judge of ourselves, as he will judge of us : that is, by the
heart, and by the principles which rule there. And for this, let
every man be but true to the resolves of his own conscience, and
he will seldom need any other carsuist. As for those late specious
professions of religion amongst us, and those high strains of
purity above the rest of the world, together with boastings of a

HEAVEN PROMISED TO THE^PURE IN HEART. 337
more intimate converse with God, and acquaintance with the mys
tery of godliness, and the like ; they are generally nothing else but
terms of art, and tricks used by spiritual mountebanks, to impose
upon the credulous and unwary ; and signify but little to that all-
searching Judge, who judges neither by fine words nor fair pre
tences. For let men say, or pray, or pretend what they will, he
who has a covetous heart, is in the sight of God a covetous wretch.
And he who has a proud, a lustful, or a revengeful heart, passes in
the accounts of heaven for a proud, a lustful, and a revengeful
person. And he who can harbour schism or faction, sacrilege or
rebellion, either in principle or design, though he prays never so
devoutly, never so loud and long, with all the postures of a solemn
hypocrisy, as a sad look and a doleful tone ; yet let him take it
from the word of truth itself, that he has nothing pure or pious
in his heart : for the main spring, the heart, is out of order ; and
therefore the motion of the wheels must needs be so too.
Briefly, and in a word, and with that to conclude : he who has
nothing to entitle him to this blessedness of " seeing God," but
a civil, inoffensive smoothness of behaviour, a demure face, and a
formal customary attendance upon a few religious duties, with
out a thorough renovation of the great principle within him, and
a sanctified disposition of heart, may indeed hereafter see God,
but then he is like to see him only as his judge.
To which God be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all
praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now ahd for evermore.
Amen.

Vol. IV.— 43 2F

338

SERMON XXIII.
self-denial the duty of christians.
„ , Galatians v. 24.
And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affec
tions and lusts.
It is common to all sects and institutions to have some distin
guishing badges and characteristic names, by which they both
express and distinguish their profession. But Christ, that came
into the world, not to imitate, but to correct and transcend both
'that of the Jews and of the philosophers, sequesters his dbctrine
from the empty formality of names, reducing it to its inward
vigour and spirituality. So that even in respect of the most
solemn appellation, we find that Christianity was some time in
the world before the name of Christian ; perhaps to convince the
world, that religion is not a bare name, and that men might be
Christians before they were called so ; as daily experience demon
strates that they are often called so before they are.
And indeed the name of Christian, without the nature, leaves
no more impression upon the soul, than the baptismal water,
that conveys it, does upon the face. Wherefore Christ gives
another-guess badge and mark of Christianity ; such a one as
constitutes the very essence of it ; for still it is the same thing
that gives both nature and difference to beings. Now this discri
minating mark is in short comprised in the crucifixion of the
flesh and the lusts thereof. For the explication of which words
I shall show,
1. What is meant by being Christ's.
2. What by " the flesh with the affections and lusts."
1. For the first of these. To be Christ's is to accept of and
have an interest in Christ, as he is offered and proposed in the
gospel. Now Christ is offered and held forth to every particular
person that expects to be saved by him under three offices: 1.
his prophetical, 2. his kingly, and 3. his sacerdotal. In which
account I give you not only the number of his offices, but also
their order, as they stand related to us. And this order and
economy of them is founded upon the very nature of the thing,
and the natural order of religious actions. For in the procedure
of nature there must be, 1. The knowledge of a duty; 2. The
performance of it; 3. The reward. Correspondent to these is
the economy of Christ's offices. For, 1. By Christ's prophetic

SELF-DENIAL THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS. , 339
office-, revealing his mind to us, we come to know his will. 2.
Then by his kingly office, ruling and governing us, we come to
yield obedience to that will. 3. And thirdly, by his sacerdotal
or priestly office, we come to receive the fruit of that obedience
in our justification and salvation. For we must not think that
our obedience is rewarded with eternal life, for its own merit, but
it is the merit of Christ's sacrifice that procures this reward to
our obedience.
Some indeed preposterously misplace these, and make us, par-
taike of the benefit of Christ's priestly office in the forgiveness of
our sins, and our reconcilement to God, before we are brought
under the sceptre of his kingly office by our obedience. But
such must know, that our interest in Christ as a lord and king
to rule us, does precede, if not also cp.use, our interest in him ais
a priest to save us. For the gospel perverts not the order of
nature ; the work must still go before the reward. And those
shall never share in the benefit of Christ's sacrifice, who have not
submitted to the rule of his sceptre.
Now, therefore, to sum this up into a firm conclusion, he, arid
he adone, is properly said to be Christ's, who upon a sound know
ledge of, and a sincere obedience to, Christ's will, stands justified
and reconciled to God by the merit ofhis death and sufferings : and
thus he is perfectly Christ's, who has an interest in him considered
under every one of his offices. This may serve to overthrow the
wild and irrational justification of the antinomians, libertines, and
lazy solifidians, who upon this ground only judge themselves to be
Christ's, because they believe they are. A way of justification,
for its easiness, rather to be wished true than to be thought so.
But easy things in religion are always suspicious, if not false ;
and such will find, that their belief is not the rule of God's pro
ceeding. 2. In the next place we are to see what is meant by " the flesh,
and the affections and lusts." By the first I suppose I need not
tell you that it cannot be understood of the corporeal bulk of
man, which together with the soul makes up the whole compound ;
' but it is rather a metonymy of the part for the whole, or- perhaps
more properly of the subject for the adjunct, the flesh for the
sin adherent to the flesh, as shall be made out by and by. In
the mean time by flesh we are to understand the whole entire
body of sin and corruption, that inbred proneness in our nature
to all evil, in one word expressed by concupiscence, usually called
by the schoolmen fomes; that fuel or combustible matter in
the soul, that is apt to be fired by every temptation ; the womb
that conceives and brings forth all actual impurities, styled in the
next words, "affections and lusts." By which we are not to un
derstand only the brutish affections of carnal sensuality, but in
differently all the actual eruptions of that accursed principle ; all
the streams that issue from that impure fountain ; for as by " the

340 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXIII.
flesh" is denoted the original depraved disposition of the heart ;
so by the other is signified the drawing forth of that propensity or
principle into the several commissions of sin through the course
of our lives ; flesh is the fuel, and lust the flame.
Having thus given the explication of the words, and shown
what is to be understood by " being Christ's," and what by " the
flesh and its affections," we shall lay the further prosecution of
the text in these two things.
I. To show why this vitiosity and corrupt habit of nature
comes to have this denomination of" " flesh."
II. What is imported by the " crucifying" of it.
I. For the first of these. The whole depravation of our na
tare comes to be called "flesh" for these reasons :
1. Because of its situation and place, which is principally in
the flesh. Here it is placed, here it is enthroned. Concupiscence,
I show, was the radix of all sin, and all the several kinds of sin,
to which men are severally inclined, are only so many modifica
tions or different postures of concupiscence ; and concupiscence
itself follows the crasis and temperature of the body ; as we
know the liquor for the present receives the figure of the vessel
into which it is infused. If you would know why one man is
proud, another cruel, another intemperate or luxurious, you are
not to repair so much to Aristotle's Ethics, or the writings of
other moralists, as to those of Galen, or of some anatomist, to
find the reason of these different tempers ; for doubtless they
arise from the different quality of the blood and the motion of
the spirits in those several persons: which things themselves
depend upon the climate, diet, and air, in which men are born
and bred. Hence we see, that those of the same climate are
usually disposed to the same sin. Whereupon some have pre
sumed to set down the standing characters of several nations ;
as that the Grecians are false ; the Spaniards formal, grave, and
proud ; the French wordy, fickle, and fantastic ; the Italians lust
ful ; and the English mutinous and insolent to governors. And
these characters, if true, seem to agree to these several nations,
not only for one age, but successively in all generations: as
waters of a river running in the same channel always retain the
same colour, taste, and breed the same sorts of fish. And it is
not to be questioned, but that it was the same humour that raised
the barons' wars, and since acted higher in the late rebellion. I
do not believe a transmigration of souls, but surely there is
something to be observed that looks very like a transmigration
of tempers and manners; so constantly does posterity succeed
into the humours, appetites, and ways of their progenitors.
But let not any one gather from what has been said, that I
place sin in the body only, not in the soul also : for in the body
I place only the first seeds and occasions of it, which immediately,

SELF-DENIAL THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS. 341
upon the sociation of the soul with the body, communicates
and transfuses the contagion to that likewise ; as we see in stills
and alembics, though the fire put under, and the materials put
within them, lie in the lower part, yet they send up a steam and
exhalation, which settles into drops in the upper part : so all the
perturbations of bodily affections, though they are seated in the
body, which is the lower part, yet they continually exhale and
breathe forth sinful vapours, that leave a guilt and impurity upon
the soul ; yea, even upon the top and commanding faculties, the
understanding and the will : though, to pursue that similitude a
little further, as that which rises from the bottom of the still is
but a vapour, and becomes not a drop till it settles upon the
upper part of it, so that which comes from the body is but a bare
disturbance, and comes not to the proper form and nature of a
sin, till consented to and owned by the soul. From what has
been laid down, Aristotle observes, that intemperance and luxury
about things that affect the body and grosser senses leaves a kind
of stupidity and sottishness upon the mind also ; as the uppermost
part of the chimney is blacked by the fire that burns below.
How the body should affect the soul, that which is material
work upon that which is immaterial, is, I confess, a problem
¦ hardly resolved in philosophy ; but experience shows the truth
of the thing by its apparent and undeniable effects : and reason
itself will not prove that we ought to reject the thing, because
we are ignorant of the manner, unless reason would prove also,
that we might know every thing. But where philosophy seems
to contradict a divine truth, there it is to be reputed vain, and
we are to fetch the decision of the case from faith.
Divines, in the matter of original sin, which upon good grounds
we believe, though I suppose few can explain the way of its pro
pagation ; they, I say, acknowledge that the soul, which is by
immediate creation infused by God into the body, comes pure,
unspotted, and untainted with the least sin ; but upon the
union and conjunction of it with the body, it contracts a pollu
tion, and so the whole man becomes presently sinful ; as the
purest water issuing from the fountain, when it slides into a dirty
and a muddy kennel, it immediately loses its clearness and vir
ginity, and becomes as filthy as the place in which it runs. This
discovers, that it is the body that first sullies and besmears the
soul ; here is the malum propter vicinum malum, this is the un
happy neighbourhood ; for no sooner are they joined, no sooner
are the body and the soul made brothers, but they are brethren
in iniquity.
Conformable to what has been said, is the verdict of the holy
scripture. Hear the exclamation of St. Paul, Rom. vii. 24, " 0
wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from this body of
death ?" It was his body that wounded, that, as it were, stifled
his soul : hence it cries out, as one sinking in a bog or quagmire,
2f2

342 DR. SOUTIl's POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXIII.
for immediate deliverance. This sociable evil, this treacherous
companion, is the enticer and betrayer to all sin. Hence again
Paul lays the stress and load of all upon this, in tlie 18th verse
of the same chapter, "In me, that is, my flesh," says he, "there
dwelleth no good thing." He carried his prison about him, nay
his bane, his poison, had he not had an antidote from grace : it
was a magazine for the weapons of unrighteousness, a full, endless,
inexhaustible storehouse of all filth and corruption.
This truth, that sin has its first situation and place in the flesh,
and that from hence it borrows its name in common dialect of
scripture, is yet further clear from this ; that the most mortified
and sanctified persons in the world cainnot by any means wholly
discharge themselves from the relics of sin and concupiscence
while they are yet in the body ; as having soaked and insinuated
itself into the very vital constitution of it: but immediately
after they die, and the soul comes to be delivered from the body,
we hold that the sanctification of it is then perfect and consum
mate ; so that it sins no more, the very being, as well as the
guilt of sin is then destroyed ; the soul is then sprightly, pure,
and vigorous, like the spirit or quintessence of a liquor extracted
from the dregs and the captivity of matter ; or like a pleasant
bird that is released from a nasty cage : the soul then finds its
activity restored with its purity, and so mounts up to heaven,
where it enjoys its Maker by a bright and a clear intuition, and
converses with him for ever: and this is an evident demonstra
tion that the vitiosity of our nature is first situate and fixed in
the flesh.
The papists indeed hold, that the souls of the saints, at least of
the plebeian and ordinary saints, are not immediately, upon the
dissolution of the body, freed wholly from the being and in
herency of sin, but are sent into a place called purgatory, where
the fire is to calcine and purge off the dross of sin from the soul,
before it can be fitted for the society of the blessed. But this is
a fabulous and a gross conceit, and were it not gainful, unworthy
the patronage of any learned popish writer. For how can the fire
burn the soul ? and then how can it burn off sin ? Do we think
that sin sticks upon the soul like rust upon a piece of iron ? But
these things are so ridiculous and absurd, that to repeat them is
to confute them.
2. The vitiosity of our nature is called " flesh," because of its
close, inseparable nearness to the soul. There is an intimate
conjunction and union between the soul and sin ; and the inti
macy of their coherence is the cause of the intimacy of their
friendship. Sin is fixed in the heart, and therefore it lies in the
bosom. Hence, to show the individual estate and the indisso
luble tie of matrimony, the Spirit takes a similitude from this,
Matt. xix. 5, and says, " They two shall be one flesh." The soul,
while it is embodied, can no more be divided from sin, than the

SELF-DENIAL THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS. 343
body itself can be considered without flesh. The nearness
between these two, our soul and our corruption, is so great, that
it arises to a kind of identity : hence to deny and conquer our
sin is, in scripture language, to deny ourselves, implying, that sin
adheres so close to us, that it is a kind of second self.
I do not say that the substance of the soul is evil, or that the
being and nature of it is sinful ; but that the stain of sin con
tracted by it clings so fast to it, that it is scarce to be fetched off.
Blackness is not the substance of the ink, yet it is inseparable
from it.
See the nearness of sin to the soul, by observing the ways and
means by which God endeavours to part them, and without
which they cannot be divided. No less than the blood of the Son
of God to wash off the stain of sin ; no less than the Spirit of
God to subdue the power; nothing but an infinite price, joined
with an infinite power, can work the division. Hence the
effectual sin-conquering force of the word is expressed by this
dividing quality, Heb. iv. 12, "It is quick and powerful, and
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing
asunder of soul and spirit, of the joints and marrow." Is there
any thing more closely united than the joint and the marrow?
than the soul and the spirit ? Yes, the soul and sin. Hereupon,
the word being to disenthral the soul from it, must have the
same effect upon it that the sword has upon the body, which is,
by penetration and dividing the continuity of the parts; for
every wound is properly division, an opening or loosening the
compactness and closeness of the thing upon which the impression
is made. Wherefore if the great business of the word is to
wound and divide the soul from sin, it follows, that they were
once intimately and closely cemented together; the connexion
between these two is a Gordian knot, that cannot be dissolved
but by this spiritual sword.
We misapply the command of loving our neighbour, and mis
place our affection ; for sin is our nearest neighbour, and we love
that most ; it cleaves, it adheres, it sticks to us ; but it is as the
viper did to Paul's hand. And we may say of it as Christ did of
Judas, " He that betrays me is with me :" sin is, as it were, en
grafted into the soul, and thereby made connatural to it, and
consequently as a stock upon which another scion is engrafted ;
the soul does not bring forth its own natural fruit, but the fruit
of sin. They are mutually knit and entwined one within the
other. Hence the power of remitting sins is in the gospel termed,
Matt. xvi. 19, the power of loosing, as the contrary is of binding.
Sin has bound itself as close upon the soul as the bonds or fetters
that pinion and hold fast an imprisoned malefactor.
The same union is yet further evident from the state of every
unsanctified, unregenerate person in his death : at which great
change, though he leaves his body, he retains his sin ; but still

344 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXIII.
keeps close to his side, and follows him into another world. A
man's corruption, if dying in his sin, is to him like a bad servant
or an unfaithful soldier ; though it lives with him, yet it will be
sure not to die with him. And this may be the second reason of
this denomination.
3. A third reason why the vitiosity of our nature is called
" flesh" is, because of its dearness to us. And this founded upon
the former, for vicinity is one cause of love. Now there is
nothing that we prosecute with a more affectionate tenderness
than our flesh; for, as the apostle says, Eph. v. 29, "No man
ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishefh and cherisheth it."
How does the soul sympathize with it, either in its sufferings or
its comforts ! one would think that reason was even swallowed up
in sense : how does every change of weather affect the mind !
how sensible is it of every winter's blast, every summer's heat, of
the sweetness of ease and the tortures of pain, as if, by convers
ing with the body, it even grew corporeal. If any the least
member is hurt, what a general auxiliary, what a concurrent help
is there from all the rest ! the eye bewails, the tongue bemoans,
and the hand plasters and foments it ; and all this to rescue a base
carcass from that which will one day certainly attach it, death
and dissolution.
But in the mean time the conscience may be wounded, the soul
bruised and broken with the fatal blows of sin and temptation,
and lie even gasping at the brink of eternal death, and yet we
feel no pain there, neither seek for a remedy ; it may faint and
bleed, and we never ask whether there is any balm in Gilead, any
spiritual surgeon to pour oil into our wounds. For see whether it
is not the usual custom of men not to think of their soul till their
body is given over ; nor to send for the divine, till they are left
by the physician ; so dear is this flesh to us : for if it were not
so, could we think the drunkard would ruin his soul to please his
palate? would the unclean person pawn eternity for the gratifi
cation of a base appetite ? Nay, take a survey of all the arts, the
trades, and the most prized inventions in the world, and you will
find ten to four found out and employed either to please or adorn
the flesh : it is for this that the artificer labours, and the merchant
ventures ; and we compass sea and land ten times oftener to
make a gallant, than to make a proselyte. Justly therefore upon
this account also does the Spirit express our sin by the name of
"flesh," for this has an equal share in our love.
Sin is our darling, our Delilah, the queen regent of our affec
tions ; it fills all our thoughts, engrosses our desires, and chal
lenges the service of all our actions. Can there be any greater
love than the love of a mother to her child ? And we know the
scripture tells us, that sin is " conceived and brought forth" by
the soul, James i. 15. Doubt not therefore but it shall be
cherished and beloved as a child ; it is the firstborn of the soul,

SELF-DENIAL THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS. 345
the beginning of its strength; but it is such a firstborn to it as
Reuben was to Jacob; such a one as he had for ever cause to
curse. I shall not stand to show the excessive love that the miserable,
bewitched soul of man bears to sin, much less shall I stand to
prove it. Let it suffice us to observe, from the constant incessant
practices of the world, that there is no cost, study, travail, and
labour, either to preserve health, to defend life, or to endear
friends, which is not with am abundant overplus of charge and
expense freely and greedily laid out upon the satisfaction of sin,
and that in its most tyrannical and unreasonable demands. What
that man in Micah vi. 7 proffers for the expiation, many hun
dreds would give for the preservation of their sin ; " thousands
of rams and ten thousands of rivers of oil, yea the fruit of his
body for the sin of his soul ;" so dear does sin usually cost men
in this world, though much dearer in another. This is their
paramour, they court it, they go a whoring after it, as the usual
scripture expression is ; they will not, though you fling the ven
geance of God and the fire of hell in their faces, be plucked
away, but maugre all curses or promises, terrors or entreaties,
they will even die in the fatal embraces of their dear but killing
corruption ; and as some will rather rot and perish, and be eaten
through with a gangrene or an ulcer than undergo the painful
cutting and lancing of their flesh, because they are delicate and
tender of it : so the soul will, through the same tenderness to a
cruel lust, see itself overgrown, infected, poisoned, and at length
ruined by it, rather than remedy and remove it, by the healing
severity of a thorough mortification. Let this therefore be the
third and last reason why the Spirit has here' set forth the pravi-
ty and corruption of our nature by the name of " flesh."
Now what has been hitherto discoursed of may, by way of
inference, suggest these things to our consideration.
1. The deplorable estate of fallen man; whose condition is
now such, that he carries his plague about him, and wears it
something nearer to him than his shirt ; that he encloses a viper in
his bowels, feeds and maintains, and is passionately fond of his
mortal enemy ; and what is the greatest misery of all, has it not
in his power to be otherwise ; he has a body that is not so much
the instrument or servant, as the dungeon of his soul: and sin
holds him by such bonds of pleasure so strong, so suitable to his
perverted and diseased inclinations, that his ruin is presented to
him as his interest, and nothing gratifies, delights, or wins upon
him, but that which dishonours his Maker, and certainly destroys
himself. 2. The next thing offered from hence to our thoughts is, the
great difficulty of the duty of mortification: this is a greater
work than men are aware of: it is indeed the killing of an enemy,
but of such an enemy as a man thinks his friend, and loves as his
Vol. IV.— 44

346 dr. sotuth's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxiii.
child ; and how hard it is to put the knife to the throat of an Isaac is
easily imaginable. What! part with that that came into the world
with me, and has ever since lived and conversed with me, that
continually lies down and rises up with me, that has even incorpo
rated itself into my nature, seized all my appetites, and possessed
all my faculties, so that it is the centre and principle of all my plea
sures, and that which gives a relish and a quickness to every object!
This is a hard saying, and a harder undertaking. He must be a
good orator that should persuade a man to stick daggers and needles
in his flesh, to strip his bones, and in a manner to tear his nature
over his eyes; yet to mortify a sin is something like it: but alas!
it would go near to nonplus the most artificial persuader, to bring a
man to part with the covering of his body ; but how much more
with the vestment of his soul !
Surely there is no love to God less than that which will in
duce a man to lay down his life for God, that can enforce him to
mortify a corruption for him ; and this, one would think, should
awaken those who sacrifice to their own dreams, who spread
themselves paths of roses to a fool's paradise, and design heaven
upon those terms of easiness that the gospel knows not of: but
it is an attempt that will cost many a smart blow, many a bitter
rencounter, and many a passage through the fiery furnace, before
the innate filth of our nature can be severed from us. And
whatsoever measures a man may propose to himself, he will find,
that to mortify a lust, and to be a Christian, is a harder work
than now and then to lift up his eyes, to cry, Lord, Lord ! or to
hear an absolution, which perhaps does not at all belong to him.
3. In the third and last place, this declares to us the mean and
sordid employment of every sinner : he serves the flesh, that is,
he is a drudge and a scavenger to the most inferior part of his
nature. It is a low and an unmanly thing for any person to be
laborious and solicitous, and to spend much time in dressing and
adorning his body ; it shows him to be a fop, a trifle, and a mere
picture; but then how much more ignoble must it be to attend
upon his body, in the dishonourable provisions for the lusts and"
corruptions of it !
If it be a preferment to handle sores and ulcers, to converse
with diseases, and all the filth of a distempered body, then may it
pass for a generous employment, to be sedulous in obeying the
dictates of sin and the commands of the flesh ; but as the service
of God is perfect freedom, so the service of the flesh is perfect,
entire, complete slavery.
n. I proceed now to the second general thing proposed for
the handling of the words, and that is, to show what is imported by
the crucifixion of the flesh; under which I shall do these things :
1. I shall show what is the reason ofthe use of it in this place.
2. What is the full force, sense, and significance of it.

SELE-DENIAL THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS. 347
3. Prescribe some means for enabling us to the duty signified
by it
4. Make some useful corollaries and deductions from the whole.
1 . For the first of these : this word is here used by way of
allusion to Christ, of whose behaviour and sufferings every
Christian is to be a living copy and representation. Christ will
have his death an example to excite, as well as a sacrifice to
save : and there is no passage in his life and death but is intended
for our instruction, as well as our salvation. Upon this score
we are bid -to " put on Christ," as a garment, Rom. xiii. 14.
For as in a geirment there is an apposite fitness and commensu-
ration of each part of that to every part of the body; so there
is nothing in the whole series of Christ's life and death, but
ought in some measure to be answered and transcribed by every
believer; as auTording to us for every action not only a pattern,
but a motive.
We read of Christ's nativity : here every Christian is to turn
a history into a precept, and read in himself the necessity of a
new birth. We find die passion and the crucifixion of Christ
for sin: now what can this better suggest to us, than the cruci
fying sin, the cause of his crucifixion ? We read and admire his
resurrection from the dead: certainly this might infer in us a
spiritual resurrection from the death of sin and the grave, and
stench of corruption. Nay, if we have that Christian dexterity
and skill of a proper application of these passages, we shadl find
a correspondent homogeneous quality derived from each. We
shall die with him, and we shall rise with him : we shall find
something in his cross that shall kill our sins ; something in his
resurrection that shall revive our graces : for if we transfer and
place it even upon a natural cause, what is it else, butiifor the
body to sympathize with the head ?
The Socinians indeed place the whole business of our redemt)-
tion upon a bare imitation; and the truth is,, to say no more,, (if
you will admit the expression,) they do indeed make Christ <an
example, and that in a much more ignominious way than the
Jews did. But now though they place the whole redemption
wrought* by Christ in a bare following and expressing his exam
ple, let not us therefore transgress into the other extreme, and
totally exclude this imitation ; for undoubtedly Christ in all his
sufferings left us a pattern, as well as paid a, price.
There is none that seems to have so evangelical and raised a
notion of this, as the apostle Paul in Gal.ii. 2Q, "lam crucified
with Christ, nevertheless I live." Paul seems to be recovered to
his spiritual life, as the youth upon whom. Elisha, stretched him
self. The prophet put his face to the other's face, his eyes,, his
mouth, his hands, to the eyes, mouth, and hands of the other;
and so, by an adequate application of his body to each part, he
brought him at length to enjoy the same life with himself. Thus

348 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [seAm. xxiii.
Paul, eis it were, stretched himself upon the same cross with
Christ, and by exactly conforming to his sufferings and death,
was advanced to the similitude of his life. Hence it is said,
2 Tim. ii. 12, " If we suffer with him, we shall also reign with
him." And Paul, in that excellent discourse, Phil. iii. 10, vents
a heavenly passionate desire, that he might " know the power of
Christ's resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being
made conformable to his death." And thus to endeavour to be
like Christ is a laudable, nay, a dutiful ambition ; it is our sin to
worship, but our duty to be his picture; for doubtless every
Christian is obliged not only to obey, but also to represent his
Saviour. Certainly Paul, in Gal. vi. 14, where he says, that he is
" crucified to the world," and tells the believing Romans, in
Rom. vi. 6, that " their old man is crucified with Christ," could
have expressed the same thing by other words, sufficiently sig
nificant, as that he was mortified, and his worldly desires extin
guished, and that their corruptions were abated, weakened, and
subdued ; but he rather says " crucified." The other, indeed,
would have expressed his purity, but this by a peculiar signifi
cance imports his Christianity, as not only declaring an excellent
life, but also the example that caused it. It is like fair writing,
with the copy prefixed amd set above it. The business of a
Christian is not invention, but imitation : and because he is too
ignorant to prescribe to himself, all his perfection is to follow,
and Christ gives every Christian this comprehensive summary
compendium of his duty, " Let him take up his cross and follow
me." And if we would abridge all religion into this short dicho
tomy, the sum of our belief is Christ, and of our obedience
conformity. Having thus shown the reason of the use of the word here, I
proceed now to
2. The second thing, which is, to show the full force and
significance of it. Crucifying therefore, as it is here applied to
the corruption and depraved sinful disposition of our nature,
imports these four things : .j
(1.) The death of it. The cross is the instrument of death,
and to crucify is to kill. A few interrupted assaults and com
bats with a man's corruption will not suffice : he may give it
some blows, and wounds, and bruises, but after all these it may
recover ; and we know the seed of the woman was not only to
bruise, but to break the serpent's head.
He that will crucify his sin must pursue it to the very death.
Many, after they have been something humbled for their sin,
and for a while have used the means of mortification, so as to
terrify it from a present acting, and have taken off something of
the edge of its fury, conclude that the day is won, and the
enemy routed, when by sad experience they find at length that

SELF-DENIAL THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS. 349
it is but a retreat, and the return is more furious and dangerous
than ever. An enemy is never overcome till he is killed ; and
those only act like wise men who think so.
We are to crucify our corruptions, as the Jews did Christ ;
the whippings, scourgings, and bufferings, were but the forerun
ners and beginnings of the grand suffering that was intended.
It was his life and his blood that they thirsted after. Now it is
but for a man to chauige the scene, and act the same upon his
own corruption. Sin stands as a malefactor condemned to death
by the law of God ; and God has entrusted every man with the
execution of his own sin ; and God will require life for life ; so
that if a man lets his sin escape alive, the life of his soul must be
its ransom.
There is nothing that betrays and ruins men, as to the great
concerns of their eternal happiness, so much as half and imper
fect mortifications of their sin, but supposed to be perfect and
complete ; for they give sin rather a respite than a ruin ; a time
of breathing and of recollecting its strength, and a more prevail
ing insinuation upon the heart, upon the vicissitude and the
return : so that a man is strangely baffled and set backwards in
tbe main work of repentance, while he sees all his endeavours
unravelled, and his sin grow upon him afresh, like weeds only
cropped and cut, whereas they should have been rooted up.
If a man thinks that he has given a shrewd blow to his lust,
let him know that this is an argument for him to pursue his
advantage, and to redouble his strokes upon it, to a perfect con
quest, rather than to acquiesce, as if he had achieved something
sufficient to acquit himself in the combat. The utmost cruelty
to an inveterate enemy is always successful, if sufficiently pow
erful ; but if a man shall content himself to have given such an
adversary a scratch on the hand, when he might and should have
stabbed him to the heart, let him thank himself, if in the issue
he fall by a recovered fury, and die by that strength that he
spared, to his own ruin.
Wherefore when we are thus commanded to " crucify the
flesh," let every one understand the full latitude of this precept ;
and remember that he is charged to kill his corruption. God's
hatred is directed to the life and being of sin ; and for a man to
spare that, is to be absurdly cruel to his own soul. To strike it,
to war against it, without designing its death, is but hypocrisy.
A Saul may captivate and imprison an Agag, but a pious
Samuel will slay him.
(2.) As it implies death, so it further imports a violent death.
Sin never dies of age. It is as when a young man dies in the
full fire and strength of his youth, by some vehement distemper ;
it as it were tears, and forces, and fires his soul out of his body.
He that will come and fight it out with his corruption to the
last shall find, that it will sell its life at a dear rate; it will
2G

350 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sBRM. XXIII.
strive and fight for it, and many a doubtful conflict will pass
between that and the soul. It may give a man many a wound,
many a foil, and many a disheartening blow : for, believe it, the
strong man will fight for his possession. Never think to dispos
sess him by a bare summons, or imagine that a man can recover
the mastery of his heart and his affections by a few prayers and
broken humiliations. No, such a mortifying course must be
taken, and such constant violences and severities used, as shall
try and shake every power of the soul, before a corruption can
be despatched. The conquest had need be glorious, for it will be
found by sharp experience, that the combat will be dangerous.
The soul is engaged with such an enemy as will require both
the onsets of force and the stratagems of art. Sin will never
quit its hold quietly ; but, like the devil, who if we hear is con
jured down, it is always in a storm. That man that allows him
self in his sin, and humours his corruption, let him consider, that
if God ever intend to save him from it, what it will cost him to
conquer it ; kill it he must, but then it will not be killed like a
lamb, which resists not the knife, but like a wolf or a wild boar ;
he must run it down, and conquer it, before he can kill it ; and
though God do give him the grace to conquer it in the issue, yet
he must go the hazard and the dubious adventure of being con
quered himself. When a man is put to effect any thing with
violence, it is troublesome to him that does, as well as grievous
to him that suffers it. This therefore is the second thing implied
in the crucifixion of sin, to despatch it by a violent death.
(3.) To crucify the flesh with the affections of it imports a
painful, bitter, and vexatious death. Let us but reflect upon our
Saviour: he was nailed to the tree, and that through those parts
which were most apprehensive of pain, the hands and the feet :
which members, by reason of the concurrence of the nerves and
sinews there, must needs be of quickest sense : thus he hung, in
the extremity of torture, till, through the insupportable pressures
of pain, he at length gave up the ghost.
Now we are still to take the former observation along with us,
that the occasion of the use of this expression here is an allusion
to Christ's crucifixion : so that the crucifying the flesh must
express the pain also, or the resemblance would not be perfect.
This supposed, it would be well that such as are quick and for
ward to profess the name and undertake the rigour of a Christian
course, would first sit down and calculate and ponder the diffi
culties, the hard, grating, and afflicting contrariety that it bears
to the flesh. They are to live as upon the rack ; to hear the cries
of a tormented, dying corruption, without relenting; when our
greatest desires thirst and beg for satisfaction, they are to be
answered only with renewed exercises of mortification ; when we
have got them upon the cross, we are to treat them as the Jews
did Christ ; when they thirst and call out for their former plea-

SELF-DENIAL THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS. 351
sures, to give them the vinegar and the gall of sharper and sharper
severities. The cravings of our dearest and most beloved affec
tions are to be denied ; and what a torment is it when desire is
upon the career, to separate between the enjoyment and the
appetite! It is like, rending the skin from the flesh, or the flesh
from the bone : yet this is to be, done ; nor are we to be surprised
with wonder at it ; for certainly no man was ever crucified with
out pain.
The punishment of the cross is of all others the quickest and
the most acute; it is the universal stretching of all the limbs
from the joints, so universal, that there is not the least part,
sinew, or fibre in the body, but it is distended. So the mortifi
cation of sin is to be so general and diffused, as not only to fix
upon the bulk and body of sin, but to stretch the inquisition to
every the least desire, the most lurking and secret affection ; for
assuredly there is something more than ordinary implied in this
expression of " crucifying sin :" it cannot but import the most
rugged, cruel, amd remorseless dealing with it that is imaginable.
And however men are nice and favourable to their corruption,
yet did they consider what endless pains, what unspeakable tor
ments, their corrupt affections and lusts prepare for them, even
self-love could not but be religion enough to make them prevent
such miseries, by first inflicting them upon the author.
Every man should remember, that for all his indulgence to sin,
sin will not spare him ; even that corruption that lies in his
bosom will prosecute him, and cry out for justice against him at
the judgment of the great day. Besides, why should we grudge
at the painfulrjess of this duty, when it is confessed, that every
wound given to sin cannot but pain the sinner ; but then if we
consider withal, that God has decreed to pardon and save none,
without giving them some taste of the smart and bitter fruit of
sin, we have cause to adore his mercy in this, that the pain we
take in mortifying sin, will be the only pain that we shall ever
endure for it.
(4.) In the fourth and last place, crucifixion denotes a shameful
and a cursed death ; it is such a one as was marked out and sig
nalized with a peculiar malediction, even of old, by God himself,
Deut. xxi. 23, "He that is hanged on a tree is accursed of God:"
and for the shame of it, it is so great amongst all nations, that
the infamy were a sufficient punishment without the pain: so
that the Romans used it to slaves only, and the vilest malefactors.
Hence, in Heb. vi. 6, such apostates as are said by their un
worthy behaviour to crucify Christ, are said also to " put him to
an open shame." *
Thus therefore must the corruption and vitiosity of our nature
be dealt with. God has doomed it to death, without the benefit
¦of so much as dying honourably. If there be any scorn, loath
ing, and detestation due to a dying offender, certainly it is much

352 DR. SOUTH's POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXIII.
more due to the sin that made him so. Hereupon God has pro
vided one great instrument for the mortifying of sin, which is the
irksome shame of confession; I do not mean the auricular pick
pocket confession of the papists, but public confession, such a one
as David exercised, when he confessed his sins before the whole
congregation ; and such a one as the primitive Christian church
required of. scandalous excommunicate persons, before they were
readmitted into its communion. And indeed if we consider the
temper of man's mind, confession is of all other penalties the
most shameful ; shameful I mean to sin, though glorious to the
confessing sinner.
Hence also humiliation for sin is expressed by " taking shame
to ourselves." And certainly if shame is not judicially awarded
as the punishment, it will naturally follow as the fruit and effect
of sin. See all the cursed deaths, the confusion and consterna
tion that attends malefactors : it is all to be ascribed to this
cursed cause, that they would not shame their sin, amd therefore
their sin has now shamed and confounded them. Considering
therefore how sin has stained the beauty of our nature, and co
vered it with the shames and dishonours of corruption, whatso
ever we do, or can inflict upon it of this kind, it is not so much
a punishment from the law of God, as a proper retaliation from
ourselves. Having thus shown what is imported by the crucifying of sin,
I proceed now to
3. The third thing proposed, which is, to prescribe some means
for the enabling of us to the performance of this duty. Two
therefore I shall mention as conducible to this crucifixion of the
flesh, with its affections and lusts.
(1.) The first is a constant and pertinacious denying them in
all their cravings for satisfaction. A man by fasting too long,
may come to lose his stomach ; so an affection abridged and tied
up from its proper gratification comes by degrees to be chastised
and even wearied into sobriety; for frequent disappointments in
a thing eagerly desired will at length leave a kind of indifference
in the desires as to that thing. As on the contrary, every grati
fication of a corrupt appetite exasperates, calls forth, and enlarges
it to new, and greater, and more restless expectations.
Let a man therefore begin the crucifixion of his flesh in these
negative mortifications; that is, when Iris voluptuous humour is
clamorous for pleasure, let him not answer any of those calls : if he
would not maintain it, let him not feed it : he will find that so much
as"it wants of food, it will lose of its fierceness. This is the course
taken for the taming of wild beasts, to reduce and order them by
the disciplines of hunger, by long and frequent frustrations of
their ravenous appetites. And the reason of this course is founded
in a natural cause. For though the design of every appetite is
to purvey for nature, and to derive strength to that by receiving

SELF-DENIAL THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS. 353
such and such objects ; yet by the same means it first feeds and
strengthens itself. It being like some collectors of public monies,
who indeed are employed and intended to serve the exchequer,
but yet in the mean time use to be very kind to themselves. In
a word, the defraudation of the appetites of sin weakens the whole
body of sin and themselves also ; as on the other side all satis
faction corroborates amd inflames them. And he that takes up a
resolution to crucify his intemperance, luxury, or uncleanness,
yet, when they call for their usual refection, and a fair occasion
knocks at his door, or his companions call upon him, has no
power to deny either the entreaty of his appetite within, or to
slight the invitation of tempting objects from without, he may
as well expect to tame a wolf by feeding him, or to extinguish
a flame by heaping fuel upon it, as to mortify a sin upon these
terms. His attempt is absurd, his success desperate, and his lust
must and will prevaul.
(2.) The other means to crucify a corrupt affection, is to en
counter it by actions of the opposite virtue. This differs from
the former thus : that that was only the denying of fuel to a fire,
but this a pouring water upon it, and so vanquishing it by the
prevalence of a contrary element. He that is profane, let him
subdue his profaneness by the exercise of prayer and meditation.
He that is covetous, let him dispossess his mind of that vice by
actions of charity and liberality : for as vicious actions frequently
repeated produce a vicious habit, that infects and ferments the
whole soul ; so the like frequent repetition of virtuous actions
does by degrees loosen, and at length totally unfix and drive out
that habit of vice. Now this is both the nobler and the .speedier
way of conquest ; as it is more glorious to break open* than to
starve a city, and to take it by force than by surrender. Both
indeed are equally conquests, but the latter is the greater
triumph. And thus much for the means by which we may be enabled to
crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts.
4. Come we now to the fourth amd last thing, viz. to see what
may be drawn by way of consequence atnd deduction from what
has hitherto been delivered.
(1.) First of all then we collect the high concernment and the
absolute necessity of every mam's crucifying his carnal worldly
affections. I know no work so difficult and unpleasing, but its
necessity is an abundant argument to enforce it. And I suppose
every one will grant, that it is necessary for him to be a Christian :
yet unless he has crucified the flesh he cannot be so, and his as
suming that title is only a nullity anda usurpation.
Upon this small hinge therefore turns the grand determination
of our eternal estate, whether as to happiness or misery. The
whole round of man's happiness, from the first dawnings of it in
the revelations of grace, to the last consummation of it in glory,
Vol. IV.— 45 2 g 2

354 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXin.
runs solely and entirely upon this. Without this, not so much as
the blessing of word and sacraments, but it is poisoned with a curse.
For first, he that comes to Christ's table who is not Christ's, is in
God's esteem only as a dog catching at the children's bread. He
that prays to Christ, and yet is not Christ's, is but as a rebel pre
senting a petition ; if he intrudes into the participation of ordinances,
and the society of the saints, he is a guest without either invitation
or wedding garment, where his best entertainment will be the im
prisonment of a malefactor, instead of the welcome of a guest. On
the other hand, take all the solid happiness of this life, and the
hopes of a better, the privileges of the sanctified, and the eternal
fruitions of the glorified, and they are all compendiously but fully
couched in this one word, " to be Christ's."
(2.) In the next place, we gather a standing and infallible cri
terion, by which to distinguish those that are not Christ's from
those that are, and consequently to convince us how few Chris
tians there are in the world ; or, to speak more closely, how few
Christians there are in Christendom ; and that the common use
amd acceptation of this word is much larger than its real signifi
cation. Much the greater number and proportion of men lie
wallowing in all the filth and the pollutions of the flesh. But I
suppose the precedent discourse has been a sufficient demonstra
tion, that he and he alone has a right to this glorious appellative
of a Christian, and to the privileges that attend it, who has mas
tered his depraved nature, cashiered his corrupt inclinations, and
offered violence to his dearest, when sinful affections : so that he
overcomes and triumphs, and sees his sin bleeding at his feet. In
sum, he only is Christ's who has executed the utmost of that
pious crtielty upon his sin, that we have seen hitherto imported
by crucifixion.
But it will be replied, that this is a hard and a discouraging
assertion, that none should be reputed Christ's, unless he has fully
crucified and destroyed his sin.
But to this I answer, that we must here distinguish of a two
fold destruction of sin. 1. In respect of a total abolition: thus
every one that is Christ's must have destroyed his sin in design
and purpose ; this he must intend, whatsoever God enables him to
effect ; this must be aimed at, whatsoever is reached. 2. In re
spect of a sincere, though imperfect inchoation : and thus every
one must actually destroy his sin ; that is, he must actually begin
and be about the work. Where we may observe, that this is
properly, nay, with an emphatical significance, implied by cruci
fixion ; for a man is not dead as soon as crucified. We know our
Saviour arid the two thieves hung some hours upon the cross
before they breathed their last : so sin, though it is not immedi
ately dead, yet it is truly crucified if it is a dying. It ,may
struggle for Ufe, indeed, yet for all that it may be under the
pangs and power of death.

SELF-DENIAL THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS. 355
But to show what is the least degree of the crucifixion of sin
indispensably required to entitle a man to this transcendent pri
vilege of being Christ's, I shall lay down this position, viz. that
he in a true evangelical sense is to be reputed Christ's, who has
crucified his sin, as to an active resolution against it ; I say active
resolution; where this term active does not illustrate, but imply
the nature of it. There is a kind of identity in these terms active
resolution, as when we say, a rational man, where the predicate
does not describe, but include the subject.
Which, by the way, is a sure, unfailing rule for men to try the
sincerity of their resolutions by. Many are prone to think, that
they are resolved against sin, when indeed they only deceive and
abuse themselves, and are not so ; for that is no resolution, that
is not seconded with vigorous suitable endeavours : if it is not
active, it is not so much as resolution. But he that pursues, and
backs, and follows home purpose with endeavour, resolution with
action, he has given his corruption its death-blow ; he has cruci
fied it ; and if he does not intermit this course, he shall see his
victory completed in the death of his adversary. And thus I af
firm, that the crucifixion of sin realized in a sincere though par
tial mortification of it, makes a man a believer, instates him in
grace, entitles him to glory, and, in a word, renders him truly
Christ's. And indeed, if this does not, we may conclude, accord
ing to that of our Saviour, though in a different sense, " when
the Son of man comes will he find faith upon the earth ?" For if
this be rejected as no sufficient condition to interest a man in the
merits of Christ's death, and the redemption he has purchased, as
God indeed has limited the number of saints to very few, so I am
afraid that upon these terms we shall reduce it almost to none, and
make the passage to heaven yet narrower than ever God made it :
who, even in the midst of a sinner's condemnation, is the God
that delights to save, and not to condemn.
To which God be rendered and ascribed, &c.

356

SERMON XXIV.
a curse denounced against bloodshed.
Habakkuk ii. 12.
Woe to him that buildeth a town with blootf !
This short prophecy, out of which I have selected this portion
of scripture to discourse of upon this sad and solemn occasion,
was uttered (as interpreters do conjecture, for know it certainly
they cannot) about the latter end of" the reign of King Josiah, or
at least in the following reign of his son, but however some time
before the Babylonish captivity, that being the great event which
it foretells, and the chief subject of which it treats.
The whole prophecy contains in it these two parts: 1st. A
double complaint made by the prophet; 2dly. A double answer
returned to it by God.
And first for the complaint. The prophet cries out of the
horrid impiety, the great perfidiousness, and general corruption
of the Jewish nation, then grown to that height, that he was
forced to invoke the justice of heaven against them, as being too
strong for all human control, too big for reproof, and fit only to
upbraid the means of grace by their incorrigible impenitence
under them.
This loud and grievous complaint of his prophet God answers
with the denunciation of a severe judgment against the persons
complained of, by bringing in upon them an army of the Chal
deans, "that hasty and bitter nation," as they are styled in the
sixth verse of the first chapter, persons that should act all the in-
solencies upon them, that victory in conjunction with ill-nature
could prompt them to : men whose hearts were flint, and their
bowels brass; who knew not what it was to pity or. relent, but
were utter strangers to humanity, and incapable of showing com
passion : but upon all these accounts so much the fitter to be in
strumental to the divine vengeance, now inflamed against them,
and to surpass, if possible, the severity of the sentence by the
fierceness of the execution. Which dreadful answer of God is
so far from satisfying the prophet's complaint, that it only exas
perates his grief, and provokes him to another, in which he ex
postulates with God the method of this his judgment, that he
should punish the wickedness of his people by persons so much
viler and wickeder than themselves ; that vice should be employed
to punish sin, and that his church should be chastised, and, if you

A CURSE DENOUNCED AGAINST BLOODSHED. 357
will, reformed, by persons notable for nothing but blood and
rapine, luxury and idolatry.
To this complaint also God is pleased to rejoin, and to clear
the justice, equity, and reason of his proceeding, by showing that
it was not to be rated by the qualification of the instruments
made use of in it ; which instruments he would be sure to account
with when they had done his work ; and that as he designed his
people for the rod, so he designed the rod itself for the fire. He
assures his prophet, and with him all pious and humble persons,
who could lift their faith above their sense, that as Nebuchad
nezzar and his army were not for any worth or piety in them
selves suffered to captivate and trample upon God's people, and
to make havoc of and vent their rage against the church ; so that
they themselves should infallibly have their turns in the course
and circulation of divine justice, and be strictly reckoned with
for their intolerable pride, their insatiable avarice, and their un-
-human and remorseless cruelty, shown in the spoil and waste
they had made upon all nations round about them for the propa
gation of their empire, which they were still enlarging as their
desires, and their desires as hell, as it is expressed in the fifth
verse of the second chapter ; for all this, I say, the prophet is
assured that these victorious sons of Belial should pay severely,
when God should think fit to rebuild Jerusalem upon the ruins
of Babylon; and to convince the proud and the cruel, that he
neither loves nor values his scourge, though he is sometimes con
strained to use it.
The words of the text contain in them a woe or curse, de
nounced personally and directly against the great head of the
Chaldean empire Nebuchadnezzar, but -by consequence against
the whole empire itself. The curse is both for the ground, object,
and measures of it considerable. And therefore I shall cast the
prosecution of the words into these five particulars.
I. I shall show the ground or cause of this curse, which the
text declares to be that justly abhorred sin of blood-guiltiness.
II. I shall show the condition of the person against whom this
curse was denounced. He was such a one as had actually set up
and established a government by blood.
III. I shall show the latitude and extent of the curse, and
what is comprehended in it.
IV. I shall :show the reasons why a curse or woe is so pecu
liarly denounced against this sin.
V. Arid lastly, I shall apply all briefly to the present sad oc
casion. I. And first for the ground and cause of the curse here denounced,
which was the crying, crimson ;sin of bloodshed ; a sin, in the
hatred and detestation of which heaven and earth seem to strive
for the mastery. The first great disturbance in the world after

358 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXIV.
the fall of man was by a murderer; whom the vengeance of God
pursued to that degree, that he professed that " his punishment
was greater than he could bear," though he himself could not
say, that it was greater than he had deserved. Accordingly in all
succeeding generations it has still been the care of Providence,
both by civil and religious means, to extinguish all principles
of savageness in the minds of men, and to make friendship and
tenderness over men's lives a great part of religion. But by
nothing has this been so highly endeavoured as by the rules and
constitution of Christianity, the last and noblest revelation that
God has made of his mind and will to the sons of men. In
which all acts of fierceness, violence, and barbarity are so strictly
provided against, that there are few injuries in which patience
and sufferance are not recommended instead of the most just and
reasonable pretensions to revenge : nay, and so very tender is it
of men's lives, that it secures them against the very first ap
proaches and preparations to murder, by dashing even angry
thoughts, and denouncing damnation to vilifying, provoking
words: so that we have both law and gospel equally rising up
against this monstrous sin : and the sentence of both confirmed
by the eternal voice of reason speaking in the law of nations:
and so all passing this concurrent judgment, that whosoever sheds
man's blood, ought by man to have his blood shed. A judgment
made up of all the justice and equity that it is possible for reason
amd religion to infuse into a law.
But now the execution of this law being upon no grounds of
reason to be committed to every private hand, God has found it
necessary to deposite it only in the hands of his vicegerents, whom
he entrusts and deputes as his lieutenants in the government
and protection of the several societies of mankind ; and so both
to ennoble and guard their sceptres, by appropriating to the
same hands the use of the sword of justice too. From which
it follows, that the law has not the same aspect upon sovereign
princes, that it has upon the rest of men; nor that the sword
can, by any mortal power, be authorized against the life of him
to whom the sole use of it is by divine right ascribed. Upon
which account, if it so fall out that a prince invades either the
estate or life of a subject, that law, that draws the sword of
justice upon the life of any private person doing the same things,
has no power or efficacy at all to do the same execution upon the
supreme magistrate, whose supremacy, allowing him neither
equal nor superior, renders all legal acts of punishment or coer
cion upon him (the nature of which is still to descend) utterly
impossible. But what! does God then approve, or at least connive at those
wicked actions in princes, that he so severely takes revenge of in
others ? No, certainly, the guilt is the same in both, and under
an equal abhorrence with God, and shall equally be accounted

A CURSE DENOUNCED AGAINST BLOODSHED. 359
for ; but the difference is this, that while God punishes inferior
malefactors by the hands of princes, he takes the punishment of
princes wholly into his own : and surely no guilty person is like
to speed at all the better for having his cause brought before him
who has an infinite wisdom to search into, and an infinite power
to revenge his guilt. It is God's prerogative to be the sole judge
of princes, and heaven only is that high court of justice, where
kings can be legadly atrraigned, tried, and condemned. God has
woes enough in store to humble the highest amd the proudest
tyrant, without needing the assistance of any of his rebel sub
jects ; and therefore such courses for the curbing or pulling
down of princes is neither the cause of God nor the defence of
religion, but the doctrine of devils, and the dictates of that
which in the judgment of God himself is worse than witchcraft.
For be a king never so savage, bloody, or unjust, he is, under all
these respects, to be looked upon as a plague or a punishment sent
by God upon the people, whose duty I am sure is to submit, be
the punishment what it will. And however, that nation is like
to find but a strange recovery, be its distemper what it will, if
its cure must be a rebellion.
H. The second thing to be considered is, the condition of the
person against whom this woe or curse is denounced. He was such
a one as had actually established a government and built a city
with blood. We know that as soon as Cain had murdered his
brother, he presently betook himself to the building of a city.
And so indeed it falls out, that bloodiness has usually a con
nexion with building, and that upon some ground of reason :
forasmuch as men, by shedding of blood, are enabled to build
cities, and set up governments ; and then because such cities
being once built, and governments set up, do secure the shedders
of blood from the vengeance due to their sin. The person here
spoken of I am sure eminently served his turn by his cruelty and
bloodiness in both these respects, as having thereby reared, or at
least hugely augmented the most magnificent city that ever was ;
even Babylon, the stupendous metropolis of the eastern monarchy,
then the governess of the world : a city so strong and great, that
it might well promise its builder sufficient defence against any
mortal power, that should presume, to call him to account for any
of those slaughters and depredations, by which he had been
enabled thus to build it. So that it is not for nothing, that the
prophet here expresses the whole Chaldean monarchy by this
city, which was of such incredible strength, glory, and vast
dimensions, that it might well pass for one of the wonders of
the world, and render it almost doubtful whether Babylon
should be accounted in the Chaldean empire, or the Chaldean
empire be said to be in Babylon. The account the world
has had of the Assyrian monarchy, the first and greatest

360 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxiv.
of all the four, is indeed but small and imperfect ; but so far as the
scattered fragments of antiquity have been able to inform us, we
may guess at the unparalleled greatness of the structure, by the
magnificence of its remains. For if we consider the spaciousness
of this city of Babylon, it is reported to have been about four hun
dred and fifty-eight of our English miles in circuit : yea, so exceed
ing wide and ample was it, that three days after it was taken, one
part of the city knew nothing of what had befallen the other. The
wall that encompassed it was two hundred cubits high, and so thick
withal that two coaches might meet upon the breadth of it. It
opened itself at a hundred gates, and those all of brass ; which
whole wall was the work of Nebuchadnezzar, though falsely as
cribed to Semiramis. Add to all this, the horti pensiles, art's
miraculous emulation of nature, that is, vast gardens and woods
planted upon the battlements of towers, and bearing trees fifty foot
in height; such prodigious instances ofthe grandeur of this city
have the most authentic historians, both Greek and Latin, trans-'
mitted to us. So that Nebuchadnezzar might well vaunt himself,
upon the survey of such a mighty structure, as in Daniel iv. 29, 30,
we find that he does to some purpose ; where we have him walking,
in the palace of his kingdom, and thus braving it to himself: "Is
not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of my king
dom, and by the might of my power ?" Words that sufficiently
declare the speaker of them to have little regarded either God or
man. And surely while he uttered them, he thought himself in a
condition rather to rival and defy heaven, than to fear it, and far
above the reach of all woes or curses.
But when God shall send a curse, it shall go with a vengeance,
and make its way into the very heart of Babylon, climb its high
walls, and break through its brass gates, and drive the tyrant
with these very words in his mouth from his throne and all his
imperial glories, to herd it with the- beasts of the field, till a
better mind should fit him for a better condition. For it is worth
our observing, that God takes a peculiar delight to surprise and
seize upon' a great guilt in the height of its pride and bravery,
and in the very midst of all its strengths and presumed securities.
He delights to commission his curse to arrest a bloody Ahab, just
as he is going to take possession of the price of blood, and to
dash out the brains of a murderous Abimelech in the very head
of his army. These are the triumphs of judgment, and the
glorious trophies of blood-revenging justice.
ni. The third thing proposed was, to show the latitude and
extent of this woe or curse, and what is comprehended in it. Con
cerning which there is no doubt but it includes the miseries of
both worlds, present and future. And if we go no further than
the present, it is grievous enough, and made up of these following
ingredients :

A CURSE DENOUNCED AGAINST BLOODSHED. 361
1. That it fastens a general hatred and detestation upon such
men's persons. For cruelty >and bloodiness, armed with power,
is the proper motive and the dreadful object of men's fears ; and
fear and hatred usually keep company ; it being very hard, if
not impossible, to assign that person, who has not the same share
and proportion in men's hatred, that he has in their fears. Eveiy
man flies from such a one, as from a public ruin, or a walking
calamity, who, which way soever he turns himself, both looks
amd brings certain desolation. He converses amongst the living
as an enemy to men's lives : as a sword or a dagger, which the
nearer it comes, the more dangerous it is.
Cruelty alarms and calls up all the passions of human nature,
and puts them into a posture of hostility and defiance. Every
heart swells agaunst a tyrant, as against a common enemy of
mankind, and blood rises at the sight of blood ; and certainly it
is none of the least of miseries for a man to be justly hated ;
for though it be tied up and restrained from its utmost effects,
yet the very breathings of it are malignant, the silent grudgings
and glancings of it are ominous and fatal. A great part of the
happiness of this life is, to enjoy a free and amicable converse
with such as live about us ; and therefore an ingenuous nature
cannot but account it a real plague, to see a cloud in every
countenance he beholds; to observe the black and lowering
aspects of a reserved malice, and, as it were, to read his doom in
every face, and to gather his fortune from another's forehead.
Who so hated as Carin, Nebuchadnezzar, Saul, Herod, and
such other bloodsuckers? All the glory of their power and
magnificence was smothered in the hatred of their cruelty,
deriving a just hatred upon their persons ; for it is the concern
ment of mankind, and of humanity itself, to abhor such destroyers.
He that shows the power he has over men's lives only by taking
them away, must not think to command or reign over their affec
tions. Neither is this hatred without an equal scorn ; for the
same temper that is cruel is also sordid and degenerous, and con
sequently as fit an object for contempt. What so cruel, and withal
so base, as a wolf? But on the other side, true worth and forti
tude is never bloody. Gold, the noblest of metals, is healing
and restorative; and it is only iron, the vilest, with which we
wound and destroy.
Let this therefore be the first ingredient of the woe discharged
against the tyrant and bloody person, to be universally hated and
scorned ; to go no whither, but with a retinue of curses at his
heels ; to be murdered in the wishes, and assassinated in the very
looks of his subjects. He who is a monster, and an exception
from -human nature, may perhaps count this nothing, and say,
with Lucius Sylla, the murdering, proscribing dictator of Rome,
Oderint dum meluant ; but he that is sensible that man was born
for society, that is, to love and to be loved, must in this case look
Vol. IV.— 46 2 H

362 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXIV.
upon himself as an outlaw and an exile from the converse, and
consequently from the felicity and proper enjoyments of man
kind. 2. The second ingredient of the woe here denounced against
bloody persons is, the torment of continual jealousy and suspi
cion. He that is injurious is naturally suspicious; and he that
knows that he deserves enemies, will always suppose that he has
them, and perhaps at length by suspecting come to make them
so. But now, is it not the height of misery thus like a wild
beast still to fear and to be feared ? for the mind to be perpetually
struggling with its own surmises, and first to create torments, and
then to feel them ? The breast of a tyrant is like a sea, it
swallows up and devours others, and is still restless, troubled, and
unquiet in itself. Could Herod the Great be more poorly and
basely unhappy, than to be afraid of poor sucking infants, and not
to think himself safe in the throne, unless he stormed nurseries
and invaded cradles? A kingdom can be desirable upon no other
account, but because it seems to command more of the materials
of happiness, and to afford greater opportunities of satisfaction
to the desires of a rational nature, than can possibly be had
in any inferior condition. But now what real happiness can
that prince or great man find, that has his mind depraved into
such a jealous, suspicious temper? What can all the enjoy
ments of a court or kingdom profit, when the tormentor within
shall embitter them all, and the paleness of fear and death sit
perpetually upon his heart ? What pleasure can it afford to cast
roses into that bosom, that feels the gnawings of the wolf? And
therefore if the tyrant is brought to this pass, as to feel the re
flections of his tyranny over others in that which his own jeal
ousy exercises upon himself, and if his own thoughts plot and
conspire against him, his very diadem is but a splendid mockery,
his throne a rack, and all his royalty nothing else but a great and
magnificent misery.
3. The third ingredient denounced against him that endeavours
to raise and settle a government with blood is, the shortness and
certain dissolution of the government that he endeavours so to
establish. There is no way by which God so usually punishes
villanous designs, as the disappointment of them, by those very
methods and instruments by which they were to have been accom
plished. It is, as I may so say, the great sport of Providence,
to ruin unjust titles and usurped government by their very sup
ports. But of all the means employed by tyrants for this
purpose, there is none so frequently made use of, though none so
often proves fatal to the user, as this of savageness and cruelty •
innocent blood always proving but a bad cement to build the walls
of a city with. For how do such governments pass the world
like so many furious blasts of wind, violent and short! as it were
out of breath and expiring with their own violence. How do

A CURSE DENOUNCED AGAINST BLOODSHED. 363
tyrants, having by much blood and rapine advanced themselves
to the sovereign power of a kingdom, like so many fatal comets
shine and blaize, and fright the world below them, in those upper
regions for a while, but still portend their own downfall and
destruction! For was it not thus with those traitorous captains
of Israel, who kinged themselves by slaying their masters . and
reigning in their stead ? How quickly was their usurped govern
ment at an end ! How soon did they meet with others, who did
the like for them! Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?
Such governments quickly fall and moulder away, like clods dis
solved with blood.
Was it not thus also with Cinna and Marius, and afterwards
with Sylla himself, who had nothing of Dictator Perpetuus but
the name ?
How soon was the family of bloody Saul extinct! And for
Herod the Great, did not the same cruelty, for which he deserved
to be childless, almost make him so ? Arehelaus, the only son he
left, succeeding but to part of his kingdom, and that too but for
a short time. And when afterwards Herod Antipas the tetrarch
was routed and lost all his army in a war with Aretas king of
Arabia ; and when by the subtlety of Agrippa he was outwitted
and outed of all, and also banished, Josephus himself says, that
even the Jews ascribed all this to a divine vengeance upon him
for the barbarous and unjust murder of John the Baptist.
And for the Jews themselves, does not Christ, in the very
same place in which he foretells the ruin and destruction of Je
rusalem, upbraid that bloody city with her " killing God's pro
phets, and stoning those that were sent unto her ?"
And lastly, whereas the high-priest counselled the putting of
Christ to death, lest otherwise the Romans should come upon
them, and destroy both their nation and government ; is it not
evident to any one not obstinately blind, that the very guilt of
his blood brought that destruction upon them from the Romans,
who not long after sacked their city, burnt the temple, killed,
crucified, sold, and dispersed the inhabitants ; that is, used them
as they had used Christ, till at length they took away both their
place and nation ? " Woe to the bloody city," says the prophet, in
Ezek. xxiv. 6.
The sin of blood is a destroying, wasting, murdering sin ;
murdering others, besides those whom it kills ; it breaks the
back of governments, sinks families, destroys for the future,
reaches into successions, and cuts off posterities.
4. The fourth ingredient of the woe here denounced against
the bloody builders of governments, is the sad and dismal end
that usually attends such persons. He that delights to swim in
blood is for the most part at length drowned in it ; and there is
a kind of fatal circulation by which blood frequently wheels
about and returns upon the shedder of it. How did Cyrus the

364 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxiv.
Persian verify this by a peculiar significancy of death, having his
head cut off and thrown into a tub of blood ! How did the
fratricide Romulus die, being torn in pieces by the senate ! How
did Sylla expire in a murdering fit, causing one to be strangled
before him in his chamber, and with that passion so disturbing
himself, and enraging his distemper, that within a few hours he
breathed out his own bloody soul ! And, to come to the sacred
story, how did Samuel treat Agag ? " As thy sword has made
marly childless, so 'shall thy mother be childless amongst women."
And then for Herod the Great, who so barbarously murdered
those poor innocents; he died indeed in his bed, as well as our
late grand regicide ; but with so much horror and disaster, that
for some days before he died he snatched at a knife, to have
murdered, or rather to have killed himself; and so to have done
that, which only wanted another and a higher hand, to have
made it a just execution. But upon none did the revenging
hand of divine justice appear more signally than upon Herod
Agrippa, mentioned in the twelfth of the Acts ; who, to please
the Jews, and thereby to confirm himself in his kingdom, having
slain James, the brother of John, with the sword, proceeded
to take Peter also. But we read in what terrible strange
manner, even in the height of his pride and glory, he was smote
by God, infested with worms, and made a living carcass ; thus
anticipating the effects of death, and suffering the curse of the
grave, before he descended into the ground.
Should I endeavour to give a full rehearsal of all such like
instances, I must transcribe the stories of all times, which are
scarce fuller of pages, than of examples of this kind. Blood
seldom escapes revenge, since it is so easily followed and found out
by its own traces. And thus much for the third thing proposed ;
which was, to show the latitude and extent of the curse or woe
here denounced against bloody persons, and the several plagues
comprehended in it. I come now to the fourth particular,
which is,
IV. To show the reasons why a curse or woe is so peculiarly
denounced against this sin. Many may be assigned, but I shall
produce only these :
1. The first is, because the sin of bloodshed makes the most
direct breach upon human society, of which the providence of
God owns the peculiar care and protection. Concerning which
we must observe, that every man has naturally a right to enjoy
such things as are suitable to, and required by the rational appe
tites of his nature ; in the due and lawful satisfaction of which
properly consists his well-being in this world, which is every
man's birthright by an irrevocable charter from God and nature.
For whosoever is born, has a right to live ; and whosoever has a
right to five, has a right also to live well. Now that men might

A CURSE DENOUNCED AGAINST BLOODSHED. 365
the better secure both their lives or being, and withal compass
such lawful satisfactions to themselves, as should be requisite to
their well-being, they first entered into society, and then, to pre
serve society, put themselves under government. So that the
end of society is a man's enjoyment of himself, and the end of
government is society. For in the first and most natural inten
tion of it, no governor, merely as such, is made absolute lord of
the lives or proprietor of the estates of those whom he governs,
but only a trustee by God to secure them in the free possession
and enjoyment of both. And therefore that governor that wrings
away a mam's estate, or destroys his life, not yet forfeited to the
community he lives in by amy crime, is in God's account a thief
and a murderer, and so shall hereafter be dealt with by him as
such ; though in the mean time, as I said before, neithft reason
nor religion can authorize the subjects to revenge these injuries
upon their governor.
From whence we learn the reason why God so much concerns
himself to punish the unjust shedder of blood ; first, because he
is the great trespasser upon human society, by being destructive
to the lives of men ; and next, because if he who is so, chances
to be a sovereign prince, there is no provision in the ordinary
course of human justice to call such a destroyer to account.
As for the life of man, it is an enjoyment in comparison of
which nature scarce values all others; this is the very apple of
his eye, sensible of the least touch, and irrecoverable after the
first loss. For if a man loses his estate, he may get another, and
if he loses his reputation, he may perhaps recover it ; or if he
cannot, he may live without it, not very happily indeed, but yet
he may live. But if the tyrant takes away his life, there is no
retrieving of that ; this sweeps away being and well-being at one
blow ; the dying man parts with all at one breath, and is but one
remove from annihilation ; not so much as his very thoughts re
maining, but they also perish, Psalm cxlvi. 4. And now when
a tyrant by shedding blood has provoked civil justice, and by
shedding so much has put himself beyond the reach of it, does
not the matter itself seem to appeal to a superior Providence, to
invoke the justice of heaven to make bare its arm in the behalf
of injured and oppressed right ?
Blood certainly shall not go unrevenged, though it be the
greatest Herod that sheds it, and the meanest infant that loses it ;
though whole parliaments and armies shall conspire against the
life of the innocent and the helpless. Briefly, it belongs to God,
as the supreme governor of the world, to revenge such grand and
unnatural violations of the societies of mankind, committed to
the tuition of his providence.
2. The second reason why God so peculiarly denounces a woe
against the sin of bloodiness, is not only for the malignity of the
sin itself, but also for the malignity of those sins that almost al-
2h2

366 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxiv.
ways go in conjunction with it, particularly for the abhorred sins
of fraud, deceitfulness, and hypocrisy. The two great things
that make such a breach upon the peace and settlement of the
world are force and fraud. For all men that are miserable become
so either by being driven or cheated out of their enjoyments.
Hence the Spirit of God, in Psalm lv. 25, joins the bloody and
deceitful man together. And does not Christ himself call Herod,
that murdered John the Baptis*-, " fox ;" a beast notable for his
craft, as well as for sucking of blood ?
If we look into history, we shall scarce find any one remark
ably cruel, who was not also noted for his dissimulation. But
we need not much trouble histories; for has not all the blood
shed amongst us, from the blood of the prince to that of the
peasant, issued from the most devout pretences of reformation ?
Has not the nation been massacred by sanctified murderers, who
came into the field masked with covenants and protestations,
quoting scripture while they cut throats, and singing psalms while
they plundered towns ; destroying their prince's armies and shoot
ing at his person, while in the mean time they swore that they
fought for him ?
But this way and method of proceeding is but natural. For
men must be first deceived out of their guards and defences, be
fore they can be exposed to the utmost violences. The bird must
be caught in the snare, and the fish beguiled with the bait, before
they can be killed.
But now there is scarce any thing that God hates more tho
roughly, and punishes more severely, than deceit and falseness:
for it is most properly a defiance of God; who is always either
solemnly invoved, or at least tacitly supposed, for the great wit
ness of the sincerity of men's dealings : and if men use not truth
in these, the great bond of converse is dissolved. No wonder
therefore if bloodiness draw after it such a woe, having always
such a sin in its company, and if the curse falls heavy, being pro
cured by two of the greatest sins in the closest conjunction.
And thus much for the fourth particular, which was to show
the several ingredients contained within the compass or latitude
of the curse or woe here denounced. I descend now to,
V. The fifth and last, which is, to apply all to this present occa
sion. I show at the beginning, that ever since the creation of
mankind, God has all along manifested such a solicitous care for
the lives of men, the noblest of all his creatures, that he has not
secured them only by severe laws established against murder but
also by making kindness, mercy, and benevolence a great part of
religion ; and of all other religions, has he chiefly woven these
excellent and benign qualities into the very heart and vital con
stitution of Christianity. By how much the more detestable,
and for ever accursed, must those miscreants appear, who have

A CURSE DENOUNCED AGAINST BLOODSHED. 367
slurred and bespattered the best, the purest, and most peaceable
of all religions, by entitling it to all the rapines they have acted,
and all the blood they have imbrued their hands in, as shed by
the immediate impulse of God's Spirit, and for the defence and
preservation of religion! How much this nation has been con
cerned in this black charge, we need no other argument than this
fatal day to convince us ; on which was acted the most disloyal,
barbarous, and inhuman piece of villany, and that with all the so
lemn disguises of piety and religion, that mortal men were ever
yet guilty of, since there was such a thing as sovereignty acknow
ledged, or such a thing as religion professed upon the face of the
earth. But to show further how close and home the subject-matter
of the text comes to the business of this annual solemnity, we
will survey the correspondence that is between them, as to the
three main things contained in the words. The first was a
charge of unjust effusion of blood. The second was the end or
design for which it was shed, namely, the setting up of a govern
ment. And the third and last was a woe or curse denounced
against the person that endeavours to establish himself by such a
course. As for the first, we must know, that all unjust bloodshed is
twofold. 1. Either, public, and acted by and upon a community,
as in warr. Or, 2. Personal, in the assassination of any parti
cular man.
1. As for that which is public ; it is as certain, that he who
takes away a man's life in a war, commenced upon an unjust cause,
and without just authority, is as truly a murderer, as he that en
ters his neighbour's house, and there stabs him within his own
walls. And as for the late war, upon the account of all laws
both of God and man, whether we respect the cause for which it
was raised, which was, the removal of grievances, where there
were none, or the persons that carried it on, who were subjects
armed against their prince, it was in all the parts and circum
stances of it a perfect, open, and most barefaced rebellion. For
not all the Calvins, Bezas, Knoxes, Buchanans, or Paraeus's in
Christendom, with all their principles of anarchy and democracy,
so studiously maintained in their respective writings, can by any
solid reason make out the lawfulness of subjects taking arms
against their prince. For if government be the effect and pro
duct of reason, it is impossible for disobedience to found itself
upon reason : and therefore our rebels found it necessary to balk
and decry this, and to fetch a warrant for all their villanies from
ecstasy and inspiration. But besides, if we translate the whole
matter from the merit of the cause to that of the person, no peo
ple under heaven had less ground to complain of, much less to
fight against their prince, than the English then had, who at that
time swimmed in a full enjoyment of all things but a thankful

368 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxiv.
mind ; no prince's reign having ever put subjects into a condition
so like that of princes, as the peaceable part of the reign of king
Charles the First ; which indeed was the true cause that made them
kick at those breasts that fed them, and strike at that royal oak un
der whose shadow they enjoyed so much ease, plenty, and prosperity.
2. The other sort of unjust bloodshed is, the assassination of
particular persons : and had not our bloodsuckers their slaughter
houses and courts of mock justice, as well as the high places of
the field, to act their butcheries upon? Strafford and Canter
bury lead the way, both as forerunners of, and introductions to
the shedding of a more sacred blood, the stain of which will dye
the English calendar for ever, and the cry of which sober persons
much fear continues still, and rings aloud in heaven, whatsoever
arts have been used, and still are, to silence it here on earth.
For it was the blood of one, who had those two things eminently
in conjunction, either of which alone should be a sufficient safe
guard to the life of him that has them, to wit, innocence and
sovereignty. For innocence ought to protect the life of the
meanest subject, and sovereignty to secure the person of the
highest criminal. But we scorn that word when we speak of
this blessed martyr, whose virtues were larger than his dominions,
and will make his enemies more infamous than their own vices.
Blood therefore we see has been shed amongst us to some
purpose : the first thing in which the text is answered by the
business of this day.
The second was, the end or design for which the blood here
spoken of was shed, namely, the erecting or setting up of a
government. And was not the very same thing driven at by
all our pious murderers? For out of the ruins of a glorious
church and monarchy, and all those slaughtered heaps of men
sacrificed to the cause of loyalty on one side, and of rebellion on
the other, did there not at length rise up a misshapen monstrous
beast, with many heads, called a commonwealth ; a pack of in
solent, beggarly tyrants, who lorded it as long as they were able,
till at length they were forced to surrender and pass over all their
usurped power into the hands of their great Beelzebub, the
prime rebel and regicide, by whom they had done all their
mighty works? And so their commonwealth wheeled about
again into a monarchy. All those rivulets of tyranny, as it were
emptying and discharging themselves into that great gulf or
dead sea of all baseness, cruelty, and hypocrisy: a fellow that
had torn and trampled upon all those obligations, either civil or
sacred, by which human society does subsist; who by abusing
religion, breaking oaths, mocking of God, and murdering his
prince, at length grasped the sovereign power of these three
kingdoms, and then called himself their protector, with the same
truth and propriety that a wolf or a bear may be said to protect
the flocks they worry and tear in pieces.

A CURSE DENOUNCED AGAINST BLOODSHED. 369
So then the parallel we see holds good thus far; that our
villains reared themselves a government by the blood they shed,
as well as those mentioned by the prophet in the text.
And now, in the third and last place, have they not, think we,
also as full a right and title to the woe and curse there denounced
in the same words ? Yes, assuredly ; there being no persons,
under heaven that more deserved to drink off the very dregs of
God's vengeance, amd to empty all his quivers, than these mon
sters did.
As for the curse that befell these bloody builders of govern
ment, I show, that it manifested itself eminently in two respects.
1. In the shortness of the government so set up. And was it
long that these murderers of their prince possessed the govern
ment they so usurped ? Within five years their infant common
wealth expired ; and in five years more Cromwell's mushroom
monarchy was at an end, in spite of all the prophecies of those
impostors, that would lengthen out his life and government out
of Damiei and the Revelations, telling him, that there was thirty
years' more generation-work (as they canted it) cut out for him ;
and that it was contrary to the methods of Providence, having
raised up such an extraordinary instrument, to lay him aside, tih
he had finished his work. But God, who understood his own
counsels better than such saucy interpreters, knew that this
wretch had disturbed the world too long already ; and so in his
good time sent him to his own place.
2. Another part of the curse attending the- bloody raisers of
government, was the general hatred that always follows such
persons. And of this I think our usurpers had as large a portion
as ever light upon the heads of mortal men. For in the most
flourishing estate of all their greatness they were encompassed
with curses as well as armies ; men being scarce able to keep
down the inward boilings of revenge, and to restrain their
tongues and hands from ministering to that fulness of hatred that
swelled within their hearts. Men hated them even in the behalf
of human nature, and for the vindication of common humanity.
And still so much and so justly abhorred are they, that all the
pardons and indulgences, all the good words, all the great offices
and preferments, that can be bestowed upon them, will never be
able to sweeten their memory, nor rescue them from the detesta
tion of all sober persons and true lovers of their country. And
the truth is, to speak the severest words of these vipers, is not,
as some call it, a sacrificing to any personal heat or private re
venge ; but a real serving of the public interest of society, and
the doing an act of mere charity to the innocent and to posterity,
who, by hearing with what abhorrence such miscreants are men
tioned, will dread the imitation of those villanies, that have de
rived such an odium and infamy upon the actors of them. Nor
can I think that any one can concern himself against the ripping
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370 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxiv.
up, of the baseness of the king's murderers, even in the harshest,
that is, the most proper terms, but such as have been either the
relations, officers, or servants of that grand regicide, and conse
quently, whose unlimited puritan consciences will equally serve
them to act and thrive under any government whatsoever.
But it is well that there is a punishment for villains in the
general hatred of mankind ; and this is the lot, this the punish
ment of our rebels : but as for any other penalties, that use to
descend upon traitors and murderers from the hand of human
vengeance, these they have for the most part escaped, as having
rebelled under a lucky star, which has prospered their villanies
and secured their persons in this world, till the great Judge of
all things shall recognize the cause of abused majesty and religion
in another, and there award such a sentence upon the violators
of them, as shall demonstrate to men and angels, that verily God
is righteous : " doubtless there is a God that judgeth the world.",
To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise,
might, majesty, and dominion both now and for evermore
Amen.

371
SERMON XXV.
the design of Christ's incarnation.
1 John iii. 8.=
For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might
destroy the works ofthe devil.
There is nothing that contributes so much to the right
understanding, of the nature of any thing or action, as a true
notion of the proper end amd design of it; the ignorance of
which bereaves rnatnkind of many of the blessings of heaven;
because oftentimes while they enjoy the thing, they yet mistake
its use ; and so pervert the intentions of mercy, and become
miserable amidst the very means of happiness. Certainly there
fore it concerns men infinitely, not to entertain an error about
the greatest of God's favours, and the very masterpiece of his
goodness, the sending of his Son into the world. The meaning
of which providence, should we misconstrue, we should frustrate ;
our grand and last remedy, and perish, not for want, but for
misapplication of the means of life. Wherefore this divine
apostle, who had been honoured with so near an admittance into
his master's mind, and lain so familiarly in the bosom of •truths-
endeavours to give the world a right information about this so
great and concerning affair in this chapter, and - particularly in
these words ; in which we have these two parts.
I. An account of Christ's coming into the world, in this ex
pression ; " The Son of God was manifested. ?'
II. The end and design of his coming ; which was to " destroy
the works ofthe devil."
I. As for the first of these, the manifestation qf the Son of God,
though it principally relates to the actual coming of Christ into
the world, according to my application of it to the present pur
pose, yet it is a term of a larger comprehension; and so ought
to carry our notice both to passages before and after his nativity.
For as in the coming of a prince, or great person, to any place,
the pomp of harbingers and messengers is, as it were, some
appearance of him before he is seen ; so Christ declared himself
at vast distances of time, by many semblances and intimations,
enough to raise, though not to satisfy the world's expectation.
We shall find him first exhibited in promises, and those as
early as the first need of a Saviour, even immediately after the
fall ; by such a hasty provision of mercy, that there might be no

372 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxv.
dark interval between man's misery and his hope of recovery ;
Gen. iii. 15, " The seed of the woman shall break the serpent's
head." He was afterwards further shadowed out in types and
sacrifices, and such other emblems and arts of signification ; still
with this method of proceeding, that the manifestation brightened
and grew greater and greater, according to the nearer and nearer
approach of the full discovery.
He that at first was known only as the seed of the woman,
was in process of time known to be the seed of Abraham, Gen.
xxii. 18. And after that, the seed of David, in Isaiah xi. 1.
And from thence proceeding to greater particularities relating to
the manner of his coming, he was known to be born of a virgin,
Isaiah vii. 14. And for the place where; to be born at Beth
lehem, Micah v. 2. And for his person and condition, that he
should be " a man of sorrows," Isaiah liii. 3. And that he
should suffer and die for sin, ver. 8. That he should rise again,
Psalm xvi. 10. That he should ascend into heaven, amd lead
captivity captive, &c, Psalm lxviii. 18. That he should reign
till he had subdued his enemies, and saw the world brought
under him, Psalm ex. 1. Thus by a continual gradation the
promise advanced itself with further steps and increases, " shin
ing more and more unto a perfect day ;" displaying fresh and
fuller discoveries through the several ages of the world ; every
new degree of manifestation being a mercy great enough to
oblige an age.
But when at length prophecy ripened into event, and shadows
gave way upon the actual appearance of the substance, in the
birth of Christ, yet then, though the Son of God could be but
once born, he ceased not to be frequently manifested : there was
a choir of angels to proclaim his nativity, and a new star to be
his herald ; the wise men of the east came to worship a new sun,
where they saw and acknowledged the first miracle of his birth,
a star appearing when the sun was up. When he disputed with
the doctors, every argument was a demonstration of his deity;
and during the whole course of his ministry, all the mighty
works he did were further manifestations of a divine nature
wrapped up in the flesh ; even his death proved that there was
something in him that could not die ; and the very effects of
mortality, by a strange antiperistasis, declared him to be immor
tal, 1 Pet. iii. 18, " Put to death in the flesh, but quickened by
the Spirit." And lastly, after all this, the perfection and height
of evidence shone forth in the stupendous passage of his resur
rection ; in which, according to the apostle Paul's phrase, Rom.
i. 4, he was " declared to be the Son of God with power." God
made it his business to show him publicly, to hold him up to be
seen, admired, and believed in. Every thing that concerned him
was writ in capital letters, and such as might not only entertain,
but help the sight.

373
Now upon the strength of this consideration it is, that we
pronounce the Jews inexcusable for persisting in their unbelief.
Concerning which as we are to observe, that in order to the con
vincing of men's belief, it is not only required that the proposition,
proposed to be believed, be in itself true, but that it also appear
such ; so Christy to comply with the strictest methods of human
reason, asserted his being the Son of God with such invincible
arguments, that he was manifested" to be so ; yea, and to that
degree, that the Jews' rejection of him is not stated upon igno
rance, or the cause of it want of evidence in the thing that they
were to know; but upon the malice and depravation of their
wills acting counter to their knowledge, in John xv. 24: "If I
had not done amongst them the works which no other man did,
they had not had sin : but now they have both seen and hated
both me and my Father." It was not a blind hatred ; they saw
well enough what they did ; they had an open, as well as an evil
eye ; a resolved obstinacy to outlook the sun, and outstare the
fight. For so was Christ, he was the light of the world ; and nothing
is more manifest or visible than that which manifests both itself
amd all things else ; and needs no invitation to the eye, but will
certainly enter, unless it be forcibly kept out. But they were
purposed not to believe their eyes ; to question whether it was
day when the sun shined ; to doubt whether he that did the
works of God was sent by God ; whether miracles could prove
any thing, or signs could signify ; and lastly, whether he that
fulfilled all prophecies was intended by them. It is clear there
fore, that the Jews rejected the Son of God, not because he was
not manifested, but because they delighted to be ignorant, and
to be sceptics and unbelievers even in spite of evidence.
And thus much for the first thing, the manifestation of the
Son of God.
at II. Pass we now to the next, which is, the end of his manifes
tation, " that he might destroy the works of the devil." In the
prosecution of which I shall first show, 1. What were those
works of the devil that the Son of God destroyed : and 2. The
means and ways by which he destroyed them.
1. For the first of these. I reduce the works of the devil,
destroyed by the manifestation of the Son of God, to these three ;
1. Delusion. 2. Sin. 3. Death. There is a natural coherence
and concatenation between these: for.' sin being a voluntary action,
and so the issue of the will, presupposes a default in the under
standing, which was to conduct the will in its choices : and then
when the delusion and inadvertency of the understanding has be
trayed the will to sin, the consequent and effect of sin is death.
Christ therefore, that came to repair the' breaches, and cure the
miseries of human nature, and to redeem it from that frenzy into
21

374 dr. south's posthumous sermons [serm. xxv
which it had cast itself, designs the removal and conquest of al
these three.
(1.) And first for delusion. The devil, as his masterpiece and
first art of ruining mankind, was busy to sow the seeds of erroi
and fallacy in the guide of action, their understanding. And
surely he has not gained higher trophies over any faculty of
man's nature than this. For where, upon the survey of the
world lying under Gentilism, can we find truth even in principles
of speculation, but much less in those of practice ?
As for the first fundamental thing, the originad of nature and
the beginning of the world ; what dissonant and various opinions
may we find, and consonant in nothing but their absurdity !
Some will not allow it to have had any beginning ; others refer
it to accident. And those who acknowledge it to have been effi
ciently framed and produced by an infinite eternal mind, yet
assert the matter and rude chaos out of which he framed it, to
have been as old, or rather as eternal as the artificer. Thus
ridiculously making two eternals, and one of them infinitely imper
fect ; whereas the very notion of eternity and self-existence, pur-
( sued into its due consequences, must of necessity infer an infinite
perfection in all other respects whatsoever. For all imperfection
and finiteness proceeds from the restraint of a superior cause ; and
what cause could limit that which had no cause ; and keep that
which had its being from itself, from having all the perfections of
being ?
And for the principles of practice they were equally ridiculous
and uncertain. Some fixed the chief good of man in pleasure,
some in contemplation, and some thrust the means into the place
of the end, and made the chief good of man to act virtuously;
whereas indeed the chief good was to enjoy God, and the way
to attain it was to act virtuously. And then if you would know
what they understood by acting virtuously, you would find them
stating the rates of virtue so, that many actions were taken into
that number, which we account vicious and unwarrantable.
Ambition was an excellent thing amongst them, and an insatiable
desire of honour a current virtue. Lust, if it did not proceed
to adultery, that is, to a downright act of injustice, was accounted
a very innocent and allowable recreation. In a word, they were
at an infinite loss where to state the ground and reason of men's
actions, and all their practical maxims were deficient at least, if
not unjust.
And for those that acknowledged God for the end of all that
they were to do, yet did they pursue the enjoyment of that end
by means any ways suitable or proportionable to it? Did they
worship him as God ? No, we know that " they waxed vain in
their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened :" they
changed the glory of the eternal, all- wise, incorruptible God,
into the images of silly, sinful, mortal men ; nay, and what is

THE DESIGN OT CHRIST'S INCARNATION. 375
yet more incredible and intolerable, into the similitude of beasts,
and fowls, and creeping things. All this time worshipping the
"works of their own hands, or at least using them as instruments of
worship and proper conveyances of divine adoration to God him
self, held forth to them by such ways of representation; which
was a great absurdity in reason, a great impiety in religion, and
a horrible injury amd affront to the Deity; for could any thing
be more injurious, than that men should take their notions of
God from such resemblances; and then depress their religious
worship of him to the proportion of those notions ?
Now all this was done by the wisest of the heathens, by the phi
losophers, the sages, the governors and teachers of the rest of the
world ; and if these could so degenerate and ride down their reason
to such a strange weakness and deception, what can we think of
the rout and the vulgar, who could not salve their idolatry with art
and distinction ? They certainly were in outer darkness, in such
thick " darkness as might be felt." Their priests' images were
their realities ; and what they saw with their eyes they worshipped
with their heart, thinking of no bther Deity but what shined upon
them in the golden statue or the curious picture ; still raising their
devotion as the skill of the engraver had advanced the object.
But then, since the exercise of virtue is not to be bound upon
men's consciences (at least respecting the generality of men) but
by hopes and fears grounded upon the proposal of future rewards
and punishments ; if we look further and consider how they
acquitted themselves in giving an account of these to the world,
we need require no further account of the error and delusion
under which the devil had sealed them. All the reward they
proposed to virtue, even in its greatest austerities, self-denials,
and forbearances, was to live for ever in the Elysian fields. A
goodly reward indeed ; a man must forego many of his pleasures,
defy his clamorous appetites, and submit to many inconveniences
i% pursuing the rigidum honestum, the harshnesses of virtue :
and afterwards, for all this, we shall he gratified with taking a
turn now and then in a fair meadow.
And then the punishments they designed for ill lives were no
ways inferior in point of unlikelihood and absurdity : as the fill
ing of tubs full of holes, which let out the water as fast as it was
poured in. The rolling of a great stone up a steep mountain,
which perpetually returned back upon the person that forced it
upwards. The being whipped with snakes by three furies. The
being bound hand and foot upon a rock, and having one's liver
gnawed by a vulture ; still growing and renewing itself according
as it was devoured. These and such like old wives' and old
poets' fables, they amused the world withal : which could keep
nobody that was witty from being wicked: all awe and dread
vanishing upon the discovery of such ill-contrived cheats, such
thin and transparent fallacies.

376 DR. SOIft-H's POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXV.
Yet this was the economy of the religion of the Gentiles
before the coming of the Messiah : and for that little handful of
men, that God chose from the rest of the world, to impart his
law to them, the church of the Jews : even this, some time
before the birth of Christ, was like an enclosed garden overrun
with weeds, the very influences it lived under being noxious and
pestilential. Their fountains were poisoned : their teachers were
only so many authentic perverters of the law ; so many doctors
of heresy and immorality ; abusing the authority of Moses while
they sat in his chair. So that there was a kind of universal error
and delusion, and that in matters of the greatest importance,
spread over all nations, by that diligent, indefatigable enemy of
truth and mankind, the devil. This being his groundwork to
delude men's apprehensions, that so he might command their
services : and so blind were their eyes, that he might lead them
whither he would.
(2.) The second great work of the devil to be destroyed by the
manifestation of the Son of God, was sin. It were a sad story
to give a full account of this. For the truth is, the devil deceived
men only for this cause, to make them sinful. And such was his
cursed success in this attempt, and the vile fertility of this ill
thing brought by him into the world, that it conveyed a general
infection into all the faculties of man: so that at length "the
thoughts of his heart were evil, and only evil, and that con
tinually," Gen. vi. 5. It had so corrupted and fouled the world,
that it put God to attempt the cleansing of it by a deluge. But
neither so was the work effected ; for after so many sinners were
cashiered, yet sin still survived, and grew and multiplied, like a
plant rather watered only than drowned ; thriving and increasing
as fast as those that peopled the world by a commission and com
mand from heaven.
It would be a fearful sight to see those sins that have stained
man's nature ranked into their several kinds and degrees, and
displayed in their filthy colours : to see one nation branded with
one vice, another nation notorious for another ; and each in some
degree tainted with all. St. John tells us, that " the whole world
lies in wickedness," 1 John v. 19. And St. Paul gives us
a large account of the vices of the Gentile world, in Rom. i.,
from the 26th verse to the end of the chapter. They were
possessed with vile affections, acted by unnatural lusts, delivered
over to a reprobate mind, " being filled with all unrighteousness,
fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy,
murder, debate, deceit, malignity," &c. And for a concluding
epiphonema, it is said of them in the last verse, that "knowing
the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are
worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in those
that do them." And certainly for men to take pleasure not only
in their own sins, but also in the sins of other men, is the very

377
height and perfection of an overgrown impiety : yet thus far were
they arrived. Every one delighted to see the sin of his own
temper amd practice exemplified, and so in a manner counte
nanced by another mam's behaviour: to see himself transcribed,
and his vice propagated into the manners of those that were
about him.
And to proceed further, their vice did not only reign in their
ordinary converse, but also got into their divine worship : and as
before I show that they worshipped their gods idolatrously and
foolishly; so their histories tell us that they worshipped them
also viciously: revels, drunkenness, and lasciviousness, were the
peculiar homage and religious service that they performed to
them. What were their bacchanalia, but solemn debauches in
honour of a drunken deity ? And the rites of their bona dea, in
which Publius Clodius was deprehended under the habit of a
womaui, were transacted with so much filth amd villanous im
purity, that they are scarce to be thought of without a trespass
upon modesty. Now certainly if these courses could propitiate
or please their deities, there could be no such dishonour or
defiance to them, as the practices of virtue and sobriety.
We see here to what a maturity sin was grown amongst the
heathens : and amongst the Jews it was not much shortened in
its progress. For what are all the writings of the prophets, but
so many loud declarations of the prevailing sway that sin had
amongst them ? How does Isaiah complain, that " the faithful
city was become an harlot!" Isaiah i. 21. How does Jeremy
bemoan himself, that he was constrained to dwell and converse
with so much impiety in ch. ix. 2 ; "Oh that I had in the wilder
ness a lodging place of wayfaring men, that I might leave mjr\
people, and go from them : for they be all adulterers, an assembly
of treacherous men." And again, in verse 4, " Take ye heed
every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother ; for
every brother will utterly supplant." It seems there was scarce
truth and sincerity enough amongst them to serve the common
intercourses of society and human life. The truth is, he that
fully enlarges himself upon this theme must be endless and
infinite, and declaim to eternity. But now when such an enor
mous corruption of manners had seized upon the church, to
whom was committed the law of God, and the living oracles, and
. all the meatus of instruction to piety and virtue, and whatsoever
was excellent ; what was to be expected, but that God should
either destroy or reform the world ?
And therefore having pitched upon the latter, it was now full
time for him to send his Son, to cleanse this Augaean stable, to
purge away the dross of the world ; for this was the design of his
coming, Mai. iii. 2, 3, " to be like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's
soap, to purify the sons of Levi, and to purge them as gold and
silver ;" and if it were possible, to recover the world to its former
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378 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxv.
innocence, or at least to such a degree of it, as to break the
sceptre and kingdom of the wicked one, who triumphed in the
possession that he had got of men's hearts, by the sin that dwelt
there, and' raged in their lives.
Would we know the great purpose that brought Christ out of
his Father's bosom, and clothed him with the infirmities and
meannesses of our nature, and made him submit to all the indigni
ties that an obscure birth, an indigent life, and an ignominious
death could bring upon him? Why it was not through these
miseries to acquire a crown, and to advance his glory ; for this he
had by an eternal birthright, beyond any increase or addition;
and his glorification did not so much invest him with any new
honour, as restore to him his old. But all this long and miracu
lous scene of transactions was to redeem poor mortal men from
the beloved bonds and shackles of their sins, to disenslave them
from the tyranny of ruling corruptions ; to dispossess the usurper,
and to introduce the kingdom of God, by setting it up first in
men's minds ; to recover all their faculties to the liberty of inno
cence and purity ; and so, in a word, to restore men both to God
and to themselves.
Now if this were the grand design of Christ's coming into the
world, to conquer and destroy sin ; certainly it concerns us not
to celebrate the memory of that coming by any thing that may
contradict the design of it. To be vain, and dissolute, and
intemperate, are strange commemorations of his nativity, who
was born into the world to make men otherwise. It is indeed
such a solemnity as is the proper and deserved object of our joy ;
but then it is to be such a joy as is in heaven, of which divine
love is the principle, and purity the chief ingredient. And thus
much for the second grand work of the devil, which Christ was
manifested to destroy, namely sin.
(3.) The third and last is death, the inseparable concomitant
of the former. This is the devil's triumphing work, by which
he vaunts and shows forth the spoils of our conquered nature,
the marks and trophies of this unhappy victory. For since the
first entrance of sin into the world, death has dwelt amongst us,
and continued, and with a perpetual, irresistible success prevailed
over us. Rom. v. 12, " Sin entered into the world, and death by sin ;
and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Sin,
as it were, opened the sluice, and death immediately, like a mighty
torrent, rushed in, and overwhelmed the world. Or like a com
manding enemy it invaded mankind with a ruining, destructive
army following it. Plagues, fevers, catarrhs, consumptions,
shame, poverty, and infinite accidental disasters ; and the rear of
all brought up with death eternal.
But now Christ, intending to be a perfect Saviour, came to
destroy this enemy also ; for the apostle tells us in 1 Cor. xv. 26,
that the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Where

THE DESIGN OF CHRIST'S INCARNATION. 379
yet it is not to be understood, that this benefit of Christ is to
extend to all men ; but to those only who should believe, and be
renewed by the Spirit, and become the sons of God ; these are
the persons " over whom the second death shall have no power."
For since this deliverance proceeds upon the conditions of faith
and obedience, those who reach not these conditions, are not at
all concerned in it ; but remaining in sin, are consigned over to
death. But some will say, do not saints and believers die as well
as the wicked and unbelievers ? I answer, that though they do,
yet the sting of death is taken away ; so that from a curse, it is
made a means to translate them to a better life ; and that sick
ness, misery, or temporal death, that has nothing of curse or
punishment in it, but, on the contrary, ends in that that gives an
end to all misery, according to the estimate of God, comes not
into the accounts of death. And this is sufficient to render
Christ truly and properly a conqueror of death ; that he actually
conquers and destroys it in some, and has it in his power to do it
in all others, would they but come up to those terms upon which
only he is pleased to do it.
And thus I have shown what those works of the devil are,
for the destruction of which the Son of God was manifested.
2. I come now to the last thing proposed, which is to show,
what are the ways and means by which he destroys them.
Where we must observe, that as those works of the devil were
three, so Christ encounters them by those three distinct offices
belonging to him as mediator.
(1.) As a prophet, he destroys and removes that delusion that
had possessed the world, by those divine and saving discoveries of
truth exhibited in the doctrine and religion promulged by him.
The apostle tells the Athenians, that before the coming of Christ
God winked at the ignorance and idolatry that had blinded the
Gentiles ; but after his coming, " commanded all men every
where to repent," Acts xvii. 30. And in ch. xiv. 15, he tells the
men of Lystra, that the design of his preaching was, " that they
should turn from those vanities unto the living God." And still
we find, that according as the gospel found reception and success,
men began to be undeceived,* and to shake ^off the yoke of their
former delusions. In Acts xix. 19 we find, that upon the
preaching of the gospel, those that were addicted to magic and
conjuration, brought their books, though of never so great value,
and burnt them publicly, as a sacrifice to the honour of Christ,
and a solemn owning of the efficacy of that religion. And
again, in 2 Tim. i. 10, the apostle tells us, that it was " Christ
that brought life and immortality to light." The heathens'
notion about the future estate of souls was absurd and fantastic ;
and that which the Jews had was but dim and obscure : but
Christ cleared it up to mankind, under evidence and demonstra
tion ; " he uttered things kept secret from the foundation of the

380 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxv.
world ; he unlocked and opened the cabinet of God's hidden
counsels, and has afforded means to enlarge men's knowledge in
proportion to their concernment.
In a word, the doctrine of Christ gives the best account of
the nature of God and of the nature of man; of the first
entrance of sin into the world, and of its cure and remedy: of
those terms upon which God will transact with mankind; and
upon which men must approach to God in point of worship, and
depend upon him in reference to rewards. And this is the
circle of knowledge necessary and sufficient to make mankind
what they so much desire to be, happy. Which if it be sought
for any where but in the discoveries of Christianity, it is like
seeking for the living amongst the dead : or the expectation of a
vintage from a field of thistles. All that the philosophers teach
about these things is either falsity or conjecture ; and so tends
either to make men sinful, or at the best unsatisfied. But Christ
was to be " a light to the Gentiles," and there is no cozenage in
the light, no fallacy in the day ; wheresoever he shines, mists
presently vanish, and delusions disappear.
(2.) As for the second work of the devil, sin, this the Son of
God destroyed as a priest, by that satisfaction that he paid down
for it ; and by that supply of grace that he purchased, for the
conquering and rooting it out of the hearts of believers. By
the former he destroys the guilt of sin, by the latter the power.
Christ when he was in his lowest condition, suffering upon the
cross as a malefactor, even then he broke the chief support of
the devil's kingdom, and triumphed over his strongest principality,
in cashiering the guilt and loosing the bands of sin by a full ex
piation. Sin that has so much venom in it as to poison a whole
creation, to kindle an eternal fire and an unsupportable wrath,
to shut up the bowels of an infinite mercy to poor perish
ing creatures, and in a word to overturn and confound the
whole universe ; yet being once satisfied for, it is a weak and
harmless thing : it is a lion without teeth, or a snake without a
sting. But none could make it so but the Son of God, the
eternal high priest of souls, who exhausted the guilt and full
measure of its malignity, by a superabundant ransom given for
sinners to the offended justice of his Father.
(3.) As for the third and last work of the devil, which is
death ; this Christ, as he is a king, destroys by his power : for
it is he that has " the keys of life and death, opening where none
shuts, and shutting where none opens:" this even amongst men
is the peculiar prerogative of- princes. At the command of
Christ " the sea shall give up its dead," the graves shall open,
and deliver up their trust ; and all the devourers of nature shall
make a faithful restitution. And surely this is that which should
comfort every Christian when he is upon his death-bed, and about

THE DESIGN OF CHRIST'S INCARNATION. 381
to lay his head upon a pillow of dust, and to take his long sleep,
that he has the greatest ground in the world to expect that he
shall rise again, if an omnipotence can awaken him, if the eternal
Son of God can snap asunder the bonds of death, and if the
word of the King of kings can give him assurance of all this.
Christ has fully finished the work for which he 'was manifested ;
he has vanquished the devil, beat down all his forts, frustrated
his stratagems; and so having delivered his elect, in spite of
delusion, sin, and death, and all other destructive contrivances
for the ruin of souls ; as a king and a conqueror he is set down
at the .right hand of the Most High, receiving the homage of
praises and hallelujahs from saints and angels, who are continually
saying, " Blessing, honour, glory, and power, be unto him that
sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever."
To whom with the Father, and the Holy Ghost, do we also
render and ascribe, as is most due, all praise, might, ^majesty, and
dominion, both now and for ever. Amen.

382

SERMON XXVI.
the visit of the wise men to jerusalem.
Matthew ii. 3.
And when Herod the king heard these things, he was troubled, and
all Jerusalem with him.
Though all the works of God, even the most common, and
such as every day meet our senses in the ordinary course of na
ture, carry in them a grandeur and magnificence great enough to
entertain the observation of the most curious, and to raise the
admiration of the most knowing ; yet it has stiff been the method
of divine providence to point out extraordinary events and pas
sages with some peculiar characters of remark ; such as may
alarm the minds and engage the eyes of the world, in a more
exact observance of, and attention to, the hand of God, in such
great changes. And very observable it is, that the alteration of
states and kingdoms, the rise and dissolution of governments, the
birth and death of persons eminent in their generations, have for
the most part been signalized with some unusual phenomena in
nature ; sometimes in the earth, sometimes in the sea, and some
times in the heavens themselves : God thereby showing that the
great affairs of the world proceed not without his own particular
notice ; and therefore certainly ought much more to challenge
ours. And of this method of providence, as the reason on
God's part cannot but be most wise, so on man's (the more is our
just shame) it is no less than necessary: for that natural prone
ness in most men to irreligion seems to gather strength from
nothing more than from an observation of the constant uninter
rupted course of nature, from which some are but too ready to
think, whatsoever they speak, that nature is its own god, because
they never see it controlled ; that things always were, and always
will be, as now they are ; and, in a word, that the world is un
changeable, when they do not see it changed. God therefore is
sometimes pleased to interpose with a high hand, and to vary the
usual course of nature, thereby to convince mankind, that this
great fabric is not an automaton, so as to move itself: nor yet
unaccountable, so as to acknowledge no superior law : but that
it acts, or is rather acted by that eternal Spirit, and governed by
that almighty and all-wise Artificer, that can order, govern, trans
pose, and, if occasion requires, take asunder the parts of it, as in
his infinite wisdom he shall judge fit.

THE VISIT OF THE WISE MEN TO JERUSALEM. 333
But of all the strange passages and prodigies by which God
introduced great persons into the world, none were so notable as
those that ushered in the nativity of this glorious first-born of
the creation, our blessed Saviour. And indeed great reason it
was, that he that was Lord of heaven should have his descending
into the flesh graced and owned with the testimonies of stars and
angels, one shining and the other singing at so great a blessing
coming upon mankind. Accordingly the evangelist in this chap
ter makes it his design and business to recount some of those
notable circumstances that attended our Saviour's birth, which
we may reduce to these two heads.
I. The solemn address and homage made to him by the wise
men of the east.
II. Herod's behaviour thereupon.
I. For the first of these, there are in this general passage these
particulars considerable.
1. Who and what those wise men were.
2. From whence they came.
3. About what time they came to Jerusalem.
4. What that star was that appeared to them.
5. How they could collect our Saviour's birth by that star.
Of each of which in their order.
1. And for the first of these. The persons here rendered
" wise men" (and that certainly with great truth and judgment)
are in the Greek termed pdyoi, and in the Latin magi. The
origination of which word some take from the Hebrew radix,
signifying, in the participle benoni in hiphil, one that meditates or
mutters. Some from a Syro-Arabic word, signifying explorare
or scrutari. Others from a Persian word, but what that word is
none pretends to know : though since it is probable that these
magi did first exist amongst the Persians, it is also not improbable
but that both name and thing might have their original in the
same place.
As for the use of the word, it is different. As first it was
taken, doubtless, not only in an honest, but also in an honourable
sense ; and the magia of the ancients was nothing else but a pro
found insight into all truth, natural, political, and divine. So
that Suidas gives this account of the word, i*dyot ?topa nlpsatj oi
$i%6ao$oi, they were the Persian philosophers. And that they were
divines also is clear ; for Xenophon, in his 8th book rtspi Kupw
Ttai&tias, commends the piety of Cyrus and his care of religion, for
his appointing magi to preside in their sacred choirs, and to manage
the offering of sacrifices, rots npZitov xattotdSvaav ol fidyoi ijivnv tovt
©toIs, &c. And that this also was a name given to such as were
skilled in politic matters is no less evident ; for the great counsellors
of the Persian kings were called magi ; and Cicero affirms, in his

384 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXVI.
third book De Naturd Deorum, that none were ever admitted to the
Persian throne, but such as had been thoroughly instructed and
trained up by these magi. For as Plato says, in his Alcibiades, it
was their work, fiaaaixa SiSdaxciv, to teach and instil into them the
arts of government. -
Now this discourse is only to show, that the acception of the
word amongst the Greeks and Latins, and other modern lan
guages that speak after them, by which magus signifies no better
than a wizard or conjurer, is through abuse and degeneration ;
the ill practices of some who wore this name, having by little and
little disgraced the name itself into a bad sense.
As for the acception df it here by our evangelist, I doubt. not
but it is in a good sense, and that the persons here spoken of were
great scholars, men well studied in the works of nature, and pro
bably most seen in the mysteries of astrology, the chief and prin
cipal part of the eastern learning. For the proof of which this
observation is very considerable, that the word i^Y01 applied to
the Latins, Greeks, or Egyptians themselves, is for the most
part used in a bad, sense ; but the same authors applying it to
the Chaldeans and Persians intend it in a good, and that these
men mentioned by the evangelist were Persians, shall presently
be made at least very probable.
As for the condition and quality of these magi, or wise men,
some contend, though I think more eagerly than conclusively, that
they were kings. And for the proof of it allege several places of
scripture ; as first, that of Psalm lxxii. 10, " The kings of Tarshish
and of the isles shall bring presents; the kings of Sheba and Seba
shall offer gifts." But what is this to those who came not from Tar
shish, nor from Sheba, but from Persia, as shall be made appear here-
aifter ? Besides, that those words are literally spoken of Solomon,
in whom they were eminently fulfilled ; for we know what com
merce he had with those parts, and we have also a full rehearsal of
the great visit and present made him by the queen of Sheba. They
allege also that place in Isaiah lx. 3, The Gentiles shall come to
thy light, and kings to the glory of thy rising ;" with other such
texts, which they call proofs; though so unconclusive and imperti
nent to the matter in hand, that they prove nothing but the folly
and absurdity of those that allege them.
To the whole matter therefore I answer, that it is most impro
bable that these men were kings ; and that the behaviour of He
rod and the Jews toward them seems clearly to evince so much.
For there was no mention of any pompous kingly reception, but
an the contrary, he treats them as imperiously ats he would have
done his servants or his footmen, in ver. 8 : " And he sent them
to Bethlehem, and said, Go search diligently for the young child ;
and when ye have found him, bring me word again." Which
surely sounds not like language fit to bespeak princes in. Those

THE VISIT OF THE WISE MEN TO JERUSALEM. 38j?
indeed whose chief religion is to rebel against princes, might
possibly talk to them also at this rate, but it is not to be imagined
that the rest of the world were yet arrived to this perfection.
It is evident therefore that Herod received them not as kings, no,
nor with that respect that is due to the ambassadors of kings;
but rather as any of our inferior magistrates would now-a-days
receive some Polonian or Hungarian, that should come to him
about a brief, or for a license to show some strange outlandish
feats upon a stage.
But lastly, this is an undeniable argument that they were not
kings, that the evangelist is thus silent of it. For since it is
manifest that his design was to set forth Christ's birth, and to
render it as notable and* conspicuous as he could from those pas
sages that did attend it ; it is not imaginable that he would have
omitted this, that would have added so much of lustre and
credit to it in the eyes of the world. The omission of it is
indeed so hugely improbable, that, all things considered, it may
almost pass for impossible.
2. The second thing here proposed to our consideration was
the place from whence these wise men came, The evangelist
describes it only by a general term, <W avatoxuv, from the
eaist. But ;the eaist is of a large compass, and therefore we
may well direct our inquiries to something that is more
particular. Some therefore are of opinion, that these wise men came from
Arabia, and that part of it that is called Arabia Felix, which lay
eaistward to Jerusalem ; especially since their presents consisted
of gold, myrrh, and frankincense, the proper commodities of
those places: for Arabia afforded gold, and the adjoining Sabea
afforded plenty of all manner of spices and perfumes. Others
there are that affirm these wise men to have come from Chaldea
or Assyria. I shall not trouble myself to produce or confute
the several reasons upon which either of these opinions are built ;
but briefly give my reasons why neither of them can be admitted.
For the first. They could not come from Arabia, because
there never was in Arabia any sort or sect of men known or
distinguished by the name of magi; and therefore to bring these
men from Arabia were altogether as absurd, as if in story we
should bring the Brachmans, or Indian philosophers, from the
Orcades, or the Druids from America. And as for that reason,
that the materials of their presents were the native commodities
of those regions, it proves nothing ; since other countries afforded
them besides, and however might have them otherwise by impor
tation. And when men make presents, they do not always pitch
upon such things as grow in their own countries, but upon the
best and richest that they have in their possession.
In the next place for Assyria or Chaldea : they could not
come from thence neither, forasmuch as they lay northwards to
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386 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXVI.
Jerusalem : so that Trequently in the prophets, when God threat
ens the Jews with an invasion from the Assyrians, they are still
called " a nation or army coming from the north." But the
evangelist expressly says, that these men came an avato^v,
from the east, to which words this opinion is utterly irrecon-
cileable. Having thus removed these two opinions, I judge it most
probable that they came from Persia ; which as it is confirmed
by the concurrent testimonies of the most eminent divines, both
ancient and modern, so there wants not also solid reasons to per
suade the same.
(1.) The first of which shall be taken from this; that this
sort of men most flourished in Persia: they were most famous
there. And I believe there may be better arguments brought to
prove that the magi had their first rise there, than any can be
brought to the contrary.
(2.) The second reason shall be taken from the situation of
the place, Persia being situate eastward to Judea ; so that it ex
actly answers the words of the evangelist.
(3.) The third and last shall be taken from the manner- of
their doing homage to Christ, which was that used by the Per
sians in expressing their homage to kings, namely by gifts and
presents. These reasons seem probably to evince, that these magi, or wise
men, came from Persia : and we must know, that in matters of
this nature, where demonstrations are not to be had, probable con
jectures, burdened with no inconvenient consequences, are the best
arguments, and such as any rational mind may well acquiesce in.
And thus much for the place from whence these wise men came.
3. The third thing proposed was, the time when they came to
Jerusalem ; for some affirm them not to have come to Jerusalem
till two years after the birth of Christ, grounding this their
assertion upon what is said in ver. 16, that " Herod sent and slew
all the children in and about Bethlehem, from two years old and
under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of
the wise men." Whence they infer Christ to have been two
years old at the time of the wise men's arrival at Jerusalem.
But the words of the text import the time to have been but
very small between the birth of one and the coming of the
other ; for it is said in ver. 1, that " when Jesus was born, be
hold the wise men came," which word iSoi, behold, according to
the phrase of scripture, is equivalent with forthwith, or presently,
as might be made out by sundry parallel places. Besides, that
the wise men at their coming found Christ in Bethlehem, where
yet it is certain that Joseph and Mary tarried not above forty
days, the time appointed by the law for her purification ; from
whence it follows, that the coming of the wise men must needs
have been within the compass of those forty days. As for that

THE VISIT OF THE WISE MEN TO JERUSALEM. 387
argument grounded upon Herod's killing the children of two
years old and under, according to the time of his inquiring of
the wise men, the solution of it is very easy, if we" reckon those
two years before the time of his inquiry, and not those two
years that immediately followed it. The reason of which is
manifest, forasmuch as the wise men spoke not of Christ as yet
to be born, but of him as actually born ; though the precise
time when, they declared not, nor perhaps knew. And therefore
Herod, whose design was to secure himself from a rival king,
whom he heard was already born, killed all the children that were
born within the space of two years before the coming of the
wise 'men and his inquiring of them. From whence it follows,
that the time of the wise men's coming to Jerusalem was some
few days after the birth of Christ, probably nine or ten, and that
they worshipped him at Bethlehem about the twelfth, the day
still observed by the church for its commemoration.
And now, as we have here removed the opinion of those that
state • the time of the wise men's coming to Jerusalem two years
after the birth of Christ ; so another opinion that makes the star
to have appeared two years before Christ's birth, is no less to be
rejected, since they gave it the appellation of " his star" upon
this account, that it then declared him to have been born. And
whereas some, in defence of this opinion, allege the improbability
of their coming from Persia in so few days; I answer, that if
they be allowed to have come from those parts of it that lay
nearest to Jerusalem (as well they may), it is not improbable at
all ; since a very learned commentator upon this place says, that
some parts of Persia were not distant from Jerusalem ultra du-
centas leucas, which, reckoning five hundred paces to a leuca, as
some do, amount to a hundred of our miles. If fifteen hundred,
as Ammianus Marcellinus does, then they make three hundred of
our miles. The former of which they might go in that time
very easily, and the latter with no such extraordinary great diffi
culty ; considering that camels, the beasts of travel in those
countries, are said even with great burdens to despatch forty of
those leucas, that is, according to the latter and greater computa
tion, threescore of our miles in a day. And thus much for the
third thing, viz. the time of these wise men's coming to Jerusalem.
4. The fourth thing proposed to be considered was, what this
star was. Where though some have affirmed it to have been of
the same nature with those that have their proper place and mo
tion in the celestial orbs, and though that omnipotent God, that
made the sun stand still at one time, and go back at another,
cannot be denied to have been able to have pommanded any of
the stars upon such a message and employment; yet that he
actually did so is not necessary for us here to assert, there being
otherwise sufficient reasons to persuade us that this was not a
real star of the same kind with those heavenly bodies, but only a

388 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxvi.
bright meteor formed by the immediate power of God into the
resemblance and similitude of a star, and so by a singular act of
his providence used and directed to this great purpose. For had
it been indeed a real star, there can hardly any reason be assigned
why it should not have appeared to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
as well as to those wise men in their journey from thence to Beth
lehem ; which yet it is clear that it did not, from the evangelist's
being wholly silent of it ; who otherwise would undoubtedly
have recorded it as a passage, than which none could be more
efficacious, to upbraid the Jews with the unreasonableness
of their unbelief. Nor does its being called a star prove it to
have been really so: it being so usual both in scripture and
common speech to call the resemblances of things by the names
of those things themselves, comets and falling stars still obtaining
this appellation, which yet have nothing of stars in them but the
name. 5. The fifth and last thing proposed to be discussed, was, how
these wise men could collect or come to know our Saviour's birth
by their seeing this star. Evident it is from the words that they
had a full and clear knowledge of it. For they spake of it as of
a thing granted ; and therefore they ask not whether or no he
was born, but where he was born. And they call it emphatically
"his star;" "We have seen his star in the east ;" implying that
it pointed him out by a certain and peculiar designation.
To this I answer, that all knowledge must commence upon
principles either natural or supernatural.
If they draw it from the former, it must have been either,
(1.) From the principles of astrology; and here, for the con
futation of this, would the time and measure of this exercise
permit, the vanity of this science might easily be shown, from
the weakness of its principles, the confessions of such as have
been most reputed for their skill in it ; and what is stronger than
their confessions, from their frequent mistakes and deceptions in
their most confident predictions. Which sufficiently prove the
greatest pretenders to it to be indeed but mere planetaries ; that
is, as we may well interpret it from the force of the word, such
as use to err and to be deceived, and consequently that nothing
certain can be concluded from their principles.
(2.) Or secondly, if these men's knowledge of Christ's birth
by the star were natural, the former way being removed, it must
needs have been from tradition. And as to this, some affirm
that they gathered it from that prophecy of Balaam continued
down to them by report from his time, which prophecy is re
corded in Numb. xxiv. 17, that " a star should rise out of Jacob ;"
and also that they might learn it from several prophecies of the
sibyls, one of which sibyls prophesied in Persia. But how
much soever these prophecies of the sibyls may have obtained in
the world, yet most of them relating to Christ are proved by the

THE VISIT OF THE WISE MEN TO JERUSALEM. 389
learned Casaubon to be spurious and supposititious, and by all
wise men believed to be such.
Others affirm, that this might have been first learned from the
Jews, in the time of their dispersion ; but especially from some
remaining traditions of Daniel. And certainly, when we con
sider how much this prophet writes of the kingdom and coming
of the Messiah, it is noways improbable, but that he might
otherwise, both by writing and word of mouth, leave many things
behind him concerning the same. All which, through the great
ness of the place he held in the Persian court, and the vast
repute that he had for his knowledge and learning, might easily
find both a general and a lasting reception. It cannot therefore
be rationally denied, but that these wise men might be much
directed by such helps as these. But yet I affirm, that these
were not sufficient; so that we must be. forced to derive their
knowledge of Christ by this star from a supernatural cause ;
that is, from the immediate revelation of God : how or in what
manner that revelation was effected, it is not necessary for us
to know; but that they were such persons to whom God upon
other occasions did vouchsafe extraordinary revelations, is clear
from the 12th verse, where it is said, that "they were ad
monished by God in a dream not to return to Herod." Now it
is very probable that the same God who warned them of their
danger, first suggested to them this great discovery; especially
since it was not so difficult to escape the one, as to find out the
other. We must conclude therefore, that it was neither their
own skill, nor yet the light of that star, that taught them the
meaning of that star. But Leo states the matter rightly in his
fourth sermon upon the Epiphany : Prater Mam stella speciem
qua corporeum incitavit obtutum, fulgentior veritatis radius eorum
corda perdocuit. Starlight is but a dim light to read the small
characters of such mysteries by. He only that made the stars
could discover it ; even that God who rules their influences, and
knows their significations.
And thus much for the first notable circumstance of our Saviour's
nativity, namely, the solemn address of the wise men to him from
the east, upon the appearance of a star. I come now to
II. The second, which was Herod's behaviour thereupon; who
being a person so largely spoken of in the Jewish story, so par
ticularly noted by the evangelist, and made yet more notable by
having the birth of the great Saviour of the world fall in his
reign, he may well deserve our particular consideration: accord
ingly we will consider him in these three respects.
1. In respect of his condition and temper, in reference to his
government of Judea.
2. Of his behaviour and deportment upon this particular
accident.
2k2

390 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxvi.
3. Of the influence this his behaviour had upon those under
his government.
1. And for the first of these; we will take an account of his
condition and temper in reference to the government held by
him, by these three things recorded of him, both in sacred and
profane story. (l.) His usurpation. (2.) His cruelty: and,
(3.) His magnificence.
(1.) And first for his usurpation. When the government of
Judea was taken from the Asmoneans, the last of which that
reigned was Antigonus, this Herod, the youngest son of Anti
pater, an Idumean, (who had grown up under Hyrcanus, being
by him employed in the chief management of the affairs of his
kingdom,) through the favour of Marcus Antonius, was by the
Roman Senate declared king of the Jews ; in which dignity, to
the wonder of many, he was also confirmed afterwards by Au
gustus himself. But Herod had a good purse, and having also
well experienced Jugurtha's observation of Rome, that it was
urbs venalis, knew how to open it for his advantage as well as any
man living: which, together with his great courage and reso
lution, lifted him up to, and settled him in a royal throne, so
much above the pitch of any thing that by his birth he could
pretend to. But let men be usurpers, and as false and wicked as
they will, yet God is still righteous, and will serve and bring
about his righteous purposes, even by their wickedness. And I
question not but the success of Herod's projects was chiefly from
the special providence of God, while the villany of them was
wholly from himself: for by this strange and unexpected trans
lation of the Jewish government, in setting the crown of it upon
a stranger's head, was exactly fulfilled that eminent and most
remarkable prophecy of the Messias, in Gen, xlix. 10, that "the
sceptre should not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from be
tween his feet, until Shiloh come."
(2.) The second thing observable of him was his cruelty.
We have already seen him seated in the Jewish throne, though
a usurper and an intruder, and one who had no other title to that
sovereignty, but the gift of those who had no right to give it.
However being thus possessed of it, he must have recourse to
the common method of usurpers, and maintain by blood what
he had got by injustice. Accordingly he assassinates all such as
he could but suspect might be his competitors. Aristobulus, the
last of the Asmonean race, and preferred by him at the instiga
tion of his wife Mariamne to the high priesthood, because the
affections of the people were towards him, was by his appoint
ment treacherously drowned. Nor spares he Hyrcanus himself,
his predecessor, though now in the extremity of old age, and the
person who had raised his father Antipater to that pitch as to
give him, his son, the possibilities of a kingdom, and consequently
of doing all this mischief. Nay, and his beloved wife Mariamne

THE VISIT OF THE WISE MEN TO JERUSALEM. 391
also, and his own sons Alexander and Aristobulus, and at length
too, his base son Antipater; and, which was the most unpa
ralleled piece of barbarity that ever was acted, last of all, those
poor infants also (which we shall presently speak of), they must
all fall a sacrifice to his remorseless cruelty : so that neither the
innocence of infancy, the venerableness and impotence of old
age, the sacred obligations of gratitude, the love of a wife, nor,
lastly, the endearing relation of a son, could prevail any thing
against the inhuman resolves of his base and cruel disposition ;
which gave occasion to that sarcastical speech of Caesar Augustus
concerning him ; " That it was better to be Herod's hog, than
his son." For as a proselyted Jew, he would not meddle with
the former ; but as worse than a Jew, he barbarously procured
the murder of the latter.
(3.) The third thing observable in the temper of this Herod
was his magnificence. There was none that reigned over the
Jews, Solomon only excepted, that left such glorious monuments
of building behind them as did Herod. The temple, the arx
Antonia, and his own houses, sufficiently declared his vast and
boundless spirit: any one of which had been enough to have en
nobled the reign of any one prince : but this was all for which
he was laudable: God sometimes thinking it fit to give a man
some one good quality to season his many bad ones ; and so to
keep him sweet above ground. Herod did many things of pub
lic advantage, and yet he scarce deserved the reputation of a
public spirit, when the end and design driven at by him in all he
did was his own private glory, and the gratification of his am
bition. The consideration of which may teach us how great a
riddle the actions of most men are, even in their most specious
and public undertakings. The action may be sometimes of a
national emolument, and yet the spring and design that moves it
be but personal. Few men know what disguises are worn upon
the public face of things, and how much the world is beholding
to some men's pride and vain-glory, which often supply the
office of charity in those worthy benefactions they pass upon the
public ; while in the mean time, the good of those that are bene
fited by such works is the least thing in the thoughts of those
that did them. So far from impossible or improper was that
supposition made by the apostle Paul in 1 Cor. xiii. 3, of a
man's " bestowing all his goods upon the poor, and yet not
having charity." For it is not the bulk or outside of the action,
but the mind and spirit directing it, that stamps it charitable.
Men may give large sums, and do generous actions, upon as
great designs of selfishness, as ever the vilest miser or usurer
entertained, when he amassed heaps upon heaps within his greedy
coffers : only with this difference indeed, that one in all this feeds
his pride, the other his covetousness. But surely pride is as
much a vice as covetousness, though not always of so ill effect to

392 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxvi.
those that are about it. It is not what a man does, but how,
and why, that denominates his action good or evil before God.
Herod may be Herod still, for all his building of a temple.
And thus much for the three qualifications observable in
Herod's person.
2. The second thing to be considered of him was, his behaviour
upon this particular occasion of the wise men's coming to Jeru
salem from the east, to inquire after him that was born king of
the Jews, at the nativity of our blessed Saviour ; which be
haviour of his shows itself in these two things.
(1.) In that trouble and anxiety of mind that he conceived
upon this news. He was full of suspicious, misgiving, and per
plexing thoughts, what the issue of things might be, and how
he should be able to maintain himself in the throne, against the
claim of the right owner, which he knew he held by no other
title but that of injury and usurpation.
(2.) His behaviour shows itself in that wretched course he
took to secure himself against his supposed competitor ; which
was by slaying all the children born in and near to Bethlehem,
from two years old and under ; the time within which he had
learnt from the wise men that Christ must have been born.
It must be confessed here (which yet certainly is very strange)
that Josephus, who is so particular in recording most things re
lating to Herod's reign, yet speaks not a word either of the birth
of Christ, or of the appearance of the star, or of the wise men's
coming to Herod thereupon ; nor, lastly, of the massacre of
these children. All of which, one would think, were too great
and too considerable passages to be passed over in silence by such
an historian as Josephus.
However, this ought not to shake our faith of these things at
all ; since if the evangelists had falsified in these narratives, it
is infinitely improbable, that the enemies of the Christian religion,
who could so easily have convinced them of such falsification,
should not some time or other have objected it against the truth
of our religion, which .yet they never did ; but on the other
hand, it is hugely probable, that Josephus, a great zealot in the
Jewish religion, and consequently a mortal hater of ours, might,
out of his hatred of it, omit the relation of these passages which
were likely to give it so much reputation in the world. But as
for the passage of his murdering the infants, Ludovicus Capellus
is of opinion, that in that place where Josephus says, that Herod,
drawing near his death, summoned the noblest of the Jews by a
menacing edict from all parts of Judea, and shutting them up,
gave order to his sister Salome, and her husband Alexas, to see
them all put to the sword after his death ; it was Josephus's in
tent by this device to slubber over the massacre of these inno
cents ; thus not wholly omitting it, and yet by so obscure a
narrative not clearly and plainly discovering it. But whether

THE VISIT OF THE WISE MEN TO JERUSALEM 393
(his observation have any weight in it or no, I hope the testimony
of those whose writings have been opposed, but never yet confuted
or convinced of falsity, will have more authority and credit with
us, than the ambiguity and shuffling of a partial historian.
(3.) The third thing proposed to be considered by us was, the
influence that this behaviour of Herod had upon those under his
government. For the text tells us, that not only he was troubled
himself, but that " all Jerusalem was also troubled with him :"
yet not for any love they bore him we may be sure. But they
were troubled and disturbed with the fears they had of what the
rage and jealousy of such a tyrant might produce : for seldom
does a tyrant confine his troubles within his own breast, but that
those about him also go sharers in the smart of them. And what
the prophet said of Ahab may be as truly said of Herod, and all
such usurpers, that " they are those that trouble Israel." For
usually such persons neither rise nor fall, but at the cost of the
people's blood, and the expense of many innocent lives. When
tyrants and victorious rebels invade the regal power of any
nation, the people must not expect to rest quiet either in peace
or war: nor were the Jews here deceived in their ill-boding
presages of what mischief would ensue upon Herod's discontents.
Such a cloud could not gather over their heads for nothing. And
long it was not before it broke out in that bloody shower that
has been made mention of. From all which we may learn how
much it concerns the tranquillity and happiness of a kingdom to
stop the first pretences and encroaches of usurpers ; and as much
ais in them lies to keep all Herods and Cromwells from getting
into the supremacy. For as soon as their own guilt and suspicion
shall alarm them with any fears of the right owner's regaining his
inheritance, then presently the whole nation is in danger of being
forced to a war, to defend and fight for those whom they have
more heart to fight against. Or in case Providence shall favour
them so far as to enable them to turn their swords against such
domestic pests, yet they must still purchase their delivery by a
war ; that is, rid themselves of one calamity by another. So that
we see, when Herods and usurpers once ravish the government
into their hands, whether they stand or whether they fall, all
Jerusalem is like to be troubled with them.
And thus I have finished what I proposed from the text,
namely, the two grand circumstances of our Saviour's nativity.
I shall now close up all with a resolution of this short question,
Why that Jesus Christ, being born the right and lawful king of the
Jews, yet gave way to this bloody usurper, and did not, either in
his, or his successor's time, assume the government himself?
In answer to which, though I think it a solid and satisfactory
reason of all God's actions to state them upon his mere will and
pleasure; yet there are 'not wanting other reasons assignable for
this. I shall pitch upon two.
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394 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxvi.
1st. Christ balked the kingly government of the Jews, because
his assuming it would have crossed the very design of that reli
gion that he was then about to establish; which was to unite
both Jew and Gentile into one church or body. But this union
could not possibly be effected till the politic economy of that
nation, so interwoven with the ceremonial and religious, like the
great partition wall, was broken down. Upon good reason there
fore did Christ refuse to undertake the kingly government, and
therein the support of that nation, the politic constitution of
which, through the special providence of God, in order to the
propagation of the Christian religion, was now shortly to expire,
and to be done away.
2dly. Christ voluntarily waved the Jewish crown, that he
might hereby declare to the world the nature of his proper king
dom: which was to be wholly without the grandeur of human
sovereignty amd the splendour of earthly courts. In Luke xvii.
20, it is said, that "the kingdom of God cometh not with obser
vation." So we read it. But the Greek is xata $avtaalav, that
is, with pomp and gaiety of outward appearance ; for so the word
signifies. Whereupon, in Acts xxv. 23, when Agrippa and
Bernice came in much splendour and magnificence to visit
Festus, it is said that they came uitd 7toM.ijs $avtaalas, which is
there well rendered, " with much pomp."
This being so, men may save themselves the labour of enter
ing into covenants, raising armies, and cutting of throats, to
advance the sceptre and kingdom of Jesus Christ : for Christ has
no need of their forces: he came to cast out such legions, and
not to employ them. Here in this world he owns no sword but
that of his Spirit, no sceptre but his word, no kingdom but the
heart. This is his prerogative royal, to govern our wills, to
command our inclinations, and to reign and lord it over our most
inward affections. Which kingdom, God of his mercy daily pro
pagate and increase within us.
To which God be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all
praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now amd for ever.

395

SERMON XXVII.
christ worthy of our highest esteem.
Matthew x. '37.
He that loves father or mother better than me is not worthy of me.
Our Saviour in these words presents himself arid the world
together as competitors for our best affections ; which because we
never fasten upon any thing but for some precedent apprehension
of worth in it, he therefore treats with us not upon terms
of courtesy but reason, challenging a transcendent affection on
our parts, because of a transcendent worthiness on his. He would
have it before the world, for this cause only, that he deserves it
above, the world.
Now because men might be apt to flatter themselves into
a false persuasion of their love to Christ, the heart being no less
the seat and shop of deceit, than it is of love ; lest, I say, they
might baffle and impose upon themselves (as sad experience
shows that most men do in this particular), our Saviour, with
great art, selects and singles out those enjoyinents that are most
apt to seize and engross our affections, and particularly states the
sincerity of our love to him, in the superiority of it over our love
to those. An ordinary affection relating to an extraordinary object
is no affection. When Christ is the thing that we are to love, be
tween the highest degree of love and a total negation of it, there is
no medium ; as it is said of Jacob, that he loved Rachel, but he
hated Leah ; because he loved Leah the less of the two. So if a
man loves the world in a greater degree, and Christ in a less,
when God shall come to take an estimate of that love, he will
make no allowance for the comparison, but account that man
absolutely to love the world and to hate Christ. For not
to value him more than all, is really to undervalue him.
For the exposition of the words, we must here observe, that
these terms father and mother are not to be understood in a
literal, restrained sense, only as they signify such relations ; but
they are to be taken more largely, as they comprise whatsoever
enjoyments are dear unto us : it being usual in scripture to ex
press all that is dear to us by some one thing that is most dear. As
it is a frequent synecdoche, to express the whole by some one
principal part. Prov. xxiii. 26, " My son, give me thy heart."
God here requires the service of the whole man ; but the heart
is only expressed, as being the prime ruling part.

396 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxvh.
Now the affection we bear to our parents, is the greatest that
we are to bear to any worldly thing, and that deservedly. For
if under God they gave us our beings, we may well return them
our affections. So that Christ by demanding a love greater than
that which upon a natural account is the greatest, and by pre
ferring himself before that enjoyment which is the dearest, he
does by consequence prefer himself before all the rest. For he
that is above a prince, is consequentially above all his subjects.
As for the next expression, " He is not worthy of me ;" it
may seem from hence to be inferred, that he who should love
Christ above father or mother, or any other worldly enjoyment,
would thereby become worthy of Christ. But yet to affirm that
any man may so qualify himself, or do that which may render
him worthy of Christ, would be apparently to introduce and
assert the doctrine of merit ; a thing of the highest absurdity,
both in reason and religion. In answer to this therefore we
may observe that there is a twofold worthiness.
1. A worthiness strictly and properly so called, which is
according to the real inherent value of the thing ; and so no man
by the choicest of his endeavours can be said to be worthy of
Christ. He can no more merit grace than he can merit glory,
and both are included in Christ. Obtain them indeed we may,
but we can never deserve them. Worthiness is a thing that
man can never plead before God ; but after we have done all,
we are still unprofitable, and therefore still unworthy.
2. There is a worthiness according to the gracious acceptance
of God, which is a worthiness improperly so called : when a
thing is worthy, not for any value in itself, but because God
freely accepts it for such. This worth may be rather termed a
fitness or a meetness, not consisting in merit, but in due con
ditional qualifications. And so he that loves father or mother
less than Christ, is in this sense worthy of him; that is, fitly
prepared and qualified to receive him ; as having that which God
is pleased to make the only condition upon which he bestows
Christ. These things being premised by way of exposition, I shall
draw forth and prosecute the sense of the words in these three
particulars. I. I shall show what is included and comprehended in that
love to Christ that is here mentioned in the text.
II. I shall show what are the reasons and motives that may
induce us to it.
IH. What are the signs, marks, and characters whereby we
may discern it.
I. As for the first of these, what is included in the love here
spoken qf, I conceive it may include these five things.
1. An esteem and valuation of Christ above all worldly

CHRIST WORTHY OF OUR HIGHEST ESTEEM. 397
enjoyments whatsoever. The first foundation stone of this love
must be laid in admiration, and a high persuasion of that wbrth
that we are to love. We must first believe Christ excellent,
before we can account him dear. Those that profess and avow
a love to Christ, and yet, by the secret verdict of their worldly
minds, place a greater esteem upon a pleasure, upon honour,
upon an estate, do indeed speak contradictions and delude them
selves, and may as well believe their life may remain when their
soul is departed, as imagine that their love may go one way, and
their esteem another. Upon which account it is clear, that
Christ must be first raised above the world in our judgments, he
must first rule there ; he must lord it in our thoughts, and com
mand our apprehensions.
If we trace David through all his Psalms, he is continually
breathing out an ardent love to God ; they run all along in a
strain of the highest affection. And this love we shall find to
have been founded upon a proportionable esteem of God, which
esteem does eminently appear in several expressions. How often
does he repeat and insist upon this one, " Lord, who is like unto
thee ?" Psalm xxxv. 10, and lxxi. 19. His thoughts were even
transported into a ravishing admiration of God's surpassing ex
cellencies, before his heart could be drawn forth in love and
affection to him ; he suffered an ecstasy in his thoughts before he
did in his desires. And again, Psalm xviii. 3, " Thou art
worthy to be praised." God's worth, presented to the soul by
thoughts of esteem, is that which so strongly and (as I may say)
invincibly draws its affections. It is indeed the price of our
desires, and really buys them before it has them.
Some are of opinion, that the dictates of the understanding
have such a determining, controlling influence upon the will and
affections, that they cannot but desire whatsoever the" under-
stauiding shall sufficiently offer and propose to them as desirable.
But whether or no the judgment does certainly and infallibly
command and draw after it the acts of the will (which is a con
troversy too big to be discussed in a sermon), yet this is certain,
that it does of necessity precede them, and no man can fix his
love upon any thing, till his judgment reports it to the will as
amiable. This must be the only gate and portal through which
we must introduce loving thoughts of Christ into the heart ; he
must be first valued before he can be embraced. For this is
undoubtedly certain, that nothing can have a greater share of
our affections, than it has of our esteem.
2. This love to Christ implies a choosing him before all other
enjoyments. For a man to pretend affection to Christ by ex
tolling his person, admiring what he has done for us, by praising
the ways of God, commending the practice and the practisers of
godliness ; and yet in the mean time to act and labour for the
world, to live in sin, and upon all occasions to submit to a
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398 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxvii.
temptation rather than to a precept; notwithstanding this
strange opposition and clashing between his profession and nis
course, I suppose every rational man would read his judgment,
not in his words, but in his choice. Laudant ilia, sed ista legunt ;
he that commends such books, but reads others, only shows that
he praises one thing but values another, and that the best inter
preter of his mind is not what he says, but what he chooses.
By this Moses undeniably proved both the strength and sin
cerity of his love to God and to the people of God, that he chose
rather to suffer afflictions with them, than to enjoy all the
pleasures of Pharaoh's court. For to have solicited their cause
with Pharaoh, to have procured them a mitigation of their bond
age, to have won them favour and a good opinion from the
Egyptians, had indeed been signs and effects of love, but this
was love itself. His affection was in his choice ; for had he still
chosen Pharaoh's court, all other things that he could have done
for his brethren had amounted rather to a good wish, than to a
true affection.
Thus, on the contrary, wicked men are said to "love death:"
but can any man make his greatest evil the object of his best
desire, which is love? No, assuredly, while he considers it as
such, he cannot ; but because it is rational from men's choice to
infer and argue their love, they may be said therefore truly and
properly to love death, because they choose it. And by the
same reason on the other side, a believer, though he may be
sometimes ensnared in sin, and so brought to commit it, yet he
cannot be said indeed to love it, because it is seldom his choice,
but his surprise ; he makes it not his end and his design. It is
rather a sudden invasion made upon his affections than the
resolved purpose of his will.
Thus" therefore we see how the spirit and force of our love
exerts itself in choice ; for the design of love is to appropriate as
well as to approximate its object to the soul: and to choose a
thing is the first access to a propriety in it. For choice, as I
may so say, is possession begun, and possession itself is nothing
else but choice perfected. Barely to esteem Christ (if we may
suppose a division of those things which indeed are not to be
divided) is as much inferior to a choosing him, as a good look is
below a good turn.
3. Love to Christ implies service and obedience to him ; the
same love that when it is between equals is friendship, when it
is from an inferior to a superior is obedience. Love, of all the
affections, is the most active; hence by those who express the
nature of things by hieroglyphics, we have it compared to fire,
certainly for nothing more than its activity. The same arms
that embrace a friend, will be as ready to act for him. This is
the natural progress of true love, from the heart to the hand ;
where there is an inward spring, there will quickly be an externa]

CHRIST WORTHY OF OUR HIGHEST ESTEEM. 399
visible motion. When we have once placed our affection upon
any person, the next inquiry naturally will be, what shall we do
for him ? And if this be the property of love when it lays itself
out upon natural objects, we may be sure it will be heightened
when it pitches upon supernatural. It is indeed changed, but
withal advanced ; the object altered, but the measure of the act
increased. Divine and heavenly things do indeed refine and lop
off the extravagancy, but they abate nothing of the vigour of
our aitTections.
Christ has determined the case in short, John xiv. 15, "If ye
love me, keep my commandments." There is more real love to
God shown in the least sincere act of obedience, than in the
greatest and the most pompous sacrifice. Many may please them
selves in their fair professions, their orthodox opinions, and their
judgment about the ways of Christ, but God knows there may
be much of all this, and yet but little love. It is the command
that must try that; and- believe it, the grand inquiry hereafter
will be, not what we have thought or what we have said, but
what we have done for Christ.
Christ all along in scripture proposes himself to us as our
Lord and Master ; and a servant's love to his master is his ser
vice. It was the idle servant that God dealt with as his enemy.
How does a wicked man's love to sin appear, but by his con
tinual, indefatigable acting and working for it, obeying its com
mands, and fulfilling even its vilest lusts and most unreasonable
desires ! Now Christ requires that every believer should manifest
his love to him in that height and measure, that a wicked person
manifests his love to sin. So that when he required a testimo
nial of Peter's affection, he did not ask him what he thought of
him, or what he was ready to profess concerning him: for we
know he thought him to be the Son of God, Matt. xvi. 16; and
he professed, that "if all others forsook him, yet he would not,"
Matt. xxvi. 33; yet for all this he afterwards both denied and
forswore him. Christ therefore exacts a demonstration of his
love in service and obedience. " Peter, lovest thou me ? Feed
my sheep," John xxi. 17. He knew he that would obey and
serve him, and execute his commands, loved him beyond all pos
sibility of dissimulation. A man usually speaks, but he seldom
does one thing and thinks another.
It is natural for love, where it is both sincere and predomi
nant, to subdue the party possessed with it to undertake the
most servile, laborious, and otherwise uncomfortable offices in
the behalf of him whom he loves. If you will admit the paradox,
it makes a man do more than he can do. Will is instead of
power, and love supplies the room of ability. Had the love
of Christ but once thoroughly seated itself in our hearts, we
should find, that, according to that most expressive phrase of
the apostle, it would " constrain us." It were but Christ's say-

400 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxvii.
ing, Go, and we should go; Do this, and we should do it.
We should find a double command, one from Christ and one
from our own affection. Love without works is a greater ab
surdity than faith without works ; faith works by love and love
by obedience. Let none therefore ever think to divide himself
between God and mammon ; to afford his love to Chnst, but his
service to the world. If a man may honour his parents but not
obey them, keep loyalty to his governor but rebel against him,
then may also his love stand sincere to Christ while unseconded
with obedience.
It is the masterpiece of Satan and our own corruptions, to
bring us under this persuasion, that we may love Christ without
serving him ; but believe it, it is a destructive and a damnable
delusion ; equal in the absurdity and in the danger : and I be
lieve, if we could divide these two and give the devil his choice,
he would accept of one instead of both : give but the devil your
service, and he would give Christ your love. We are apt to
place all upon persuasion, but how shall we be disappointed
when God comes to reckon with us for performance !
4. Love to Christ implies an acting for him in opposition to
all other things ; and this is the undeceiving, infallible test of a
true affection. We may not only value and commend, but think
also that we serve Christ by reason of the undiscernible mixture
of his and our interests sometimes wrapped together; so as to
be persuaded that we serve and carry on his interest, while indeed
we only serve our own in another dress. I believe that John
did not only persuade others, but himself also, that he served the
cause of God in destroying the posterity of Ahab and the wor
shippers of Baal; when in truth, God's honour and his own
safety, the interest of religion and of his crown, at that time so
particularly met and combined together, that he mistook his own
meaning, and thought he was all the time honouring of God,
while he was only endeavouring to establish himself, and pursu
ing the designs of policy under the mask of zeal. But when
two distinct interests are drawn forth in an open avowed opposi
tion, and visibly confront one another ; when those that embrace
one are apparently discriminated from the other, and none can
embrace both, but a man must either testify a real affection on
one side, or an odious indifference and neutrality, then love will
appear to be love ; dissimulation will be rendered impossible, and
a man will be judged to love there only where he shall dare to
appear. When Christ and the world, Christ and our honour, Christ
and our profit, shall make two opposite parties, then is the time
to try our affections. If one servant should follow two several
persons, it were hard to discern whose servant he was, while they
both walked quietly together ; but should they once quarrel and
come to strokes, we should quickly see by his assistance where

CHRIST WORTHY OF OUR HIGHEST ESTEEM. 401
he had engaged his service. The truth is, it is but one and the
same league, that is defensive in respect of our friends, and offen
sive to their enemies. Neither is there any defending of Christ's
interest, without an active opposing that of Satan and the flesh,
when the preservation of one lies in the destruction of the other.
If Christ cannot increase, unless John decrease, the Baptist him
self must not be spared. Because Peter would show that he
loved Christ above the rest, he drew his sword for him. He that
fights for another pawns his life that he loves him ; competition
is the touchstone of reality.
It is not to make invectives against sin and the courses of the
world, or to speak satires against the devil, that infallibly con
cludes us to be Christ's disciples. Those may chide very sharply,
who are yet hearty and real friends. But show me the person
who can act with as keen a vigour as he speaks ; who can put
his foot upon the neck of his lust ; who can be restless and active
in circumventing, undermining, and defeating his corruption, and
all this only for its implacable enmity to Christ ; such a one in
deed declares to the world by a demonstration of the highest
evidence, that Christ bears the rule and preeminence in his af
fections. Had king Josiah spoken great and glorious words of his love
to God's church, and of his hatred to idolatry, this indeed might
have been a far commendation of his zeal to the world, which is
often deceived and almost always governed by words: but it
could not have at all commended his zeal to God, who weighs all
such expressions in the balance of truth and reality, and finds
them wanting.
But see how this royal person's love to God manifested itself:
as soon as he succeeded his father, and found the church gene
rally corrupted, and idolatry like a usurper reigning in his king
dom, he presently throws down the altars, breaks the images,
dismantles the high places, and all this in opposition to a potent
prevailing interest in his kingdom. A friend at court signified
but little, when he was to speak for idolatry, where the king
himself looked upon the church as his crown, and the purity of
religion as his prerogative. And this was to love God and re
ligion indeed, thus to assert them actively, by engaging against
their fiercest opponents, and building up the divine worship upon
the ruin of its adversaries. And surely between the most glitter
ing professions, the most enlarged vows, and highest verbal
engagements for God, and between this way of taking up and
owning his quarrel, there is as much difference, as there is
between wearing God's colours and fighting his battles.
5. To assign the greatest and the sublimest instance in the
last place. Love to Christ imports a full acquiescence in him
alone, even in the absence and want of all other felicities : men
can embrace Christ with riches, Christ with honour, Christ with
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402 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxvii.
interest, and abundantly satisfy themselves in so doing; though
perhaps all the time they put but a cheat upon themse ves think
ing that they follow Christ, while indeed they run only after the
loaves. What Solomon says of wisdom, that they think of reli
gion that it is " good with an inheritance." The devil granted
it to be an easy matter for Job to serve God in the midst of that
great affluence, while God set a hedge round about all that he
had : but, says he to God, " put forth thine hand and touch him,"
strip him of all his greatness, his wealth and honour, and he will
curse thee to thy face ; and if Job's heart had not been made of
better metal than the heart of the most specious hypocrite in the
world, the devil had not been at all out in his advice, but would
have certainly seen his prediction verified in Job's behaviour.
Many love Christ as they love their temporal king ; while he
flourishes, and has the opportunity of obliging his dependants,
they will be sure to stick close ' by his side : but would they
follow him into banishment, and pay allegiance to majesty poor,
and bare, and forlorn? and if Providence should debase him to
so low a pitch, could they honour him in rags, as much as they
do in purple ? and give him the same homage wandering in the
land of strangers, that they show him riding in the head of his
own armies ? No ; the case comes to be altered here. When
indeed duty and emolument conspire, one may easily be per
formed, because in the very same action the other may be in
tended : but when they part, and virtue is to set off itself merely
upon the stock of its own worth, there men generally look upon
it as upon a fair woman without a portion : all will commend,
but none will marry her.
But this was the great and infallible demonstration, that all
the ancient heroes in the faith gave of their love to God, that they
took him alone for an inheritance and a patrimony, and embraced
religion separate from all temporal accessions, as the utmost limit
of their desires, the just measures of their designs, and the sole
and ample object of their satisfaction. Abraham left his coun
try, his family, his estate, following God upon his bare word and
command. The disciples left all, and followed Christ; the pri
mitive Christians and martyrs relinquished every worldly enjoy
ment even to life itself, and embarked all their hopes, all their
fortunes and felicities, both present and future, in this one bot
tom, looking for all these, and that which Was much better and
greater than all, entirely in their religion.
But because human nature has great arguments and reluctan-
cies against such an heroic act of piety, God, that he might cast
all our duties within the rules and measures of reason which is
the proper " drawing ns with the cords of a man," has provided
greater arguments to induce us to such an undertaking, than
flesh and blood can produce against it. For when he called
Abraham from the very bosom of his friends and fortunes he

CHRIST WORTHY OF OUR HIGHEST ESTEEM. 403
did not divert his will from one desirable object without propos
ing to it another : but he both answers his desires and obviates
his fears, in that infinitely full and encouraging promise, Gen.
xv. 1, "Fear not, Abraham; I am thy shield and thy exceeding
great reward." A promise that might reach the very utmost of
his thoughts, confute his doubts, and make good the reason of
his obedience in all circumstances whatsoever. And Christ
makes the same promise to all his, Matt. xix. 29, that " there is
none who should leave father, or mother, or lands for his sake
and the gospel's, but should receive an hundredfold in this world,
and in the world to come everlasting life." That is, they should
receive that high satisfaction, pleasure, and peace of mind, that
should be an hundredfold greater than any that is conveyed to the
heart of man from the vastest abundance of worldly treasures
and enjoyments. So that in all these high instances of religion,
God is pleased to convince as well as to command us to obedience,
still interweaving argument with precept, and so making our
love to him as rational as it can be religious.
And therefore let men frame to themselves what measures of
religion they please, yet if they cannot love and acquiesce in it,
when Providence shall leave them nothing in the world else to
bestow their love upon, but dispossess them of all the former de
lights of their eyes and joys of their hearts, (of which we have
but too frequent and pregnant examples in many, whose fortunes
have been ground to nothing by some sad calamities), such must
assure themselves that all their love to Christ is trifling and su
perficial, and far from that sincerity that makes it genuine, sav
ing, and victorious over the world. And God knows how soon
he may bring all our pretences to so severe a trial ; and what
need the weak heart of man will then have of such a principle
to support it, when it shall find itself beat off from all its former
holds, bereft of its supplies, and every thing on this side heaven
frowning and looking sternly upon it. It will be then found
that religion is not a chimera or a fancy, and that the pious man
has something or other within him that makes him hold up his
head, while others in the same calamity droop and despond.
Where the love of Christ has once possessed itself of the
heart, though a man lives in the world, yet he lives not upon it.
And therefore when nothing is imported from without, he can say
to the world as Christ did once to his disciples, " I have meat that
ye know not of." "A good man," says Solomon, " is satisfied from
himself;" he carries his store, his plenty, his friends, and his pre
ferments about him. Nothing could more excellently and divinely
express this condition than those words of our Saviour, John vii.
38, " He that believes on me, as the scripture saith, out of his
belly shall flow rivers of living water." Cisterns may be broKen,
and we removed from them or they from us ; but he that has a
fountain within him can never be athirst.

404 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxvh.
Having thus despatched the first particular, and shown those
five things included in tfie love to Christ spoken of in the text,
I proceed now to
II. The second, which is to show what are the reasons and
motives that may induce us to this love. And for this I might
insist upon that mighty and commanding cause of love, the amia-
bleness and high perfection of Christ's person; which contains
in it the very "fulness of the Godhead bodily;" all the glories of
the Deity are wrapped up and included in it ; they reach as wide
as infinity, and as far as eternity. His vast, unlimited knowledge
and wisdom, his uncontrollable power and his boundless goodness,
are all objects to excite such an esteem and admiration of him
as must naturally pass into love.
Every thing that is but good attracts love, but that which is
excellent commands it ; and then how amiable must that nature
needs be of which the sun, the gloriousest creature in the world,
is but a glimpse, the light itself a shadow, and the whole uni
verse, that is, the united glories of heaven and earth, but a
broken copy and an imperfect transcript. " Thou art fairer than
the children of men," says the prophet David, Psalm xiv. 2 ; and
beauty, all confess, is the grand celebrated motive of affection.
The whole Song of Solomon is but a description of those raptures
of love into which the church had been raised by a contemplation
of the unparalleled beauties of Christ. All the perfections we
behold and admire in the world, either in men or women, are but
weak traces and faint imitations of the divine beauty, which is
the original : and which would infinitely more captivate our
desires, could we see things with an intellectual eye, as clearly as
we do with a corporeal. But I shall not dwell upon these
motives of love drawn from the perfection of Christ considered
in himself, but as relating to us and to our concernments, and so
I shall assign these two motives of our love to him.
1. That he is best able to reward our love.
2. That he has shown the greatest love to us.
1. And for the first of these, that he is best able to reward
our love. I confess, that to love merely for reward, is not so
properly to love as to traffic, and flows not from affection but design.
But on the other side, to love a worthless thing, to embrace a cloud,
or for a vine to cling about a bramble, is not to bestow, but throw
away affection. The " recompence of reward" is a thing always to
be respected, though not to be solely intended. And the very
pleasure and satisfaction that the mind finds in loving a worthy
and a noble object, is a considerable reward of that very love.
Virtue and religion composes the thoughts, answers the desires,
and satisfies the conscience of him that loves it. The absolving
clearness of which is a gratuity much greater than any that
either the pleasure of the sin or of the world can bestow. The

CHRIST WORTHY OF OUR HIGHEST ESTEEM. 405
sensual epicure catches at the delights of sense, and lets out the
whole stream of his desires upon them. But what answer and
return do they make him ? Does he not find them like the
apples of Sodom, rotten as well as alluring, fair to the sight, but
crumbling into ashes by the touch ? How do they vanish into
smoke, and air, and nothing, and lose all their credit upon expe
rience ! Trial puts a period to them, as it must do to all empty,
fantastic enjoyments, that owe their value only to distance and
expectation. Those that have been the most insatiable lovers of pleasure,
profit, and honour, and such other worldly incentives of love ;
and have had all their desires pursued and plied with constant
surfeiting fruitions of them ; let them at last run over all with a
severe and a reflecting thought, and see whether they have not
been rather wearied than satisfied, their love still determining in
loathing, or at least in indifference. How have they been paid for
all their love ? Why, some have been paid with the wages of
poverty, some of diseases, some of shame, but all with dissatis
faction. " What fruit have we of those things ?" says the apostle
most emphatically: which words are not so much the voice of
a man, as of mankind, upon a survey of all temporal fruitions.
There is an emptiness during the enjoyment of them, and a
sting in the remembrance : present they deceive, and being past
they disturb. And now must vanity and vexation be taken for
a valuable price of that affection that Christ would purchase
with the pleasures of virtue and the glories of heaven, with
present satisfaction and future salvation ?
Go over the regions of hell and mansions of the damned, and
there you will see how sin and the world have rewarded men for all
the love they have shown them. They have made most men miser
able, even in this life ; but did they ever make any one happy in
the other ? in which alone happiness and misery are considerable,
as being there alone unchangeable. Consider a man making his
addresses to his beloved sin, as Samson did to his Delilah ; he
courts and caresses it, sacrifices his strength and unbosoms his
very soul to it ; he breaks through bars, and gates, and walls to
visit it: is impatient of wanting the delights of its company:
and now how is he recompensed for all these heights of love ?
Why, he is answered with tricks and arts, with traps and
treacheries : he is dissembled with, and betrayed to his mortal
enemies : those eyes are put out by the person upon whom they
doted, and the lap he slept in delivers him into perpetual im
prisonment, misery, and intolerable disgrace. It is impossible
for a man to show more love than he does to sin, and it is not
possible for his bitterest enemy to pay him with more fatal
returns. The truth is, a man in all his converse with sin courts
a serpent, and hugs a scorpion, which will be sure to strike and
sting him to death for all his kindness.

406 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxvii.
But because there are other things besides sin that are apt to
bid fair for our love, as the possessions and honours of the world,
let us see what kind of requital they make for that great love
that they find from their most passionate suitors and pursuers.
A man perhaps loves riches with that vehemence of desire, that
he thinks gold cannot be bought too dear, though the price of it
be his natural rest, his health, his reputation, his soul, and every
thing. But now after all this, what does he find in it to recom
pense such an unwearied, unconquerable love ? Can it ease his
conscience, when the injustice by which he gained it shall torment'
him ? Can it reconcile him to heaven ? or afford him one drop
of cold water in hell to cool his tongue when it has brought him
thither ?
And why then should a man fling away the very spirit and
quintessence of his soul, his love, upon such an ungrateful ob
ject as can make him no return ? Would he bestow half of his
watchings, his labours, and painful attendances, in the matters of
religion, in stating businesses between God and his soul, he might
raise himself such an interest, as should scorn the batteries of
fortune, the injuries of time, and the very powers of hell, such
a one as should stand victorious and eternal, trample upon the
world, conquer death, and even outlive time itself. Let that
thing or person therefore have our love that will give most' for
it ; and this shall be the first motive or argument for our placing
it upon Christ.
2. The second shall be taken from this consideration, that
Christ has shown the greatest love to us. Love is the most na
tural, proper, and stated price of love. It is a debt that is not
to be paid but in kind ; it scorns all other return or retaliation ;
and Christ is so much beforehand with us in this respect, that
should we show him the utmost love that humanity is capable of
exerting, yet our love could not come under the notion of kind
ness, but of gratitude : for we cannot prevent him in the first
acts ; but only answer him in the subsequent returns of it. It
is not a giving, but a paying him our affection.
The united voice of all the world heretofore proclaimed the
baseness of ingratitude, and you needed not have amplified upon
the topic of several vices, to have represented a man vile ; for
that charge alone of being ungrateful, was a compendious account
of all ill qualities, and left a greater brand upon a man, than
whole volumes of satires and loud declamations against him. For
the truth is, it is a vice that has in it a peculiar malignity, tend
ing to dissolve and fret asunder the bands of society, and amica
ble converse between men ; forasmuch as society subsists by a
mutual intercourse of good offices ; and if there were no corre
spondence and exchange of one friendly action for another com
pany could not be desirable : and a man might command the
same enjoyment in the solitudes of a desert and a howling

CHRIST WORTHY OF OUR HIGHEST ESTEEM. 407
wilderness, that he could in a populous city, well inhabited, and
wisely governed.
Every ungrateful person, that receives much kindness but re
pays none, only acts another kind of robbery, for he really
withholds a due, and is indeed a thief within the protection of
the law. Ingratitude is as great a sin in the sight of God, as
any that is punishable by the laws of men ; and has as little to
plead for itself upon the stock of human infirmity as any sin
whatsoever. For nature prompts, and even urges a man to
acknowledge a benefit conferred on him ; and that so far, that an
obligation noways answered, lies like a load and a burden upon
an ingenuous mind ; and a man must have debauched and worn
out the natural impressions of ingenuity to a very great degree,
before he can be unconcerned where he has been much obliged.
Now Christ has obliged us with two of the highest instances
of his love to us imaginable.
(1.) That he died for us. The love of life is naturally the
greatest, and therefore that love that so far masters this, as to
induce a man to lay it down, must needs be transcendent and
supernatural. For life is the first thing that nature desires, and
the laist that it is willing to part with. But how poor amd low,
amd in what a pitiful, shallow channel does the love of the world
commonly run ! Let us come and desire such a one to speak a
favourable word or two for us to a potent friend, and how much
of coyness, and excuse, and shyness shall we find ! the man is
unwilling to spend his breath in speaking, much less in dying for
his friend. Come to another, and ask him upon the stock of a
long acquaintance, and a professed kindness, to borrow but a
little money of him, and how quickly does he fly to his shifts,
pleading poverty, debts, and great occasions, and any thing,
rather than open his own bowels to refresh those of his poor
neighbour! the man will not bleed in his purse, much less other
wise, to rescue his friend from prison, from disgrace, and perhaps
a great disaster.
But now how incomparably full and strong must the love of
Christ -needs have been, that could make him sacrifice even life
itself for the good of mankind, and not only die, but die with all
the* heightening circumstances of pain and ignominy; that is, in
such a' manner, that death was the least part of the suffering?
Let us but -fix our thoughts upon Christ hanging, bleeding, and
at length dying upon the cross, and we shall read his love to man
there, in larger and more visible characters than the superscrip
tion that the Jews put over his head in so many languages. All
which, and many more, were not sufficient to have fully expressed
and set forth so incredibly great an affection. Every thorn was
a pencil to represent, and every groan a trumpet to proclaim,
how great a love he was then showing to mankind.
And now surely our love must needs be very cold, if all the

408 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXVII.
blood that ran in our Saviour's veins cannot warm it ; for all that
was shed for us, and shed for that very purpose, that it might
prevent the shedding of ours. Our obnoxiousness to the curse
of the law for sin, had exposed us to all the extremity of misery,
and made death as due to us, as wages to the workman. And the
divine justice, we may be sure, would never have been behind
hand to pay us our due. The dreadful retribution was certain
and unavoidable, and therefore since Christ could not prevent,
he was pleased at least to divert the blow, and to turn it upon
himself; to take the cup of God's fury out of our hands, and to
drink off the very dregs of it. The greatest love that men
usually bear one another is but show and ceremony, compliment,
and a mere appearance, in comparison of this. This was such a
love as, Solomon says, is "strong as death;" and, to express it yet
higher, such a one as was stronger than the very desires of life.
(2.) The other transcendent instance of Christ's love to man
kind, was that he did not only die for us, but that he died for* us
while we were enemies, and (in the phrase of scripture) enmity
itself against him. It is possible indeed that some natures, of a
nobler mould and make than the generality of the world, may
arise to such an heroic degree of love, as to induce one friend to
die for another. For the apostle says, that " for a good man
one would even dare to die." And we may read in heathen story
of the noble contention of two friends, which of them should
have the pleasure and honour of dying in the other's stead ; and
writing the inward love of his heart in the dearest blood that did
enliven it. Yet still the love of Christ to mankind runs in ano
ther and a higher strain ; for admit that one man had died for
another, yet still it has been for his friend, that is, for something
if not of equal, yet, at least, of next esteem to life itself, in the
common judgment of all. Human love will indeed sometimes
act highly and generously, but still it is upon a suitable object,
upon something that is amiable : and if there be either no fuel,
or that which is unsuitable, the flame will certainly go out.
But the love of Christ does not find, but makes us lovely. It
" saw us in our blood" (as the prophet speaks), wallowing in all
the filth and impurities of our natural corruption, and then it
said unto us, "Live." Christ then laid down his life for^us,
when we had forfeited our own to him. Which strange action
was, as if a prince should give himself a ransom for that traitor,
that would have murdered him ; and sovereignty itself lie down
upon the block to rescue the neck of a rebel from the stroke of
justice. This was the method and way that Christ took in what
he suffered for us ; a method that reason might at first persuade
us to be against nature, and that religion assures us to be above
it. But such a one that both reason and religion cannot but
convince us to be the highest and the most unanswerable ar<m-
ment for a surpassing love to Christ on our parts, that (be°it

CHRIST WORTHY OF OUR HIGHEST ESTEEM. 409
spoken with reverence) God himself could afford us. An argu
ment that must render every sin of so black and dismal a hue
under the economy of the gospel, that there is no monster com
parable to the sinner, to him that can hate after so much love,
and by his ingratitude rend open those wounds afresh that were
made only to bleed for his offences.
Having thus shown the reasons and arguments to enforce our
love to Christ, I descend now to
HI. The third and last thing, which is to show the signs and
characters whereby we may discern this love. Love is a thing that
is more easily extinguished than concealed. It needs no herald
to proclaim it, but wheresoever it is, it will be sure to show
•itself. Fire shines ss well as bums, and needs nothing but its
own light to make it visible and conspicuous. But yet to make
a clearer discovery of the sincerity of our love to Christ, I shall
give these three signs of it.
1. A frequent amd indeed a continual thinking of him. " Where
your treasure is," says our Saviour, "there will your heart be
also." That is, whatsoever you love and value, that will be sure
to take up your thoughts. Love desires the presence of the
object loved, and there is no way to make distant things present
but by thought. Thought gives a man the picture of his friend,
by continually representing him to his imagination. " 0 how
love I thy law!" says David; it is "my meditation day and
night." It kept him waking upon his bed, and was a greater
refreshment to him than his natural repose. Let every man
reflect upon his own experience, and consult the working of his
own breast, and he will find how unable he is to shut the door
upon his thoughts, and to keep them from running out after that
thing, whatsoever it is, that has seized his affections. Whatso
ever work he is about, whatsoever place he is in, still his thoughts
are sure to be there.
And can that man then pretend a love to religion, who seldom
makes it the business of his thoughts and meditations ? He that
thinks of God but now and then, and by chance, or upon the
weekly returns of a sermon, when the preacher interrupts his
other thoughts, shows that God and religion are strangers to his
heart, and his most inward affections. David makes this the
proper mark and the very characteristic of a wicked and a pro
fane person, that " God is not in all his thoughts:" the very bent
and stream of his soul is another way. Love is the bias of the
thoughts, and continually commands and governs the motion of
them. And therefore if a man would have an infallible account
of his own heart, let him impartially ask himself, what hours he
sets aside to meditate upon the matters of religion, the state of
his soul, the conditions upon which he must be saved, and what
evidences he has of his repentance, and his interest in the second
Vol. IV.— 52 2 M

410 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXVH.
covenant; as also to consider with himself the quality of his
sins and the measures of his sorrow ; and whether after all he
gets' ground of his sin, or his sin of him. Let every man, I say,
inquire of his own heart what time he allots for these thoughts,
and whether he is not delighted when he can retire for this pur
pose : and, on the contrary, grieved and displeased when by some
cross accident or other he is diverted and taken off from thus
retreating into himself. If he finds nothing of this in the course
of his life (as it is to be feared very few do), let him rest
assured that he is not in earnest when he calls himself a Chris
tian. For Christianity is not his business, his design, and con
sequently not his religion : but, applied to him, is only a name,
and nothing else.
2. The second sign of a sincere love to Christ, is a willingness
to leave the world, whensoever God shall think fit to send his
messenger of death to summon us to a nearer converse with
Christ. " I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ," says
the blessed apostle. For is it possible for any to love a friend,
and not to desire to be with him ? Upon which account I have
often marvelled how some people are able to reconcile the sin
cerity of their love to Christ, with such an excessive,, immoderate
dread of death. For do they fear to be in Abraham's boSom,
and in the arms of their Saviour? Are they unwilling to be
completely happy, to be saved and glorified, and to have their
hopes perfected into possession and actually to enjoy, what they
profess themselves earnestly to expect ?
Those who have a spiritual sight of these things, and a rational
persuasion of their title to them, surely cannot look upon that,
through which they must pass to them, with so much horror and
consternation. The first effect that a true and lively faith has
upon the soul is to conquer the fear of death : for if Christ has
done any thing for us, he has disarmed that, and taken away the
grimness, the sting, and terror of that grand adversary. But
some men have to Set their heart and soul upon the things of this
world, that it is death to them to think of dying ; they do not
so much depart, as are torn out of the world ; and the separation
between this and them is harder than that between their soul
and their body. How intolerable is it to them, to think of
parting with a fair estate, a flourishing family, and great honour !
How hardly are they brought to exchange their heaven here
below for orie above ! This is the mind of most men, and it
shows itself through all their glorious pretences; but let those
who are so minded, whatsoever love they may profess to Christ,
rest assured of the truth of this, that they love that most which
they are willing to relinquish last.
3. A third, and indeed the principal sign of a sincere love to
Christ, is a zeal for his honour, and an impatience to hear or see
any indignity offered him. A person truly pious will mourn for

CHRIST WORTHY OF OUR HIGHEST ESTEEM. 411
other men's sins as well as for his own. " Mine eyes run down
with teairs," says David, "because men keep not thy command
ments." He is grieved that God is dishonoured, whosoever the
person be that does it. He weeps over the vicious lives of those
that are round about him, though they cannot wound his con
science, yet because of the wound and blow that the scandal of
them gives to religion. For it is the honour and reputation of
that, that he espouses as his own concernment ; forasmuch as
every man even in temporal things looks upon his very personal
interest as wrapped up in the credit of his profession. And
therefore where such a one hears the name of God profaned, re
ligion scoffed at and abused, his blood boils, and his heart grows
hot within him, and he cannot but vindicate the honour of his
Maker, in reproving the blasphemer to his teeth.
Some indeed will not discourse filthily or atheistically them
selves, but can quietly and contentedly enough hear others do so ;
but let such know that they go sharers in the blasphemy that
they do not reprehend ; and have as little love to Christ, as that
son to his father, who should patiently hear him reviled and tra
duced in compatny, and acquit himself upon this account, that he
did not revile him himself: or that subject to his prince, who could
read a libel of him with pleasure, and make good his loyalty to
him upon this ground, that he was not the author of it : though
in all base and unworthy actions, the difference between the
author and the approver of them, by the judgment of all knowing
persons, is not great.
Never did our Saviour himself express so keen and fierce an
indignation, as when he saw men profaning the temple, and
turning his Father's house into a den of thieves : he then added
compulsion to complaint, force to his words, and drove out those
hucksters in the face of danger, amd in spite of resistance, fearing
neither the authority of the rulers, nor the insolence of the
rabble. Thus did Christ manifest his love to his Father, which
love he has left as the pattern and standard by which we should
measure our love to him.
And thus I have given you some survey of the love that
Christ exacts from all those who aspire to the name and privilege
of Christians. You have seen the several parts and ingredients
of it, the arguments for it, and, lastly, the marks and signs de
claring it ; which surely will be some use and moment to every
man to conduct him in that grand inquiry about his spiritual
state and condition. If the love of Christ is not in him, the
merits of Christ's death belong not to him ; but he is a member
of Satan, and a vessel of reprobation. Certainly had men a
'deep and a lively sense of that eternal misery that Christ has
declared the portion of those who relate not to him, they would
give their eyes no sleep, nor their thoughts any rest, till they had
satisfied themselves of that sincerity that alone must stand be-

412 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. XXVH.
tween them and eternal wrath ; and withal entitle them to those
numerous and great blessings that he wrapped up in the womb of
that one comprehensive promise, that all things shall work
together for the good of those that love God."
To which God be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all
praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for ever
more. Amen. *

413

SERMON XXVIII.

PART I.
THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST A MOTIVE TO CONFIDENCE IN
PRA-faR.
Ephesians iii. 12.
In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith
of him.
There is no duty or action of religion, in which it concerns a
man to proceed with so much exactness, as in prayer; it being
the greatest and most solemn intercourse that earth can have
with heaven ; the nearest access to him who dwells in that light
that is indeed inaccessible : and in a word, the most sovereign
and sanctified means, to derive blessing, happiness, glory, and all
that heaven can give or heart desire, upon the creature. But
since the distance between God and us is so great by nature, and
yet greater by sin, it concerns us to see upon what terms of
security we matke our address to him : for it cannot be satfe for a
traitor to venture himself as a petitioner into the presence of his
prince, whatsoever his wants or necessities may be. And that
sin puts us in the very same capacity in reference to God is most
sure ; so that if there be no accommodation and reconcilement
first found out, for any sinner to come to God, is but for him to
cast himself into the arms of a consuming fire, to provoke an
imminent wrath, to beg a curse, and to solicit his own
damnation. But Christ has smoothed a way for us, and turned the tribu
nal of justice into a throne of grace ; so that we are commanded
to change our fears into faith; to lift up our heads, as well as
our hands, and to come with a good heart, not only in respect of
innocence, but also in respect of confidence.
For the prosecution of the words I shall endeavour the dis
cussion of these four things.
I. That there is a certain boldness and confidence very well
consisting with and becoming of our humblest addresses to
God. II. That the foundation of this confidence ¦ is laid in the
mediation of Jesus Christ.
ni. I shall show the reasons why the mediation of Christ
ought to minister such confidence to us in our access to God.
2m2

414 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxviii.
IV And lastly, I shall show whether or no there be any other
ground that may rationally embolden us in these our approaches
to him. I. And for the first of these, that there is a certain bold
ness and confidence very well consisting with. and becoming of our
humblest addresses to God. This is evident; for it is the very
language of prayer to treat God with the appellation of "father;"
and surely every son may own a decent confidence before his
father, without any entrenchment either upon paternal authority
or filial reverence. For when God by the Spirit of adoption has
put us into the relation of sons, he does not expect from us the
behaviour of slaves, and allow of no other expresses of our honour
to him but distance and amazement, silence and astonishment.
As for the nature of this confidence, it is not so easily set forth
by any positive description, as by the opposition that it bears to
its extremes; which are of two sorts: 1. In defect; 2. In
excess. 1. And for those of the first sort, that consist in defect.
(1.) This confidence is in the first place opposed to desperation
and horror of conscience. A temper that speaks aloud in those
desponding ejaculations of the psalmist, Psalm lxxvii. 7 — 9.
" Will the Lord cast off for ever, and will he be favourable no
more ? Is his mercy clean gone for ever ? and doth his promise
fail for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath
he in anger shut up his tender mercies?" Every word seems to
be the voice of a soul supposing itself in the very brink of hell,
and even already singed with the everlasting burnings. Nor
does despair here only put it to the question as the psalmist
does ; but takes it for a granted, concluded truth, and verily
believes that matters stand thus between God and the despairing
person ; who looks upon God as his implacable adversary, amd
himself as under a condemning sentence that is both final and
irreversible. Nothing can be imagined more black and dismal
than those thoughts and representations, that such a mind frames
to itself of God's power and justice. For it thinks that this
latter is inexorable, and that the former is wholly employed
about the execution of its severe decrees. These grim attributes
constantly exercise and take up the meditations; which con
sidered with relation to the state of a sinner, absolutely in them
selves, and without any qualification or allays from mercy, must
needs drive a man into all the agonies and terrors of mind that
can be. For what can a sinner hope for, from power and
justice without mercy? What can he expect but the extremity
of wrath and revenge ? a separation from God and a consignation
over to eternal miseries ?
But besides, if despair does sometimes think and reflect upon
mercy, yet it expects no share in it; but supposes the bowels

ON confidence in prayer. 415
shut up, the relentings past, and the day of grace spent and
gone. Now so long as it thus misrepresents and libels God to
the conscience in all his attributes, how is it possible for a man
to have the confidence to pray to him? Despair stupifies and
confounds, and stops not only the mouth, but the very breath,
and, as it were, keeps and confines a man within himself.
It is natural for every thing to fly from an enemy, and while a
mam apprehends God to be so, he would, if it were possible, con
vey himself out of his very sight. He that presumes to ask a
thing of another, is prompted to the doing so, by an opinion of
the proneness of such a one to hear and relieve him in all
his straits and necessities; but no man puts a petition into the
hands of his tormentor, or asks any other favour of his execu
tioner but to despatch him quickly. No man can pray where he
cannot hope.
That confidence therefore that must qualify us for and attends
us in prayer, is opposed to all kind of desperation, which by mak
ing a man account God his enemy, and thereby forbear praying
to him, makes him indeed his own.
(2.) This confidence is opposed also to doubtings and ground
less scrupulosities. 1 Tim. ii. 8, " I will," says Paul, " that men
pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and
doubting." Why? Suppose they should doubt and waver in
presenting their prayers to God ; James i. 7, " Let not such an
one," says St. James, " think that he shall receive any thing of
the Lord." And the reason is plain, for no man is to pray for
any thing, but what God both allows and commands him to pray
for.. In which case, if he doubts of the issue and success of his
prayer, is it not clear that his suspicion upbraids either God's
power, that he cannot, or his truth, that he will not make good
the effects of his promise ? And would any great man favour a
petitioner that should entertain such thoughts of him? Would
he not rather think himself affronted than honoured by such an
address ? Qui timide rogat, docet negare. No man counts himself
any longer obliged to do a kindness, after he comes once to be
suspected : for to suspect a man is to asperse his clearness and
ingenuity, and plainly declares that we judge him not really to
be what he pretends and appears ; than which there cannot be a
greater and a more injurious reflection upon the divine goodness.
God does not love a misgiving, half-persuaded petitioner, that
comes in suspense and trembling, sometimes hopes, sometimes
fluctuates, and, in a word, cannot be so properly said to come as
a petitioner, as an adventurer to the throne of mercy. God loves
to maintain worthy apprehensions of himself and of all his
dealings, in the minds of such as serve him ; and it is but reason
that those apprehensions should shine forth in the freedom of
their deportment, and in their frank reliance upon his readiness
to give or do whatsoever shall be fit for them to ask.

416 DR. SOUTH'S -POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXVin.
But it will perhaps be pleaded in defence and excuse of such
doubting, that it arises not from any unbecoming thoughts of
God but from the sense of the unworthiness of him that prays ;
which makes him question the success of his petition, notwith
standing all the divine mercy and liberality. And this seems to
be so far from a fault, that it ought rather to be cherished and
commended as an effect of the grace of humility.
But to this I answer, that by the plea of unworthiness is
meant, either an unworthiness in point of merit; and so the
argument would keep a man from praying for ever, forasmuch as
none can ever pretend a claim of merit to the thing he prays for,
as shall be more fully observed hereafter. Or secondly, it is
meant of an unworthiness in point of fitness to receive the thing
prayed for; which fitness consists in that evangelical sincerity,
that makes a man walk with that uprightness, as not to allow
himself in any sin. But for a man to plead himself unworthy
upon this account, is to plead himself unfit to pray : for whatso
ever makes him fit to pray, makes him fit also to expect the
thing asked for in prayer. This therefore concerns not the
matter in debate ; for the question is, whether he that is duly
qualified for such an address to God, can without sin doubt of
the issue of that address ? Which we deny : otherwise it is most
certainly true, according to that of Solomon, that " the prayer
of the wicked is an abomination to God ;" and that such a one
may not only lawfully doubt whether he shall be heard or no,
but ought to conclude, that without all doubt he shall not be
heard. But it may be urged further. Does not experience show, that
persons that are thus qualified in point of sincerity and upright
ness before God, do not always obtain the things they sue for,
but are sometimes answered with a repulse ? For did not David
earnestly pray for the life of his child, and yet was denied it ?
And the like instances might be produced of several other saints.
Now where a man is sure that the prayers of the righteous are
not always granted, may not he very well doubt of the success
of his own ?
To this I answer, that in that respect that a man ought to
pray for any thing from God, the prayer of no righteous person
,was ever denied. For every man is to pray for a thing with
submission to the divine will, and so far as God shall think fit to
grant it. And in this respect no man is to entertain the least
doubt in prayer, but stedfastly to believe that God will vouchsafe
him the thing he petitions for, so far as the ends of God's glory
and his own good shall make the granting of that thing necessary.
Otherwise for a man to expect absolutely and infallibly the event
of whatsoever he prays for, only because he thought fit to pray
for it, is a great folly, and a bold presumption ; it is to determine
and give measures to the divine bounty and wisdom • to tell it

' ON CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER. 417
what it ought to do ; to send instructions to heaven, and in a
word, it is not so properly to pray, as to prescribe to God.
2. Having thus shown the two extremes to which the confi
dence spoken of in the text is opposed in point' of defect, I come
now to treat of those to which it is opposed in point of excess,
and to show, that as it excludes despair and doubting on the one
hatnd, so it banishes all rashness and irreverence on the other.
It is indeed hard for the weak and unsteady hearts of men to
carry themselves in such an equal poise between both, as not to
make the shunning of one inconvenience the falling into another ;
but the greater the danger is, the greater must be our attention
to the rule.
(1.) First of all then, confidence in point of excess is opposed
to rashness and precipitation. Rashness is properly a man's
sudden undertaking of any action, without a due examination of
the grounds or motives that may encourage him to it, and of the
reasons that may on the other side dehort and deter him from it :
an omission of either of which makes it rash and unreasonable.
And prayer surely, of all other duties and actions, ought to be a
reasonable service. It calls upon him that undertakes it to con
sider before he resolves, again and again to consider, irito what
presence he is going, what the thing is that he is about to do,
what preparedness and fitness he finds in himself for it, what the
advantages of a right, and what the sad consequences of an
undue performance of it are tike to be. '
I have read that it has been reported of a holy person, that he
used to bestow a whole hour at least in meditation 'before he
kneeled down to that prayer which perhaps he uttered in three
minutes. He that goes about to pray, must know that he goes
about one of the weightiest and the grandest actions of his whole
life. And therefore let him turn his thoughts to all the ingre
dients and circumstances relating to it ; let him meditate before
what a pure and a piercing eye he presents himself ; such a one
as shoots into all the corners and recesses of his heart like a sun
beam, as ransacks all his most concealed thoughts, views all the
little indirect designs, the excursions and wanderings of his spirit,
and spies out the first early buddings and inclinations of his cor
ruption. And as it sees them, so it cannot but abhor and detest
them, unless their guilt be washed off by repentance, and covered
under the imputed righteousness of a Saviour.
Let him consider, how it were like to fare with him, if this
should happen to be his last prayer, and God should stop his
breath in the very midst of it, and interrupt him with a summons
into another world : whether, in such a case, he should be found
in a fit posture to own an appearance at that fearful tribunal,
without blushing and confusion of face. No man is fit to pray,
that is not fit to die.
Let him consider also, whether there are not the scores of old
' Vol. IV. -53

418 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. XXVIII.
sins yet uncancelled lying upon his hand ? Whether he is not in
arrears to God in point of gratitude for past mercies, while he
is begging new ; and whether he has not abused that bounty
that he is now imploring, and made the liberality of heaven the
instrument of his vanity, and the proveditor for his lust ; even
in a literal sense " turning the grace of God into wantonness."
These things should be recollected and canvassed with a deep,
close, and intent reflection, and all reckonings (as much as
possible) set even between God and the soul.
David would first wash his hands in innocency, before he would
presume to compass God's altar, Psalm xxvi. 6. But how few
are there, that think preparation any part of this duty. They
bolt immediately into the presence of God, though perhaps they
come but newly from doing that, that they would not own in the
presence of men. They come with the guilt of fresh sins warm
upon their consciences, lifting up those hands in. prayer, that
were lately busied in all kind of rapine and violence ; and joining
in it with those tongues that were not long before the instruments
of railing, filth, and obscenity. As David washed his hands, so such
persons should do well to wash their mouths also, before they ap
proached the place of divine worship, especially when they were
to bear a part in it. With what awe and veneration did Jacob look
and think upon the place where God had appeared to him ! Gen.
xxviii. 16, 17, " Surely," says he, " the Lord was in this place
and I knew it not ; and he was afraid, and said, How dreadful
is this place ! it is none other but the house of God." But sad
experience shows, that men now-a-days resort to that, that they
both call and think the house of God ; but yet behave them
selves in it, as if it .were neither holy nor dreadful : though if
God were not more merciful than men are sinful, they would feel
by a severe instance that it was both.
There is some boldness that is the effect of blindness ; and
surely it is this, that brings men to so sacred and so concerning an
action as prayer is, with such trivial spirits, such rambling, un
collected thoughts, and such offensive, profane behaviours. But
such persons must know, that this is far from the boldness men
tioned in the text : and that though God both allows and enjoins
a due confidence in our accesses to him, yet still they are to
remember that confidence does not exclude caution.
(2.) The confidence spoken of in the text, in point of excess,
is opposed to impudence or irreverence ; which, the truth is, is
but the natural effect and consequent of the former : for he that
considers not the sacredness of a thing or action, cannot easily
pay it that devotion and reverence that the dignity of it requires.
There are many ways by which this irreverence may show itself in
prayer, but I shall more especially mention and insist upon two.
1st. The using of saucy, familiar expressions to God. A
practice that some heretofore delighted in to that degree of ex-

ON CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER. 419
travagance, that he that should have stood without the church,
and not seen what was doing within it, would have verily thought
that somebody was talking to his equal and companion. Now
the ground of this must needs have been from gross, low, and
absurd conceptions of God, and withal very fond and high
opinions of themselves, by ttdrich they thought themselves such
absolute masters of his favour, and bound so close to him by
election, that they were to bespeak him at a different rate of
fellowship and peremptoriness from all other mortals. And
accordingly, they would utter themselves to him as if they were
perfectly acquainted with all his counsels, knew his mind, and
read over his decrees: and if need were, could advise him in
many matters relating to the government of the world.
And therefore their usual dialect was, We know, Lord, that
this and this is thy way of dealing with thy saints ; and that thou
canst not be angry with those whose heart is right with thee,
though they may sometimes out of' infirmity trip into a perjury,
a murder, or an adultery. Nay, and they would tell God to his
face, that he had revealed such a thing to them ; when perhaps
within two or three days the event proved clean contrary. When
their armies were in their field, they would usually at home be
siege God with such expressions, Lord, if thou shouldest forsake
us thy peculiar inheritance, who are called by thy name, where
wouldest thou find such another praying people? And again,
Lord, thou mayest, out of anger to the nation, deliver thy chosen
ones into the hands of their enemies, but consider what thou
doest. It would be endless, and indeed unsavoury, to draw forth
all the flowers of their profane rhetoric, with which they so
liberally stuffed their impudent harangues, which they were
pleased to cadi prayers.
And the rude familiarity of their expressions was attended with
an equad rudeness of gesture and motion, throwing forth
their arms, sweating, and carrying their whole bodies so, as if
their prayer was indeed a " wrestling with God" without a meta
phor. But it is strange that any should be able to persuade
themselves that this should be zeal, and the proper fervour of
devotion, when common sense and good manners generally prompt
men to a. greater wariness and restraint upon themselves in their
appearance before an earthly superior. For no man shakes his
prince by the hand, or accosts him with a Hail, fellow, well met.
And if the laws and custom of nations will by no means endure
such boldness to sovereign princes, for fear of debasing majesty,
and so by degrees diminishing the commanding force of govern
ment, surely there ought to be more care used in managing our
deportment toward God ; since the impressions we have of things
not seen by us, are more easily worn off, than those that are con
tinually renewed upon the mind by a converse with visible
objects. And that which will bring us into a contempt of our

420 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. XXVIII.
earthly prince whom we see, is much more likely to bring us into
a light esteem of our heavenly King, whom we have not seen.
We are to use such words as may not only manifest, but also
increase our reverence; we are, as I may so say, to keep our
distance from God, in our very approaches to him. But such
undue familiarity, as it does for the most part arise from con
tempt, so it always ends in it.
2dly. This irreverence in prayer shows itself in a man's
venting his crude, sudden, extemporary conceptions before God.
Why God should be pleased with that which intelligent men
laugh at, I cannot understand. And there is nothing more
loathsome and offensive to discreet ears, than the loose, indigested,
incoherent babble, of some bold, self-opinioned persons, who in
their talk are senseless and endless. Some indeed sanctify their
unpremeditated way of speaking to God, by calling it " praying
by the Spirit ;" and so entitling the Holy Ghost to all their im
pertinencies, which is to excuse or defend boldness with blas
phemy. But surely folly is no sUch difficult thing, that any man
should need to fetch it from a supernatural cause, and owe his
absurdities to immediate inspirations. For if this be to pray by
the Spirit, a man needs only to forget himself, to balk the use of
his reason, and to let his words fly at random, without care or
observation, and he shall find very plentiful assistances of this
nature. But to vindicate the Spirit of God from these unworthy impu
tations, and withal to dash such impudent pretences, we are to
know that the Spirit measures out his assistance to men in the
use of the means proper for the effecting or accomplishing of any
work ; but suspends and denies that assistance, where the use of
those means is neglected ; for he cooperates with men according
to the established course of working proper to their natures : and
no man prays and preaches more by the Spirit, than he that
bestows time and study in the orderly disposing of what he is to
say; and so employs and exerts those faculties of mind which
the Spirit of God endowed him with, for the better and more
exact management of those holy services that he stands en
gaged in.
Were a man to petition his prince, or to plead at the bar for
his life, I believe none could persuade him to venture the issue of
so great an action upon his extempore gift. But admit that a
man be never so well furnished with an ability of speaking
suddenly and without premeditation ; yet certainly premeditation
and care would improve and heighten that ability, and give it a
greater force and lustre in all performances. And if so, we are
to remember that God calls for our best and our utmost • we are
to bring the fairest and the choicest of our flock for an offering,
and not to sacrifice a lame, unconcocted, wandering discourse to
God, when our time and our parts are able to furnish us with one

ON CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER. 421
much more accurate and exact. When a Roman gentleman
invited Augustus Caesar to supper, and provided him but a mean
entertainment, Caesar very properly took him up with an Unde
mihi tecum tanta familiaritas ? " Friend, pray how came you and
I to be so familiar?" Great persons think themselves enter
tained with respect, when they are entertained with splendour ;
and they think wisely and rightly. In like manner God will
reject such sons of presumption and impertinence with disdain,
and though they took no time for the making of their prayers,
yet he will take time enough before he will grant them.
But besides, to dismiss this supposition, it is indeed scarce
possible, but much speaking without care or study must needs
put the speaker upon unseemly repetitions, and tautologies, which
Christ most peculiatrly cautions his disciples against as a heathen
ish thing, in Matt, vi., where he prescribes them that excellent
form of prayer, composed with so much fulness, strictness, and
significancy of sense, that it is impossible for any thing that is
extempore to resemble it. He that does not consider and weigh
every word of his prayer, will find it very unfit to be weighed
more severely by God himself in the balance of the sanctuary;
who will account no mam to speak piously, who does not also
speak properly in his devotions. And therefore I shall conclude
this particular with that most divine and excellent direction
given by Solomon concerning this matter, Eccles. v. 2, " Be not
rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter
any thing before God ; for God is in heaven and thou upon
earth: therefore let thy words be few." When we speak to a
superior, to use words few and expressive is the proper dialect of
respect. And thus I have finished the first thing proposed for the
handling of the words, which was to show that there was a cer
tain confidence well becoming our humblest addresses to God,
and withal to demonstrate what this confidence was; which I
have done, by showing that it is such a one as stands opposed
both to despair and doubting on the one hand, and to rashness
and irreverence on the other.
II. I come now to the second particular, which is to show that
the foundation of this confidence is laid in the mediation of Christ.
Where there is a breach of amity between two persons, of which
the offended person is much the superior, upon which account his
dignity will not permit him to seek or offer a reconcilement ; as
on the other side, the inferior condition of him that is the
offender will not let him dare to attempt one ; it is manifest, that
unless there be some third person to interpose between both, the
breach must needs be perpetual and incurable. It was thus
between God and man upon his apostasy from God : God was
too great, too glorious immediately by himself to court his rebel
2N

422 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXVm.
creature, and the creature too vile and obnoxious to treat with
his injured sovereign: whereupon they must have both pre
pared for mutual acts of hostility, had not Christ, God and man,
undertaken to mediate and comprise the difference on both sides ;
so that every sinner has cause to speak to Christ as the Israelites
did to Moses, an eminent type of him : Speak thou unto us
and for us too, and we will hear; but let not God the Father
speak to us, or we to him, lest we die. A guilty person is but a
bad advocate.

423

SERMON XXIX.
PART II.
THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST A MOTIVE TO CONFIDENCE IN
PRAYER.
I
Ephesians iii. 12.
In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith
of him.
The discussion of these words I shall manage in these two
particulars. First, I shall show that the confidence becoming a Christian,
in his access to God by prayer, is founded upon the mediation of
Christ. Secondly, I shall inquire whether there be any other ground
upon which this confidence may rationally found itself.
And first for the first of these, that the confidence becoming a
Christian, in his access to God by prayer, is founded upon the
mediation of Christ.
But now this dependence of our spiritual affairs upon Christ's
mediation, will be yet more evidently set forth, in the discussion
of the third particular :
IH. Which is to show the reason why Christ's mediation ought
to minister such confidence to us in our access to God. He that is
confident in any action grounds his confidence upon the great
probability of the happy issue and success of that action ; and
that -probability of success is grounded upon the fitness of the
person entrusted with the management of it. In one word, there
fore, the reason of grounding our confidence upon Christ's media
tion, is the incomparable, singular fitness of Christ for the per
formance of that work; which fitness will appear by considering
him under a threefold relation or respect.
1. In respect of God, the person with whom he is to mediate.
2. In respect of men, the persons for whom he mediates.
3. In respect of himself, who discharges this office.
1. And first we shall consider him in relation to God, with
whom he is to mediate ; who also in this business may sustain a
double capacity in relation to Christ : (1.) Of a Father. (2.) Of
a Judge. (1.) And first if we consider him as his Father, there cannot

424 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxix.
be a more promising ground of success in all his pleas for^us.
For who should be heard and prevail, if not a son pleading before
his father' where the very nearness of the relation is a more
commanding rhetoric than words and speeches can bestow upon
a cause. Nature itself takes the cause in hand, and declaims it
wth more power and insinuation than the highest and the most
persuasive oratory. To have the judge's ear is a great matter,
but his son has his heart also. To be sure of an audience is a
privilege that every advocate cannot attain to ; but he may wait
and wait, and at length go away unheard : and if perhaps he does
obtain a hearing, yet he is not sure to carry it on without rubs
and supercilious checks, that shall dishearten both his client and
himself: he brings no advantage to the cause by his own person ;
so that if it succeeds, it must be upon the account of an invinci
ble prevailing evidence of merit. It must in a manner be its own
pleader. It must argue and set off itself, and without any
assistances of favour, prevail entirely by the absolute victorious-
ness of truth.
But a good cause managed by an acceptable and a favoured
person, it is like a sharp weapon wielded by a mighty arm, that
enters deeper and further, being driven home by a double cause,
its own keenness, and the other's strength. It is impossible
indeed for the unchangeable rectitude of the divine nature to
warp or deviate in the least manner from truth or justice, out of
favour to persons. Yet where favour is consistent with justice,
as oftentimes it may undoubtedly be, there the sonship of the
advocate must needs facilitate and promote the cause. But how
ever, admitting that favour can have no place in matters of this
nature ; yet it is a solid argument of comfort and encouragement
to sinners, that their cause is in such hands as can reflect no pre
judice or disadvantage upon it. Their advocate is not disgusted
or obnoxious, and in need to plead for himself, before he can be
in a capacity to be heard for his client. It is enough that, if
there be any possibility of favour, they are sure of it ; that they
have an interest on their side, an interest founded upon the
nearest and the dearest relation. They speak to the father by
the mouth of his son, and what is more, of his only son : so that
they may hope with the highest reason and argument ; and to put
an impossible supposition, though their cause should fall, yet
their confidence is founded upon a rock.
(2.) We will consider God relating to Christ as a Judge.
And here we will first represent to ourselves all that the office
and severity of a judge can engage him to. We will consider
him with all the rigours of justice, void of favour, inflexible,
immovable, and exacting all by a strict rule ; a rule that he will
not In the least recede from; a rule admitting of no mitigation
or dispensation ; but awarding to all actions a recompence ac
cording to the most rigid and nice proportions of equality and

ON CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER. 425
merit. We will consider him as clothing himself with all the
terrors of mount Sinai, uttering a fiery law, that speaks nothing
but death and a curse to the disobedient, and requires the forfeit
of a soul for every transgression. Yet notwithstanding all this,
we may with confidence rest ourselves upon the mediation of
Christ with God, for these two reasons.
First, because he appears for us, not only as an advocate, but
as a surety, paying down to God on our behalf the very utmost
that his justice can exact. He suffered, he bled, he died for
those for whom he intercedes; so that he brings satisfaction in
one hand, while he presents a petition with another. He under
takes and pays the debt, and thereby cancels the bond ; so that
the law and justice itself have lost their hold of the sinner, and
he is become a discharged and a justified person. And surely
such a one may pray with confidence and hope for all the bless
ings of divine mercy, when his surety has cleared off all scores
with his justice. He may take up the apostle's demand, " Who
shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect ? It is God that
justifies," amd he may add further, It is Christ that intercedes ;
Christ that brings a price for what he asks, that can plead a
right; and, if need be, even appeal to God's justice.
But, secondly, we have yet another ground of building our
confidence upon Christ's mediation with God, though considered
as a judge ; because he himself, has appointed him to this work :
"It was he that laid help upon one that is mighty," as the
psadmist says, Psadm lxxxix. 19, and " that made the man of his
right hand, the Son of man, strong for himself," Psalm lxxx. 17.
He prepatred amd endowed him with qualifications fit for so great
an employment. Upon which account he is called the Christ,
that is, the Anointed of God : for with the Jews, kings, priests,
and prophets, that is, persons designed to the highest offices and
charges, were initiated into them by the ceremony of anointing :
whereupon Christ, who was to sustain all these offices, is said to
have been " anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows."
But now, if God thus constitutes Christ a mediator between
himself and sinners, certainly it is an evident demonstration that
he will hear and accept him in the management of that very
work that he called him to and put him upon. No judge com
mands an advocate to speak, and when he speaks presently shuts
his ears. This would be to contradict himself, and to mock the
other : which God's truth and goodness will not suffer him to do.
What Christ does in this matter, he does upon the very account
of obedience, and has a call and a command to vouch for the
success of his appearance, and therefore cannot be rejected or
kept off as an intruder. He that bids another ask a thing of
him, tells him in effect that he is resolved to grant it. He that
invites, promises an admittance.
And thus I have shown Christ's fitness fof the work of media-
Vol. IV.— 54 2 m 2

426 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxix.
tion, in respect of God, and that considered either as a Father or
^2 ingthe next place we are to consider his fitness for this
work in reference to men, for whom he mediates; which will
appear from that fourfold relation that he bears to them. (l.)Of
a friend. (2.) Of a brother. (3.) Of a surety. (4.) Of a lord and
master. .
(1.) And first let us look upon him as a friend ; that is, as one
that we may trust with our nearest concernments as freely as
ourselves. And Christ has solemnly owned this relation to all
believers: so that we may with the greatest cheerfulness and
assurance commit the presenting of our petitions to him, whose
care and solicitousness for the success of them will be the same
with ours. Friendship is an active and a venturous thing, and
where it is real, it will make a man bolder and more importunate
for his friend than for himself. Now Christ has all the perfec
tions of human friendship, without the flaws and weaknesses of
it: and surely he will bestow a prayer for those for whom he
would spend a fife. Though the presence of God is terrible to
behold, and his anger much more terrible to feel, yet Christ has
declined neither of them, but made his way to the former by a
resolute undergoing ofthe latter.
Many men will indeed profess themselves to be friends, and
expect to be accounted so : but if at any time they are desired
to speak a good word to a great person in the behalf of one to
whom they have made all these professions, they will desire to
be excused; they must not spend and lavish away an interest
upon other people's advantages, but reserve it fresh and entire
for themselves.
Sad were the condition of sinners, should the friendship of
Christ show itself at this rate. A friend in the court of heaven
would do them but little good, that would not so much as be
friend them with a word. But Christ is interceding for us night
and day; presenting our prayers to the Father, and making
them effectual by his own.
(2.) Let us consider Christ as a brother, and so we have a
further cause to repose a confidence in him, in point of his medi
ation for us. For although it does not always fall out that the
nearest, relations are the best friends, yet it is a fault that they
are not so ; and therefore we may be sure that Christ, who can
not commit a fault, cannot but equal the nearness of the rela
tion he bears to us with a proportionable measure of affection.
He is the Son of God by nature, and because we cannot be so
too, he has made us so by adoption : John i. 12, " To as many
as received him, he gave power to become the sons of God." So
that he has even united us into one family with himself: Eph.
iii. 15, "By whom the whole family in heaven and earth is
named." Nay, and to advance the relation yet nearer, because

ON CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER. 427
it was impossible for dust and ashes to aspire to a participation of
the divine nature, he was pleased to descend to the assumption of
ours, and to become the Son of man, not by adoption only, but
really and naturally : to be " bone of our bone, and flesh of our
flesh ;" to own the same human affections, and, in a word, not to
decline our very infirmities. Which being so, we may very well
own all that confidence of succeeding through the mediation of
Christ, that the fidelity of a friend and the dearness of a brother
may administer to us. For should a brother prevaricate and prove
false, nature itself would seem to fly in his face, and upbraid his
unhuman perfidiousness. Society would mark him out as a common
enemy to mankind, amd unfit for converse.
Brotherhood unites persons by a certain tie, that is not only
forcible but sacred ; and to violate it by any falseness or treach
ery of behaviour, is to injure not only a man, but even humanity
itself. And therefore whatsoever business any one puts into
his brother's hands, he counts as secure as if it were in his own.
And we may be sure that Christ will be as much more concerned
for our affairs than an earthly brother, as such a brother would
be more than an ordinary acquaintance.
(3.) Let us consider Christ as our surety ; and so we shall
find, the same, if not a greater cause, of being confident of him
as our mediator. It is not every friend, nor every brother, that
will be a surety ; since the love that must raise one to undertake
this even amongst men, must be a love greater than he bears to
himself : for he that ventures to be a surety for another, ventures
an undoing for his sake ; and there is not any thing less to be
wondered at in common life, than to see such persons undone :
so that nothing is more certain in humaui affairs, than that asser
tion of Solomon, that " he that hateth suretiship is sure." But
the debt that Christ was our surety for, was as much greater than
the greatest that befalls men in worldly matters, as eternity is
greater than time, as heaven is above earth, and the executions of
an infinite wrath above the slight, weak revenges of a mortal
power. " He bore our iniquities," Isaiah liii., and placed himself
before the justice of his Father, as responsible for all that the
law could charge us with : and being made thus obnoxious by
his own free choice, "wrath came upon him to the uttermost:"
he drank off the cup of God's fury, and squeezed out the very
dregs. All this he did in our stead, in our room, in our persons,
whom he represented' in all that great action.
And now, after such an experiment of his love to us, can we
doubt that he will stick at the lesser and lower instances of kind
ness ? that he will refuse to manage and enforce our petitions at
the throne of grace, who did not refuse to make himself an
offering to justice ? We may rest assured that he will not be
wanting to the prosecution of our interest, who, by the very
office that he has undertaken, has made our interest his own.

428 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxix.
(4 ) And lastly, for the further confirmation of our confidence
in our addresses to God, we will consider Christ under a very
different relation from all the former, and that is as he is our
lord and master. Majestas et amor, sovereignty and love, as the
poet observes, do but ill cohabit in the same breast; and the
truth is, love prompts to service, and sovereignty imports domi
nion ; and so proceed in a very contrary strain. Yet Christ has
united them both in himself: for as he is the most absolute of
lords, so he is the best and the most faithful of friends, the kind
est brother, and the ablest surety. Nay, and he has founded
our friendship and our subjection to him, things very different,
upon the same bottom ; which is, obedience to his laws ; John
xv. 14, " Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command
you." And elsewhere he tells us of the homage we owe him in
John xiii. .13, "Ye call me Lord and Master: and ye do well;
for so I am." But this relation, though it speaks superiority and
distance, yet it imports also kindness and protection. For what
master is there, of a worthy and a generous spirit, that does not
espouse the interest and good of his servant, and esteem himself
answerable for it as for a trust, which all the principles of reli
gion, humanity, and good-nature will call him to an account for?
Christ shows sufficiently how far he owns himself concerned
for his servants, where he declares, that he looks upon every
courtesy or injury done to the least of them as done to himself,
in Matt. xxv. 45. And as he owns them before men, so he is
not ashamed to ackowledge them before his Father in heaven;
to further their prayers, to endear their persons, to recommend
their services, and, in a word, to be their constant, indefatigable
intercessor. Now, under this relation of lord, I suppose we may consider
that also by which Christ owns himself for our head; than
which there cannot be one more peculiarly fitted to encourage us
in the business of prayer. For when any of the members are
aggrieved, or ill at ease, it is the head that must complain and
cry out for relief. Nor needs it any intelligence from the afflicted
part ; but it feels it by a quick sympathy, and utters what it
feels by a kind of necessity. And it is as impossible for an arm
or a leg to be broken, and the head to be unconcerned, as for any
member of the mystical body of Christ to be under a pressing
calamity, and for Christ the head not to be sensible of that
misery, and to vent his sense of it by a vigorous intercession
with his Father for its removal.
And thus I have shown those four relations that Christ bears
to believers ; every one of which is a pregnant and a forcible
argument for us to depend upon his mediation for the success of
our prayers and the acceptance of our persons, in all our addresses
to the Father.
3. I come now in the tliird and last place, to demonstrate the

on confidence in prayer. 429
fitness of Christ to be a mediator for us, by considering him in
respect of himself, and those qualifications inherent in him, which
so particularly qualify and dispose him for this work: of which
I shall mention and insist upon three.
(1.) That he is perfectly acquainted with all our wants and
necessities. (2.) That he is heartily sensible of, and concerned about them.
(3.) That he is best able to express and set them forth to the
Father. (1.) And for the first of these, his acquaintance with our con
dition: we need not spend much time or labour to inform our
advocate of our case : for his omniscience is beforehand with us :
he knows all our affairs, and what is more, our hearts, better than
we ourselves. And it is our happiness that he does so : for by
this means he is able to supply the defects of our prayers, and to
beg those things for us that our ignoramce was not aware of.
And what is yet a greater advantage, he is upon this account
able also to correct our prayers. For such is the shortness of
our understanding, and the weakness of our affections, that we
pray sometimes for those things that would prove our bane and
our destruction : we beg heartily for a mischief, and importune
God to be so favourable as to ruin us at our desire. In which
case surely it concerns us to have somebody to counter-petition
us, and to ask a fish while we are begging for a serpent ; and to
be so kind to us as to keep our prayers from being granted.
A man perhaps is visited with sickness, and passing his days
in pain amd languishing, puts up many a hearty prayer to God
to restore him to health and ease; but all this time he is igno
rant of the end and design of this visitation : for possibly the
distemper of his body is every day ministering to the cure of
his soul, to the mortification of his pride, his lust, and worldly-
mindedness: and perhaps God, who foresees all accidents, and
knows upon what little wheels and hinges the events of things
move, understands assuredly that his sickness removes him out
of harm's way, and secures him from those peculiar occasions of
sin, that, being well and healthful, he would inevitably fall into,
and perhaps deplorably fall by. But now Christ has a full com
prehension of all these possibilities, and knows what would pro
mote and what would annoy every man in his spiritual estate :
he knows when sickness will set a man nearer to heaven than
health can do ; when poverty, banishment, and affliction, subserve
the purposes of grace, and the great interests of eternity, better
than all the affluence of fortune, the highest preferments, and
the most undisturbed prosperity.
As it is a happiness for some men not to be left to their own
choice, but to resign themselves up to the guidance and disposal
of one of greater experience ; so it is the safest course for many
not to be permitted to stand or fall according to their own prayers.

430 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxix.
For it is not always piety or discretion that indites them, but an
impatience of some present grievance, or a passionate desire of
some earthly enjoyment, affections that in many circumstances
border too near upon sin : and therefore the prayers that proceed
from them are never granted by God but in anger, and with an
intent to punish and to blast the person that makes them. Such
prayers are never seconded or backed by Christ's intercession,
unless for the begging of their pardon, and excusing their folly
and their unfitness; and then God maybe said most graciously
to hear them, when for the mediation of Christ he pardons and
denies them : which mediation of his takes its measures of act
ing, not by our desires, but our wants ; of which he is the most
competent judge, as being more privy to them than our very
consciences ; for they may be deceived and deluded, but he can
not. And thus much for the first thing that qualifies Christ to
be our Mediator, that he knows every thing belonging to our
spiritual estate certainly and infallibly.
(2.) The second is, that he is heartily sensible of, and con
cerned about whatsoever concerns us. Without which his know
ledge would avail us but little. For the bare knowing of a
thing engages no man to act in it. And therefore Christ is re
presented to us as one that is touched with the sense of our in
firmities, as sharing our griefs, and bearing a part in our sorrows ;
which very thing renders him a merciful high priest, and ready
to intercede for us with the same vehemence and importunity,
that by a personal endurance of those miseries he might he
prompted to for himself. He that would speak earnestly and
forcibly of any thing, must work it into his heart by a lively
and a keen sense of it, as well as into his head by a clear know
ledge and apprehension. For where the heart is engaged, all
the actions follow : no part or power of the soul can be unactive,
when that is stirred ; and being once moved itself, it moves ali
the rest.
Now it is the heart of Christ that every believer has an interest
in: and we know that he carries that in his breast that inter
cedes for us with him, as well as he with the Father. He does
not only hear our sighs, but also feels the cause of them : and if
we suffer by the direct impressions of pain, he also suffers by
the movings and yearnings of his own compassion: so that in a
manner our relief is his own ease; and that deliverance that
disburdens our minds, does also by consequence discharge his.
When he was to leave the world, we read how sensible he was
of the disconsolate condition of his disciples; and that he pro
mised to send the Spirit to them for no cause more than to be
their Comforter; and to allay those sorrows that upon his de
parture he foresaw would fill their hearts : he seemed actually to
feel their grief, while it was yet but future, and to come : that
is, before they could have any feeling of it themselves. This

ON CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER. 431
concernment therefore of his for us, is another thing that greatly
fits him for the office of a Mediator.
3. The third and last is, his transcendent and more than
human ability to express and set forth every thing that may be
pleaded in our behalf to the best advantage ; which is the peculiar
qualification of a good advocate, and that which makes the two
former considerable. For admit that he knows both his client's
cause, and is heartily and warmly concerned for it, yet if his
tongue and his eloquence doth not serve him to draw forth those
thoughts and those affections in a suitable defence of it, he is
rather a good man and a good friend, than a good advocate or
mediator. But now is there any one that may compare with
Christ in respect of this faculty ? to whom God has given " the
tongue of the wise ;" a tongue speaking with authority, command
ing men, and persuading God : nay, and who himself was able to
give his disciples such a tongue, as all their adversaries, though
never so learned and eloquent, were not able to resist. That
prayer that perhaps is by much ado sighed and sobbed out by
the penitent, his grief interrupting his words, yet as it arrives
to the throne of God from the mouth of our Mediator, it comes
with a grace and force superior to all human rhetoric ; it enters
the presence and pierces the ears of the Almighty; and, in a
word prevails in that manner, as if it were almighty itself.
And here I cannot but observe, how the qualities of Christ as
our mediator pleading for us do particularly mate and confront
those of the -devil our grand adversary pleading against us. For
as Christ is most knowing of our spiritual estate, and every
thing relating to it ; so is the devil most industrious and inquisi
tive to give himself an exact information of the same. As
Christ is most tenderly concerned for us, so is the devil most
maliciously and inveterately set against us. And, lastly, as
Christ has all the strengths and treasures of elocution to employ
in our defence, so is the devil restless amd artificial in drawing up
our charge and accusation with all the heightening, aggravating
language, that a great wit and a redundant malice can afford.
But in all this he is outdone ; even as much as the Creator can
outdo a creature: so that we need not use any further elogy of
Christ's mediatorship than this, that he is a greater and a more
potent advocate, than the devil himself can be an accuser.
And thus I have at length demonstrated the eminent fitness of
Christ for the office of mediator, upon a treble account or
respect; namely, in respect of God, of us, and of himself: and
so have finished the third particular proposed for the handling of"
the words ; .which was, to show the reason why Christ's media
tion ought to minister such confidence to us in our access to God.

432

SERMON XXX.
PART III.
THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST A MOTIVE TO CONFIDENCE IN
PRAYER.
Ephesians iii. 12.
In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith
qf him.
The prosecution of these words was first cast into the discus
sion of these four particulars.
I. That there is a certain boldness or confidence very well
consisting with and becoming of our humblest addresses to
God. II. That the foundation of this confidence is laid in the
mediation of Christ.
III. To show the reason why the mediation of Christ ought
to minister such confidence to us in our access to God.
IV. And lastly, to show whether there were any other ground
that might rationally embolden us in these our addresses to him ?
Having finished the first three of these, I proceed now to the
fourth. What reason we have to raise a confidence about the
success of our prayers, upon the mediation of Christ, has been
already declared ; but since we cannot have too many pillars for
so great a superstructure to lean upon, it will not be amiss to see
whether there be any other means to give efficacy and success to
them. If there is, it must be either, 1. Something within ; or,
2. Something without us.
As for any thing within us that may thus prevail with God, it
must be presumed to be the merit of our good actions, which by
their intrinsic worth and value may lay claim to his acceptance.
It cannot, I confess, be the direct business of this discourse to
treat of the merit of good works. But for our direction, so far
as may concern the present subject and occasion, I affirm, that it
is impossible, not only for sinful men, but for any mere creature,
though of never so excellent and exalted a nature, properly to
merit any thing from God, and that briefly for these two reasons.
1st. Because none can merit of another but by doing some
thing of himself and absolutely by his own power, for the advan
tage of him from whom he ments, 'without that person's help or

ON CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER. 433
assistance. But what can any thing that the creature can do
advantage God? What can all the men and angels contribute
or add to the divine happiness or perfection ? And if we should
suppose that any action of theirs might, yet it could not be
meritorious, forasmuch as they do every thing by a power and
an ability conveyed to them by God; so that in their most re
fined and holiest performances, they offer God but what is his
own, the effect and product of his grace working within them,
and raising, them to do what they do. The talent they trade
with was given them, nay, and what is more, the very power of
trading with it was given them too : so that both in their being
and operations they au:e another's, and stand accountable for all
to a superior bounty ; and restitution surely is not merit.
2dly. To merit is to do something over and above what is due,
no two things in the world being more directly contrary than
debt and merit. But now it is impossible for any created agent
to do any thing above its duty, forasmuch as its duty obliges it
to do the utmost that it can. It is clear therefore that for any
one, even the brightest angel in heaven, to think of meriting, is
but a dream and a chimera ; but then for us, who are obnoxious
upon the account of several sins and breaches of the law, to
entertain the least thought of it, is much more absurd and in
tolerable ; and consequently, if we build any confidence in our
addresses to God upon our merits, we build upon the sand ; and
what the issue of such a building is like to be, we may easily
conclude. It remains therefore that if there be any other ground of this
confidence, it must be something without us. And if so; it must
be the help and intercession either, 1. Of the angels; or, 2. Of
the saint?
1. And first for the angels : that they cannot be presumed to
mediate for us and present our prayers before God, I suppose
may be evident by these reasons.
(1.) Because it is impossible- for the angels to know and per
fectly discern the thoughts, that being the incommunicable pro
perty of God ; 2 Chron. vi. 30, " Thou only, 0 Lord, knowest
the hearts of the children of men ;" and in Jer. xvii. 10, " I the
Lord search the heart." But now many prayers are wholly
transacted within the mind and the heart, and pass not into any
outward expression. And even in those prayers that are orally
delivered, that which is the chief part, and indeed the soul of
prayer, is the inward disposition of the heart ; which falls under
the cognizance of no created understanding, it being the peculiar
royalty and prerogative of omniscience.
(2.) The second reason is, that it also exceeds the measure of an
gelical knowledge, for any angel by himself and his own natural
power of 'knowing, to'know at once all the prayers that are even
littered in words here and there throughout the world ; and that
Vol. IV.— 55 2 0

434 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxx.
because it is impossible for him to be actually present in all places.
For though the knowledge of angels is not limited just to the
things of that place where they are present, yet it is certain
that it cannot extend much further ; since a limited nature must
needs also have a limited way of knowing. Upon which account
God's omniscience is not ill founded by some upon his essential
omnipresence, as the ground and reason of it. For he that is
intimately present to all things, must needs have a knowledge of
those things, which persons that are not thus present to them,
for the same cause, are not capable of.
But for all this, some concern themselves to hold a contrary
opinion about the knowledge of angels, and they pretend to
ground it, 1. partly upon scripture : 2. partly upon reason.
And first as to what they produce from scripture, passing by
most of their frivolous and impertinent quotations, i shall more
especially single out and insist upon two, as being the most
likely to speak to their purpose.
(1.) The first of them is that in Luke xv. 10, "There is joy
in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that re
penteth." From whence they argue, that repentance being a
thing chiefly situate in the heart, if the angels can know this, they
must needs know the heart also.
But to this I answer, that repentance is not only immediately
knowable in itself, but also mediately, by the outward effects of
it showing themselves in the life of the penitent ; such as in
Matt. iii. are called " fruits meet for repentance ;" which whether
they be sincere and genuine or no, though we perhaps cannot
always discern, yet the angels, whose discernment is much greater,
may well be thought able to understand and distinguish.
But it will be urged in the second place, that though it follows
not from hence that the angels can discern the heart, or the re
pentance of a sinner as it lies included there, yet by granting
that they know and observe the outward effects of repentance, it
will follow, that by the same reason they must also know all those
prayers that men utter and express outwardly by word of mouth.
And therefore that as to these at least we may presume that they
will be our mediators, to present them for us to God.
For reply to this I answer, that it was sufficiently proved by
the former argument, that the angelical knowledge cannot at the
same time naturally reach itself to all things that actually happen
in the world ; and that for the reason then given, that an angel,
being of a limited nature, cannot be actually present every where.
But you will ask then, how come the angels to know the repent
ance of every converted sinner ? Why ; it must be supposed that
they know it by report of those angels that God has employed as
ministering spirits about that repenting person ; and consequently
it is not necessary that we affirm it to be universally known to
all the angels in heaven, but to those only, who by converse with

ON CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER. 435
these come to have such a report conveyed to them ; for the text
speaks only of the angels indefinitely, but not of all universally.
But upon this it may be replied further, that upon the same
ground we may infer also, that the angels may know all the
prayers orally put up by men throughout the whole world ; for
asmuch as they may be signified to them by the like reports
from those angels that have the respective care and governance
of each person.
To this I answer, that it is indeed possible that they may, but
that they also do, we have no ground to conclude. For although
God has told us, that so eminent and remarkable a passage as
the conversion of a sinner is known to the angels in heaven,
whether by particular revelation from himself, or by report from
either amgels, it matters not ; yet that therefore every action done
by, or occurrence relating to such a one, must also be reported
and made known to the angels too, no reason or argument can
demonstrate. And unless we know that these things certainly
are so, as well as that possibly they may, they can administer no
sure ground to our confidence, as shall be made appear in its due
place. But after all this discourse, what if we should now affirm, that
there is no necessity of our holding, that the angels know the
repentance of every sinner here on earth, either by themselves or
by the reports of others. For when it is said, that "there is joy
amongst the angels in heaven over one sinner that repenteth," is
it said, that this joy happens just about the time of that repent
ance, or at any time of the sinner's abode in this world ? No ;
we find no mention of the time, and therefore what hinders but
that it may be understood of the time when the penitent enters
into heaven : that then there is joy amongst the angels, who re
joice that he repented and is recovered, which repentance they
then come clearly to see and know, in the visible consequent of
it, his salvation. This I am sure may be the sense of the text
without any force done to it at all ; and if it may, there is no ne
cessity of the former interpretation, upon a removal of which
there cannot be so much as any colour or show of argument from
hence to evince the angels' knowledge of every particular man's
actions and affairs here upon earth. And thus much in answer
to their first scripture.
(2.) The other, is that place in Rev. viii. 3, "And another
angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and
there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it
with the prayers of all saints, upon the golden altar that was be
fore the throne." From whence they say it is evident, that the
angels are employed in presenting our prayers to God, nay, so
invincibly evident in the judgment of some, that they wonder
that any should be able to stand out against the prevailing force
of it.

436 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxx.
But to this I answer, that angel is a name not only of nature,
but also of office; and signifies one peculiarly sent and employed
bv God about any work: upon which account Christ is several
times in scripture called " the angel of the Lord, " "the angel of
the covenant ;" and simply without any. addition, the angel, as
in Zechariah i. Accordingly in this sense is the word angel to be
taken here, namely for Christ; to whom also the other words
most appositely agree ; the incense here mentioned very fitly re
presenting the merits of his death and sufferings, by which he
offered himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, by virtue
of which sacrifice he is continually giving an efficacy to our
prayers before the throne qf grace. If therefore the angel here
spoken of be Christ, and Christ be God as well as man, nothing
for the mediation of any created angel can be concluded from this
text. And thus having answered what they allege from scripture
for the angels' knowledge of and concernment about men's par
ticular actions here upon earth, and especially their prayers, I
shall now come to examine what they allege for the same from
reason. 2dly. They argue therefore that the angels see and know our
prayers, and every thing else belonging to us, because they behold
the face of God, the divine essence ; which essence containing in
itself the exact ideas and representations of all things, by be
holding that they must by consequence behold and view all things
else. This is frequently urged and insisted upon, and yet there can
not be a more false and absurd reasoning. For if this were true,
then it would follow that whosoever saw God, would be also om
niscient and know as much as God himself knows, since he knows
all things by the survey of his own essence. It would follow
also that there could be no possibility of God's revealing any
thing to the angels : for how can any thing be said to be revealed
that was known before ? But yet Christ tells us, that the angels
are ignorant of the day of judgment, Matt. xxiv. 36; and St.
Peter tells us concerning the mysteries of Christ's incarnation
and man's redemption, that " the angels desire to look into them,"
1 Pet. i. 12 ; and the word rtopax-u+ai in the original is most em-
phatical, as signifying a stooping down to look into a thing, which
is a searching, inquisitive posture : and therefore surely the angels
are capable of a further knowledge of these things by a revela
tion of them from God, and consequently cannot see all things
in the divine essence.
But that we may answer and remove the very ground of this
reasoning, we are to consider, that the divine essence discovers
itself, and what is in it, to those that behold it, not by any natu
ral necessity, as a sensible object lays itself open to the eye, but
voluntarily and freely, as the mind of one man discovers itself to

ON CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER. 437
another, and as we may presume one angel declares his thoughts
to another. Add to this also, that the other supposition of the
ideas amd images of all things existing in the essence of God,
seems but a mere fiction, framed only according to our gross way
of apprehending things, and so by no means strictly and
literally agreeable to the most spiritual, simple, uncompounded
nature of God.
From both which it follows, that that device of speculum Trin-
itatis, "the glass of the Trinity," in which they say that saints
and angels behold all things, is a most senseless and ridiculous
conceit ; and I wonder that any persons of reason and learning
should be ever brought to lay any weight upon it. For if this
be a good argument, that he that sees him who sees all things,
must himself also see all things ; then by unavoidable conse
quence, this will be as good, that he that sees him who .sees no
thing, must also himself see nothing. And then any angel may
be omniscient and blind in a minute : for let him look upon God
who sees all things, and then he is omniscient and sees all things
himself; but let him immediately after look upon a blind man,
and then by a wonderful transmutation presently he sees nothing.
But the truth is, such ways of discoursing are fitter to be
drolled upon, than to be refuted by any serious answer.
And thus i have shown, that we have no ground to repose any
confidence in the mediation of angels, for the promoting of our
petitions before God.
2. I come now to see whether we have any greater ground of
confidence from any thing that the saints are like to do for us in
this particular. Concerning which we must observe, that the
foregoing arguments brought against the angels interceding for
us, by reason of their unacquaintance with our spiritual affairs,
proceed much more forcibly against the intercession of the saints,
Vho are of much more limited and restrained faculties than the
angels, and know fewer things, and even those that they do know
in a much lesser degree of clearness than the angelical know
ledge rises to.
But yet for the further proof of the saints' unacquaintedness
with what is done here below, these reasons may be added over
and above.
As first, it is clear that God sometimes takes his saints out of
the world for this very cause, that they may not see and know
what happens in the world. For so says God to king Josiah, 2
Chron. xxxiv. 28, " Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers,
and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace, neither shall
thine eyes see all the evil that I will bring upon this place, and
the inhabitants thereof." Which discourse would have been
hugely absurd and inconsequent, if so be the saints' separation
from the body gave them a fuller and a clearer prospect into all
the particular affairs and occurrences that happen here upon earth.
2o2

438 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxx.
But if they are ignorant of these, as this scripture sufficiently
proves, then can there no reason be assigned, why we should not
also judge them ignorant of our prayers.
Some indeed are not ashamed to say, that God reveals the
prayers of men here below to the saints above, that they may
present those prayers to him; which assertion as it is utterly
groundless, so it is also apparently absurd. For to what purpose
should God reveal a prayer made to him, to any of the saints,
that he might pray it over to him again ? Can he make the matter
plainer and more evident to God than it was before? Or can
he add merit and value to it, when it is impossible for any
creature to merit from God? Or lastly, can he prevail with
God more than God's own mercy and Christ's intercession?
Thus when men first take up an opinion, and then afterwards
seek for reasons for it, they must be contented with such as the
absurdity of it will afford.
But secondly, we have yet further an express declaration of
the saints' ignorance of the state of things here below in those
words in Isaiah lxiii. 16, where the church thus utters itself to
God, " Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be igno
rant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not." Abraham and Jacob
surely were saints, and those too none of the lowest rank; yet
it seems they knew nothing of the condition of their posterity,
understood none of their wants and necessities. And if so, how
they should pray and be concerned for those of whom they had
no knowledge, is hard to comprehend.
But notwithstanding these places, the sons of the Romish
communion are taught to believe otherwise; and accordingly
adlege several things, which they are pleaised to think, or at least
to call arguments to the contrary : the foundation of most of
which being overthrown by what has been disputed about the
angels, I shall only mention two more, the first from scripture,"
the second, as they pretend, from reason.
(1.) As for scripture, they allege Luke xvi., where Abraham
a beatified saint in heaven, could yet know the estate and hear
the words of the rich man in hell ; as also what befell him and
Lazarus in their lifetime, as that " one received good things, and
the other evil things ;" from whence they say it is clear, that the
saints in heaven know the condition of those that live here, and
consequently may be thought particularly to intercede for them.
But to this I answer, first, that supposing this to be a real
history, and literally to be understood, yet this proves no more,
than that Abraham might come to know from Lazarus, after his
assumption into heaven, what the condition of that rich man
was, as also what miseries he himself lay under, during his life : but
that is no argument that Abraham knew any thing of this, while
Lazarus and the rich man were yet living upon earth. But in
the second place We are to know, that this whole relation is but

ON CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER.
a parable, and so cannot be argumentative for the proof of any
thing. (2.) Their next argument, which is drawn from reason, pro
ceeds thus : that if the saints here upon earth pray for one an
other, then certainly those in heaven, whose charity is more
perfect and consummate, must be thought much more to pray for
those here below. But the former is evident from several examples,
and there is also an express command for it, in James v. 16. '
To this I answer first, that the charity of the saints who live
in this world putting them to pray for one another, does not
infer, that the saints in heaven (whose charity is. greater) must
do so too, unless it were proved that the charity of a glorified
person must needs have the very same way of acting and exert
ing itself in heaven, that it had in the same person while he was a
member of the church militauit here on earth.
But in the second place, not to deny wholly that the charity
of the blessed souls prompts them to Pray for those that live yet
in the body, we may distinguish of a twofold intercession of the
saints, 1. General, 2. Particular. The general is that by which
the saints pray for the good and happiness of the whole body of
the church, which they well know upon a general account, during
its warfare in this world, to be surrounded with temptations, and
so in need of the continual assistance of divine grace; where
upon their charity may well engage them thus to pray for it.
But as for any particular intercession, by which any saint inter
cedes in the behalf of any particular person here below, recom
mending his personal case to God, this follows not from the
former; for it has been proved that they know not these particu
larities, and if so, though they be in never so high a degree
charitable, yet their charity is not to outrun their knowledge.
Now in order to any man's establishing a rational confidence
upon the intercession of the saints for us, these three things are
required ;• 1. That they be able thus to intercede for us. 2. That
they accordingly will. 3. And lastly, that a man certainly know
so much. A failure in any of which conditions renders all such
hope and reliance upon them most absurd and unreasonable.
For what foundation of hope can there be, where there is no
power to help? And what help can he afford me, who knows
not whether I need help or no ? But suppose that he does fully
know my condition, yet knowledge is not the immediate principle
of action, but will ; arid no man goes about the doing of any
thing because he knows it may be done, but because in his
mind he has resolved to do it. And then as for the saints'
will to pray for .us, since the measure of their will is the will of
God calling and commanding them to undertake such or such a
work, where there is no such call or command to the thing we
are speaking of, we are to presume also, that neither have they
any will to it. But lastly, admitting that there is in them really

« r
440 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxx.
both a knowledge, and an actual will fitting the saints for this
office of interceding, yet unless we are sure of it by certain in
fallible arguments, we cannot build our practice upon it, which
is itself to be built upon faith, that is a firm persuasion of both
the reasonableness and the fitness of the thing that we are to do.
But now what arguments have we to ascertain us of the saints'
ability and proneness to intercede for us? We have weighed
what has been brought from scripture and from reason, and found
it wanting; so that we have nothing solid to bottom ourselves
upon in this matter. But God requires that our boldness should
commence upon knowledge, for he neither approves the sacrifice
nor the confidence of fools.
And now in the last place, if we view this doctrine in the
consequence of it, we shall find that it speaks aloud against the
folly and impiety of a practice so much used by some, namely,
the invocation of saints, and praying to the souls of holy men
departed this life. It is possible indeed that men may believe
that the saints in heaven particularly intercede for men here
below, and yet not hold that they are to be prayed to : but it is
certain, that none hold that the saints ought to be prayed . to,
who deny their particular intercession with God for us. All the
arguments therefore that have been hitherto produced for the
disproving of this, do by consequence utterly destroy the invoca
tion ofthe saints.
But before I examine any of their arguments for it, it will not
be amiss to consider the original grounds of this practice; of
which I think I may reckon these three for the principal.
First, the solemn meetings used by the primitive Christians
at the places of the saints' sepulchres, and there celebrating the
memory of their martyrdom. In which panegyrical speeches
there were use'd frequent apostrophes and figurative addresses to
the souls of the saints, as if they were actually present and heard
what was spoken: and these expressions the vulgar, not being
able to distinguish between things spoken figuratively and pro
perly, easily drank in according to the literal meaning of the
words ; though indeed they no more proved that the saints
heard them, or that those that so spoke thought they did, than
those exclamations, " Hear, 0 heaven, and hearken, O earth !"
prove that the heaven and earth can hear what is thus spoken
to them.
The second thing that induced this belief, were those seeds
of the Platonic philosophy, that so much leavened many of the
primitive Christians : which philosophy teaches, that the souls of
good and virtuous men after the decease of the body are turned
into angels or good demons, and fly about the world helping men,
and defending them from evils and mishaps : whereupon it was
easy with a little change to transfer and apply these things to
the souls of the saints. For the confirmation of which it is re-

ON CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER. 441
markable that Origen, a person excessively addicted to the phi
losophy of Plato, was the first of the Christians that brought this
opinion into the church : though it was long after his time that
the invocation of the saints came to be practised ; the practice
beginning first amongst the Greek eremites, who transfused it to
Nyssen, Basil, and Nazianzen, their great admirers and disciples ;
who afterwards made a shift to insinuate it into the minds of the
credulous vulgar.
The third cause of this was the people's being bred in idolatry :
whereupon what worship they gave to devils and to their heroes
before, they very readily applied upon their conversion to Chris
tianity to good angels, and to the souls of the martyrs; which
also the unwariness and facility of many of their teachers and
bishops was willing enough to humour them in, as being desirous
upon any terms to gain them from heathenism to the profession
of Christian religion ; and being also in those times otherwise
taken up and busied with disputes against such heretics as more
directly struck at the foundations of Christianity.
But nothing can be more evident than that the primitive
fathers of the church held no such thing as the invocation of the
saints, and that from this one consideration, that they still used
this as an argument against the Arians for the proof of the
deity of Christ, that he was to be invoked and prayed unto.
Which worship, might it have been communicated to the saints,
or any besides God, had been no proof of the thing for which
they brought it at all.
And moreover/ the weak grounds that the patrons of this
opinion have found for it in scripture, have been the cause, that
even those that hold and practise it cannot yet unanimously
agree about the terms upon which they are to hold it. For some
will have invocation of the saints necessary, some pious and pro
fitable, and others only lawful or allowable. And the council of
Trent, that pretended to determine the case, has been so wise as
to put the world off with an ambiguity that might indifferently
serve the defenders of either opinion, by denouncing an ana
thema against those qui negant sanctos invocandos esse, who deny
that the saints were to be prayed to. Which expression is very
ambiguous : for to deny that the saints are to be prayed to, may
signify either to deny that it is necessary to pray to them, or that it
is lawful to pray to them. But the 'truth is, it is their best course
to state it upon this, that it is useful and profitable. Profitable, I
say, not to those that practise, but to those that teach and assert it.
But since the practice has now prevailed amongst those of the
Romish communion, let us see what reason they allege for it.
Why, they argue from the custom used in the courts of princes,
where petitioners presume not to petition their prince immedi
ately by themselves, but by the intercession of such as attend
about him.
Vol. IV.— 56

442 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxx.
But to this pretence, which, as St. Ambrose affirms in his
comment upon the 1st of the Romans, and St. Austin in his 8th
book De Civitate Dei, was the very same that the heathens al
leged for their worshipping of good demons and their heroes ;
that is, famous men departed this life, and supposed by them to
have attained a state or condition of being and power next to
their gods. To this I say, this is a full answer, that God is not
man, nor are we in all things to argue the manner of our be
haviour to God from what we use to men. God will himself
determine the way by which he will be worshipped ; and, con
sequently, the only rule of the worship we tender him must be
his own prescription and command.
But besides, let the comparison be put equally, and so even
upon these terms their argument will not proceed. For should
even an earthly prince constitute arid appoint one certain person
to receive all petitions, and bring them to him, surely it would
be an arrogance to presume to petition him by the mediation of
any other. Now God has actually constituted Christ our media
tor, and our sole mediator, which appears from that one text,
which the patrons of praying to the saints will never solidly
answer, 1 Tim. ii. 5, " There is one God, and one Mediator be
tween God and men, the man Christ Jesus." Upon which ac
count, for us to put our prayers into any other hands, is to affront
God in his command, and Christ in his office.
If it be here further alleged, that our sins render us very
unworthy to come immediately even to Christ himself; where
upon it is but a due humility for us to make our way to him by
the mediation of his friends, such as the blessed saints are.
To this also I answer, that Christ, who knew better than we
ourselves, whether we were fit to come to him or no, has expressly
commanded us to come : in which case we are to learn, that the
best and most refined humility is obedience : and when Christ
commands us to come to him, and with the jealousy almost of a
rival forbids us all address to others, if we repair to any but him
self, it is "the sacrifice of fools," seasoned with ignorance and
wilfulness ; and not so much a veneration of his majesty, as a
despisal of his mercy. For should any noble or great person
command me personally to represent my wants immediately to
himself, surely it would be but little modesty or civility in me to
present my petitions to him by the intercession of his porter.
As for those that judge or practise otherwise, there is this only
to be alleged for the reasonableness of what they do ; that hav
ing so much injured Christ the great mediator, it is not to be
wondered (should we respect their behaviour, and not his mercy)
if they stand in need of a mediator to Christ himself. But as
gold upon gold is absurd in heraldry ; so I am sure, a mediator
to a mediator is a greater absurdity in Christianity.
I conclude, therefore, that Christ is the only person through

ON CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER. 443
whose mediation we may with confidence make our access to
God : and that to share this work of mediation with any, either
saints or angels, is an injurious and sacrilegious encroachment
upon that office, that neither admits of equal nor companion. It
is also a senseless invention, grounded upon that which is not;
namely, their particular knowledge of our affairs here below : and
if it were not so, yet is the practice hugely useless and super
fluous; for there cannot be imagined any kindness or concern
ment in the saints for us, that is not infinitely greater amd more
abundant in Christ. And therefore let men please themselves as
they will in their imaginary, fantastic by-ways of address, yet
Christ is the only true way, the way that , has light to direct, and
life to reward those that walk in it; and consequently there is
" no coming to the Father but by him."
To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise,
might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore.
Amen.

444

SERMON XXXI.
the danger of resisting the spirit.
Genesis vi. 3.
And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not ahoays strive with man.
In this chapter we have God taking a survey of the state of
the sons of men before the flood ; and withal we have the judg
ment or verdict that he delivers in upon that survey, namely,
that tliey were exceeding wicked ; as in verse 5, " And God saw
that the wickedness of man was great in the earth." We have
him in the first chapter looking over all created beings, and
thereupon pronouncing his approbation of them, that " behold,
they were good," and hear no further of them: in the sixth
chapter, we have man, that of all those good things should have
in reason proved the best, totally corrupt and depraved; as
appears from the same verse, " Every imagination of the thoughts
of his heart was evil, and only evil, and that continually." So
that we see his sins were as numerous as his thoughts, and withal
so great, that it even " repented the Lord that he had made man
upon the earth ;" as we read in verse 6. Sin is of so vile and
provoking a nature, that it is able to extort a certain kind of re
pentance from God himself, who has elsewhere said, that he can
not repent : so that here we see God himself repenting, by rea
son of the sins of men : but of the sinner's repentance we read
not a word. Now when sins are arrived to their highest pitch,
both in respect of number and greatness ; amd withal attended
with an absolute impenitence ; what in reason can remain but a
certain sad expectation of judgment against the sinner? And
such a one we have here. After the overflowing of sin upon the
whole earth, God in his justice seconds it with a deluge of
waters; and so proportions his punishment to the rate of the
offence; a general destruction to a general sin. But before the
execution of this judgment, and amidst those aboundings of sin
and wickedness, yet God left not himself without a witness in
the hearts of men; but continued his Spirit in the ordinary
operations thereof, secretly dealing with and entreating men to
be reconciled to God. Notwithstanding their obstinate progress
in sin, their continual pursuit of the lusts and desires of their

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 445
evil mind, they had many a gripe of conscience, many sad
remorses, many checks and calls from the Holy Spirit, which, by
their resolution to persist in sin, they did at length totally
extinguish. Upon their rejection of the Spirit, God intends to
ruin and reject them, and to that intent withdraws the Spirit,
and the strivings of it. And presently after we read of the flood
breaking in upon them, to their utter ruin and perdition.
The words will afford several observations ; as first, from the
method God took in this judgment, first withdrawing his Spirit,
and then introducing the flood, we may observe,
1. D. That God's taking away his Spirit from any soul, is the
' certain forerunner of the ruin and destruction of that soul. This
is clearly evinced from the words ; for although the flood did
immediately terminate in the destruction of the body only, yet
because it snatched these men away in a state of impenitence, it
was consequentially the destruction of the soul.
2. From that expression of the " Spirit's striving with man,"
which does always imply a resistance from the party with whom
we strive, we may observe,
2. D. That there is in the heart of man a natural enmity and
opposition to the motions of God's Holy Spirit ; outward conten
tion it is the proper issue and product of inward hatred : striving
in action it is an undoubted sign of enmity in the heart. " The
flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh."
Gal. v. 17. Here we see there is a sharp combat between these
two : and the apostle subjoins the reason of it ; " for these two are
contrary." Things contrary will vent their contrariety in mutual
strife. 3. From the same expression of " striving" we may observe,
3. D. That the Spirit in its dealings with the heart is very
earnest and vehement. To strive, it imparts a vigorous putting
forth of the power : it is such a posture as denotes an active
desire. There is none that strives with another, but conquest it
is the thing both/in his desire and in his endeavour.
4. The fourth observation is drawn from the definite sentence
that God here passes, that " his Spirit should not always strive
with man," and it is this;
4. D. That there is a set and punctual time, after which the
convincing operations of God's Spirit upon the heart of man, in
order to his conversion, being resisted, will cease, and for ever
leave him.
This seeming to take in the chief, if not the only drift and
scope of the Spirit in these words, waiving the consideration of
the rest, I shall now prosecute this. In the prosecution of it, I
shall do these things.
I. I shall endeavour to prove and demonstrate the truth of this
assertion from scripture.
II. I shall show how many ways the Spirit may be resisted.
2P

446 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXXI.
III. I shall show whence and why it is that upon some resist
ance the Spirit finally withdraws.
IV. Make application.
I Concerning the first, I shall present you with the proof of
this doctrine from several scriptures, that give us pregnant exam
ples, that this is the way of God's dealings still to withdraw his
Spirit after some notorious resistance.
1. The first is that dreadful place in which is set down God's
dispensation towards the children of Israel, in Psalm xcv. 10:
" Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said,
It is a people that do err in their hearts, and have not known my
ways ; unto whom I sware in my wrath, that they should not
enter into my rest." We have here these things observable.
(1.) Their resistance of God's Spirit, specified in these words;
"I was grieved with this generation."
(2.) We have the set and limited time of that resistance, it
was "forty years."
(3.) God's judicial withdrawing his Spirit thereupon, and de
livering them up to a state of everlasting spiritual desertion,
held forth in these words, " I sware in my wrath, that they
should not enter into my rest." From whence we see that th&
departure of the Spirit was as infallibly sure, as the truth of
God confirmed with the obligation of an oath could make it.
2. A second place, that yet further proves that there is such a
critical fixed time of the Spirit's working, is in Heb. iv. 7, " He
limiteth a certain day, saying, To-day if you will hear his voice,
harden not your heart." This expression seems to hold forth two
things. (1.) The fixed determination of the time of the Spirit's speaking
to us ; " To-day." Now as in a day, after such a set hour it is un
avoidably and certainly night : so after such a season of the Spirit's
strivings, there inevitably follows a final desertion. While it is day
the Spirit works ; but this night cometh, and it will not work.
(2.) This expression shows the shortness of this time. The
day of grace, it is but a day. It is the sun of righteousness
shining in our faces for some few hours. Which, by the way,
speaks severe reproof to the unreasonable delays of some, in their
closing and complying with God. The Spirit calls them to-day,
and they promise obedience to-morrow. Procrastination in tempo
rals is always dangerous, but in spirituals it is often damnable.
3. The third place that may be alleged for the proof of this
truth is that, Luke xix. 42, If thou hadst known, even thou,
at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace !
but now they are hid from thy eyes." In these words also we
may observe three things.
(1.) Their enjoyment of a season, in which the Spirit dealt
with them concerning the things of their peace ; they had their day.

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 447
(2.) Their neglect and misimprovement of that season, im
plied in Christ's wish that they had known and improved it.
(3.) God's dealing with them upon that misimprovement; the
things of their peace were hid from their eyes. When the day
of grace is past, and darkness upon the soul, no wonder if it is
unable to discern the things of its peace. To these places we
may add that in Gen. xv. 16, where God says, " that the sin of
the Amorites was not yet full :" implying, that there was a cer
tain pitch of sin, under which he would not destroy, and after
which he would not spare them. Till such time as a vessel is
filled, we may still pour in more and more ; but when it comes
to its fulness, then it has its ne plus ultra, there is no capacity to
receive any more. So during the time of God's permission, we
may go on in a way of opposition to him, to multiply acts of re
sistance against the Spirit; but after this set time is expired,
there must be no further resistance made : we must either yield,
or die eternally: God will not let us perpetuate our rebellions
against him ; he will either take away our opposition, or the
Spirit which we so oppose.
And thus much for the proof of the point by scriptures, which
leave it undoubted, that the Spirit has its set time of striving
with the heart, after which it will cease. And now I could ob
serve also, by way of allusion and illustration, how that the
creatures also have their set and stinted times allotted them, be
yond which they can do nothing with success. It is notable in
the dealings of men, when they make contracts and bargains,
there is some good hour, some advantageous nick of time, which
if overslipped and let go, either the price fails or the thing fails.
And it is further observable, that there are some lucky seasons
and offers of preferment in every man's life, which if not laid
hold upon, a man is for ever after degraded in his worldly ad
vancements. Nay, even those creatures that are only acted by a
principle of sense do observe their set times, in which they will
do the works of their nature, and after which they will not.
The bird has its summer to build in, and the bee to gather honey
in; and if they should chance to be hindered from doing these
works at that time, they are never seen to do them in the winter.
In Jeremiah viii. 7, we have this very consideration applied to
this present purpose, "Yea, fhe stork in the heavens knoweth
her appointed times, and the turtle, and the crane, and the swal
low, observe the time of their coming, but my people know not
the judgment of the Lord." I do not mention these things as
arguments to prove any thing, but only as observations to illus
trate what has been already proved. For since some presume to
say, that the visible carnal world is an image or adumbration of
the invisible and spiritual; methinks God, that has tied all the
operations of the creature within such a strict observance of
their respective seasons, he himself should be much more regular

448 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXXI.
and exact in the observance of his own. I shall conclude this
first head with that place in Eccles. iii. 1, " To every thing there
is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. And
without question we shall find, that not man only, but even the
Spirit of God also, as he has his time to work, so he has a time
also to leave off working ; a time to solicit and persuade, and a
time to depart.
But here, before I enter upon the second thing, to prevent
misapprehensions, you must here observe, when I say there is a
set time of the Spirit's working, after which it ceases, it is not
to be understood of a general set time, which is the same in every
man, and beyond which these workings never pass : as for ex
ample, because forty years was the set time of the Spirit's striving
with Israel, we are not thence to conclude, that it will continue
its workings just so long with all the world besides: but it is to
be meant of a set and stinted time in respect of every particular
man's life, in which there is some limited period, wherein the
workings of the Spirit will for ever stop. For as it merely de
pends upon the sovereignty of God's good pleasure, whether or
no there should be any such workings at all; so it is likewise
absolutely at his disposal to prolong or shorten their continuance.
Only this we may rationally collect ; where the means of grace
are more plentiful, there the Spirit, upon resistance, sooner de
parts. Now these being more fully, clearly, and convincingly
dealt forth under the dispensations of the gospel, than those of
the law, we may conclude this also, that the Spirit in such times
is quicker in his despatches, and shorter in his stay. Thus God
forbore the fig-tree but three years, and the children of Israel
forty. And no wonder : that was in a fruitful soil, these in the
wilderness. And God will bear with that unfruitfulness in a
wilderness, that he will not in his vineyard.
II. Having thus proved the point by scripture, and withal
given you some caution for the understanding of it ; I proceed
in the next place to show, how the Spirit may be resisted in its
workings upon the heart. Herein as for those controversies,
whether the workings of the Spirit, by which a man is not
actually converted, were yet notwithstanding sufficient for his
conversion; or, when one resists the Spirit, and another does
not, whether this proceeds from the different operations of the
Spirit, or the different dispositions of the hearts wrought upon;
I shall not undertake here to determine. But this I shall pre
sume to affirm, that what God never intended should convert a
man, was never able to convert him: and moreover, what never
actually does convert him, was never fully intended for his con
version : otherwise, if it was, we must make his intentions frus
trate ; which, I think, cannot be affirmed, without a blasphemous
derogation from his power and his wisdom. But to the point in

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 449
hand, namely, to show how many ways the Spirit may be resisted.
Where we must first lay down, what it is in general to resist the
Spirit. And this I conceive is, in brief, to disobey the Spirit
commanding and persuading the soul to the performance of duty,
and the avoicTance of sin.
Now the Spirit commands and persuades two ways.
1. Externally, by the latter of the word, either written or
preached. 2. By its immediate internal workings upon the soul, which I
shall reduce to two : (1.) The illumination of the understanding.
(2.) The conviction ofthe will.
Now suitable to all these ways of the* Spirit's dealing with us,
there are so many different acts of resistance, by which these
dealings are opposed. Of all which in their order.
1. Concerning the resistance of the Spirit in disobeying the
letter of the word. The reason that disobedience to the word is
to be accounted an opposing of the Spirit, is because the word
was dictated and inspired by the Spirit, itself. As we have it in
2 Pet. i. ult., "Prophecy came not in old time by the will of
man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the
Spirit." Therefore to disobey what was written and delivered by
them, was, in effect, to disobey the Spirit that did inspire them.
I may truly say of this word, that it is the voice of God, and not '
of a man : and what God is the author of, that he will certainly
own, both by his encouragements of those that obey it, and his
judgments upon those that reject it. It may indeed be delivered
by a poor, inconsiderable, obscure man, but even so it is stamped
with the appointment of God, and will do thorough execution:
be the cloud never so obscure and dark, yet lightning may break
from it, to the terror and shaking of all beholders. This word,
that is so slighted by sinful man, is no less than the power of the
almighty God to salvation ; that instrument which the divine
omnipotence uses to convert souls. Look but into the law ; and
if thou hast a spiritual ear open to hear it, it will speak with a
voice that will make thee tremble. Read the gospel ; and if ever
God do thee good by it, thou wilt feel it like a two-edged sword,
dividing between thee and thy dearest lusts. It will be a fiery,
a searching word : it will pierce into thy very heart, and unbosom
all thy retired corruptions: it will discover to thee those two
great mysteries, the mystery of godliness and of iniquity : it will
mightily convince of sin, righteousness, and judgment : it will
display how cursed and bitter a thing it is to sin against an
almighty God : how excellent and amiable it is to follow him in
the traces of a pure conversation. It will also lay before thee
the certainty, the horror, and dreadfulness of the day of judg
ment to all the impenitent. This is the power, this is the energy
and the force of the word ; and if it never had this effect upon
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450 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxi.
thy heart, it was because thou hast resisted the Spirit speaking
It may here be demanded how the Spirit may be resisted
speaking in the word. I answer, two ways: 1. By a negligent
hearing and a careless attendance upon it. 2. By acting in a
clear and open contrariety to it.
(1.) Concerning the first, the resistance of the Spirit speaking
in the word by a superficial attendance upon it. As for those that
seldom or never hear it all ; that keep out of the Spirit's reach ;
that are such fools as not only to put the " evil day," but also the
good day, " far from them ;" that do not so much resist, as wholly
reject the Spirit ; their condition, no doubt, is very sad and despe
rate. Certainly Sodom and Gomorrah will be able to commence a
plea for themselves at the day of judgment that these cannot: for
the_ joyful sound never rung in their ears, the gospel was never
brought to their doors ; but these have had the means even offered
to them, and refused them. But if the word has been a burden,
and sabbaths have been a trouble, what a weight will, there be in
damnation! A man shall one day be accountable not only for
the sermons that he has heard, but for those also that he might have
heard. But to pass over those who scarce merit the name of pro
fessors, there is another sort that indeed hear the word, yet with
that supine negligence, that they cannot quit themselves from being
ranked amongst the contemners of the Spirit. Some indeed hear
the sound of the word as of the wind, but for want of attention,
scarce know from whence it comes, nor whither it goes. Some
suffer wandering thoughts, like the fowls of the air, to intercept the
seed, before it falls upon their hearts. Some by reason of their own
idle discourses cannot hear the voice of the Spirit. Some sleep and
shut their eyes against that light that might otherwise shine into
their souls. And is not this to despise the Spirit ? Believe it, as
it is the greatest affront that we can offer to any considering man,
when he is seriously speaking to us, and that about the things of
our own concernment, to be thinking of something else, and not to
regard him ; so in these addresses of the Spirit to us about the things
of our own eternal peace, not to attend or observe him, is so much
greater a contempt, by how much the Spirit of God is greater than
the greatest of men.
(2.) The second way of resisting the Spirit speaking in the
word, is by acting contrary to that word. The most considerable
thing in man is his actions. Every action it is defined, fluxus
virium agentis ; it is the drawing forth the very spirit and vigour
of the agent upon some object : thoughts like shadows in the mind
quickly vanish; words are transient and pass away, but deeds
and actions will abide. Accordingly God lays all the stress of
religion upon these; the law runs thus, "Do this, and thou shalt
live :" the gospel says, " Not every one that cries, Lord, Lord,

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 451
but he that does the will of my Father, shall enter into heaven."
Both agree in this, that they put not men upon bare words and
wishes, but upon doing. Nay, let me further say, if it were
possible that we could do the will of God without hearing of it,
it was no matter whether we heard it or no ; for hearing is not
intended for itself, but in order to doing. We read of one in the
gospel that was commanded by his father to go work in the vine
yard, but he denied, and said he would not go; yet notwith
standing was excused, because at length he did go : and so ex
piated the evil of his words, by the goodness of his deeds.
Therefore it is the obedience or disobedience of our actions that
the Spirit of God chiefly regards. You may hear the word, and
what is more, you may hear it with attention, yet if by your
practice you contradict the things that you have heard, this is to
resist the Spirit. To hear or read the precepts of God, and yet
do things contrary to those precepts ; to hear the thunder of his
curses, and yet not to be wrought upon, so as to avoid the cursed
thing, this is notoriously to resist the Spirit. He that shall hear
God commamding him not to take his name in vain, and yet
pollute it with hideous, blasphemous oaths ; that shall hear Christ
forbidding wantonness, even in the glance of an eye, and yet
roll himself in folly and uncleanness ; he that shall hear that
dreadful voice of God, " Cursed be he that does the work of the
Lord negligently," and yet come unprepared to duties, and,
being come, slightly perform them; surely such a person is to be
reckoned amongst the highest opposers of the Spirit. If every
idle word renders a man obnoxious to judgment, shall not a
downright breach of the law by action sink a man under a much
more heavy condemnation ? He that will not hear, or hearing
takes no notice of the laws of his prince, is a disobedient subject :
but he that acts in opposition to them is an open rebel. Now
the reasons that this kind of resisting the Spirit in our actions is
so great, may be these two.
1st. Because action is the very perfection and consummation of
sin. Sin may indeed make a foul progress in our thoughts and
desires, and step a little further in our words; but when it
comes to be acted, then it attains its full pitch, and becomes
perfect. 2dly. Because sin in the actions argues an overflowing and a
redundancy of sin in the heart. A sinful action it is only the
boiling over of sin as it lies there : for the heart it is yet in the
womb ; for as the apostle says, there it is conceived : but in the
actual commission of it, it is then brought forth : so that if
(according to our Saviour's word) through the abundance of the
hes»rt a man speaks, then certainly from the exceeding super
abundance of it does he proceed to action.
Having thus shown how the Spirit is resisted in its external
speaking in the word,

452 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxi.
2 I shall next show how it is resisted in its immediate internal
workings upon the soul. Here we must reflect upon ourselves,
and know that upon the unhappy fall of man, sin, and the
wretched effects of sin, immediately entered upon, and took full
possession of all his faculties: his understanding, that before
shined clear like the lamp of God, was by sin overspread with
darkness; his will, that bore a perfect conformity to the divine
will, was rendered totally averse from, and contrary to the things
of God. When man was first created, there was such an exact
symmetry and harmony of all the faculties, such an absolute
composure of the whole, that he was not only the workmanship,
but also the image of his Maker. But sin shattered all, it took
the whole fabric asunder. And thus the soul being broken and
ruined (as God threatened to Babylon, in Isaiah xiii. 21), became
desolate, and a place of "doleful creatures;" that is black and
dismal apprehensions of God's wrath, and gross ignorance of his
will, lodging in the understanding: and a place for satyrs to
dance in; that is, of brutish lusts and impure desires, acting,
moving, and taking their pastime in the will. Now God the
Father, through the admirable contrivance of his wisdom, and
the propensity of his mercy, intending man's recovery, and the
Son as Mediator undertaking it, it was requisite that in order to
it, he should take away and cure all these distempers both of
man's understanding and his will. Hereupon, by virtue of the
power committed to him as Mediator, he issues forth the Spirit
as the purchase of his death, for the accomplishment of these
gracious ends in renewing and recruiting the decayed nature of
man. And this he does by the two forementioned works, to wit,
illumination and conviction ; in both of which the Spirit may be
resisted. (1.) Concerning our resistance of it in illumination, or its
enlightening work. Where note by way of caution, that by the
works of the Spirit I understand not the extraordinary, efficacious
works thereof in true conversion; for these are not resistible,
inasmuch as they take away our resistance: they depend not
upon the courtesy of our wills as to their success, but upon the
sole power of God forcing his way through the heart in spite of
all opposition. But I speak of its common works, such as a man
may frustrate, such as he may be partaker of and yet perish.
And these enlightenings both may be and often are resisted by
the soul. Illumination in general may be described, the Spirit's
infusing a certain light into the mind, whereby it is in some
measure enabled to discern and judge of the things of God.
Now this fight is threefold.
1st. That universal light which we usually term the light of
nature, yet so as it may also be rightly termed the light of the
Spirit ; but in a different respect. It is called the light of nature,
because of its general inherence in all men ; because it is com-

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 453
mensurate and of equal extent with nature, so that wheresoever the
nature of man is to be found, there this light is to be found. " It
enlightens every man that comes into the world." But on the other
hand, it is called the light of the Spirit, in respect of the Spirit's
efficiency, in that it is the producing cause of it, as it is of every
good and perfect gift. This light it is the first breathing of God
upon our nature, the very first draught and lineaments of the new
creature ; it is, as it were, the first dawning of the Spirit upon the
soul, in those connate principles born with us into the world, and
discovering, though very imperfectly, some general truths : as that
there is a God, and that this God is to be worshipped, and the like.
Yet this is but a glimmering, imperfect light, and such a one as car
ries with it a greater mixture of darkness ; like the break of day,
which has in it more of darkness, it is but one remove from darkness.
The Spirit of God shining barely in nature, it is like the sun shining
through a cloud, but with a faint, weak brightness, made rather to
refresh than satisfy. Yet this was all the heathens had, in whom
especially the imperfection of it appeared, as not being able to res
cue them from idolatry, from villanous and unnatural lusts, both of
which are the blush of nature as well as of religion. Yet by this
light they shall be judged, and by this condemned. Wherefore of
all sins that resist the Spirit, loathe amd detest those that resist it
speaking in nature, which are so gross and horrid as not to be named,
much less to be committed. Certainly these stains are not the stains
and spots of God's children : nature itself is corrupted, yet it will
testify aloud against such hideous corruptions.
Conscience is corrupted, yet like the unjust judge, through the
importunity or cry of such it will judge righteously. To be
unnatural is something more than to be irreligious ; for a man to
offer violence to the principles, what is it but a spiritual self-
murder ? To cease to be a man, is something worse than not to
be a saint. 0 reverence therefore this light, set up by God
himself in our nature. As we are not to rely upon it as our
only guide, so are we upon no hand to sin against it : walking
according to its directions is not sufficient to save us, but going
contrary to them will certainly condemn us.
The second kind of light may be called a notional scripture
light ; that is, a bare knowledge of or assent to scripture truths.
This light is begot in the mind of all professors by the mere
hearing or reading the word ; it is the bare perception of evan
gelical truths placed in the intellect, resting in the brain, trea
sured up there by a naked apprehension and speculation. So
that the resisting this being almost the same with our resistance
of the Spirit speaking in the word, only with this difference, that
in the former we resist the word as considered in the letter, in
this we resist it as it lies transcribed in the conceptions of the
understanding. I say, since this almost coincides with the former,
which I have discussed already, I shall proceed no further in it,

454 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. XXXI.
only leave this to your consideration, that if the poor heathens
fell under the wrath and curse of God, only for resisting the
Spirit in the dim light of nature ; then how will it be possible
for us to escape if we resist it now shining openly, like the sun
in his might, in the clear discovery of the law and gospel ? As
the light which we resist is greater or less, so is the proportion of
our sin either diminished or advanced. Therefore ff we disobey
the Spirit, what can follow but that as our light, so our sin also,
must be far greater than theirs, and our punishment answerable ?
For assuredly, the just God who takes the exact and true dimen
sions of sin, will heat the furnace of his wrath seven times hotter
for gospel reprobates, than for ignorant heathens.
The third kind of light may be called a special convincing light,
which is a higher degree of the enlightening work of the Spirit,
and not common to all professors, yet such a one as may be re
sisted, yea and totally extinguished. This is the highest attain
ment of the soul on this side saving grace ; it is like the clear
shining of the moon and stars, which is the greatest light that is
consistent with a state of darkness. Yea, it is such a light as
does not only make a discovery of thevthings of God, but also
engenders in the soul a certain relish and taste of them. It is a
light, not only of knowledge, but of joy ; and this it was that
enlightened the stony ground in Matt. xiii. 20, which did not only
hear and apprehend the word, but also with joy received it : yet
we see in the next verse, that it was not able to withstand tribu
lations and persecutions, hut when the storms arose and the wind
beat upon it, it quickly went out ; like a torch before a tempest,
after a very short and weak contest, it was soon extinguished.
However, we must know, that this light is the ultimus conatus,
the last and greatest endeavour of the Spirit upon a reprobate
soul, which, once finally resisted, for ever departs, and leaves the
soul under an everlasting night, without any after-returns of
day. To be thus enlightened, is called in scripture to " taste of
the heavenly gift, to be partaker of the Holy Ghost, and of the
powers of the world to come," as it is expressed in Heb. vi. 4, 5 :
and of the desperate, deplorable condition of those that miscarry
under these illuminations, we have an account in the next verse ;
" If they fall away it is impossible to renew them again to
repentance." " The wicked," says God, " shall fall and never
rise." He that shall hear what report the gospel makes of the nature
of sin, and be so far affected with a lively sense and feeling of it,
as to resolve against it, to hate it, even to a relinquishment of it,
and continue for a long time so to do, yet notwithstanding at
length disentangle himself from those thoughts and apprehen
sions of sin, so far as to relapse into the fearful commission and
love of it. that man's case is grievous, and his wound not easily
curable. For God intends these illuminations as singular special

the danger of resisting the spirit. 455
means, both to allure the soul to duty by the discovery of the
love of Christ, and to awe it from sin by the terrors of hell. Now
when a man desires to sleep securely in the free enjoyment of his
sin, and shall therefore seek to put out this light, we have no
ground to conclude that the Spirit will ever restore it. He that
frowardly atnd foolishly puts out his candle, is not sure to blow it
in again. As for those common shinings of it that beam ' forth in
the notion of the word, they indeed may be renewed every ser
mon, they are such beams as we read of, occidere et redire possunt.
But when this special light is extinct, when this sets in darkness,
the soul that is thus benighted is left to sleep a perpetual sleep of
sin and death.
And thus much concerning the first inward work of the
Spirit, to wit, illumination of the understanding.
(2.) We come now to the second, which is the conviction of the
will, which conviction may be described in general,
A work of the Spirit of God upon the will and affections,
producing in them some imperfect liking of the ways of God,
and dislike to the ways of sin.
There is a clear and open passage between the understanding
and the will. Light in the one naturally begets heat in the other,
and the conviction of the affections is never greater than the
illumination of the judgment. So that when the work of the
Spirit miscarries about the understanding, it never thoroughly
succeeds in the will; for it strikes the will and the affections
through the understanding, and if it cannot pierce this, it is not
to be imagined how the blow can reach the other.
Now the convincing works of the Spirit upon the will may be
reduced to these three. 1. A begetting in it some good desires,
wishes, and inclinations. 2. An enabling it to perform some im
perfect obedienee. 3. An enabling it to leave some sins. In all
these works the Spirit may be resisted and opposed.
1st. And first, it may be resisted in the good desires and incli
nations that it suggests to the will. That these good desires issue
from the Spirit, I suppose none will deny, who acknowledges
that of ourselves we are not so much as able to think a good
thought. He that affirms holy duties may proceed from an un
holy, corrupt heart, may as well expect " grapes from thorns,
and figs from thistles." As there aje some desires so exceeding
black and hellish, that it easily appears they came into the mind
from their father the devil : so on the contrary there are some so
pure and holy, that they may be quickly discerned to be the off
spring of the Spirit, as bearing his image and likeness. Good
inclinations, they are the firstborn of holiness in the soul, the
very first endeavours and throes of the new birth. And as they
are the first, so in reason they may be thought to be most im
perfect, and consequently most easy to be rejected : a good desire
stepping forth amongst raging and unmortified lusts, it is like

456 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxi.
righteous but weak Lot, endeavouring to appease the tumult of
the Sodomites. O how easily is it forced to retire! how quickly
is it repulsed ! It is like a drop of water falling into a furnace,
that presently exhales and does not at all allay the fury of its
heat How often has the Spirit whispered to us, This is the
way walk in it," and our perverse hearts have hurried us another
way1 How often has many a soul thoughts of relinquishing its
sin and returning to God, and yet by the allurement of new plea
sures, has been inveigled and recalled back ! How often do some
think of repairing to Christ, and yet are held fast by the fetters
of prevailing lust? And all this befalls men, because they im
prove not these blessed inclinations. Oh! were we but true to
our own souls, to cherish these tender, new-born, infant desires,
and to carry them to Christ by prayer, certainly he would take
them in his arms and bless them, and send them away strength
ened. Every sincere desire to pray might be improved to a
blessed communion with God, every secret dislike of impurity
might be wrought up to sanctity of life and conversation. 0
despise not therefore "the day of small things;" shut not your
ears against the secret admonitions of the Spirit, they are none
other than God himself speaking to thee (as to Elijah) in " a still
voice." You may one day come to know, when with bitterness
of soul you shall reflect upon and recollect all these dealings of
the Spirit : Such a time I had an inclination to confess my idle
ness, my intemperance before God, and amend it, but I hearkened
to the dissuasions of my corrupt heart, and so neglected it. Such
a time I had strong motions and intentions to restore my ill-got
ten goods, but my covetousness restrained me. I say, then you
will know and confess (as Jacob did of Bethel) " of a truth God
was in all these workings, and I knew it not."
2dly. The Spirit may be opposed, as it enables the soul to
perform some imperfect obedience to God's commands. A man,
by the convincing energy of the Spirit in the word, may be led,
or rather drawn to many duties. Thus Herod, in Mark vi. 20,
upon the soul-searching ministry of John, is said to have " done
many things." The Israelites also, in Psalm lxxviii. 34, were
driven by God's judgments to proceed very far in his worship;
" When he slew them," it is said, " they sought him, and they
returned and inquired early after God." So that Jiere we have
both duty and earnestness in duty; but we see in the following
verse they quickly got loose from those convictions ; " They
flattered him with their mouth, and lied unto him with their
lips :" that is, their ensuing practices foully falsified all those
fair promises of obedience, which they made under their convic
tions. Such men's hearts may be often heated by the lively and
warm impressions of the Spirit, yet by their innate corruptions,
as it were, their proper form, like water heated, they are quickly
recovered to their native coldness. In Job xxvii. 10, Job says,

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 457
"Will the hypocrite always call upon God?" Implying, I con
ceive, that from the motions of God's Spirit he may engage very
fairly in that duty, though he fall short of continuance. See the
convincing works of God's Spirit upon Ephraim, in Hosea vi. 4 ;
they wrought in him some superficial beginnings of goodness,
but as it is there expressed, "it was like a morning cloud,"
when temptations arose it posted away, and like the early
dew, presently drunk up by the scorching heat of raging lusts.
Now this resistance of the Spirit is much more heinous than the
former, inasmuch as the practice of holiness is greater than a
bare desire and inclination to it. To injure or offend him that
does but wish and desire our good, argues, little ingenuity ; but
to grieve and oppose him that actually endeavours it, shows a
plain want of humanity. For him who has maintained some
communion with the Spirit, and has " taken sweet counsel with
him,'' so that they have often " walked to the house of God in
compatny ;" I say, for such a one to rift up his heel in acts of
defiance and resistance of the Spirit, this is very grievous.
When a man has proceeded very far in the mortification of his
pride, his drunkenness, his lust, for him to return again to the
same excess of riot, this is a more than ordinary provocation.
When he is upon a fair advance to Zoar, to the city of life and
deliverance, for such a one to look back upon Sodom, and caist
an eye of desire upon his forsaken filth; it is just w,ith God to
make such a one a wonder and a sad example of his abused
mercy. But this is the upshot of all, this is the very dividing
point where the Spirit of God and the souls of men break and
part for ever ; they find a cursed pleasure in sin, and none in
a course of duty : and so, maugre all the entreaties and wooing
convictions of the Spirit, they relinquish duty and return to sin.
3dly. The Spirit may be opposed in that convincing work,
whereby it enables the will to forsake some sins. This work
bears some affinity with the former, but it is not altogether the
same. I confess, to yield perfect obedience to all God's com
mands, does include in it a forsaking of all sin, and is consequen
tially, yea and really, the same with it. But imperfectly to
execute some good duties, and imperfectly to leave some sins,
which is here intended, are, two distinct things. Now that the
Spirit is able to work up a soul even to this also, and that the
soul is likewise able to frustrate this work, these following scrip
tures will demonstrate. 2 Peter ii. 20, we have some that, by
the convincing help of the Spirit, " had escaped the pollutions
of the world," they had washed their hands of all those enormi
ties that raged and reigned in the lives of grosser sinners. Yet
in the same verse we have these also "again entangled and
overcome by their lusts;" and thereupon compared to the most
filthy creatures, which being washed, with much greediness
return to their beloved mire and defilements. In Gal. iii. 3, we
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458 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxi.
find some who had "begun in the Spirit," yet in danger to have
"ended in the flesh;" so treacherous is sin in its departure, and
so violent in its returns. Certainly in these cases it seems to
retire and draw back, only to come on afterwards with a greater
assault. For the appetite of sin being only restrained, not taken
away, it returns after a while with more violent fury upon its
object: and like a thirsty man, the longer it has forbornMo
drink of the pleasures of sin, it takes so much deeper a draught
of them at length. Thus sin is only pent up in the soul by
main force of the Spirit, but when it finds the least vent it
lashes out to the purpose: some cannot neglect duties as they
used to do, because the terrors of God are upon their souls;
some dare not venture upon their former lewd courses, because
the Spirit meets them with the drawn sword of God's vengeance,
casting the very flashes of hell in their faces, if they step afoot
into those ways. So that here the sinner is indeed held in bonds,
but his sinful nature is still unchanged; like the devils them
selves, who, though they are kept in chains, yet they are still
devils in chains. The soul has lost the present exercise of sin,
yet still retains the faculty: but at length the Spirit having for
a long time kept the soul from its lust, as God did Balaam from
his covetousness, and still hearing it crying and craving after its
beloved corruption ; even as God let Balaam go upon the like
importunity, so the Spirit slacks his hold and lets the soul loose
to its sin. And then it sins at a high rate indeed ; better were
it for man never to have given the Spirit any room, any place
in his heart, than at length thus to turn it out. We may truly
say of this holy guest, Turpius ejicitur, quam non admittitur;
yea, safer had it been for such a soul to have still wallowed in
his sin, than being once rescued from it, again to apostatize to
it. For this is to sin from choice, and that from choice grounded
upon experience ; for having tried both ways, to wit, those trf
the Spirit, and those of sin, by such returns to it he does aloud
proclaim his judgment to the world that sin is better.
And thus much concerning the second general head, to show
how many ways the Spirit may be resisted.
III. I proceed to the third, to show the reasons why upon stick
resistance the Spirit finally withdraws.
1. The first reason is drawn from God's decree. This is that
which bounds all things, and fixes the freest operations of second
causes : the event of things in themselves merely contingent, by
this decree is stamped certain and infallible. It turns a casualty
into a certainty ; a contingency into a necessity. And as the
actions of the creature are limited and determined by this decree,
so the most free actions of God himself come also within the re
straining compass of the same. God purposes before he acts,
and his purpose it is the measure of his operations : and what

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 459
God wills, he wills immutably. His wisdom and infinite know
ledge foresees and debates all inconveniences antecedently to
every act of volition ; and so there can be no new emergent in
convenience that may unframe his resolutions and cause a change.
Accordingly the workings and strivings of God's Spirit are
measured out and bounded by this decree ; by virtue of which
its departure is firmly and irreversibly intended, and some resist
ance of it is thereby put beyond pardon. Some think the like
of the great sin against the Holy Ghost, that is not unpardon
able from its own nature, but from God's special decree ; not
because it is of so great malignity as to surpass the extent of
God's mercies, nor yet because it is inconsistent with the means
of obtaining pardon, but that God by an act of sovereignty
singled out this sin, and for the glory of his justice and the terror
of those that should abuse his grace, passed a decree for ever to
exclude it from all possibility of remission. But thus much by
way of digression. Now this decree has not any active influence
or efficiency, so as actually to produce or put in being the thing
decreed. I say the decree itself does not effect the thing, but it
engages God's veracity and immutable truth, to see it certainly
effected. There is nothing therefore but, if we pursue it to its
first original, must of necessity terminate in this decree, as de
riving from hence the first rise and reason of its being. I say
the reason,, though not the cause. In Eph. i. 11, God is said to
" work all things according to the counsel of his own will." He
resembles an excellent artificer, who in all his works of " art has
forelaid in his mind a perfect model of his intended fabric, before
ever he sets the first hand to it. It is finished in the contrivance,
before it is so much as begun in the production. God says,
" Shall I decree, and shall it not come to pass ?" So by inversion
we may say, Shall any thing come to pass, and shall not he
decree ? Would we know why the Spirit of God departed from
Judas, even to the loss and perdition of his soul ? We have an
account in John xvii. 12 ; it was " that the scriptures might be
fulfilled ;" that is, that the will or decree of God delivered in
scripture concerning Judas might be accomplished.
Now what terrors should this strike into all resisters of the
Spirit, all prodigals of the means of grace ! Whosoever spends
upon mercy, spends upon a set allowance. God has allotted and
decreed to every man his portion in the Spirit's workings, which
by reason of the enforcing power of that decree, he will never
extend nor contract, diminish nor augment. And since it is not
known to us in what point of our life God has set this fatal
bound, as it is a sovereign remedy to prevent despair, that none
might unadvisedly conclude against himself, that he had finally
resisted the Spirit : so on the other hand it ought to be a strong
argument to cut short the outrageous progress of a presuming
sinner, since he knows not but the very next sin he is closing

460 dr. south's posthumous" sermons. [serm. xxxi.
with, may separate between him and the Spirit of God for ever.
For shall" God limit the natural days of our life, beyond which
we cannot pass, as it is in Job xiv. 5, and shall the days of the
Spirit's striving with us be undetermined ? Certainly what he
says of those may be said of the Spirit's workings, they are all
numbered." And that they are so will appear one day, when
those exact bills of our accounts, relating all our opposmgs even
of the smallest motions of the Spirit, shall be preferred and read
against us. Can we then (as it is expressed in the prophet) dis
annul " God's covenant with day and night ?" Can we disappoint
or change " the ordinances of heaven and earth ?" Then may we
stretch the fixed term of the Spirit's dealing with our hearts be
yond God's decree. Then may we, when our day of grace is ex
piring, cause the sun of mercy to go ten degrees backward.
Alas! poor inconsiderable, impotent men! We must lay our
mouths in the dust, and give way to the irresistible decree of
God for ever. Can all the men in the world, by the united force
of their power and policy, hinder the sun from setting but for
the space of one hour ? nay, but of one moment ? And can we,
weak, sinful worms, prolong our precious day of grace at our
pleasure ? True it is, the mercy of God is infinite, and his good
ness past finding out ; but he that has set bars and doors to the sea,
has also set bounds to this ocean of his mercy, and said, Thus far
shall you come in your strivings with such a soul, and no further.
2. The second reason why the Spirit departs upon resistance,
is because it is most agreeable to the great intent and design of
the gospel. And this is twofold, suitable to which the Spirit
does accordingly appropriate a twofold operation.
(1.) The first great gospel design is the converting and saving
the elect, and this is accomplished by an effectual converting
power, which in its addresses to the soul is invincible. It does
not persuade but overpower, and therefore never fails or miscar
ries, but effectually converts, sanctifies, and reduces the soul.
The infallible success of the work depends upon the irresistible
force of the agent : by a happy, alluring, yet efficacious violence
it draws ; Jer. xxxi. 3, " With lovingkindness have I drawn
thee." Wheresoever this power draws, the soul certainly follows :
I rather say certainly than necessarily, because necessity may
seem to entrench upon the free spontaneity of the will, although
it is clear that there is a kind of necessity which is compatible
with its freedom. The drawing work of the Spirit it has the
strength but not the violence of coaction, Luke xiv. 23, " Compel
them to come in." There is a compulsion indeed, but not such a
one as is against the will ; but such a one as makes it willing.
And this alone is sufficient to enervate the objections of those
free-willers, that exclaim of coaction and compulsion in an irre
sistible converting work. Thus therefore the Spirit effects God's
great and primary gospel design, in calling home his sheep, his

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 461
chosen ones, the objects of his eternal love : and this is done
by an effectual, never-failing power in their vocation ; by which
they are fully instated in their present possession of grace, and
sufficiently secured in their hopes of glory for the future.
. (2.) The second end and design of the gospel is to render re
probates inexcusable ; and this is no less effectually done by the
common enlightening, convincing works of the Spirit, which are
sufficient to take off all pleas, to silence them in their own
defence, and to enhance their guilt beyond excuse. It is con
fessed, the converting, renewing work of the Spirit was never
vouchsafed to any reprobate ; they were never admitted to share
in the children's bread. Yet God's denial of recovering grace
cannot warrant them in a state of sin. All indeed through
Adam were generally immersed into an equal plunge of misery,
all were forlorn and broke, and as to the stock of their first
righteousness totally bankrupt, and the law still remains a rigid.;
exactor of obedience. The elect and reprobate both fell from
their righteousness, but God was pleased to renew the store of
the former, leaving the latter destitute: but may not God even
from these require perfect obedience, though they have lost the
power to perform it? A creditor does not lose his right to his
money, because the debtor is unable to pay. Suppose a creditor
have two debtors, and both turn bankrupt ; now if he of his own
free cost and favour supplies one wherewithal to discharge the
debt, may he not therefore demand it of the other without the
like supply? Certainly mercy to one does not weaken or take
off the procedure of the law against the other; neither our
merits nor our misery can lay any obligation upon God's grace.
He that shall dare to cavil and expostulate with his Maker at
such a rate of impiety and impudence, as the corrupt heart of
man is apt to do, " Is it my fault that I remain unconverted*
under all my convictions ? Had God vouchsafed to me convert
ing grace as he did to others, I had been converted as; well
as they?" God will answer the expostulations of such men, as he
did those, Matt. xx. 13, 15, " Friend, I do thee no wrong." Is it
not lawful to do with my own free grace as I please ? " Is thine<
eye evil and malicious, because I am goodi?" Out of my mercy
I bestowed converting grace upon such an. unworthy sinner, out
of my sovereignty I denied it to another, yet still without any im
peachment to my justice. His justice is not at all injured when,
he confers grace upon one, nor his mercy lessened when he with
holds it from another. However a man may for a while please
himself in such objections against his Creator, and seem to him
self to unreason the equity of God's proceedings ; yet there will
be a time when the sinner shall stand clearly convinced of the
righteousness of God's dealings in his final departure from him ;
so as not to be able to plead or reply any thing against him in a
rational way to all eternity : and this of all other will be the
2q2

462 DK. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxi.
most stinging consideration, the most irksome and tormenting
thoueht- for if we observe the vilest, the most profligate male
factor when he stands openly convict, and that by the most
pregnant evidence, he is apt to relieve his mind with such l poor,
oerishing forlorn persuasions, as that he suffers unjustly, that he
has hard measure, and that he smarts in the severe censures of
men beyond the merit of his fact; then, I say, the slender com
fort even of these apprehensions will fail the sinner. For he
shall evidently find and know himself utterly forsaken, and
-ejected by the Spirit, and withal see it most just and righteous
that he should be so forsaken. This is that that will most
bitterly gnaw and rack the proud heart of a reprobate, when he
shall be forced to acknowledge that the Spirit's departure is not
only his punishment, but his desert : he shall then confess, that
the Spirit was as real in his workings, as he was peremptory in
his resistance : that he was as pathetical and tender in the offers
of grace, as he was obstinate in their refusal: that the Spirit
with much eagerness would have often stepped between him and
the commission of his beloved sin, and that he with as much
vehemence rushed into it. That the Spirit had used many
forcible arguments to conclude him into duty, and that he still
flew off; and when he could not answer them, absolutely denied
them. All these things, in the dismal remembrance of them, will
be like so many vultures devouring and preying upon a self-con
demned soul.
But it may be here replied, What needs 'any continuance of
the Spirit's workings to render a man inexcusable, since the
very strivings of the Spirit in natural conscience is sufficient to
effect this ?
I answer, that it is most true, that even nature itself is able to
cut off all excuse from the mind of an awakened sinner: as is
clear from Rom. i. 20, where Paul, speaking of the heathen,
which were only acted by this principle, says, that " they were
without excuse." And again, in Rom. ii. 15, we read of their
natural " consciences excusing and accusing each other," accord
ing as their deeds were good or evil. From whence it clearly
follows, that the motions of God's Spirit are continued and
vouchsafed to the impenitent under the Gospel, not barely to
render them inxecusable, but to render them in a greater measure •
inexcusable, and to charge their impenitence with greater aggra
vations : for God intending to the reprobates different degrees of
punishments, it is requisite, that in order to it, he should present
their sins under different aggravations.
And thus we see God's two great gospel designs, the first of
them to convert the elect, which is effected by the extraordinary
power of the Spirit ; the second to bereave the reprobate of ex
cuse, which is accomplished by the ordinary strivings of it, in
those convictions which in their issue prove ineffectual : so that

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 463
now the Spirit having finished the end for which those workings
were continued, what in reason can follow, but, the end being
acquired, those workings should cease? In human actions
designed for the attainment of any end, when it is actually
attained, the continuation of that action is irrational and absurd,
And what is unsavoury and unbeseeming in the actions of men,
shall we ascribe to those of the Spirit? A man may with as
much reason set his reapers to work, when he has finished his
harvest ; or set his labourers to prune and lop his trees, which by
his own appointment they have already cut down ; as the Spirit
continue his strivings after he has fully accomplished God's end
upon any sinner. He is sent only as God's agent or ambassador
to do his message, and for a while to negotiate his business with
the hearts of the impenitent, not to take up his fixed dwelling or
habitation with them. Therefore it is most rational, that having
done his message and finished his embassy he should depart.
3. The third ground or reason why God withdraws his Spirit
upon our resistance, is because it highly tends to the vindication
of his honour. Now God may vindicate his honour two ways in
the Spirit's departure.
(1.) As it is a punishment to the sinner, that has dishonoured
him. God's glory cannot be repaired but by the misery of the
party that made a breach upon it. God cannot be glorious, till
the offender is made miserable. Now this is a punishment exactly
correspondent to the sin, that is totally spiritual. For can there
be a greater punishment for a sinner, than to be permitted to
take a full swing in the free satisfaction of his lust ? When God
bereaves his soul of his Spirit, there is, as I may say, a decree
passed in the court of heaven, in respect of that soul, for liberty
and toleration in sin. In this sense there is no distinction be
tween the evil of sin and the evil of punishment ; for the evil of
sin is the greatest evil of punishment. If a man possessed with
frenzy should endeavour to drown or stab himself, and being
forcibly withheld, should fight and strive to have his will ; could
there be any greater punishment for his fighting and striving,
than to be delivered over to the free execution of his intended
mischief? We find the children of Israel grieving, and even
fretting God's Spirit, in Ezek. xvi. 43, " Thou hast fretted me
in all these things." Now what course does God take to revenge
himself? Does he threaten them with the sword, with famine
and desolation ? Does he give them over as a prey to their ene
mies, to be insulted over by a bitter captivity ? No ; but, what
is worse, that he may inflict spiritual judgments, he causes •- tem
poral judgments to cease ; in verse 42, "I will make my fury to
wards thee to rest, and my jealousy shall depart from thee, and I
will be quiet, and will be no more angry:" that is, his anger
should grow to that height, that it should be too great to be out
wardly expressed : it should burn inwardly ; and so it is much

464 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxxi.
more dreadful. The wind when it breaks forth, it only shakes
the trees- but when it is pent up, and restrained within the
eround it makes the very earth shake and tremble. Questionless
there is not an expression in all God's word, that does more fully
and terribly hold forth God's anger, than this wherein he says he
will be angry no more. It is clear therefore that God cannot
vindicate his honour by inflicting a greater evil upon those that,
despise his Spirit, than by withdrawing it. Then God punishes
the unjust man in a fearful way, when he inflicts that matchless
curse in Rev. xxii. 11, and says, "He that is unjust, let him be
unjust still." Then does he take the sorest vengeance of the un
clean person, when he withdraws the pure motions of his Holy
Spirit, and says, " He that is filthy, let him be filthy still." No
penalty for sin so dreadful, as a liberty to continue in sin.
(2.) God may vindicate his honour by clearing his injured,
attributes from those aspersions that human mistakes might
charge upon them : for upon God's merciful, patient continuance
of his Spirit, after long opposition made against it, from the
facility of God's forbearance, men are prone to conceive others
wise of God, than is either consistent with their duty or his
honour. But now, by thus withdrawing of his Spirit, he does
eminently vindicate and recover the repute of his injured attri
butes, and of these two especially: 1. Of his wisdom; 2. Of
his mercy.
1st. He vindicates and asserts the honour of his wisdom. I
confess it is downright atheism to deny God's wisdom in words,
and few will do it. But corruption is apt to think what atheism
only will avouch. And there is a language of the heart which
speaks clear enough to God's dishonour, though not to our hear
ing. The voice of it in such a case is, " How doth God know,
and is there knowledge in the Most High?" Psalm lxxiii. 11.
Is it for God's wisdom to offer what he knows will be rejected ;
and to multiply his entreaties, that the sinner may only have oc
casion to multiply affronts? Is it prudence to urge and press a
man with the continual offers of that thing, which we know him
to be fully resolved for ever to refuse? Amongst men there is
none but the covetous and the foolish that offer their gifts to
those who they are sure will not accept them. He that shall
give with the same importunity that others ask, and shall entreat
men to receive his favours, plays the beggar in the midst of his
liberality. Now as long as the Spirit prorogues his workings
after an obstinate resistance of them, so long he only seeks and
sues for a repulse ; he courts an affront. It is mercy at first for
God to send his Spirit,, but when it is slighted it is wisdom to
revoke it.
2dly. He vindicates the honour of his mercy. Such is the
vileness of men, that even from mercy itself they take occasion
to blaspheme mercy. For by thus presuming upon it, they do

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 465'
not so much think or speak, as act their blasphemies against it.
He that goes on to sin against mercy, he either thinks that God
knows it not, and so cannot punish him ; or that he is of so im
pregnable a clemency, that he will not. But as the former of
these strikes at God's omniscience, so the latter at his mercy.
For this is not properly mercy, but fondness ; that is, an ir
rational mercy; which we cannot add to God's nature, but by
such additions we should diminish and detract from his perfection.
Now God, by the departure of his Spirit, vindicates the
honour of his mercy in a double respect.
First, by showing that it is noways inferior, much less con
trary, to his holiness. God's attributes do not interfere nor
clash: the exercise of one does not justle out the other: they
are at perfect agreement: and mercy will not enlarge itself to
such a pitch as holiness will not warrant. God will let the re-
sisters of his Spirit see, that as he was merciful to endure them
so long, so he is too holy to bear with them any longer. For
during the time of his forbearance, the repute of his holiness lies
at staike. What glory did God gain to his mercy, as it is in
Psalm 1., by bearing with "such as consented with thieves, as
were partakers with adulterers, as gave their mouth to slanders
and reproaches?" I say, what glory did he gain in verse 21,
" These things hast thou done, and I kept silence, and thou
thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself?" Here
we see, in recompence of his forbearance, they question his
righteousness ; and from his permission conclude also his appro
bation of their wickedness.
Secondly, God in this vindicates the honour of his mercy, by-
making it clear, that it is not repugnant to his justice : nay, that
it is not only not repugnant to it, but also makes way for a
severer execution of it : and from hence God may be said, not only
to be merciful because he will be merciful, but because he will
be just. Mercy neither can nor will rescue an impenitent sinner
from the hand of justice. All the time that the infinite mercy
of God is striving and dealing with the heart of an obstinate
sinner, his justice is like a sleeping lion, ready .to tear him in
pieces whensoever" God shall awaken it. It is reported of
Dionysius, that setting to sea after he had pillaged a temple, and
having a very prosperous voyage, he cried out, 0 quam diis
placet sacrilegium ! How are the gods pleased with sacrilege !
The case of the obstinate sinner is not much unlike : when men
in the full pursuit of their sins find themselves yet followed by
the fresh gales of the Spirit blowing upon their hearts, they are
apt to conclude, that God will still wait their leisure, that these
motions will be perpetual, and that therefore they may take their
own time to accept of those terms, that they suppose will be
always offered : and consequently they will venture to swear
once more, to wantonize once again, to take another sip or two
Vol. IV.— 59

466 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxi.
of the cup of intemperance, till the Spirit departs of a sudden,
and leaves them in a state of irrecoverable hardness and perdition.
As children when * they play by the sea-shore, they will in sport
step a little into the water, and presently a foot further, and so
on till the tide unexpectedly comes and sweeps them away
beyond all possibility of return. As long as an obdurate sinner
goes on resisting the Spirit, even the angels of heaven cry to
God, "How long, 0 Lord, holv and just!" Where is the glory
of thy holiness, and thy zeal "for thy justice, that thou dost thus
suffer so provoking and yet so contemptible a creature to make a
progress in his rebellion, to abuse thy grace, and to affront thy
Spirit ? Now the righteous God is here even engaged to with
draw his Spirit, and to vindicate the honour of his mercy by the
exercise of his justice.
4. God withdraws his Spirit upon resistance, because this
naturally raises in the hearts of men an esteem and valuation of
the Spirit's workings: and the reason of this is, because in so
doing, men apparently see that God himself puts an esteem and
value upon them, otherwise why should he so severely bereave
men of •them upon their abuse ? Were it not a treasure, God
would not be so choice of it. God showed what a value he put
upon his vineyard, by taking it from those husbandmen who had
misemployed it. The great God is not jealous for a trifle. . God
can continue worldly riches to men, even when they abuse them ;
but if a spiritual talent be misimproved, it must be taken away.
Now upon whatsoever God shows his esteem, it is natural for
men, acting rationally, to place theirs. Now the esteem that
the departure of the Spirit begets upon their minds, is twofold.
(1.) An esteem of fear. For this, like the rest of God's
judgments, is pama ad unum, terror ad omnes ; a punishment
indeed to one, but a terroT to all. God in every punishment
does not intend revenge so much as example. We read how the
Spirit departed from Saul ; and certainly God designed it not
only for a judgment upon him, but also for a document of fear
to others ; otherwise, why do these things stand upon eternal
record in scripture ? Questionless the thought of this would put
a stop to any sober sinner ; it would give a restriction to his
appetite : and if there be any thing that keeps the sinner from
causing the Spirit to depart, it is the fear of his departure.
Men are usually ruled and instructed by their fears. It is the
height of spiritual prudence, to draw caution from danger, to
distil instruction from punishments ; and from a serious consi
deration of the Spirit's final departure from others, to secure it
in its abode with ourselves.
(2.) The thought of this begets in the minds of the godly an
esteem of love. When they shall know that God withdraws his
Spirit from the unworthy abusers of it, and yet continues it to
themselves, notwithstanding all their unworthiness ; if there be

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 467
iany but the least grain of pious ingenuity in them, they cannot
but reflect upon this distinguishing love of Godr with melting
returns of love and affection. For who is there, even amongst
the most holy of men, but reflecting upon his own heart, must of
necessity confess, Is there not with me also an opposition to the
Spirit as well as in others ? Yet the Spirit has for ever departed
from them, and still abides working and striving with me.
Singularity puts a value and endearment upon mercy. Enjoy
ments that are peculiar are usually precious.
IV. Application. You have heard that there is a set time,
after which the Spirit, being resisted, will cease to strive,
and depart: you have adso heard how many ways it may be
resisted : and withal, the several grounds and reasons, why it
will withdraw upon such resistance. And now, - what can be
more seasonable, than to wrap up all in the apostle's own exhor
tation, 1 Thess. v. 19, " Quench not the Spirit." It is clear there
fore that it may be quenched. And if so, it will be our prudence
to avoid all those courses, that may not only quench, but even
cool it in its workings. Let every one be as careful and tender of
grieving the Spirit, as he would be of grieving his only and his
dearest friend. Believe it, it is this Spirit alone that is able to
stand by and comfort you in all the disconsolate and dark passages
of your lives. When he is gone, who shall resolve and clear up
all the doubts • of our misgiving and trembling consciences? who
shall subdue all our corruptions? who shall bear 'up our desponding
souls in the midst of afflictions? who shall ward off the force
amd fire of temptations? Our own deceiving hearts, an
alluring world, a tempting devil, and all the powers of sin and
hell will be let loose upon us: and, what is the greatest misery
of all, being deprived of the Spirit, we shall have nothing to
oppose them; no second to assist us. Be ready therefore to
entertain it in all its motions; to cherish <<- all its suggestions:
whensoever it knocks at the door of your 'hearts (as it often does),
stamd prepared to open to it, and receive it with joy. When it
speaks to you in the word, answer, as Samuel did, Speak, Lord,
for thy servant hears." When it seems to pull you from sin,
and says, " Do not that abominable thing which my soul hates;"
drawback your hands from the commission of it, and do it > not
for a world. When it enables you to relinquish and forsake some
sins, never rest till you have forsaken them all. When it raises
you to the performance of some good duties, still press forward
to perfection : let every holy motion and desire be improved into
a holy action : but if you should at any time chance to grieve
or oppose him (as we do all of us too, too frequently), yet be
sure that you persist not in it, but recover yourselves by a speedy
and a serious humiliation. Mourn over your disobedience, pray
fervently for an obedient heart. Assuredly you will hereafter

468 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxxi.
find that it is better thus to strive with God in prayer, than with
the Spirit in his workings. Now as arguments to dissuade or
deter you from this, and withal to persuade and excite you to the
former, take these motives. .
1 Our resisting of the Spirit in his precepts and instructions
will certainly bereave us of his comforts. Now the office of the
Spirit consists in these two great works, to instruct and to com
fort. The same Spirit that in John xvi. 7 is termed a comforter,
in the 13th verse is said to be a guide to "lead into all truth."
Where we must note, that his comforting work always presup
poses and follows his work of instuction: yea, and it is dis
pensed to men as a reward for their obedience to that; nay,
before this work pass upon the soul it is not capable of the other.
For the Spirit to pour in comfort to an impure heart, before it
is qualified and cleansed, and, as it were, prepared, by its in
structing, convincing work ; it is as if a physician should ad
minister cordials to a corrupt, foul body: they would do much
more hurt than good, till the ill humours are purged and evacu
ated. He that will not be reformed cannot be comforted. God
has inseparably joined these two together, and therefore it is
presumption for any to hope to divide and put them asunder ; as
it is in Rom. xiv. 17, " righteousness and joy in the Holy Ghost"
go linked together. Purity and spiritual joy are as closely united
as sin and sorrow. It is vain to catch at one and balk the
other. He that will not obey the Spirit as his instructor shall
never enjoy him as his comforter.
Now the reason that such as resist the Spirit cannot enjoy his
comforts is, because this resistance is inconsistent with those
ways by which the Spirit speaks comfort ; and these are two.
(1.) The Spirit speaks comfortably, by giving a man to under
stand his interest in Christ, and consequently in the love of God.
But it is impossible for him that resists the Spirit to be sure of
any of these, inasmuch as he falls under those qualifications that
render a man the proper object of God's hatred, and totally
estranged from Christ ; 1 John iii. 6, " Whosoever abideth in
Christ, sinneth not : and whosoever sinneth hath neither seen nor
known him." I suppose it will be easily granted, that he who
acts in a continual repugnancy to God's Spirit, by a despisal of
all his holy motions and suggestions, sins, and that at a very high
strain ; and upon this, concession, this scripture will unavoidably
conclude him so far unacquainted with Christ, as neither to have
seen nor known him. And can we rationally imagine, that he
who has neither seen nor known Christ, can have any sure
interest in him ? He that is interested in Christ is his friend ;
John xv. 15, " I call you not servants, but friends." But he that
is not so much as an acquaintance, cannot possibly be a friend.
And for any interest in God's love, he is totally excluded from
that, Psalm xi. 5, " The wicked his soul hateth." And such are

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 469
all resisters of God's Spirit, wicked in the highest, xat itoxnv,
and by way of eminence. Now how can the Spirit convey com
fort to such persons ? to whom, if he reports the truth, as the
Spirit of truth can do no otherwise, he must tell them that they
are aliens to Christ, strangers to the covenant, enemies to God,
haters of him, and therefore hated by him. Now if these can
be arguments of comfort, then he that resists- God's Spirit may
be comforted.
(2.) The second way by which the Spirit comforts a man, is
by discovering to him that grace that is within him : that is, not
only by clearing up God's love to him, but also by making him
see his love to God. The strength of this, as it is an argument
of comfort, lies here. Because our love to God it is the proper
effect, and therefore the infallible sign of God's love to us, which
is the great basis and foundation of all comfort. We therefore
love because we were first beloved. But can the love of God
abide in him who resists and does despite to his Spirit ? Can any
one at the same time fight like an enemy and love like a friend ?
The sinner cannot give any true evidence of his love to God,
inasmuch as a continual obstinate resistance of the Spirit is
inconsistent with grace ; and it implies a contradiction for any
one to love God, and to oppose that Spirit, that is a Spirit of
love. And thus it is clear, that such as resist the Spirit's strivings
cannot share in his comforts. And how unconceivably sad and
miserable it is to want them, none know so much as those that
have wanted them. If God should let loose all the sorest afflic
tions of this life upon you, and should awaken your consciences
to accuse you, and withal possess your guilty despairing souls
with a lively sense of his wrath for sin, and fill you with the
terrors of hell, so that ,you should even roar by reason of the
disquietness of your hearts, as he had done to some, and par
ticularly to David, you would then know what it is to have the
Spirit as a comforter. However, when you come to look death
in the face, and are upon your passage into eternity, and pre
sently to appear before God in judgment, then you will prize the
comforts of the Spirit. And if you ever hope to enjoy them at
that disconsolate hour, beware how you resist his strivings now.
2. The second motive why we should comply with the Spirit
is, because the resisting of it brings a man under hardness of
heart and a reprobate sense. Now a man is then said to be
under a reprobate sense, when he has lost all spiritual feeling ; so
that when heaven and the joys thereof are displayed before him,
he is not at all affected with desire ; when hell and wrath and
eternal misery are held forth to him, he is not moved with terror.
Now resisting of the Spirit brings this hardness upon the heart
two ways.
(1 ) By way of natural causation. Hardness of heart is the

470 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXXI.
proper issue and effect of this resistance. Every act of opposi
tion to the Spirit disposes the soul to resist it further. As the
reception of one degree of heat disposes the subject to receive the
second, and the second the third, till it arrives to the highest.
And the more frequent the Spirit's workings have been, the heart
grows more insensible and hard ; as a path, by often being trod,
is daily more and more hardened. Custom in sin produces bold
ness in sin ; and we know boldness is for the most part grounded
upon the insensibility of danger.
(2.) This resistance brings hardness of heart, by way of a
judicial curse from God. It causes God to suspend his con
vincing and converting grace ; whereupon the sinner is more and
more established and confirmed in his sin. It is not to be ques
tioned, but the hardness of Pharaoh's heart, at the time of his
destruction, had in it something of punishment as well as sin ;
and was penally inflicted upon him as a judgment of his irrational
hardness under God's former judgments. I shall allege no more
examples ; this is sufficient to demonstrate how dreadful a thing
it is to be punished with a hard heart. It is this alone (to say
no more of it) that renders all the means of a man's salvation
utterly ineffectual.
3. The third motive is, because resisting of the Spirit puts a
man in the very next disposition to the great and unpardonable
sin against the Holy Ghost. For this dreadful sin is only a
greater kind of resistance of the Spirit. And all the foregoing
acts of resistance are like so many degrees and steps leading to
this. For since a man cannot presently and on the sudden arrive
to the highest pitch of sin, there are required some previous an
tecedent dispositions to enlarge, and, as it were, make room in
the heart for the admission of so great a sin as this. All former
oppositions of the Spirit empty their malignity into this one,
which virtually includes them all, as rivers empty themselves
into the sea. It is confessed a man may frequently oppose the
Spirit, and yet not commit this great sin ; yet none ever com
mitted this sin, but such as had before frequently resisted the
Spirit. Some indeed make the sin against the Holy Ghost to
be only a blasphemous rejection of the external objective testi
mony of the Spirit, that is, of his miracles, by which he attested
the truth of the gospel, so as to ascribe them to the devil. But
as for a wilful, malicious opposing of the internal efficient per
suasion of the Spirit upon the heart,' they doubt whether the
nature of man is capable of such an act. Here, not to exclude
the former from being the sin against the Holy Ghost, certain it
is, that the general judgments of divines do agree in the latter.
And Heb. vi. 4 — 6 seems not obscurely to evince the same.
And thus you have seen that way marked out before you that
leads to the sin against the Holy Ghost. Therefore it nearly
concerns all resisters of the Spirit to bethink themselves whither

THE DANGER OF RESISTING THE SPIRIT. 471
they are going, and to beware that they do not slide into that
that is unpardonable. It is wisdom timely to depart from your
sins, before the Spirit finally departs from you. I hope there is
none here, that either has or, ever shall commit this great sin;
yet consider (which certainly is terror enough to a considering
mind) that if you go on, and still proceed to resist the Spirit, it
is possible that you may. And in things that concern the ever
lasting ruin of an immortal soul, miserum est posse si velis. It is
a miserable and a dangerous thing to be able eternally to undo
yourselves if you will. Wherefore I should now entreat and
advise all, as they desire the comforts of the Spirit, as they
tender the good of their precious, never-dying souls, as they wish
the unspeakable satisfaction of a peaceable conscience, as they
hope to enjoy the refreshing sense of God's love here, and to
behold his face with joy hereafter, that they would forbear to
resist the strivings of the Spirit; for if we still go on further
and further, till we come to resist him so far, he will then seal
and fit us for wrath and judgment in this world, and then actu
ally deliver us up to it in the next.

472

SERMON XXXII.
the difference between a saving and a pharisaical
righteousness.
Matthew v. 20.
For I say unto you, That unless your righteousness exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and pharisees, ye shall in no case enter
into the kingdom of heaven.
We have here the great doctor of souls in his sermon upon
the mount applying himself to the great business of souls, their
eternal happiness and salvation ; a thing aimed at by all, but
attained by few. And since there can be no rational direction
to the end, but what is laid in the prescription of the means, he
shows them the most effectual course of arriving to this happi
ness that is imaginable ; and that is, partly by discovering those
ways and means by which men come to miss of salvation ; and
partly by declaring those other ways by which alone it is to be
attained. First he shows them how it cannot be acquired ; and
secondly how it may. It cannot be attained by the righteousness
of the scribes and pharisees; it may be attained by such a one
as does exceed it.
In order to the understanding of the words, I must premise
some short explication of these three things.
First, Who and what these scribes and pharisees were.
Secondly, What is here meant by " righteousness."
Thirdly and lastly, What by " the kingdom of heaven."
And first for the first, who these scribes and pharisees were.
It would be both tedious, and as to our present business super
fluous, to discourse exactly of the original and ways of the seve
ral sects that about the time of our Saviour infested the Jewish
church ; such as were the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and
Herodians. Let it suffice us therefore to consider so much of
them, as may contribute to the clearing of the text; which is,
that these pharisees were a powerful ruling sect amongst the
Jews, professing and pretending to a greater sanctity of life and
purity of doctrine than any others. Upon which account they
gave denomination to their sect from pharash, a word importing
separation ; as that they were men who had sequestered and set
apart themselves to the study and pursuit of a more sublime
piety and strictness of life than the rest of mankind ; as also such
as gave the best interpretations of the Mosaic law, not only ex-

ON A SAVING AND A PHARISAICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 473
pounding, but also correcting and perfecting it where it was de
fective. In which respect they struck in with the scribes. For pharisee
is the name of a sect, scribe of an office ; and signifies as much
as a doctor, one whose employment it was to interpret and ex
pound the law to the people in their synagogues. So that in
short the scribes and pharisees amongst the Jews were such as
owned themselves for the strictest livers and the best teachers in
the world.
The second thing to be explained, is what our Saviour here
means by " righteousness." The word may have a twofold accep
tion. 1. It may import a righteousness of doctrine ; such a
one as is to be the rule and measure of the righteousness of. our
actions. 2. It may import a righteousness in point of practice ;
that is, such a one as denominates a man just or righteous ; as
the former properly denominates a man only sound or orthodox.
And now, according to these two senses, as righteousness is
twice mentioned in the text ; so it is first mentioned in one sense,
and then in the other.
The righteousness called by our Saviour " the righteousness of
the pharisees" signifies the righteousness taught by the pharisees*,
which is manifest from the whole drift of the chapter. In all
which throughout, it is evidently Christ's design to oppose the
purity of his doctrine in the clear exposition of the law, to the
corrupt and pernicious expositions that the pharisees gave of the
same. But then the other righteousness called by our Saviour " your
righteousness" imports a righteousness of practice, a pious life,
or a course of evangelical obedience. So that the sense of our
Saviour's words taken more at large runs thus. Unless you
pursue and live up to a greater measure of piety than what the
scribes and pharisees teach and prescribe you in their perverse
and superficial glosses upon the law of Moses, you will find it
infinitely short and insufficient to bring you to heaven. Your
lives must outdo your lessons. You must step further, and bid
higher, or you will never reach the price and purchase of a
glorious immortality.
The third and last thing to be explained, is what our Saviour
here means by "the kingdom of heaven." For there are three
several significations of it in scripture.
1. It is taken for the state and economy of the church under
Christianity, opposed to the Jewish and Mosaic economy; in
which sense that known speech both of John the Baptist and of
our Saviour is to be understood, in which they told the world,
that " the kingdom of heaven was at hand ;" that is, that the
Mosaic dispensation was then ?eady to expire and cease, and that
of the Messiah to take place.
2. It is sometimes taken for the kingdom of grace, by which
Vol. IV.— 60 2r2

474 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxii.
Christ rules in the hearts of men. In which sense those words
of his to the young man are to be understood in Mark xii. 34,
" Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." That is, thou
art not far from such a frame and disposition of spirit, as fits a
man to be my disciple and subject, and so brings him under the
spiritual rule of my sceptre. .
3. And lastly, it is taken for the kingdom of glory, which is
the prime and most eminent acception of it ; and which I con
ceive is intended here ; though I deny not but some would have
it expounded in the first of these three senses. But besides that
the natural aspect of the phrase seems to favour this interpre
tation, the word "entering into" much more easily denoting a
passage into another place, than merely into another state or
condition ; the same is yet further evident from hence, that an
entrance into the kingdom of heaven is here exhibited as the end
and reward that men propose to themselves as attainable by the
righteousness of their lives ; and consequently to commence upon
the expiration of them, which therefore can be nothing else but
a state of blessedness in another world.
These things premised by way of explication, we may take the
entire sense of the words in these three propositions.
1st. That a righteousness is absolutely necessary to the attain
ment of salvation. Which is an assertion of such self-evidence, and
so universally granted by all, in appearance at least, that to cast
any remark upon it might at most seem ridiculous, did not so
many in the world contradict their profession by their practice ;
and while they own designs for heaven, yet indeed live and act as
if they were candidates of hell, and probationers for damnation.
2dly. As a righteousness is necessary, so every degree of righ
teousness is not sufficient to entitle the soul to eternal happiness.
It must be such a one as exceeds, such a one ais stands upon higher
ground than that which usually shows itself in the lives and con
versation ofthe generality of mankind.
3dly. And more particularly, that righteousness that saves and
lets a man into the kingdom of heaven, must far surpass the best
and the greatest righteousness of the most refined and glistering
hypocrite in the world. Which proposition, as virtually contain
ing in it both the former, shall be the subject of the following
discourse. And the prosecution of it shall lie in these three
things. I. To show the defects of the hypocrite's righteousness, here
expressed by "the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees,"
and declared for such a one as cannot save.
II. To show those perfections and conditions by which the
righteousness that saves and brings to heaven does transcend and
surpass this.
III. And lastly, to show the grounds and reason of the neces
sity of such a righteousness in order to a man's salvation.

ON A SAVING AND A PHARISAICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 475
I. And first, for the defects qf the hypocritical, pharisaical righ
teousness, we may reckon several.
1. As first, that it consisted chiefly in the external actions of
duty; never taking care of the inward deportment of the soul,
in the regulation of its thoughts, wishes, aind affections ; in the
due composure of which consists the very spirit and vital part of
religion. The pharisees taught the Jews that he who imbrued
not his hand in his brother's blood was no murderer, and that he
who defiled not his neighbour's bed could not be charged with a
violation of that command that forbad adultery. So that it seems,
according to them, a man might innocently burn with malice and
revenge, lustful and impure thoughts, so long as he could keep
the furnace stopped, and prevent them from breaking forth and
raging in gross outward commissions. Thus, .as our Saviour told
them, making clean the outside of the platter, and smoothing the
surface of their behaviour, while their inward parts were full of
all noisomeness, filth, and abomination. The hypocrite and the
pharisee, like some beasts, are only valuable for their skin and
their fine colours : so that after all their flourishes of an outward
dissembled piety, all those shows of abstinence and severity, by
which they amuse the eyes of the easy credulous world, we can
not say properly of any one of them, that he is a good man, but
only a good sight; and that too, because we cannot see all of him.
Such persons are not the temples or habitations, but the sepul
chres of piety ; and we know that when we have seen a sepulchre,
we have had the best of it : for there is none so ill a friend to his
other senses, as to search or look into it any further. The pha
risees were thought and accounted by the deluded vulgar the
greatest heroes in piety, the highest and most advanced proficients
in fhe school of religion, of all others whatsoever ; so that at the
same time they were both the glory and the reproach of the rest
of their brethren the Jews, whom they seemed to obscure, and
even to upbraid, by their vast transcendency in the ways of sanc
tity and devotion : and yet our Saviour gives you the very ori
ginal and spring-head of all those shining performances, in Matt.
xxiii. 5, where he tells you, that " all their works they did to be
seen of men." It was the eye of the world that they courted,
and not the eye of heaven that they feared. Otherwise, surely
they would have thought themselves responsible for all the vil
lany and hypocrisy of their hearts; for all their bosom-cabinet-
concealed impurities ; since all these were as open to the eye of
God's searching omniscience, and as odious to the pure eye of
his holiness, as murders or robberies committed in the face of the
sun, and revenged upon the actors of them by the hand of public
justice. And where these were cherished by the inward affections and
approbations of the heart, demure looks, long prayers, and en
larging of phylacteries, were but pitiful, thin arts to recommend

476 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. XXXH.
them to the acceptance of that God, who looks through appear
ances, and pierces into the heart, and ransacks the very bowels
and entrails of the soul, rating all our services according to the
frame and temper of that. For being a spirit, he judges like a
spirit, and cannot be put off with dress and dissimulation, paint
and varnish ; and the fairest outward actions of duty, not spring
ing from an inward principle of piety, are no better in the sight
of him, who abominates nothing more than a foul heart couched
under a fair behaviour.
2. A second fault and flaw in this righteousness was, that it
was partial and imperfect, not extending itself equally to all
God's commands: some of which the pharisees accounted great
ones, and accordingly laid some stress upon the observation of
them; but some again they accounted but little ones, and so
styled them in their common phrase, and show as little regard to
them in their practice.
Which defect, as it was eminent in them, so it is also common
to every hypocrite in the world, who never comes up roundly to
the whole compass of his duty, even then when he makes the
most pompous show ; but singles out some certain parts, which
perhaps suit best with his occasions, and least thwart his corrup
tions, leaving the rest to those who may like them better. As
the proud or unclean person may be liberal and charitable to the
poor, frequent in the service of God, abhor a lie or a treacherous
action, with many other the like duties, that do not directly
grate upon the darling sin that he is tender of: but what says he
all this time to those precepts that charge his pride and his un
cleanness? God calls upon him to be humble as well as charitable,
to be pure and chaste, as well as devout: nor will it suffice him
to chop and change one duty for another ; he cannot clear his
debts, by paying part of the great sum he owes. The obligation
of the law is universal and uniform, and carries an equal aspect
to every instance of religion lying within the compatss of its com
mand. Upon which account it is said, James ii. 10, that " he
that offends in one is guilty of all." For by so doing he breaks
the whole chain of duty, which is as really broken and divided,
by the breach of one link, as if every one of them was taken
asunder. Nor is it otherwise in the laws of men. For surely
he that is convict of murder, has no cause to excuse that vio
lation of the law upon this account, that he is no thief or traitor :
the law is as really, though not as broadly violated, by one trans
gression, as by a thousand ; and whosoever lives, and allows
himself in the constant neglect of any one of Christ's commands,
and expects to be saved upon the stock of his obedience to the
rest of them (though even the supposition of such an obedience
is absolutely impossible), that man has a hope altogether as ab
surd, sottish, and ridiculous, in reference to his future salvation,
as if in the forementioned case a convict murderer should think

ON A SAVING AND A PHARISAICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 477
to escape the sentence and execution of death, by pleading that
he never broke open a house, nor conspired the death of his
prince, or bore his share in a public rebellion : how would every
one hiss and explode such a defence !
David knew that there was no building any solid confidence
upon a parcelled, curtailed obedience ; and therefore he states his
hope upon such a one as was entire and universal ; Psalm cxix.
6, " Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect to all thy
commandments." Every disappointment certainly draws after
it a shame : and whosoever hopes to stand before God's tribunal
in the strength of a righteousness maimed in any one integral
part of it, will have a defeat and a disappointment cast upon his
greatest expectation and his highest concernment ; he will be
lurched in that that admits of no ^fter-game or reparation.
God exacts of every soul that looks to enter into the kingdom of
heaven a perfect righteousness ; perfect, I say, with a perfection of
sincerity, which is a perfection of parts, though not of degrees :
that is, there is no one grace or virtue but a Christian must have
it before he can be saved : though such is the present state of human
infirmity, that he camnot in this life attain to the highest degree of
that virtue. But as an infant is a man, because he has all the parts
of a man, though he has them not in that bulk and strength that
those have who are grown up ; so he is righteous and sincere, who
performs every divine precept, omitting no one of them, though his
performances have not that perfection and exactness that is to be
found in the obedience of a person glorified and made perfect.
However, still we see that universality is required, and an equal
compliance with all the divine precepts. For as it is not a hand
some eye, a handsome hand, or a handsome leg, but a universal
symmetry, and just proportion of all the members and features of
the body, that makes a handsome man ; so neither is it the practice
of this or that virtue, but an entire complexion of all, that must
render and denominate a man righteous in the sight of God. And
therefore it was infinite folly in the pharisees to be exact in other
things, even to the tithing of rue and cummin, and in the mean time
to lop off the force and design of a grand precept of the law, by
allowing men in some cases not to pay honour to their parents ; as
we read in Mark vii. 10 — 13, making it a damnable sin, forsooth,
to deprive the priest of a sallad, but a very allowable thing to suffer
a parent to starve with hunger. But when such a deluded wretch
shall brave up his accounts to God, " that he prayed often, fasted
twice a week, payed tithe of all that he had ;" what will he answer,
when God shall reply upon him, Ay, but friend, what have you done
for your distressed father and mother ? Your bowels have been shut
up to your nearest kindred, and you have not relieved the poor,
though recommended with the deafest relation. Then he will find
that the performance of one duty can be no recompence for the
omission of another.

478 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXXII.
Men should measure their righteousness by the extent of
Christ's satisfaction for sin, which was far from being partial or
imperfect ; it grasped and comprehended all the sins that either
were or could be committed. And if, in the application of this
satisfaction to any soul, Christ should take all the sins of it upon
his own score, one only excepted, that one sin would inevitably
expose it to the full stroke of God's vengeance, and sink it for
ever into endless perdition.
Let a man therefore show me any one part of the law, for the
transgression of which Christ did not shed his blood ; and for
the pardon of which the merits of that blood must not be im
puted to him, if ever it is pardoned ; and I will grant, that in
the general rules and obligations of obedience, that part of the
law admits of an exception, and consequently obliges not his
practice : but Christ knew full well how imperfect a Saviour and
Redeemer the world would have found him, had he not paid a
price to divine justice for every even the least and most despised
deviation from the law. One peccadillo, as some phrase it, if not
satisfied for, had been enough to crack and confound the whole
system of the creation, and to have lodged the whole mass of
mankind eternally in the bottomless pit.
From all which it appears, that the partial, mangled obedience
that the hypocrite or the pharisee pays to the divine precepts,
can entitle him to no right of entrance into the kingdom of
heaven : there is no coming thither with a piece of a wedding
garment, with the ragged robe of a half and a curtailed righteous
ness : and the righteousness of the most eminent unregenerate
professor amounts to no more, who is never so clear and entire
in duty, but that he has his reserves, his allowances, and exemp
tions from some severe, troublesome precept or other, that he is
resolved to dispense with himself in the observance of ; as never
worshipping God but with a proviso, that he may still bow in
the house of his beloved Rimmon.
3. The third defect of this pharisaical, unsound righteousness is,
that it is legal ; that is, such a one as expects to win heaven upon
the strength of itself and its own worth. Which opinion alone
were enough to embase the very righteousness of angels in the
sight of God so far, as to render it not only vain, but odious ;
and to turn the best of sacrifices into the worst of sins. It is an
affront to mercy for any one to pretend merit. It is to pull
Christ down from the cross, to degrade him from his mediatorship ;
and, in a word, to nullify and evacuate the whole work of man's
redemption. For as St. Paul argues most irrefragably, if
righteousness is by the law, then is Christ dead in vain : since
upon this supposition there can be no necessity of Christ or
Christianity; and the gospel itself were but a needless and a
superfluous thing ; for it is but for a man to set up and traffic
for heaven upon his own stock ; and to say to himself, " I will

ON A SAVING AND A PHARISAICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 479
do this and live ; my own arm shall bring salvation to me, and
my righteousness shall uphold me."
But who art thou, 0 vain man, that durst reason thus about
thy eternal state ? when if God should enter into judgment with
the best ofhis servants, "no flesh living could be justified in his
sight:" a sight that endures not the least unpardoned, unremitted
transgression; that "charges the very angels with folly." So
infinitely exact, searching, and spiritual, is the eye of divine
justice, and so vastly great is the prize of glory that we run for,
so much higher and more valuable than our choicest and most
elaborate performances !
And can we think then, that a few broken prayers, a few
deeds of charity, a few fastings, and abstinences, and restraints
of our appetites, will carry in them such a commanding, con
trolling value, as to bear us through God's tribunal, and to make
tiie doors of heaven fly open before us, that we may even with
the confidence of purchasers enter and take possession of the
mansions of glory ? Some perhaps may think so, who suppose
they can never think too well of themselves.
But as arrogant as such a thought is, its arrogance is not
greater than its absurdity. For as Job says, " Who can bring a
clean thing out of an unclean?" And as our Saviour, "Who
can gather figs from thistles?" or the grapes of a perfect
righteousness from the briers and thorns of a corrupt and de
generate nature ? Since the ruin of our faculties by original sin,
let the devoutest and the sincerest Christian in the world bring
me the best and -the exactest duty that ever he performed, and
let him sift, examine, and compare it to the rigid measures of the
law, and the holiness of the divine nature, and then let him
venture the whole issue of his eternal happiness upon it if he
dares. Did men cofftider how many things go to the making
of an action perfectly good, amd how many such good actions
are required to integrate and perfect a legal righteousness; it
were impossible for them to reflect with any fondness upon
the very best of their services, which are always allayed with
such mixtures of weakness and imperfection.
And therefore let not any pharisee be too confident; for be
his righteousness what it will, yet if he hopes to justify himself
by it, he will find that persons justified in this manner are never
glorified. Men may saint themselves as they please, but if they
have nothing to read their saintship in but their own rubric, they
may chance to find themselves condemned in heaven, after they
have been canonized on earth.
And thus I have shown the three great defects cleaving to the
righteousness of the pharisee, who is here represented as the
grand exemplar and standard of hypocrisy ; all hypocrites more
or less partaking of both the nature and defects of the pharisaical
righteousness. And if we now grant, as with great truth and

480 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxii.
readiness we may, that the pharisee or hypocrite may live up to
such glorious externals and visible shows of religion, as to
astonish the world with an admiration of his sanctity ; so that in
the judgment and vogue of all, he shall stand heir apparent to a
crown of glory and immortality ; which yet in reality and truth
he has no more title to, than he who acts the part of a king upon
the stage has a claim to a sceptre or a kingdom: then what judg
ment can we pass upon the generality of men that wear the
name of Christians, and upon that account seem big with expec
tations of a glorious eternity, yet are as much short of a phari
saical righteousness, as that is short of sincerity ? Alas ! they are
not arrived so far as to approve themselves to the eye of the
world, so far as to appear godly, or so much as to be mistaken for
religious. But by an open sensuality and profaneness, their
behaviour seems a constant defiance of heaven, and a confutation
of their religion. It were worth the knowing by what reason
ings and discourses such men support their minds and reconcile
their future hopes to their present practices : for if he, whom the
world judges a saint, may yet be ' in the gall of bitterness" and
" a son of perdition," is it possible that such a one, whose actions
proclaim him even to the world for a reprobate and a castaway,
should yet indeed be a pious and a sincere person? No,
assuredly ; for though the piety of a man's outward actions may
very well consist with the villany of his heart, yet it is impossi
ble, on the other hand, for a life outwardly bad to be consistent
with a heart inwardly good ; and those that set forth for heaven
in the contrary persuasion and principle, when they meet with
hell in their journey's end, will find that they missed of their
way. And thus much for the first thing, which was to show the
defects of the hypocritical, pharisaical righteousness. I proceed
now to
II. The second, which is to show those perfections and qualities
by which the righteousness that saves and brings to Iteaven does
transcend and surpass that. Many might be recounted, but I
shall insist upon four especially.
1. As first, that it is entirely the same whether the eye of man
see it or see it not. It can do its alms where there is no trum
pet to sound before it, and pray fervently where there is no
spectator to applaud it. It finds the same enlargements and
Sowings of affection when it pours forth itself before God in
private, as when it bends the knee in the solemn resorts of the
multitude, and the face of the synagogue. It is contented, that
the eye of Omniscience is upon it, and that it is observed by him
who sees'in secret, as scorning to move upon the inferior motives
of popular notice and observation. For it acts by a principle that
holds no intercourse with the world, even the pure abstracted

ON A SAVING AND A PHARISAICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 481
love of God, which would be as active and operative, if there
were no other person in the world but him alone in whose breast
it is. And therefore there is no external interest that can bear
any share in the heat and activity of such a one's devotion. It
needs no company to keep it warm. For he transacts with God,
and with God alone : so that if he can be heard above, he cares
not whether or no he is seen here below.
But it is much otherwise with the hypocrite; his devotion
grows cold, if not warmed with the crowd and the throng. He
designs not to be, but to appear religious. He can willingly want
the inward part of a Christian, so he may be esteemed and com
mended for the outward. For as it is said of some vain-glorious
pretenders to science, that they desire knowledge, not that they
may know, but that they may be known : so some affect the
gatrb of the pious and the austere, who abhor the rigours of a real
and a practical piety. They can be infinitely pleased with the
dress and fashionable part of religion, while they hate and loathe
the grim duties of self-denial and mortification. In short, they
aire like fire painted upon an altar, they desire not to be hot, but
only to shine and glister. And it is this worthy principle that
brings so many to the worship of God, only to court the eye of
some potent earthly great one, who perhaps commands and lords
it over their hopes and their fears ; so that when he is present,
they will be sure to be so too, and when he is absent, they can
be as ready to turn their back upon heaven, and to think it below
their occasions, if not also their prudence, to sacrifice business to
prayer, which is a thing that they never make their business.
But what would or could such a person plead, should God
arrest him in the church, and summon him to his tribunal in the
midst of those his solemn mockeries of heaven, and ask him who
and what it was that brought him thither to that place? Surely
he could riot answer, that it was God; for then why should not
he be there as well in the absence of the grandee his patron, un
less he thought that God also was one of his retinue, and so was
nowhere to be found out of his company ?
But this very thing makes it but too, too evident, that it is a
mortal eye that every such hypocrite adores ; so that in all his
most solemn addresses he cannot so properly be said to act the
Christian, as to act a part. Such pharisees come to church, and
frame themselves into postures of zeal and devotion, as women
dress themselves, only to be stared upon and admired. If they
were sure of no beholders, they would not be fine ; for it is the
spectator that makes the sight.
I wish all those would lay this consideration to heart who are
conc'erned to do so, and measure the sincerity of that holiness
they so much value themselves upon, by this one mark and
criterion ; for can they answer from their hearts, that it is purely
the love of duty that engages them in duty? Is there nothing
Vol. IV.— 61 2 S

482 dr. south's posthumous sermons. [serm. xxxii.
of pageantry and appearance that models and directs and gives
laws to all the little designs they bring along with them to
church? Does not the consideration of what such or such a
one will say or think of them bring many to sermons, and, which
I tremble to think of, even to the sacrament, who, neither by
the necessity or excellency of the duty itself, would ever be in
duced to vouchsafe their attendance upon it ; but could be con
tented to live without sacraments for ever, and to end their days
like heathens and outlaws from all the graces of the second cove
nant, and the mysteries of Christianity ?
If there be any such that hear me, let them lay their hands
upon their hearts, and assure themselves, that God loathes all
their services, and detests their righteousness, as the highest
affront that can be passed upon all his attributes, and conse
quently has assigned it its reward in the lot and portion of
hypocrisy. But now the sincere and the really holy person apprehends a
beauty and a worth in the very exercise of duty, and upon that
account still carries the reason of his devotion about him and
within him ; so that when he has shut to his door, and seques
tered himself from the popular gaze, then chiefly he sets himself
to the work of prayer and piety, and accounts his closet a
temple, and his conscience an amphitheatre.
2. A second property of such a righteousness as is saving and
sincere, is, an active watching against and opposing every even
the least sin. How small and almost indiscernible is a dust fall
ing into the eye, and yet how troublesome, how uneasy and,
afflicting is it! 'Why just so is the least sin in the eye of a
sanctified person ; the sense of it is quick and tender, and so
finds the smallest invasion upon it grating and offensive. We
know when David cut off the skirt of Saul's garment, at which
time he was far from any hurtful designs upon his person, yet it
is said of him, that immediately upon the doing of it "his heart
smote him ;" so fearful was he lest he might have transgressed
the lines of duty, though his conscience did not directly accuse
him of any such transgression. Now as solicitous as David was
after this action, so cautious and timorous is every sincere person
before he attempts a thing. That plea for sin, Is it not a little
one? which is the language of every rotten heart, is no argu
ment at all with him for its commission.
For he knows that there is no sin so little, but is great
enough to dishonour an infinite God, and to ruin an immortal
soul ; none so little, but designs and intends to be great, nay the
greatest, and would certainly so prove, if not cut off and sup
pressed by a mature prevention. Every lustful thought left to
its own natural course and tendency would be incest, every
angry thought murder, and every little grudging of discontent
and murmuring would at length ripen into blasphemy and curs-

ON A SAVING AND A PHARISAICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 483
ing; did not the sanctifying or restraining grace of God inter
pose between the conception and the birth of most sins, and
stifle them in the womb of that concupiscence that would other
wise assuredly bring them forth, and breed them up to their full
growth. And this the new creature in every truly righteous person is
sufficiently aware of, which makes him dread the very begin
nings of sin, and fly even the occasions of it with horror. For
he knows how easily it enters, and how hardly it is got out ;
how potent and artificial it is to tempt and insinuate, and how
weak his heart is to withstand a suitable temptation. He con
siders adso how just it is with God to give those over to the
highest pitch and degree of sin, who make no conscience of
resisting its beginnings ; and withal how frequently he does so,
withdrawing the supports and influences of his grace, and leaving
the soul, after every yielding to sin, more and more defenceless
against the next encounter and assault it shall make Upon him.
All which considerations of a danger So vastly and incredibly
great, are certainly very sufficient to warrant the nicest caution
and tearfulness in this case, upon all accounts of prudence what
soever. But now if we examine the righteousness of an unsound pha
risaical professor by this property, we shall find it far from being
thus affected toward sin ; it easily connives at and allows the
soul in all lesser excursions amd declinations from the rule,
readily complies with the more moderate and less impudent pro
posals of the tempter ; so that such a one never comes so much
as to startle, or think himself at all concerned about -the security
of his eternal estate, till some great and clamorous sin begins to
cry aloud and ring peals of imminent approaching vengeance in
his conscience; and then perhaps he looks about him a little,
prays twice or thrice, dejects his countenance, and utters a few
melancholy words, and so concludes the danger over, his sin
atoned, his person safe, and all perfectly well again. But this is
a righteousness tatken up upon false measures, a righteousness of
a man's own inventing, and consequently such a one as can never
determine in the peace of him that has it.
But the truly pious is never at rest in his mind, but when he
stands upon his guard against the most minute and inobservable
encroaches of sin, as knowing them upon this account perhaps
more dangerous than greater ; that the ehemy that is least
feared, is usually the soonest felt. For as in the robbing of a
house, it is the custom for the sturdiest thieves to put in some
little boy at a window, who being once within the house, may
easily open the doors and let them in too : so the tempter, in
rifling of the soul, despairs for the most part to attempt his
entrance by some gross sin of a dismal, frightful hue and appear
ance, and therefore he employs a lesser, that may creep and slide

484 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxn.
into it insensibly; which yet, as little as it is, will so open and
unlock the bars of conscience, that the biggest and the most
enormous abominations shall at length make their entrance, and
seize and take possession of it. .
Let no man therefore measure the smallness of his danger by
the smallness of any sin ; for the smaller the sin, the greater
may be the stratagem. We may have heard of those who have
been choked with a fly, a crum, or a grape-stone. Such con
temptible things carry in them the causes of death ; and it is not
impossible, though some have had swallows large enough for
perjuries, blasphemies, and murders, yet that others may chance
to be choked and destroyed with sinful desires, idle words, and
officious lies. How many ways a soul may be ruined few con
sider ; those that do, will not count it scrupulosity to beware of
the least and slenderest instruments of damnation. But if to be
so very nice and suspicious be called by any scrupulosity, such
must know, that no scrupulosity about the matters of eternity
can be either absurd or superfluous, but in these affairs is only
another name for care and discretion.
3. The third discriminating property of a sincere, genuine,
and saving righteousness is, that it is such a one as never stops
or contents itself in any certain pitch or degree, but aspires and
presses forward to still a higher and a higher perfection. As
the men of the world, when they are once in a thriving way,
never think themselves rich enough ; but are still improving and
adding to their stock ; just so it is with every sanctified person
in his Christian course ; he will never think himself holy and
humble and mortified enough, but will still be making one
degree of holiness a step only to another ; when he has kindled
the fire in his breast, his next business is to make it flame and
blaze out. If it were possible for him to assign such a precise
measure of righteousness as would save him, yet he would not
acquiesce in it ; since it is not the mere interest of his own sal
vation, but of God's honour, that principles and moves him in
the whole course of his actions. And then he knows, that if
God cannot be too much honoured, he cannot be too righteous ;
and that if he cannot too intently design the end, he can never
too solicitously prosecute the means. It was an expression of a
father, concerning the apostle Paul, that he was insatiabilis Dei
cultor, an insatiable worshipper of God : so that having pitched
his mind upon this object, his spiritual appetites were boundless
and unlimited.
It is observed of the two nobler senses, the seeing and the
hearing, that they are never tired with exerting themselves upon
such things as properly affect them ; for surely none ever sur
feited upon music, or found himself cloyed with the sight of rare
pictures. In like manner the desires of the righteous are so
suited and framed to an agreeableness with the ways of God, that

ON A SAVING AND A PHARISAICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 485
(hey find a continual freshness growing upon them in the per
formance of duty ; the more they have prayed, the more fit and
vigorous they find themselves for prayer; like a stream, which
the further it has run, the more strength and force it has to run
further. Such persons are carried forth to duty, not upon designs of
acquisition, but gratitude; not so mucli to gain something from
God, as (if it were possible) to do something for him. And we
all know, that the nature and genius of gratitude is to be infinite
amd unmeasurable in the expressions of itself. It makes a David
cry out as if he even laboured and travailed to be delivered of
some of those thankful apprehensions of the divine goodness that
his heart was big with. Psalm cxvi. 12, " What," says he,
"shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits?" All that he
could do or say for God seemed to him but a short and slender
declaration of those aboundings of affection, that within he found
and felt inexpressible.
But now if we come to try the spurious, unsound righteous
ness ofthe hypocrite by this test, how pitiful, how false, and how
contemptible a thing will it appear ! For he designs not to excel
or to transcend in the ways of sanctity. If he can but patch up
such a righteousness as shall satisfy and still his conscience, and
keep it from grumbling and being troublesome, down he sits, and
there takes up, as being far from the ambition of making a pro
ficiency, or commencing any degree in the school of Christ. But
believe it, a man may be righteous in this manner long enough
before he is like to be saved for being so. For the truth is,
such a one does not really design to be righteous, but only to
be quiet. Ani in this one thing you will find a never-failing
mark of difference between a pharisaical hypocrite, and a truly
sanctified person, that the former measures his righteousness by
the peace of his conscience, and the latter judges of the peace of
his conscience by his righteousness.
4. The fourth and last property of a sincere and saving righ
teousness, which most certainly distinguishes it from the hypo
critical and pharisaical, is humility. For I dare venture the
whole truth of the gospel itself upon this challenge. Show me
any hypocrite in the world that ever was humble. For the very
nature and design of hypocrisy is, to make a man a proud beggar ;
that is, by the most uncomely mixture of qualities, at the same
time poor and vain-glorious. We have the exact character of him
in Rev. iii. 17, " Thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods,
and have need of nothing ; but knowest not that thou art wretched,
and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." It is the business
of every hypocrite to make a show, to disguise his penury with
appearances of plenty and magnificence ; and upon that account
it concerns him to make the utmost improvement of the little
stock he has; to look upon every, duty as meritorious, every
2s2

486 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxii.
prayer as not so much asking a mercy, as claiming a debt from
heaven till at length, as it were, even dazzled with the false
lustre of his own performances, he breaks forth into the phari
saical doxology, " God, I thank thee that I am not as other men."
Thus pluming and priding himself in all his services, as if in
every action of piety he did God a courtesy, and passed an obli
gation upon his Maker. .
But how does the sincere person behave himself both in and
after every duty performed by him? Surely with a very dif
ferent spirit. Self-abhorrence and confusion of face, like the
poor publican, makes him cast down his eyes while he is lifting
up his heart in prayer : and when he has exerted his very utmost
zeal in the divine worship, he lays his person and his services in
the dust before God, and is so far from expecting a reward for
their value, that he counts it a mercy not to be condemned for
their imperfection ; and though God condemns him not, yet he
is ready to condemn himself. " God be merciful to me a sinner,"
is the constant language of his heart in the conclusion of his,
choicest performances : for when he has done his best, he knows
that it will scarce amount to so much as well : so that if there
was not a gospel to qualify and mitigate the rigours of the law,
he knows the demands of it were too high and exact to be an
swered upon the stock of nature, attainted with guilt, and
disabled with infirmity. And knowing so much, he never ex
postulates the injustice or unkindness of God's judgments, be his
afflicting hand never so pressing and severe upon him. He ac
knowledges that severity itself cannot outdo the provocation of
his sins ; which, though it were possible for God to be cruel, yet
had rendered it impossible for him to be unjust. And therefore
he kisses the rod, and embraces the scourge, and confesses the
righteousness, even where he faints under the burden of an afflic
tion. In a word, after he has done all to purge, purify, and
reform himself, he is not yet pleased with himself; but in the
very exercise of his graces, finds those flaws, those failures and
blemishes, that makes him wonder at the methods and con
trivances of divine mercy; that God can be infinitely just, and
yet he not infinitely miserable.
Having thus finished the second thing, and shown those per
fections and qualities by which the righteousness that saves and
brings to heaven does transcend atnd surpass that of the hypocrite
and pharisee ; I descend now to
III. The third and last which is to show, the grounds, the
reasons, and causes of the necessity of such a righteousness, in order
to a man's salvation, an'd entrance into the kingdom of heaven.
1. The first shall be taken from the holiness of God ; whose
nature will never suffer him to hold so strict and intimate
a communion with his creature, as he does with those whom he

ON A SAVING AND A PHARISAICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 487
admits into heaven, unless the divine image and similitude, de
faced by sin, be in some degree repaired and renewed upon him.
For surely there is none who admits his swine into his parlour or
his bedchamber ; and the corruption of man's nature, unmortified,
and unremoved by the contrary habits of holiness, degrades a
man to the same vileness, the same distance from, and unfitness
for, all society with his Maker. It cannot but be the most offen
sive and intolerable thing to nature, for the healthful and the.
sound, the curious and the cleanly, to converse with sores and
ulcers, rottenness and putrefaction ; and yet a soul covered with
the leprosy of sin is infinitely more loathsome and abominable in
the most pure eyes of God. For how is it possible for truth to
cohabit with hypocrisy, purity with filth, and the transcendently
holy and spiritual nature of God to associate with lust and sensu
ality ? And these are the endowments, and ornaments, and
commending qualifications of every unsanctified person, every
hypocrite and pharisee, let him shine with never so fair and
bright a reputation in the eye of the credulous and deluded
world. But the matter stops not here. Such a one is unfit for the
presence of G°d, not only upon the account of his impurity, but
also of his enmity. For what should a sinner do in heaven, any
more than a traitor or a rebel do in court ? The exasperated
justice of God will prey upon the unpardoned sinner whereso
ever it meets him, even in the highest heaven, if it were possible
for him to come thither ; and whensoever it does so, it is that
that makes hell ; which is not so properly the name of a place as
of a condition ; a condition consigning the soul over to endless
misery and desperation. And could we imagine a person locally
in Abraham's bosom, yet if he brought with him the worm of
conscience, and the secret lashes of an infinite wrath, that man
were properly in hell, or hell at least in him, wheresoever the
place of his abode or residence might fall.
2. The other reason for the necessity of such a transcending
righteousness, in order to a man's entrance into heaven, shall be
taken from the work and employment of a glorified person in
heaven ; which is the continual exercise of those graces, which
here on earth were begun, auid there at length shall be advanced
to their full perfection; as also the contemplation of God in all
his attributes, together with the whole series of his astonishing
actions, by which he was pleased to manifest and display forth
those great attributes to the world : whether in creation, by which
he exerted his omnipotence in calling forth so beautiful a fabric
out of the barren womb of nothing and confusion : or in the se
veral traces and strange meanders of his providence, in governing
all those many casualties and contingencies in the world, and so
steadily directing them to a certain end, by which he shows forth
the stupendous heights of his wisdom and omniscience. And

488 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxii.
lastly in the unparalleled work of man's redemption, by which
at once he glorified and unfolded all his attributes, so far as they
could be drawn forth into the view of created understandings.
Now a perpetual meditation and reflection upon these great sub
jects is the noble employment of the blessed souls in heaven.
But can any, whom the grace of God has not thoroughly
renewed and sanctified, be prepared and fitted for such a task ?
No, assuredly : and therefore it is worth our observing, that those
who, living dissolutely in this world, do yet wish for the rewards
of the righteous in the other, commence all such wishes upon a
vast ignorance and mistake of their own minds, not knowing
how unsuitable, and consequently how irksome the whole business
of heaven would be to their unsanctified appetites and desires.
For what felicity could it be to a man always accustomed to the
revels and songs of the drunkards, to bear a part in the choir of
saints and angels, singing forth hallelujahs to him that sits upon
the throne ? What pleasure could it be to the lustful, the sensual,
and unclean person, to follow the Lamb, with his virgin retinue,
wheresoever he goes ?
Such persons deceive themselves when they wish themselves
in heaven ; and, in truth, know not what they desire : for, how
ever they may dread and abhor hell, yet it is impossible for them
to desire heaven, did they know what they were to do there :
and therefore instead of making Balaam's wish, that they may
" die the death of the righteous," they should do well to live the
life of such ; and to hearken to Christ commanding them to "seek
the kingdom of heaven," by first seeking "the righteousness
thereof." For it is righteousness alone that must both bring
men to heaven, and make heaven itself a place of happiness to
those that are brought thither.
To which the God of heaven and fountain of all happiness
vouchsafe to bring us all ; to whom be rendered and ascribed, as
is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now
and for evermore. Amen.

ADVERTISEMENT

THE THREE FOLLOWING SERMONS.

The following Sermons were first published in 1717, with the follow
ing- title: — "Posthumous Works of the late Reverend Robert South,
D. D., containing Sermons on several subjects; viz., I. On the Mar
tyrdom of King Charles I. II. Ecclesiastical Constitutions to be
strictly maintained. III. The certainty of a Judgment after this
Life, &c. London: Printed for E. Curll, at the Dial and Bible
against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street."
The following extracts are taken from the Preface to this Volume :
"It is generally expected that upon publishing the Posthumous
Works of any Author, some account should be given of them ; there
fore the editor of these remains of the learned Dr. South, thinks him
self obliged to offer the following particulars, both for the reader's
information and satisfaction.
"The three sermons were given by Dr. South himself to Dr.
Aldrich, late Dean of Christ Church, in Oxford.
"As to the first of them, that upon the 30th of January, it was
preached at Court, and from some passages in it, I think it is pretty
plain that it must have been soon after the restoration of nis most
sacred majesty King Charles the Second. This discourse was printed
Vol. IV.— 62 489

490 ADVERTISEMENT.
some years ago ; but besides a large paragraph which is enclosed
between crotchets in the 6th page,* there are many considerable
amendments and corrections throughout.
"The second, entitled 'Ecclesiastical Constitutions to be strictly
maintained,' has been lately published, but from so imperfect a copy,
that there is not one single paragraph in it truly printed.
"The third, 'Upon a Future Judgment,' was preached at St.
Mary's Church, in Oxford ; and from a passage in it, and by the
conclusion, it is apparent that it must have been composed for the
anniversary of the Royal Martyr.'
The first Sermon, with various emendations and corrections, willjje
found in the second volume of the present edition, pp. 30^—321.
The second Sermon appears also to have been revised and improved
by the author, and is given in the same volume, pp. 476 — 498
• See page 493 of this volume.

491

SERMON XXXIII.
ON THE MARTYRDOM OF KING CHARLES I.
[Preached at Court, on the 30th of January.]
Judges xix. 30.
And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such thing
done or seen from the day that the children of Israel came up
from the land of Egypt unto this day; consider of it, take ad
vice, and speak your minds.
There is a certain fatal pertinency in the very phrase of the
text ; for when there were judges, there was no king in Israel,
though as to the present purpose, they were judges of another
nature, that removed ours. We have an account of this pro
digious and horrid action, clothed with all the circumstances of
wonder and detestation, but yet well timed for its commission, it
being done when, upon the want of the regal power, Judges xxi.
25, " every man did what was right in his own eyes ;" or, in ano
ther dialect, " as the Spirit moved him." And as for, the authors
of this execrable fact, we have them defending themselves with
their swords, and for some time asserting their villany, with their
success and victory against their brethren, twice beaten and mas
sacred before them in a righteous cause, as you may see in the
next chapter.
I do not profess myself either delighted or skilled in mystical
interpretations, and to wiredraw the sense of the place, so as to
make it speak the death of the king ; as some who can interpret
scripture, as if the whole book of God was only to tell things
transacted in England and, Scotland: so that there cannot be so
much as a house fired, or a leg broken, but they can find it in
Daniel or the Revelations.. No, I pretend to no such skill ; it is
enough for me if I bring the present business and the text to
gether, not by design, but accommodation: and as the phrase
runs full and high, so I doubt not but to find such a parallel in
the things themselves, that it may be a question whether of the
two may have a better claim to the expression. The cause here,
which was worded with so high aggravations, was an injury done
to one single Levite, in the villanous rape of his concubine ; the
resentment of which was so great, that it engaged the rest of the
tribes to revenge his quarrel with a civil war, in which the pre
eminence and conduct was given by God's appointment to the

492 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxih.
roval tribe of Judah. The sceptre being most concerned to as
sert the privileges and revenge the injuries of the crosier. We
have the Benjamites sturdily abetting what they had impiously
done, and for a while victorious in villany, by the help of God s
providence, trampling on those that fought by the warrant of his
FLet us now see the counterpart: he that dates the king's murder
from the fatal blow given on the scaffold, judges like him that
thinks it is the last stroke that fells the tree ; the killing of his
person was only the consummation of his murder, first begun in
his prerogative. We have heard the knack of a double capacity,
personal and politic, and I suppose they distinguish the king into
two, that each party might murder him under one. And for
those whose loyalty does only consist in designing that action
which was taken out of their hands, and having laid the premises
they protest against the conclusion ; they cover their prevarication
with a fig-leaf, and only differ from the other party in this, that
these endeavour to disguise the author of the fact, those only the
executioner. Well then ; when a long sunshine of mercy had
ripened the sins of the nation, so that it was now ready for the
shatterings of divine vengeance; the seed of faction and rebel
lion having been for a long time studiously sown by schismatical
doctrines, and well watered by seditious lectures, the first assault
was made against the tribe of Levi, by some implacable enemies
of the church, the fury of whose lust and ambition nothing could
allay, till they had full scope to prostitute her honour, and ravish
her revenues : till at length, cut, divided, torn in pieces as she
was, she lay a ghastly spectacle to all beholders, to all the Israel
of God.
And as this was done to our English Levites, so it was acted by
Benjamites, by so many Benjamites, as raven like wolves, till
by their rapine and sacrilege they had their mess five times bigger
than their brethren's. The prosecution of which quarrel was
armed by the royal standard, and the defence of the church man
aged by the defender of the faith ; in which it pleased the all-wise
God to cause Judah to fall before Benjamin, the lion to be a prey
to the wolf; by which fatal trace of Providence, the king being
killed long before forty-five : by natural and immediate sequel to
complete the action, Charles was murdered in forty-eight. And
this is the black subject of this day's solemnity. In my reflections
upon which, if detestation (that is, a due apprehension of the
blackest fact that ever the sun saw, since he withdrew upon the
suffering of our Saviour) chance to give an edge to some of my
expressions, let those know, the nature of whose actions has made
the truth look like a sarcasm, and descriptions sharper than invec
tives : I say, let these censurers know (whose innocency lies only
in the act of indemnity), that to drop the blackest ink, and the
bitterest gall upon this fact, is not satire, but propriety.

ON THE MARTYRDOM OF KING CHARLES I. 493
Now since the text says, "there was no such thing ever done
or seen," the proper prosecution of the words, all applied to this
occasion, must be to show wherein the strangeness of this deed
consists ; and since the nature of every particular action is to be
leamt by reflecting upon the agent and the object, with all the
retinue of circumstances that attend it, under a certain determi
nation, I shall accordingly distribute my following discourse into
these materials: I shall
I. Consider the person who suffered.
II. Show the preparation or introduction to his suffering.
III. Show you the qualities ofthe agents who acted in it.
IV. Describe the circumstances and manner of the fact.
V. Point out the destruction and grim consequences of it. Of
all which in their order.
I. He that suffered was a king, and, what is more, such a king
as was not chosen, but born to it ; owing his kingdom, not to the
voice of popularity, but the suffrage of nature ; he was a David,
a saint, a king, but never a shepherd : all the royal blood in
Christendom ran in his veins, i. e. many kings went to the mak
ing up of him, and his improvement and education fell in ways
not below his extraction. He was accurate in all the commend
ing excellencies of human accomplishments, able to deserve, had
he not inherited a kingdom: of so controlling a genius, that in
every science he did not so much study as reign, he appeared not
only a proficient, but a prince ; and, to go no further for a testi
mony, let his own writings serve for witness, which speak him
no less an author than a monarch, composed with such an unfail
ing accuracy, such a commanding, majestic pathos, as if .they had
been written not with a pen, but a sceptre ; and as for those
whose virulent and ridiculous calumnies ascribe that incomparable
work to others, it is a sufficient argument that those did not, be
cause they could not write it. It is hard to counterfeit the spirit
of 'majesty, and the inimitable peculiarities of an incommunicable
genius. At the council table he had ability enough to give him
self the best counsel, but the unhappy modesty to diffide in it,
indeed his only fault, for modesty is a paradox in majesty, and
humility is a solecism in supremacy.
Look we next on his piety and incomparable virtues, though
without any absurdity I may say, that his very endowments of
nature were supernatural ; so pious was he, that if others had
measured their obedience to him, by his to God, he had been the
most absolute monarch in the world. As eminent for frequent
ing the temple, as Solomon for building one : no occasions ever
interfered with his devotion, nor business out-dated his time of
attendance in the church. [And here I should not pay a due
tribute to his memory, did I forget that remarkable instance of
constancy of soul (not to be shocked by the severest strokes of
2 T

494 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXXIH.
ill fortune), with which he received the surprising news of the
sudden loss of a dear friend and faithful servant, sacrificed by a
vile assassin to the unjustifiable and groundless clamours of an
ill-informed people, as well as to private spleen. How gallantly
in this affair did he suppress human nature, and restrain that flood
of tears due to the memory of his friend, till he had finished his
duty towards God.] So firm was he in the protestant cause,
though he lay in the midst of temptation, in the very bosom of
Spain, and though France lay in his, yet nothing could alter
him, but he espoused the cause of his religion more than his
beloved queen. He ever filled the title under which we prayed
for him. He could defend religion as a king, dispute for it as a
divine, and die for it as a martyr. I think I shall speak a great
truth in saying, that the only thing that makes protestantism
considerable in Christendom, is the church of England, and the
only thing that does now cement and confirm the church of Eng
land is the blood of that blessed martyr. He was so well skilled
in all controversies, that we may well style him, in all causes ec
clesiastical, not only supreme governor, but moderator, nor more
fit to fill the throne than the chair; and withal, so exact an
observer and royal rewarder of all such performances, that it was
an encouragement for a man to be a divine under such a prince.
Which piety of his was set off with a whole train of moral vir
tues. His temperance was so great and impregnable amidst all
those allurements with which the courts of kings are apt to melt
the most stoical and resolved minds, that he did at the same time
both teach and upbraid the court; so that it was not so much
their own vices, as his virtue, that rendered their debauchery in
excusable. Look over the whole race of our kings, and take in
the kings of Israel to boot, and who ever kept the bonds of con
jugal affection so inviolate ? David was chiefly eminent for re
penting in this matter; Charles for not needing repentance.
None ever of greater fortitude of mind, which was more
resplendent in the conquest of himself, and in those miraculous
instances of his passive valour, than if he had strewn the field
with the rebels' arms, and to the suffrage of his own cause,' joined
the success of theirs; and yet, withal, so meek, so gentle, so
merciful, and that even to cruelty to himself, that if ever the
lion dwelt with the lamb, if ever courage and meekness were
united, it was in the breast of this royal person; and, which
makes the rebellion more ugly and intolerable, there was scarce
any person of note among his enemies, who did not wear his co
lours, and carry some particular mark of his favour and obliga
tions ; some were his own menial servants, and eat bread at his
table, before they "lifted up their heel against him;" some
received from him honours, some offices and employments. I
could mention particulars of each kind, did I think their names
fit to be heard in a church or from a pulpit. In short, he so

ON THE MARTYRDOM OF KING CHARLES I. 495
behaved himself toward them, that their rebellion might be malice
indeed, but could not be revenge.
And these his personal virtues shed a suitable influence upon
his government for the space of seventeen years ; the peace,
plenty, and honour of the English nation spread itself even to
the envy of all neighbouring countries ; and when that plenty
had pampered them into unruliness and rebellion, yet still the
justice of his government left them at a loss for an occasion to
rebel, till at last ship-money was pitched upon as fit to be re
formed by excise and taxes, and the burden of the subjects taken
off by plunderings and sequestrations. The king now, to scatter
that cloud which began to gather, and look black upon the church
and state, made those condescensions to their impudent petitions,
that they had scarce any thing to make war for, but what was
granted them already; and having thus stripped himself of his
prerogative, he left it clear to the world, that there was nothing
left for them to fight for, but only his life. Afterward, in the
•prosecution of this unnatural war, what overtures did he make
for peace ? Nay, when he had his sword in his hand, his armies
about him, and a cause to justify him before God and man, how
did he choose to compound himself into nothing ! to depose
and unking himself by their hard and inhuman conditions!
But all was nothing : he might as well compliment a mastiff, or
court a tiger, as think to win those who were now hardened in
blood, and thorough-paced in rebellion. Yet the truth is, his
conscience uncrowned him, as having a mind too pure and delicate
to admit of those maxims and practices of state, that usually
make princes great and successful.
Having thus, with an unheard-of loyalty, fought against \him
and conquered him, they commit him to prison, and the king
himself notes, that it has always been observed, that there is but
little distance between the prisons of kings and their graves ; to
which I subjoin, that where the observation is constant, there
must be some standing cause of the connexion of the thing ob
served; and indeed, it is a direct translation from the prison to
the grave ; the difference between them being only this ; that he
who is buried is imprisoned under ground, and he that is im
prisoned is buried above ground ; and I could wish, that as they
slew and buried his body, so we had not also buried his funeral.
But to finish this poor and imperfect description, though it is
of a person so renowned, that he neither needs the best, nor can
be injured by the worst : yet, in short, he was a prince whose vir
tues were as prodigious as his sufferings ; a true father of his
country, if but for this only, that he was father of such a son.
And yet the most innocent of men, and best of kings, so pious
and virtuous, so learned and judicious, so merciful and obliging,
was rebelled against, drove out of his own house, pursued as a
partridge on the mountains, like an eagle in his own dominions,

496 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. XXXIII.
inhumanly imprisoned, and, for a catastrophe of all, most barbar
ously murdered : though in this his murder was the less woful, in
that his death released him from his prison.
II. Having thus seen the person suffering, let us in the next
place see the preparations of this bloody fact ; and indeed it would
be but a preposterous course, to insist only on the consequent,
without taking notice of the antecedent. It were too long to
dig to the spring of this rebellion, and to lead up to the secresies
of its first contrivance ; but as David's phrase is, upon another
occasion, it was " framed and fashioned in the lowest parts of the
earth," and there it was " fearfully and wonderfully made," a
work of darkness and retirement, removed from the eye of wit
nesses, even that of conscience also ; for conscience was not ad
mitted into their council. But their first aim was to procure a
Levite to consecrate their design, and a factious ministry to
christen it the cause of God : they still own their party for God's
own Israel, and being so, it must needs be their duty to come out
of Egypt, though they provide themselves a Red sea for their
passage. For their assistance they repair to the northern steel, and
bring in an unnatural mercenary crew, that like a shoal of locusts
covered the land, such as inherited the description of those which
God brought upon his people the Jews ; " a nation fierce, peeled,
and scattered ;" and still we shall read that God punished his
people from the north, as Jer. 1. 3, " Out of the north comes de
struction, which shall make the land desolate." Jer. iv. 6, "I will
bring evil from the north, and great destruction." Now to en
dear and unite these into one interest, they invented a covenant,
much like to that which some are said to make with hell, and an
agreement with death. It was the most solemn piece of perjury,
the most fatal engine against the church, and bane of monarchy ;
the greatest snare of souls, and mystery of iniquity, that ever
was hammered out by the wit and wickedness of man. I shall
not, as they do, abuse scripture language, and call it the blood of
the covenant, but give it its proper title, the covenant of blood ;
such a one as the brethren Simeon and Levi made, when they
were going about the like designs ; their very posture of taking
it was an ominous mark of its intent ; and their holding up
their hands was a sign they were going to strike. It was such an
olio of treason and tyranny, that one of the assembly of their own
prophets gives this testimony of it, in his narration upon it (and
his testimony is true), "that it was such a covenant, that whether
you respect the subject matter of it, or the occasion of it, or the
persons engaged in it, or lastly the manner of imposing it, the
like was never read, seen, or heard of." The truth is, it bears
no other likeness to other ancient covenants, than as at the
making of them they slew beasts and divided them, so this was

ON THE MARTYRDOM OF KING CHARLES I. 497
solemnized with blood, slaughter, and division. But that I may
not accuse in general, without a particular charge ; read it over
as it stands prefixed to their catechisms (as if without it their
system of divinity was not complete, nor their children like to
become Christians, unless they were schooled to treason, and
catechized to rebellion) ; I say, in the covenant as it stands here
in the third article of it ; after they had first promised to defend
the privileges of parliament, and the liberties of the kingdom,
at length they also promised to defend the person of the king,
viz. in the preservation and defence of the true religion, and the
liberties of the kingdom ; so that their promise of loyalty to him
was not absolute, but conditional, bound hand and foot with this
stipulation, so far as he preserveth the true religion and liberties
of the kingdom. Now those very persons who covenanted thus,
had already from pulpit and press declared the religion and way
of worship established in the church of England, and then main
tained by the king, to be false, popish, and idolatrous ; and withal,
that the king had invaded their liberties. Now for men to sus
pend their obedience upon certain conditions, which very con
ditions they declared at the same time not performed, was" not to
profess obedience, but remonstrate the reasons of intended dis
obedience. We have seen the doctrine of the covenant ; see
now the use of this doctrine, as it was charged home with a
suitable application, in a war raised against the king, in the cruel
usage and imprisonment, killing, sequestering, and undoing
of all that adhered to him. All which home proceedings,
though his majesty now stupendously forgives, yet the world
will not, cannot yet forget : his indemnity is not an oblivion :
amd for those persons who now clamour and cry out, they are
persecuted, because they are no longer permitted to persecute ;
and who choose rather to quit the ministry, than disown the
obligation of the covenant, I leave to all impartial and under
standing minds to judge, whether they do not by this openly
declare to the world, that they hold themselves obliged by oath,
as they are able, to act over again all that hath hitherto been
done by virtue of the covenant, and consequently that they left
not places for being nonconformists to the church, but for being
virtually rebels to the crown ; which makes them just as worthy
to be indulged, as a dropsy or a malignant fever, which is ex
asperated by mitigations, and inflamed by every cooling infusion.
But to draw the premises closer to the purpose, I argue : that
which was the proper means to enable the king's- enemies to make
war against him, and upon that war to conquer, and upon that
conquest to imprison, and inevitably to put the power in the
hands of those who by that power in the end did murder him ;
that, according to the genuine consequence of reason, was the
natural cause of his murder. This is the proposition that I
assert, but I shall not trouble myself to make the . assumption ;
Vol. TV.— 63 2t2

498 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxiii.
and indeed those who wipe their mouths, and lick themselves
innocent by clapping this act upon the army, make just the same
plea that Pilate did for his innocency in the death ot Christ, be
cause he left the execution to the soldiers ; or what the soldiers
may make for clearing themselves of all this blood that they have
spilt, by charging it upon their swords. I conclude therefore,
that this was the gradual process to this horrid act, this the train
laid to blow up monarchy, this the step by which the king
ascended the scaffold.
III. Come we now in the third place to show who were the
actors in this tragic scene. When through the anger of Provi
dence, the thriving army of rebels had worsted justice, cleared
the field, subdued all oppositions and risings, even to the very
insurrections of conscience itself; so that impunity at length
grew into reputation of piety, and success gave rebellion the
varnish of religion ; that they might consummate their villany,
the gown was called in to complete the execution of the sword ;
and to make Westminster Hall a place to take away lives as well
as estates, a new court was set up, and judges packed, who had
no more to do with justice, than so far forth as they deserved to
be the objects of it ; in which they first begin with a confutation
of the civilians' notion of justice and jurisdiction, it being with
them no longer an act of the supreme power. Such an inferior
crew, such a mechanic rabble were they, having not so much as
any arms to show the world, but what they used in rebellion ;
that when I survey the list of the king's judges, and the witnesses
against him, I seem to have before me a catalogue of all trades,
and such as might have better filled the shops of Westminster
Hall, than sat on the benches ; some of which came to be possessors
of the king's houses, who before had no certain dwelling but the
king's highway ; and some might have continued tradesmen still,
had not want and inability to trade sent them to the war. Now
that a king, such a king, should be murdered by such, the basest
ofhis subjects, and not like a Nimrod (as some sanctified preachers
have called him), but like Actaeon, torn by a pack of blood-hounds ;
that the steam of a dunghill should thus obscure the sun ; this
so much enhanceth the calamity of his royal person, and makes
his death as different from his who is conquered and slain by
another king, as it is between being torn by a lion, and being
eaten up by vermin ; pardon the expression, for it came into
my mind by speaking of those, many of which were some time
beggars. For the feet to trample upon, yea kick at the head,
would it not look like a monster ? but indeed, these of all others
were the fittest instruments for such a work ; for base descent and
poor education disposeth the mind to impiousness and cruelty ;
as of beasts those are the most savage, which are bred in dens,
and have their extraction from under ground : these therefore

ON THE MARTYRDOM OF KING CHARLES I. 499
were the worthy judges and condemners of that great king ; even
the refuse of the people, and the very1 scum of the nation, that
was at that time both the uppermost and basest part of it.
IV. Pass we now in the fourth place to the circumstances and
manner of proceeding in this ugly fact. And the circumstances
we know have the greatest cast in determining the nature of all
actions, as we judge of any one's parts or qualities by the nature
of his attendants. First, then, it was not done like other works
of darkness, in secret, nor (as they use to preach) in a corner,
but publicly, coloured with the face of justice, managed with
openness and solemnity, as solemn as the league and covenant
itself. History indeed affords us many examples of princes clan
destinely murdered, which though it be villanous, is in itself more
excusable ; for he that doth such a thing in secret, by the man
ner of doing confesseth himself ashamed of the thing he does ;
but he that acts in the face of the sun, vouches his work for laud
able, glorious, and heroic. Having brought him to the high
court of justice (so called, I conceive, because justice was there,
arraigned and condemned, or perhaps because it never showed
mercy), by a way of trial as unheard-of as the court, he was not
permitted so much as to speak in his own defence, but with the
innocence and silence of a lamb, condemned to slaughter ; and it
would have been well for them if they could as easily have im
posed stience on his blood. Being condemned, they spit in his
face, and delivered him to the mockery and affronts of the sol
diers; so that I wonder where the blasphemy lies, which some
charge upon those who made the king's suffering something to
resemble our Saviour's ; but is it blasphemy to compare the king
to Christ in that respect, in which Christ himself was made like
a servant ? For can he be like us in all things, and we not like
him ? Certainly there was something in that providence, that ap
pointed so long ago the chapter to be read on the day of our Sa
viour's passion, to be read likewise on the day of our king's ; and
I am sure that the resemblance is so near, that had he lived before
him, he had been a type of him. I confess there is some dispa
rity in the case, for they showed themselves worse than the Jews.
But however, since they object that we make the king like Christ,
I am willing it should be their commendation to be as unlike
Christ as they please.
Let us now follow him from their mock-tribunal to the place
of his residence till his execution. Nothing remains for a man
condemned, and presently to leave the world, but these two things :
first, to take leave of his friends, a thing not denied to the vilest
malefactor, which is sufficiently apparent in that it hath not been
denied to themselves: yet no entreaties, from him or his royai
consort, could prevail with these murderers to let her take the
last farewell and commands of her dying husband. He was

500 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxiii.
permitted to take ho farewell, but to the world. Thus was he
stripped of all, even from the prerogative of a prince, to the pri
vilege of a malefactor. The next thing desired by all dying
Chrfstians, is freedom to converse with God, and to prepare them
selves to meet him at his dreadful tribunal ; but with an Italian
cruelty to the soul as well as the body, they debar him of this
freedom also, and even solitude, his former punishment, is now
too great an enjoyment. But that they might show themselves
no less enemies to private, than they had been to public prayers,
they disturb his retirements, and with scoffs and continual calum
nies upbraid those devotions which were then interceding for
them ; and I question not but fanatic fury was at that height,
that they would have laughed at Christ himself had he used his
own prayer.
With these preludiums is he brought to the last scene of
mockeries and cruelty, to a stage erected before his own palace ;
and for a greater affront to majesty, before that part of it in
which he was wont to display his royalty, and to give audience
to ambassadors, where now he could not obtain audience for
himself, in his last addresses to Kis abused subjects. There he
receives the fatal blow ; there he dies conquering and pardoning
his enemies, and at length finds that faithfully performed on the
scaffold, which was at first promised in the parliament, and per
haps in the same sense, that he should be " a glorious king." And
even this death was the mercy of the murderers, considering what
kind of death several proposed when they sat in council about
the manner of it, even no less than to execute him in his robes,
and afterwards to drive a stake through his head and body to stand
as a monument on his grave. In short, all kinds of death were
proposed, that either their malice could suggest, or their own
guilt deserve. And would these then now find in their hearts,
or have the face to desire to live ? and to plead a pardon from
the son, who thus murdered the father ? I speak not only of
those wretches who openly imbrued their hands in the bloody
sentence, but of those more considerable traitors who had the
villany to manage the contrivance, and yet the cunning to disap
pear at the execution, and perhaps the good luck to be preferred
after it. And for those who now survive, by a mercy as incredi
ble as their crimes, which has left them to the soft expiation of
solitude and repentance ; though usually all the professions that
such make of repentance, are nothing else but the faint resent
ments of a guilty horror, the convulsions and last breathings of
a gasping conscience : as the mercy by which they live is made a
visible defiance to government, and a standing encouragement to
these alarms of plots and conspiracies : so I beseech God that
even their supposed repentance be not such, as both themselves
and the kingdom hereafter may have bitter cause too late to re
pent of. And if indeed they should prove such as have no con-

ON THE MARTYRDOM OF KING CHARLES I. 501
science but horror, who by the same crimes will be made irrecon-
cileable, for which they deserve to be unpardonable ; who would
resume those repentings upon opportunities, which they made
upon extremity; and being saved from the gallows, make the
usual requital that is made for that kind of deliverance ; I say,
if such persons should only for a time be chained, and tied up,
like so many lions in the Tower, that they may gain more fierce
ness, and run again at majesty, religion, laws, churches, and the
universities ; whether God intends by this a repetition of our
former confusions, or a general massacre of our persons (which
is most likely), the Lord in his mercy fit and enable us to endure
the smart of a misimproved providence, and the infatuated frus
tration of such a miraculous deliverance.
But to return to this blessed martyr. We have seen him
murdered, and is there any other scene of cruelty to act ? Is not
death the end of the murderer's malice, as well as of the life of
him that is murdered ? No, there is another and viler instance of
their implacable cruelty; in the very embalming of his body,
and taking out of his bowels (which, had they not relented to his
enemies, had not been so handled), they gave order to those to
whom that work wais committed, diligently to search and see (I
speak it with shame and indignation) whether his body was not
infected with some loathsome disease : I suppose, that which
some of his judges were so much troubled with. Now any one
may see, that further to intimate an inquiry was, in effect, to
enjoin the report. And here let any one judge, whether the re
morseless malice of embittered rebels ever rose to such a height
of tyranny ; the very embalming his body must be made a means
of corrupting his name ; as if his murder was not complete, if,
together with his life they did not assassinate his fame and butcher
his reputation. But the body of that prince, innocent and vir
tuous even to a miracle, had none of the ruins and genteel rot
tenness of our modern debauchery ; it was firm and clear like his
conscience ; he fell like a cedar, no less fragrant than tall and
stately; rottenness of heart and bone belong to his murderers,
the noisomeness of whose carcasses, caused by the noisomeness of
their lives, might even retaliate and revenge their sufferings, and
while they are under the execution, poison the executioner. But
the last grand comprehensive circumstance, which is, as it were,
the very form and spirit that did actuate and run through all the
rest, is, that it was done with the pretence of conscience, and the
protestations of religion, with eyes lift up to heaven, expostu
lating with God with pleas of providence, and inward instigations,
till at last, with much labour and many groans, they were de
livered of their conceived mischief. And certainly we have cause
to deplore this murder with fasting, if it were but for this reason,
that it was contrived and committed with fasting; every fast
portended some villany, as still a famine ushers in a plague : but

502 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxiii.
as hunger serves only for appetite, so they never ordained a hur
miliation, but for doing something, which, being done, might find
them matter of a thanksgiving ; and such a fury did abused piety
inspire into the church militant, upon these exercises, that we
might as safely meet a hungry boar, as a preaching colonel after
a fast, whose murderous humiliations strangely verify that pro
phecy in Isaiah viii. 21, " When they shall be hungry, they shall
curse their king and their God, and look upwards ;" that is, they
should rebel and blaspheme devoutly : though by the way, he that
is always looking upwards can little regard how he walks below.
But was there any thing in the whole book of God to warrant
this rebellion ? Instead of obedience, will they sacrifice him
whom they ought to obey ? Why yes : Daniel dreamed a dream,
and there is also something in the Revelations concerning a beast,
and a little horn, and a fifth vial, and therefore the king ought
undoubtedly to die : but if neither you nor I can gather so much
from these places, they will tell us it is because we are not in
wardly enlightened. But others more knowing, but not less
wicked, insist not so much on the warrant of it from scripture,
but plead providential dispensations ; God's works, it seems,
must be regarded before his words ; and their Latin advocate,
Mr. Milton, who like a blind adder has spit so much poison on
the king's person and cause, speaks to this roundly, Deum secuti
ducem, et impressa passim divina vestigia venerantes, viam haud
obscuram, sed illustrem, et illius auspiciis commonstratam et pate-
factam ingressi sumus.
But must we read God's mind in his footsteps, or in his words ?
This is as if when we have a man's hand-writing, we should en
deavour to take his meaning by the measure of his foot. But
still, is pleading conscience a covering for all enormities, and an
answer to all questions and accusations also ? What made them
fight against, imprison, and murder their lawful sovereign ?
Why, conscience. What made them extirpate the government,
and pocket up the revenues of the church ? Conscience. What
made them perjure themselves with contrary oaths ? What made
swearing a sin, and forswearing none ? What made them lay
hold on God's promises, and break their own ? Conscience.
What made them sequester, persecute, and undo their brethren,
ravin their estates, and ruin their families, get into their places,
and then say they only rob the Egyptians ? Why still this large
capacious thing is conscience. The poet says, Vis fieri dives,
Bithynice ? conscius esto ; which I think may be properly construed
thus, If you would be rich, be (in their sense) conscientious.
We have lived under that model of religion, in which nothing
has been counted impious, but loyalty, nor absurd, but restitu
tion. But, O blessed God! to what a height can prosperous,
audacious impiety rise ! Was it not enough that men once crucified
Christ, but that there must be a generation of men who would

ON THE MARTYRDOM OF KING CHARLES I. 503
crucify Christianity? Must he who taught no defence but
patience, allowed no armour but submission, and never war
ranted the shedding any blood but his own, be now again mocked
with soldiers, and vouched the author and patron of all those
hideous and rebellious acts, which an ordinary impiety would
stand amazed at, and which in this world he has so plainly con
demned in his word, and will hereafter severely sentence in his
own person? Certainly these monsters are not only spots in
Christianity, but so many standing exceptions from humanity and
nature. V. In the fifth and last place, let us view the horridness of the
fact, in the fatal consequences that did attend it. Every villany is
like a great absurdity, drawing after it a numerous train of ho
mogeneous consequences, amd none ever spread itself into more
than this. But I shall endeavour to reduce them all into two
sorts ;* such as were of a civil, and such as were of a religious
concern. And first for the civil, political consequences of it; there
immediately followed a chatnge of that government, whose praise
had been proclaimed even by its enemies. It was now shred into
democracy ; and the stream of government being cut into many
channels, ran thin and shallow, whereupon the subjects had many
masters, and every servant so many distinct services. But the
wheel of Providence, which they only looked at, and that even
to giddiness, did not stop here, but by a fatal vicissitude, the
power and wickedness of those many were again compacted into
one, and from that one returning again into many, with several
attending variations, till at length we pitched upon one again, one
beyond whom they could not go, the ne plus- ultra of all regad
excellencies, as all change tends to, and at last ceases upon its
acquired perfection. Nor was the government only, but the
glory of our nation also changed; distinctions of orders con
founded, the gentry and nobility, who voted the bishops out of their
dignities in parliament, by the just judgment of God were thrust
out themselves, and brought under the lash of an imperious
beggar on horseback. Learning was discountenanced, and the
universities threatened ; the law to be reformed ; the model of
the nation to be burnt ; such an inundation and deluge of ruin,
reformation, and confusion, had spread itself upon the whole
nation, that it seemed a kind of resemblance of Noah's flood, in
which a few men survived among beasts.
The second sort of consequences were of religious concern.
I speak not of the contempts and rebukes lying upon the
preachers of those days; for they brought their miseries upon
themselves, and had a great deal more cause to curse their own
seditious sermons, than to curse Meroz. They, sounded the first
trumpet to rebellion, and like the saints, had grace to persevere

504 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxih.
in what they first began ; courting a usurper, and calling themselves
his loyal and obedient subjects, never endeavouring so much as to
think'of their lawful sovereign. I speak not therefore of these, but
the great destructive consequence of this fact was, that it left a
lasting slur upon the protestant religion. "Tell it not in Gath,
publish it not in the streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the
Philistines triumph," lest the papacy laugh us to scorn. I confess
the seditious writings of some who call themselves protestants, have
sufficiently bespattered their religion. See Calvin warranting the
three estates to oppose their prince, 4 Instit. ch. 20, sect. 31. See
Mr. Knox's Appeal, and in that, arguments for resisting the civil
magistrate. Read Mr. Buchanan's discourse, De jure regni apud
Scotos. Read Vindicia contra Tyrannos, under the name of Junius
Brutus, written by Ottoman the civilian. See Pareus on the 13th
to the Romans, where he states a large term, atrocem aliquam
injuriam, and a very easy application to be sufficient reason for the
taking up arms against the king. But this is rather a comment on
the covenant, than on the 13th to the Romans. Both of which, as
they teach the same doctrine, so they deserved and had justly the
same confutation. But these principles, like sleeping lions, lay still
a great while, and never were completely awaked, nor appeared in
the field, till the French Holy League, and the English Rebellion.
Let the powder-plot be as bad as it will, yet still there is as much
difference between that and the king's murder, as between an action
and an attempt : what bulls and anathemas could not do, seditious
sermons have brought about. What was then contrived against
the parliament, has since been done by it : what the papists' powder
intended, the soldiers' matches have effected. I say, let the powder-
plot be looked upon, as indeed it is, the product of hell, as black
as the souls and principles that hatched it ; yet still this reformation-
murder will preponderate, and January always have the precedency
of November.
And thus I have traced this accursed fact through all the parts
and ingredients of it : and now, if we reflect upon the quality of
the person upon whom it was done ; the condition of the persons
that did it; the means, manner, and circumstances of its trans
action ; I suppose it will fill up the measure, and reach the
heights of the words in the text, that " there was never such a
thing done or seen since the day that the children of Israel came
out of the land of Egypt until this day." For my part, my
apprehensions of it overcharge my expressions, and how to set it
off I know not, for black receives no other colour : but when I
call to mind all the ideas of horror, and all the records of the
Grecian and barbarian murders, together with new fancied in
stances, and unheard-of impossibilities, yet I find none parallel,
and therefore have this only to say of the king's murder ; that it
is a thing, than which nothing can be imagined more strange, and
amazing, and astonishing, except its pardon.

ON THE MARTYRDOM OF KING CHARLES I. 505
And now having done with the first part of my text, does it not
naturally engage me in the second ? Must such a deed as was
never seen nor heard of, never be spoken of; or must it be stroked
with smooth mollifying expressions ? Is this the way to cure the
wound, by pouring oil upon those that made it? And must
Absalom be therefore dealt gently with, because he was a sturdy-
rebel ? If, as the text bids us, we consider the fact, and take
advice with reason and conscience, we cannot but obey it in the
following words, and speak our minds. For could Croesus's dumb
son speak upon the very attempting a murder upon his prince
and father, and shall a preacher be dumb when such an action is
committed ? Therefore having not yet finished my text, nor
according to the command of it, spoken all my mind, I have one
thing more to propose, and with that to conclude.
Would you be willing to see this scene acted over again ? To
see that restless plotting humour that now boils and ferments in
many traitors' breasts, once more display itself in the dismal
effects of war and desolations ? Would you see the rascality of
the nation in troops and tumults beleaguer the royal palace ?
Would you hear the ministers absolving their congregations from
their sacred oath of allegiance, and sending them into the field
to lose their lives and souls in a professed rebellion against their
sovereign ? Would you see an insolent overturning army in the
heart and bowels of the nation, moving to and fro to the terror
of every thing that is noble, generous,, and religious ? Would
you see the loyal gentry harassed, starved, and undone, by the
oppression of base, insulting committees ? Would you see the
clergy torn in pieces, and sacrificed by the inquisition of synods,
triers, and commissioners ? And to mention the greatest last ;
would you have the king, with his father's kingdoms, inherit
also his fortunes ? Would you see the crown trampled upon,
majesty haled from prison to prison, and at length, with the vilest
circumstances of spite and cruelty, bleeding and dying at the feet
of bloody inhuman miscreants ? Would you, now Providence
has cast the destructive interest from the parliament, and the
house is pretty well swept and cleansed, have the old " unclean
spirit return, and take to itself seven other spirits," seven other
interests worse than itself, and dwell there, and so make our
latter end worse than our beginning ? We hear of plots and
combinations, parties joining and agreeing ; let us not trust too
much in their' oppositions among themselves. The elements can
fight with each other, and yet unite into one body ; Ephraim
against Manasses, and Manasses against Ephraim, and both
equally against the royal tribe of Judah. Now if we fear the
letting loose these furies again upon us, let us fear the returns of
our former provocations : if we would keep off the axe from our
princes and nobles, let us lay it to our sins ; if we would preserve
their lives, let us mend our own. We have complained of armies,
Vol. P7.— 64 2 U

506 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxra.
committees, sequestrations, but our sins are those that have
sucked the blood of this nation. These have purpled the scaffold
with royal blood ; these have blown up so many noble families,
have made so many widows, have snatched the bread out of the
mouths of so many poor orphans. It is our not fearing God, that
hath made others not honour the king ; our not benefiting by
the ordinances of the church, that hath enriched others with her
spoils. And how is our church (the only church in Christendom
we read of, whose avowed principles and practices disown all re
sistance of the civil power) struck and laid at, at this time ! But
when I hear of conspiracies, seditions, designs, covenants, or
plots, they do not much move or affright me : but when I see the
same covetousness, the same drunkenness and profaneness, that
was first punished in ourselves, and then in our sanctified
enemies : when I see joy turned into revelling, and debauchery
proclaimed louder than it can be proclaimed against : these, I
confess, stagger and astonish me : nor can I persuade myself we
were delivered to do all these abominations. But if we have not
the grace of Christians, yet have we not the hearts of men?
Have we no bowels nor relentings? If the blood and banish
ment of our kings, if the miseries of our common mother, the
church, ready to fall back into the jaws of purchasers and
reformers, cannot move us, yet shall we not at least pity our pos
terity? Shall we commit sins, and breed up our children to
inherit the curse ? Shall the infants now unborn have cause to
say hereafter, in the bitterness of their souls, " Our fathers have
eaten sour grapes" of disobedience, " and our teeth are set on
edge" with rebellions and confusions ? How doth any one know,
but the oath that he is now swearing, the very lewdness he is now
committing, may be scored up by God as an item for a new
rebellion? We may be rebels, and yet not vote in parliament,
nor sit in committees, nor fight in armies ; every sin is virtually
treason, and we may he guilty of murder in breaking other com
mandments besides the sixth. But at present we are made
whole : God hath by a miracle healed our breaches, cured the
maladies, and bound up the wounds of a bleeding nation. What
remains now, but that we take the counsel that seconded the like
miraculous cure, " go our ways, sin no more, lest a worse thing
come upon us." But since our calamities have reached that
height, that they give us rather cause to fear a repetition, than a
possibility of gradation ; I shall dismiss you with the same ad
vice upon a different motive, " Go, sin no more, lest the same
evil befall you." Which God of his infinite mercy prevent;
even that God, " by whom kings reign and princes decree jus
tice," by whom their thrones are established, and by whom their
blood will be revenged. To whom, &c. Amen.

507
SERMON XXXIV. .
[Preached at Oxford.]
ecclesiastical constitutions to be maintained.
Galatians ii. 5.
To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour ; that the
truth of the gospel might continue with you.
Christianity having been now in the world above sixteen
hundred years, there is hardly any condition that can befall the
church but may be paralleled, or at least resembled by the con
dition it hais been in, in some place or age before. That which
our church labours under at present, is the bold and restless
encroachments of many amongst ourselves, upon the bishops and
pastors of it.
1st. By an endeavour to cast out of our public worship some
ceremonies and usages hitherto received in it; and instead of
submitting to their spiritual governors in such matters, they
insolently require of their governors to comply with them,
though contrary to their own judgment, and that also backed
with truth and reason, as well as law and authority. And then
(upon their refusal to yield to such innovators) by traducing
them as persons of another religion, of a different Christianity ;
and, in a word, as papists and idolaters, for persisting in the use
of those ceremonies which, upon the most serious deliberation
had about these things, by such as laid down their lives against
popery, have by full authority, both ecclesiastical and civil, been
established in our church.
Not much unlike this case of ours, we have one mentioned
here, in the church of Galatia, and that as early as the times of
the apostles themselves; in which many, both Jews and Gen
tiles, being converted to Christianity, a great dispute arose,
whether the Jewish customs were to be joined with the Chris
tian profession, and, consequently, whether the converted Gen
tiles ought not to have been circumcised according to the law of
Moses, as well as baptized according to the religion of Christ.
The Jewish converts, who were most infinitely fond of the
Mosaical rites, even after their enrolment under Christ's banner,
fiercely contended, not only for the continuance of circumcision
amongst themselves, but for obliging the proselyte Gentiles to
the same custom also. And in this their error, they were the
more confirmed by the example and practice of St. Peter, the
great apostle of the circumcision, it being the fate of the church

508 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxiv.
then as well as since, to have some of its chief leaders betray
the truth and interest of it, by unworthy and base compliances
with its enemies. St. Peter, I say, thus ' judaizing in some
things and that even contrary to his own conscience, as well as
to the 'truth of the gospel (for the text tells us, in the 12th and
13th verses, that it was neither better nor worse than downright
dissimulation ; and such a one is like a contagious pest, which
spreads the infection on many more besides himself), did by his
example mightily encourage those Jewish Christians, not only
to have confidence in their errors, but also to an expostulation
with St. Paul himself, who being an apostle to the Gentiles,
both taught and practised quite otherwise ; and so far did it
carry them, that they questioned the very truth of his doctrine,
calling it another gospel, and by no means the same that Christ
and the rest of the apostles hadL taught before, as is intimated in
the first chapter and the 9th verse. They reflected also very
slightingly on his person and apostleship, extolling St. Peter and
others as pillars, but despising St. Paul as nothing in compari
son. Upon which, St. Paul coming to visit these Galatian con
verts, with Titus his companion, they press him very earnestly,
and with an importunity next to compulsion, to have Titus cir
cumcised, according to their false notion of the necessity of cir
cumcision. And yet, as false as this opinion was, it wanted not
some colour of arguments ; for might not these Galatians plead,
in behalf of the continuance of circumcision, that Christ himself
declared, "he came not to destroy the law of Moses, but to
confirm and fulfil it?" And was not this circumcision one of the
most considerable parts of the law ? So considerable indeed, as
to be the grand obligation to bind men to all the rest. Did not
also Christ command his own disciples to hear and do what the
pharisees taught them out of Moses' chair, and did they teach or
own any thing equally necessary, or more necessary than cir
cumcision ? As a confirmation of all this, did not St. Peter, who
was the proper apostle of the circumcision, agree and concur
with them in the practice of it, or at least not dissuade them
from it ; nay, and did not St. Paul himself cause Timothy to be
circumcised ? And if in this matter there should be any differ
ence between these two apostles, was not the advantage clearly
on St. Peter's side, who, having conversed personally with
Christ in the flesh, might rationally be presumed to know the
true sense and design of the gospel more than St. Paul, who had
not that benefit ? And consequently that it must be much safer
for them in that controversy to adhere to the former than to the
latter. Lastly, over and above all, might they not plead them
selves extremely scandalized, grieved, and offended, at the dis-
usage of circumcision, which they were sure was at first instituted
by God, and never since (for what they could find) forbidden by
Christ, but rather, on the contrary, countenanced by his own

ECCLESIASTICAL CONSTITUTIONS TO BE MAINTAINED. 509
practice ? These things certainly carry some show of reason in
them, and were much more forcible allegations for circumcision,
than any that our sectarists bring against our ceremonies ; and
yet -as forcible as they seemed, they had no other effect on St.
Paul, thatn that with great stiffness he rejects both them and
those that urged them ; and upon a full hearing of the merits of
the whole cause, resolves not to give place to them, "no, not for
an hour."
This was the occasion of these words ; in which are five par
ticulars worth our observation.
1st. A fierce opposition made by some erroneous* private
Christians in the church of Galatia against St. Paul, a great
apostle, and consequently of prime authority in the church of
Christ. 2dly. The cause of this opposition, the viblent and unreason
able demands made to him to confirm the practice of a thing as
necessary, which in itself was not so. ,
3dly. The methods taken in this opposition, viz. slandering
his doctrine, and detracting from the credit and authority of his
person, for withstanding these their encroaching demands.
4thly. The wholesome method made use of by the apostle in
dealing with these violent encroachers ; that was, not to give
place to them in the least, " no, not for an" hour."
5thly. And lastly, the end and design intended by the apostle
in this his method of dealing with them, viz. the preservation of
the gospel in the truth and purity of it, that those sacred truths
might have their due regard among them.
The sum of all wliich particulars I shall connect into this one
proposition, which shall be the subject of this following dis>-
course ; namely, that the best and most apostolical way to
establish a church, and to secure it in a lasting continuance of
the truth and pjurity of the gospel, is for the governors and
ministers of it not to give place at all, or yield up the least
received constitution of it to the demands or pretences-of such as
dissent or separate from it; all which is a plain, natural, unde
niable inference from the practice of St. Paul in a case so like ours,
that a liker can hardly be imagined. The prosecution of this propo
sition I shall endeavour to manage under the following heads.
I. I shall consider and examine the pretences alleged by dis
senters for our remitting or yielding up any of our ecclesiastical
constitutions. II. I shall show you the natural consequences of such a tame
resignation. III. I shall show what influence and efficacy a strict adherence
to the constitutions of the church, and an absolute refusal to part
with any of them, is likely to have upon the settlement of the
church and purity of the gospel amongst us.
But before I enter upon the discussion of any of these, I must
2u2

510 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXXIV.
premise this observation, and rule of all I shall say upon this
subject, viz. that the case is altogether the same, of requiring upon
the account of conscience forbearance of practices in themselves
lawful, through a pretence of their unlawfulness, and an imposing
upon the conscience practices in themselves not necessary, upon
allegation and pretence of their necessity ; which latter was the case
between St. Paul and these Galatians, as the former is between our
church and the sectarists. Now both of these courses are supersti
tious, and equally so. For though lewdness and ignorance have
still carried the cry of superstition against our church ceremonies ;
yet (as a learned prelate* hath fully proved in his visitation sermon)
that charge truly recoils upon our dissenters, in the very point and
matter before us. For as to urge the practice of a thing indifferent
as a part of God's worship, and for itself necessary to be practised
(which our church never did, nor does in the injunction of any of
her ceremonies), is superstitious ; so as to make it necessary to ab
stain from practices in themselves lawful, or at least indifferent,
alleging . that they are sinful, and consequently that an absti
nence from them is part of our obedience to God, this is alto
gether as superstitious, and diametrically opposite to and de
structive of the Christian liberty that Christ has invested his
church with.
I. This premised, I shall now enter upon the first thing pro
posed ; which was to consider and examine the pretences alleged by
dissenters for the quitting or yielding up any of the constitutions of
the church. And here in a noted discourse so acceptable to such
as hate the church, and hope shortly to ruin it, we have their chief
pretences already gathered to our hands, under very few heads, viz.
the infirmity, the importunity, and plausible exceptions of our sec
tarists ; concerning the first of which, the plea of infirmity or weak
ness, if it be meant of such a weakness (as it must be, if it argues
any thing) as in the 14th chapter of the epistle to the Romans, or
the 8th chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul
speaks of in those weak brethren, who in his time being newly
converted from Judaism, or Gentilism, were for a while to be
borne with in some things ; it is most evident that the case of
these converts then, and of our dissenters now, are so widely
different, that where people have from their infancy been brought
up in a Christian church, and by Christian parents and teachers,
such infirmity or weakness the apostle there mentions in persons
newly converted from other religions, neither is nor can be
pleaded; since after so many opportunities of instruction, there
can be no doubting or dissatisfaction in things necessary to be
known, practised, or forborn, but what in all persons enjoying
those means is very culpable, and in most inexcusable ; so that
the plea is impertinent. ' Bishop Sanderson.

ECCLESIASTICAL CONSTITUTIONS TO BE MAINTAINED. 511
And for that other, of importunity, it is so senseless, and
withal so shameless a pretence, that it may be referred even to
the judgment of those that make it, whether, in case this was
admitted against things legally established, any laws in the world
could possibly subsist or continue, where people were bold and
violent enough to oppose and exclaim against them. And since
the civil state has found it necessary to arm itself with laws
against sturdy beggars, it is methinks somewhat hard, that in the
ecclesiastical state, sturdy beggars should control the laws. In
the last place, therefore, let us see what is to be ascribed to their
phrase of " plausible exceptions," where it will concern us, first
of all, to inquire into the force and meaning of this word plausible,
this high and mighty word, to which the long received constitu
tion of a whole church ought to give place. Now plausible, I
conceive, may have one of these two significations.
1. It may be taken for that which carries with it more
appearance and show of reason than its opposite, in the judgment
or opinion of the multitude ; or,
2. For that which carries a greater appearance and show of
reason in the judgment of the more sensible part of mankind. In
either of these senses, I shall show that it makes nothing for
them, and that from the following considerations.
1st. Because there is actually a church, a greater number of
persons in the nation, that practise and conform to the use of
those things now in debate between us, than there is of those
who stand off and abstain from them. This being so, unless we
will judge those men gross hypocrites, we are bound in reason
and Christian charity to believe, that there appears to them a
greater ground of reason, why they should so conform, than why
they should not ; and consequently the first signification of
plausibility fails our dissenters, since the number of those to
whom conformity appears more rational, is much larger than the
number of those to whom the exceptions against it appear to be
so. In this sense therefore the exceptions cannot be allowed to
be so much as plausible ; but then,
2dly. Admitting (which as they cannot prove, so neither do'
we grant) that there were this kind of plausibility in their ex
ceptions brought against conformity, yet I deny that which is
plausible in this sense, that it appears reasonable to the opinion
and vogue of the multitude, ought to take place of that which is
deemed to have greater reason for it in the sense and judgment
of the more knowing, though much inferior to the other in
number : which is the other sense in which I showed the word
plausible may be taken.
3dly. The third consideration is, that since the governing
part of the church and state have declared for conformity, by
making laws to enjoin it; and since in all governments the
advantage of wisdom and knowledge in making or changing,

512 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxiv.
must in reason be presumed to be rather on the side of those that
govern, than of those that are to be governed ; it follows, that ac
cording to the other sense of plausibility, conformity and the reasons
for it are more plausible, than the exceptions and arguments alleged
against it.
4thly. The fourth and last consideration, which eradicates the
foregoing pretence, is, that the ground of passing a thing into a
law, and of retaining that law when once made, is not the
plausibility of the thing or law to the sense of the vulgar, but the
real conducibility of it to the good of the multitude ; and that
accords to the sense and judgment of those who are to govern
and make laws for it. To which I add further, that a thing may be
really and practically conducing to the good of the multitude, though
neither suitable to the opinion or humour of it, and consequently
noways plausible to it.
Now from these four consequences, it being manifest how
insignificant that pretence, taken from the plausibility of the
nonconformists' exceptions against the constitutions of our
church, proves to be, since they are neither plausible, as proceed
ing from the wise and governing part of the nation, nor yet as
from the greater or more numerous part of it ; nor lastly, ought
to have any control upon the laws, though they were never so
plausible upon this last account ; I shall pass from the plausibility
to the force of the exceptions, and see whether we can meet with
any strength of reason, where we have not yet found the show
And here I shall not pretend to recount them all in particular,
but only take them as reducible to and derivable from the following
three heads. 1. The unlawfulness, or, 2. The inexpediency, or, 3.
And lastly, the smallness of the things excepted against. I shall
only touch briefly upon each of them, for the compass of this dis
course will allow no more.
1. For their leading plea of the unlawfulness of our ceremo
nies, grounded upon the old baffled argument drawn from the
illegality of will-worship, and the prohibition of adding to and
detracting from the word and worship of God : no other answer
can or need be given to it, but that which has been given over
and over. That our ceremonies are not esteemed by our church
either as divine worship, or as any necessary essential part of it,
but only as circumstances and external appurtenances for the
more decent performance of the worship. For that man should
of his own will impose on us any thing as the necessary worship
of God, or add any thing to the worship as a necessary essential
part of it, this questionless (as the aforementioned allegations
sufficiently prove) must needs be sinful. But if from hence it
be affirmed also, that no circumstance is to be allowed in divine
worship, but what is declared and enjoined by express scripture;
the consequence of this is so insufferably ridiculous, that it will
extend to the making it unlawful for the church to appoint any

ECCLESIASTICAL CONSTITUTIONS TO BE MAINTAINED. 513
place or house for God's worship j nay, it will lead also to the
very taking down of pulpits, reading-desks, fonts, and every
thing else circumstantially ministering to the discharge of divine
service, if not expressly mentioned and commanded in the word
of God. And let them, upon the foregoing principle, avow the
absurdity of the consequence if they can. But it has been well
remarked, that these men do not indeed believe themselves,
when they plead our rites unlawful. For when an act of parlia
ment enjoined all persons in office to take the sacrament accord
ing to the use of the church of England (and that we know is to
take it kneeling), we find none of them refusing (how idolatrous
soever at other times they esteemed it) rather than turn out of
the least office of gain they were possessed of; which, had it been
unlawful, surely men of such tender consciences, as they own
themselves to be, would never have been brought to do, since not
the least unlawful thing ought to be committed for the greatest
temporal advantage whatsoever. But since these men have by
so many other instances manifested to the world, that they look
upon their own will as their law, they would do well hereafter to
allege no other argument for the unlawfulness of our ceremonies ;
and therefore to pass to their second plea of inexpedience, or in-
conveniency of them; to which I shall give the two following
answers. 1st. That inexpedience being a word of a general, indefinite-
sense, and so determinable by the several fancies, humours,
apprehensions, and interests of men about the same, thing, so that
what is judged expedient by one man is thought inexpedient by
another; the judgment of the expediency or inexpediency of
matters formed into laws, ought in all reason to rest wholly in
the legislators and governors, and consequently no private per
sons ought to be looked upon as competent judges of the inex
pediency of that which the legislative power has once enacted
and established as expedient.
2dly. I affirm also, that that which is not only in itself lawful,
but highly conducible to so great' a concern of religion, as
decency and order in divine worship ; and this to that degree, that
without it such order and decency could not subsist or continue ;
this cannot otherwise be inexpedient upon any considerable
account whatsoever. But then all these considerations of inex
pediency will be abundantly overbalanced by this one great ex
pediency. For since the outward acts of divine worship cannot
be performed, but with some circumstances and posture of body,
either every man must be left to his own arbitration, or use what
circumstances and postures he pleases, or a rule must be laid
down to direct these things after one and the same manner. The
former of necessity infers diversity and variety in the discharge
of the same worship, and that by the same necessity infers disor
der and indecency; which by nothing but a uniformity in the
Vol. IV.— 65

514 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxiv.
behaviour and circumstances of persons joining in one and the
same worship, can be prevented. This argument, I confess, con
curs directly for the necessity of ceremonies in general about
divine service ; but so far as ours are argued against upon a
general account, and till they are proved particularly unfit for the
general end, the same may be also a defence of ours in particular.
3. Come we now to the third and last exception, grounded
upon the smallness of the things excepted against ; to which also
my answer is twofold. First, that these things being in them
selves lawful, and not only so, but also determined by sufficient
authority, the smallness is so far from being a reason why men
should refuse and stand out against the use of them, that it is an
unanswerable argument why they should, without any demur,
submit and comply with authority in matters which they them
selves confess to be of no very great moment. For it ought to
be a very great and weighty matter indeed, that can warrant a
man in his disobedience to the injunctions of any lawful
authority; and that which is a reason why men should comply
with their governors, I am sure can be no reason why their
governors should give place to them. But, secondly, I add
further, that nothing actually enjoined by law is or ought to be
looked upon as small or little, as to the use or forbearance of it,
during the continuance of that law, nor yet as sufficient reason
.for the abrogation of that law; since, be the thing never so
small in itself, yet being by great deliberation first established,
and for a long time since received in the church, and contended
for with real and great reason on its side ; be the reasons never
so plausible (which yet hitherto does not appear) on the other,
yet the consequence of a change cannot be accounted small, since
it is certainly very hazardous at best, and doubtful what mischief
it may occasion, how far it may proceed, and where it may end ;
especially since the experience of all governments has made it
evident, that there was hardly any thing altered in a settled state,
that was not followed by more alterations, and several incon
veniences attending these alterations ; not indeed at first fore
seen, but such as in the event made too great impressions on the
public to be accounted either small or inconsiderable. These
exceptions being therefore stripped of their plausibility and force
too, and retorted uponthe patrons of them, it follows, that not
withstanding all our harangues concerning our difference in
smaller things, as the phrase now is, and our contending about
shadows, and the like, made by some amongst us, who would fain
be personally popular at the public cost, and build themselves a
reputation with the rabble upon the ruins of the church, that by
all the obligations of oaths and gratitude they are bound to sup
port, as I am sure that supports them. It follows, I say, that for
the governors of our church after all this to be ready to yield up
the received constitutions of it, either to the infirmity, or impor-

ECCLESIASTICAL CONSTITUTIONS TO BE MAINTAINED. 515
tunity, or plausible exceptions (as their advocates are pleased to
term them) of our clamorous dissenters, is so far from being a
part either of the piety or prudence of those governors, that it is
the fear of many both pious and prudent too, that in the end it
will be like to prove no other than the permitting of a thief to
come into the house, only to avoid the noise and trouble of his
knocking at the door. And thus much for the first thing pro
posed ; which was to consider and examine the pretences alleged
by dissenters for our quitting or yielding up any of our ecclesias
tical constitutions.
II. I come to show now the second thing, which is, what are
naturally like to be the consequences of such a tame resignation. In
order to which I shall consider these two things. 1. What the
temper and dispositions of those men who press so much for com
pliances have usually been. 2. What the effects and conse
quences of such compliances or relaxations have been formerly.
1. And first for the temper of those men. This certainly
should be considered ; and if it ought to give any force to their
demands, it ought to be extremely peaceable and impartial. But
are there any qualities incident to the nature of man, that these
persons are further from ? For did they treat the governors of the
church with any other appellation, but that of priests of Baal,
idolaters, persecuting Nimrods, formalists, dumb dogs, proud
popish prelates, haters of God and good men, &c. ? I say, is not
this their usual dialect ? And can we imagine that the spirit of
Christianity can suggest such language and expressions? Is it
possible that where true religion governs in the heart, it should
thus utter itself by the mouth ? And to show yet further that
this temper can manifest itself by actions as well as words, did
not these who now plead conscience against law, persecute,
plunder, kill, and "murder those who pleaded and followed con
science according to law ? And can any one assure the government
that they will not under the same circumstances do again the same
things? And for their impartiality, did they ever grant allow
ance or toleration to any that were dissenters from them ? The
presbyter would grant none, and so much has he given the world
under his own hand, in those many clamorous libels, and that
spawn of pamphlets composed on that subject. And when his
younger brother, the more able and more successful sectarist of
the two, had undermined him, and introduced toleration, yet still
episcopacy as well as popery stood expressly excepted from any
benefit by it, or part in it. This is the way and temper of the
persons we have to deal with ; and what pity is it that the whole
government, both ecclesiastical and civil, should not lean to and
bear with them ! A faction that will be sure to requite such a
favour once done them, by using it to the reproach and ruin of
them that did it. And thus having given some short account of

516 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxiv.
the temper and disposition of these men, the next thing is to
consider, ..
2 What the effect and consequences of such compliances or
relaxations have been heretofore. And for this I appeal to the
judgment, reading, and experience of all, who have in any mea
sure applied themselves to the observation of men and things,
whether they ever yet found that any who ever pressed for
indulgences and forbearances, rested in them once granted, with
out proceeding any further? None ever yet did, but used them
only as an act and instrument to get into power, and make every
concession a step to a further demand ; since every grant renders
the person to whom it is made so much the more considerable,
when he thinks fit to ask more. To grant is to give ground;
and such persons ask some things only in order to their getting
others without asking ; for no other encroachers upon or enemies
to any public constitution ask all at first ; sedition itself is modest
in the dawn, and only toleration may be petitioned, where no
thing less than empire is designed. The nature of man acts the
same way, whether in matters civil or ecclesiastical ; and can we
easily forget the methods by which that violent faction grew
upon the throne ? Did not the facility and too fatal mercy of a
late prince embolden their impudence, instead of satisfying their
desires ? Was not every concession, every remission of his own
right, so far from allaying the fury of their greedy appetites, that,
like a breakfast, it rather called up their 'stomachs, and fitted
them for a dinner? Did not craving still grow upon granting,
till nothing remained to be asked on one side, or given on the
other, but the life of the owner? Thus it was with the state;
and I would fain hear any solid reason to prove that it will not
happen alike to the church : for how has the papacy grown to
that surprising height, and assumed such an extravagant power
over sovereign princes, but by taking advantages from their own
grants and favours to that see ? Which still took occasion from
them to raise herself gradually to further pretences, till courtesy
quickly passed into claim, and what was gotten by petition, was
held by prerogative ; so that at length insolence, grown big and
bold with success, knew no bounds, but trampled upon the necks
of emperors, controlled the sceptre with the crosier, and in the
face of the world openly avowed a superiority and preeminence
over crowned heads. Thus grew the papacy, and by the same
way will also grow other sects, for there is a papacy in every
sect or faction, for they all design the same height and grandeur,
though the pope alone has had the fortune to compass it. And
thus having shown what have been the effects of such concessions
heretofore, as well as described the temper of the persons who
now press for them, I suppose it will not be very difficult for us
to judge what are like to be the future effects and consequences
of the same amongst ourselves; concerning which, I shall lay

ECCLESIASTICAL CONSTITUTIONS TO BE MAINTAINED. 517
down this assertion; that what effects and consequences any
thing had formerly, and what in its own nature it tends to, and
is apt to produce, it is infinitely sottish and irrational to imagine
or suppose that it will not produce and cause in the world for the
future ; and, I believe, hardly any nation but ours would suffer
the same cheat to be trumped upon it twice immediately together.
Every society in the world subsists in the strength of certain
laws, customs, and received usages uniting the several parts of it
into one body. And accordingly the parting with any of these
laws or customs is a real dissolution of the continuity, and con
sequently a partial destruction of the whole. It certainly shakes
and weakens all the fabric, and weakness is but destruction
begun ; it tends to it, and naturally ends in it ; as every disease
of the body will be death, and no mischief cures itself. But to
pass by arguments deduced from the general nature of things, to
the same made evident to sense in particular instances, let us first
of all suppose our dissenters to be dealt with upon terms of com
prehension (as they call it), and taken into the communion of the
church, without submitting to the present conditions of its com
munion, or any necessary obligation to obey the established rules
of it, then these things must follow.
First, that men shall come into the national ministry full of
their covenanting rebellious principles, even keen upon their
spirits, and such as raised and carried on the late fatal war. Then
will also follow, that in the same diocese, sometimes in the very
same town, some shall use the surplice, and others not ; each
shall have their parties prosecuting one another with the bitterest
hatred and animosities ; some in the same church, and at the
same time, shall receive the sacrament kneeling, some standing,
and others probably sitting ; some shall make use of the cross in
baptism, and others shall not only not use it themselves, but also
inveigh and preach against those who do ; some shall preach this
part, others that, and some none at all. And where, as in cathe
drals, they cannot avoid the hearing of it read by others, they
shall come into the church when it is done, and stepping into the
pulpit, conceive a long, crude, extemporary prayer, in reproach
of all those excellent ones just offered up before. Nay, in the
same cathedral you shall see one prebend in a surplice, another
in a long coat or tunic, and in performance of the service, some
standing up at the creed, the doxology, or the reading of the
gospel, others sitting, and perhaps laughing and winking upon
their fellow schismatics in contempt of those who practise the
decent order of the church : and from hence the mischief shall
pass to the people, dividing them into parties and factions, so
that some shall come to the assembly of the saints, only to hear
a favourite preacher, and for ever after be sure to be absent. I
will give no countenance, says one, to the formalist ; nor will I,
says another, with much better reason, give ear to the schismatic :
2X

518 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxrr.
all this while the church is rent in pieces, and the common enemy
gratified. And these are some of the effects of comprehension;
nor indeed could any other be expected from a project so nearly
allied to fatal forty-one ; so that I dare avow, that to bring in
comprehension, is in plain terms, nothing less than to establish a
schism in the church by law, and settle a plague in the bowels of
it, that shall eat out the very heart and soul ; so far consume the
vitals and spirits of it, that in the compass of a very few years,
it shall scarce have any visible being or subsistence, or so much
as the face of a national church to show.
But from comprehension let us pass to toleration, that is, from
a plague within the church, to a plague round about it. And is
it possible for the church to continue sound, or indeed so much
as to breathe, in either of these cases ? Toleration is the very
pulling up the flood-gates, and breaking open the fountains of
the great deep, to pour in a deluge of wickedness, heresy, and
blasphemy upon the church. The law of God commands men
to profess and practise the Christian religion ; the law of man in
this case will bear you out, though of none, or of one of your
own choice. Therefore, a hundred different religions at least
shall, with a bare face and a high hand, bid defiance to the Chris
tian ; some of which, perhaps, shall deny the godhead of Christ,
some the reality of his manhood, some the resurrection, and
others the torments of hell. Some shall assert the eternity of
the world, and the like, and all this by authentic allowance of
law. Upon this footing it shall be safe for every broacher of
new heresy to gain as many proselytes to it as he can ; and there
is none of them all, though never so absurd, impious, and blas
phemous, but shall have proselytes and professors more or less ;
and what a large part of the nation must this necessarily draw
in ! So that as number and novelty easily run down truth and
paucity for a while, the orthodox part of the nation, the church,
will quickly be borne down, and swallowed up. And since it is
impossible for government or society to subsist where there is
no bond or cement of religion to hold it together, confusion
must needs follow. And since it is equally impossible for con
fusion to last long, but that it must at last settle into something,
that will and must be popery, infallibly, irresistibly ; for the
church of England being once extinct, no other sect or church
hats any bottom or foundation, or indeed any tolerable pretence
to set up upon, but that. And that this deduction of things is
neither inconsequent nor precarious, we may be assured from the
papists themselves ; for did not their late agent, who lost his life
in their service, and whose letters are so well known, tell us in one
of them, " that the way by which he intended to have popery
brought in was by toleration ; and that if an act for a general liberty
of conscience could be obtained, it would give the greatest blow to
the protestant religion here, that ever it received since its birth ?"

ECCLESIASTICAL CONSTITUTIONS TO BE MAINTAINED. 519
Did he not also complain, "that all their disappointments, miseries,
and hazards were owing to the fatal revocation (as he calls it) of
the king's declaration for liberty of conscience?" And lastly,
does he not affirm, "that all the advantage they expected to
make, was by the help of the nonconformists, presbyterians, in
dependents, and other sects ?" I purposely use his own words ;
and shall we not think that the papists themselves knew what
were the properest and most effectual means for the prosecution
of their own interest? So that let all our separatists and dis
senters know that they themselves are the pope's artificers, to
carry on his work, and do that for him which he cannot do for
himself. They are his harbingers and forerunners, to prepare
and make plain a way for him to come amongst us. Thus they,
even they, who are the most clamorous declaimers against popery,
are the surest and most industrious factors for it. It is the
weakening the church of England by their separation from it, and
their invectives against it, which gives Rome a handle to attack
it, thus weakened to her hands, with victory and success. The
thief first breaks the hedge of the vineyard, to filch away per
haps but a few clusters, but the wild boar enters the same breach,
and makes havoc of all.
As for the church of England, whatsoever fate may attend it,
this may amd must be said of it, that it is a church which claims
no independent secular power, but, like a poor orphan, exposed
naked and friendless to the world, pretends to no other help but
the goodness of God, the piety of its principles, and the justice
of its own cause to maintain it. A church not born into the
world with teeth amd talons like popery and presbytery, but like
a lamb innocent, and defenceless, and silent, not only under the
shearer, but under the butcher too ; a church which, as it is
obedient to the civil powers, without any treacherous distinctions
or reverses, so would be glad to have the countenance and pro
tection of that power ; and though it cannot be protected by it,
is yet resolved to be peaceable and quiet under it ; and while it
parts with all, to hold fast its integrity. And if God should for
the nation's unworthy and ungrateful usage of so excellent a
church, so pure, so peaceable a religion, bereave us of it, by
letting in the tyranny and superstition of another, it is pity but
it should come in its full force and power. And then I hope
that such as have betrayed and enslaved their country, will con
sider that there is a temporal as well as ecclesiastical interest
concerned in the case ; that there are lands to be converted as
well as heretics ; and those who pretend they can with a word's
speaking change the substance of some things, can with as much
ease alter the properties of others. God's will be done in all
things ; but if popery ever comes in by English hands, we need
not doubt but it will fully pay the score of those who bring
it in.

520 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxiv.
III. I come now to the third and last thing proposed, which
was to show what influence and efficacy a strict adherence to the
constitutions ofthe church, and an absolute refusal to part with any
of them, is like to have upon the settlement of the church, and the
purity of the gospel amongst us; and for this I shall point out
three ways by which it tends effectually to procure such a settle
ment. 1. By being the grand and most sovereign means to cause and
preserve unity in the church. The psalmist mentions this as one
of the noblest and greatest excellencies 6f the Jewish church,
Psalm cxxii. 3, " that it was built as a city that is at unity in
itself." Unity gives strength, and strength continuance. The
catholics abroad frequently tell us, that if we could be united
amongst ourselves, we should be a formidable church indeed;
and for this reason there was none they so mortally hated, as the
late renowned archbishop and martyr, whose whole endeavour
was to establish a settled uniformity in all the British churches.
For his zeal and activity in which glorious attempt, the presby-
terians cut him off according to the papists' hearts' desire. Now
a resolution to keep all the constitutions of the church, the parts
of its society, and conditions of its communion entire, without
lopping any of them, must needs unite all the ministers and
members of it, while it engages them (as the apostle so passion
ately exhorts his Corinthians, 1 Cor. i. 10) to " speak all the same
thing ;" but if any one is indulged in the omission of the least
thing enjoined, they cannot be said to " speak all the same thing."
In which case, besides the deformity of the thing itself, that
where the worship is the same, the manner of performing it
should be so different ; this difference of practice will also certainly
produce an irreconcileable division of minds, since such diversity
cannot be imagined to proceed from any other thing than an
opinion that one man understands amd does his duty after a
better and more spiritual manner than another, and consequently
has the start of his neighbour or fellow minister, either in point
of judgment or devotion, in neither of which are men to allow
precedency, especially when it comes once to be contested.
Unity without uniformity, is like essence without existence, a
mere word and a notion, and nowhere to be found in nature.
2. A strict adherence to the constitutions of the church is a
direct way to settle it, by begetting in her enemies themselves
an opinion of the goodness and requisiteness of those ways, for
which they see the government and ministry of the church so
concerned, that they can by no means be brought to recede from
them. Let factious persons pretend what they will outwardly,
yet they cannot but reason with themselves inwardly, that cer
tainly there must be something more than ordinary in those
things, that men of parts, reason, and good lives, so strenuously
tontend for, and so tenaciously adhere to. For it is not natural

ECCLESIASTICAL CONSTITUTIONS TO BE MAINTAINED. 521
to suppose that serious men will or can be resolute for trifles,
fight for straws, and encounter the fiercest opposition for such
things, as all the interests of piety and religion may be equally
provided for, whether the church retains or parts with them.
This is unnatural and impious: and on the other side, let none
think the people will have any reverence for that, for which the
pastors of the church themselves show an indifference. And
here let me mention a great, but sad truth, not so fit to be spoken
as to be sighed out by every true son and lover of the church,
that the wounds the church of England now bleeds by, she ha^
received "in the house of her friends," her false, undermining
friends ; and that nonconformity, and a separation from it, and a
contempt of the excellent constitution of it, have proceeded from
nothing more, than from the partial, treacherous, half conformity
of many of its own ministers ; the surplice sometimes worn, and
oftener laid aside ; the liturgy so read, as if they were ashamed
of it ; the service so curtailed, as if the people were to have but
the tenth of that for which they paid their own tenths ; the
ecclesiastical habit neglected, the sacrament indecently admin
istered, the furniture of the altar abused, and the table of the
Lord profaned. These and the like vile passages have made
many nonconformists to the church, by their conformity to their
minister. It was an observation of a judicious prelate, that of
all the sorts of enemies that the church had, there were none so
devilish and pernicious, and likely to prove so fatal to it, as the
conforming puritan. It was a great truth, and not long after
ratified by dreadful experience ; for if you would know what the
conforming puritan is, he is one that lives by the altar, and turns
his back upon it ; one that catches at the preferments of the
church, but hates the discipline and orders of it ; one that prac
tises conformity as popery, takes oaths and tests with an inward
abhorrence of what he does for the present, and a resolution to I
act quite contrary when occasion serves ; one who during his '
conformity will be sure to be known by such a distinguishing -
badge as shall point him out to and secure his credit with the j
fanaticad brotherhood ; one that still declines reading the church
service himself, leaving the work to curates and readers, thereby
to keep up an advantageous interest with thriving, seditious
tradesmen, and groaning, ignorant, but rich widows ; one that in
the midst of conformity thinks of a turn, and is careful to behave
himself as not to outshoot his home, but to stand right and fair,
in case a revolution should bring fanaticism again into fashion,
which it is more than possible he secretly wishes for.
These and the like are the principles that act and govern the |
conforming puritan ; who, in a word, is nothing else but ambi
tion, avarice, and hypocrisy, serving all the real interests of
schism and faction in the church's livery.
Now if there be any such here (as I hope there are none),'
Vol. IV.— 66 2x2

522 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxiv.
however he may sooth up and flatter himself, yet when he hears
of such and such of his neighbours, parishioners, or acquaintance
running to conventicles, such and such turned quakers, others
fallen off to popery ; and lastly, when the noise of the dreadful
national disturbances and dangers shall ring about his ears, let
him lay his hand upon his heart and say, " It is I, that by con
forming by halves, and by treacherously prevaricating with my
duty, so solemnly sworn to ; I, that by bringing a contempt upon
the service and order of the purest and best constituted church
in the world, slabbering over the one, and slighting the other,
have scandalized and tossed a stumbling-block before the neigh
bourhood, and have been the cause of this man's faction, that
man's quakerism, the other's popery, and thereby have in my
proportion contributed to those convulsions that now so terribly
shake and threaten both church and state." I say, let him take
his share of this horrid guilt, for God and man must lay it at his
door ; it is the genuine result of his actions ; it is his own ; and
will stick faster and closer to him, than to be thrown off by him
like his surplice.
3. And lastly, a strict adherence to the rules of the church,
without yielding to any abatement in favour of the dissenters, is
the way to settle and establish it, by possessing its enemies with
an awful esteem of the conscience and courage of the governors
and ministers of it. For if the things under debate be given up
to the adversary, it must be upon one of these two accounts;
either, first, that the persons who thus yield them up judge them
unfit to be retained : or secondly, that they find themselves not
able to retain them. One or both of these of necessity must be
implied in such a yieldance.
In the first case then our dissenters will cry out, Where has
been the conscience of our church governors for so many years,
in imposing and insisting on those things which they themselves
now acknowledge and confess not fit to be insisted upon ? And
is not this at once to own all the libellous charges and invectives
which the nonconformists have been so long pursuing our church
with ? Is not this to fling dirt upon the government of it, ever
since the Reformation ? Nay, does not the same dirt fall upon
the very reformers themselves, who first put our church into that
order it is in at present, and died for it when they had done ?
Such therefore as are diposed to humour these dissenters, by
giving up any of the constitutions of our church, should do well
to consider what and how much is imported by such an act ; and
this they shall find to be no less than a tacit acknowledgment of
the truth and justice of all those pleas by which our adversaries
have been contending for such a cession all along. The truth is,
it will do a great deal towards the removal of the charge of
schism from their doors to ours, by representing the grounds of
their separation from us, hitherto lawful at the least. For the

ECCLESIASTICAL CONSTITUTIONS TO BE MAINTAINED. 523
whole state of the matter between us lies in a very little com
pass; that either the church of England enjoins something un
lawful as the condition of her communion, and then she is
schismatical; or there is nothing unlawful enjoined by her, and
then those that separate from her are schismatics : and till they
prove that the church of England requires of such as communi
cate with her, either the belief of something false, or the practice
of something impious, it is impossible to prove the unlawfulness
of those things that she makes the condition ofher communion, and
consequently to free those that separate from the charge of schism.
Now while this is the persuasion of the governors of our
church concerning these things, the world cannot but look upon
them in their unmoveable adherence to them, as acting like men
of conscience, and, which is next to it, like men of courage.
The reputation of which two qualities in our bishops will do
more to the daunting the church's enemies, than all their con
cessions can do to the reconciling of them. Courage awes an
enemy, and backed with conscience, confounds him. He that
has law on his side, and resolves not to yield, takes the directest
way to be yielded to. For where an enemy sees resolution, he
supposes strength ; but to yield is to confess weakness, and con
sequently to embolden opposition. And I believe it will be one
day found, that nothing has contributed more to make the dis
senting nonconforming party considerable, than their being
thought so. It has been our courting and treating with them,
that has made them stand upon their own terms, instead of
coming over to ours. And here I shall shut up this consideration
with one remark, and it is about the council of Trent. The
design of which councd, in all the princes that were so earnest
for the calling it, was to humble and reduce the power of the
papacy ; and great amd fierce opposition was made against it all
along by the prelates and ambassadors of those princes ; but so far
were they from prevailing, that the papacy weathered out the
storm, and fixed itself deeper and stronger than ever it was
before. But what method did it take thus to settle itself?
Why, in a word, no other than a positive resolution not to yield
or part with any thing ; not to give way either to the importunity
or plausible exceptions, nor, which is more, to the power of those
princes. So that (as the writer of the history of the council
observes) notwithstanding all those violent blusters and assaults
made on every side against the papal power, yet in the end the
patience and resolution of the legates overcame all.
Now what may we gather from hence ? Why surely this very
naturally; that if courage and resolution should be of such force
to support a bad cause, it cannot be of less to maintain and carry
on a good one ; and if this could long prop up a rotten building,
that had no foundation, why may it not only strengthen, but
even perpetuate that which has so firm a one as the church of

524 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxiv. ^
England stands upon ? And now to sum up all, could St. Paul
find it necessary to take such a peremptory course with those er
roneous dissenters in the church of Galatia, as " not to give place to
them, no, not for an hour ;" and is it not more necessary for us,
where the pretences for schism are less plausible, and the persons
perverted by it more numerous ? Let us briefly lay together the
reasons and arguments why we should deal with our dissenters, as
St. Paul did with those, not to give them place at all, because,
1st. By our yielding or giving place to them, we have no
rational ground to conclude we shall gain them, but rather en
courage them to encroach upon us by further demands ; since
the experience of all governments has found concessions so far
from quieting dissenters, that they have only animated them to
greater and fiercer contentions.
2dly. By our yielding or giving place to them, we make the
established laws (in which these men can neither prove injustice
nor inexpedience) submit to them, who in duty, reason, and con
science, are bound to obey those laws.
3dly. By our yielding or giving place to them, we grant to
those, who being themselves in power, never thought it reason
able to grant the same to others in the same case.
4thly. By our yielding or giving place to them, we bring a
pernicious incurable evil into the church, if it be by a compre
hension ; or spread a fatal contagion round about it, if it be by
toleration. 5thly. By our yielding to these men in a way of comprehension,
we bring those into the church who once destroyed and pulled it
down as unlawful and unchristian, and never yet renounced the
principles by which they did so : nor (is it to be feared) ever will.
6thly. By such a comprehension we endeavour to satisfy those
persons, who could never yet agree among themselves about any
one thing or constitution in which they would all rest satisfied.
7thly. By indulging them this way, we act partially, in gratify
ing one sect, who can pretend to no favour, but what others may
as justly claim who are not comprehended ; and withal impru
dently, in indulging one party, who will do us no good, to the
exasperation of many more who have a greater power to do us
hurt. 8thly. By such a concession we sacrifice the constitutions of
our church to the will and humour of those whom the church
has no need of, neither their abilities, parts, piety, or interest, nor
any thing else belonging to them considered.
9thly. And lastly, by such a course we open the mouths of
the Romish party against us ; who will still be reproaching us for
going from their church to a constitution that we ourselves now
think fit to relinquish, by altering her discipline and the terms of
her communion ; and may justly ask us where, and in what kind
of church or constitution, we intend finally to fix.

y
cclesiastical constitutions to be maintained. 525
These, among many more, are the reasons why we contend,
that our dissenters are not to be given place to.
But after all this, may it not be asked, whether it were not
better to submit to the aforementioned inconveniences, rather
than the church should be utterly ruined? To this I answer,
that the case is fallaciously put, and supposes that if these things
were submitted to, the church will not be ruined, which I deny ;
and upon the foregoing grounds affirm it to be much more
probable that it will. To which I add, that of the two, it is
much better that the church should be run down by a rude vio
lence overpowering it, than to be given up by our own act and
consent. For the first can only take away its revenues, and
discourage or suppress the public exercise of its discipline, but
cannot destroy its constitutions ; the latter does. The former
will be our calamity, but the latter, being the effect of our own
consent, will render us inexcusable to all, both our friends and
enemies, and ourselves too ; and in the midst of our desolation
leave us not so much as the conscience of a good cause to com
fort us.
To explain which by instance : suppose the land overrun by a
foreign invasion, yet still the body of the laws of England may
be said to remain entire, though the execution of them be super
seded ; but if they be cancelled by act of parliament, they cease
to be, or to be called any longer the laws of England. In like
manner, if our church governors and the clergy concur not to
the disannulling of the canons, rules, and orders of the -church,
the constitution of it will still remain, though the condition of
it be obscured by persecution, and perhaps disabled from showing
itself in a national body ; just as it fared with it in the late re
bellion : and who knows, but if force and rapine should again
bring it into the same condition, the goodness of God may again
,give it the like resurrection ? but if we surrender it up ourselves,
to us it is dead, and past all recovery.
And therefore what remains now, but that we implore the
continued protection of the Almighty upon a church, by such a
miracle restored to us, and (all things considered) by as great a
miracle preserved hitherto amongst us, that he would defeat its
enemies, and increase its friends ; and settle it upon such foun
dations of purity, peace, and order, that " the gates of hell may
not prevail against it."

626
SERMON XXXV.
the certainty of a future judgment.
[Preached at St. Mary's, Oxon.]
2 Corinthians v. 10.
We must all appear before tlie judgment seat of Christ ; that every
one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he
hath done, whether it be good or bad.
Besides instruction and exhortation, which have never bjeen
wanting (at least in this last age) to those of this church, there
are but two ways or means more, in the ordinary course of divine
providence, by which the reasonable creature is to be wrought
upon ; I mean, by which man is either to be taken off from
the forbidden evils he is inclined to, or drawn to the com
manded good he is averse from : and those two are, the hope of
a reward for one, and the fear of punishment for the other ; that
those who have neither ingenuity nor gratitude, nor will be
allured to piety and obedience by the fruition of God's mercies,
may yet, out of a self-love at least, and impatience of suffering,
be frighted from disobedience and profaneness by feeling of God's
judgments. And truly, if we of this nation had been so in
genuous and well-natured a people as that the former of these (I
mean God's mercies) would have prevailed with us, we had long
since been inwardly the best, as we were outwardly the happiest,
of all nations. For never was there any people since the crea
tion of mankind, that enjoyed, for so long time together, so
many of God's mercies of all kinds and degrees, and that with
so many aggravating circumstances to improve and endear them
to us, as we did, whilst, for almost a century together, God
courted us, and wooed us, as it were, without interruption or in
termission, by word and deed, by peace and plenty, and by all
sorts both of temporal and spiritual expressions of his love,
which were possible for a creator to make to a creature : so that
what God said once to the church and nation of the Jews, he
might have said unto us not long since, Isaiah v. 4, viz. " What
could I have done more unto my vineyard ?" What could I have
done more, in love and kindness to the church of England, than
I have done ? Why should you be used kindly any more ? You
will revolt more, you will but abuse my goodness, and weary my
patience, and turn my grace into wantonness, as much or more
hereafter than you have done already. And therefore God
having, according to his usual method, first, and so long tried all

THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT. 527
fair means to win us and keep us to him, and all in vain, most of
us still growing the worse, the better we were used by him : he
was compelled at last (after many warnings and threatenings to
no purpose), he was compelled, I say, (for he delights not in the
affliction of any creature,) to make use of his other, and that
which is usually his most effectual way of working upon man, I
mean the way of his judgments : and that, first, by taking away
alibis blessings, which we had so long and so unthankfully abused;
and secondly, by making us feel, what we would not fear, the
power and effects of his wrath, which we had before so often
and so long provoked and despised ; so that the measure of the
afflictions we lately suffered, though it will still fall short of the
measure jpi our sins, yet is it correspondent in many respects to
the measure of that happiness we formerly enjoyed : our peace
being turned into war, our plenty into scarcity, our health into
sickness, our strength into weakness, our religion into hypocrisy
on the one side, and profaneness on the other ; and we ourselves,
who before had nothing almost to wish for, had in those times
nothing almost that we could hope for, being then the object of
scorn or pity, who were before the object of envy and admira
tion to all our neighbouring kingdoms. And now one would be
lieve the dismal account of those times, which our own sins
brought upon us, should have some good effect on our lives and
conversations ; one would think, I say, that if our foreheads were
not of" brass, our necks iron, and our hearts adamant, we should
either have bended or broken with these sufferings ; and that
the bitterness of our punishment would by this time have so far
exceeded the sweetness of our sins, that we should willingly have
quitted the one, upon condition we might have been (as certainly
we should have been) delivered from the other. But alas!
such is commonly either the blindness of our minds, the
hardness of our hearts, or the searedness of our consciences,
or rather the spiritual lethargy (as I may so term ¦ it) of our
souls, that most of us sleep in as great security in the midst
of all manner of judgments, as Jonas did in the midst of that
storm which his own disobedience had raised. Or if perhaps
we are awake with our eyes, yet our hearts as Nabal's was, are
dead within us. So that to all our other miseries, this plague,
which is the greatest any man can have in this world, is added
also ; I mean, " that seeing we should not see ; and hearing, we
should not hear; and understanding, we should not perceive;"
nay, that even feeling, we should not feel, or at least not feel
what most hurts us ; or what indeed was, is, and will be the true
and only cause of our sufferings. When it comes to pass, that
very few of us are like David, the better, but many thousands
of us, like Ahaz, the worse, since we were afflicted ; having, like
the ground, often drank up both "the former and latter rain;"
the former of God's mercies, and the latter of his judgments :

528 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxv.
and yet bring forth nothing but briers and thorns, nothing but
hypocrisy and profaneness; and consequently must needs be
(as the ground was) "nigh unto cursing," and I pray God
our end be not burning. For to men so heavily plagued, and
yet for all that so incorrigibly wicked, as many of us are, what
remains but (as St. Paul tells us) " a fearful expectation of judg
ment ?" And by judgment he means not any temporal or worldly
judgment, but the conclusion, or rather consummation of all our
miseries here, with hell and damnation itself hereafter. And
indeed it is the fearful expectation of that future judgment, or
nothing, that must work upon obstinate offenders. The truth
is, our spiritual lethargy is not curable, but by a spiritual fever,
and it must be the horror of an awakened and affrighted con
science, that must melt and mollify the hardness of our hearts.
And therefore have I made choice of this argument to discourse
on at this time, as being persuaded, that if any thing at a\\ will
humble us, it must be the apprehension of and meditation on the
last judgment ; and this I hope, by God's blessing, may be effec
tual, in some measure, to this purpose : for surely no man can be
so fast asleep in his sins, but the sounding of the last trumpet in
his ears may startle him ; neither can any man be running so fast
or so furiously in the broad way that leadeth to destruction, but
the flashing of hell fire in his face may put him to a stand.
And therefore let all profane persons or hypocrites, that live in
•any known sin or evil course of life, attend with fear and
trembling to this most terrible, and yet most infallible oracle of
the great God. " For we must all appear before the judgment
seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his
body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."
These words I shall not now consider (as they may be) as matter
of consolation to the righteous ; but only, upon this occasion,
handle them in the severer sense, or that of terror only ; and from
these words thus considered, I shall endeavour (waving all need
less criticisms),
I. To convince every man's conscience, that there shall be in
deed such an appearance, or such a general trial or doom of all
mankind after this fife, as is here spoken of.
II. I shall try to make clear to every one of our understand
ings, what manner of appearance, or trial, this shall be, as also
before whom, and in what form of proceeding, together with the
issue, effects, and consequences of it.
III. And lastly, I will, by way of application, do my best en
deavour to work upon every man's affections, by showing you
how much all men (of what quality and condition soever they
are), especially the wicked and ungodly, are concerned in it ; and
consequently how much it imports all men, especially such men,
to think upon it, and prepare for it, that by a timely repentance
they may prevent the woful effects of it.

¦ THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT. 529
I. To begin then with the first of these general heads, in which
I am to convince every man's conscience that there shall be indeed
such an appearance, or such a general trial or doom of all mankind,
after this life, as is here spoken of: neither let any man think this
purpose unnecessary or superfluous, as if if supposed a doubt,
where none was, by making a question of a principle ; for though
the affirmative of this proposition (viz. that there shall be cer
tainly such a doom or judgment after this life) be, or ought to
be, a principle undeniable, indisputable, and consequently un
questionable, amongst such as are truly Christians ; yet because,
as St. Paul says of the Jews, " all are not Jews that are Jews
outwardly ;" so may I say too, that all are not Christians neither,
that are so outwardly ; and because many pretend to be of the
church that hardly believe all the articles of her creed ; lastly,
because there are some amongst us, that do not only live, but
talk, as if they thought there were no account to be given of
their sayings or doings after this life, or at least as' if they either
doubted or had forgotten this truth : for the satisfaction of all, it
is therefore expedient to rescue from disbelief and contempt this
fundamental article of our creed, viz. " that Christ shall come
again to judge both the quick and the dead." For proof of this
proposition against such as deny it, I desire only this fair postu-
latum, the acknowledgment of that truth, which is ordinarily
acquirable by the light of nature herself, viz. that there is a
God, or such a power as made us, and observes our actions ; and
granting this conclusion, I question not but to make it appear
even to "the most profatne persons, and that from the dictates of
their own reason, together with such notions as they have, or may
have, of the Deity by the light of nature itself, that there shall be
a trial or judgment of all men after this life, for; the things that
all and every one of them have done here in the flesh, and
that, 1. Because it is very agreeable to the nature of God.
2. Because it is also very consonant to the nature of the soul
of man.
3. Because it is necessary for the manifestation of the divine
justice. 4 Because the inequality and disproportion between actions
and events, merits and rewards, men's parts and their fortunes
here in this life, doth seem to require and exact such a judgment.
5. Because there is an inbred notion, or natural instinct and
apprehension in all men, that there will be such a judgment.
1. The truth of this doctrine is very applicable to the nature
of God ; for what can be more agreeable to the nature of the most
pure and powerful agent, than to draw and unite unto itself what
soever is like itself, as likewise to separate and remove from itself
whatsoever is unlike itself? Now what is like God, but that
which is good ? and what unliker him than evil ? And what is it
Vol. IV.— 67 2 Y

530 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXXV.
to unite the one to himself, but to reward? or to separate and
remove the other, but to punish ? And yet we see God neither
rewards all the good, nor punishes all the wicked in this world ;
there must be therefore a time hereafter, when both the one and
the other shall be performed, and that time is what I call the last
judgment. 2. The truth of this doctrine is very agreeable to the nature of
the soul of man, because otherwise the chief agent both in good
and evil should have little or no reward for the one, and little or
no punishment for the other. For the principal or chief agent in
all our actions (whether they be good or bad) is the soul ; the
body is but an organized instrument, or at most but an accessary
in either. And yet all rewards and punishments appointed for
good and evil by laws in this life, are bodily and sensual, at least
I am sure they are finite and mortal, and consequently no way
suitable or proportionable to the spiritual, immaterial, and im
mortal nature of the soul. That therefore the chief agent or
principal in all actions may have its reward or punishment propor
tionable and adequate to its own nature, it is necessary that at
one time or other there should be an inquisition and judgment,
whose effects, whether good or bad, may be spiritual and ever
lasting. Now if a judgment producing such effects cannot be
here in this fife, it must therefore necessarily be in another
hereafter. 3. It is not only requisite, but necessary, that there should be
a judgment after this life for the manifestation of the divine
justice : for though whatsoever God doth is just, and that because
God does it, yet does it not always appear to be so. Now God is
not only just in himself, but will appear to be so to others, and
will have his justice confessed and acknowledged, at one time or
other, by the hearts and consciences of all men. And though
the Creator is not obliged to account to the creature for the
manner how, or the reason why, he doth any thing ; yet if he
will have the creature convinced of a thing, that it is so or so, he
must needs some way or other, or at some time or other, make it
appear to the creature that it is so ; and therefore I say for this
reason it is necessary, that at some time or other there should be
a general, a public, and a formal trial, wherein the actions of
every particular man should be discovered to all in general, both
angels and men ; that so the actions being compared with the
issue, and the merit balanced with the reward, God might (as the
apostle says, Rom. iii. 4) " be justified when he judgeth," whether
he absolves or condemns, and that not only by those that stand by,
and are but the hearers of it, but even by those themselves that
are judged. One of the main ends therefore (as I humbly con
ceive ) why God hath appointed a day to judge all the world (as
the apostle speaks, Acts xvii. 31), is, to give the whole world
satisfaction, or to convince men and angels, whether they be

THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT. 531
good or bad, of the exact and precise integrity and impartiality
of the, divine justice in all and every one of the acts and effects
of it. And hence it is, that this general doom is called in scrip
ture, "the day of the revelation of the righteous judgment
of God ;" or the day wherein God will reveal and make it appear
that all his ways and all his judgments are righteous : though the
very being of a God implies holiness and power, and consequently
justice, yet the ways and means God makes use ofio show that
infinite justice are not always obvious ; though we know by his
nature it is impossible for him to be unjust, yet are there some
things, in which, though we search ever so diligently for the
manner- how they come to pass; yet I am apt to believe them
beyond the capacity of human nature, and the measure even of
divine revelation on this side the grave; for example, that "for
the offence of one, condemnation came upon all men," or that all
men became liable to eternal wrath, because one man had eaten
the forbidden fruit, is what we ought to deem exact truth, as
consonant to express scripture ; that tiie misery of all for the sin
of one would be a most just punishment, if God should inflict it ;
but then we may believe likewise, that the reasons of God's jus
tice in both these particulars are superior to the comprehension
of mortality, and not now fathomable. The like may be said in
regard of the punishment of finite and temporal sin with infinite
and eternal torment; which though it be true, that it shall be
so, and consequently just that it should be so ; yet I believe it
would perplex the wisest man living to give a satisfactory answer
(according to our notions of equity and justice) how in equity or
justice it can be so. And therefore in regard of these, and such
other Svavoijta, or hard truths as these are, it is, that St. Paul
(though bred at the feet of Gamaliel, and rapt up into the third-
heaven, amd consequently knowing as much or more of God than
ever man did) cries out, as one overwhelmed in admiration and
astonishment, Rom. xi. 33, " 0 the depth of the riches both
of the wisdom and knowledge of God ! how unsearchable are his
judgments, and his ways past finding out !" But at the day of
judgment, the reason and equity even of these and of all other
now seeming hard sayings, shall be disclosed to us, that the
righteousness of all God's ways, and the impartiality of his deal
ings with the sons of men, may be so clearly manifested to all,
that the very reprobates themselves shall be forced to see and
acknowledge their own damnation to be most just, both in regard
to the duration and intenseness of it, having not so much as the
comfort of an excuse, nor any thing to accuse or complain of, but
their own folly and fault for their destruction. And thus you
see, in the third place, the necessity of a judgment after this life,
for the satisfaction of the world, for the conviction of the wicked,
and consequently for the full and Derfect manifestation of the
divine justice.

532 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXXV.
4. The strange disproportion and unsuitableness betwixt ac
tions and events, merits and rewards, men's parts and their, for
tune here in this life, doth seem to exact, as it were, at the hands
of a righteous God, that there should be a day of an after-reck
oning, to rectify this, which is in appearance so great a disorder
and confusion : and to put a real and a visible difference betwixt
the evil and the good, the holy and the profane ; for now there
seems to be none at all, it being long since the observation of one
of the wisest of men, Eccles. ix. 2, that " all things happen alike
unto all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked;
to the clean, and to the unclean : to him that sacrificeth, and to
him that sacrificeth not ; as is the good, so is the sinner ; and he
that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath." Nay, it were well if
it were no worse : but the same wise man tells us, Eccles. viii. 14,
" that there be just men, to whom it happens according to the
work of the wicked ; and there be wicked men, to whom it hap
pens according to the work of the righteous. For a just man,"
says he, Eccles. vii. 15, " many times perisheth in his righteous
ness, and a wicked man many times prolongs his life in his wick
edness." The self-evident truth of these propositions cannot be
questioned by any man (though they were not in holy writ) that
sees and observes the dispensation of good and bad things in this
life. To conclude ; we see that riches, honour, pleasure, and
whatsoever the foolish world calls good, they are for the most
part and in the greatest measure the portion of the worst of men :
whereas poverty, pain, and shame, and whatever else we usually
term evil, are for the most part and in the highest degree the lot
of the righteous ; Dives being a type, as it were, of the one, and
Lazarus of the other. There must therefore in all reason and
equity, be another audit, or time of account after this life, to the
end that, as Abraham said unto Dives, those that have received
good things in this life, and been evil, may be tormented ; and
those that have received evil things in this life, and been good,
may be comforted ; "for if in this life only good men had hope
in Christ, they were" (as the apostle tells us, 1 Cor. xv. 19) " of
all men most miserable." This argument drawn from the seem
ing unequal distribution of things here below, I mean the cala
mity of good men and the prosperity of bad men in this life, is
urged by the elder Pliny, and some few others of the heathen
moralists, to prove the non-existence of a God : for if, say they,
there be a God, he must needs be just and good ; and if he be
just and good, he would not, he could not suffer good men to be
unrewarded, and evil men unpunished ; much less could he or
would he endure, that evil men should thrive in and by their
wicked courses, and good men fare the worse for their goodness,
as in common experience we see they do. And truly if my con
clusions concerning the certainty of a judgment to come after
this life, were not true, this argument of theirs would shrewdly

THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT. 533
shake the first article and foundation of all our creed viz. the
being of a God. But supposing such a judgment 'to come.
wherem all good men shall finally and fully be rewarded, and
all wicked men finally and fully punished, we do at once vindi
cate the power, the wisdom, the providence, the justice, and con
sequently the very being and essence of God, from all blasphemy
and contradiction, notwithstanding any disproportion or incon
gruity whatever, that is or seems to be between actions and
events, merits and rewards, men's parts and their fortunes, here
in this life. And this is the fourth reason, why, granting there
is a God, we must necessarily grant likewise, that there shall be
a day of judgment.
5. The last reason I shall make use of, to necessitate the evi
dence and enforce the truth of the doctrine of a future judgment,
is that inborn and inbred notion and apprehension, which all men
have by nature, that there is such a thing, together with the gene
ral expectation of all men, that there will be such a thing : and
this reason, how slight soever it may appear to others, to me it
seems (what I hope I shall make it seem to you also) most effec
tual and convincing; for whatsoever it is that- all men think will
be, without doubt it shall be, because whatsoever all men agree
in, is the voice of nature itself, and consequently must be true :
for the dictates of nature are stronger than the probats of reason,
I mean of reason not abstracted, but as it is in us mortals ; and
therefore of all other arguments, that which is drawn from natu
ral impression and instinct is most forcible and concluding, and
the knowledge arising from such impression or. instinct, though
it be not so full and perfect, yet it is more certain and infallible
than any other knowledge whatsoever, arising from a man's own
fallible discourse and reasoning. I confess indeed that know
ledge, the produce of instinct and natural impression only, is not
so full, so perfect, nor perhaps so properly termed knowledge
(because the word scire properly denotes per causas scire), as that
which is concluded by demonstration, or drawn from an evident
connexion of one thing with another, or a consequence of one
thing from another ; because when a man knows any thing by
natural impression or instinct only, he knows not the reasons of
what he knows ; he knows oVt sati, that there is such a thing, but
not Siot i sati, why it is ; no, nor perhaps -ti sati, what it is ; I
mean not what it is in the exact or distinct nature of it neither ;
and yet for all that, this knowledge is (as far as it reaches) more
certain and infallible than any conclusion drawn from our own
reasoning and discourse can be. 1st. Because this inbred notion
or this knowledge which we have of any thing by natural im
pression or instinct, is not (as all other human or acquired know
ledge is) a conclusion made by us from our own discourse and
judgment, which is always fallible or subject unto error: but
it is a conclusion made in us by nature, or rather by the God of
2 y2

534 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxv.
nature himself, who can neither deceive nor be deceived; and
therefore whatsoever we know in this manner must needs be
certain. 2dly. Because, if the knowledge we have by our instinct were
not certain or infallible, this received and as yet undoubted
maxim, both in natural philosophy and divinity, viz. that God
and nature do nothing in vain, would not be true: for if that
were not so indeed, which all men in general, and every man in
particular is naturally inclined to believe to be so; then that
natural impression or instinct, whereby they are inclined to
think so, should be planted in them to no purpose; the affirm
ation of which is not only a reproach to nature, but a blasphemy
against God himself; because indeed that which we call nature
is but God's ordinary method of working in and by the creature.
3dly. That the knowledge which is ain effect of natural im
pression or instinct is indeed certain and infallible, will easily,
and clearly appear, if we but consider those creatures who have
not the use of reason, or of instruction, of revelation, of tra
dition, or of any other means of knowledge (excepting that of
sense), but this of instinct or natural impression only ; and yet
we see, that those irrational creatures have their knowledge
more immediately, more certainly, and more infallibly1, than any
man's deductions from his own discourse and reason. For
instance, who amongst us is there that doth or can know, his
enemy (after the clearest discovery he can make of him) so cer
tainly, or avoid him so suddenly, as the lark doth the hobby at
the first sight? What sick man, nay, what physician knows his
own disease, and the remedy for it, so exactly, as the dog knows
his vomit, and that which will procure it? What husbandman
knows his seasons more exactly, or observes them more duly or
punctually, than the stork, the crane, and the swallow ? Lastly,
(pardon the lowness of the similitude) what landlord or what
tenant foresees the ruin of his own house so certainly, or avoids
it so seasonably, as the vermin his inmates ? and yet the lark
never studied Machiavel, nor the dog Hippocrates, neither were1
the stork, the crane, or the swallow, ever taught by natural phi
losophy to distinguish seasons ; nor the vermin by judicial astro
logy to foresee casual and contingent events: but it has pleased
the all-wise and gracious Creator to supply the defects of reason
in these poor helpless animals, with a knowledge which, though
it be not so large and perfect, yet it is more certain and infal
lible, especially in those things that are necessary for the pre
servation of their existence and species, than any knowledge
attainable by men, by disquisition or speculation, because (as I
said before) it is a knowledge not gotten by, but infused in them
by God amd nature, who cannot err ; and such a knowledge as
this (I mean for the kind of it) is that which all men have of a
judgment to come, or of something to be suffered by evil doers

THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT. 535
after this life ; a knowledge, I say, which is planted in them,
and not learned by them, but originally in every man, and uni
versally in all men ; and whatsoever is so, must needs be taught
them by God and nature, and consequently cannot be erroneous
or uncertain. It is true indeed, that some particular men, or
some particular sort or sect of men, may believe and maintain
false and foolish opinions, such as have neither solidity of truth
in them, nor reality of object without them : but then such
opinions as these had their creation and production at first from
some one man's fancy, and from thence derived by education and
tradition, may afterwards infect many : and thus the opinion
and practice of idolatry, or the worship of more gods than one,
came into the world, and spread itself over most part of man
kind, for it was not so from the beginning. But the dictates
and impressions of nature do very much differ from conceits or
imaginations of fancy, and from traditional errors of custom and
education ; in the first place, because the dictates and im
pressions of nature are - not only general in most men, but
universal in adl men, whereas conceits of fancy, and traditional
errors of custom or education, flowing from thence, though they
may be, and often are consented to and believed by many, yet
none of them ever were or ever will be consented to and believed
by all. Thus were the philosophers of old, and thus are the
Christians at this day, divided into their several sects and heresies.
Secondly, The dictates and impressions of nature, as they are
universally in all men, so are they originally in every man with
out teaching. And hence it is that St. Paul tells us, Rom. ii.
14, that "the gentiles that had not the law" (he means that
were never taught the law as the Jews were) had yet notwith
standing that very law in regard to the fundamental notions of
piety, justice, and sobriety, written in all and every one of their
hearts by nature itself, and together with the law, by necessary
consequence, a belief and expectation of a reward for good and
punishment for evil after this life ; as appears by their " con
sciences accusing and excusing them," even for those things
which were not punishable or rewardable, nor perhaps discern
ible by any but themselves here in this world. Whence it fol
lows, that those notions of law and suggestions of conscience
(which St. Paul tells us were in all the gentiles without teach
ing) must needs be dictates and impressions of a simple and
uncorrupted nature.
Thirdly. The dictates and impressions of nature (in quantum
et quatenus), or as far as they are merely from nature, receive
neither addition nor diminution (as they may do either) from
other principles : as they are universally in all men without ex
ception, and originally in every man without instruction, so are
they equally and alike in all men without distinction, in the
Gentile as well as in the Jew, in the barbarian as well as in the

536 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxv.
Greek in the Pagan as well as in the Christian, and in those
that have no learning as well as in those that have ; whereas
opinion, arising from conceit of fancy, and knowledge, which is
the product of human reason, and faith itself, which is an effect
of and assent to divine revelation, are all of them stronger or
weaker, more or less in their several subjects, according to the
strength, measure, and working of the several principles from
whence they flow. And consequently they are none of them
equal in all men, nor any one of them equally at all times in
those that have them : but the other natural, impressive know
ledge is quite contrary ; such a knowledge as this is that appre
hension which all men have or would have (if their natural
impressions were not defaced in them) of a judgment to come, or
of a reward for the good and a punishment for the wicked after
this life ; for never was there any good man but hoped for it, or
any wicked man but at some time or other was afraid of it. In
a word, there was never in any age in the world, either nation
in general, or any one man in particular, that owned the being
of a God, but he acknowledged a judgment to come also ;
although the notion they perhaps had of it was but in a confused
and imperfect manner ; as appears by those Elysian fields, or
places of rest and happiness for the good, and Phlegethon and
Cocytus, those black and burning lakes of fire and brimstone,
the places of torment for the wicked after this life ; which the
poets or heathen divines speak of, as the general and received
opinion of all mankind, together with Minos, Rhadamanthus,
and jEacus, which were to be the judges ; Alecto, Megaera, and
Tisiphone, the fiends or furies which were to be the tormentors
of the damned.
This, I say, was the general and the constant doctrine and
opinion of the heathen ; which was registered, but not invented
by the poets ; being indeed in substance the same which we Chris
tians are now taught more perfectly by divine revelation, but was
always instilled by nature itself, though more obscurely and
imperfectly, into all mankind. Nay those very men themselves,
who both by their words and actions would make others believe
that they believed no God, do many times shake and tremble
upon the apprehension and expectation of some terrible thing or
other that is to come ; so that whilst they deny a judge with
their mouths, they acknowledge a judgment in their hearts. And
indeed bad men are not always so bold as they would seem to be,
nor so little afraid of God as they would have the world think
they are. For of all men, these atheists, that would be, when
ever they are in any great extremity or danger, have the poorest,
the basest, and the most dejected spirits. Give me a man of the
coldest and softest constitution, and let him be but innocent, and
he shall look death (I mean a present, an evident, a deliberate,
and an unavoidable death) with more courage and bravery in the

THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT. 537
face, than a man of the most fiery temper and most exalted
spirit, if he be a villain, or guilty of any horrid or heinous crime.
And what is or can be the reason of this, but that one is secure,
and the other is afraid of some terrible thing after death, which
can be no other but that general doom or judgment we now
speak of, the harbinger or forerunner whereof hath taken up his
lodging in the breasts and bosoms of all men ? And that is con
science, which hath always (unless it be asleep, or " seared" as
St. Paul calls it, " with a hot iron") one of its eyes upon sin here,
and the other upon punishment hereafter ; which whosoever tells
me he does not believe, he must pardon me if I tell him again,
that I do not believe him ; for it is impossible that those inborn
characters, that hand-writing of God and nature, I mean that
innate impression or instinct which all men have of a future
reward or punishment, should be utterly blotted out of any man ;
forgotten perhaps, or not thought upon, or defaced it may be, but
absolutely lost and annihilated it cannot be ; and therefore if
there be any man afraid or loath to own this truth, he betrays a
secret belief of it by his fears ; or if he do not now, he will do
so at some time or other hereafter.
But agadnst this which has been said, it may be objected, that
if the belief of a judgment to come were, as I affirm it to be, an
effect of natural impression or instinct, then it would be uni
versally equal in all, and consequently equal in every one of the
same kind ; for we see, say they, that all larks are equally afraid of
the hobby, and every particular lark as much at one time as at
another. Besides, it is apparent, that all men do not equally
believe this truth ; nay, it is to be feared, that some men do not
believe it at all ; and of those who do, some believe it at one
time more, amd less at another. And therefore that this belief
of a judgment to come (in whomsoever it is) is the effect of some
other cause, and not of natural impression or instinct.
To this objection I answer, that it is true indeed, that all in
bred and inborn impressions or instincts are universally and con
stantly equal in all particulars of the same kind ; and always
continue to be so in those creatures which are not capable of
either infection from without, or corruption from within. And
such are all living creatures besides man ; which neither sway
the rule of nature, nor are swerved from it, but are always
constantly and equally guided by it, as having no other principle
from without to corrupt or control it. But with men it is far other
wise ; for in them those notions of nature that are born with them
may and do receive augmentation or diminution, alteration or
Corruption from some other principles either without us or within
us. For instance, those inborn notions that there is a God, that
there will be a reward for those that live well, and punishment for
those that live ill ; and that we should do unto others as we would
have others do unto us, and the like, may and do receive aug-
Vol. IV.— 68

538 • dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxv.
mentation from divine revelation, and from right reason, and from
a good (either religious or moral) education and conversation ; so
that what was imprinted in us by nature may be and is improved
and confirmed in us by other principles ; and therefore I will not
deny, but a Christian may have a more constant, and more con
firmed, and more perfect knowledge both of a God and of a
judgment to come, and of that fundamental equity which ought
to be betwixt one man and another, than he that hath no know
ledge of these and the like things, but by the light of nature
only. And by the same reason one Christian may have a more
constant, distinct, and perfect knowledge of the same truths
than another Christian, according as the one may be more or less
enlightened by those higher principles than the other, or may
make a better or a worse use of them.
Again : as the knowledge we have by instinct may be augmented
and improved, confirmed and perfected ; so it may be lessened
and weakened, defaced and corrupted ; nay, and for a time so
obscured, as it may seem both to ourselves and others to be quite
extinguished, and that either by our own depraved reason, to
gether with our perverse will and affections from within us, or
by an evil education, or a worse conversation from without us,
which many times infuse such opinions (both concerning God and
ourselves) into us, as are quite contrary to and destructive of our
first notions ; and yet because they are more suitable to our per
verse will and affections, they are frequently received and
defended by our depraved reason against the light of nature itself.
As a man may easily perceive, that will but read attentively the
first and second chapters of St. Paul's epistle to the Romans,
where the apostle having laid it down for an undoubted conclu
sion, that the law (he means the moral law), or the fundamental
notions of our duty towards God and man, was written by
nature in the heart, of all the gentiles, and has proved it to be so,
because their consciences did justify them when they did well,
and accuse them when they did ill ; yet he affirms likewise, that
this very law (though written in their hearts by nature) was so
obscured and almost quite erased from their judgment by their
more perverse wills and affections, that as they worshipped beasts
for God, so they made beasts of themselves, and behaved them
selves worse than beasts to one another. ..This behaviour does
no way invalidate the forcibleness of this argument, but rather
intimates a deep stupefaction, by a long inveterate habit of ill,
fallen on their minds. So that, to conclude this point, there may
be and is a natural knowledge in all men of a future judgment, as
well as the existence of a God ; though in some perhaps the
impression of either of these truths is not always active or
operative ; for we see that some men are grown to such a habit
of sensuality, or brutality, that they do nothing almost according
to reason ; and yet I hope that no man will from thence con-

THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT. 539
elude, that such men are not reasonable creatures, or that they
have no such natural principle or faculty as reason at all in them.
And let this suffice for our conviction in point of judgment or
conscience, that there shall be a day of judgment after this life :
which was my first general.
II. I am therefore now, in the second place, to irJquire (as far
as the light of divine revelation will enable me) what manner of
thing this judgment or last doom will be. Know then, that the great
appearance, trial, or judgment which my text speaks of, is the
general or grand assize of the whole world, held in a heavenly
high court of justice by our Saviour, to hear, examine, and
finally determine, of all thoughts, words, and actions, that ever
were thought, spoken, or committed, together with the causes,
occasions, circumstainces, atnd consequences of all and every one
of them, and accordingly to pronounce an irrevocable sentence
either of absolution or condemnation upon all men. In which
solemn description you have,
1. The Judge.
2. The parties to be judged.
3. The things controverted, or for what they shall be judged.
4. The form of this trial, or the manner of proceeding that
shall be held in it.
5. And lastly, the sentence itself, with the issue and execution
of it.
1. First, then, for the judge at this general and grand assize ; he
must, as my text tells you, be Christ ; " For we must all appear
.before- the judgment seat of Christ;" God and man, in his two
capacities of godhead and manhood connected ; for as he was our
Redeemer, so he is to be our judge in both his natures : he must in
the first place be our judge as he is God, because none but God
has jurisdiction over all the parties that are to be tried at that
judgment, which are angels as well as men, princes as well as
subjects, and the greatest peers as well as the meanest peasants.
Now though one creature may have jurisdiction over another,
nay over many other creatures, yet no one has or can have
authority over all his fellows, this being a royalty or prerogative
of the Creator himself only. Again : Christ must be judge, as
he is God, because none but omniscience can discern the main
and principal things that shall be there called in question, which
are not words and actions only, but the hearts, consciences,
thoughts, purposes, and intentions of all men. Lastly : Christ
must be judge, as he is God, because none but God can give life
and execution to the sentence as pronounced then, whether of
absolution or condemnation ; for none else can render the crea
ture infinitely and eternally happy, which is the execution of one
of the sentences; or on the other side, render the other part of
the sentence of infinite and everlasting misery effectual, but God

540 dr. south's posthumous sermons.' [serm. xxxv.
only: and therefore the judge at that trial must necessarily be
God, and consequently this very act or office of Christ, the ex
ecution of justice in this judgment, is an irrefragable argument
of his godhead. But though God only is or can be our judge
at that great tribunal, yet nevertheless he must not be God only,
but man likewise ; and that, first, in regard of the judgment
itself, to manifest the equity, the indiscriminateness, and the im
partiality of it ; which might be perhaps doubted of, if the judge
were either God or man only. For if he were only God, he
would be the party offended, and if only man, the person offend
ing: and a judgment, though really never so just, may be, or
seem to be, suspected to be otherwise, when either of the parties
concerned is judge ; whereas Christ, being God as well as man,
and man as well as God, must needs be acknowledged to be an
equal, an indifferent, and impartial judge betwixt God and man,
as being equally allied unto them both. Again : Christ must be
judge as he is man, in regard to the parties triable at that day,
whether they be sheep or goats ; I mean, whether they be the
just that are to be absolved, or the wicked that are to be con
demned. For among the just there is none so good, but he
might fairly be afraid to appear at that judgment, if the same
person were not our Saviour who is to be our judge, who if he
brought not to the bench with him the pity and compassion of a
man, as well as the power and justice of a God ; nay, if God at
that trial did not look upon us through himself as man, and be
holding the merits in his own person, impute them to us, not
one of all mankind could be saved. He is to be judge as man
therefore, that the just to be absolved may not fear to appear
before him : and he must be judge as man too, that the con
demned wicked may have no cause of complaint, how severe
usage soever they find from him. For how can even the damned
themselves murmur, repine, or except against the judgment, where
the trial (as I shall show you presently) is by the evidence of
their own conscience, and their condemnation pronounced by that
judge, who laid down his life to save sinners, and consequently
cannot possibly be imagined to condemn any but such as would
not be saved by him. Lastly : Christ must be judge, as he is
man, in regard of all mankind, or in regard of humanity itself;
I mean for the dignifying and exalting of human nature : that
as the nature of man was debased, and brought down to the
lowest degree of meanness in the person of our Saviour, in his
birth, life, and at his death ; so the same nature, in the same per
son, might be exalted and raised up to so high a degree of power,
majesty, and honour, that not only men that had despised him,
and devils that had tempted him, but even the blessed and glo
rious angels themselves, whose comfort and assistance he once
stood in need of, should fall down, and tremble at his presence.
And thus much for the judge at this awful trial.

THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT. 541
2; The second thing considerable in the description I gave
you of this judgment, are the parties to be judged ; and those
briefly (to speak nothing of the evil angels who are then also to
receive their full and final doom) are all persons of all sorts,
qualities, conditions, and professions, young and old, rich and
poor, high and low, one with another. For at this bar princes
have no prerogatives, the nobles have no privileges, nor the
clergy exemptions and immunities, nor the lawyer any more
favour than his client; the rich shall neither be regarded for
their bags, or the poor pitied for his poverty : but all indifferently
shall have the same judge and the same trial, the same evidence
and the same witness ; and if their cases be alike (how different
soever their persons or estates may be here),' their fate shall there
be the same. And thus much for the parties to be judged.
3. The next thing is, the matters that shall be questioned at
that trial; and those are not our actions only, but our words also
and not only our words, but our thoughts too, and not only our
thoughts, but our very inclinations or dispositions themselves
likewise ; together with the place, time, occasion, intention, and
end, for which every thing was done, thought, or spoken, and
that - from the first birth or instant of time, to the very last
periodical minute of it.
4. And then for the manner of proceeding, there will be no
Occasion for examinatkm of witnesses, or reading depositions ;
there will be no allegata or probata ; for every man shall be in
dicted and arraigned, cast or acquitted, condemned or absolved,
by the testimony of his own conscience, which shall readily,
though never so unwillingly, assent to whatever the judge shall
charge it with, whether it be good or evil ; whether it be for him
or agadnst him/ The book of life shall be opened, wherein is re
gistered and recorded whatever good or evil at any time, from the
beginning of the world till the end of it, has been done, spoken,
consented to, oi imagined by any or all mankind ; and what is
more 'wonderful, this is written in such a character, that all men
(of what nation or language soever) must needs understand and
acknowledge the truth of it ; this book being nothing else but
the counterpart, as it were, of every man's conscience, which
God keeps by him as an undeniable evidence to convince all men
with at the last judgment. In which,
5. I shall now consider the fifth and last thing proposed to
this description, viz. the sentence itself, whether of absolution or
condemnation, the form of both which is judicially set down by
Christ himself, Matt. xxv. 34. That of absolution in these terms,
" Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world ;" but of this sentence
the present occasion of our humiliation will not permit me to
speak, as too triumphant a topic for this day. That other
sentence therefore (the sad but seasonable object of our present
2Z

542 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxv.
meditation) you may find in the 41st verse of the same chapter,
in these words, "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, pre
pared for the devil and his angels." A dismal and woful sentence,
my beloved, a sentence carrying hell amd horror in the very
sound of it ; whilst every syllable does, as it were, stab the soul,
and every word bring with it a new death (if I may so say with
out a paradox) to those that can never die. Have we any of us
ever been present when the sentence but of a bodily death has
been pronounced upon a prisoner at the bar? and may not we
observe what horror and amazement does instantly seize the
poor wretch, what a deadly paleness covers his face, what a
ghastly distraction rises in his countenance, what a faltering in
his speech, what a trembling in his joints, what a cold sweat over
his whole body ? and yet all these were but weak and faint ex
pressions of what his soul suffered. If any of us, who have
seen and observed all this, had but once felt in ourselves what
we have seen in others ; then perhaps we might guess, and yet
but guess, at the fear and trembling, the horror and amazement,
which will not only seize and lay hold upon, but devour and
swallow up the soul of man, upon the hearing of that dreadful
knell, that direful and fatal sentence, which will at once both
pronounce, and make him unspeakably, unconceivably, irre
coverably, and everlastingly miserable. But why do I compare
things together so infinitely disproportionate, as temporal with
eternal, corporeal with spiritual, the death of the body alone,
with the death of soul and body too, or the benches of men with
the tribunal of God ? No, my beloved, if the sentence of that
judge were like those of ours here, it would be well for the great
est part of mankind ; for then perhaps it might either be ap
pealed from, or reversed ; or if neither, yet at worst it might be
endured, without their being utterly and for ever undone by it.
Here on earth, perhaps, appeals may be lodged, and carried from
one plaice to another, from an inferior to a superior authority.
But at the last day, to whom shall we appeal from God our
sovereign and supreme judge ? Or what higher court of judica
ture is there than that of heaven ?
Lastly : 'when our advocate himself condems us. who will be
so compassionate, or dare be so impudent as to plead for us ?
When, therefore, this sentence is once pronounced, there is no
more hope left either of reprieve or pardon, of ease or intermis
sion, of alteration or ending : but (which is the misery of mise
ries) that torment which is intolerable for a moment, must last
for ever : a word that must vex and rack the understanding,
puzzle and weary the imagination, distract and confound all the
powers and faculties of the soul. What pain is there or can
there be so little, as man could be content on any consideration
to endure for ever? What man amongst us is there so poor or
so covetous, as that he would be hired, or so stout or so patient

THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT. 543
(if he were hired), that he could endure but the aching of one
tooth in extremity, if he hoped for no end of his pain ? And
yet the toothache, the gout, the stone, and the strangury, the
rack and the wheel, with the rest of our natural diseases., or in
ventions of cruel ingenuity, are but as so many flea-bitings, or
inconsiderable trifles, compared with the torments of the damned.
All pains here are either tolerable or not durable, either we
may suffer them, or at least shall sink under them. But there,
there I say, in hell is acuteness of sense with acuteness of tor
ment, extremity of pain and extremity of feeling, insupportable
anguish, and yet ability to bear it, where the fire always burns,
and yet consumes not, where fuel is still devoured, and yet it
wastes not; where, if a man had a world of earth, he would give
it all for one drop of water, and yet the whole ocean would not
cool him ; where there is perpetual darkness, without rest, con
tinual night void of sleep : and (to conclude what never shall be
concluded indeed) where is always distraction without madness,
dying without death, misery without pity, and wishing without
hope. Such things as these can hardly be thought of, much less
dwelt on without the greatest horror. If St. Paul, a prisoner at
the bar, discoursing on this argument, could make an insulting
Felix tremble ; how much greater fear ought they to have, who,
living in any known breach of God's commands, or open sin un-
repented of, are therefore much more concerned in that future
judgment than Felix could be ! He, you know, was a heathen,
but we are Christians ; and' you may be assured the least Chris
tian sinner is greater than the greatest among the heathens ;
because they can sin but against the light of nature, and their
own reason only ; whereas wicked Christians sin not only against
the light of nature and reason, but against divine revelation in
the known precepts of the law, and those plainer ones of the
gospel also; at once most desperately slighting the terrible
threats of the one, and most profanely despising the gracious
offers of the other. So that if the honour either of God's mercy or
of his justice be dear unto him, it must necessarily be easier, not
only for Felix, that never heard of Christ, but even for Pontius
Pilate himself, who condemned him, than it will be for any
wicked, impenitent Christian at the day of judgment.
III. And therefore, for application of all unto ourselves, let us
now (according to my third and last general) endeavour to be in-
• formed how far we ourselves are like to be concerned in the
future judgment, taken (as I have taken it all this while) in the
worst sense, and consequently how we ought to think of and
prepare for it. Well then, if there be indeed such a judgment
to come, as I hope I have fairly proved, we may from thence
conclude, 1. That the greatest pretenders to wisdom in this world are

544 DR. SOUTH's POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM. XXXV.
not the wisest men ; I mean those great Ahithophels, those subtle
steersmen of states and kingdoms, those deep politicians, and civil
oracles as it were, of courts and councils, who think this doctrine
of a future judgment, as well as most of the other mysteries of
the Christian religion, to be indeed nothing else but reasons of
state, or the politic devices and inventions of the wiser sort of
men (they mean such as they themselves are), to keep the weaker
judgments and stronger passions in the greatest awe, and so to
make them the more pliable and conformable to the laws and
commands of men. So that the end of all religion is (as these
political Christians suppose) terminated in this life ; and that
whatsoever foolish book-worms may talk of after this life, whether
it be the resurrection of the body, or the appearance of both
body and soul in another place, with the eternal existence of
them both in extremity either of pain or pleasure; with whatso
ever else our Christian faith obliges us to believe, in order to
another life, they are but so many bugbears to fright children
withal. Or at best, in those men's opinion, they are but the
vain speculations of idle and curious wits, or the issue and pro
duct of melancholy brains, and fitter for the exercise of men's
disputative faculties in the schools, than for the object of a wise
man's hopes or fears in any of his actions, as having indeed
nothing of solid truth or reality in them. But how miserably
mistaken and shamefully deceived will these giant-wits, these
mighty Solomons (as they are now thought) then find themselves
to be, when, awakened by the sudden, the general, and fearful
alarm of the last trumpet, out of that sleep which they well
hoped would have been endless, they shall see themselves (to
their inexpressible horror and amazement) first summoned and
haled to judgment, and afterwards hurried and dragged away
by stranger and subtler spirits than themselves, to torment and
execution; where their senses will quickly convince their intel
lects, that what they formerly supposed but a chimera, an idle
speculation, or at best but a politic invention, is indeed a sad, a
serious, and severe truth. Neither will it be the least part of
these men's hell, that they shall eternally reproach themselves
with folly, after so exalted an opinion of their own wisdom.
2. To proceed, again, in the second place ; all other hypocrites,
as well as atheistical statesmen, are fools also ; I say all other-
hypocrites, because indeed these Christian politicians, or politic
Christians I just now mentioned, are a sort of hypocrites, viz.
moral or civil hypocrites (as I may so call them), because they.
seem to believe what they do not, and enjoin others what they care
not for themselves ; I mean the belief of Christian doctrines and
duties, and that for a moral and civil respect or end only, to wit,
in order to the preservation of public peace and welfare in the
state ; which certainly were a very good end, if it were not then-
only end in so doing. But the other hypocrites I now speak of

THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT. 545
are religious hypocrites, and not so called because they are more
religious than the other, but because they are such hypocrites as
to pretend religion for their main end, though indeed they intend
and use it only as a means to advance and compass, not the
public, but their own particular designs by it (whether they be
honest or dishonest), and that often to the prejudice of the public
interest both of church and state; nay sometimes, as in our late
intestine broils, to the apparent ruin or hazard of them both.
And therefore this kind of hypocrites, as they are much more
wicked and mischievous here in this world ; so (supposing a future
reckoning) they will be far more miserable in another state, than
those hypocrites or atheists lately mentioned. Indeed, if God
was as easily to be deceived as men are, with false, specious
shows and pretences ; or if these hypocrites could hope to work
upon God, as they once did upon the populace, by false words
and flattering insinuations ; or lastly, if they could make God
(as they would fain have made the king) believe, that the demo
lishing of his palaces, the robbing him of his revenues, the per
secuting of his ministers, by their false interpreting and mis
applying of his word, nay, and by driving himself (as much as
in them lies) out of his own kingdom, the church ; if they can,
I say, when they come to appear before the judgment seat of
Christ, make him believe that these and all other things they
have done of the like kind, were all of them done in order to his
service, amd with atn intention to make him a much more glorious
God than he was before ; then let them be thought as wise as
they would seem religious : nay, let them name their own places
and preferments in heaven, as they did here on earth in the time
of their usurpation; for certainly no preferment can hardly be
adequate to such transcendent spirits and undertakings.
And yet all this would be no difficult matter for them to bring
to pass; if either, in the first place, they might always be owned
as the highest and supreme judicatory ; that is, if they might be
hereafter, as they will needs be here, their own judges; or
secondly, if they may not be their own judges, or absolved
by their own votes, yet if they might at least be but tried (as
they think it very equitable they should be) by their own ordi
nances, that is, by laws and rules of their own composure, with
out and contrary to the consent of the supreme legislator: or
lastly, if at that great assize they can neither be their own judges,
nor be tried by their own ordinances, yet at least if they may but
have their own preachers or advocates (who pleaded so power
fully for them to the people) to plead for them likewise before
God ; and withal, if those advocates of theirs may but be allowed
to interpret that sentence which shall then be pronounced, with
the same assurance and falsity as they have interpreted others of
holy writ ; neither they themselves, nor any of their party, will
run any great hazard. For then (I mean if their scribes and
Vol. IV.— 69 2 z 2

546 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxv.
pharisees, if their doctors of the law and interpreters of the gos
pel, may be believed) the meaning of " Go, ye cursed," shall be
the contrary, " Come, ye blessed ;" and on the contrary, the
blessing shall tacitly imply only a curse ; as if that which was
spoken to those on the left hand was meant to those on the right ;
and the words directed to those on the right intended for those
on the left hand ; it being the usual interpretation of those
doctors to make the sense of God's word (how opposite soever to
the letter of it) to be always in favour of themselves, and to con
demn their foes ; who, because they are enemies to the good old
cause, must needs be esteemed God's also. But whether this
supposition be true or false (with all other controversies betwixt
us and them) will be fully, finally, and impartially determined,
when they and we shall appear before the judgment seat of
Christ ; " for we shall all appear," says my text ; that is, we shall
not only be there, but be present every one of us in his proper shape
and likeness : no disguising of persons, no palliating of actions, no
concealing of purposes, no dissembling of intentions at all there ;
" for we must all appear," says my text, yvfivoi xai tstpaxnxia-
fiivoi (as the same apostle says in another place), " naked and
barefaced," and laid, as it were, flat upon our backs, not before a
close or a grand committee of ignorant and partial men, who may
deceive and be deceived, but before Christ, the most exact
searcher and infallible discerner of all hearts ; and before Christ
attended on by all the holy angels and blessed sarints, amongst
whom, to their greater confusion, hypocrites shall perhaps see
some sitting at Christ's right hand, whom they have formerly
condemned and executed as malignants and delinquents. And
amongst these, I doubt not but they will see him whom they
have pierced (I mean not Christ God, but God's Christ, or God's
anointed), that blessed saint and martyr their own sovereign,
whom they so inhumanly and barbarously murdered ; and whom,
though they would not look upon as an object either of reverence
or pity here, they shall, though unwillingly, behold him as an
object of horror and confusion there : an object which, next unto
hell itself, shall be most dreadful and terrible unto them, whilst
his wounds, bleeding afresh at the sight of his murderers, shall at
once upbraid, accuse and condemn them.
Howsoever, I am sure they must appear before the judgment
seat of Christ; that Christ, who is truth itself, and in whose
mouth there was no guile, and therefore he cannot choose but
abhor a hypocrite beyond all sinners : that Christ, who would not
have his own fife defended against the unjust violence of the law
ful magistrate, and therefore cannot endure a rebellious hypocrite
of all hypocrites, nor a rebel upon a false pretence of religion, of
all rebels : lastly, before that Christ that knows well enough that
his name and his worship, his word and his sacraments, prayer,
fasting, and the rest of his sacred ordinances were only made a

the certainty of a future judgment. 547
stale by the hypocrites of those times, to conceal, to make way
for, and to compass their own covetous, malicious, or ambitious
ends : and consequently, whilst they bragged of setting him upon
his thrpne, they placed a reed in his hand instead of a sceptre,
and crowned him in jest, whilst they crucified him in earnest ;
and what is this, but to mock Christ himself as well as the world
here ? And therefore they themselves shall be mocked by Christ
before all the world hereafter: for as they have most unjustly
made many innocent and upright men spectacles to men and
angels here in this life, so shall they, unless a repentance fol
lowed, be made a spectacle to men and angels in the life to come,
being first put to open shame by having their mask of piety
plucked off, and consequently all the rottenness of their hearts
and villany of their designs made evident and apparent, and
afterwards a double portion of the most exquisite torments that
hell can afford shall be given to them ; one moiety for their sins,
and another for their hypocrisy ; one for their great presumption
in their daring to mock God, and another for their far greater
impudence in pretending to honour and serve, whilst they did
but mock him. This, I say, shall be the portion of the hypocrite
at the day of judgment, which appears to be a very bitter one by
that of our Saviour, Matt. xxiv. 51, where it seems, a greater
punishment cannot be threatened or given than a portion with
the hypocrite ; and yet even from thence we may collect, that
some sinners who are not hypocrites, yet are equally bad, other
wise they would not have their portion assigned with them ; and
those are such, who are so far from hypocrisy, that they do not
nor will not so much as pretend to be religious ; I mean those
that call themselves Christians, and yet are worse than the worst
of pagans, such as sin with a high hand, those impudently pre
sumptuous and profane persons, that are so far from concealing
or disguising any of their lewd courses or practices, though never
so sinful and shameful, that they not only own and avow them,
but value themselves for them ; as if to be a witty scoffer, a bold
blasphemer, a strong drinker, a notorious fornicator or adulterer,
and a desperate contemner of all divine and human laws, were
the necessary ingredients towards the composition of a gallant
man, and consequently, as if it were possible to be a gallant man
and a good Christian ; nay, as if it were not possible to be a
gallant man, and to be a man, that is a rational creature, without
being metamorphosed and transformed into a swine, a goat, or some
such brutish creature, by giving up a man's self to all manner of
beastly hists, with as much liberty, and as little shame or
remorse, as beasts themselves do : as if God had given men rea
son, not to govern and restrain, but to stir up and be subservient
to their sensual appetite ; and what is all this, but to do what is
in one's power to unman himself, and turn a rebel, not against
divinity and religion, but against humanity and nature itself also ?

548 dr. south's posthumous sermons, [serm. xxxv.
And now though this, one would think, were as bad as could
be yet it were to be wished that some were not worse ; by not
wo'rse, I mean, that they would be content and satisfied to walk
alone 'by themselves in the ways and works of darkness, without
making it their business (as we see they do) to draw as many
others as they can down into hell with them, like the companions
of Ulysses, who having drunk of Circe's enchanted cup them
selves, and thereby become beasts, afterwards made use of all
the beastly inducements they could to prove the preference of
that to man's life, and so persuade their other fellows to drink of
the same cup, and partake of a like fate with them. And what
is this, but to play the devil's part, or to be the prince of dark-
ness's agents or factors here in this world ? For as the devil him
self is called &idpoxoS, or the tempter, because it is his business,
delight, and study, to tempt others ; so all that are tempters of
others into sin, may, by the same reason, be called devils ; I am
sure they do the devil's work, and shall have (unless they repent)
the devil's wages for it. For if those that " turn other men unto
righteousness" (as the prophet says) " shine like stars," or have a
much greater degree of glory in heaven, than other good men,
who have not been so zealous or industrious to convert others ; by
the same reason, those who tempt other men into sin shall have
a much greater degree of torment in hell than other wicked men,
who have not been so malicious or contagious in corrupting and
infecting those who have conversed with them ; which is an effect
of the most diabolical spirit that any man, whilst on this side the
grave, can possibly be possessed or endued withal. But whence,
I wonder, is this courage against God ? Or what is it makes
some men so bold and confident, not only by being as wicked as
they can themselves, but by endeavouring to make others their
proselytes ? Is it because they never think of any thing at all
beyond the present ? If so, they are no wiser than the brute
beasts. Or is it because they think of nothing beyond death?
And of death too, perhaps, in the most gentle and comfortable
notion ; I mean, as death is a rest from all labours, a cure of all
diseases, an asylum from all enemies, and generally, as it is an
end of all worldly troubles, and a deliverance from all earthly
calamities and vexations. Truly, I must confess, to have such a
notion of death as this is, is no pleasant meditation, especially
when we are ready to sink under any severe difficulties or
troubles. But, alas ! my beloved brethren, death is to be thought
upon by Christians, not only as it is the end of one life, but as
the commencement of another which for better or worse must
last for ever. Nay, death is to be thought upon by wicked
Christians, not as the beginning 6f another life, but as the
entrance or passage unto another death ; where men shall be dead
to all pleasure, to all joy, to all comfort, to all hope; this shall be
their deathless life, or a lifeless death ; they shall be, however,

THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT. 549
alive to pain, alive to shame and horror of conscience, and (which
is worst of all) living to despair of ever attaining any end or ease
of those torments.
And now I would fain know, whether any the most profligate
person has courage enough to think of such a death as this with
out fear, or the confidence to expect it without trembling ? Let
us therefore consider it, and you especially, whoever you are,
must consider it seriously that forget God, or at least forget him
as he is a judge. Consider it, you that by your drunkenness or
uncleanness, or by any other profane course of life do seem, as it
were, to have made a covenant with death and hell, and think
perhaps to have the more favourable usage from the prince of
darkness hereafter, the more boldly you have avowed yourselves
to be his servants in advancing of his kingdom here ; you that
have done what you can to prevent your judge, by pronouncing
sentence upon yourselves, and damning yourselves as often as you
swear, which is almost as often as you speak (for such is the cus
tom of common swearers), think with yourselves, I beseech you,
whether your courage, how great soever it be, will serve you, and
your strength, how much soever it be, will support you, and for
ever too, in such a place and such a condition as I have imperfectly
described unto you ; " Can any of you dwell, and dwell for ever,
in everlasting burnings ?" And yet this shall be the dwelling,
" this shall be , the portion of the hypocrite," says the prophet,
Isaiah xxxiii. 14. And the like portion with the hypocrite shaU
the profane person participate. For though the way of the pro
fane and the hypocrite seem contrary, yet they shall meet, and
their end shall be the same ; and though they deride and laugh
at one another here, yet they shall both of them weep and gnash
their teeth together hereafter. For the hypocrite shall be as tow,
and the profane person as flax, and "they shall both burn toge
ther, and none shall quench them." God of his infinite goodness
give them both grace to foresee in time, and by repentance to
prevent this their so great danger ; for certainly for any man to
despise the divine justice, with the endless and intolerable effects
of it, is not courage, but madness. And therefore to conclude
all in a word, the best method we can take is to judge ourselves,
that we may not be judged of the Lord ; and because " that day"
(as the Lord himself tells.us) " shall come as a thief in the night,"
suddenly and unexpectedly, let us always be sure to have oil in
our lamps, that is, faith and repentance in our hearts, justice and
charity in our actions ; and whatever else we have to do, let it be
one part of our daily business seriously to meditate,
1st. Upon the vanity and shortness of our lives ; and
2dly. Upon the certainty and uncertainty of our deaths.
3dly. Upon the great exactness and severity of the judgment
to come after death ; and

550 DR. SOUTH'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS. [sERM.

xxxv.

4thly. And lastly, upon the eternity and immutability of every
man's condition in the other world, whether it be good or evil.
And then, I hope, by God's grace sanctifying these our endea
vours, our condition there will be such, as we shall have no cause
to desire either an end or an alteration of it.
Which God of his mercy grant us all, through the merits of
his Son, and the happy conduct of his Holy Spirit. Amen.

INDEX.

Abibtt, offering strange fire, i. 247.
Abilities in a Christian minister, not to
be discouraged, i. 70 — 72. Ministerial,
when given to the apostles, iii. 187.
Abimelech, iing of Shechem, slain by a
stone, i. 129. King of Gerar, withheld
from sinning, ii. 56, iii. 21, 92.
Abiram. See Corah.
Abner, killed treacherously by Joab, i. 345.
Abomination, what is meant by committing
abomination, ii. 102.
Abraham, his intimacy with God, i. 233.
His going about to sacrifice his son, ii.
419. His answer to the rich man, ii.
272.
Absalom's malice to his brother, i. 194.
Absolution, no infallible ground for confi
dence, i. 368.
Abstinence, bodily abstinence often called
piety and mortification, iii. 6. See Fast
ing.
Academies, conventicle-academies set up
in defiance of the universities, ii. 282.
They ought to be suppressed, ii. 298.
Accidents and casualties governed by a
certain providence, i. 121 — 136.
Act, there is no new immanent act in
God, i. 124.
Action ; the morality of an action, what it
is founded in, i. 156. The influence of
sinful actions upon the conscience, i.
426. Frequency of actions begets a
habit, i. 459. Action the highest per
fection of man's nature, i. 460. What
it is to deny Christ in our actions, i. 41.
The main end of religion is the. active
part of it, i. 460. The activity of man's
mind, ii. 265. Good actions are plea
sant, iii. 336. Moral actions of no value
in the sight of God, iii. 344. The ac
tions of our Saviour are of three sorts,
iii. 417. How amiable to us, ib.
Acts of hostility must be forborne, iv. 240.
Actual preparation to the communion, i.
318—333.
Adam's restless appetite of knowledge,
the occasion of his fall, ii. 382. His fall
spread a universal contagion upon the
whole mass of human nature, iii. 17.
Adversity, a way by which God some
times delivers us out of temptation, iii.
90, 91, 106—109. No excuse for sin,
iii. 275. See Afflictions.

Adultery, spiritual adultery ; the Jews an
adulterous generation, i. 38. Creates
much trouble, iv. 320.
Adversary, in Matt. v. 25, explained, iii.
olS.
Advocate. See Mediation of Christ.
Affections ; man's affections bid for no
thing till the judgment has set the price,
li. 197. The difference of men's affec
tion for religion and for worldly things,
ii. 272. Affections and lusts, their
power over the soul, iii. 411. How to
be conquered, iv. 352. See Flesh.
Affliction of the body helps to humble the
soul, iv. 149. Afflictions of the mind
or soul. See Spirit, wounded. Why
God brings them on the wicked and
reprobate, iii. 546. And on the pious
and sincere, iii. 484, 546, &c, are not
tokens of God's displeasure, iii. 547,
548. See Anger. Are limited by God's
overruling hand, iii. 448 ; and the effect
of his will, iii. 480, iv. 207. Differ from
punishments, iii. 481. Afford us great
comfort, iii. 449. We may pray God to
divert them, and endeavour to prevent
and remove them, iv. 207, 208, 429, 430.
Their spiritual use, iv. 174, &c. Must
not be scoffed at, iii. 549. See Justice,
divine.
Agag's foolish security, ii. 123, iv. 5.
Agathocles, king of Sicily, from a potter,
l. 128.
Ahab, with a handful of men, overthrow-
eth the vast army of Benhadad, ii. 120.
Spares Benhadad's life, ii. 48. Deluded
by his false propnets, i. 345, ii. 207.
Killed by a soldier drawing his bow at a
venture, i. 129.
Ahithophel, hanging himself because he
had not the good luck to be believed, i.
131, 152.
Ajax kills himself by Hector's sword, i.
151.
Alexander, bathing himself in the river
Cydnus, i. 126. Troubled at the scanti
ness of nature, i. 145. Married Roxana,
and what ceremony he used, i. 319.
Quelled a mutiny in his army, and how,
ii. 55. Could not cure himself of the
poisonous draught, ii. 259. His advice
to one of his soldiers called Alexander,
ii. 300. He fights upon his knees, iii.
157. With him the Grecian monarchy
expired, ii. 60. 551

552

INDEX.

Alienation of sacred things is a robbing of
God, i. 115. ,
Alms-giving one of the wings of prayer,
i. 331. , . „ _ „
Altar, profaned by revelling in St. Paul s
time, i. 108. It receives and protects,
but needs not such as fly to it, i. 205.
Ambassador, represents his prince, i. 386.
Ambition of the pharisees hinders them
from embracing Christianity, i. 95. The
slavish attendance of an ambitious per
son, 217.
'A/irrpia 7% avQtihdis. ii. 328.
Anabaptism, easy to be fallen into by one
who would slight the judgment of all
antiquity, ii. 337.
Anabaptists rebellious in Germany, iv. 282.
Angels, their nature and business, i. 460.
Their habitation, iii. 367. Employment,
iii. 367, iv. 433, &c. Knowledge, iii.
433—437, iv. 141. Why Christ took
not their nature upon him, iii. 467. Fall
en angels, their sin was greater than
that of man, iii. 467. Can never be
pardoned, iii. 499. See Intercession.
Anger must be suppressed, iii. 419, 420,
iv. 292—295. An obstacle to reproof,
iii. 256, 257. How ascribed to God, iii.
428. Every affliction is not the effect
of God's anger, iii. 429, 430, 476, 487.
How it differs from his hatred, iii. 430.
How it exerciseth itself, and its effects,
iii. 431 — 434. Its greatness how de
clared, 434 — 437. On whom it seizeth,
iii. 439. Should deter us from sin, 275.
See Passions.
Angry persons, in what they delight, iv.
238. Will not admit of reproof See
Anger.
Annihilation not the greatest punishment
of a man, iii. 454.
Antiquity, whether better than the present
time, iii. 312, &c.
Anthropomorphites, the opinion of that
sect, i. 31.
Antinomians, their assertions, i. 290, 463,
iii. 218, 220. Antinomianism seldom
ends but in Familism, ii. 342.
Antiochus's sacrilege punished, i. 110.
Antiperistasis, ii. 333.
Antonius (Marcus), subduing himself and
his affections to Cleopatra, ii. 204.
Apostasy, not reparable but by an extra
ordinary grace, i. 470.
Apostles furnished by God with abilities
proper for their work, ii. 79. Credible
arid unquestionable witnesses of Christ's
resurrection, ii. 362. The first (and
perhaps the last) who ever did, or are
like to speak so much sense and reason
eitempore, ii. 474. Christ's promise to
his apostles to enable them with assist
ance against their adversaries, ii. 467,
473. Infallibility, a real privilege in the
apostles, ii. 475. Ignorant before the
coming of the Holy Ghost, iii. 185.
Their commission explained, iii. 441,
&c.
Apollonius Tyanaeus, iii. 185.

Apollinarians, iii. 464.
Appearance ; men commonly are either
valued or despised from the manner of
their external appearance, i. 68. Of
truth, the formal cause of all assent,
ii. 194.
Appetite, its use and abuse, iv. 352. How
to be conquered, ib. Not the cause of
sin, iii. 376. See Flesh, Concupiscence.
Aquinas (Thomas), his opinion concerning
the three faculties of the mind, ii. 69;
Arcana. See Mysteries.
Archimedes, i. 9. His turning about the
world, iii. 92.
Arians, i. 493, iii. 464. Their opinion
concerning our Saviour, i. 508* 509.
Arianism, how brought in, ii. 327.
Aristocracy, ii. 59.
Aristotle's Baying, of putting a young
man's eye into an. old man's head, i. 7.
Opinion concerning the original of the
world, i. 21. His saying ,oT the mind,
i. 24, 426; of wiBdom,^. 489; ofthe
eternity of the world, ii. 155; of the
vices of the flesh, ii. 203. His opinion
concerning one universal soul belonging
to the whole species or race of mankind,
ii. 205. His opinion of intemperance,
&c. iv. 341. His use and abuse of
Solomon's writings, iv. 108.
Ark captivated, worsteth the victorious
Philistines, i., 109.
Arminians, iii. 464, iv. 135.
Arms, whether lawful to be taken up
against our prince, iv. 258, &c. See
Passive Obedience, War.
Army of saints described, ii. 134.
Ascension. See Christ.
Assassination, iv. 368. See Duelling.
Astrology, its vanity, iii. 375.
Assent, Us cause, ii. 194. Condition re
quired to render an act of assent properly
an act of faith, ii. 360. The difference
between evidence, certainty, and firm
ness of assent, ii.
Assurance, anj excellent privilege, and
what it is, i. 222. Two sorts of assur
ance, iii. 43.
Atheists ; the cause of atheism, i. 101.
Atheists not the wisest men, i. 220.
Their opinion of the eternity of the
world, ii. 225. Atheists and republicans
have no religion, ii. 532. The original
of atheism, ii. 225. Atheism, the con
clusion of Socinianism, ii. 334. Atheist,
his craft, iv. 20. His pleasure, iv. 21.
Wish, ib. Power, ib. Method of pro
ceeding and arguments, iv. 21, 22.
Weak conjectures, iv. 23. And his
folly, iv. 24 — 28. Is tied by no bonds
of justice, iii. 346. Becomes the pest
of society, ib., and the most of all men
afraid at the approach of death, iii. 199
Atheism, what it is, iii. 533, iv. 20.
Motives thereto, iv. 26. Its chief
weapons, iv. 21. How to be prevented,
iv. 29.
Athenians, laughing at the physiognomist
describing Socrates, i. 6. Diligent im-

INDEX.

553

provers of reason, i. 11. How they cir
cumscribed the pleadings of their ora
tors, i. 264.
Atkins (Edward), preferred rather to be
constant to sure principles, than to an
unconstant government, i. 34.
Atoms, ridiculous grounds of accounting
• for the phenomena of nature, ii. 225.
Attributes. Of God's justice, mercy, and
righteousness, what they signify, iv. 134.
See God.
Attrition, iii. 230, &c.
Averroes' wish, i. 315, ii. 179.
Augustin's allusion concerning the wings
of prayer, i. 331. What he saith of the
Pelagians, i. 418.
Authority of a bishop, iii. 205.
Axioms, all speculation rests upon three
or fohr axioms, i. 258.
Axtell (Colonel), was persuaded to rebel
lion by the sermons of Brooks and Ca
lamy, i. 194. B .
BAAL-Cromwell, Baal-covenant, Baal-en
gagement, i. 163.
Baalam's wish, i. 159. His deliverance,
iii. 21.
Babes in Christ, i. 484.
Babylon, iv. 359, 360.
Babylonians, their lepa ypa/ijmra, i. 497.
Backsliding, iii. 280 — 282.
Bacon, iv. 26.
Banquets furnished, not for the poor (like
that of the gospel), but for the rich, ii.
243.
Barchocab, a false Messiah, i. 521.
Barzillai's years and wealth, ii. 250.
Bashfulness, the proper ornament of wo
men, ii. 109.
Basilisk's eye, ii. 105.
Beget, this word used in a political sense,
i. 513.
Beggars' qualities, pride and indigence, i.
406. Importunity, ii. 555.
Being, uncreated. See God. All created
beings are his servants, i. 226.
Belief of Christianity, and the best means
to enlighten the understanding to it,
i.97.
Believers and the godly, who are they
that assume that title, i. 290. Are sub
ject to temptations, iii. 349, 350, iv. 122.
See Regenerate Persons. Must resist
temptations, iii. 355. By what means,
iii. 355—360.
Believing, whether in the power of man's
will, iii. 519. Its difficulty, iii. 410.
Motives thereto, iv. 144, &c.
Belisarius's eyes put out, ii. 456.
Bellarmine, concerning the pope of Rome,
' i. 338. What he fixes upon the doc
trine of all protestant churches, ii. 343.
One of the patrons of rebellion against
kings, ii. 320.
Belsbazzar's sentence written by the finger
of God, i. 110.
Benediction of the pope's legate, 311.
Beneventum (archbishop of), i. 367.
Vol. IV.— 70

Benignity of God, iv. 227.
Benjamites, their villany, ii. 115.
Beza, Calvin's disciple, and his successor
in place and doctrine, ii. 376.
Bishop's duty, i. 76—81. Bishop, his
office, in. 203, 204. Authority, iii. 205.
Necessary qualifications, iii. 203—206.
B asphemy, what it is, i. 40, iii. 498, iv. 470.
Blessings of this world, the promiscuous
scatterings of God's common provi
dence, i. 361.
Blind, a man born blind, i. 492. Blind
ness cured by Christ, iii. 471. Whv
iii. 474. "
Blushing, the colour of virtue, ii. 101.
Bloodshedding, its sinfulness, iv. 357 —
359. Its different sorts, iv. 367, &,c.
Is accompanied with other sins, iv. 365.
Why a curse or woe is particularly pro
nounced against it, iv. 364—366. And
is most remarkably punished and re
venged by God, iv. 361—364.
Borgia (Cassar), his boast to Machiavel, i.
134. And how deceived, i. 134, 152.
Body, how it affects the soul, 340, 341.
Of Christ, iii. 175.
Boldness in prayer towards God, 414.
Books, Dan. vii. 10, explained, iii. 299.
The cause of them, iv. 116, &c.
Brain, its labour exceeds all other exer
cises, iv. 112 — 114.
Bread, breaking of bread an eastern cere
mony in transacting marriages, i. 319.
Brevity, the greatest perfection of speech,
i. 256 ; and of prayer, i. 259. A re
commendation of it, i. 256—272.
Bridgman (Sir Orlando), his saying con
cerning the unlawfulness of touching
the king's person, or calling him to an
account, 289.
Brooks. See Axtell.
Brutus, his ingratitude, i. 182. Brutus
and Cassius, what their countenance
was, ii. 452.
Buchanan, De Jure Regni apud Scotos, ii.
318, 377. His saying of cnureh-excom-
munication, ii. 345.
Budaeus's learning, ii. 331
Builder; wise builders for eternity, i. 458.
Business, who are called men of business,
i. 195. What it is to be fit for business,
iii. 11.
But, what that particle denotes, i. 440.
Buxtorf's saying of the Jewish fathers,
ii. 288.

Cesar, Julius, his saying concerning the
power of chance, i. 127. The warnings
he had of the Ides of March, i. 129.
His saying concerning the women with
monkeys in their arms, i. 296. How he
quelled his mutinous army, i- 343. His
great expedition, i. 467. Octavius Cse
sar preserved by shifting his tent, i. 129.
Tiberius Cassar monstrously vicious in
his old age, i. 299.
Cain marked, i. 201. Diverts his discon
tent by building cities, ii. 340.
3A

554

INDEX.

Calamity general or common, how to be
applied, v. 5. See also iii. 475.
Calamy. See Axtell.
Calling, or employment, diligently pur
sued", is part of our duty to God, iii. 191.
Calling and election, who make it sure,
iv. 106.
Callings, where learning is necessary, are
attended with most labour and misery,
iv. 113, 114.
Calvin, a patron of rebellion, ii. 318, 375,
376. His remark upon our Saviour's
way in manifesting his resurrection, ii.
351. His great abilities, ii. 331. His
opinion of reprobation, iv. 1.
Calumny, the effect of envy, ii. 454.
Campanella's speech to the king of Spain,
i. 62.
Candle of the Lord set up by God in the
heart of every man, ii. 274.
Cannon-bullet ; a prince's shoulder kindly
kissed by a cannon-bullet, ii. 53.
Captive, made (o renounce his religion,
and then killed, i. 282.
Carnal corruptions, iii. 513, 514.
Cartes (Des), his prescription for the regu
lation of the passions, i. 360.
Carthaginians, cruel and false, i. 194.
Cassius. See Brutus.
Casuistry of the papists exploded, iv. 84.
Casuists, the devil's amanuenses, i. 292.
The judgment of the most experienced
casuist not sufficient to give a man an
entire confidence, i. 366.
Catechizing, the great use, and want of it,
ii. 293.
Catholic, a name vainly usurped by the
Romanists, i. 369.
Cato's character, i. 374.
Causes ; concatenation of causes, i. 307.
Censers, consecrated, made broad plates
for the covering of the altar, i. 108.
Censuring condemned, iii. 475.
Chance, what that word signifies, i. 121.
Charity, neglected when expensive, i. 165.
Its measures, i. 167. Charity of the
hand signifies but little, unless it springs
from the heart, i. 332. The worldly
person's charity, ii. 92. Excellency of
charity, iv. 55.
Charles I., the hypocritical contrivers of
his murder, i. 194. He died pardoning
and praying for his enemies, i. 456.
The effects of his piety and Christian
sufferings, ii. 75. His sufferings not to
be paralleled, ii. 390. A character of
his person, ii. 305, iv. 493. An account
of his sufferings, ii. 308, iv. 496. The
struggle of his conscience at the signing
of a great minister's death, iii. 104. His
disguised executioner, ii. 346. Discovery
made of his being murdered by the
papists, ii. 508. The rebellion against
him incapable of any extenuation, ii.
533. He was misreported as a designer
of popery and arbitrary power, iii. 14.
His family guilt charged upon his head,
ii. 390. Whether lawfully executed,
iv. 367.

Charles II., his clemency, i. 456. Re
called by the lords and commons of
England, ii. 54. His restoration, an
eminent instance of the methods of
Providence, ii. 386. Hie character, ii.
301. Difference in the Faction's pro
ceedings against the father and the son,
ii. 527.
Chastity, may be defended by force of
arms, iv. 275.
Chemistry, iv. 115.
Christ was conceived in the womb of his
mother by the immediate power of God,
iv. 98. Is the Son of God in several
respects, ib. Came to destroy the
works of the devil, iv. 373 — 379. In
what manner, iv. 379 — 381. His humi
liation was his own choice, iii. 465.
How he descended from heaven, and
into what place, iii. 271, 272. Why
sent into the world, iii. 461. Took on
him the seed of Abraham, iii. 463.
Why he took upon him the nature of
man, rather fhan of angels, iii. 467 —
470. The union of his two natures, iii.
175. His divine nature proved, iii. 463.
His human nature proved, iii. 463, 464.
Being born king ofthe Jews, why he
did not assume that regal government,
iv. 394, &c. His offices, iv. 338, 339.
The truth of his office, and divinity of
his mission, iii. 464. His power how
manifested, iii. 170. Cured one that
was born blind, iii. 471. Why, iii. 474.
Why he bid the young man sell all his
possessions, iii. 406. His righteousness
now imputed to us, iii. 220. Cannot be
perfectly imitated, iv. 42. Why trou
bled in spirit, iii. 535. His great sorrow,
iii. 539. The preliminaries of his pas
sion, ib. Rose from the dead by hig
own power, iv. 98. To whom his bene
fits do extend, iv. 379, &c. His ascen
sion, iii. 174. How he filleth all things,
iii. J 78. His power and office in hea
ven, iii. 180, iv. 380, 539. Is appointed
our only mediator by the Father, iv.
425, 442, 443. Is our mediator in three
respects, iv. 423. Is our surety, iv. 427 ;
our Friend, iv. 426; our brother, ib. ;
and our Lord and master/ iv. 428, &c.
Is perfectly acquainted with all our
wants and necessities, iv. 429. " To be
Christ's," what is meant thereby, iv.
338, 354. See God.
Christian, who properly so called, iv. 354.
See Regenerate Persons.
Christianity ; its duties, i. 338. Mysteri-
ousness, i. 489 — 506. Doctrine shining,
and burning, i. 201. Aspect, i. 462. A
Christian, a public blessing, ib. Of
thirty parts of the world, five only
Christian, i. 192. Its design, iii. 188,
iv. 242. Its spirit and soul, iv. 45. Its
excellency, iii. 217, &c, iv. 323. Com
pletes the law of nature, iv. 237. Its
advantages, iii. 169. Is a state of war
fare, iii. 197, 350; of self-denial, iii.
198, iv. 45. Requires us to proceed

INDEX.

from grace to grace, iii. 195. See Re
ligion, Worship.
Christmas day kept a general fast by the
rebels in 1645, iv. 48.
Christ Church in Oxford, i. 74.
Church, a royal society for settling old
things, not for finding out new, i. 206.
Church of England, her religion, i. 85.
The best and surest bulwark of protest
antism, ii. 518. Truest friend to kingly
government, i. 85. Excellently reform
ed, i. 205. Her charity, ib. Her ab
horrence of all imposture, i. 311. The
danger of new modelling her, i. 206.
Her danger of being crucified between
two thieves, ii. 320. Her religion and
communion abused by schismatics, ii.
502, iii. 13. Vindicated from their ca
lumnies, iii.* 13 — 15. Her complaint
against her prevaricating professors, ii.
515. High and low churchmen, i. 401.
Dividers ofthe church, i. 402. Its stale
during the time of the grand rebellion,
iii. 203, &c. Has a just right to its pos
sessions, iv. 251, &c. Church service
imperfectly read, i. 79. The way of
divine service in the cathedrals of the
church of England, more decent than in
other countries, i. 118. Church cere
monies, vindicated, i. 387 — 389. Church
constitutions, a strict adherence to them
preserves unity, ii. 491, 492, iv. 520. It
shows the fitness of those church usages,
ii. 492, iv. 520, 521. It procures esteem
to the ministry, ii. 494, 495, iv. 522.
Church censures authorized by St. Paul,
i. 79. Church lands, the purchasers of
them unhappy, i. 111. Church fanatics,
the greatest danger from them, ii. 516.
Church of Christ, iii. 182—184. Its
state at different times, iii. 311, &c.
Church of Rome. See Rome.
Cicero reckoned lying dexterously amongst
the perfections of a wise man, .i. 189.
Circumstances of life, whereby men are
deluded, ii. 208.
Circumstantials. See Worship.
Clement (Gregory), his disease, ii. 314.
Clergy's duty, ii. 293. Marriage, ii. 330.
The clamours of popery and puritanism
against the English clergy, ii. 451.
Coals kindled upon an enemy' s head, i. 454.
Ccena pura, what it is, i. 321.
Coleman's letter concerning toleration, i.
490, iv. 518.
Comfort conveyed to man by the Spirit
of God, iii. 522, &c. Comforts for
want of health, reputation, or wealth,
i. 362, 363.
Comforter, or the Holy Ghost, iii. 522.
, See Holy Ghost.
Commandments, the matter of all of them
(except the fourth) is of natural, moral
right, i: 440.
Commands of God, why they should be
observed, iv. 144—146.
Commin, a popish priest and Dominican
friar, first introduced praying by the
spirit, i. 251.

555
Commission given by Christ to his apostles
explained, in. 441.
Commonwealth, hath in it always some-
thing of monarchy, ii. 59.
Community of nature and religion, an ar-
gument for the love of enemies, i. 453
Communicative ; to be so, is the property
of evil as well as of good, i. 464. Coyet-
ousness is not communicative, ii. 238.
Commutation of one man's labour for
another's money, ii. 249.
Comparisons in a spiritual state are dan
gerous, iv, 195.
Compassion and ingratitude never dwell
in the same breast, i. 183.
Complaints against the evil of the present
times are irrational, iii. 314. How to be
remedied, iii. 316, 317.
Compliance and half-conformity miscalled
moderation, ii. 512.
Comprehension, nothing else but to es
tablish a schism in the church by law,
n. 485, iv. 517.
Concealing defects or vices in a friend is
flattery, iii. 236, &c.
Conceptions, the images of things to the
mind, i. 341.
Concupiscence, iii. 513, iv. 340.
Condition, the safety of the lowest, and
the happiness of a middle one, ii. 457.
That condition of life is best, which is
least exposed to temptation, iii. 63.
Confession, auricular, ii. 505. The abuse
of confession, iii. 144. Confession, iv.
352. Motives thereto, iv. 143, &c.
Confidence ; Jewish confidence reproved
by John the Baptist, i. 369. Confidence
toward God, i. 365, iv. 414—422. How
grounded, iv. 423—431. Common to
all sincere Christians, i. 372. It resides
in the soul or conscience, i. 380. A
false confidence, i. 382. Instances of a
confidence suggested by a rightly-in
formed conscience, i. 396 — 400.
Confirmation, owned by the church of
England, a divine and apostolical institu
tion, made a sacrament by the church
of Rome, ii. 294.
Conformity to the church traduced, i. 295,
296.
Conscience, a calm conscience the result
of a pious life, i. 11. Company no
security against an angry conscience, i.
14. From what a good conscience
ariseth, i. 31. Clearness of conscience
the best ground for confidence, i. 136.
Conscience lays no restraint upon
worldly policy, i. 140. What is a
man's civil conscience, i. 143. How
the conscience ought to be informed i.
371 — 374. How high the confidence of
a well-grounded conscience can rise, i.
372 — 374. Conscience must not be
offended, i. 375. How to distinguish
between the motions of God's Spirit
and of conscience, i. 376. Conscience
is often to be reckoned with, i. 378, 379.
The bare silence of it no sufficient argu
ment for confidence towards God, i. 382.

556

INDEX.

Ils nature and measures, i. 365—400,
iv. 8. Why its testimony is authentic,
j '384 — 396. It is God's vicegerent, i.
384. The mischief of not distinguishing
between conscience and mere opinion, l.
386. What is the notation of the Latin
word, conscience, ib. Its notion truly
stated baffleth all schismatical opposers,
i 387- The sight, sense, and sentence
of the conscience, i. 393—395. It is the
eye ofthe soul, i. 394, 428. Wasted by
great sins, wounded by small ones, l.
394, 432 — 439. It is a man's best friend
in all trials, i. 397—399, and comfort at
the time of death, i. 399. The means
how to have a clear impartial conscience,
i. 438, 439. Conscience amused with a
set of fantastical new-coined phrases, i.
471. How it is wounded, i. 479, 480.
Troubles of conscience not to be re
moved, ii. 258. Conscience, the best
repository for a man to lodge his trea
sure in, ii. 277. Peace of conscience,
how valuable, and how dismal the want
of it, iii. 135. A tender conscience, the
true state and account of it, i. 473 — 488.
A weak conscience, what it is, i. 475 —
478. Plea of a weak conscience when
justifiable, and when not, i. 481—486.
A dissenting conscience irreconcileable
with the sovereignty of the magistrates,
i. 486. Pleas of conscience usually ac
companied with partiality and hypocrisy,
i. 487. The impudence and impiety of
some pretenders to conscience, l. 385 —
390, 437, ii. 316, 370, 512, iv. 502. An
erroneous conscience, to act against
conscience, ii. 371. Liberty of con
science, a word much abused, i. 50, ii.
302. The worm of conscience, ii. 9.
Antidote for the conscience against pre
sumption and despair, iii. 99. Its duty,
iii. 339. Mostly injured by presumptu
ous sins, iii. 290, &c. The cause of its
remorse, iii. 403. Ils stings and remorses
are terrible, iii. 543, iv. 272. Not always
necessary to be felt in the sincere and
regenerate, iii. 550. Who they are that
sin against its checks and warnings, iii.
278, iv. 271, &c. Cannot be distin
guished into politic and private, iii. 191.
Its danger when stupid and hardened,
iv. 8. See Hypocrite. How it grows
hardened, iv. 9, &c. Troubled con
science. See Wounded Spirit.
Consecration of priests, i. 56. Of places,
i. 114. God's different respect to such
places, i. 116.
Constancy, a crowning virtue, i. 469.
Constantinople, its siege, i. 165.
Constitution. See Temper.
Consubstantiation, iii. 178.
Content, life's greatest happiness, ii. 261.
Contented acquiescence in any condi
tion, i. 362.
Contentious persons described, iv. 238,
&.c, 294.
Contingencies, comprehended by a certain
divine knowledge, and governed by as

certain a providence, i. 123. Future
contingencies are not to be the rule of
men's actions, ii. 243. See Decrees,
Foreknowledge, Things future, and iv.
148, &c.
Contradiction, whether what we judge to
be or not to be so, ought to measure the
extent of the divine power, ii, 164—166.
Two sorts of contradictions, ii. 166.
Two contradictions cannot be true, ii.
177. It is a contradiction for a thing to
be one in that very respect in which it
is three, ii. 178.
Conventicles, and private1 meetings, not
warrantable from the use of primitive
Christians, i. 56. The conventicle, the
Jesuit's kennel, i. 296. The ordinances
of the conventicle, and what is to be
met with there, i. 471. * Conventicling
schools and academies ought to be sup
pressed, ii. 298. '
Conversing in lewd places and companies,
dangerous, iii. 47.
Conversion, or a spiritual change, i. 323.
How a preacher is said to be an instru
ment in ihe conversion of a sinner, ii.
78. How mistaken by the hypocrite,
iv. 165. See Regeneration.
Converts from Judaism, i. 473. From
idolatry, i. 474. A man converted from
one sin to another is the devil's convert,
iii. 145.
Conviction of the will, how performed, iv.
455. See Will.
Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, their cen
sers, i. 108.
Corruption, innate corruption brought with
men into the world, iii. 16.
Council of Constance cruelly and basely
used John Huss, and Jerome of Prague,
i. 193.
Counsellors, evil counsellors, a word of
malice used by the faction to undermine
the government, ii. 26, iii. 14.
Counsels of God not to be inquired into,
iv. 208. See Decrees, Purposes.
Courage required in a bishop, iii. 204. In
a Christian, iv. 163. See Fortitude.
Courtiers engage one in a fatal scene, and
then desert him in it, i. 449.
Covenants solemnized with eating and
drinking, i. 320. The business of man's
redemption proceeds upon a twofold
covenant, ii. 13.
Covenant of rebellion against the church
and monarchy, ii. 309, 310, iv. 496, 497.
Scotch covenant, ii. 517.
Covetousness of the pharisees, the reason
of their unbelief, i. 97. Covetousness
darkens the conscience, i. 435, 436.
It is a blinding, pressing, and bold vice,
ii. 120. It is an absurdity in reason,
and a contradiction to religion, ii. 229 —
263. It is miscalled good husbandry,
iii. 12.
Coward, a most unfit person to make a
Christian, i. 52. The speech of a well-
wishing coward, i. 164. Cowardice
miscalled mercy, iii. 13. Is neither

INDEX.

557

acceptable to God nor man, iv. 163,
iii. 198, &c. See Passive Obedience!
War.
Creation, hard to be discovered by natural
reason; and the philosophers' opinions
about it, i. 21.
Credit, the Joss of it is the liar's reward
i. 198.
Creditor and debtor divide the world ii
239.
Credulity lays a man open, iii. 130. Cre
dulity, iii. 250. See Believing.
Crellius's assertion concerning God's sub-
Btance, ii. 186. Concerning God's at
tributes, iii.- 428/
Croesus's son saves his father by speaking.
ii. 49, 319, iv. 505.
Cromwell, a lively copy of Jeroboam, i.
55. How he first entered the Parlia
ment, i. 128. Weeping and calling
upon God, i. 139. His inquisition, ii.
44. He was a monarch in reality of
fact, ii. 59.
Crucifix adored, ii. 329.
Crucifixion of the flesh. See Flesh.
Cruelty of zealots to their brethren for
. their loyal adherence to their sovereign,
i. 453. Of the world, encouragements
against it, iii. 442, &c.
Curiosity, its nature and danger, iii. 489.
Curse of God, its power, iv. 360.
Custom, long and inveterate, hard to be
conquered, i. 168. Overcomes con
science, i. 430, iii. 412.
D
Damnation, how expressed in scripture,
iii. 452. How it ought to influence us,
iii. 445.
Damned, their misery, iii. 453. See Pu
nishment, Eternal Death, Destruction.
Damocles, with a sword hanging ov«r his
head, i. 215.
Danger, generally absolves from duty, i.
162. Truth exposes the owner to
danger, i. 45. Dangers of a merchant,
ii. 250. Of a soldier, ii. 251. Of a
statesman, ib.
Daniel's behaviour in the land of his cap
tivity, i. 119, 120.
Darius, iii. 538.
Dathan. See Corah.
David, raised by prosperity, i. 134. His
murder and adultery, i. 291. His re
traction, after a bloody and revengeful
resolution, i. 350. His flight from
Absalom, and return, ii. 53. His piety
disarming the divine vengeance, ii. 57.
His trust in God, ii. 62. His being
softened by the delicacies of the court,
ii. 96. He chooseth pestilence before
captivity, ii. 116. Encountered Goliah
in hope of the king's daughter, ii. 150.
He ia afflicted with his son Absalom's
absence, ii. 258. Persecuted by Saul,
ii. 456. Yet spares him, when he
might have taken his life, iii. 27. His
condition after his sinful fall, iii. 59.

How he gave occasion to God's enemies
to blaspheme, iii. 61. Considered in a
double capacity, iv. 118. His prayer
to and praise of God, ib. His upright
ness, iv. 119. Was a type of Christ
m. 537.
Day, its meaning in scripture, iii. 190, 196
Death, iv. 315, 378. Its pains, ii. 20— 22^
fehame, the sting of death, ii. 104
Temporal, iv. 315. How it creeps
upon us, iv. 316. Compared to eternal,
w. Eternal, ib. Deprives us of all
worldly comforts and pleasures, iv. 317,
and of the enjoyment of God, ib. Fills
both soul and body with the most in
tense pains, torment, and anguish, iv.
318. Why called the wages of sin, iv.
318 — 322. Objections against eternal
death answered, iv. 320 — 322. See
Destruction.
Death-bed repentance, whether effectual
to salvation, iv. 80—89. Its impossibility
would create despair, iv. 89, &c. Ex
amples of its having been effectual, iv.
85, &c. To rely thereon is foolish and
hazardous, iv. 89—92. Is difficult to be
conceived and proved, iv. 91, &c. Its
hindrances, iv. 90, &c.
Debauchee, his life, i. 12. The ill conse
quences of debauchery, ii. 93.
"Declared," in Rom. i. 4, explained,
iv. 94.
Decrees of God, from eternity, ii. 24.
Take nothing from man's free will, iii.
373, 374, iv. 458, &c. Cannot be the
cause of sin, iii. 373—375. See Free
will, Purposes of God.
Defences of a nation, its laws and military
force, ii. 439. See Force, War.
Degree ; every degree of entrance is a de
gree of possession, i. 356.
Delight, the natural result of practice ahd
experiment, i. 276. A man's whole
delight is in whatsoever he accounts his
treasure, ii. 267.
Deliverance ofthe Israelites from Pharaoh
and his host, iv. 34. Of England from
the grand rebellion, compared thereto,
iv. 34, 35, 37—39. Its greatness, iv.
34. Unexpectedness, ib., &c. Season-
ableness, iv. 37, &c, and undeserved-
ness, iv. 38.
Deliverances, miraculous, exemplified, iv.
30. What is chiefly to be considered in
them, iv. 40. Signal and unexpected,
are the strongest and sweetest ways of
God's convicting us of our sins, iv. 7.
Should make us thankful and obedient,
iv. 7, 8.
Delusions of sectaries, i. 471, 472. Strong
delusions sent by God, ii. 192 — 228.
How spread over the world at the com
ing of Christ, iv. 373^376.
Demagogues, their artifices, ii. 296.
Demas's apostasy, iii. 30, 31.
Demetrius the silversmith, a heathen im
postor, i. 311.
Democracy, hath always in it some one
ruling active person, ii. 59.
312

INDEX.

558
Denial, self-denial, the great comprehen
sive gospel-duty, i. 36. Denial of Christ,
what it is, i. 39—48. Christ s denial of
us, what it is, i. 48. , ..
Dependence upon Providence, n. 397, 45/ ;
in the way of lawful courses.^ u. 397.
Our dependence is on Christ's merit
and mediation, iv. 423.
Descent of Christ. See Christ, Humilia
tion. Of the Holy Ghost. See Holy
Ghost.
Desertion of God, its bad effects on man,
iii. 541, 544, 545. See God, Spirit of
God withdrawn.
Designs of God. See Decrees.
Desire, the spring of diligence, ii. 267.
See Thoughts, and iv. 330.
Despair, who are chiefly subject thereto,
iii. 287. How caused, iii. 490, iv. 22.
See Death-bed Repentance. Is opposite
to trust in God, iv. 414, and makes a man
uncapable of his duty to God, iii. 490.
Despondency of mind in a time of pressing
adversity, i. 135, 136.
Destruction of sinners, when designed by
God, iii. 393, iv. 3—10. How effected,
iii. 549. Of soul and body in hell, iii.
452. Why this is the most terrible of
all punishments, iii. 454.
Detraction. See Flattery.
Detractor and the flatterer compared, ni.
253, &c.
Devil, his ingratitude and pride, i. 181.
His pride was his ruin, l. 437. His
methods in assaulting man, i. 166 — 168,
ii. 207, 208. How he transforms him
self into an angel of light, ii. 322—324.
How he operates upon the soul, ii, 324
— 327. How he has imposed upon the
Christian world, ii. 327 — 345. He is a
subtle gamester, ii. 346. His two allies,
the world and the flesh, iii. 17. His
power, iii. 377. Works, iv. 373. How
conquered, iv. 379—381. See Christ.
Why he hates man, iii. 350. Why he
tempts man, iii. 350 — 352. By what
ways and means, iii. 352 — 355, iv. 373,
&c. Is not to be charged with our sins,
iii. 377.
Devotion's ingredients, desire, reverence,
and confidence, i. 120. Devotion indis
pensably required in prayer, i. 252.
Our liturgy, the greatest treasure of
rational devotion, i. 272.
De Witt, a kind of king in a common
wealth, ii. 59.
Diabolical baseness, i. 282.
Diagoras Melius, iv. 19.
Dictatorship, a perfect monarchy for the
time, ii. 59.
Difficulties, mistaken for impossibilities, i.
169. The great difficulty in reconciling
the immutable certainty of God's fore
knowledge with the freedom and con
tingency of all human acts, i. 505.
Difficulty of working out our salvation,
iii. 323—325.
Diogenes at a feast, abstaining for his
pleasure, i. 7.

Dionysius, iii. 335.
Discontent. See Complaints, Disgusts.
Discretion, shows itself in paucity of
words, i. 259. Discretion must be
added to devotion, i. 333.
Disgrace, above all other things, the tor
ment of the soul, ii. 104, iii. 336.
Disgusts, inward, must be suppressed by
a Christian, iii. 419.
Dispensation cannot be granted to do evil,
iii. 225, &c. Popish, on what grounded,
iii. 226.
Dispensations, or judgments of God, what
opinion is to be formed of them, iii.
429—431. ?. .
Disputes, whence they arise, iv. 116, &c.
See Knowledge, human.
Dissatisfaction, naturally arising in the
heart, after an ill action, i. 274.
Dissembling of others' defects or vices is
flattery, iii. 236, &c.
Dissenters, their conscience, i. 486. Their
covetousness, ii. 237.
Dissimulation, the principle of worldly
policy, i. 139. A companion of cruelly,
iv. 366. Dissimulation in prayer, ii. 347.
See Flattery, Hypocrite.
Distrust of Providence, ii. 234. Distrusts
of God are unreasonable, iii. 523. See
Dependence.
Dividers. See Church.
Divines, observations on their parentage,
iv. 107.
Divinity, the dignity of it, and what it
treats of, ii. 79. Unfit for the ignorant
and forward, ii. 84. The most laborious
of all studies, iv. 113, &c.
Doctrines of Christ, their nature, iv. 99,
&c. Cannot be proved by his miracles,
iv. 104, 105, &c. But by the prophe
cies fulfilled in him, iv. 100. And that
not found conclusive to all persons, iv.
101, &c. Doctrines preached in the
name of Christ must be tried, iii. 232.
By what means, iii. 232, 233. Not to
be accepted, because common, general,
or ancient, iii. 233. Nor on account of
the preacher's supposed sanctity, ib.
When known to be good, iii. 234.
Dominion of God is absolute, iii. 481, iv,
224.
Doubts ; every doubting does not over
throw the confidence of conscience, i.
380. How cleared, iii. 526.
Drinker, he is the object of scorn and
contempt, i. 217. His penance, i. 8.
Drunkenness no sin amongst many of
the Germans, ii. 145.
Drunkenness is painful, iv. 320.
Duck (Arthur), his book De Usu et Au-
thoritate Juris Civilis Romanorum, ii.
389.
Duellers, what dangers they encounter,
iv. 269—272.
Duelling, what it is, iv. 264, 273. In what
cases lawful, iv. 264 — 266 ; when un
lawful, iv. 266 — 269. Its bad conse
quences, iv. 269, &c. How discoun
tenanced by antiquity, ib.

INDEX. 559

Duels fought in the pretended quarrel of
honour, iii. 3 — 6. Proscribed in France,
iii. 6.
AwaTdi, how expounded by Grotius, ii. 22.
Durandus's principles, ii. 31.
Dulness, among some a mark of regene
ration, ii. 70.
Dutch critic, his exposition of St. John viii.
58, and his being overpowered by the
first chapter of St. John, i. 524.
Duties preparatory for a due access to the
holy sacrament, i. 325 — 333. Duties of
mortification, ii. 100. Moral duties, i.
337 — 341. Duties of princes and sub
jects, ii. 62 ; of a church-ruler, i. 76—
81 ; of parents, ii. 287 ; school-masters,
ii. 290 ; clergymen, ii. 293. Duty barely
without reward is no sufficient motive,
ii. 136. Christian duties are all reducible
to faith, obedience, and patience, iv. 205.
How enforced, iii. 490.
E
Eagle and oyster in the fable, i. 36. Her
nest fired by a coal snatched from the
altar, i. 109. The swiftness of the Ro
man eagles, i. 467. The quickness of
the eagle's eye, ii. 51.
Ear, hearing, explained, iii. 509, &c.
Earth, its " lower parts," explained, iii.
171—173.
Ease of a virtuous and religious person, i.
11—16.
Easter devotions, and Easter dress, i. 323.
Economy of the Jews, and of the Chris
tians, i. 89.
Education, when mistaken for piety and
grace, iv. 326.
Egyptians, the great masters of learning,
enjoined silence to the votaries of their
gods, i. 497. Egyptian midlives, ii.
419.
Ehud kills Eglon, king of the Moabites,
ii. 422.
Eiicuiy Boiti\uc>i, Charles I. the author of,
iv. 493.
Ejaculations, such as are the prayers of
our Saviour, aud others of like brevity,
i. 268.
*EXo/?e km I&ukz explained, iii. 181.
Election and elected, iii. 218, 457, iv. 106.
See God.
Elijah kills the prophets of Baal, ii. 423.
Eli's sons' infamous example, ii. 85.
Employment. See Idleness, Industry,
Labour, Learning, Divinity.
"En iwijai explained, iv. 95.
Encouragement given to men of dangerous
principles, ii. 533.
Ends pitched upon by men, not suitable to
their condition, i. 144.
Enemies, to be loved, i. 150, 440—457;
and prayed for, but not trusted, i. 150.
Happy, who has no enemies ; much
happier, who can pardon them, i. 475.
Bosom enemies the worst, iii. 114. En
mity, a restless thing, i. 449. Enemy
not to be caressed as a friend, iv. 215.

Our duty to him, iv. 216, 253. See
War.
England's sins and punishments, ii. 116.
English virtue and temper give way to
foreign vices, ii. 152. English preach
ing, i. 70. English government's mild
ness, n. 524. English, the apes of the
French, iii. 6.
Enjoyments of this world have neither the
property nor perpetuity of those that
accrue from religion, i. 15. They are
not an end suitable to a rational nature,
i. 145. They are perishing and out of
our power, ii. 275, 276.
Ens and verum jn philosophy are the
same, i. 59.
Enticing to sin, its crime, iii. 381—383.
Enthusiasm, a fantastic pretence of inter
course with God, i. 375. Enthusiasts'
mystical interpretations of scripture, ii.
303, iv. 491. Quicksilver or gunpowder
of enthusiasm, ii: 340. Enthusiasm
commonly takes up its abode in melan
choly, ii. 341.
Envy, what it proceeds from, i. 180. Its
nature, causes, and effects, ii. 441 — 459.
Envy's tyranny worse than Phalaris's
bull, ii. 452. Envy compared to the
eagle, in its sagacious and devouring
nature, ii. 454.
Epicurus's opinion of good and evil,
honest and dishonest, i. 337, 338. Epi
cureans' scoffing at the resurrection, ii.
156. Epicurus, iv. 19.
'EmXa/i/Ja^rai explained, iii. 461, 462.
Episcopacy is superior to presbytery, iii.
201.
Epistle qf St. Paul to the Romans, its
drift is universal, i. 303. The 13th
chapter of it, the repository of the most
absolute and binding , precepts of allegi
ance, ii. 368.
Equity is essential to the nature of God,
iii. 482, &c.
Erasmus, a restorer of polite learning, ii.
Erastianism' s unhappy propagation, i. 141.
Erastus, iii. 206.
Error of having false principles, or draw
ing wrong consequences from right ones,
i. 207. Error the madness of the mind,
ii. 216. Error in the judgment proceeds
from ill-disposed affections, ii. 192 — 228.
Esau's mortal grudge against Jacob, ii. 48.
Escobar the casuist suits the strictest pre
cept to the loosest consequences, ii. 340.
A patron of resistance against kings, ii.
320.
Estates, sudden in getting, short in con
tinuance, ii. 237. See Calling, Goods.
Esteem of the world not to be depended
on, i. 365.
Eternity, what, iii. 452. Of torments, iii.
453. See Destruction, Eternity of the
world. See Aristotle, Atheists.
Ethiopian's skin unchangeable, i. 168.
Eucharist in both kinds, opposed by the
council of Trent, i. 193.
Eunomians, iii. 464.

660

INDEX.

Eusebius, concerning the consecration of
churches, i. 115. .
Events knit and linked together in a chain,
ii. 52.
Evidence of sense, the clearest that natu
rally the mind of man can receive, l. 94.
Evil, its nature, i. 336—341. Its way of
operating upon the mind of man, i. 341.
Evil called good, and good evil, i. 334 —
350, ii. 500—536, iii. 1—15.
Exaltation of Christ. See Ascension.
Examination, the great difficult work of
self-examination, i. 327. Examination
of one's self necessary, iv. 196.
Examples of persons recorded in scripture,
not proposed as rules of direction to live
by, ii. 415. Vicious examples of per
sons in place and power, strong tempta
tions to sin, iii. 95. See Custom.
Exchange, the alienation of one property
or title for another, i. 416.
Excuses for not being charitable, i. 165.
A sinner excluded from all excuses by
natural religion alone, i. 303 — 317. Ex
cuses for sin. See Devil, God, In
firmity, Ignorance, Presumption, Sin.
Expedient, or inexpedient, words of a
general, indefinite signification, ii. 481.
Experience gives knowledge in all profes
sions, i. 103. It is one of the surest and
best improvements of reason, i. 206.
Expression; the finding words and expres
sions for prayer, is the business of the
brain, i. 252. Outward expressions must
be restrained, iii. 420 — 422. Smooth,
their effects, iii. 422.
External profession of a true religion, no
certain ground for confidence towards
God, i. 369.
Eye, in what case a man may see more
by another's eye than his own, i. 158.
Of one who lost his eye by keeping it
long covered, i. 375. What is meant
by the singleness of the eye, i. 428.
The eye is first overcome, ii. 143.

Fabricitjts's impregnable integrity, i. 374.
Faction's proceedings against Charles I.
and II., ii. 523 — 532. Spirit of faction
in extemporary harangues, i. 254, 255.
Factious men affect the title of public
spirits, iii. 14.
Faith, must be not only living, but lively,
i. 326. God has given our faith light
enough to guide, and darkness enough
to exercise it, i. 489. Faith too mean a
thing for heaven, i. 502. Implicit faith,
a great absurdity, i. 503, ii. 330, 331.
The whole work of man's salvation
ascribed to faith, ii. 198. The peculiar
excellency of faith not springing from
sight, ii. 349, 352. Faith consists not in
a bare act of assent, but in a full choice
of the will, ii. 365. The property and
nature of faith, iii. 82. Faith is three
fold, iii. 348. Saving faith, iii. 216, 348.
When mistaken, iii. 189. Is alone able

to make a man victorious, iii. 355. In
what manner, iii. 357.
Fall, wherein consists the greatness of a
fall, i. 469, 470.
False foundations, what they are, i. 462 —
466.
Falsehood, an attendant of ingratitude, i.
183. The infamous character of a false
man, who shows tricks with oaths, i. 216.
Familists, assert the Spirit's personal in
dwelling in believers, ii. 402. Henry
Nicolas the father of them, ii. 339. See
Antinomians.
Fanatics step to the magistracy through
the ruin of the ministry, i. 61. Fanatic
treachery, i. 193. Fanatic zeal against
popery and superstition, i. 369, 370.
Pretence to the gift of prophecy, ii. 43.
Fanaticism, what it is, li. 226. Fanati
cism and rebellion, the two plagues of
Christendom, ii. 287. Fanatics and
pasists not so opposite as they pretend,
ii. 507.
Fancy, its worst and its true sense, ii. 70.
Farthing, paying the uttermost, explained,
iii. 320.
Fast, enjoined by the church-rubric to
prepare us for a festival, i. 330. FaBting
the diet of angels, and one of the wings
of prayer, i. 331. In what it consists,
iv. 44—48, 149—152. Its use, iv. 51,
147. Its qualifications, iv. 50 — 56. It
must be sincere, iv. 53, &c. Attended
with a hatred to sin, iv. 53, 54. En
livened with prayer, iv. 54, and accom
panied with alms-deeds and works of
mercy, iv. 55. It is a duty both moral,
iv. 43, spiritual, iv. 151, and by God's
command, iv. 57. Is a sovereign remedy
to cure spiritual distempers, iv. 147.
But is not meritorious, iv. 56. Must be
practised by all men, iv. 44. But not
as necessary and valuable in itself, iv.
50 — 53. Reasons for fasting and hu
miliation, iv. 148, 149. National fasting
required for national sins, iv. 152, &c.
Father, in Matt. x. 37, iv. 395.
Favours, according to worldly policy, are
to be done only to the rich or potent, or
to enemies, i. 143. Favour of God,
who sins against it, iii. 279.
Fear, how altered from what it was in the
stale of innocence, i. 30. Hopes and
fears govern all things, ii. 153. Innate
fears not to be conquered, ii. 120. Fear
of God, the whole business of religion,
ii. 144. Fear described, iii. 435, 448,
449, 500, 501. Is twofold, iii. 444. Of
God must be preferred to the fear of
man, iii. 456, &c. Fear not them that
can kill the body, iii. 444. What ought
not to be feared, iii. 446 — 452. The
fear of man draws to many sins, iii. 458,
&c. Its esteem, how raised, iv. 466.
Is improper in a mipister of God's word,
iii. 442.
Fearfulness, iv. 362. See Fear.
Fervency of prayer, how prevented, iv,
129, &c.

Fifth Monarchy's sovereignty founded
upon saintship, i. 23.
Flatterer described, iii. 260, 246, 247, 253.
His designs detected, iii. 260 — 263.
Who are the greatest flatterers, iii.
249, 250.
Flattery feeding the mind of a fool in
power, i. 343—345, 349. Flattery, in
what it consists, iii. 235—263, iv. 298.
Its ends and designs, iii. 259 — 263.
Who are most liable to be flattered,
iii. 255 — 259. The reasons on which it
is grounded, iii. 255. Its effects, iii.
422, 458.
Flesh, a corrupt habit so called, iv. 120,
340. Must be crucified, iv. 346—352.
How to be crucified, iv. 352, 353. Its
necessity, iv. 353, 354. " The flesh
with its affections and lusts," explained,
iv. 339.
Flood, why brought upon the earth, iv.
444.
Folly ; in scripture, wickedness is called
folly, piety wisdom, ii. 89.
Fool, who, iv. 24; "saith in his heart"
explained, iv. 20 — 24.
Foolishness of worldly wisdom, i. 138 —
152.
Force, when lawful to be used, iv. 257,
258, 273, 274. Under what restrictions,
iv. 279, &c. Against whom, iv. 281,
&c. Not by a private man against his
governor, iv. 260. See War.
Forecast, prudent forecast is not covetous
ness, ii. 233.
Foreknowledge. See God.
Forgiveness of God, whence it flows, iii.
492, &c. What it is, iii. 494, &c. Of
what number of sins, iii. 496, &c. Of
what magnitude, iii. 498, &c. On whom
bestowed, iii. 499. Why to be expected,
iii. 504, iv. 243, &c. Should enforce
our fear of God, iii. 502. Is more
reasonably to be expected from man
than from God, iii. 396.
Form of godliness. See Godliness.
Forms are not irreconcileable to the power
of godliness, ii. 343.
Forsaken of God, the danger, iii. 541, 544,
545. , See Desertion.
Fortitude, is the gift of the Holy Ghost,
iii. 517, &c.
Forum conscientias, iii. 403.
Fox (George), an illiterate cobbler, first
beginner and head of the Quakers, ii.
489.
Frankness of dealing, used by the ablest
men, i. 148.
Free will, iii. 215, iv. 81, 111, 135, 167,
210. Freedom of the will much im
paired by original sin, i. 313.
Friendship, the crown of all temporal en
joyments, yet subject to change, i. 14,
132. Disregarded by the worldly poli
tician, i. 143. Not to be made with an
ungrateful man, i. 184. Poisoned by
falsehood, i. 196. Christ's friendship to
his disciples, i. 224—239. The privi
leges of friendship, i. 228—236. Friend-
Vol. IV.— 71

INDEX. 561
ship, its real signs, iii. 259. When be-
trayed. See Flatterer.
Futurity. See Things future, Foreknow
ledge, Omniscience.

G
Galatia, the church of Galatia, even
when newly planted, in a corrupt and
degenerate condition, ii. 476, 477, iv.
507, 508.
Galatine, what he affirms of the Talmud
ists, ii. 181.
Gassendus understood well Epicurus's no
tions, i. 338.
Gelasius, what he saith of the Pelagians,
i. 418. B
Generations. See Complaints.
Gideon's fleece, i. 180, ii. 450. His great
deserts ill requited by the Israelites, i.
171, 172.
Gift ; things required in passing a thing
away to another by a deed of gift, i. 113,
114. Gifts conferred upon the apostles,
ii. 30—46 ; called xapicfiara, ii. 31.: either
ordinary, ib., or extraordinary, ii. 32.
Of tongues, of healing, of prophecy, ii.
32, 33, iii. 186, 527. Of courage, iii.
327. Diversity of gifts imports variety,
excludes contrariety, ii. 35 — 40. Minis
terial gifts, when given to the apostles,
iii. 187.
Gifted Brethren, persons pretending to
the Spirit, ii. 43. Fanatical pretensions
to the gifts of prophecy, and discerning
of spirits, ii. 43, 44.
Glory; what it is, ii. 103. To, glory in
sin, what it is, ii. 112. Love of glory,
what able to produce, iii. 331 — 335.
Why it influenceth us, iii. 335—338. It
is not able to make us victorious, iii.
338—344. Of God, the end of all his
works. See Honour. How engaged,
iii. 386—389.
Gloucester, a lawyer's advice to bind the
duke of Gloucester to a trade ; and this
lawyer was made a judge under Charles
II., ii. 241.
Gluttony is painful, iv. 320.
Gnostics, a word mistaken by some, i. 305.
God, the fountain of honour, i. 87. In
Deo sunt jura omnia, i. 113. There is
no new immanent act in God, i. 124.
The proof of a God or First Being, i.
208, 209, 212. God a God of order, i.
250. Creator of the world, i. 307 ; to
be worshipped, ib. ; the worker of all
our good inclinations and actions, i.
416. God is a pure act, a perpetual,
incessant motion, i. 460. The absolute
monarch of the world, ii. 47. His ways
and actings above all created intellectu
als, ii. 383. His dealing with the first
and latter ages of the church, ii. 417.
In how many respects God is capable
of being honoured or dishonoured by
us, iii. 132, 133. God may order what
he does not approve, i. 53. His intima
cies with the faithful under the law, and

562

INDEX.

under the gospel, i. 232—234. God
makes use of the several tempers and
constitutions of men to serve his church,
jj 36 — 39. How he is said to send men
delusions, ii. 192—228. God and the
world, rivals for men's affections, ii. 272.
God's divine nature, i. 491, and way of
subsisting, ii. 178. Its absoluteness and
simplicity, iii. 35. God's image in man ;
wherein it consists, i. 22, 23. The first
reason and impulsive cause of God's
actings is within himself, iii. 35. God's
decrees, from all eternity, ii. 24. Pro
mises and immutability, ii. 24, 25.
God's word, or the scripture, contains a
body of religion, and a system of the
best rhetoric, ii. 74. God's judgments,
of several sorts, and for several ends, ii.
127—132, 213. God's language, when
the work of the 6ix days was transacted
in so many words, i. 256, 257. God's
perfections, i. 246, 247, 412. Attributes,
i. 10, 500. Providence, ils admirable
extent, i. 121. God's presence, and its
extraordinary manifestations, i. 108. Qm-
nipresence, i. 122, 123. Omniscience
and prescience, i. 123, 505. Omnipo
tence, i. 1p'3. Mercy, i. 210. Justice,
ii. 25, 26. Wisdom and power, i. 489,
490. God's worship, not like him, in
visible, i. 461. His being or existence,
by whom denied, iv. 19, &c, 24.
" There is no God," how to be under
stood, iv. 19 — 24. Our Creator, iii.
386 — 389. How he governs the world,
iii. 342. Knoweth all things, iii. 295,
297, 134—138. Rules and governs the
secret passages of man's life, iii. 295,
By discovering them, iii. 296. His most
secret intentions, ib. Designs, iii. 297.
Is the only object of our worship, iii.
398. How to^be rightly known, iii. 214.
Judgeth men for sin in this life, iii. 298.
His proceeding against sinners, iv. 1.
Prepares and ripens them for destruction,
iv. 3 — 10. See Destruction. When
provoked to swear against man, iv. 16.
Will judge men at the day of judgment,
iii. 299, &c. Why called merciful,
righteous, and just, &c, iv. 133. In
tends his own glory in all his doings, iv.
227, &c. How he deals with those in
affliction, iv. 229, 230, &c. Particularly
punishes the bloodshedder, iv. 365, &c.
When he speaks convincingly, iv. 5 — 7.
At what lime he withdraws his Spirit
from a hard heart, iv. 445, &c. How
he concurs to harden the heart, iii. 516,
&c. Does not move any to sin, iii. 517.
May justly punish those from whom he
has withdrawn his Spirit, ib. How his
honour is vindicated, iv. 463 — 466.
What it isto "see God," iv. 332, &c.
His love and favour, how engaged, iii.
386—389. His goodness, iv. 227. Con
sidered in relation to Christ, as a father,
iv. 423, &c. ; as a judge, iv. 424, &c.
God the Son; Christ's divinity, i. 507—
511, iii. 38. Pre-existence, i. 526. Per

son, i- 524. Infinite knowledge and
goodness, ii. 231. Humanity, i. 811.
Lineal descent and pedigree, i. 511 — 517.
Coming to his own and condescension,
i. 524—528, 537, 538. Natural cogna
tion to the Jews, i. 538. Hypostatical
union, ii. 22. Photinus and Socinus's
opinion of the nature of Christ, i. 525,
526. Christ the true Messiah, i. 511.
His office of mediator, ii. 14. His in
tercession, iii. 37, 40. He is called the
" mighty counsellor," i. 234. His priest
hood, ii. 27, iii. 39. He is lord of the
universe, yet depressed to the lowest
poverty, ii. 232. The son of David ;
the carpenter's son, i. 66. His being
templed and touched with the feeling
of our infirmities, iii. 39. His behaviour
upon earth, i. 537. The value of his
merits, iii. 38. His sufferings, ii. 1 — 16,
104. His miraculous works, ii. 352.
Doctrine, i. 90 — 92, ii. 223. Arguments,
i. 92—94. Authority of speech, i. 267,
iii. 38. Prayers, i. 224—239. Friend-
ship and love, i. 224—239, 455, 531.
Peace, ii. 276. Kingdoms, two, provi
dential and mediatorial, ii. 341. Me
thods of drawing men to their duty, by
hope of rewards and fear of punish
ments, ii. 143. Christ's disciples, a
little itinerant acadamy, ii. 64. Christ's
descent into hell, ii. 20 — 22. His resur
rection, ii. 17—29, 348—367. Hisap-
pearing among his disciples1 while the
doors were shut, ii. 358. His ascension
and promise, ii. 474.
God the Holy Ghost; his deity, ii. 40.
Personal subsistence, ii. 41. Gifts, ii.
32—40.
Godliness; the power of it not irreconcile-
able to forms, ii. 343. What godliness
is, iii. 18. Form of godliness availeth
nothing to salvation, iv. 325 — 329, &c.
It sometimes proceeds from a strict
education, iv. 326. Or from the cir
cumstances and occasions of a man's
life, iv. 327, &c. Or from a care and
tenderness of his own reputation', ib.,
&c. See Hypocrite.
Godly, who they are, iii. 20.
Gold, diamonds, and the most precious
metals, buried in the earth, i. 500.
Good; the nature of good, i. 336 — 341.
How it operates upon the mind of man,
i. 341. Its property to be communi
cative, i. 462. Chief good, ii. 264—271.
Goodness of God, iv. 227.
Goods, when they may be defended by
force of arms, iv. 276, &c.
Goodwin (John), his "pagans' debt and
dowry," ii. 206.
Gospel; its propagation, i. 36. Its revela
tion, a great and peculiar mercy, i. 315.
Its parabolical description, i. 318. It
adds no new precept to the moral law,
i. 442. It contains all the treasures of
divine wisdom, i. 490. Its triumph over
all the wisdom and philosophy of this
world, i. 499. It is full of mysteries, i.

INDEX.

568

503. How it is disparaged by ill preach
ers, ii. 80 — 86. What preparations are
required to a gospel-scribe, ii. 68 — 80.
The gospel does not change or destroy
the natural way of the soul's acting, ii.
135. The spirit required under the
gospel, and that under or before the
Mosaic dispensation, ii. 146. The gos
pel to be received not upon the evidence
of demonstration, but by the rational
assent of faith, ii. 352. Great intent
and design of the gospel, iv. 178, 460 —
463. How it was published,- iii. 188.
Its truth, iii. 212. How proved, iii. 408.
Contains all things necessary to salva
tion, iii. 217. It worketh in us what is
good, iii. 213. Gives us right notions
of God, and of our duty to man, iii. 214.
Its duties mistaken by the hypocrite, iv.
186—188.
Government ; its business to procure obe
dience and keep off disobedience, i. 57.
Government and religion the two things
by which God supports the societies of
mankind, ii. 56. The necessary de
pendence of its principles, upon religion,
i. 57 — 63. Church-government and
civil government depending one upon
another, i. 71, 72. What is contained
in the nature of government, i. 79 — 82.
The ill influence that contempt has upon
government, i. 82 — 84. Causes why
church governors are despised, ground
less, i. 84, 85 ; and just ones, i. 85 — 87.
The want of kingly governmentJamong
the Israelites, ii. 302, iv. 491. The
mischievous influence of the misappli
cation of names, upon the civil govern
ment, ii. 520 — 536. Its strength, in
what it consists, iii. 209, &c. Govern
ment, or employment, how it influenceth
men, iii. 186.
Grace ; state of grace, i. 5. Preventing
grace, i. 358. Subsequent grace, iii. 28.
Grace of God is a free gift, i. 355, ii.
342, iii. 507, &c. How wrought in us,
iii. 195. Why some cannot improve its
means, iii. 511 — 515. Its power, iv. 15.
Withdrawn is the sinner's destruction,
iv. 9. See Destruction. May be de
nied, iv. 13. See Spirit of God with
drawn. Universal grace, opinions con
cerning it, iii. 519. "Under grace," its
meaning, iii. 22^).
Grammar; all legal, free grammar schools
are to be countenanced, ii. 299. A
grammarian's answer to his prince, who
disputed with him upon a grammatical
point, ii. 229.
Gratitude, what it is, i. 173 — 177. Upon
it are founded the greatest and most
sacred ties of duty, i. 175. The worldly
politician has no sense of gratitude, i.
142. Our obligation of gratitude to
God, iii. 164.
Greatness of place, a splendid servitude,
i. 14. Men hold their greatness rarely,
their baseness always, for term of life,
i. 350. Greatness and prosperity, a

curse, ii. 95. The greatness of a sinner,
an encouragement to sin, ii. 108.
Greeks' ten years" siege before Troy, i,
468. "
Grey-hounds ; the thinness of their jaws
allays not the ravening fury of their
appetite, iii. 6.
Grieving the Spirit, its danger, iv. 467
&c. See Spirit of God withdrawn.
Grotius' s exposition of Isaian liii., ii. 4.
His opinion of opposing the civil magis
trate, iv. 259, &c.
Guilt, always accompanied with meanness
and poor spiritedness, i. 280. Makes a
man irreconcileable, iii. 503. How to
be cleared from the conscience, iii. 479.
H
Habit may continue, when a man is no
longer able to act, i. 299. Habits are
neither inconsistent with, nor destroyed
by every contrary act, i. 380. Habit
of holiness, i. 460.
Habitual preparation to the communion, i.
323—325.
Hainan's greatness, i. 147, and fall, i. 152.
His concern at Mordecai's refusing to
cringe to him, ii. 258.
Hannibal's diversion into Campania, i. 126.
Happiness of heaven, ,i. 501. It consists
not in any earthly abundance, ii. 260.
Happiness in this life, no distinguishing
token of God's love, ii. 387. In what
happiness consists, iii. 405, 445. Why
so lew attain it, iv. 323. What was so
esteemed by heathens, iii. 405.
Hardness of a sinner's heart how effected,
iii. 515—517, iv. 9, 469. Cannot be
ascribed to God as its cause, iii. 515.
Its danger, iv. 9, 445*470. See De
struction, Heart.
Harrison, a chief actor in King Charles's
murder, i. 350.
Hasty births, seldom long-lived, but never
strong, ii. 87.
Hatred, what it was in the state of inno
cence, i. 29. A liar exposed to hatred,
i. 199—201. The nature of hatred, iii.
430. See Anger.
Health, comforts under wants of it, i. 362.
Health recovered by strange casualties,
i. 130. Religion conduceth to health, i.
219. Health, a great happiness, with
out any other riches, ii. 260.
Hearing, iv. 484. See Ear, hearing.
Heart, signifies the will, i. 157. It com
pendiously denotes all the powers and
faculties of the soul, ii. 267. The weak
ness and treachery of the heart, iii. Ill
— 147. Hard-heartedness an attendant
of ingratitude, i. 182. The heart, may
remain hardened, in the midst of con
vincing means, iii. 507, 511 — 515. See
Hardness. Perceiving heart, what is
meant thereby, iii. 508 — 511.
Heathens, whether they had knowledge
enough to save them, i. 98. Nineteen
parts of the world perfectly heathens, i.

564 INDEX-

192. The heathens' ccena pura, l. 321.
The heathen world consigned over to a
perpetual slavery to the devil's deceits,
ii. 206. .„ J t , . .
Heaven, what is signified by the kingdom
of heaven, ii. 66. , . , . •
Hector, dragged by the belt which Ajax
had given him, i. 151.
Hell, emphatically described by the Apo
calypse, i. 202. What tbe word hell,
khi, signifies, ii. 20. Hell described,
iii. 540.
Henry II. of France killed by a splinter,
i. 129. Henry VII. of England, his
best titles to his kingdom, ii. 51, 52.
Henry VIII.'s divorce, the occasion of
many strange accidents, i. 126.
Heresy, built upon the seeming supposed
absurdity of many truths, i. 42, 43.
Heresy in fundamentals, ii. 219. Here
tics have many things common with the
heathens, ii. 328. Htcreticum devita,
how those words were expounded, ii.
331.
Herod, a god of the rabble's and the
devil's making, iii. 28. Herod's be
haviour at the report of the magi, iv.
392, 323. His usurpation, iv. 390.
Cruelty, ib. Magnificence, iv. 391.
See Magi.
Hezekiah's success against the vast army
of Sennacherib, ii. 57. His pride, ii.
95, 257.
High places, what is meant by them, i. 55.
Hinderances to a death-bed repentance, iv.
90, &c.
Hippocrates' saying of the cure of the
body, ii. 72.
Hobbes, iii. 533.
Holiness of God should deter us from sin,
iii. 486. ,»
Holy Ghost, why sent, iii. 526. His pro
cession, iii. 521. Office, iii. 522—526.
What he was to testify of Christ, iii. 526.
By what ways and means, iii. 527.
When and how conferred, iii. 184 — 189.
Is necessary to enable man to conquer
his spiritual enemies, iii. 359. See God
the Holy Ghost.
Homer's heroes assisted by their god,
ii. 400.
Honour or justice of God vindicated, iv.
463 — 466. Honour's pleasures, how
thin they are, i. 13, 14. Sense of ho
nour, i. 143, iii. 3 — 6.
Hope, what it was in the state of inno
cence, i. 30. Hope of a reward, ii. 134
— 152. How hope purifies a man, ii.
148 — 165. Hope may dwell with the
hypocrite, iv. 180 — 182. Of the sinner
is vain, iv. 88. Will meet with miser
able disappointments, iv. 197 — 200.
Hours for divine worship, i. 119.
House of God, who appears in it is in a
more especial manner placed in the pre
sence of God, i. 240.
Huss (John), cruelly and basely used by
the counsel of Constance, i. 193.
Humiliation is the end God proposes by

his judgments, iv. 159, &c. Must be
personal and particular, iv. 156, Sec.
Gives us hopes that God will pardon
our sins, iv. 157 — 159. National hu
miliation is necessary for national sins,
iv. 152, &c. Humiliation of Christ, iii.
171—173, 465-467. See Repentance,
Sin.
Humility is a distinguishing property of
Christian righteousness, iii. 484, &c.
See Poverty of spirit.
Hushai's counsel to Absalom, ii. 209.
Hypocrite described, iv. 178, Ate. His
hope, iv. 179. May hope to be happy,
iv. 180, &.c. How he attains this hope,
iv. 182 — 190. How he continues and
preserves that hope, iv. 193 — 197. Re
lies on God's mercy, iv. 184. Is not
afraid of his justice, ib. How he is
deceived herein, iv. 185, 187. Enjoys
peace and comfort in his mind, iv. 181,
&c. Mistakes the duties of the gospel,
iv. 186 — 188. His end is miserable, iv.
197—200, 202—204. Is dejected under
afflictions, iv. 200, &c, and at the ap
proach of death, iv. 201, 202. See
Scribes and pharisees, Righteousness
of man.
Hypocrisy, what is damnable hypocrisy in
the language of scripture, i. 139. Its
pretences to the spirit and tenderness
of conscience, i. 153. Hypocritical con
trivers of the murder of Charles I., i.
194. The self-adoring hypocrite in the
gospel, i. 197.
Hypostatical union, iii. 175. See God the
Son. I
Idleness exploded, iii. 192. Createth im
possibilities, i. 161. Exposeth the soul
to the devil, iii. 119.
Idolatry, the sin of the heathens, i. 304.
How practically commitled, iv. 24.
Ignorance, a cause of contempt in a ruler,
i. 85. How far ignorance is voluntary
and culpable, i. 373. A religious fear
grounded upon ignorance, i. 476, 478.
The constant practice of religious cheats,
to keep people in ignorance, i. 311. Ig
norance is the foundation of the hypo
crite's hope, iv. 183, &c. When it ex-
cuseth a sin, iii. 266, 385. When not,
iii. 385.
Illuminati, what they were, i. 140.
Illumination of the Spirit, what, iv. 452.
Is threefold, iv. 452 — 454.
Image of God in man, what it is, i. 22.
Image- worship, i. 315.—
Imitation of vice is base and servile, iii.
251.
Immortality of the soul, conjectured by
philosophy, proved only by religion, l.
57. Immortal seed, i. 323.
Impartiality necessary in our inquiries into
truth, i. 101.
Impatience is compounded of pride and
anger, iv. 234.
Impediments. See Hinderances.

INDEX.

565

Impenitence. See Repentance delayed
dangerous.
Implicit faith the property of a Roman
catholic, i. 464. A great absurdity, i.
503.
Importunity, the only coaction that the
will knows, i. 468.
Impossible, many things are reckoned
such, that indeed are not, i. 161.
Imposture, two thirds of the world owe
their misfortunes to it, i. 348. Religious
impostors, ii. 216.
Impudence in sin, the forerunner of de
struction, ii. 101 — 117. Impudence in
prayer described, iv. 418.
Inclination, not interest, should move our
devotion, i. 120. A mere inclination to
any thing is not properly a willing of
that thing, i. 160. Good inclinations,
whence they proceed, iv. 455.
Indemnity, act of indemnity, ii. 319.
Independent, the prophecy of an inde
pendent divine: an independent fast,
i. 41.
Indian's religion, worshipping the devil,
i. 143.
Indifference, in things spiritual, iii. 514,
515.
Indigence, when it is a curse, iv. 162.
See Poverty.
Indulgence granted to schismatics, a rea
son for asserting the constitution of the
church of England, i. 387. Popish in
dulgences and pardons, i. 367, ii. 330.
Indulgences condemned, iii. 218. See
Dispensations.
Industry necessary in all states of men,
iii. 191, &c. Why, iii. 192.
Inexcusableness of a sinner under natural
religion without revelation, i. 303 — 317.
Infallibility, challenged by the enthusiasts
and papists, ii. 338, 339. The real pri
vilege of the apostles, ii. 475.
Infirmity, sins of, iii. 268, iv. 313. See
Sin.
Information, whether after the utmost
means of information, a man may not
remain ignorant of his duty, i. 373.
Ingratitude, its nature and baseness, i. 178
— 180. Its principle, i. 179, 180. , Its
ill qualities and attendants, i. 180 — 183.
A description of an ungrateful person,
i. 184.
Injunctions, for composing and ending the
disputes about the Trinity, i. 402.
Injuries done and- said, which most re
sented by men, Hi. 422. A breach of
Christian peace, iv. 241. May be pun
ished, iv. 247.
Injustice. See Destruction, Spirit of God
withdrawn.
Innocence, happiness of man in the state
of inpocence, i. 24 — 26. Innocence pre
ferable to repentance, i. 358. Legal
and evangelical innocence, i. 381, 382.
The advantage of innocence, i. 474.
It enables eloquence to reprove with
power, ii. 231. Innocence and integrity
required in a bishop iii. 205, &c.

Innocent, what causes render it just to
inflict a punishment upon an innocent
person instead of another, ii. 14.
Innovators of divine worship, contemners
of God, and the most pernicious dis
turbers of the state, i. 62. Innovating
spirit striking at the constitutions of our
church, i. 204. Innovations in religion
the most efficacious and plausible way of
compassing a total abolition of it, i. 205.
Insensibility, iv. 8.
Inspiration, extravagant pretenders to it,
ii. 415. Jnspired persons always at
tended with some extraordinary signs
and characters, ii. 418.
Instinct, iii. 364, iv. 533—539.
Integrity. See Innocence.
Intellectual power or faculty, its principal
offices, i. 423.
Intemperance, a branch of sensuality ;
how it debauches the conscience, i. 434,
and how mischievous a sin it is, iii. 121.
See Aristotle.
Intention, iii. 250; to sin, shows a love
thereof, iv. 124, &c. By whom directed
and governed, iii. 296. The plea of a
good intention, i. 154, 463.
Intercession of saints distinguished into
general and particular, iv. 439. Of an
gels and saints disproved, iv. 433.
Intercessor, none other between God and
man but Christ Jesus, iv. 442, &c.
Interest outweighs truth, i. 44. The civil
and ecclesiastical interests are not to be
disjoined, i. 61. Interest deposed, i.
36 — 52. Private interest the cause of
contention, iv. 240.
Interrogative way of speech, imports not
only a negation, but a manifest impos
sibility of a-thing, i. 405.
Intimacy of God with the faithful, i. 231
—234.
Ireland, its climate impatient of poisonous
animals, and its church of poisonous
opinions, i. 402.
Irreligion, accounted policy and fashion
able, i. 140. The irreligious are not the
wisest men, i. 220, 221, iv. 543.
Irreverence in prayer, iv. 418, &c.
Isaiah, the evangelist of the Jewish church,
ii. 1.
Israelites. See Jews.
Italian cruelty towards Charles I., ii. 313.

Jacob, met and embraced by Esau, ii. 48.
He thought seven years' service for
Rachel but a few days, ii. 267. How
he marshalled his family, when he was
to meet his brother Esau, ii. 270. His
supplanting his brother, ii. 420, 456.
How he struggled with God, iii. 125.
James I., how he discovered the powder-
plot, ii. 50.
Jealousy is full of vexation, iv. 362.
Jeffrys (Chancellor), his design of setting
up an anniversary feast or meeting of
Westminster scholars, ii. 279.
3B

566

INDEX.

Jeremy the prophet, in what particulars he
resembled a bishop, iii. 202.
Jeroboam's sin, i. 53 — 72.
Jesting, when inconvenient, iii. 242.
Jesuits, their doctrine concerning the di-
rection of the intention, i. 154.
Jewish economy brought in with miracles,
i. 89. Whv the Jews rejected Chris
tianity, i. 90, 532. Six parts of ihe
world are Jews and Mahometans, i.
192. The Jews' exactness in their pre
parations, i. 321. Their arrogance in
being Abraham's sons, i. 533. How
they are called by Christ "his own,"
i. 528. Their condition, national and
ecclesiastical, at Christ's coming, i. 529,
530. God's complaint against them, ii.
431—435. Their sins, ii. 436—138.
The Israelites' dealing towards Gideon,
L 171, 172. Their fornication with the
daughters of Moab, iii. 96. The judg
ments of God upon them, ii. 115. Tne
Israelites' spoiling the Egyptians, ii.
42f. Their ingratitude and idolatry in
changing the Deity for a golden calf.
iii. 57.
Jews, their idolatry, impurity, rebellion,
iii. 466, 505, 507. God's dealings with
them, iii. 505, &.c, iv. 447. Provoked
God to wrath, iv. 31—33, 446. Their
sinfulness, iv. 377, &c. The cause of
their unduiifulness to God, iv. 40 — 42.
Their unbelief inexcusable, iv. 373, &.c.
Believed a transmigration of souls, iii.
472. Why God withdrew his Spirit
from them, iv. 446, &c. Their deliver
ance out of Egypt and from Pharaoh,
iv. 33, &c. Why they put Christ to
death, iv. 104.
Joash, king of Israel ; upon what the fate
of his kingdom depended, i. 125, 126.
Job, his integrity in spite of calumny, i.
399. Envy, the cause of his misfor
tunes, ii, 449. His affliction scarce to
be equalled, iii. 540. Tended to his
own good, iii. 487.
John (St.), his gospel's first chapter full of
commanding majesty, i. 523, 524. The
58th verse of the eighth chapter inter
preted away by a Dutch critic, i. 524.
The text in 1 John v. 7, concerning the
Trinity, ii. 174.
Jonah's anger, i. 353. His profound sleep
under his guilt, ii. 252.
Joseph's strange and unparalleled story,
full of chances and tittle contingencies,
directed to mighty ends, i. 125. His
good conscience under the charge of
the highest ingratitude and the lewdest
villany, i. 399. His being supported
under temptation, iii. 26, 27, 46.
Joy. See Passions.
Judah, the crown of Judah translated into
the line of Nathan, i. 514.
Judas swallowing the sop, i. 210. A thief
and a hireling, ii. 147, 237. He was
tempted, and fell beyond recovery, iii.
39. His critical hour, iii. 74.
Judge, in Matt. v. 26, explained, iii. 319.

Judgment, Christ and his truths are denied
by an erroneous, heretical judgment, i.
39. Reason's judgment overruled by
immoderate passion, i. 353. Error in
the judgment caused by ill-disposed
affections, ii. 192—228. The wisdom
of man is an incompetent judge of the
ways of God, ii. 382. False ways of
men's judging, ii. 389—399. Judgments
of God, inflicted by him upon men, are
of several sorts, and intended for several
and very different ends, ii. 214. Our
own judgment ought not to be loo perti
naciously adhered to, iv. 305. Can be
passed by no man upon his own final
estate, iv. 15. See Presumption, Se
curity. Will be executed by God for
the sins of men, iii. 298, &c. See De
struction, God. Of God is irrevocable
and irreversible, iii. 327 — 330. Parti
cular or personal, iv. 6. When unjustly
charged, iii. 475—477, 487. Why un
justly charged in regard to God, iii. 477
— 480. Should draw men to repentance,
iii. 275, 276, iv. 148, &c. How to be
most effectually averted, iv. 153, ice.,
336. The end of God's judgments, iv.
158. What use to be made of them,
iy. 174. General judgments, why in
flicted for particular sins, iv. 154. Judg
ment after this life, its certainty, iv.
526 — 550. Agreeable to the nature of
God and of the soul, iv. 529, 530. Ne
cessary, iv. 530 — 532. Description o#
it, iv. 539—542. What kind of persons
have reason lo fear it, iv. 543 — 550.
Jurisdiction, ecclesiastical, its origin, iii.
206. Settled by law, ti. See Church.
Jus naturale antecedent to all jus positi-
vum, either human or divine, i. 340.
Justice ; gratitude, a part or species of jus
tice, i. 174. The nature and office of
justice, ib. God's justice a reason of
the impossibility of Christ's detention
under a state of death, ii. 25, 26. Di
visions of justice into commutative and
distributive, i. 405. Justice pictured
blind, ii. 131. Justice miscalled cruelty,
iii. 13. Divine justice is essential to
God's nature, iii. 482, iv. 133, &c, 229,
&.c. Could not be satisfied by any
thing created, iii. 495. Is not to be
escaped, iii. 179, 285. Its method of
proceeding, iii. 179, iv. 257, 360.
Justification, ascribed to faith alone, i.
463. Self-justiciaries, their arrogant as
sertion, ib. Justification of a sinner,
iii. 219. Should be our chief aim, iii.
218, &c.
Juvenal, speaking of a future state, ii. 170.
Juxon's advice to Charles I., ii. 396.
K
Kindnesses, why called obligations, i.
175. Kindness of God, iv. 227. See
Goodness, Mercy.
Kingdoms are at "the disposal of God, ii.
53, 54. Kingdom of heaven, what it is,

INDEX.

567

fi. 66, iv. 116, 473. Kingdom of Christ,
what, iii. 503, iv. 394.
Kings, seldom showing themselves, to
keep their subjects in awe, i. 497. Pro
vidence peculiarly concerned in their
salvation and deliverance, ii. 47. Kings
not to be resisted by force. See Force,
Passive Obedience, War. King-killers,
their judgments from God, iv. 369, &c.
Knave, passes for a name of credit, i. 137.
The folly of trusting a knave, i. 199.
Knaves pretending, and fools believing,
serve the devil's interest, ii. 347.
Knowledge of the truth concealed and not
owned by the heathen philosophers, i.
310. The knowledge of angels, i. 502.
Knowledge of languages, a crime among
the sectaries, ii. 44. Knowledge and
learning not opposite to grace, ii. 45.
The generality of knowledge required
in a clergyman, ii. 72. The divine love
of knowledge, ii. 268. Knowledge of
God, iii. 294, 306, iv. 134—138. How
proved, iii. 299—301, iv. 136, 138, &c.
Its excellency, iv. 138 — 143. Proper
ties, iv. 138, &c. Certainty, ib. Inde
pendency, iv. 139, &c. Universality,
iv. 139, &c. Of our thoughts, iv. 142,
&c. What influence it ought to have
over us, iv. 143 — 146. Human know
ledge, its nature, iv. 109, &c. By whom
to be judged, iv. 107. Why so much
praised, ib. In itself is vain, iv. 109.
Li matters of salvation is necessary, iv.
108, 109. Is always attended with sor
row, iv. 109 — 117. Is the instrument
of affliction, iv. 109, of melancholy, ib.,
t and vexation of spirit, iv. 110. Whether
it can be true, or relied upon, ib., &c.
Cannot be assured, ib. Cannot ad
vance the real concerns of human hap
piness, iv. Ill, 112, 332, &c. Is hard
and laborious to be acquired, iv. 112 —
114. Is never contented, iv. 114. Its
effects and consequences produce sor
row, iv. 114 — 117. Is the cause of dis
putes, iv. 116, &c. Opposeth new dis
coveries, ib. Can only find comfort
when it seeks God, iv. 117. Angelical
knowledge, its extent, iv. 433—437.
See Divinity, Learning.

Labour makes many things pass for im
possible, i. 161. Labour is necessary
to all men, iii. 192. See Industry.
Laelius, uncle to Socinus, his posthumous
papers, i. 523.
Laish, its inhabitants ruined by their sloth,
iii. 118.
Language, injurious, is a breach of Chris
tian peace, iv. 244, &c. See Expres
sions, outward, Revile not again.
Laws obligatory to gratitude: of nature,
i. 174; of God revealed in his word, i.
176 ; of men, ib. ; of the' Romans, ib.
The law of Moses, a true and perfect
transcript of the moral law, i. 441. J

Moses' law proceeded only upon tem
poral rewards and punishments, i. 443.
What is the obliging power of the law
to be measured by, ib. Slatute-law,
the product of the king's will, ii. 524.
The nature and obligation of laws,
penalties, and rewards, ii. '487 — 489.
Law of God is indispensable, iii. 226,
&c. Exceptions thereto, ib. Moral
law obligatory, iii. 220, &c. _ Law of
the land, a laborious study," iv. 113.
Whether it be lawful to go to law, iv.
282, &c. Is necessary, iv. 287—289.
Under what restrictions, iv. 289 — 291,
Upon what grounds it proceeds, iv. 287,
&c. Arguments against going to law,
iv. 282—287. "Not under Taw, but
under grace," explained, iii. 220, &c.
Lazarus's, poverty did not unqualify him
for Abraham's bosom, ii. 215. His
resurrection more credible, and why,
ii. 353.
Learning restored, by whom, ii. 331. A
backward learner recompenseth sure for
sudden, i. 77. Human learning neces
sary in the ministerial function, iii. 186.
^ In what other callings necessary, iv.
113, &c. By whom most commended,
iv. 107. See Knowledge, human.
Lead, a metal which bends to every thing,
i. 403.
Length, seldom an excellency in sermons,
ii. 64.
Lent, its instruction and use, iv. 47. Men
tioned by the council of Nice, and many
of the ancient fathers, iv. 47, 48.
Levi's tribe had neither place nor portion
together, like the rest, i. 58. The Le
vite and his concubine the occasion of a
bloody civil war, i. 126, ii. 303. What
was the Levites' ministry and prepara
tion, ii. 87.
Leviathan's atheistical doctrine, i. 141. Its
infamous author, i. 338.
Libels against the church of England in
the time of the grand rebellion, iii. 207.
Libertines, iii. 199, &c, iv. 339.
Liberty of conscience, a word much abused,
i. 50. - Liberty and property, two tink
ling words of the republican cant, ii.
283, 531. How it is abused, ii. 531, 532.
Life hangs upon a very slender thread, i.
130. What is meant by it, when Christ
saith that it consisteth not in abundance,
ii. 248, 229—263. Change of life, or
repentance, i. 8. Change of life will
change the judgment, i. 102. Laying
down life for the brethren, i. 443. Life
is short, iii. 196, 321, &c. Long enough
for the purposes and ends of our crea
tion, iii. 196, &c. Limited by God's
decree, iii. 197. Is the only time to
make our peace with God, iii. 321, &c.
Is uncertain, iii. 325 — 327. All its se
cret passages are known to God, iii. 296.
May be defended by force of arms, iv.
274, &c. Its loss is irreparable, iv. 365.
Good life, what, iii. 339, iv. 83. Is
necessary to salvation, iv. 80, &c.

568

INDEX.

Spiritual life, its fountain, iii. 357, 358,
iv 193. Eternal life, how to be ob
tained, iii. 415. See Religion, Wor-
Light of reason, what it is, i. 374. Light
within us, how it becomes darkness, i.
42-i — 139. Natural light joins with
revelation concerning a future state,
iii. 403 — 408. Special, iv. 454, &c.
Notional, iv. 453. Universal, why
called Ihe light of nature and of the
Spirit, iv. 452, &c. Light of the Spirit.
See Illumination.
Lip-devotion is of no signification, iv. 325.
See Form of Godliness.
Little ; more little men in the church to
spare, than little things, i. 204.
Liturgy, the reason of having our liturgy
continued, i. 205. Its excellency, l.
269, 270. The greatest treasury of
rational devotion in the Christian world,
i. 272.
Live peaceably, Rom. xii. 18, explained,
iv. 252, 253. When impossible, iv. 238
— 240. What duty is here commanded,
iv. 240 — 245. Means to perform it, iv.
292 — 306. Motives to enforce it, iv.
307—309.
Longinus's observation upon Moses, i. 257.
Loquacity, no fit ingredient for prayer, i.
259.
Lot's deliverance, iii. 20.
Love, what it is, and how it acted in the
state ofMnnocence, i. 28, 29. Love of
enemies, i. 440 — 457. Love of kindred,
small ; of countrymen and neighbours,
less, i. 531. Love and reason, the soul's
two wings, ii. 274. What is the in
fallible test of love, ii. 271. Love of
God towards man, why, iii. 336 — 389.
Man's love to Christ, what it is, iv. 396
— 404. Reasons and motives to induce
us thereunto, iv. 404, &c. How it may
be known to be in us, iv. 409— -412.
Love of glory. See Glory. Love of
sin is constant and habitual in the un
regenerate, iv. 475, &c.
Lowliness of spirit. See Poverty of spirit.
Loyalty to the king and conformity to the
church, crimes unpardonable with the
faction, i. 163.
Loyola (Ignatius), his sect composed ofthe
best wits and ablest heads, ii. 332.
Lucius Sylla, iii. 335.
Lucullus, great in the field and in the
academy, yet by luxury survived the
use of his reason, ii. 204.
Ludlow's memoirs, the republicans' new
gospel, ii. 45.
Lust, how it darkens man's conscience,
i. 433. Lusts, what are so, iii. 372.
How the cause of sin, iii. 380 — 387.
See Flesh.
Luther, falsely and ridiculously abused by
the papists, ii. 325, 326. The story of
his being tempted to make away with
himself, iii. 76.
Luxury grows by prosperity, ii. 96.
Luxury, iii. 441.

Lying; the extent, nature, effects, and
punishments of that sin, i. 187 — 203.
How the mind of man can believe a Ue,
ii. 194.
" Lying down," in Psalm cxxxix, 3, ex
plained, iii. 295. M
Macedonia's heresy, ii. 41. A shoot of
the old Arian stock, ii. 328.
Machiavel, iii. 465. His observations upon
the reason of the weakness of Italy, i.
61. Upon a people's general deprava
tion, ii. 113, 286.
Maecenas's advice to Augustus Caesar, i. 62.
Magi, or wise mert, who they were, iv.
383, &c. Their quality, iv. 384, &c.
Their country, iv. 385. The time of
their coming to Jerusalem, iv. 386, &c.
By what kind of a star they were
guided, iv. 387, &c. How they could
collect the birth of the Messiah from
the sight of that star, iv. 388, &c.
Magistrates ; whence proceeds the awe
they have upon the people, iii. 24.
Mahomet joins the impostor to the tyrant,
i. 53, iii. 185. Mahometan religion,
made up of many, partakes much of the
Jewish, ii. 182. A Mahometan Chris
tian, i. 403.
Malice and envy ofthe world, ii. 257, 451.
Malice, its effect, iii. 479, 480. Against
God, whence it proceeds, iii. 491, &.c.
Malignity of some natures and disposi
tions, i. 282. The peculiar malignity
of every vice, ii. 203.
Mamertines, their scandalous case, ii. 389.
Man, the sum ofthe whole creation, i. 22.
His irreparable loss in Adam, i. 32. An
insolent and impotent creature, i. 404.
Poor and proud, i. 417. His indispen
sable obligation to pay homage to God,
i. 409. His great want and weakness,
ii. 264. Naturally affects society and
converse, ii. 268. He is naturally prone
to credulity and superstition in matters
of belief, and to an opinion of merit in
matters of practice, ii. 330. His natural
state, or after his fall, iii. 287, 355 — 357,
iv. 345, 445, 452. His condition before
the flood, iv. 444, &c. Is naturally at
enmity with God, iv. 445, &c. Con
sidered as a member of a body politic,
iii. 1 90. And in a spiritual and temporal
capacity, iii. 191. Cannot repent in the
frave, iii. 196, &c. How supported by
rovidence, iii. 365. His obligations to
God, as his Creator, iii. 367—369. Is
unable to make any satisfaction to God,
iii. 324, &c.
Manifestation of the Son of God, how, iv.
371, &c. Why, iv. 373. Was to re-
move and conquer delusion, iv. 374 ;
sin, iv. 376 ; death, iv. 378.
Mariana, a patron of resistance, ii. 320.
Marcionites, iii. 464.
Marius (C), his great saying, iii. 5.
Mary (Queer-), false to her promise, i. 193.

INDEX.

569

Martyrdom, the badge of primitive Chris
tianity, and what it is, i. 45. It is allow
able to flee from it, i. 46. In many
cases it is a duty, i. 162. The noble
army of martyrs, iii. 87.
Massaniello, a poor fisherman, i. 128.
Maxims, rules of discourse, and the basis
of all philosophy, i. 24.
Means ; the foolishness of pitching upon
means unsuitable to one's end, i. 146.
Mediation of Christ, considered in regard
to God, iv. 423 — 425. In regard to
men, iv. 426—428. Why only to be
performed by Christ, iv. 429 — 431.
Meditation closes the preparatory work of
the pious communicant, i. 333.
Meiosis ; a figure, what it is, ii. 235.
Melancholy persons. See Spirit wounded.
Melancthon, a restorer of polite learning,
ii. 331.
Memory, nothing more fickle End slippery,
i. 131. It is twofold, ii. 70. Its parts,
i. 131.
Men-pleasers, iii. 458.
Mephibosheth, slandered by Ziba, ii. 450.
Mercy ; a reserve of mercy, for the most
part, wrapped up in every curse, i. 39.
In divine mercy we must distinguish
between the first impulsive cause of the
act, and the proper qualification of the
object, iii. 35. Mercy of God over all
his works, iii. 361 — 371. Manifested in
two respects, iii. 361, 494—496, iv. 133,
&c. Abused, 'the danger, iii. 180, 285,
504. Is pleasant to the soul, iii. 548.
To whom extended, iv. 184, &c, 227.
How to be valued, iii. 547. Should
deter us from sin, ii. Vindicated, iv.
464, &.c.
Merit, is a mere nothing, i. 134, iv. 171,
432. It is impossible for man to merit
of God, i. 404—421. The popish dis
tinction of merit, i. 414. The Romish
casuists' giving men a share in the
saints' merits, i. 367.
Messiah, was to descend naturally from
Solomon, i. 514. Expected as a tem
poral prince, i. 532. The opinions of
divers about the Messiah, ii. 1 , 2.
Metempsychosis taught by Pythagoras, ii.
155, iii. 472.
Metius Suffetius's treachery, ii. 51.
Micah's complaint, ii. 270.
Milton, the blind adder, ii. 315, 316.
Mind, the excellency of the mind of man,
i. 9, iv. 180. It cannot with the same
force attend two several objects at the
same time, i. 265. Presence of mind,
ii. 52. The activity and method of the
mind's acting, ii. 265, 266.
Ministers ; the nature and extent of their
office, their commission and instruction,
i. 36. In what cases they are not to se
cure themselves from persecution, i. 47.
Their discouragement in the courts of
the law, i. 51. They are very service
able to the civil magistrate, i. 61. Their
office consistent with temporal privileges
and advantages, i, 63. No illiterate per-
Vol. IV.— 72

son to be admitted to that function, i. 66.
The embasing of them lends to the de
struction of religion, i. 68. They are
not to be brow-beaten by the magistrate
in the management of their ministry,
i. 80. Deference and submission due to
them, i. 502, 503. The usual grounds
of the contempt cast upon them, i. 84.
The qualifications required in a minister,
ii. 69 — 80. The general discouragement
of ministers from reflecting upon the
late villanous times, ii. 533. Christian
ministry generally exposed to scorn and
persecution, ii. 461. Ministry of God's
word. See Commission.
Miracles, what they are, and what is their
force, i. 93, ii. 363. Papists pretend to
the gift of miracles, ii. 34, 35, 210. A
miracle in a large and general sense,
and in a restrained and proper one, ii.
209, 210. Miracles are the work of
God, iv. 30, &c. Why used by Moses,
iii. 184, iv. 30. Wrought by Christ, and
why, iii. 184, 408. By his disciples, iii.
527, &c. Continued in the church on
extraordinary occasions, iv. 30. Pre
tended to by great impostors in religion,
iii. 185. Are difficult to be known to be
really the work of God, iv. 103 — 105.
Are not a sufficient proof that Christ
was the Messiah, iv. 101, 102, 104.
Why God enabled his servants to work
them, iv. 30, &c. Are all inferior to
the resurrection of Christ, iv. 101, &c.
Misapprehension of God and his attributes,
dangerous, iv. 183, &c. See Hypocrite.
Misery inflicted by man, not to be feared,
iii. 446 — 452. Eternal, what, iii. 415,
453, &c. How to be avoided, iii. 415.
Of an unrepenting sinner inevitable, iii.
328, &c. See Destruction.
Misrepresentation of words a fatal impos
ture, i. 334—350, ii. 500—536, iii. 1—15.
Mission of Christ, its divinity, iii. 465, &c.
Mistake of a letter's superscription effected
the preservation, of a kingdom, ii. 52.
Misunderstanding of sin one cause of a
hypocrite's hope, iv. 185, &c.
Moderation, a word by which the betray
ing of the church-constitutions is called,
ii. 512—516.
Modesty, discovered best by fewness of
words, i. 259. Few examples of merit
and modesty in conjunction, i. 401.
Monarchy, the excellency of that govern
ment, ii. 57, 58. The reproach of slavery
unjustly cast upon England's monarchi
cal government, ii. 532.
Monk ; the strange temptations of a cer
tain monk, iii. 103.
Moon ; spots in the moon, i. 518.
Morality of an action, what it is founded
in, i. 156. Morality, its principal duties,
iv. 51. Are the general duties for which
a man will be judged at the last day, iii.
217, 220.
More (Sir Thomas), his defence of Eras
mus against Dorpius, ii. 333.
Mortification of the flesh is difficult, iv.
3b2

670

INDEX.

345, 346. Advantageous, iv. 51, 57.
Is erroneously taught by the church of
Rome, iv. 56, &c. Of sin, what, iv.
123, &.c. Necessary in believers, ib.
Its severe duties, iii. 154.
Moses, taken up by Pharaoh's daughter,
a mere accident, i. 128. The height
and grandeur of his style, i. 257. What
he assigns as the proper qualification of
a judge, i. 435. He was the more reve
renced for wearing a veil, i. 496. He
had a respect to the recompence of the
reward, ii. 134. He enforced his law by
rewards most suitable to sense, ii. 138.
Preserved innocent and untouched in
Pharaoh's court, iii. 27, 47. How he
prevailed with God by prayer, iii. 125.
The severity of his law, i. 109. Ob
servation of Mosaic rites, an occasion
of dispute between the Jewish and gen
tile converts, ii. 476, iv. 507.
Mother, in Matt. x. 37, explained, iv. 395.
Motion ; a maxim in philosophy, concern
ing motion, i. 353.
Motive, more desirable than the action it
self, ii. 135.
Murder; 6elf-murder accounted a good
and virtuous action, both by the Gre
cians and Romans, i. 337.
Murmurings against God unreasonable,
iii. 275, 276, 523, iv. 227. Must be sup
pressed, iv. 212, &.c.
Mysteries of religion, much disputed, i. 39.
Mysteries of the Egyptians kept secret,
i. 497. Mysteries of Christianity hidden
from the wise and prudent, i. 500. Ridi
culed, blasphemed, and new-modelled,
i. 506. Mystery of God, and of the
Father, and of Christ, ii. 174—191.
N
Naboth's vineyard, ii. 257.
Nadab. See Abihu.
Names; honourable names and appella
tions given to the worst of men and
actions, i. 295. Good name, how es
teemed amongst men, iii. 423.
Nathaniel's character, i. 198.
Nature ; what is good-nature and ill-na
ture, i. 179, 180. The characters of
good-nature and ill-nature misplaced,
ni. 8, 10. Human nature, its averseness
to all acts of virtue, especially those of
a higher strain, ii. 400. Its weakness
since the fall repaired by the gospel, ii.
400, 401. State of nature, i. 5. Na
ture's two great helps, art and industry,
i. 347. Two natures united into one
person, and one nature diffused into a
triple personality, i. 491. Nature alone
is weak, iii. 511, &c. Nature of God
is incomprehensible, iv. 133, &c.
Nebuchadnezzar's sacrilege punished, i.
109. God gave him majesty, ii. 56.
His pride, ii. 95. Nebuchadnezzar,
God's woe or curse against him, iv.
356.
Necessity, twofold, ii. 25.

Nero's poorness of spirit, i. 3E5. His cha
racter, ii. 369.
New-birth, new man, i. 323.
Nicanor's intended sacrilege punished, i.
110.
Nicodemus discoursing with our Saviour,
i. 494.
Nicolaitans, iv. 63, 65.
Nicolas (Henry), the father of the Famil-
ists, ii. 339.
Night, in scripture, explained, iii. 190.
Noah, delivered out of temptation, iii. 20.
Nonconformists, stiff and obstinate, un
willing to submit to the orders of the
church, i. 390. Their objections against
our ceremonies, ii. 479 — 483, iv. 510—
515.
Notable man ; what that word commonly
signifies, i. 84.
Novelty, the parent of pleasure, i. 11.
Christianity, an entire novelly to the
highest discoveries of mere nature, ib.
See Knowledge, human.
Nois dWios of Plato and Aristotle : and
what a paradox they owned about it, i.
306.
Numa Pompilius, iii. 185.
0
Oath ; a new oath preparing for the
clergy, in order either to nave their
livings, or to damn their souls, i. 292.
Oath, of God, what, iv. 1.
Obedience to God's will rewarded with a
further discovery of it, i. 98. The obe
dience of the whole man required by
God's law, i. 156. It is excited not
properly by a persuasion of merit, but
by an assurance of a reward, i. 420.
Obedience due to a spiritual guide, i.
505. No obedience comparable to that
of the understanding, ii. 190. Obedi
ence and subjection to the government,
to be preached by every minister four
times a year at least, ii. 296. Obedi
ence suspended by some upon a condi
tion, ii. 310, iv. 497. Precepts of obedi
ence in the 13th of Romans, ii. 368.
The doctrine of passive obedience prac
tised by the primitive heroes of the
Christian church, i. 162. Passive obe
dience, iv. 359, 360. See Grotius, Pa-
raeus, Passive. Active and passive
obedience include the whole duty of a
Christian, iii. 417.
Obscurity, the foundation of all inquiry,
ii. 499.
Obstinacy againsf*God's judgments, its
danger and folly, iii. 275, 276.
Octavius. See Csesar.
Offences against God and man, their dif
ference, iii. 396, &c.
Office of Christ. See Christ, Mediation,
Intercessor, Mission.
Officer, in Matt. v. 26, explained, iii. 31-9.
Old age, unable to stand out against all
ill practice, i. 299.
Omnipresence of God, iii. 300.

INDEX.

571

Omniscience of God, iii. 300, iv. 134—138,
143—146.
Opinion, probable, what it is, iv. 179.
See Judgment.
Oppressions of men, strong temptations to
sin, iii. 95, 96. Oppression is criminal,
iv. 241, &c.
Ordinances of the gospel, their efficacy,
iy. 3.
Origen's opinion about the sufferings of
the damned, i. 210. His opinion of
Christ's body considered, iii. 176.
Ottoman the civilian's Vindicia contra
Tyrannos, ii. 318.
'OpvaQei/TO; explained, iv. 94, &c.
Owen (John), Dean of Christ Church, his
preaching for the suppressing of West
minster school, ii. 300. Dr. O. knew
himself to have the Spirit of God, ii. 409.

Paganism, christened into a new form and
name, ii. 329.
Palavicini (cardinal), his gospel, i. 419.
Palestine, the scene of our Saviour's life
and actions, i. 528.
Parable of a marriage, i. 318. Of the ten
virgins, i. 325. A parable contains two
parts, iii. 320. How it is to be ap
plied, ib.
Paradoxes, seeming to attend gospel truths,
i. 43.
Paraeus (David), a pattern of resistance, ii.
318. His doctrine concerning the re
sistance of a lawful prince, iv. 261, &c.
Answered, iv. 261 — 264.
Pardons and indulgences, i. 367. Pardon
must be accompanied with oblivion, iii.
244.
Parents, their duty towards their children,
ii. 287—289.
Parisian massacre, i. 194.
Tlappti<rLa, what that word signifies, i. 372.
Party, and singularity, a false foundation
to build upon, i. 464. What is partiality,
i. 100. The odious distinction of court-
party and country-party, iii. 528.
Passions, where they have their residence ;
what the stoics thought of them, i. 28.
Love and hatred, i. 28, 29. Anger,
what it was in the state of innocence, i.
29. Joy, ib. Sorrow, ib. Hope, i. 30.
Fear, i. 30. Passion, the drunkenness
of the mind, i. 354. Passions and affec
tions matehed and balanced by one an
other, ii. 102. Must be bridled, iv. 211.
Passive obedience, iv. 260, &c, 367.
Paternal relation, the most honourable, ii.
287.
Path, Psalm cxxxix. 3, explained, iii. 295.
Patience described, iv. 205, 247, &c. Its
excellency, iv. 216. Difficult to be
attained, iv. 217, 218. How to be
practised, iii. 418, &c. See Affliction,
Submission to God's will.
Paul (St.), his church delivered from
beasts, i. 20. Being reprehended and
struck for reviling the high priest, ex

cuses himself, i. 64. Saul, his perse
cuting fit, i. 353. His sermon before
Felix, ii. 83. He and Silas singing in
the prison, ii. 261. What judgment the
barbarians passed upon him, when the
viper fastened upon his hand, ii. 389.
His advice to Timothy and Titus, ii.
535, i. 76. He and Barnabas refuse
adoration, iii. 27. His being buffeted
by a messenger of Satan, iii. 86.
Peace, its nature, iv. 257, &c. With all
men impossible, iv. 238, &c. With
God a necessary to salvation, iii. 193.
Of conscience not enjoyed by all men,
iv. 159, &c. How endeavoured by the
hypocrite, iv. 185.
Peaceably. See Live peaceably.
Pedigree of Christ drawn by two of the
evangelists, i. 511. The infamous pedi
gree of Socinus's heresy, i. 523.
Pelagianism countenanced, i. 401. What
it springs from, and what it is resolvable
into, i. 417, ii. 31. Pelagius's doctrine
about repentance, i. 127, iv. 167. Pe
lagians' doctrine about original sin, ii.
285, iv. 312. Of universal grace, iii.
519. Pelagianism, how introduced, ii.
334.
Penitent, dying, his capacity, iv. 81, 83,
&c. May sincerely repent, iv. 84, 91.
Penruddock's death caused by the per-
fidiousness of U. C, a colonel of the
army, i. 52.
Perdition. See Destruction, and iv. 4.
Perfection of God, how to be imitated, iv.
145. Perfections or abilities must not
be overrated, iii. 253, &c.
Persecution, the trial of a man's con
science, ii. 271. A word whereby to
call the execution of the laws in behalf
of the church, ii. 502, 511, 512.
Persons ; plurality of persons in the divine
nature, proved, and asserted a great
mystery, ii. 176.
Persians' behaviour at the lake Strymen,
iv. 27.
Persuasion, peremptory, what it is, iv. 179,
Peter (St.), his remarkable speech to our
Saviour, i. 406. He is foiled by a sud
den weak assault, i. 467, 469. He fell,
but rose again, iii. 39. Thi difference
between him and St. Paul, about the
observance of the Mosaic rites, ii. 476.
Peter's unjustifiable zeal in drawing his
sword for his master, iii. 102.
Peters (Hugh), his advice to his master
upon the mutinying of the army about
St. Albans, iii. 511.
Pharaoh's heart hardened by the lying
wonders of the magicians, ii. 210.
Pharisee ; the origination of that name, i.
465. Pharisees, men of business, iii.
13. See Scribes.
Philistines, worsted by the eaptivated ark,
i. 109.
Philosophers, charged by St. Paul with
not glorifying God as God, i. 305. They
generally held the soul to be a spiritual,
immaterial substance, i. 432. Their

572

INDEX.

opinion concerning one universal soul
belonging to the whole species of man
kind, ii. 205. What they called sum-
mum bonum, ii. 264. Observation on
Ihe parentage of philosophers, iv. 107.
On their studies, iv. 108.
Phcebus's advice to Phaeton, ii. 292.
Photinus, bishop of Sirmium ; his heresy
of our Saviour's being a mere man, i.
526. Photinianism, how introduced into
the world, ii. 334.
Physiognomist's description of Socrates
laughed at by the Athenians, i. 6.
Physic, a laborious study, iv. 1 13.
Piety. See Godliness.
Pious; the most pious men are still the
most knowing, l. 103.
Plato's books contained admirable things,
i. 374. He knew the immortality of the
soul, but not the resurrection, ii. 156.
How imitated by his scholars, iii. 252.
Plea of conscience ; the force of it is to be
seriously examined, i. 387. Such pleas
usually accompanied by partiality and
hypocrisy, i. 487.
Pleasure; what it is, i. 4, 5, 6. Religion
the proper pleasure of the mind, i. 9 — 18.
Pleasures of speculation, i. 9. Of an
epicure, of an Archimedes, i. 9, 12.
Pleasure taken in other men's sins, i.
273 — 302. Pleasure greater upon the
forbearance than in the commission of
sin, i. 360.
TiXripdw explained, iii. 181, 182.
Hrevita, Kara, in Rom. i. 4, explained, iv. 245.
Pocock (Dr.), his character; and his ac
count of Grotius's exposition of Isaiah
liii., ii. 4.
Poland ; what brought Socinianism there,
i. 403.
Policy ; its principles, i. 138 — 144. What
is the essence of a politician, i. 140, ii.
319. His danger, i. 145—152. Eccle
siastical policy, the best, i. 53 — 72.
Politian, a restorer of polite learning, ii.
331. But an atheist, fearing to read the
Scripture, lest it should spoil his style,
ii. 75.
Pope, the silly pretence of burning the
pope, ii. 28L
Popery, when it began, ii. 329. How its
doctrines grew up, ib. Compared with
enthusiasm, ii. 338 — 341. Its articles,
ii. 502 — 507. Popish austerities, i. 16.
Papists' absurd practice in picturing
God, i. 31. They place the spiritual
above the civil state, in power as well
as dignity, i. 61. Their, and fanatic
treachery, two twins, i. 193. Their
religion an innovation upon the Chris
tian church ; they are our shrewdest
and most designing enemies, i. 205.
Their doctrine of merit, i. 419. Their
belief of monstrous contradictions; their
claiming the gift of miracles, ii. 34.
The grandeur of their religion owing to
the prudence of some of their popes, ii.
58. They never write against the non
conformists, and why, ii. 508.

Possible, in Rom. xii. 18, explained, iv.
245, &c.
Postures of reverence due to sacred places,
i. 120.
Poverty often the mark of divine mercy's
riches, i. 363. It has made the most fa
mous commanders, statesmen, and phi
losophers, ii. 92. Poverty stepping into
power, often intolerable, ii. 236. It
renders men ridiculous and contempt
ible, i. 68. Not always the lot of the
righteous, iv. 162. Is always a tempta
tion to sin, iv. 163. Is often a direct
effect of vice, and a judgment of God,
iv. 162, &c. Sometimes it is the effect
of knowledge or learning, iv. 115. See
Knowledge, human.
Poverty of spirit, its nature, iv. 162 — 169.
What it is not, iv. 162, &c. Has an in
ward sense and feeling of our spiritual
wants and defects, iv. 164, &.c. Is not
presumptuous of its own state, iv. 165,
166. Dreads the justice of God and its
own corrupt nature, iv. 166. Relies
only upon God, iv. 167. Believes that
all men by nature are subject to the
curse of the law, iv. 168. Works out
his salvation with fear and trembling, ii.
Whence this poverty ariseth, iv. 169.
How it may be obtained, ib. Entitles
ils possessor to the kingdom of heaven,
iv. 176.
Powder-plot compared with Charles I.'e
murder, ii. 318.
Power ; without it all government is pre
carious, i. 80. Arbitrary power, slander
cast against the monarchy of England,
iii. 523 — 526. Power of God irresist
ible, iv. 223. Can destroy both the
soul and body of man in hell, iii. 445.
Ministerial, when given to the apostles,
iii. 187. •" With power," in Rom. ix. 4,
explained, iv. 95.
Practice of obedience, the best foundation
to build upon, i. 459, 460. Practice
divides the world into virtuous and
vicious, i. 158. How our obligation to
practice is enforced, ii. 150.
Praise of God, how to be performed, iv.
118.
Prayer ; what is required to a pious, ac
ceptable prayer, i. 240 — 251, iv. 414 —
422. Praying by a set form, extempore,
by the spirit, i. 251 — 255. Brevity and
prolixity of prayer, i. 256 — 271. The
excellency of our common prayer book,
i. 269, 270. Prayers before sermon, i.
270. The prayers of the heathens,
pharisees, and our nonconformists, i.
271. What the life and spirit of prayer
consists in, i. 330. Prayer's two wings,
i. 331. A right confidence towards God
most eminently exerts itself in prayer, i.
396. No man ought peremptorily to
pray for any particular state of life, ii.
64. Prayer a great preservative against
temptation, iii. 124. What qualifications
are required to render a prayer prevalent
and effectual, iii. 125—127. In what

INDEX.

573

cases praying against temptation avails
not, iii. 127—129. What it is to pray
spiritually, according to the measures
of Christian piety, iii. 143. Lord's
Prayer, a standing form and pattern to
pray by, iii. 109. Prayer, what it is,
iv. 118, 125—128, 413. Extemporary
condemned, iv. 420. A particular duty
in time of affliction, iv. 207, &c. When
acceptable to God, iv. 55. When not
effectual, iv. 130—132, 413.
Praying by the spirit, how prevented, iv.
128 — 132, &c. In faith, how prevented,
iv. 128, &c. With zeal, how prevented,
iv. 129.
Preaching; what Gaspar Streso said of
the English preaching, i. 70. Preaching
the least part of a divine, ii. 72. How
preaching works upon men's minds, ii.
76 — 79. Two different ways of preach
ing, which are to be rejected, ii. 80 — 86.
A pulpit-preacher reviling the hierarchy
of the church, ii. 385. Seditious preach
ings and prayings in the time of the
grand rebellion, iii. 207, &c.
Precepts; no new precepts added to the
moral law by the gospel, i. 441. Pre
cepts and counsels in the word of God,
how distinguished by papists, iii. 401.
Predestination, iii. 374, 375. See Elec
tion, Reprobation, Spirit of God with
drawn.
Preeminence ; it is natural almost to all
men to desire preeminence in any per
fection, but especially religious, i. 465.
Preeminence of former times unreason
able, iii. 313, &c.
Preferments of the world depend upon
accidents, i. 133, 134. Promise of pre
ferment, the ablest casuist to resolve the
cases of a scrupulous, oath-sick con
science, ii. 150.
Prejudice of education hard to be con
quered, i. 95. Prejudice disposes the
understanding to error, ii. 202.
Preparation required for the worthy par
ticipation of the Lord's Supper, i. 318
—333.
Presbyterian faction's postdated loyalty, ii.
304.
Presbytery, iii. 201. See Episcopacy.
Presence of mind argues a head and a
heart made for great things, ii. 52.
Presumption is man's usual sin in a pros
perous estate, i. 134. The extravagant
presumption of such as pretend to clear
up all mysteries in religion, i. 504, iii.
289. Danger, iii. 283—285. Origin,
iii. 393 — 396. Object, iii. 287, 288.
Presumptuous sins, what, iii. 264 — 268,
284. The most notable presumptuous
sins, iii. 273—282. The danger of fall
ing into them, iii. 288, 289. Their bad
consequences, iii. 289 — 293. Are most
difficult to be cured, iii. 290, &c. Most
hateful to God, iii. 291, &c.
Pretence of religion, nothing so absurd
but may under it be obtruded upon the
vulgar, i. 55. The absurdity and im

piety of most pretences to conscience, i.
386—392.
Prevailing explained, ii. 210, &c.
Prevention of sin an invaluable mercy, i.
351—364, ii. 121, iii. 22.
Pride, a constant attendant of ingratitude,
i. 180. Pride and indigence usually
concur in beggars, i. 406. A principle
of pride working in the heart of men
ever since our first parents' fall, i. 417.
Pride the devil's sin, his ruin and his
stratagem, i. 437. It receives improve
ment by prosperity, ii. 96. It is a vice
which puts forth betimes, ii. 291. It is
hard to be subdued, iii. 194. See Pre
sumption, Hypocrite, Sin, Angels.
Priest ; what is meant by the consecration
of priests, i. 56. The government and
the priesthood united in the same person,
i. 58. In the Old Testament the same
word signifies priest and prince, i. 64.
Prince ; none so absolute but stands in
need of his subjects for many things, i.
407. A prince wearing sack-cloth under
his purple, ii. 100. Princes not subject
to punishment, iv. 359, 360. See Pas
sive obedience.
Principle ; the two great principles by
which a religious man rules all his
actions, i. 208.
Prison, in Matt. v. 27, explained, iii. 320.
Private good, must always stoop to the
public, i. 481.
Privileges, peculiar and extraordinary, of
the late blessed times of light and inspi
ration, i. 347.
Probability ; most of worldly dealings de
pend wholly upon it, i. 94.
Proceedings of God against sinners, iv. 1.
See God, Destruction.
Prodigality ministers to all sorts of vice,
ii. 233. The abuse of surnaming the
prodigal person generous or liberal,
iii. 13.
Production and possession, the two great
originals from which a man denveth
what right he hath to the actions of
another, i. 409, 410.
Profession ; continual pursuit of an honest
profession never wearieth, i. 13. Pro
fessions chosen by men accidentally,
without knowing what fortune will at
tend them in them, i. 133.
Progress ; an infinite progress exploded as
absurd and impossible, ii. 266.
Projectors, endeavouring to degrade the
noble constitution of our church to the
mechanic model of republican, imperfect
churches abroad, 1. 390.
Promises of God were needless, if the
hope of a reward was not lawful, ii. 147.
How to be understood, iv. 14. Promise,
or vow, when to be made, iv. 11. Its
obligation, ib.
Property. See Liberty.
Prophecies received their completion in
Christ, i. 92. Flattering prophets, i.
342 — 345. Prophecies of Oliver Crom
well's recovery and long life two days

574

INDEX.

before his death, ii. 410. No prophecies
or miracles, though never so exactly
fulfilled, can prove a bad action to be
the will of God, ii. 411. Prophecies
mutually confirm and prove the things
that fulfil them, iii. 465. Concerning
Christ are not conclusive against Jews
and sceptics, iii. 408, iv. 101, &c.
Proposition sufficiently proved requires
our assent, notwithstanding several un
answerable objections, ii. 351.
Prosecutions how they ought to be ma
naged, iv. 287, &c. Ought not to be
too rigorous, iv. 300, &c. See Law.
Xlpaodflfiarov, or napaaKeufi, of the Jews, i. 321 .
Prosperity discovers what a man is, ii. 90.
It improves pride, ii. 96, and luxury, ib.
It inclines men to profaneness and ne
glect of God, ii. 96, 97. It indisposeth
them to the proper means of amend
ment, ii. 97, 99. How a man may use
prosperity so as il may not be destruc
tive, ii. 99, 100. Of sins committed
therein, iii. 273—275.
Protestant ; schismatics abuse that word
by calling themselves true protestants,
ii. 507.
Providence of God managing Ihe most
contingent passages of human affairs, i.
121; directing them to great ends, i.
123 — 136. How it disappoints the de
signs of the worldly politicians, i. 146.
It is peculiarly concerned for the protec
tion and defence of kings, ii. 47 — 63.
What sins Providence sets itself in a
more particular manner to detect, ii.
127, 128. God's providential dealing
with man cannot be truly comprehended
by man's judgment, ii. 384 — 395. Pro
vidence of God is subservient to his
ordinances, iv. 4. Its method of pro
ceeding, iv. 229, 230, &c. Calls us to
repentance, iv. 10. Who they are that
sin against God's providence, iii. 277,
278.
Provoke God, its meaning, iv. 31 — 33.
Its sin, iv. 31, 32, &c.
Public-mindedness makes nations grow
great out of little or nothing, i. 149.
The title of public spirits abused, and
given to the most mortal enemies of
king and people, ii. 528 — 531.
Punishment, the reward of every deviation
from duty, i. 308. By whom to be
executed, iv. 247. Inflicted by God, on
whom, iv. 359. See God, Afflictions.
When mistaken by men, iii. 477, &c.
Why concealed, iii. 484, &c. Eternal
punishment. See Death eternal, De
struction.
Purchasers of church lands, for the most
part unhappy, i. 111.
Purgatory, invented for the temporal,
penal expiation of some sins, ii. 330.
A fabulous conceit, iii. 172, iv. 342.
Puritan perfectionists, ii. 294. Puritanism
deceives the world with a demure face,
ii. 378. The description of a conform
ing Puritan, ii. 493.

Purity, how it is to be attained, iii. 148 —
165. Purity of heart, iv. 324. In what
it consists, iv. 329 — 332. It excludes all
mixture and pollution, iv. 325. Is not
content with the form of godliness, iv.
325-i329. Fits and qualifies the soul
for eternal happiness, iv. 335, 336.
Purposes of God, how to be understood,
iv. 13, 14. Are different from the de
crees of reprobation, iv. 15. Whether
they be absolute and irrevocable, iv. 12,
13. Whether they be discoverable by
man, iv. 14, 15.
Pym, an instrument in bringing King
Charles to the block, ii. 304.
Pythagoras, the first who brought the
name of <to0<}j to ipiXfootfios, i. 305. Ad
mirable in his writings, i. 374. The
importance and wisdom of his advice,
that a man should stand in awe of him
self, ii. 130. His transmigration of souls,
i. 287, ii. 155. Q
Quadragesimal fasts 'fit both body and
soul for the festivals of Easter, ii. 100.
Quadrature of the circle has engaged the
greatest wits in the search alter it, ii.
185.
Quakers the liveliest instances of what is
described of the Cumaean Sibyl by
Virgil, ii. 326. They are the highest
form of enthusiasts amongst us, ii. 339.
George Fox, an illiterate cobbler, the
first beginner and head of their sect, ii.
489.
Quinlilian's saying concerning Seneca's
handling philosophy, ii. 81.
R
Rabbins ; their absurd doctrines and sto
ries grown much more numerous and
fabulous since than before Christ's time,
i. 95. The sottish servitude of the
Jews in believing them, i. 367. They
are noted for inventing and writing un
likely and incredible lies, i. 532. Their
opinions upon Isaiah liii., ii. 2.
Rage is a contest with God, iv. 215. Must
be avoided, iv. 214.
Railing, iv. 244, &c. Against the church
of England, when, iii. 207.
Rain, the devil's assaults compared to it,
i. 468.
Rashness, iv. 417, &c.
Reading and meditation should close the
pious communicant's preparatory work,
l. 333. Reading, like eating, useless
without digestion, i. 378.
Reason ; the use of it does not show itself
till about the seventh year, i. 5. It is
hard for natural reason to discover a
creation before it is revealed, or to be
lieve it after, i. 21. Reason controlled
by passion, i. 353. The voice of reason
to be carefully attended, and why, i. 374.
No man ought to prefer his particular
reason to the united reason of a greater

INDEX.

575

number, ii. 185. The worst of slaveries
is that of the reason, ii. 216. Reason
and love the soul's two wings, ii. 274.
Every rational agent directs all his ac
tions and desires to some great ultimate
end, ii. 266. Reason differs from sense,
iii. 410. Unassisted cannot improve the
means of grace, iii. 511, &c. Enlight
ened, preferreth Christ and his doctrine,
iii. 407—409. Its power over the appe
tites, iii. 376.
Rebellion commented out of Romans xiii.,
i. 75. The youth of the nation should
be principled against rebellion, i. 165, ii.
288 — 290. A description of rebellion,
ii. 319. The old infamous rebellion of
forty-one, ii. 281, 347, 372.
Recompence of reward, ii. 134 — 152.
Reconciliation excluded by treachery, i.
200.
Redemption of man carries in it the marks
of mercy, acting by an unaccountable
sovereignty, i. 528.
Reformation ; what the outcries of further
reformation signify, i. 388. A word very
mischievous both to church and state, ii.
510, 511, 516. Rooters and thorough
reformers, who they are, ii. 73.
Refrigeriums, or intervals and respites of
punishment to the damned, i. 210.
Regenerate persons have sinned through
infirmity and surprise, i. 291. The
work of regeneration, or the new-birth,
i. 494. Regenerate persons, their spirit,
iv. 165. Are subject to sin, iv. 122.
Cannot plead infirmity in excuse for
their sins, iii. 268, 269. Their sins are
most displeasing to God, iii. 269.
Regeneration, iii. 269, &c, iv. 122, iv. 165.
See Repentance, Believers.
Relation between prince and subject, what
it essentially involves, ii. 47.
Religion, the way to wisdom and pleasure,
i. 3 — 18. The necessary dependence of
tho principles of government upon re
ligion, i. 57 — 61. The advantage of
being truly rehgious, i. 237. The de
sign of religion is to unite and to put a
spiritual cognation between souls, i. 453.
Religion's main business, duty and obe
dience,!. 459 — 461. The principal things
proposed to mankind by natural and
Christian religion, ii. 223. How the
Holy, Ghost in scripture advances reli
gion in our thoughts, ii. 197. The vanity
of most men's pretences to religion, ii.
277, 278. Pretence of religion obtrudes
absurdities upon the vulgar, i. 55. Ab
surdities of the heathens' religion, i. 33,
and of the Turkish, i. 60. The excel
lency of the Christian, i. 33. Its pre
cepts, and their severity, iii. 32, 33. Its
mysteriousness, i. 489 — 506. Innova
tions about religion the most efficacious
and plausible way of compassing a total
abolition of it, i. 205. Its essential de
sign, iii. 216, 217, iv.44. Necessity, iii.
345, 346. The only means to .make us
truly virtuous, iii. 338, 344. Its state

before Christ, iii. 460, &c, iv. 374—376.
Not to be judged from outward be
haviour, iii. 332, 333, 338. See Form
of Godliness, Hypocrite. What makes
it irksome, iii. 337. How destroyed,
iii. 232.
Reminiscence, a part of memory, what it
is, i. 132.
Remorses of conscience, whence they
arise, iii. 403—405. See Stings.
Repentance, what it consists of, i. 7, 8, iii.
150, 151, 231, iv. 67, 69. Confidence
of a future repentance, most ungrounded
and irrational, i. 211. Repentance, one
of those great truths deposited by God
in the hands of the gentiles themselves,
i. 307, 308. It is not in the sinner's
power, but it is the gift of God, i. 357.
It is neither the design nor work of mere
nature, i. 429. Repentance delayed is
dangerous, iii. 199, 327—330, iv. 62, 63,
70 — 76 ; and provoking to God, iv. 77 —
80. Is a duty, iv. 78, &c. Necessary
to salvation, iii. 228, 325 — 327. Its sin
cerity cannot be known by any outward
acts, iv. 91, &c. Is mistaken by the
hypocrite, iv. 188. It is the gift of God,
iv. 73, 82, 92. Early, its advantages,
iy. 75. When is the properest time
for it, iii. 196, 228—230, 321, 322, 326.
Its measure or extent, iii. 230 — 232.
Whether it be a punishment, iii. 229,
&c. It is a remedy against sin and the
executive justice of divine vengeance,
iv. 77. The Romish doctrine concern
ing repentance erroneous, iii. 229, 230.
Whether on a death-bed it can be
effectual to salvation, iv. 80 — 89. How
hindered on a sick-bed, iv. 90, &c. It
is foolish and hazardous to trust thereto,
iv. 89—92.
Repenting, in God, its meaning, iv. 12.
Reprobate sense, to take pleasure in other
men's sins, i. 279.
Reprobation, iii. 393, iv. 1, 9, 15, 16,
182.
Reproof, by whom to be given, iii. 237,
238. How, iii. 238—244. When dan
gerous, iii. 255—257. Its end, iii. 239.
Republican ; factors for the republican
cause, i. 165.
Republicans' hatred to all kings, ii. 152.
Reputation, a thing subject to chance, i.
131. The reputation of a religious man,
i. 216. Comfort for the loss of reputa
tion, i. 362. Reputation, iii. 423, 424,
446. See Love of God.
Resentment, iv. 292, &c.
Resignation to God's will, iv. 420.
Resistance against the dictates of con
science brings a hardness and stupefac
tion upon it, i. 376. Patrons of resist
ance against princes, ii. 320, 372 — 378.
Its absolute unlawfulness, and scandal,
ii. 368—381. See Spirit of God.
Resolution, good, iv. 355. What is ne
cessary for a dying penitent, iv. 84.
cannot be assured to be true in a dying
person, iv. 91.

576

INDEX.

Respect, best shown in brevity of speech,
i. 260. To whom due, iii. 241, &c.
Rest, what it meaneih, iv. 2. To enter
into rest, iv. 1—18. In a literal sense,
iv. 2. Spiritual or mystical sense, ib.
Restoration of King Charles II. unexpect
ed, iv. 36.
Resurrection ; how cross it lies to the
common experience of mankind, i. 494 ;
especially that of a body after its total dis
solution, ii. 349. A discourse on the ge
neral resurrection, ii. 153 — 173. Resur
rection of Christ was by his own power,
iv. 99. Proves his godhead, iv. 97 — 99,
and sonship, iv. 99—106. Surpassed
all that he said or did, ib. Is the best
argument against the Jews, iv. 102, and
infidelity, iv. 106.
Retaliation, no doctrine of Christianity,
iv. 242, &,c.
Retribution ; a general resurrection the
consequence of a general retribution,
ii. 154.
Revelation of the gospel, a great and pe
culiar mercy, i. 315. The book of the
Revelations much studied, little under
stood, i. 377. Revelation, the highest
reason lor believing the mysteries of
religion, i. 495. God's revealed word,
an infallible rule, i. 377. We ought lo
acquiesce in the bare revelation of mys
teries, ii. 190.
Revenge, the prerogative of God, i. 352.
David prevented in his pursuit of it, ti.
Revenge miscalled a sense of honour,
iii. 3 — 6. When lawful, iv. 247. When
unlawful, iv. 214, 252, 253. Is a con
test with God, iv. 215.
Reverence due to sacred places, i. 120.
Due not only from children to parents,
but from parents to children, ii. 288.
"Revile not again" explained, iii. 419 —
422. Its difficulty, iii. 422—424. How
to be performed, iii. 424—427.
Revolution of Charles II. 's return, i. 105.
Reward, the great motive of action, and
inducement to virtue. See Recom
pence.
Rewards of the Mosaic law most suitable
and adapted to sense, ii. 138. Those
of the gospel, though spiritual, yet ex
pressed by such objects as most affected
the sense, ii. To proceed upon hopes
of a reward is the result of a rational
nature, ii. 146. Those hopes are ex
cluded by some seraphic pretenders to
religion, ii. 144 — 148.
Riches, an unsure way to happiness, as
covetousness to riches, ii. 229 — 263.
Right, natural, its extent, iv. 364, &c.
When not to be exacted, iv. 301 — 303.
Righteousness ; no man's righteousness
but Christ's alone can be imputed to
another, i. 465. , Perfect righteousness
is required by God of all men, iv. 477.
Why, iv. 486. What it is, iv. 473, 480
—486. How to be measured by man,
iv. 478. Its properties, iv. 480 — 486.
Righteousness of Christ imputed does

not render good works needless, iii. 219,
&.c. Righteousness of saints cannot be
imputed, ii., &c. Righteousness of
God, iv. 133, &c. Righteousness of
the pharisees, what it was, iv. 473. Its
defects, iv. 475—479.
Roman eagles' conquest owing to their
swiftness as well as force, i. 467. The
Roman triumphs, ii. 453. The modern
Roman saints, compared with the primi
tive ones, ii. 368. The morals, courage,
and valour of the ancient Romans cor
rupted by their pleasures, ii. 93, 94.
Roman emperors betook themselves to
inferior and ignoble exercises, ii. 265.
Romish church ; the chief articles of her
faith, ii. 504 — 506. The absurd austeri
ties of the Romish religion, i. 16. The
teaching part of a Romish bishop easy,
i. 77. The Romish clergy's greatness
and lustre, i. 85. The Romish casuists
speak peace to men's consciences, and
how, i. 367. Romish pride in assuming
the name of Catholics, Catholic religion,
Catholic church, i. 369.
Royalists, the old church of England roy
alists, the best Christians, and the moBt
meritorious subjects, i. 163.
Rye conspiracy for the assassination of the
king and his brother, ii. 281.

Saauias Haggaon (Rabbi), his exposition
of Isaiah hu., ii. 2.
Sacrifice without a heart, accounted omi
nous, i. 167. Sacrifices, principal parts
of religious worship, i. 308.
Sacrilege and sacrilegious persons punish
ed, i. 109—112.
Sadducees denied the being of immaterial
substances, and the immortality of the
soul, i. 530, and all rewards of happi
ness or misery in another world, ii. 146,
and the resurrection, ii. 155.
Safety ; how far it may be consulted in
the time of persecution, i. 46 — 48; and
by whom, i. 47.
Saints of old declared themselves stran
gers and pilgrims here, ii. 273. Privi
leges of the Baints here and hereafter,
iii. 148. Tutelar saints, ii. 329. Invo
cation of saints rejected by the church
of England, ii. 505. Saints cannot in
tercede for us, iv. 437—443 ; nor help
us, iv. 439, &c. Are ignorant of what
passes in this world, iv. 438. Why
God takes them out of this world, iv.
437, &c.
Salvation proceeds upon free gift, damna
tion upon strict desert, i. 404. How to
be wrought out by us, iii. 193 — 195.
Its difficulty, iii. 323 — 325.
Samson blinded and made a fool, i. 200.
His killing himself, ii. 422.
Samuel's mantle cast over the devil, iii. 7.
Sanctity, none naturally inherent in things
themselves, i. 112.
Sanderson (Bishop), concerning the charge

INDEX.

577

against the ceremonies of our church,
iii. 489.
Sandys (Sir Edwin), his observation in his
Europa Speculum, ii. 73.
Siipra, Kara, in Rom. i. 3, explained, iv. 95.
Satan, how he tempts to sin, iii. 288, 545,
546, &c. See Devil, Temptation.
Satisfaction; the doctrine of satisfaction,
iii. 58, 159, 160. Satisfaction for sin
can be only made by Christ alone, iii.
494, iv. 380.
Saul's courage and presence of mind, ii.
51. His flying upon the spoil, when he
had conquered Amalek, ii. 91. Saul,
being asleep, spared by David, iii. 118.
Saul trained up for destruction, iv. 6.
Saved, why few are, iii. 410. How, iii. 216.
Saving and parsimony, determined by due
circumstances, both allowable and com
mendable, ii. 241.
Schisms and divisions from the church
more destructive than corruptions in it,
ii. 341. Prayers of schismatics full of
ramble and inconsequence, i. 271. Their
senseless, clamorous pretences, i. 387.
The power which they usurp, ii. 345.
Schismatical deserters called true pro-
testants, ii. 502, 507 — 509. Schismatics
in the churches of Corinth and Galatia,
ii. 477, iv. 508. Schismatics' pretences
alleged against our church constitutions,
ii. 480 — 483. They are by no means to
be yielded to, ii. 483—491.
Schools; all legal free grammar schools
ought to be countenanced, ii. 299.
Westminster school, famous for an in
vincible loyalty to the king, and strict
conformity to the church, ii. 299, 300.
An annual solemn meeting of West
minster scholars designed, but broken
off by the death of Charles II. , ii. 279.
Schoolmasters, their duty, ii. 290—293.
Schoolmen's opinion concerning a single
act, i. 429. They are the greatest and
most zealous promoters of the papal
interest, ii. 333. Their saying concern
ing the fallen angels, iii. 8.
Scotch Covenant.' See Covenant.
Scotus's opinion concerning the three fa
culties of the mind, ii. 69.
Scribe instructed to the kingdom of God,
ii. 64 — 88. Scribes and pharisees, who
they were, iv. 472, &c. The defects
and insufficiency of their righteousness,
iv. 475—480.
Scripture texts abused by sectaries, ii. 325.
Scripture secured by the papists under
the double lock of an unknown language,
'and a bad translation, ii. 331.
Scrupulosity a hindrance to devotion, iv.
415.
Scurrility never to be imitated , iii. 424—427.
Searedness of conscience, what, iv. 8.
Sectaries ; their pretences to extraordinary
gifts, ii. 43. Sects and factions grow
where there is a failure of the laws and
their execution, ii. 439. The vast in
crease of sects and heresies a conse
quence of the toleration, ii. 489.
Vol. IV.— 73

Security in a sinful state dangerous, and
how to be cured, iii. 439, 535, 549. See
Hardness of heart, Hypocrite.
Seeing, iv. 484. Represents an object the
best of all the senses, iv. 333. Is most
universally used, ii. Conveys pleasure
and delight, iv. 334. Is most capacious
and insatiable, ii., &.c. "Seeing God"
explained, iv. 333—335.
Self-denial. See Fasting, Mortification,
Revile not again.
Self-love, its cause, iv. 172. Danger, iii.
394. Is opposed by the gospel, jv. 164.
Self-opinion, iv. 164. See Knowledge,
human.
Self-preservation, iv. 274, &c.
Self-trial, or examination, is necessary, iv.
196, 417, &c.
Seneca praising poverty in the midst of
riches, i. 41. His saying of flattery, i.
344.
Senses, the cinque-ports ofthe soul, i. 117.
Sense, how it differs from reason, iii. 410.
Its power over reason, ii.
Sensuality darkens and debauches the
conscience, i. 432. Its several kinds, i.
433—435.
Sermons ; much time spent by some in
hearing, little in practising, i. 471.
Christ's sermons, full of grace and
ornament, ii. 64. In sermons, what
things are to be avoided, ii. 81 — 85.
Service, imports duty and subjection : all
created beings servants to God. What
the name of servants implies, i. 225—
227. After the full discharge of our
duty, we are but unprofitable servants,
i. 412. Church service. See Church.
Service of God is a diligent pursuit of
our callings, iii. 191, 192. Service of sin
is painful and laborious, iv. 318, &c.
Severities ; corporal severities used in the
church of Rome, ii. 330.
Shame, what it is, and wherein it does
consist, ii. 102 — 105. The recovery of
it when lost, desperate and impossible,
ii. 109. Shamelessness in sin, the cer
tain forerunner of destruction, ii. 101 —
117. Shame and pains the inseparable
effects of sin, ii. 119. Shame and sor
row, how to be discerned, iii. 343, 540.
Sheba; the Queen of Sheba, her be
haviour when she came to see King
Solomon, i. 69.
Shining ; what it proceeds from, i. 427.
Shishak, King of Egypt, his sacrilege, and
his punishment, i. 109.
Sibyls, their strange convulsions at the
time of their possession. The Cumaean
Sibyl described by Virgil, ii. 326.
Silence commendable, iv. 213.
Sin's nature is not only to defile, but to
infatuate, i. 53. It is usually seconded
and punished by sin, i. 54, 55, ii. 117,
192, 220, 222. It leaves a guilt upon
the soul, and perpetuates a blot. upon
the name, i. 55. Inveterate sin hinders
knowledge, i. 103, and makes the con
science insensible and inflexible, ii. 34.
3C

578

INDEX.

The slavery of sin represented, 1. 216 —
218. Its effects and miserable conse
quences in this world, ii. The guilt of
taking pleasure in other men's sins,
i. 273 — 302. Sin loves company, and
why, i. 280—282. The lesser the temp
tation is, the greater is the sin, i. 284.
All sin almost of personal commission
is the abuse of a natural principle of
preserving or pleasing one's self, i. 285.
What is properly called the very .sinful
ness of sin, i. 287, 288. Transmigra
tion of sins as well as of souls, i. 287.
Sins of infirmity and of presumption,
i. 291. A man may sin when he is
dead, i. 293. Variety of ways of allur
ing men to sin, ii. Encouragers of sin,
i. 295—297. Sin grows not weaker
with age, i. 298, 299. It grows from
the countenance and practice of su
periors, i. 300 — 302. Apprehension of
danger attends every commission of sin,
i. 312. The absurd excuses of a sinner,
i. 312 — 314. Original sin has diminish
ed, but not totally abolished the freedom
ofthe will, i. 313. The deplorable con
dition of obstinate sinners under the
gospel, i. 317. Prevention of sin, an
invaluable mercy, i. 351—364, ii. 121.
To one repenting sinner, a thousand die
impenitent, i. 357. Sins against con
science, whence ariseth their transcend
ent guilt, i. 384. Sin, by a mutual pro
duction, causes darkneBS, and is caused
by it, i. 427. By what sins the con
science is darkened, i. 428 — 439. Sin
ning against a weak conscience, is to
sin against Christ, i. 473 — 488. Shame-
lessness in sin, the certain forerunner
of destruction, ii. 101 — 117. A sinner
past feeling is past grace, ii. 101. How
shamelessness in sin is produced, ii. 106
— 113. Sin wears away the tenderness
of conscience, and by custom becomes
familiar, ii. 106, 107. Concealment of
sin, no security to the sinner, ii. 118 —
133. The vanity of a sinner's con
fidence of secresy, ii. 126. Man induced
to sin, as it bears some resemblance of
good, ii. 119. Shame and pain annexed
to sin, ii. 119, 120. Sin, the root of unbe
lief and apostasy, ii. 121. Sinners' se
curity under a present impunity, ii. 123,
124. After-repentance the vain refuge
of sinners, ii. 125, 126. Providence sets
itself in a more peculiar manner to de
tect some sins, ii. 127. God's sudden
vengeance upon sinners, ii. 131. Some
sins accounted no sins among some na
tions and people, ii. 145. Great posses
sions commonly gotten by the commis
sion of great Bins, ii. 252, 253. Nothing
more odious and despicable than an old
sinner, ii. 284, 285. What is original
sin, ii. 285, iii. 69. What it is to con
ceive, bring forth, and finish sin, iii. 31.
Sins distinguished by some into mortal
and venial, ii. 330. How great a blem
ish to religion is a sinful minister, iii. 62.

Every man is most peculiarly inclined to
some sin, iii. 69, 70. Occasions of sin,
iii. 70 — 74. The several steps and ways
by which a man is drawn into sin, iii.
139 — 143. Extenuation of sin, very
pernicious, iii. 141. A man converted
often from one sin to another, iii. 145.
Cessation from sin is no plenary con-
quest and mortification of sin, ii. The
power and guilt of sin, and how a man
may be purified from both, iii. 150 — 161.
Repentance for sin, iii. 150, 151. Watch
fulness against sin, iii. 151, 152. The
first motions of sin to be opposed, iii.
153, 154. Prayer a great preservative
against sin, iii. 155 — 157. Guilt of sin
expiated by no other satisfaction but that
of Christ, iii. 158 — 161. Sin, its nature,
iii. 283, 397, iv. 310—315, &c. Cause,
iii. 373, 379, 380. Seat, iv. 340—344.
May be committed in intention, iv. 124,
313. Admits many degrees, iv. 195.
Ils danger, iv. 17, 335. Prevents and
destroys the favours of God, iii. 389 —
393. Is always attended with misery
and bitterness, iii. 381. Is often the
cause of afflictions and bodily diseases,
iii. 472, iv. 147, &c. Is always attended
with sorrow, iii. 403. Is often falsely
charged, iii. 373 — 378. Is man's darling,
iv. 120—125, 344, 345. How it prevails
on the affections, iii. 381. Its heinous-
ness, iii. 397, iv. 321, &.c. May be
found in the regenerate, iv. 122, &c.
See Regenerate persons. Cannot be
numbered, iii. 496. The greatness of
its object, iii. 498, iv. 321. Its service
is most toilsome, iv. 318, &c. How to
be measured, iv. 321. Misapprehended,
the cause of a hypocrite's false hope,
iv. 185, &c. Must be avoided, iv. 331.
Mortified, iii. 194, &c. Crucified, iv.
346—352. By what means, iv. 352, 353.
How to be destroyed in man, iv. 354,
355. Its vanity, iii; 382, 383. Prevents
praying by the Spirit, iv. 128, &c. See
Prayer. How forgiven by God, iii,
492, &c. See Christ, Forgiveness.
Original sin, iv. 341. See Pelagius.
Whether the cause of all worldly afflic
tions, iii. 473. Actual sin, iv. 312.
How it differs from original sin, iv. 315.
Is committed either in words, iv. 312,
actions, iv. 313, 451, &c, or desires, iv.
313. Its degrees or measures of sinful
ness, iv. 313 — 315. Venial sin, such a
distinction in sin tends to promote a bad
life, iii. 221—223. Habitual sin, iii. 280,
290. Cannot be hid from God, iii. 302,
&c. Its danger, iii. 287—289. Sad
consequences, iii. 289 — 293. Remedy,
iii. 283—286. Secret sin is known to
God, iii. 302, &c. Presumptuous sin,
what, iii. 264—268. How it differs from
the sin of infirmity, iii. 268—272. Which
are the most notable sins of presumption,
iii. 273 — 282. National sins require na
tional humiliation, iv. 152, &c. Par
ticular sins punished with general judg-

INDEX.

581

iii. 45, 46. The tempter's design in all
his temptations; and the fatal conse
quences of a prevailing temptation, iii.
52—62. The great mercy of being de
livered out of temptation, iii. 62, 63.
That condition of life best, which is least
exposed to it, iii. 63, 64. The hour or
critical time of temptation, iii. 66 — 81,
and of deliverance out of it, ib. And the
surest way to carry us safe through it,
iii. 79. The tempter's malice, skill, and
boldness, iii. 71. His methods and ad
vantages in tempting, iii. 85, 109, 110,
117. Ways by which God delivers out
of temptation, iii. 82—94, 98, 99. What
are the principal temptations to sin, iii.
94 — 96. Watchfulness and prayer, the
greatest preservatives against it, iii. Ill
— 129. Its power, iii. 468. See Satan,
Devil. How to be conquered, iii. 455.
See Sin. Must be avoided, iv. 331 , &c.
See Believers.
Tempted, who are, iii. 372.
Tempter. See Satan.
Tender. See Conscience.
Terms and conditions of transacting be
tween God and man, i. 404.
Texts, how a man ought to stock his mind
with texts of scripture, suitable to all the
heads of duty and practice, i. 378.
Themistocles, iii. 335.
Theodorus Cyrenaeus, iv. 19.
Thief, how a person played the thief with
some of the author's discourses, i. 20.
Thievery, good and honest among the
Spartans, i. 337.
Things future are twofold, iv. 140, &c.
Thomas (St.), his doubts about Christ's
resurrection stated and answered, ii.
350—358.
Thoughts, good, their origin, iii. 304, 512,
iv. 455. Of man are evil continually, iv.
444. Are all known to God, iv.. 142,
&c. Upon their goodness depends the
purity of the heart, iv. 329. Sins of our
thoughts, by whom judged, iii. 303.
Are most opposite to- the nature of
God, ii.
Threatenings of God, iv. 14.
Tiberius. See Caesar.
Time is harmless, iii. 316. Precious, iii.
198. Present, is not jvorse than former
times, iii. 312 — 314. In what cases to
be distinguished into good and bad, iii.
309.
Timorousness, iv. 362.
Tithes, thanks returned to petitioners for
the taking away of tithes, i. 51.
Title, an unsound title coloured over
through the arts of a greedy council, iii.
-14.
Titus, bishop of Crete, St. Paul's advice
to him, i. 78.
Toleration. See Indulgence. How far it
will warrant men in their separation from
the church, ii. 486, iv. 518. Sects and
heresies and popery itself brought in by
it, ii. 489.
Tongue complaining. See Murmurings.

Tongues, the gift of, iii. 527.
Torments, eternal, iii. 453. See Destruc
tion.
Traditions, unwritten, without, them the
papists hold the scriptures imperfect, ii.
331. Tradition equally certain, but not
equally evident with sight and sense,
i. 94.
Transmigration, iii. 472. See Pythagoras.
Transmutation 6f one body into another,
ii. 157, 161.
Transubstantiation, what it is, and how
absurd, ii. 169, 184, 329, 366. A ridi
culous doctrine, iii. 178.
Travellers, some who travel only to see
the country and to learn the fashions,
iii. 47.
Treachery of papists, i. 193. Treachery
makes an incurable wound, i. 200. The
treacherous person is the devil's jour
neyman, i. 201.
Treasure of a man, what it is, ii. 266 —
271. In heaven explained, iii. 402.
Triers, Cromwell's inquisition, ii. 43
Trimming to be laid aside, ii. 535.
Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity assert
ed, and proved not contrary to reason,
ii. 174—191.
Trouble. See Affliction. Trouble for
sin. See Repentance, Sorrow.
Trust built upon men's confidence of one
another's honesty, i. 196. The folly of
trusting one's own heart, iii. 130 — 147.
Trust in God. See Confidence towards
God.
Truth's badge, a despised nakedness, i.
43. Diligence the great harbinger of
truth, i. 98. The truth of the first
principles of religion, i. 208, 209. The
great truths for the knowledge of which
the heathen philosophers were account
able, and how they held the truth in un
righteousness, i. 307 — '312. Truth dwells
low and in a bottom, i. 500. The most
effectual way to confirm our faith about
the truths of religion, ii. 223. Truth
often outweighed by interest, i. 44. A
great cause of men's denying the truths
of Christ is their unprofitableness, i. 43.
Truth, iii. 212, &c. Is suitable to the
mind of man, iii. 524, &c. Clears the
conscience from guilt, iii. 525 ; of doubt
and scruples, iii. 526.
Tullia, her impiety towards her father, i.
183.
Tullus Hostilius's stratagem to frustrate
the treachery of Metius Suffetius, ii. 51.
Turkish government, its firmness, notwith
standing the absurdity of that religion, i.
60, ii. 389. How it began to totter, i. 60.
Tyrants, equally false and bloody, i. 194.
u
Ubiquity of Christ's human nature, by
whom asserted, iii. 178.
Unbelief of the Jews, and the causes of it,
i. 95 — 97. Danger of unbelief, iii. 415.
Uncleanness. See Adultery.
3c2

582

INDEX.

Understanding of man, what it was be
fore the fall, i. 23—26. Speculative and
practical, i. 24, 25. How short, dimi
nutive, and contracted its light is now
become, i. 122. How unable to search
God's ways, ii. 384—392. Its use and
advantage, iii. 508, iv. 209.
Universities declared useless by Colonel
U. C, the perfidious cause of Penrud-
dock's death, i. 52. The two univer
sities, the church's eyes, i. 205. What
ought to be (heir emulation, i. 206.
Unprofitableness of man to God, iv. 170,
&c. See Service.
Unregeneracy, a person in that state un
able to acquire a habit of true grace or
holiness, i. 460.
Unthankfulness to God, its cause, iv.40, 41.
Unworthiness, iv. 416.
Usury, iv. 320. Divines divided in their
opinion about the lawfulness or unlaw
fulness of it, i. 44.
Uzzah's zeal for the preservation of the
ark punished, i. 109, iii. 102.

Valentinians, iii. 464.
Value ; it is natural for men to place too
high a value both upon themselves and
their own performances, i. 406, 407.
Vane (Sir Henry), his speech at his execu
tion upon Tower Hill, ii. 310.
Variety, useful and ornamental to the
church as well as to the world, ii. 36—40.
Vegetation, iii. 3fi'2 — 364.
Vengeance ; it is the time of God's ven
geance, when vice is too powerful for
the magistrate, ii. 113, 114. How God
exerts his vengeance upon sinners, ii. 131 .
Veracity; the immoveable veracity of
God's promise demonstrated in Christ's
coming, i. 530.
Verulam (Lord), his saying, that the wisest
men have their weak times, i. 468. His
observation concerning diseases arising
from emptiness, ii. 449.
Vesuvius, some sorts of sins compared
with it, ii. 130.
Vice makes a governor justly despised, i.
86. The true ground of atheism and
scepticism, i. 101. Every vicious Chris
tian is as guilty as the Jews, of rejecting
Christ, i. 538—540. Vices receive im
provement from prosperity, ii. 95 — 97.
Vice alamode looks virtue out of coun
tenance, and out of heart too, ii. 108.
Every vice has a peculiar malignity, ii.
203.. Vice, iii. 239, 339. How it enters
into man, iii. 380, 381. Its danger, iii.
346. Hard to be subdued, iii. 194, iv.
42, &c. Tolerated among the hea
thens, iii. 340, iv. 376, 377. Among the
Jews, iv. 377, <kc.
Violence unlawful, iv. 241. See Force,
War.
Violation of consecrated things. See Sa
crilege.
Virginius, iv. 276.

Virtue, beautiful in the eyes even of the
most vicious person, i. 158. It is abated
by prosperity, ii. 92. Its being its own
reward, true only in a limited sense, ii.
135. Its high price and esteem is from
the difficulty of its practice, ii. 137.
What virtues are more generally and
easily practised than others, ii. 139.
English virtue invaded by foreign vices,
ii. 152. Vice insinuates itself by its near
resemblance to virtue, ii. 244. In what
virtue consists, iii. 339 — 344. Omitted
is dangerous, iii. 380, 381. Is necessary
to salvation, iii. 195, &c. In another
must not be overrated, iii. 253, &c.
Was mistaken by ihe heathen, iv. 375.
By the hypocrite. See Hypocrite. Vir
tues of the heathens, iii. 331, 332. See
Glory.
Voice ; the inward voice of the Spirit, and
who pretended to it, ii. 405, 408—414,
424—427.
Volkelius ; what he not obscurely asserts
concerning the matter of the universe,
ii. 186.
Vow, its obligation, iv. 11. When to be
made, ib. w
Wages of sin. See Death.
Walk ; the phrase of scripture expresseth
the life of man by walking, i. 207.
Want, considered in itself, is a curse, iv.
162. See Poverty.
War ; how eagerly men went tp the holy
war, and why, i. 61. Little casualties
produce great and strange effects in war,
i. 127. War offers quarter tp an enemy,
and why, i. 453. The civil war and the
proceedings of forty-one, ii. 304. War,
what it is, iv. 246, &c. Its cause, iv.
246, 259. Different kinds, iv. 246.
When lawful for Christians, iv. 247,
257. Whether it be lawful, made
against our lawful prince, iv. "258, 367,
&.c. Is only to be used in the nature of
a remedy, iv. 257. Arguments against
it answered, iv. 250, &c. Scriptures
against it explained, iv. 252 — 256.
Washings of the Jews when they came
from markets, or any other such pro
miscuous resorts, i. 322.
Watch; the duty of watchfulness in our
Christian warfare, recommended as a
great defensative against temptation, iii.
Ill — 129. A certain general, finding
the watch fast asleep upon the ground,
sticks him through to the place, iii. 119.
Water, the violence of its united force de
scribed, i. 467.
Way, Matt. v. '26, explained, iii. 319.
Ways, in Psalm cxxxix. 3, explained,
iii. 295.
Weak. See Conscience.
Wealth ; comforts under want of it, i. 363.
Wedding ; the wedding-garment ; the
parabolical description of the sacrament
of the eucharist by the similitude of a
wedding-supper, i. 318 — 333.

INDEX.

579

merits, iv. 1 54, &c. Are specially noted
by God, iv. 155, &c. Sin against nature
is most abominable, iv. 453. Against
the Holy Ghost, what, iv'. 470. Sin of
angels more heinous than the sin» of
man, iii. 467, &c.
Sincerity recommended, i. 151. Sincerity
of heart is known to God, iii. 306, &c.
How to be tried, iii. 413, 414.
Singleness of the eye, what it signifies, i.
428.
Singularity in sins puts it out of fashion, i.
281. It is too often and mischievously
taken for sincerity, i. 465.
Sinners, iv. 346. Are atheists in their
hearts, iii. 301. Danger, iii. 439. How
called to repentance, iv. 11. May be
justified, iii. 219. When sealed up by
God to destruction, iv. 3 — 12. How,
iv. 10 — 12. How this may be known,
iv. 16. See Destruction, God, Spirit
of God withdrawn, Unregenerate.
Slander, its perniciousness, i. 349, 350.
Slanderer's mouth, how dangerous, iii.
5. Slander, how to be borne with, iii.
424^-427.
Slavery of the reason, the worst of all
slaveries, ii. 216.
Sleep, of what use to the afflicted, iii. 538.
Sobriety, always joined to watching in our
spiritual warfare, iii. 120, 121.
Socinians' doctrine of redemption, iv. 347.
Of Christ's nature, iii. 171, 175. Of
God's knowledge, iv. 135, &c. Of go
ing to war, iv. 249.
Societies ; God's principal concern in their
preservation, i. 125. Society built upon
trust, i. 195. Societies set up purposely
for the reformation of manners, ii. 105.
Socinus ; upon what he states the reason
of a man's embracing Christianity, i. 100.
Denieth God the prescience of future
contingents, i. 505, ii. 334. Denies
Christ's divine and human nature too,
in his Lectiones Sacras, i. 512. False
pretender to reason, and real subverter
of all religion, i. 523. He begins where
Photinus had long before left off, i. 526.
His opinion concerning the cause of
Christ's sufferings, ii. 11. He denies
both the deity and the personal subsist
ence of the Holy Ghost, ii. 41. Opinion
of the Socinians concerning the image
of God in man, what it consisted in, i.
22. Socinianism scandalously counte
nanced, i. 204. Its bold impugning the
fundamental articles of our faith, i. 402.
Blasphemous assertions of Socinus, i.
511. Socinians will admit of nothing
mysterious in religion, i. 491 ; and deny
Christ to . be properly a priest, or his
death to have been a propitiatory obla
tion for sin, i. 492. Enemies to natural
as well as revealed religion, ii. 158.
Hold with the Arians, and how far, ii.
174. Deny the plurality of persons in
the Godhead, ii. 176. Their blasphe
mous expressions of the Trinity, ii. 185.
They allow the divine adoration and in

vocation of Christ, ii. 186, 334. Soci-
nus's character and design, ii. 332. His
several errors, ii. 335. Grotius' s re
mark upon his pretence to reason, ii.
The chief corner-stone of Socinus's doc
trine, ii. 335—337.
Sodom's punishment, ii. 96. Sodomites,
iii. 385.
Soldiers of fortune ; their desire of advanc
ing themselves, and their danger, ii. 251.
Solifidians, iv. 339.
Solomon had the honour to be spoken to
by God himself, i. 240.
Son of God, how manifested, iv. 371 — 373.
Why, iv. 373—379. How he destroys
the works of the devil, iv. 379—381.
Whj> he was troubled in spirit, iii. 535.
See Christ.
Sons of perdition, how fitted to destruction,
iv. 4 — 9. See Destruction, Sinners.
Sorrow for sin, sweet in its end and conse
quence, i. 8. What was sorrow in the
state of innocence, i. 29. Sorrow, how
increased. See Knowledge, human.
On a death-bed, its uncertainty, iv.
91, &c. '
Soul of man is of a limited nature in all
its workings, and cannot supply two
distinct faculties at the same time, i.
252. Naturally and originally averse to
duty, ii. 136. Soul-searching way, used
and cried up, ii. 84. Soul, how it con
tracts sin, iv. 340 — 344. Sympathizeth
with the body, iv. 344. Cannot make
any improvement in virtue without the
grace of God, iii. 511, &c. How known
to be a vessel of God's wrath. See De
struction, Sinners. Is immortal, iii.
445. Its best state is separate from the
body, iy. 202.
Sovereignty of God is absolute, iv. 224.
See God, Sin.
Spaniards, fond of big, long, rattling
names, i. 342. The Spaniard's wish to
his enemy, ii. 123. The Spanish arma
da, ii. 507.
Spartan altar, boys disciplined before it,
ii. 292.
Speech, brevity, the greatest perfection of
it, i. 256 — 259. Preparation required in
a preacher as to significant speech, ii. 74.
Properties attending ability of speech,
ii. 469—471.
Speculation entertained with great and
new objects in things belonging to reli
gion, i. 11.
Spirit of man, of an operative and catching
faculty, ii. 265. Praying by the Spirit,
when begun in England, and by whom,
i. 251. What a stinting of the spirit
truly is, i. 250 ; and what it is to pray
by the Spirit, i. 251 — 254. How the
Spirit is said to be in men, and how men
are led by it, ii. 400 — 414. The being
of spirits, or immaterial substances, ii.
322. Public spirits. See Public. A
touchstone for the trial of spirits, ii, 43.
Unclean spirit. See Fasting. " Spirit
of holiness," in Rom. vii. 4, explained,

580

INDEX.

iv. 95, &c. Spirit of truth, who, iii.
524, iv. 468. Its benefits to man, iv.
468, &c. Pretences thereto, how to be
tried, iii. 528. Wounded spirit, a dis
course thereon, iii. 532 — 550. Its mean
ing, iii. 533. When said to be wounded,
ib. Who are the proper objects of this
trouble, iii. 534. Its misery, iii. 437.
Jn what its great misery doth appear, iii.
535 — 512. The signs thereof, iii. 540.
How it is brought upon the soul, iii. 542
—546. Its cure, iii. 535. Why God
permits it, iii. 438, 546—548. Is no
token of God's displeasure, iii. 548, 549,
nor of a sinful state, iii. 550. Must not
be derided, iii. 549. Spirit of God deal-
eth earnestly with the hearts of men, iv.
445. May be resisted, iv. 448 — 455.
How, iii. 279, iv. 455—458. Motives
against resisting the Spirit, iv. 468 — 470.
See Grace of God, Hardness of heart.
Spirit of God withdrawn, its sad conse
quences, iv. 445, &.C., 468, &.C. At
what time, iv. 445 — 448. May be finally
withdrawn, iv. 458—467.
Star ; its substance, appearance, and ope
ration, i. 517—522. Stars cannot influ
ence man to sin, iii. 375, 376. See Magi.
State of nature, virtue, grace, i. 5 ; of in
nocence, i. 24, 25.
Statesmen, their hazards, ii. 251.
Stale impostors, their misapplying of words
%nd names, ii. 533.
Steel ; the northern steel, ii. 308.
Stings of conscience, iii. 544.
Stoics, their opinion concerning the pas
sions, i. 28, 431. Concerning a fatality
and a fixed, unalterable course of events,
i. 124, 314. They scoff at the resurrec
tion of the dead, ii. 156.
Strafford (Earl of), his death signed by
Charles I., ii. 396.
Strong men and babes in Christ; what is
a strong conscience, i. 475.
Strong (William), how he addressed him
self from the pulpit to the leading gran
dees of the faction, ii. 300.
Study, the hardest of all labour, iv. 112 —
114.
Stupidity, iv. 8.
Submission to the will of God, iii. 315, iv.
206 — 221. Does not consist in an insen
sibility of afflictions, but in a patient re
signation under the hand of God, iv. 209,
&.c. In his understanding, ib. Will,
iv. 210. Passions and affections, iv. 211.
And in his speeches, iv. 212. By ab
staining from all rage and desire of re
venge, iv. 214, &c. Its worth and ex
cellency, iv. 216. Is hard to be obtain
ed, iv. 217, 218, &c. Must be begun
early, iv. 220. Arguments for the rea
sonableness of this submission, iv. 222
— 235. And it is both necessary, iv.
231, &c, prudent, iv. 233, ice, and
decent, iv. 234.
Subjects' duty towards the prince, ii. 62.
Subjection due even to Nero the worst
of men, ii. 369.

Sufferings in the times of rebellion de
scribed, i. 163. The comforts of phi
losophy in the midst of sufferings, ji. 8.
No suffering, though never so grievous,
aut may be endured without sin, iii. 107.
Sufferings of Christ, iii. 535—537. How
to be considered by Christians, iii. 547.
Should deter us from Bin, ib.
Suitableness, not the evidence, of a truth,
procureth assent with the ordinary and
greatest part of the world, i. 100. Suit
ableness between truth and the human
understanding, ii. 194.
Sun has many more spectators, when un
der an eclipse, i. 497. Spots in the face
ofthe sun, i. 518.
£wri)j»j'«!, what that signifies in the schools,
i. 274.
Supererogation : what are called works of
supererogation, ii. 330. Supererogation
is impious, iii. 224.
Supremacy of the pope, denied by the
English reformation, ii. 504.
Surprise, no excuse for presumptuous sins,
iii. 267, &,c, iv. 313.
Suspicion and ignorance produce weakness
of conscience, i. 476 — 478.
Suspense, how caused, iii. 407.
" Sware in my wrath," explained, iv. 1.
Swearing, what it means, iv. 1. Is dan
gerous, iv. 17. See Oath.
Sword of the city of London, a testimony
of its loyalty to kings, i. 20.
Sycophants, iv. 298. See Flattery.
Sylla (L. Cornelius), his brave saying, i.
177.
Sylla's bloody prescription, ii. 257.
Sympathy of friendship, i. 231.

Tale-bearers, their mischief, iii. 14.
Tale-bearing, the pest of society, iv.
296 — 300. Must be discountenanced, ii.
Talmud, what it is; Talmudists speak
several things of the Trinity very plain
ly, ii. 182.
Temper of every man's mind makes him
happy or miserable, ii. 262. Christian
temper, iv. 165. Temper and constitu-
tution of body no excuse for sin. iii. 376,
378.
Temperance, the nature and excellency of
that virtue, iii. 120 — 122. Temperance
in meat and drink a duty, iv. 45.
Temple, the building of God's temple re
served for Solomon, i. 107.
Temptation, discourses concerning temp
tation, iii. 16 — 129. What it is, and how
many ways understood, iii. 19. How
far pious persons are by God delivered
out of temptatjon, iii. 22 — 32. The se
veral degrees of temptation, iii. 29, 30.
The best method of dealing with a temp
tation, iii. 33, 34. What moves God to
deliver men out of temptation , iii. 35 — 40.
Whether a regenerate person can be pre
vailed upon by a temptation, iii. 28, 41.
Two ways of entering into temptation,

INDEX.

583

Weeping, the discharge of a big and swell
ing grief, i. 8.
Westminster. See School.
Weyer (John), one of the greatest monsters
of men, i. 252.
Widow's mite, outweighs the shekels in
the balance of the sanctuary, i. 154.
Will ; what it was ip the state of inno
cence, and what it is now, i. '26 — 28.
Pravily ofthe will influences the under
standing to a disbelief of Christianity, i.
96. Will, the great spring of diligence,
i.' 99. How far the will is ,by God ac
cepted for the deed, together with the
reason, bounds, and misapplication of
this rule, i. 157 — 170. The miserable
condition of a man when sin has gotten
the possession of his will, i. 355. The
freedom ofthe will variously stated, i. 419.
The will* is the uniting faculty of the
soul and its object, ii. 199. A vitiated
will disposes the understanding to error,
ii. 201—205. Will of God, what, iv. 13.
Will of man, its power, iii. 376, 379,
519, &e. Its office, iii. 379. Is the
fountain of sin, ii. When truly sub
missive, iv. 210, <Sjc. How convicted,
iv. 455, &c.
Wind, the devil's assaults compared to it,
i. 467.
Wisdom the way to pleasure, i. 3, 4. How
necessary it is to a prince, ii. 49 — 51.
The foolishness of worldly wisdom, i.
137—152. Worldly wisdom. See Po
licy. God's wisdom in a mystery, i.
489 — 506. Ridiculed by a sect of men
who vote themselves the only wits and
wise men of the world, i. 490. Wisdom
promised by Christ to his apostles,
wherein it consisted, ii. 472 — 474. Wis
dom of God, iii. 483, iv. 225. Vindi
cated, iv. 464. Carnal wisdom opposeth
grace, iii. 514.
Wise men. See Magi.
Wishing ; the insufficiency of bare wish
ing, or an imperfect velleity, i. 159.
Wish, what, iv. 21. When punishable
by God, ib. See Desires.
Wolsey's demolishing 40 religious houses ;
he and the five men employed by him
punished for their sacrilege, i. 111.
Word of God, how to be received and
understood, iii. 493. Sinners against it,
iii. 276, 277. Is the means by which he
speaketh to man, iii. 449, &c. The
danger of hearing it negligently, ii.,
&c. Of acting contrary thereto, iii.
450, &c.
Words ; paucity of words in prayer, i.
264. It shows discretion, i. 259. What
is the use of words in prayer, i. 262.
The fatal imposture and force of words,
i. 334—350, ii. 500, 536, iii. 1—15. The
generality of mankind governed bywords |

and names, i. 342 — 345, especially in
matters of good afid .evil, i. 346 — 348.
Misapplication of words, with respect
to religion, ii. 502 — 518; civil govern
ment, ii. 519 — 536. Private persons,
iii. 3 — 7. Words, what care should be
taken of them, iv. 244, &c.
Works ; men's proneness to exchange
faith for good works, i. 459. Good
Zvorks, necessary, iii. 198, iv. 474.
Works of the devil, what, iv. 373 —
379, &c. How destroyed, iv. 379--381.
Of grace, iii. 486, &c. Works of the
Spirit, iv. 452, &.c. See Supererogation.
World ; God and the world rivals for the
affections of mankind, ii. 272. The ab
surdity of placing one's heart upon the
world, ii. 273 — 276. Worldly enjoy
ments are perishing and put of our
power, ii. 275, 276, 456. World, ils
beauty, iii. 362, &c. State before
Christ, iii. 460, iv. 373, &c. Con
sidered in its natural and moral perfec
tions, iii. 309. Does not grow worse by
length of time, iii. 310. How its delu
sion is removed, iv. 379, &c.
Worship ; hours and places appointed for
divine worship, i. 118. God prefers the
worship paid him in consecrated places,
i. 116—120. We ought to worship God
with our substance, as well as with our
spirit, i. 166. Circumstantials in divine
worship, and a decency in them, abso
lutely necessary, i. 389. God will not
have his worship, like his nature, invisi
ble, i. 461. Will-worship forbidden in
scripture, what it is, i. 388. Worship,
how to be performed, iv. 120, 170, &c.
Motives to sincerity therein, iv. 131, 132.
Mistaken by the heathens, iv. 374, 379,
&c. See Religion.
Wrath of God, how to be avoided, iv. 17.
See " Sware in my wrath," Anger of
God. X
Xantipte, Socrates' wife, her extreme ill
condition, i. 172.

Year sixty, the grand epoch of falsehood
as well as debauchery, i. 201.
Youth of a nation ought to be instructed
in the principles of loyalty, i. 165. The
education of youth, ii. 281 — 301. A
wise and honourable old age, the re
ward and effect of a sober, virtuous
youth, i. 312.

Zadoce, the author of the sect and name
of the Sadducees, his saying, ii. 146.
Zimri and Cozbi killed by Phineas for
their impudent lewdness, ii. 115.

END OF VOL. IV.

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