timations against the most diligent servants of the Lord. The controverted truths that such maintain, they represent as errors: their unavoidable errors they represent as heresy : their duties they represent as faults; and their human frailties, as enormous crimes: they feign them to be guilty of the things that never entered into their thoughts and if some that have professed godliness, be guilty of greater crimes, they would make men believe that the rest are such, and that the family of Christ is to be judged of by a Judas, and the scope is to intimate that either their profession is culpable, or needless, and less commendable. Regeneration they would make to be but the entrance into the church by baptism, and any further conversion, than the leaving off some gross sins, and taking up some heartless forms of duty, to be but a fancy or unnecessary thing: and they would draw poor people to believe, that if they be born again sacramentally of water, they may be saved, though they be not born again by the renewing of the Holy Spirit. Being strangers themselves to the mystery of regeneration, and to the life of faith and a heavenly conversation, and to the loving and serving God with all their soul and might; they first endeavour to quiet themselves with a belief that these are but fancies or unnecessary, and then to deceive the people with that by which they have first deceived themselves.

And it is worthy your observation, what it is in religion that these formal hypocrites are against. There are scarce any words so sound or holy, but they can bear them, if they be but deprived of their life: nor scarce any duty, if it be but mortified, but they can endure. But it is the spirit and life of all religion which they cannot bear. As a body differeth from a carcase, not by the parts, but by the life; so there is a certain life in preaching, and prayer, and all other acts of worship, which is perceived by several sorts of hearers. The godly perceive it to their edification and delight: for here it is that they are quickened and encouraged. Life begetteth life, as fire kindleth fire. The ungodly often perceive it to their vexation, if not to their conviction and conversion: this life in preaching, praying, discipline, reproof, and conference, is it which biteth, and galleth, and disquieteth their consciences. And this they kick and rail against: this is the thing that will not let them sleep quietly in their

sin and misery; but is calling and jogging them to awake, and will not let them sin in peace, but will either convert them, or torment them before the time. It is the life of religion that the hypocrite wants; and the life that he is most against. A painted fire burneth not: a dead lion biteth not : the carcase of an enemy is not formidable. Let the word of that sermon that most offendeth them, be separated from the life, and put into a homily, and said or read in a formal, drowsy, or a schoolboy's tone, and they can bear it and commend it. Let the same words of prayer which now they like not, be said over as a lifeless, customary form, and they can like it well. I speak not against the use of forms, but the abuse of them: not against the body, but the carcase. Let forms themselves be used by a spiritual, serious man, in a spiritual, serious manner, with the interposition of any quickening exhortations, or occasional passages, that tend to keep them awake and attentive, and make them feel what you mean and are about, and you shall see they love not such animated forms. It is the living Christian, and lively worship, and serious, spiritual religion, which they hate: kill it and they can bear it. Let the picture of my enemy be nearer and comelier than his person was, and I can endure it in my bedchamber, better than himself in the meanest dress. It is the living Christians that in all parts of the world are chiefly persecuted. Let them be once dead, and dead-hearted hypocrites themselves will honour them, especially at a sufficient distance: they will destroy the living saints, and keep holydays for the dead ones. "Woe unto you Scribes, and Pharisees, hypocrites; because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" The dog that will not meddle with the dead creature, will pursue the living; and when he sees it stir no more, will leave it. Christianity without seriousness is not Christianity, and therefore not liable to the hatred of its

t Matt. xxiii. 29-33.

enemies as such. Say any thing, and do any thing how strict soever, if you will but act it as a player on the stage, or do it coldly, slightly, and as if you were but in jest, you may have their approbation. But it is this life, and seriousness, and worshipping God in spirit and truth, thạt convinceth them that they themselves are lifeless, and therefore troubleth their deceitful peace, and therefore must not have their friendship. If it were the mere bulk of duty that they were weary of, how comes it to pass that a Papist at his psalter, beads, and mass-books, can spend more hours without much weariness or opposition, than we can do in serious worship? Turn all but into words and beads, and canonical hours and days, and shews and ceremony, and you may be as religious as you will, and be righteous overmuch, and few will hate, or reproach, or persecute you among them, as too precise or strict. But living Christians and worship come among them like fire, that burneth them, and makes them smart, with "a word that is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart "."

And the enmity of the Cainites may teach the Christian, what he should be, and wherein his excellency lieth. It is life and seriousness that your enemies hate; and therefore it is life and seriousness that you must above all maintain, though dead-hearted hypocrites never so much oppose and contradict you.

O sirs, they are no trifles, but the greatest things that God hath set before you in his word, and called you out to prosecute and possess: and your time of seeking them is short, and therefore you have no time for trifles, nor any to lose in idleness and sloth. And of all men, preachers should be most sensible of this. If they were not against serious holiness in others, it is double wickedness for such as they, to be against it in themselves It is great things and such as call

that they have to study and to speak of; for the greatest seriousness, and reverence, and gravity in the speaker, and condemn all trifling in matter or in manner. A man that is sent of Christ to run for an immortal crown, or to direct others in such a race, to save his own, or other

u Heb. iv. 12.

men's souls from endless misery, should be ashamed to fill up his time with trifles, or to be slight and cold about such great and weighty things: all the heart, and soul, and might, is little enough for matters of such unspeakable importance. When I hear preachers or people spend their time in little, impertinent, fruitless things, that do but divert them from the great business of their lives, or to dally with the greatest matters, rather than to use them, and treat of them with a seriousness suitable to their importance, I oft think of the words of Seneca the serious moralist, as shaming the hypocrisy of such trifling preachers and professors of the Christian faith; 'Verba copiosa componis, et interrogans vincula nectis, et dicis, Acuta sunt ista! Nihil acutius arista; et in quo est utilis? Quædam inutilia, et inefficacia ipsa subtilitas reddit:' that is, You compose copious words, and tie hard knots by curious questions; and you say, O these are acute things! What is more acute than the peal of corn? and yet what is it good for? Subtlety itself makes some things unprofitable and ineffectual.'

66

Istæ ineptiæ poetis relinquantur, quibus aures oblectare propositum est et dulcem fabulam nectere. Sed qui ingenia sanare, et fidem in rebus humanis retinere, ac memoriam officiorum animis ingerere volunt, serio loquantur, et magnis viribis rem agant;" that is, Leave these toys or fooleries to poets, whose business is to delight the ear, and to compose a pleasant fable. But they that mean to heal men's understandings, and retain credibility among men, and to bring into men's minds the remembrance of their duties, must speak seriously, and do their business with all their might.'

6

Demens omnibus merito videret-He would justly by all be taken for a madman, that when the town expecteth to be stormed by the enemies, and others are busy at work for their defence, will sit idle, proposing some curious questions.' 'Nunquid tibi demens videtur, si istis impendero operam, et nunc obsideor? quid agam? mors me sequitur, vita fugit; adversis hæc me doce aliquid: effice ut ego mortem non timeam, et vita me non effugiat.' And shall not I be taken for a madman, if I should busy myself about such things, that am now besieged? What shall I do? Death pursueth me: life flieth from me: teach me some

thing against these:

make death not dreadful to me, or life not to fly from me.' 'Si multum esset ætatis, parce dispensandum erat, ut sufficeret necessariis: nunc quæ dementia est, supervacua discere in tanta temporis egestate!' 'If we had much time, we should sparingly lay it out, that it might suffice for necessary things: but now what a madness is it, to learn things needless or superfluous in so great a scarcity of time!' 'Metire ergo ætatem tuam: tam multa non capit.' 'Measure thy age: it is not enough for so many things.' Relinque istum ludum literarum philosophis. Rem magnificam ad syllabas vocant qui animum minuta discendo diminuunt et conterunt, et id agunt, ut philosophia potius difficilis quam magna videatur: Socrates, qui totam philosophiam revocavit ad mores, hanc summam dixit esse sapientiam, bona malaque distinguere.' 'Leave this learned play to philosophers: a gallant business! They call us to syllables, and debase and depress the mind by learning such little, trivial things, and make philosophy rather to seem a matter of difficulty than great. Socrates, that revoked all philosophy to manners, did call this the highest wisdom, to distinguish good and evil.'

Did a Seneca see by the light of nature, so much of the necessity of seriousness and diligence, about the matters of the soul? And so much of the madness of spending words and time, and trifles? And yet shall there be found a man among professed Christians, and among the preachers of faith and holiness, that plead for trifling, and scorn at seriousness, and account them moderate and wise that a heathen brands as toyish and distracted?

What is it that cloudeth the glory of Christianity, and keepeth so great a part of the world in heathenism and infidelity, but this, that among Christians there are so few that are Christians indeed? And those few are so obscured by the multitude of formal, trifling hypocrites, that Christianity is measured and judged of by the lives of those that are no Christians? Religion is a thing to be demonstrated, and honoured, and commended by practice: words alone are ineffectual to represent its excellency to so blind a world, that must know by feeling, having lost their sight. In our professed faith we mount unto the heavens, and leave poor unbelievers wallowing in the dirt. O what a transcendent,