continued, in all that they exercise themselves according to their whole power, and would do more if they could, and sometimes do more than they are required; and oftentimes with better circumstances than are exacted, and always with a mind more ready than their hand. 2. Human laws can exact but the outward action; they neither can command the understanding nor judge the will, because they cannot secure that, nor discern this; and without these two, their interest is well enough preserved. He that pays my money, though it be against his will, does me justice, and is quit before the king; and if he dissembles, yet if he gives me good words, I cannot implead him of calumny or slander. Thus the Pharisees b understood the law of Moses, and called him innocent whom the laws could not charge; but, therefore, Christ calls them to new accounts. He that offers a pure lamb to God, may dishonour him with a foul thought: and no sacrifice is pure by the skin and colour, but by the heart and hand of him, that presents it. Acts of external religion are publications of the divine honours, but the heart does only pay them; for there it is that God does sit judge alone; and though he hath given us bodies to converse below with a material world, yet God's temple is in heaven, in the intellectual world; and the spirit of a man is the sacrifice, and his purest thoughts are oblations, and holy purposes are the best presents, and the crucifixion of our passions is the best immolation, the only beasts of sacrifice, and the cross of Christ is the altar, and his passion is the salt of all our sacrifices, and his intercession makes the sweet perfume, and so atonement is made by the blood of the Lamb, and we are accepted in our services, and our wills are crowned with the rewards of a holy obedience: if our hearts be right, our services will never be wanting or rejected; and although our hearts can supply the want of external power, yet it is certain that nothing can supply the want of our hearts, and of good affections; these must be entire; for they are God's peculiar portion, and, therefore, must not be divided. Plutarch tells of Apollodorus, that he dreamed he was taken by the Scythians, flayed alive, and then cut in pieces, and thrown into a boiling Matt. vi. and Matt. xxiii. с De Ser. Num. Vind. Wyttenbach, p. 39. 6 caldron, where his heart leaped forth into the midst of all the little portions of flesh, and told them, I am the cause of all this evil.' It was something like that saying of St. Bernard, "Nihil ardet in inferno, nisi propria voluntas:" "Nothing burns in the eternal flames of hell, but a man's heart, nothing but his will:"-for from "the heart proceed evil thoughts, adulteries," &c., said our blessed Saviour d; but, therefore, God requires the heart, that is, that the principle of actions be secured, and the principalis domus,' the chief house,' where God loves to dwell and reign, be kept without thieves and murderers. This, then, is the first sense of the rule; that our obedience which Christ exacts, is a sincere obedience of the will, and is not satisfied with the outward work. He that gives alms to the poor, and curses them in his heart; he that entertains an apostle in the name of an apostle, and grudges the expenses of his diet;-is neither charitable nor hospitable, and shall neither have the reward of an apostle nor a brother. In vain it is to wash a goblet, if you mean to put into it nothing but the dead lees and vap of wine; and a fair tomb of amber was too beauteous and rich an inclosure for Martial'se viper and his fly. Introrsus turpem, speciosum pelle decora f. But this is a caution against hypocrisy in the moral sense of the words, but the legal sense of the rule is, that, in all laws, the first intention is, that God be served with the will and the affections; and that these be never separated from the outward work. 3. (2.) But it is also meant, that the whole design of the laws of Jesus Christ is to be perfective of the Spirit, and his religion is a spiritual service; that is, permanent and unalterable, virtuous and useful, natural and holy, not relative to time and place, or any material circumstances, nor integrated by corporal services; the effect of which is this: 4. (1.) The body of the Christian services does wholly consist of natural religion, that is, such services, whereby we can glorify God and represent our own needs; that is, prayers and eucharists, acts of love and fear, faith and hope, love of d Matt. xii. 15, 19, 34. iv. 59. Mattaire, p. 81. Hor. ep. i. 16, 45. God and love of our neighbour, which are all those things, by which we can be like God: by which we can do good, and by which we can receive any: and excepting the sacraments whose effect is spiritual, and the sense mysterious, and the rites easy, and the number the smallest of all, there is, in the digest of the Christian law, no commandment of any external rite or ceremony. 5. (2.) As it intends wholly an exclusion of the Mosaic ceremonies, so it will not admit a body of new and superinduced ceremonies; for they are, or may be, as much against the analogy of the spiritual law of Christ, as the other. The ceremonies of the Christian services must be no part of the religion; but either must be the circumstances of the religion, or the intemperate acts of some virtue: the Christian must be in a place when he prays, and that place may be determined, and thither he must go, and yet he may go any whither else; his action is finite, and must be done in time, and that time may be appointed him, and then he must do it at that time, and yet he may do it at any time else: if he be commanded by his superiors to pray kneeling, he must kneel at the appointment of the law; and yet he may, in his own devotions at another time, fall upon his face or pray standing. But the Christian and the Mosaic ceremonies thus differ: 1. The Mosaic rites were appointed by God; the Christain only by men. 2. Consequently they are necessary parts of religion, these are not. 3. The Mosaic ceremonies did oblige every where; the Christian only in public. 4. They were integral parts of the religion: these are but circumstances and investitures of the religious actions. 5. These are to be done with liberty; but the Jews were in bondage under theirs. 6. Ours are alterable, theirs lasting as their religion. 7. Theirs were many and burdensome, ours ought to be few; of the number of which our superiors are to judge by charity, and the nature and common notices of things, and the analogy of the liberty and laws of Christianity. But although there are no publicly described measures beforehand, by which princes or prelates shall appoint the number of their ceremonies; yet there is in reason and common voices sufficient to reprove the folly of him, who because he would have his body decently vested shall wear five-and-twenty cloaks: stola et tunica;' something for warmth and something for ornament does well; but she that wears so many adornments on her head and girdle, that it is the work of half a day to dress her, is a servant of the tire of her own head; and thinks neither her soul nor her body, but her clothes, to be the principal. By this I intend to reprove the infinite number of ceremonies in the Roman church; they are described in a great book 'in folio ;' : Quem mea non totum bibliotheca capit: my purse will not reach to buy it: but it is too like the impertinency of the busily idle women I now mentioned: and although, by such means, religion is made pompous and apt to allure them that admire gay nothings, and fine prettinesses; yet then it also spends their religious passions and wonder in that, which effects nothing upon the soul. It is certain, that actions of religion must be fitted with all those things, which minister to decent, and grave, and orderly, and solemn actions but they must be no more but a just investiture of the religious action; and every thing can distract us in our prayers, and all the arts of watchfulness and caution are too little to fix our intentions in them; and therefore whatsoever can become a proper entertainment of the mind, can also be a diversion of the devotion and a hindrance to the prayer. The sum is this;-ceremonies may be the accidents of worship, but nothing of the substance. This they were among the Jews, that they may be amongst the Christians, time and place for the action: habit and posture for the men; that is all religion needs, whatsoever else is grave and decent, and whatsoever else is orderly, is not to be rejected: but if it be not these, it is not to be imposed: and when they become numerous or grievous, they are to be removed by the same lawful hand, that brought them in. 6. (3.) In the Christian law, all purities and impurities are spiritual; and the soul contracts no religious, change without her own act: he that touches a dead body, though he does g Martial. xiv. 190. Mattaire, p. 284. not wash, may lift up pure hands in prayer; but if his soul be unclean, no water, no ceremony will wash him pure without repentance: O nimium faciles qui tristia crimina cædis It had been well, if, in all ages, this had been considered, and particularly in the matter of marriage: for when single life was preferred before the married for the accidental advantages to piety (especially in times of persecution), which might be enjoyed there rather than here, some from thence extended their declamation further, and drawing in all the auxiliaries from the old law, began to prefer single life before marriage, as being a state of greater purity; and then, by little, they went on thinking marriage to be less pure, till at last they believed it to be a state of carnality; and with the persuasions of men, effected by such discourses, were also mingled the discourses of heretics, who directly condemned marriage, and that which descended from this mixture of doctrines, some false, and the others not true, was a less honourable opinion of that holy institution on which God founded the first blessing of mankind; and which Christ hath consecrated into a mystery, and the Holy Spirit hath sanctified by the word of God and prayer, and which is the seminary of the church, and that nursery from whence the kingdom of heaven is peopled. But if marriage be lawful, then he that lives in that state as he should, contracts no impurities, but is capable of any holy ministry, and receptive of any sacrament, and fit for any employment, and capable of any office, and worthy of any dignity. Let them who have reason and experience to verify their affirmative, speak all the great things of single life that can be said of it, and they may say much; for the advantages are many which are in a single life, and in a private state, and an unactive condition, and a small fortune, and retirement; but then, although every one of these hath some;-yet a public state, and an active life, and a full fortune, and public offices, and a married life, have also advantages of their own, and blessings and virtues appropriate; and in all God may be equally served, according as the men are, and the advantages neglected or improved. But that which I insist upon is, that to be rich is no sin, and to be a |