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'CHAP. XXII.

SECT. 1. Of the way of living amongst the first Christians. 2. An Exhortation to all professing Christianity, to embrace the foregoing Reasons and Examples. 3. Plain dealing with such as reject them. 4. Their recompenses. 5. The Author is better persuaded and assured of some: An Exhortation to them. 6. Encouragement to the Children of Light to persevere from a consideration of the Excellency of their Reward; the End and Triumph of the Christian Conqueror. The whole concluded with a brief Supplication to Almighty

God.

THE CONCLUSION.

SECT. 1. HAVING finished so many Testimonies, as my time would give me leave, in favour of this subject, No CROSS, No CROWN; No Temperance, No Happiness; No Virtue, No Reward; No Mortification, No Glorification: I shall conclude with a short description of the life and worship of the Christians within the first century, or hundred years after Christ: What simplicity, what spirituality, what holy love and communion did in that blessed age abound among them! It is delivered originally by Philo Judæus, and cited by Eusebius Pamphilius, in his Ecclesiastical History; That those Christians renounced their substance, and severed themselves from all the cares of this life; and forsaking the cities, they lived solitary in fields and gardens. They accounted their company, who followed the contrary life of cares and bustles, as unprofitable and hurtful to them; to the end that with earnest and fervent desires, they might imitate them which led this prophetical and heavenly life. In many places, says he,

this people liveth; for it behoveth as well the Grecians as the Barbarians, to be partakers of this absolute goodness; but in Egypt, in every province they abound; and especially about Alexandria. From all parts the better sort withdrew themselves into the soil and place of these worshippers, as they were called, as a most commodious place, adjoining to the Lake of Mary, in a valley very fit, both for its security and the temperance of the air. They are farther reported to have meetinghouses, where the most part of the day was employed in worshipping God: That they were great Allegorizers of the scriptures, making them all figurative: That the external show of words, or the letter, resembleth the superfices of the body; and the hidden sense or understanding of the words seem in place of the soul; which they contemplate by their beholding names, as it were in a glass:"* That is, their religion consisted not chiefly in reading the letter, disputing about it, accepting things in Literal Constructions, but in the Things declared of, the substance itself, bringing things nearer to the mind, soul, and spirit, and pressing into a more hidden and heavenly sense; making religion to consist in the Temperance and Sanctity of the Mind, and not in the formal Bodily Worship, so much now-a-days in repute, fitter to please Comedians than Christians. Such was the practice of those times: But now the case is altered; people will be Christians, and have their worldly-mindedness too: But though God's kingdom suffer violence by such, yet shall they never enter: The Life of Christ and his followers hath in all ages been another thing; and there is but One Way, One Guide, One Rest; all which are pure and holy.

Sect. 2. But if any, notwithstanding our many sober reasons, and numerous testimonies from scripture, or the example or experience of religious, worldly and profane, living and dying men, at home and abroad, of the greatest note, fame, and learning, in the whole world,

*

Philo Judæus of the worship of Egypt and Alexand. Euseb. Pam, Eccl. Hist. I. 2. c. 17.

shall yet remain lovers and imitators of the folly and the vanity condemned; if the cries and groans, sighs and tears, and complaints and mournful wishes of so many reputed great, nay, some sober men-" O that I had more time !-O that I might live a year longer, I would live a stricter life!-O that I were a poor Jean Urick! -All is vanity in this world:-O my poor soul, whither wilt thou go?-O that I had the time spent in vain recreations!A serious life is above all;" and suchlike; if, I say, this by no means can prevail, but if yet they shall proceed to folly, and follow the vain world, what greater evidence can they give of their heady resolution to go on impiously; to despise God; to disobey his precepts; to deny Christ; to scorn; not to bear his cross; to forsake the examples of his servants; to give the lie to the dying serious sayings and consent of all ages; to harden themselves against the checks of conscience; to befool and sport away their precious time, and poor immortal souls to wo and misery? In short, it is plainly to discover you neither have Reason to justify yourselves, nor yet enough of Modesty to blush at your own folly; but, as those that have lost the sense of one and the other, go on to "eat and drink, and rise up to play." In vain therefore is it for you to pretend to fear the God of heaven, whose minds serve the god of the pleasure of this world: In vain it is to say, you believe in Christ, who receive not his self-denying doctrine: And to no better purpose will all you do, avail. If he that had loved "God and his neighbour, and kept the commandments from his youth," was excluded from being a disciple, "because he sold not all, and followed Jesus;" with what confidence can you call yourselves Christians, who have neither kept the commandments, nor yet forsaken any thing to be so? And if it was a bar betwixt him and the eternal life he sought, that, notwithstanding all his other virtues, love to Money, and his external possessions, "could not be parted with;""

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a Exod. xxxii. 6. Amos vi. 3 to 6. Eph. iv. 17, 24. 2 Tim. ii. 19. Mat. xix. 16 to 22.

what shall be your end, who cannot deny yourselves many less things, but are daily multiplying your inventions, to please your fleshly appetites ? Certainly, much more impossible is it to forsake the Greater. Christ tried his love, in bidding him forsake All, because he knew, for all his brags, that his mind was rivetted therein; not that if he had enjoyed his possessions with Christian Indifferency, they might not have been cpntinued But what then is their doom, whose hearts are so fixed in the vanities of the world, that they will rather make them Christian, than not to be Christians in the use of them? But such a Christian this Young Man might have been, who had more to say for himself than the strictest Pharisee living dare pretend to; yet "he went away sorrowful from Jesus." Should I ask you, if Nicodemus did well to come by night, and be ashamed of the great Messiah of the world? And if he was not Ignorant when Christ spake to him of the New Birth? I know you would answer me, "He did very ill, and was very ignorant." But stay a while, the beam is in your own eyes; you are ready doubtless, to condemn Him, and the Young Man for not doing what you not only refuse to do yourselves, but laugh at Others for doing. Nay, had such passages not been written, and were it not for the reverence some pretend for the Scriptures, they would both be as stupid as Nicodemus in their answers to such heavenly matters, and ready to call it canting to speak so; as it is frequent for you, when we speak to the same effect, though not the same words: just as the Jews, at what time they called God their Father, they despised his Son; and when he spake of sublime and heavenly mysteries, some cried, "He has a devil;" others, "He is mad:" and most of them, "These are hard sayings, who can bear them?"

Sect. 3. And to you all, that sport yourselves after the manners of the World, let me say, that you are those "who profess you know God, but in works deny

D John iii. 1 to 5.

him ;" living in those pleasures which slay the Just in yourselves. For though you talk of believing, it is no more than taking it for granted that there is a God, a Christ, Scriptures, &c. without farther concerning yourselves to prove the verity thereof, to yourselves or others, by a strict and holy conversation: Which slight way of Believing, is but a light and careless way of ridding yourselves of farther examination; and rather throwing them off with an inconsiderate granting of them to be so, than giving yourselves the trouble of making better inquiry, leaving that to your priests, ofttimes more ignorant, and not less vain and idle, than yourselves, which is so far from a Gospel Faith, that it is the least respect you can show to God, Scriptures, &c. and next to which kind of Believing is nothing, under a Denial of all.

But if you have hitherto laid aside all temptations to Reason and Shame, at least be entreated to resume them now in a matter of this importance, and whereon no less concernment rests, than your temporal and eternal happiness. “Oh! retire, retire; observe the reproofs of instruction in your own minds: that which begets sadness in the midst of mirth, which cannot solace itself, nor be contented below immortality; which calls often to an account at nights, mornings, and other seasons; which lets you see the vanity, the folly, the end, and misery of these things; this is the Just Prin ciple, and Holy Spirit of the Almighty within you: hear him, obey him, converse with them who are led by him and let the glories of another world be eyed, and the heavenly recompense of reward kept in sight." Admit not the thoughts of former follies to revive; but be steady, and continually exercised by his Grace, "to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world." For this is the true and heavenly nature of Christianity, "To be so awakened and guided by the Spirit and Grace of God, as to leave the sins and vanities of the world, and to have

* Titus i. 16.

Tit. ii. 11, 12, 13, 14.

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