secret thoughts, and concealed inclination of ungodly men. This is the science, falsely so called; and as it is impure, so it is unpeaceable, cross and hard to be entreated; froward, perverse, and persecuting: jealous that any should be better than they, and hating and abusing those that are. i Sect. 8. It was this pride made Cain a murderer it is a spiteful quality; full of envy and revenge. What! was not his religion and worship as good as his brother's? He had all the exterior parts of worship: he offered as well as Abel, and the offering of itself might be as good; but it seems the heart, that offered it, was not. So long ago did God regard the interior worship of the soul. Well! what was the consequence of this difference? Cain's pride stomached it: he could not bear to be outdone by his brother. He grew wrathful, and resolved to vindicate his offering, by revenging the refusal of it upon his brother's life; and without any regard to natural affection, or the low and early condition of mankind, he barbarously dyed his hands in his brother's blood. Sect. 9. The religion of the apostatized Jews did no better; for, having lost the inward life, power, and spirit of the law, they were puffed up with that knowledge they had; and their pretences to Abraham, Moses, and the promises of God, in that frame, served only to blow them up into an unsufferable pride, arrogance and cruelty. For they could not bear true vision, when it came to visit them, and entertained the messengers of their peace as if they had been wolves and tygers. Sect. 10. Yea, it is remarkable, the false prophets, the great engineers against the true ones, were ever sure to persecute them as false; and by their interest with earthly princes, or the poor seduced multitude, made i Gen. iv. 8. them the instruments of their malice. Thus it was that one holy prophet was sawn asunder, another stoned to death, &c. So proud and obstinate is false knowledge, and the aspirers after it; which made holy Stephen cry out, "O ye stiff-necked, and uncircumcised in heart and ear, ye resist the Holy Ghost; as did your fathers, so do ye." Sect. 11. The true knowledge came with the joy of angels, singing," peace on earth, and good-will towards men :" the false knowledge entertained the message with calumnies: Christ must needs be an impostor; and that must prove him so, to wit, his power of working of miracles; which was that which proved the contrary. They stoned him, and frequently sought to kill him; which at last they wickedly accomplished. But what was their motive to it? Why, he cried out against their hypocrisy, the broad phylacteries, the honour they sought of men. To be short, they give the reason themselves in these words; "If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him : that is, he will take away our credit with the people; they will adhere to him, and desert us; and so we shall lose our power and reputation with the multitude. m Sect. 12. And, the truth is, he came to level their honour, to overthrow their rabbyship, and by his grace to bring the people to that inward knowledge of God, which they, by transgression, were departed from that so they might see the deceitfulness of their blind guides, who, by their vain traditions, had made void the righteousness of the law and who were so far from being the true doctors, and lively expounders of it, that in reality they were the children of the devil, who was a proud liar, and cruel murderer from the beginning. Sect. 13. Their pride in false knowledge having made them incapable of receiving the simplicity of the gos pel, Christ thanks his Father, that he had hid the mysteries of it from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to babes." It was this false wisdom swelled the minds of the Athenians to that degree, that they despised the preaching of the Apostle Paul, as a vain and foolish thing. But that apostle, who of all the rest had an education in the learning of those times, bitterly reflects on that wisdom, so much valued by Jews and Greeks: "Where (says he) is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world ?"" And he gives a good reason for it, "that no flesh should glory in his presence.' Which is to say, God will stain the pride of man in false knowledge, that he should have nothing on this occasion to be proud of; it should be owing only to the revelation of the Spirit of God. The apostle goes farther, and affirms, "that the world by wisdom knew not God" that is, it was so far from an help, that, as men use it, it was an hindrance to the true knowledge of God. And in his first epistle to his beloved Timothy, he concludes thus: "O Timothy ! keep that which is committed to thy trust; avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called ;'" This was the sense of apostolical times, when the divine grace gave the true knowledge of God, and was the guide of Christians, Sect. 14. Well! but what has been the success of those ages, that followed the apostolical? any whit better than that of the Jewish times? Not one jot. They have exceeded them; as with their pretences to greater knowledge, so in their degeneracy from the true Christian life; for though they had a more excellent pattern than the Jews, to whom God spoke by Moses his servant, he, speaking to them by his beloved Son, the express image of his substance, the perfection of all meekness and humility; and though they seemed addicted to nothing more, than an adoration of his name, and a n Matt. xi. 25. • 1 Cor. i. 20. P 1 Cor. i. 29. 1 Tim. vi. 20. veneration to the memory of his blessed disciples and apostles; yet so great was their defection from the inward power and life of Christianity in the soul, that their respect was little more than formal and ceremonious. For notwithstanding they, like the Jews, were mighty zealous in garnishing their sepulchres, and curious in carving of their images; not only keeping with any pretence what might be the reliques of their persons, but recommending a thousand things as reliques which are purely fabulous, and very often ridiculous and to be sure altogether unchristian: yet, as to the great and weighty things of the Christian law, viz. love, meekness, and self-denial, they were degenerated: they grew high-minded, proud, boasters, without natural affection, curious and controversial; ever perplexing the church with doubtful and dubious questions: filling the people with disputations, strife and wrangling, drawing them into parties, till at last they fell into blood; as if they had been the worse for being once Christians. O the miserable state of these pretended Christians! that instead of Christ's and his apostles doctrine, of loving enemies, and blessing them that curse them, they should teach the people, under the notion of Christian zeal, most inhumanly to butcher one another; and instead of suffering their own blood to be shed for the testimony of Jesus, they should shed the blood of the witnesses of Jesus, for heretics: thus that subtile serpent, or crafty evil-spirit, that tempted Adam out of innocency, and the Jews from the law of God, has beguiled the Christians, by lying vanities, to depart from the Christian law of holiness, and so they are become slaves to him; for he rules in the hearts of the children of disobedience. Sect. 15. And it is observable, that as pride, which is ever followed by superstition and obstinacy, put Adam upon seeking an higher station than God placed him in; and as the Jews, out of the same pride, to out-do their pattern, given them of God by Moses upon the mount, set their post by God's post, and taught for doctrines their own traditions, insomuch that those that refused conformity to them ran the hazard of Crucify, crucify; so the nominal christians, from the same sin of pride, with great superstition and arrogance, have introduced, instead of a spiritual worship and discipline, that which is evidently ceremonious and worldly; with such innovations and traditions of men, as are the fruit of the wisdom that is from below: witness their numerous and perplexed councils and creeds, with, Conform, or burn, at the end of them. Sect. 16. And as this unwarrantable pride set them first at work, to pervert the spirituality of the Christian cult, making it rather to resemble the shadowy religion of the Jews, and the gaudy worship of the Egyptians, than the great plainness and simplicity of the Christian institution, which is neither to resemble that of the mountain, nor the other of Jerusalem; so has the same pride and arrogancy spurred them on, by all imaginable cruelties, to maintain this great Diana of theirs. No meek supplications, nor humble remonstrances of those that kept close to primitive purity in worship and doctrine, could prevail with these nominal Christians, to dispense with the imposition of their un-apostolical traditions. But as the ministers and bishops of these degenerate Christians, left their painful visitation and care over Christ's flock, and grew ambitious, covetous, and luxurious, resembling rather worldly potentates, than the humble-spirited and mortified followers of the blessed Jesus: so almost every history tells us, with what pride and cruelty, blood and butchery, and that with unusual and exquisite tortures, they have persesecuted the holy members of Christ, out of the world; and that upon such anathemas, that as far as they could, they have disappointed them of the blessings of heaven too. These, true Christians call martyrs; but the. clergy, like the persecuting Jews, have stiled them blas |