2. By the insipid formality and dead-heartedness that is found everywhere. We are without life in the ways of Grod, little beauty of holiness, little circumspection and strictness in life and conversation. Eeligion is like a river ; it loseth in strength what it getteth in breadth. Now many come in to profess, their walkings are not so awful and severe. When it is a shame not to have some form in religion, many have but a form, and so debase the holy profession by mingling it with their pride, lust, and avarice, so that it is not so daunting, and hath no such majesty with it as formerly it had. A truly godly man is to be the world's wonder, the world's reproof, the world's conviction. The world's wonder : 1 Peter iv. 4, ' They think it strange,' &c. You are to hold forth such mortification and self-denial that the world may wonder. You are to wean yourselves, and bind up your affections from such objects as do so pleasantly and powerfully insinuate with them, and ravish their affections. He should be also the world's reproof : Heb. xi. 7, by building an ark Noah condemned the world. You should be mirrors to kill basilisks ; and in the in- nocency of your lives, show them their own filthiness ; in short, your lives should be a real reproof and upbraiding to them. And then the world's conviction : 1 Cor. xiv. 25, you should walk so that they may see God in you of a truth. Your conversation should be nothing else but a walking rule, and religion exemplified. But, alas ! how vain, carnal, sensual, are most men, discovering nothing of the power of grace, the beauty of holiness, and the efficacy of the new nature ; we may see much of man, but nothing of God in them. It is even our description : 2 Tim. iii. 5, ' Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.' Denying the power ; that is, refusing and resisting that inward virtue and force of godliness, by which the heart should be renewed or the conversation rectified. Possibly there may be more light, but less heat. What Seneca observed of his times is
1 'Metuendumestinpostremamundi fetatemagishunc en-oremgrassaturum esse, quod aut niliil sint religiones aut differant tantum vocabulis.' — Melanc. Postil. de Bapt, Christi.
Eev. III. 2.] England's spiritual languishing. 427
tine of ours, Boniesse desieitint, sicuhi docti evaserint — they were less good when they were more learned ; for now we rather dispute away duties than practise them. Oh ! it is sad this, when knowledge shall devour good life, and notion spoil knowledge. That of Hugo is but too just a character of us, Amant lectionem, non religionem, iiiimo amore lectionis in odium incidiint 7'eligionis, midtos video sttcdiosos, paiicos reh'giosos, &c.^ Many desire to know, few to live ; yea, know- ledge seemeth to make men less strict and holy, for they dispute away religion the more they understand of it.
3. Loathing of heavenly manna. There cannot be a more proper discovery of spiritual languishing. Sick persons loathe their food, and feed upon ashes. Surely godliness is in the wane when a people are Christ-glutted, and gospel-glutted, and are all for ungrounded subtleties, quintessential extracts, and distillations.^ Oh ! how welcome were the first appearances of light. It is a blessing we know by the want of it. When we came newly out of darkness, whose heart did not say within him, ^aipe, ^co^, welcome, sweet light ? When it was a new thing, how strangely did it affect us ? But it is the unhappy fate of the word to be despised upon acquaintance : John xv. 35, * Ye rejoiced in his light,' 7rp6<i wpav, ' for a season,' some small time, when he first began to shine in their borders, Cant. i. 26. To a gracious eye truth's bed is always green ; as fresh and flourishing at the last as at the beginning ; but most look upon it with an adulterous eye and heart ; love it whilst it is new, nauseate it after some acquaintance and knowledge of it. With what fastidious disdain do men despise sacred truths, if discovered in their own native beauty and simplicity ! 1 Cor. ii. 6, ' We speak wisdom among those that are perfect,' saith the apostle ; that is, among grown Christians, who can discern beauty in a plain ordinance. Wisdom in an evangelic simplicity, though there be no enticing words, sublime speculations, and exotic conceits. But now carnal men are all for ra /3cWr], depths, as they say, Kev. ii. 24 ; that is, they account them great and deep mysteries, whereas the Spirit of God accounteth them illusions of Satan. Surely God will meet with such a wanton people. The continuator of Sleidan showeth, that before the great massacre in France, the Protestants were for a luscious, wanton kind of preaching. Truly we cannot absolutely determine what will become of us, only we have cause to fear that conscientious sermons, as much despised as they are, may be a commodity dear enough in England ere long ; and visions may be less open, that they may be the more precious, 1 Sam. iii. 4.
4. Plain apostasy, and turning round to those things which we hated in others before. As for instance, to Armiuian, antisabbatarian doc- trines, &c., which heretofore were made the charactistic note to dis- tinguish good persons and bad. I would not be understood as if I did think a thing simply evil because held by such men : opposition of image worship was never the worse because the Monothelites first stirred in it ; ^ nor is the cross the more holy because the Messalians despised it ; neither is everything evil because taught by persons whom