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been, an exchange of innocency for guilt, and a paradife for a wildernefs. But, which is yet worfe, in this ftate Adam and Eve had got another god than the only true and living God: and he that had enticed them to all this mifchief, furnished them with a vain knowledge, and pernicious wifdom: the fkill of lies and equivocatrons, fhifts, evafions, and excufes. They had loft their plainnefs and fincerity; and from an upright heart, the image in which God had made man, he became a crooked, twining, twisting ferpent; the image of that unrighteous fpirit, to whole temptations he yielded up, with his obedience, his paradifical happiness.

§. V. Nor is this limited to Adam; for all who have fallen fhort of the glory of God, are right-born fons of his disobedience. They, like him, have eaten of what they have been forbidden: they have committed the things they ought not to have done, and left undone the things they ought to have done. They have finned against that divine light of knowledge, which God has given them: they have grieved his spirit; and that difmal fentence has been executed, In the day that ⚫ thou eatest thereof thou shalt die.' That is, when thou doeft the thing which thou oughteft not to do, thou shalt no more live in my favour, and enjoy the comforts of the peace of my spirit: which is a dying to all those innocent and holy defires and affections, which God created man with; and he becomes as one cold and benumbed; infenfible of the love of God, of his Holy Spirit, power and wifdom; of the light and joy of his countenance, and of the evidence of a good conscience, and the co-witneffing and approbation of God's Holy Spirit.

§. VI. So that fallen Adam's knowledge of God ftood no more in a daily experience of the love and work of God in his foul, but in a notion of what he once did know and experience: which being not the true and living wisdom that is from above, but a mere picture, it cannot preserve man in purity; but puffs up, makes people proud, high-minded, and impatient of con• Gen. ii. 17.

f Rom. vii.

tradiction.

tradiction. This was the state of the apoftate Jews before Chrift came; and has been the condition of apoftate Chriftians ever fince he came: their religion standing (fome bodily performances excepted) either in what they once knew, of the work of God in themselves, and which they have revolted from; or in an historical belief, and an imaginary conception and paraphrase upon the experiences and prophecies of fuch holy men and women of God, as in all ages have deferved the ftile and character of his true children.

§. VII. As fuch a knowledge of God cannot be true, fo by experience we find, that it ever brings forth the quite contrary fruits to the true wisdom. For as this is first pure, then peaceable, then gentle, and easy to be intreated; fo the knowledge of degenerated and unmortified men is firft impure": for it came by the commiffion of evil, and is held in an evil and impure conscience and heart, that difobey God's law, and that daily do those things which they ought not to do; and for which they ftand condemned before God's judgment-feat in the fouls of men: the light of whose prefence searches the most hidden things of darkness, the most secret thoughts, and concealed inclinations of ungodly men. This is the science, falfly fo called; and as it is impure, fo it is unpeaceable, crofs, and hard to be intreated; froward, perverfe, and perfecuting; jealous that any should be better than they, and hating and abufing those that are.

§. VIII. It was this pride made Cain a murderer: it is a fpiteful quality; full of envy and revenge'. What! was not his religion and worthip 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 foul. Well! what was the confequence of this difference? Cain's pride ftomached it: he could not bear to be outdone by his brother. He grew wrathi Gen. iv. 8.

Jam. iii. 17.

ful

of God. And in his first epiftle to his beloved Timothy, he concludes thus: O Timothy! keep that which is committed to thy truft; avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppofitions of fcience, falfly fo called'.' This was the fenfe of apoftolical times, when the divine grace gave the true knowledge of God,. and was the guide of Christians.

§. XIV. Well! but what has been the fuccefs of thofe ages, that followed the apoftolical? any whit better than that of the Jewish times? Not one jot. They have exceeded them; as with their pretences to greater knowledge, fo in their degeneracy from the true Christian life for though they had a more excellent pattern than the Jews, to whom God fpoke by Mofes his fervant, he fpeaking to them by his beloved Son, the exprefs image of his fubftance, the perfection of all meekness and humility; and though they feemed addicted to nothing more, than an adoration of his name, and a veneration to the memory of his bleffed difciples, and apoftles; yet fo great was their defection from the inward power and life of Christianity in the foul, that their respect was little more than formal and ceremonious. For notwithstanding they, like the Jews, were mighty zealous in garnishing their fepulchres, and curious in carving of their images; not only keeping with any pretence what might be the reliques of their perfons, but recommending a thousand things as reliques which are purely fabulous, and very often ridiculous, and to be fure altogether unchriftian; yet, as to the great and weighty things of the Chriftian law, viz. love, meekness, and felf-denial, they were degenerated: they grew high-minded, proud, boafters, without natural affection, curious, and controverfial; ever perplexing the church with doubtful and dubious queftions; filling the people with difputations, ftrife and wrangling, drawing them into parties, till at laft they fell into blood: as if they had been the worfe for being once Chriftians.

T ■ Tim. vi. 20.

O the

O the miferable ftate of these pretended Chriftians ! that inftead of Chrift's and his apoftles doctrine, of loving enemies, and bleffing them that curse them, they fhould teach the people, under the notion of Chriftian zeal, most inhumanly to butcher one another; and inftead of fuffering their own blood to be fhed for the teftimony of Jefus, they fhould fhed the blood of the witneffes of Jefus, for hereticks: thus that fubtil serpent, or crafty evil-fpirit, that tempted Adam out of innocency, and the Jews from the law of God, has beguiled the Chriftians, by lying vanities, to depart from the Chriftian, law of holiness, and fo they are become flaves to him; for he rules in the hearts of the children of difobedience.

§. XV. And it is obfervable, that as pride (which is ever followed by fuperftition and obftinacy) put Adam upon feeking an higher ftation than God placed him in; and as the Jews, out of the fame pride, to outdo their pattern, given them of God by Mofes upon the mount, fet their poft by God's poft, and taught for doctrines their own traditions, infomuch that those that refused conformity to them ran the hazard of Crucify, crucify fo the nominal Chriftians, from the fame fin of pride, with great fuperftition and arrogance, have introduced, instead of a fpiritual worship and difcipline, that which is evidently ceremonious and worldly; with fuch innovations and traditions of men, as are the fruit of the wifdom that is from below: witnefs their numerous and perplexed councils and creeds, with Conform, or burn, at the end of them.

§. XVI. And as this unwarrantable pride fet them first at work, to pervert the fpirituality of the Christian cult, making it rather to resemble the fhadowy religion of the Jews, and the gawdy worship of the Egyptians, than the great plainnefs and fimplicity of the Chriftian inftitution, which is neither to resemble that of the mountain, nor the other of Jerufalem; fo has the fame pride and arrogancy fpurred them on, by all imaginable cruelties, to maintain this great Diana of theirs. No meek fupplications, nor humble remonftrances of those

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that kept close to primitive purity in worship and doctrine, could prevail with these nominal Chriftians, to dispense with the impofition of their un-apoftolical traditions. But as the minifters and bishops of these degenerate Chriftians left their painful vifitation and care over Christ's flock, and grew ambitious, covetous, and luxurious, refembling rather worldly potentates, than the humble-fpirited and mortified followers of the bleffed Jefus; fo almoft every history tells us, with what pride and cruelty, blood and butchery, and that with unusual and exquifite tortures, they have perfecuted the holy members of Christ, out of the world; and that upon fuch anathemas, that, as far as they could, they have disappointed them of the bleffings of heaven too. Thefe, true Chriftians call martyrs; but the clergy, like the perfecuting Jews, have stiled them blafphemers and hereticks: in which they have fulfilled the prophecy of our Lord Jefus Chrift; who did not fay, that they fhould think they do the gods good service to kill the Chriftians, his dear followers (which might refer to the perfecutions of the idolatrous Gentiles) but that they fhould think they do God good fervice to kill them: which fhews, that they fhould be fuch as profeffedly owned the true God, as the apoftate Chriftians have all along pretended to do. So that they must be those wolves, that the apoitle foretold fhould arife out of themselves, and worry the flock of Chrift, after the great falling-away fhould commence, that was foretold by him, and made neceffary, in order to the proving of the faithful, and the revelation of the great mystery of iniquity'.

I fhall conclude this head with this affertion, that it is too undeniable a truth, where the clergy has been most in power and authority, and has had the greatest influence upon princes and states, there has been moft. confufions, wrangles, blood-fhed, fequeftrations, imprifonments and exiles: to the juftifying of which, I call the testimony of the records of all times. How

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