far from finding acceptance with God, that it is an abomination to him. So God every where declares in fcripture, telling us, that the prayer of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord; and that he difdains to be praised by men of unhallowed lips and lives; and that unless with the praises we offer to him, we order our converfation aright, we shall not fee the falvation of God. With what contempt does he fpeak of this formal and external religion, without the power of it upon our hearts and lives! To what purpose is the multitude of your facrifices to me? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, and ten thousands of rivers of oil? He hath fhewed thee, O man, what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? Is not this the faft which I have chofen, to break the bands of wickedness, and to let the oppreffed go free; to deal thy bread to the hungry; and that thou bring the poor, that are cast out, to thine house; when thou feeft the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

Nor is it hearing of the word that will avail us, unless we be doers of it. Bleffed are they (fays our Saviour) that hear the word of God, and keep it. He that heareth these fayings of mine, and doth them, fhall be likened unto a wife man who hath built his house upon a rock. Nor will bare receiving the facrament recommend us to God; but perform ing the obligation, which thereby we take upon ourfelves, to abftain from all fin and wickedness; otherwise we tread under foot the Son of God, and profane the blood of the covenant, whereby we should be fanctified, as if it were an unholy thing. Can any man think that to be religion, which has no effect upon the lives of men, which does not teach them to govern their words and actions, who, reads those plain words of St. James? If any man among you Jeem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, that man's religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to vifit the fatherless and widows in their affliction

affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. When religion produceth thefe real effects, then the means of religion do truly ferve the end of it; and we are not only hearers of the word, but doers of it, and shall be bleffed in our deed.

So that as there is an obligation upon us to use the means of religion, which God hath inftituted, with great care and confcience; fo we fhould chiefly mind that which is the end of all religion, which is to make us partakers of a divine nature, and make us like to God, efpecially in thofe amiable and excellent qualities, which are the glory and beauty of the divine nature, his benignity and goodness, his mer. cy and patience. Thefe, because they are the primary perfections of God, are the principal duties both of natural and revealed religion, and of an eternal and indifpenfable obligation; becaufe they have their foundation in the nature of God, which is fixed and unalterable: And all pofitive inftitutions, when they come in competition with thefe, are to stoop and vail to them. Natural and moral duties, especially thofe of goodness, and mercy, and charity, are fo ftrongly bound upon us, that nothing in any revealed religion can cancel the obligation of them, or juftify the violation of these great and indifpenfable laws. Our Saviour, in his religion, has declared nothing to the prejudice of them; but, on the contrary, has ftraitened our obligation to them as much as is poffible: The Son of mancame not to destroy mens lives, but to fave them; fo that they know not what manner of spirit they are of, who think to please God by hating men, who are made after the image of God, and by killing one another, to do him good fervice; who, to advance his caufe and religion in the world, will break through all the obligations of nature and civil fociety, undermine government, and disturb the peace of mankind.

Whereas our Saviour did not by any thing in his religion defign to alter the civil government of the world, or to leffen and diminish the rights of Princes, or to fet men loofe from allegiance to them, or to make treason and rebellion, bloody wars and barbarous

barous maffacres lawful, for the propagating of his faith. He had (as one would imagine) as much power as the Pope; but yet he depofed no Princes, nor excommunicated and difcharged their fubjects from their fidelity and obedience to them, for their oppofition to his religion; he hath affumed no fuch power to himfelf. By what authority then doth his vicar do these things; and who gave him this authority? Our Lord tells us plainly, his kingdom was not of this world; and that without any distinction of in ordine ad fpiritualia, and therefore he wrefted no Prince's kingdom out of his hands, nor feized it as forfeited to himself.

But this power the Pope claims to himfelf, and hath exercised it many a time, difturbing the peace of nations, and exercifing the most barbarous cruelties in the world, under a pretence of zeal for God and religion; as if because religion is fo very good a thing in itself, it would warrant men to do the ve ry worst things for its fake; which is the ready way to render religion contemptible and odious, and to make two of the best things in the world, God and religion, good for nothing.

If we would preferve in the minds of men any reverence and esteem for religion, we must take heed how we destroy the principles of natural religion, and undermine the peace and happiness of human fociety, for the glory of God, and under pretence of following divine revelation, and being led by a church that cannot err: for every church doth certainly err, that teacheth any thing plainly contrary to the principles and dictates of natural religion, and utterly inconfiftent with the effential perfections of God, and with the peace and order of the world; for God is not the God of confufion, but of order; which St. Paul appealeth to as a principle of eternal truth, and naturally known: But they that pretend that religion prompts men to fedition and cruelty, do reprefent God as the God of confufion and not of order.

Therefore whatever men may through an ignorant zeal, or for ambitious ends, pretend to be religious;

let

let us place it in that which is unquestionable, the imitation of the divine perfections, and let us (as the Apoftle exhorts) put on, as the elect of God, bowels of mercy, kindness, meekness, long-fuffering, and above all let us put on charity, which is the very bond of perfection. The great perfection of the divine nature, or rather the very effence of God, is love. So St. John fpeaks, God is love; and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him. And it is

very remarkable, that in thefe very qualities of charity, and kindnefs, and compaffion, which we peculiarly call humanity, we approach nearest to the divinity itfelf, and that the contrary difpofitions do transform us into wild beafts and devils.

And yet as feverely as I fpeak against these principles and practices, I have an hearty pity and compaffion for those who are under the power of fo great a delufion; and upon a pretence of being made the only true Chriftians in the world, are feduced from humanity itself; and fo far from being made good Chriftians by thefe principles, that they are hardly left to be men; being blinded, and led by the blind, they fall into the ditch of the groffeft and fouleft immoralities; fuch as are plainly enough condemned by the light of nature, if there were no Bible in the world.

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Not but that we Proteftants have our faults and our follies too, and thofe (God knows!) too many and too vifible; we poffefs more truth, but there is little peace among us and yet God is as well and as often in fcripture called the God of peace, as the God of truth. In this great light and liberty of the reformed religion, we are apt to be wanton, and to quarrel and fall out; we are full of heats and animofities, of fchifms and divifions, and the way of peace we have not known. God grant that at last in this our day (when it concerns us fo much) we may know the things that belong to our peace, before they be hid from our eyes!

You fee in what things the practice of religion mainly confifts, in our likeness to God, and refemblance of him in holiness and goodness; and without this

we are utterly incapable of happiness: we cannot fee God, unless we be like him. The prefence of God can adminifter no pleasure, no felicity to us, till we be changed into his image; till we come to this temper, to hate fin, and delight in purity and holinefs, we can have no delightful communion with the holy God; till our paffions be fubdued, and our fouls difpoffeft of thofe devilish and ungodlike qualities of hatred and malice, of revenge and impatience; and till we be endued with the fpirit of univerfal goodness and charity,we are not fit company for our heavenly Father; we are not qualified to dwell with God, who is love, and dwells in love. So far as we are defective in thefe divine qualities and perfections, fo far we fall fhort of the temper of happiness.

There is a direct and eternal oppofition between the holy and good God, and the evil difpofitions of wicked men and till this oppofition be removed, it is impoffible we fhould find any felicity in the enjoyment of God. Now the nature of God is fixed and unchangeable; God cannot recede from his own perfection, and therefore we must quit our fins : Thou canst not change God, therefore change thyfelf, and rather think of putting off thy corrupt nature, which may be changed, than of altering the divine nature, with whom is no variableness nor fhadow of turning. God condefcended to take our nature upon him, to make us capable of happinefs; but if this will not do, he will not put off his own nature to make us happy.

SER