to engage God's bleffing upon your trades and employments, as continence or conjugal chatuity are? That is to fay plainly, Whether obe dience and difobedience to the law of God, be all one, and please him alike? You know, your fuccefs in bufinefs is not in your own hand; it is God that giveth thee power to get wealth: His bleffing maketh rich. And is fin as likely a way to engage his bleffing, as duty and obedience is? I am confident, your own reason will never give it.

Object. If you fay, fuch perfons profper in the world as well as others, for ought you fee.

Sol. The contrary is evident in the common obfervation of mankind: By reafon of whoredom, multitudes are brought to a piece of bread. And though God fuffer fome unclean perfons to profper in the world; yet chastity with poverty, is infinitely preferable to fuch accurfed profperity.

Quest. 2. Whether the course of fin you are now driving and accuftoming yourselves to, will not, in all probability, fo infatuate and bewitch you, that when you come into a married eftate, you shall still be under the power of this fin; and, fo ruin the person you marry, as well as yourfelf? If the word of God fignify any thing with you, it fignifieth this; That there is a witchcraft in whoredom; and, comparatively speaking, "None that go to her return again, neither take .they hold of the paths of life;" Prov. ii. 18, 19.

Object. If to invalidate this teftimony, you fall fay that he that pake this, did himself go after range women.

Sol. It is true, he did fo. But then withal, you must remember, that he hath warned you by his own fad experience, that you never follow him in those his footsteps: Ecclef. vii. 26. "I find (faith he) more bitter than death, the woman whofe heart is fnares and nets, and her hands as bands. Whofo pleaseth God, fhall efcape from her; but the finner fhall be taken by her.”

Queft. 3. And, lastly, I demand of your reafon, whether it can, or will, allow any place to this plea of neceffity; before you have tried and ufed all God's appointed remedies, which are fufficient to prevent that neceffity you plead ?

There are lawful remedies enough, fufficient, with God's bleffing, to keep you from fuch a neceffity to fin; fuch as temperance, and more abftemioufnefs in meats and drinks; avoiding lafcivious books, play-houfes, and filthy company; laborious diligence in your lawful callings, and fervent prayer, for mortifying and preventing grace: And if temptations shall stir amidst all thefe preventives; then cafting yourselves upon the directions and fupply of providence, in the honourable eftate of marriage. Never plead neceffity, whilst all thefe preventives might, but have not been used.

§7. Inducement 3.

Others plead the abfence of their lawful remedies, and prefence of tempting objects. This is the cafe of our foldiers and feamen. But

though this be the moft colourable pretence of all the reft, yet your own reafon and confcience will, even in this cafe, so dilemma and nonplus you, that if you will adventure upon the fin, you shall never have their leave and confent with you: For they have a fpecial and peculiar confideration of you, as perfons more eminently and immediately expofed to the dangers of death than other men. And thus (would you but give them a fair hearing) they would expoftulate and reafon out the matter with you.

"Either thou shalt efcape, or not efcape, the hazard of this voy age, or battle. If thou fall (as to be fure many will) will this be an honourable, fafe, and comfortable clofe, and winding up of thy life? What, from a whore to thy grave! God forbid. From burning lufts, to everlasting burnings! Better thou hadft never been born."

Or if thou do efcape, and return again to thy family; how canft thou look her in the face, with whom thou haft fo bafely broken thy marriage-vow and covenant? Whatever elfe thou bring home with thee, to be fure thou shalt bring home guilt with thee, a blot never to be wiped away.

Object. If you fay, you are not fuch fools to publish your own shame; you will follow Cafar's advice to the young adulterer, Si non caftè, tamen cautè, If I act not chaftly, I will act cautiously.

Sol. Your reafon and confcience will both deride the weakness and folly of this pretence: For they both very well know, no man fins fo fecretly, but he fins before two infallible witneffes, viz. God, and his own confcience; and that the laft, and least of these, is more than a thousand witneffes. That God ufually detects it in this world, carry it as closely as you will; but to be fure, it fhall be published as upon the house-top, before men and angels in the great day.

8. Inducement 4.

Another inducement to this fin, (and the laft I fhall mention), is the commonnefs of it, which abates the fhame of it.

What need they trouble themselves fo much, or be so shy of that which is practifed by thoufands, which is fo frequently acted in every place, and little made of it?

But if either your reafon or confcience will admit this plea for good and lawful, the devil hath utterly blinded or infatuated the one or other; as will evidently appear by the following reasons. For,

Reafon 1. If the thing be evil, (as you cannot deny but it is) then, by how much the commoner, by fo much the worse it muft needs be. Indeed, if a thing be good, by how much the commoner, fo much the better but to attribute this effential property of good unto evil, is to confound and deftroy the difference between them, and make good and evil both alike.

Reajon 2. If the commonnefs of uncleannefs will excufe you, it will more excufe all others that hall commit this fin after you : and ftill by how much more the numbers of adulterers and fornicators are increased, ftill the lefs fcruple men need make to commit; and

fo the whole community fhall in a little time be fo infected and defiled, that christian kingdoms shall quickly become like Sodom, and God provoked to deal with them, as he did by that wretched city.

Reafon 3 If the commonnefs of the fin be an excuse and plea for it; fuppofe the roads fhould be more infefted than they are with highwaymen, fo that every month you should fee whole cart-loads of them drawn to Tyburn; would your reafon infer from thence, that because hanging is grown fo common, you need not fcruple fo much as you were wont to do, to take a purse, or pistol an honest innocent traveller upon the road?

Object. If you fall fay, uncleanness is not fo coftly a fin as a fin as robbery is; there is a great deal of difference between Tyburn, and a whore-house punifbment.

Sal. There is a great difference indeed, even as much as is betwixt Tyburn and hell, or a small mulct in the courts of men, and the eternal wrath of a fin-revenging God: fo great will the difference betwixt the punishments of all fins by God, and by men be found.

Thus you fee, gentlemen, the common pleas for uncleanness overruled by your own reason and confciences.

We live in a plentiful land, abounding with all the comforts of this life, and with thousands of full-fed wantons; of whom the Lord complains this day, as he did of the Jews, whom that flowing land vomited out, Jer. v. 7. " When I had fed them to the full, they committed adultery, and affembled themfelves by troops in the harlots houses. They were as fed horfes in the morning; every one neighed after his neighbour's wife." How many fuch ftallions are thus neighing in the fat pastures of this good land!

Nor do I wonder at all to fee the growth of Atheism, in a land fwarmed and over-run with so many thousands of blafphemers, drunkards, and adulterers. It was a grave obfervation of that gallant moralift, Plutarch: "If Epicurus (faith he) fhould but grant a God in his full perfections, he must change his life presently, he must be a fwine no longer."

The Lord purge out this crying abomination alfo, with Atheism and drunkennefs, the inlets of it, which darken our glory, and threaten to make us defolate.

CHAP. VI.

Wherein reafon and confcience are once more confulted, about that bitter and implacable enmity found in thousands this day, against all ferious piety, and the frict profeffors thereof, who differ from them in fome external modes and rites of worship; and their determinations, upon that cafe, impartially reported.

AN is naturally a fociable creature, delighting in com

Mpany that affects to by, and to

himself, must be (faith the philofopher) Inpov, nos; either a God that is felf-fufficient, and ftands in needs of none; or a wild beaft, fo favage and fierce, that it can endure nothing but itself.

This natural quality of fociablenefs is diverfly improved. Sometimes finfully, in wicked combinations to do mifchief; like the herding together of wolves and tygers; fuch was the confederation of Simeon and Levi, brethren in iniquity; Gen. xlix. 56. Sometimes it is improved civilly, for the more orderly and profperous management of human affairs. Thus all civilized countries have improved it, for the common fecurity and benefit. And fometimes religiously, for the better promoting of each other's fpiritual and eternal good.

Now the more firmly any civil or religious focieties are knit together by love, and coalefce in unity, by so much the better they are fecured against their common enemies and dangers, and become still the more profperous and flourishing within and among themfelves. For when every man finds his particular intereft involved in the public fafety and fecurity, (as every private cabbin and paffenger is in the fafety of the fhip), every particular perfon will then ftand ready to contribute his uttermoft afliftance, for the public interest, both in peace and war. United force, we all know, is more than fingle; and, in this fenfe, we say, Unus homo, nullus homo: one man, is no man, that is, confidered disjunctively, and alone; when yet that fingle person, standing in a proper place of fervice in the body, may, by his prudence and courage, fignify very much to the public weal of his country; as Fabius did to the Roman ftate, of whom the poet truly obferved,

Unis homo nobis cunctando reftituit rem ;

That one man, by his prudent delay and conduct, hath faved the whole commonwealth.

§ 2. It is therefore the undoubted intereft of Chriftian states and churches, to make every individual perfon as ufeful as may be to the whole, and to enjoy the fervices of all their fubjects and members, one way or other, according to their different capacities; that it may be faid of them, (as the hiftorian fpeaks of the land of Canaan) that there was in it, Nihil infructuofum, nihil fterile; not a fhrub but bare fome fruit.

No prudent kingdom, or church, will deprive themselves of the be nefit they may enjoy by the fervices of any confiderable number of men, (efpecially if they be able and good men) without a plain, inevitable neceffity. No man, without fuch a neceffity, will part with the ufe and fervice of the leaft finger or toe, much lefs with a leg or arm: but would reckon himself half undone, if a paralytic disease should strike one half of the body, and render it utterly uieleis to defend and fuccour the other part in time of danger.

3. Much fo ftands the cafe with churches and kingdoms, when the caufelefs and cruel enmity of one part prevails fo far against the

other, as to deprive that ftate, or church, of the use and service of multitudes of good and faithful members.

It is folly, in its highest exaltation, for one part of a nation, out of bitter enmity to the other, not only to feek all ways and means to fupprefs and ruin it, whilft a common danger hangs over the whole; but to rejoice in the miferies of their brethren, as the principal thing which they fancy would contribute to the great advantage of their caufe. What but a general punishment, (if that will do it) can work men's hearts into a more general compaffion?

The hiftories of thofe times fufficiently inform us, that the great feuds and factions in the western church, not only immediately preceded, but opened the way to the terrible inundations of the Goths and Vandals. Whilft the fuffering part cries out, cruelty, cruelty; those that inflict it, cry as loud, juftice, juftice. Whatever rational apologies, or methods of peace, come from the oppreffed party, are cenfured by the other as murmur and mutiny. All men commend unity, and affert it to be the interest of kingdoms and churches. They with all men were of one mind; but what mind must that be? To be fure, none but their own.

The more cool, prudent, and moderate fpirits of each party, may strive to the uttermoft, to allay thefe unnatural feuds and animofities. The wisdom of the governing part, may take the inftruments of cruelty out of their hand; but it is God alone that can pluck up the roots of enmity out of their hearts.

And what is the matter, when all is fifted and examined? Why the matter is this: fome will be more serious, ftrict, and conscientious than others think fit or neceffary for them to be. They dare not curfe, fwear, whore, and be drunk, as others do. They fcruple to comply with what God hath not commanded, and the very imposers confefs to be indifferent, antecedently to their command. They reverently mention the name of God, without an oath, and the folemn matters of religion, without a jeft in their company. They will affume as much liberty to reprove fin, as others do to commit it. They take more pleasure in heavenly duties, and holy conferences, than in ranting and roaring in taverns and ale-houses. That is, in a word, they live up to the principles of religion, which all pretend to; and this is their unpardonable crime, a fault never to be expiated by any lefs punishment than their destruction.

And are not people (think you) come to a fine pafs; when the ftricteft obedience to the laws of God thall be accounted more criminal than the most open and profane violation of them? Nay, though they reprove the other party's fin no other way, but by their most ferious and religious lives; yet this alone fhall be fufficient to make them culpable and obnoxious.

§ 4. If the party thus generally hated and maligned, be (for the generality of them) ferious and godly Chriftians; or it the strictness VOL. VI.

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