3. Let us prize it and desire it, Phil. iii. 8, 9. Every man is prone to set up a righteousness of his own, Luke xviii. 9. Partly, because naturally the law is written upon our hearts ; and therefore moral strains are more welcome than evangelical doctrine. Every man is born under a covenant of works. Partly, out of pride. Every man would be avTe^ovaLo<i, all for personal merit. A russet coat of our own is valued more than a silken one that is borrowed : Eom. x. 3, ' For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.' But these do not consider the strictness of the law-covenant, nor the purity of God, nor themselves, or their own defects. A broken-hearted sense of sin would make us prize Christ, 1 Cor, iv. 4, ' I know nothing by myself, yet am I not thereby justified, but he that judgeth me is the Lord/
SEEMONS
UPO^f THE
ELEVENTH CHAPTEK OF HEBREWS.
THE EPISTLE DEDICATOEY.
To the High and Mighty Prince William, By the Grace of God, King of England, France and Ireland, &c.
May it please your Majesty, — This relict of the worthy deceased author was long since intended, when you were at a greater distance, to be sent abroad under the patronage of your great name. His own name indeed hath long been, and still continues, so bright and fragrant in England that your Majesty's condescending goodness will count it no indignity to yours to impart some of its more diffused beams and odours to it. However, if what there was of presumption in that first intention can be par- doned, no reason can be apprehended of altering it upon your nearer and most happy approach unto us.
The kind design and blessed effect whereof, compared with the scope and design of this excellent work, do much the more urgently invite to it ; for as you come to us with the compassionate design of a deliverer, and the wonderful blessing of heaven hath rendered you also a victor and a successful deliverer, the design of this book is to repre- sent that faith which is the peculiar and most appropriate principle of what is (like your own) the most glorious of all victories. You have overcome, not by the power of your arms, but by the sound of your name, and by your goodness and kindness, which so effectually first conquered minds as to leave you no opportunity of using the other more harsh and rugged means of conquest. Yea, and your success is owing to a greater name than yours ; our case, and the truth of the thing, allow and oblige us in a low and humble subordination to apply those sacred words, ' Blessed is he that cometh to us in the name of the Lord,' the power of which glorious name is wont to be exerted according as a trust is placed in it. We acknowledge and adore a most conspicuous divine presence with you in this undertaking of yours, which is not otherwise to be engaged than by that faith of which the apostle and this author do here treat. This faith, we are elsewhere told, overcomes this world ; and are told here in what way — by repre- senting another, with the invisible Lord of both worlds, being the substance of what we hope for, and the evidence of what we see not, and whereby we see him who is invisible. This world is not otherwise to be conquered than as it is an enemy ; it is an enemy by the vanities, lusts, and impurities of it. That faith which foresees the end of this world, which beholds it as a vanishing thing, passing away with all the lusts of it, — which looks through all time, and contemplates all the affairs and events of this temporary state as under the conduct and management of an all-wise and almighty invisible Euler, — which penetrates into eternity, and discovers another world and state of things which shall be unchangeable and of everlasting permanency, and there-
• THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY". 319
in beholds tlie same invisible glorious Lord, as a most gracious and bountiful rewarder of such as serve and obey him with sincere fidelity in this state of trial and temptation here on earth, — such a faith cannot but be victorious over all the lusts, vanities, impurities, and sensualities of this present evil world. Such a faith, working by love to God and good men, and all mankind, and being thereupon fruitful in the good works of piety, sobriety, righteousness and charity, will be the great reformer of the world, conquer its malignity, reduce its disorders, and infer a universal harmony and peace.
Even. among us the noblest part of your Majesty's conquest is yet behind. It cannot but have been observed, that for many years by-past a design hath been industriously driven that we might be made papists, to make us slaves ; and for the enslaving us, to debauch us, and plunge us into all manner of sensuality, from a true apprehension, that brute and slave are nearest akin, and that there is a sort of men so vile and abject (as the ingenious expression of a great man among the Eomans once was) quos non decef esse nisi servos— to whom liberty were an indecency, and who should be treated unbecomingly if they were not made slaves, that we should be fit to serve the lusts and humours of any other man, when once we were become servile to our own. And next, that the religion might easily be wrested away from us which was be- come so weak and impotent as not to be able to govern us ; and that if humanity were eradicated, the principles and privileges that belong to our nature torn from us, easy work would be made with our Chris- tianity and religion. What hath been effected among us by so laboured a design, through a long tract of time, is before you as the matter of your remaining victory, which, as on our part, will be the more difficult, where the pernicious humour is inveterate. So your majesty's part herein will be most easy, your great example being, under the supreme power, the mover, the potent engine which is to effect the hoped redress, and your more principal contribution here- unto consisting but in being yourself, in expressing the virtue, prudence, goodness, and piety, which God hath wrought into your temper. The design of saying this is not flattery, but excitation. Give me leave to lay before your Majesty somewhat that occurs in a book written twenty-seven years ago, not by way of prophecy, but pro- bable conjecture of the way wherein a blessed state of things in these parts of the world is likely to be brought about : —