ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN FOUK, LORD MAYOR OF THE CITY OF LONDON, TOGETHER WITH HIS WORSHIPFUL BRETHREN, THE ALDERMEN OF THIS CITY. RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT WORSHIPFUL, By your high approbation of a sermon preached at Paul's, before you, in May last, by one Mr. John Pawson, as the press nameth him, testified by your Order in Court of June the 15th, following, about the printing of the said sermon, I cannot, with the salvage of your honours, but judge that you are masters, at least in your own sense and apprehensions, of those noble controversies now on foot amongst us, concerning election, reprobation, the death of Christ, the grace of God, the perseverance of the saints, &c., being the principal if not the only points discoursed in that sermon. Nor would I willingly but presume that, had you not been very studiously and conscientiously versed in these great questions, you would not so publicly have appeared in the habit of a facultas theologica, nor gone so near to the giving a definitive sentence in matters of such profound disputation, as your said Order, printed, even candidly interpreted, amounteth unto. It is one of the sovereign and high contentments of my soul to understand and find, that Magistrates and Judges of the earth are willing to lift up their hearts to the acquainting of themselves with the counsels and mind of God, and will find time to search throughly into those worthy mysteries which the blessed angels, those great princes of heaven, judge it no B ways beneath them, but rather an advance of blessedness unto them, to pry into. When they who are gods by institution shall narrowly and with delight contemplate the real excellency of His glory who is a God by nature, they must needs be transformed into his likeness, and this more and more, according to that most observable passage of the great Apostle : “But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Cor. iii. 18.) And when the gods on earth shall be changed into the same image with the God of heaven, no doubt blessedness is coming with a high hand upon the world. But of this I must crave leave to inform your Christian minds, that as a narrow and intense beholding of the face of God in a true glass, and which representeth him uniformly like unto himself, is an unquestionable means of that blessed transformation I speak of; so on the contrary, to feed upon a false or undue representation of him, with a strong conceit that such a representation is according to truth, and that God is really such, as by the false light of this representation he is exhibited and appeareth unto us, is, especially as the misrepresentation may be, of most dangerous consequence, and apt to transform men into the likeness of the devil, or at least to harden and confirm men in such a transformation. The Prophet David personateth God speaking thus to the wicked: "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself." (Psalm 1. 21.) When men are unjust, unmerciful, inordinate lovers of themselves, partial, hollow and loose in their promises, full of dissimulation, or the like, if, under these most hateful and horrid impressions upon their souls, they shall be brought by men of learning, parts, and of supposed godliness, into this hellish paradise, whether it be in expressness of words, or in pregnant and near-hand consequence, it is much the same; the flesh will smell a consequence afar off, that sympathizeth with her, that the like things are found in the glorious God himself, and that he acts and moves in his way as the sons of such abominations are wont to move in their way, this must needs be as oil cast upon the raging flames, a teaching of wickedness to be more confidently wicked, than otherwise, in all likelihood, she durst presume to be. It is like that the Prophets of Jerusalem, in Jeremy's days, built up the inhabitants thereof, great and small, unto ruin, by such doctrines as these. For the Lord complains of them in these words: "I have seen also in the Prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: They commit adultery;" that is, they adulterate the truth, as Grotius interpreteth;" and walk in lies;" that is, teach the people day after day things which are false:*"they strengthen also the hands of evil doers, that none doth return from his wickedness." (Jer. xxiii. 14.) He that shall put it into the heart and conscience of an evil doer, that God is like unto him in the way of his evil doing, makes it next to an impossibility for such a man to relinquish the evil of his way. For who will not with his whole heart and soul desire and delight to walk in such ways, being otherwise pleasing to the flesh, wherein he verily believeth that he shall be like unto God? Now that you may be unjust, unmerciful, cruel, partial, haters without cause of the greatest part under your government, full of dissimulation, indulgers of all manner of sin and wickedness, and yet be like, yea, very like, unto such a God as Mr. Pawson portrayeth out unto you for the true God, the God of your hope and salvation, in his sermon, lately mentioned, although I have demonstratively and with pregnant evidence proved as much already in some of my writings; † yet, if you shall please at any time to lay the command of your honourable Court upon me to perform the same service again with more particular reference to the said sermon, I here engage myself, testibus cælo et terra, before God, angels, and men, God sparing me life and health, to do it. Besides, evident it is, by what hath been offered by me and others to public consideration, that the entire system or frame of that doctrine wherein Mr. Pawson endeavours to build you up in his sermon is not according unto godliness, but exactly calculated for the meridian of the flesh, having a palpable and broad tendency in it to revive the "old man," where he is a dying, and to render him vigorous and active, without care or fear. Yea, if the god of this world had a mind and opportunity to petition the grandees or pillars of Christian religion, met in an oecumenical council, that they would take some pity on Vidi horrenda hominum adulterantium veritatem. + Redemption Redeemed, pp. 509, 510, 513, 514, &c., 499, 489, 490, 477, &c., 470, 471, &c. Agreement and Distance of Brethren, pp. 8, 9, 25, 17, besides several other places. him, and establish or allow of some few doctrines amongst them, such as he should nominate unto them, for the relief and support of his tottering and sinking kingdom, the doctrines of this his nomination, to speak that which is very probable, would be those wherewith Mr. Pawson hath prevented him, and laboured in the very fire to plant and propagate in the world. But whereas he pretends in his dedication unto you, that the doctrines delivered in his sermon, conceived by him, as he saith, and perhaps truly, to be truths, were once and again "delivered to the saints," and owned through successive generations by the choicest of saints: 1. As to the latter: If he had read my book of Redemption through, at which he nibbles here and there in his sermon, he might have seen the contrary hereunto face to face, here being a cloud of such witnesses as he speaks of, I mean of the choicest saints, drawn together, who plainly and without parable testify that, in their successive and respective generations, not the doctrines which he maintains, but those diametrically opposite thereunto, were the more generally-received divinity and faith of the choicest saints. 2. To the former: If the doctrines he speaks of were once and again" delivered unto the saints," it is a clear case that they are no Gospel doctrines; for these were but " once delivered unto the saints," as Jude speaketh. Men, fathers, and brethren, are you able to endure sound doctrine? I know that you are able; and that you had much rather cut off your right hands, and pluck out your right eyes, and enter into life either maimed, or with one eye, than having two hands, or two eyes, to be "cast into everlasting fire." The Apostle Peter gives this important aviso to the Christians of his times, that many, speaking of such teachers as were like to come amongst them, through covetousness should with feigned words, or rather, with words formed, or fashioned,* for the purpose, make merchandise of them, (2 Peter ii. 3,) that is, make carnal benefit and advantage of them, as merchants do of their merchandise; clearly implying, that such teachers who have any worldly design upon those that hear them have hereby a strong temptation upon them to daub with untempered mortar, and to preach doctrines plausible to the flesh, and consequently destructive to the spirit, and so most dangerously Πλασοις λόγοις. pernicious to the soul. For though for a Minister of the Gospel to build up men in the false and lying imaginations of their hearts, be none other than the casting of a snare of death and eternal ruin upon them, yet is there scarce any work or service for which they are, more generally, so willing to give large wages as for this. Now give me leave, for your precious souls' sake, freely to tell you, that there is no sort of men under heaven so obnoxious to be merchandised, or sold for carnal advantage by their teachers, as men in places of power and authority, and where silver and gold have their throne, and this in more respects than one. 1. Such men as these, in respect of the many opportunities which they visibly have in their hand to gratify those that love this present world, are, in the eye of such teachers, as the wine, when it giveth its colour, and moveth itself right up in the glass, as Solomon speaketh, is in the eye of him that is inordinately addicted to it. The very sight and beholding of them awakens, yea inflames, the carnal spirits of such men to prepare their nets, and spread them in the way of those, if they can come at it, whom they design for their prey. It was to good purpose observed by the poet, That is, Non facilè esuriens positâ retinebere mensâ, Et multùm saliens incitat unda sitim. Set meat before an hungry man, He hardly will refrain; And waters springing pleasantly 2. The tenets and opinions of great men, in matters of religion, and things appertaining unto God, are commonly the unexamined and presumed notions of the state and times wherein they live; and so are like to be, not of God, but of the world, and to have a face, but no heart or substance of truth in them. For as Christ pronounceth a woe to such persons of whom all men speak well: "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you; for so did your fathers to the false prophets;" (Luke vi. 26;) in like manner, and upon the same grounds, it is much to be feared, that a woe belongs unto such doctrines which the generality of a nation shall accept of, can digest, and applaud. In this respect, also, men great in wealth |