of God; for they are spiritually discerned.' This topic enlarged on.

2. Holiness is not only an advantage in the learning of wisdom and righteousness, but in the discerning that which is wise and holy from what is trifling, useless, and contentious: to one of these heads all questions will return; and therefore, in all, we have from holiness the best instructions: this subject enlarged on.

3. Holiness of life is the best way of finding out truth and understanding; not only as a natural medium, nor only as a prudent medium, but as a means by way of Divine blessing. We have a promise of this in St. John's Gospel, ch. xiv. 21. ; and on this we may rely: this subject considered at large.

4. When this is reduced to practice and experience, we find not only in things of practice, but even in deepest mysteries, that every good man can best tell what is true, and best reprove an error: this subject enlarged on.

Application of the doctrine of the text. It is a sure rule, if the holy man best understands wisdom and religion, then, by the proportions of holiness we shall best measure the doctrines that are obtruded on us. And therefore,

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1. That is no good religion, whose principles destroy any duty of religion.

2. It is but a bad sign of holiness when a man is busy in troubling himself and his superiors in little scruples and fantastic notions about things which do not concern the life of religion, or the pleasure of God, &c.

3. That is no good religion that disturbs governments, or shakes the foundation of public peace.

Concluding exhortations, to such as are, or intend to be, of the clerical order: that they see here the best compendium of their studies, the truest method of wisdom, and the only infallible way of judging concerning the disputes or questions of the Christian church.

SERMON VI.

VIA INTELLIGENTIÆ.

JOHN, CHAP. VII.-VERSE 17.

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.

THE ancients, in their mythological learning, tell us, that when Jupiter espied the men of the world striving for Truth, and pulling her in pieces to secure her to themselves, he sent Mercury down amongst them; and he, with his usual arts, dressed Error up in the imagery of Truth, and thrust her into the crowd, and so left them to contend still: and though then, by contention, men were sure to get but little truth, yet they were as earnest as ever, and lost peace too, in their importune contentions for the very image of truth. And this, indeed, is no wonder; but when truth and peace are brought into the world together, and bound up in the same bundle of life; when we are taught a religion by the Prince of peace, who is the truth itself; to see men contending for this truth, to the breach of that peace; and when men fall out, to see that they should make Christianity their theme, that is one of the greatest wonders in the world. For Christianity is ήμερος καὶ φιλάνθρωπος νομοθεσία, "a soft and gentle institution;" vypòv kai μeiλıxov 00s it was brought into the world to soften the asperities of human nature, and to cure the barbarities of evil men, and the contentions of the passionate. The eagle, seeing her breast wounded, and espying the arrow that hurt her, to be feathered, cried out, Πτερόν με τον πτερωτὸν ὀλλύει, “ The feathered nation is destroyed by their own feathers;" that is, a Christian fighting

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and wrangling with a Christian; and, indeed, that is very sad : but wrangling about peace too, that peace itself should be the argument of a war, that is unnatural: and if it were not that there are many who are homines multæ religionis, nullius pæne pietatis," men of much religion and little godliness,❞—it would not be that there should be so many quarrels in and concerning that religion, which is wholly made up of truth and peace, and was sent amongst us to reconcile the hearts of men, when they were tempted to uncharitableness by any other unhappy argument. Disputation cures no vice, but kindles a great many, and makes passion evaporate into sin and though men esteem it learning, yet it is the most useless learning in the world. When Eudamidas, the son of Archidamus, heard old Xenocrates disputing about wisdom, he asked very soberly," If the old man be yet disputing and inquiring concerning wisdom, what time will he have to make use of it?" Christianity is all for practice; and so much time as is spent in quarrels about it, is a diminution to its interest. Men inquire so much what it is, that they have but little time left to be Christians. I remember a saying of Erasmus, "that when he first read the New Testament, with fear and a good mind, with a purpose to understand it and obey it, he found it very pleasant; but when, afterwards, he fell on reading the vast differences of commentaries, then he understood it less than he did before, then he began not to understand it:" for, indeed, the truths of God are best dressed in the plain culture and simplicity of the Spirit; but the truths that men commonly teach, are like the reflections of a multiplying-glass; for one piece of good money, you shall have forty that are fantastical; and it is forty to one if your finger hit on the right. Men have wearied themselves in the dark, having been amused with false fires; and instead of going home, have wandered all night év ódous àẞáros, "in untrodden, unsafe, uneasy ways;" but have not found out what their soul desires. But, therefore, since we are so miserable, and are in error, and have wandered very far, we must do as wandering travellers use to do, go back just to that place from whence they wandered, and begin on a new account. Let us go to the truth itself, to Christ; and he will tell us an easy way of ending all our quarrels: for we shall find Christianity to be the

easiest and the hardest thing in the world; it is like a secret in arithmetic, infinitely hard till it be found out by a right operation; and then it is so plain, we wonder we did not understand it earlier.

Christ's way of finding out of truth, is by doing the will of God.' We will try that by and by, if possibly we may find that easy and certain; in the mean time, let us consider what ways men have propounded to find out truth, and on the foun. dation of that to establish peace in Christendom.

1. That there is but one true way, is agreed on; and therefore almost every church of one denomination that lives under government, propounds to you a system or collective body of articles, and tells you that is the true religion, and they are the church, and the peculiar people of God; like Brutus and Cassius, of whom one says, Ubicunque ipsi essent, prætexebant esse rempublicam, "They supposed themselves were the commonwealth;" and these are the church, and out of this church they will hardly allow salvation: but of this there can be no end; for divide the church into twenty parts, and in what part soever your lot falls, you and your party are damned by the other nineteen; and men on all hands almost keep their own proselytes by affrighting them with the fearful sermons of damnation : but, in the mean time, here is no security to them, that are not able to judge for themselves, and no peace for them that are.

2. Others cast about to cure this evil, and conclude that it must be done by submission to an infallible guide; this must do it or nothing; and this is the way of the church of Rome; follow but the pope and his clergy, and you are safe, at least as safe as their warrant can make you. Indeed, this were a very good way, if it were a way at all; but it is none; for this can never end our controversies: not only because the greatest controversies are about this infallible guide; but also because, 1. We cannot find that there is, on earth, any such guide at all. 2. We do not find it necessary that there should. 3. We find that they who pretend to be this infallible guide, are themselves infinitely deceived. 4. That they do not believe themselves to be infallible, whatever they say to us; because they do not put an end to all their own questions, that trouble them. 5. Because they have no peace, but what is constrained by force and

government. 6. And lastly, because if there were such a guide, we should fail of truth by many other causes: for, it may be, that guide would not do his duty; or we are fallible followers of this infallible leader; or we should not understand his meaning at all times, or we should be perverse at some times, or something as bad; because we all confess, that God is an infallible guide, and that some way or other he does teach us sufficiently, and yet it does come to pass, by our faults, that we are as far to seek for peace and truth as ever.

3. Some very wise men, finding this to fail, have undertaken to reconcile the differences of Christendom by a way of moderation. Thus they have projected to reconcile the papists and the Lutherans, the Lutherans and the Calvinists, the remonstrants and contra-remonstrants, and project, that each side should abate of their asperities, and pare away something of their propositions, and join in common terms and phrases of accommodation, each of them sparing something, and promising they shall have a great deal of peace for the exchange of a little of their opinion. This was the way of Cassander, Modrevius, Andreas Frisius, Erasmus, Spalato, Grotius, and, indeed, of Charles the Fifth, in part, but something more heartily of Ferdinand the Second. This device produced the conferences at Poissy, at Montpelier, at Ratisbon, at the Hague, at many places more and what was the event of these? Their parties, when their delegates returned, either disclaimed their moderation, or their respective princes had some other ends to serve, -or they permitted the meetings on uncertain hopes, and a trial if any good might come; or, it may be, they were both in the wrong, and their mutual abatement was nothing but a mutual quitting of what they could not get, and the shaking hands of false friends; or, it may be, it was all of it nothing but hypocrisy and arts of craftiness, and, like Lucian's man, every one could be a man and a pestle when he pleased. And the Council of Trent, though under another cover, made use of the artifice, but made the secret manifest and common for at this day the Jesuits, in the questions de auxiliis Divinæ gratiæ, have prevailed with the Dominicans to use their expressions, and yet they think they still keep the sentence of their own order. From hence can succeed nothing but folly and a fantastic peace: this