04. CHAPTER 3 - APPLICATION

CHAPTER 3 - APPLICATION SECTION 1 – THE USE OF HUMILIATION

Reverend and dear brothers, our business here this day is to humble our souls before the Lord for our past negligence, and to implore God’s assistance in our work for the time to come. Indeed, we can scarcely expect the latter without the former. If God will help us in our future duty, he will first humble us for our past sin. Someone who does not have a great sense of his faults so as to sincerely lament them, will hardly have any more to reform them. The sorrow of repentance may exist without a change of heart and life; that is because an emotion may be more easily evoked than a true conversion. But the change cannot take place without some good measure of that sorrow. Indeed, we may justly begin our confessions here: it is too commonplace with us to expect something from our people, which we ourselves would seldom do or have. What pains we take to humble them, while we ourselves are unhumbled! How hard we expostulate with them to wring a few penitential tears out of them (and all too little), while our own eyes are dry! Alas! How we set them an example of hard-heartedness, while we are endeavoring to melt and soften them by our words! Oh, if we only studied half as much to affect and amend our own hearts, as we do those of our hearers, it would not be as it is with many of us! It is a great deal too little that we do for their humiliation; but I fear it is much less that some of us do for our own humiliation. Too many do something for other men’s souls, while they seem to forget that they have souls of their own to regard. They convey the matter as if their part of the work lies in calling for repentance, and the hearers’ lies in repenting; theirs lies in speaking with tears and sorrow, and other men’s lies in weeping and sorrowing; theirs lies in decrying sin, and the people’s lies in forsaking it; theirs lies in preaching duty, and the hearers’ lies in practicing it. But we find that the guides of the Church in Scripture confessed their own sins, as well as the sins of the people. Ezra confessed the sins of the priests, as well as those of the people, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God. Daniel confessed his own sin, as well as the people’s sin. I think, if we consider well the duties already stated, and how imperfectly we have performed them, we do not need to hesitate answering whether we have cause for humiliation. I must say, though I condemn myself in saying it, that whoever reads just this one exhortation of Paul to the elders of the church at Ephesus, and compares his life with it, must be stupid and hard-hearted if he does not melt under a sense of his neglects, and is not laid in the dust before God, and forced to bewail his great omissions, and to fly for refuge to the blood of Christ, and to his pardoning grace. I am confident, brothers, that none of you in your own judgment would approve of the libertine doctrine that decries the need for confession, contrition, and humiliation, and indeed, would do so in order to pardon sin! Is it not a pity, then, that our hearts are not as orthodox as our heads? But we have only half-learned our lesson when we simply know it and can say it. When the understanding has learned it, it is more of a chore to teach our wills and our affections, our eyes, tongues, and hands. It is a sad thing that so many of us preach our hearers asleep; but it is sadder still, if we have studied and preached ourselves asleep, and have talked so long against being hard of heart, until our own heart has grown hardened under the noise of our own reproofs. And so that you may see that it is not a baseless sorrow that God requires of us, I will call to your remembrance our many sins, and set them in order before you, so that we may deal plainly and faithfully in a free confession of them, and so that God, who is “faithful and just, may forgive them, and cleanse us from all iniquity.”165 I suppose I have your hearty consent in this; and even though I may disgrace you and others in this office, you will not be so offended by me that you will not readily subscribe to the charge, and be humble self-accusers; and I am not so inclined to justify myself from the accusation of others, that I will not also unreservedly put my name with the first in the bill of indictment. For how can a wretched sinner, one who can be charged with so many and so great transgressions, presume to justify himself before God? Or how can someone plead he is guiltless, whose conscience has so much to say against him? If I cast shame upon the ministry, it is not on the office, but on our persons, by revealing the sin which is our shame. The glory of our high employment does not convey any glory for our sin; for “sin is a reproach to any people.”166 And whether pastors or people, it is only those who “confess and forsake their sins that will have mercy,” while “he that hardens his heart will fall into mischief.”167

I will not undertake to enumerate the great sins that we are guilty of; therefore, passing over any particular one is not to be taken as a denial or justification of it. But I will consider it my duty to give a few instances which cry loudly for humiliation and speedy reformation. But first I must premise it with this profession: that, notwithstanding all the faults which may now be found among us, I do not believe that England ever had so able and so faithful a ministry since it became a nation, as it has today; and I fear that few nations on earth, if any, have its like. I am sure the change has been so great within these past twelve years,168 that it is one of the greatest joys that I ever had in the world to behold it. Oh, how many congregations are now plainly and frequently taught, who lived then in great obscurity! How many able, faithful men there are now in a county, in comparison to what we had then! How graciously God has prospered the studies of many young men who were little children in the beginning of the recent troubles, so that now they crowd out most of their seniors! How many miles I would have gone in the last twenty years to have heard one of those ancient reverend divines, whose congregations have now grown thin, and their roles esteemed minor, by reason of the notable improvement of their juniors! In particular, how mercifully the Lord has dealt with this poor county of Worcester, in raising up so many who do credit to the sacred office, and who freely and self-denyingly lay themselves out for the good of souls, being zealous and steadfast in it! I bless the Lord that has placed me in such a neighborhood where I may have the brotherly fellowship of so many able, faithful, humble, unanimous, and peaceable men. Oh that the Lord would long continue this admirable mercy to this unworthy county! And I hope I will rejoice in God while I live that the change I have lived to see here has become common in other parts: that so many hundreds of faithful men are so hard at work to save souls, despite the muttering and gnashing of teeth of the enemy; and that more are quickly springing up. I know there are some men who, being of another mind as to church government, will be offended at my very mention of this happy alteration, and I respect their positions. But I must profess that, even if I were absolutely prelatical,169 if I knew my heart, I could not help but rejoice. What! Not rejoice at the prosperity of the Church, because men differ in opinion about its order? Should I shut my eyes against the mercies of the Lord? Are the souls of men so contemptible to me that I would envy them the bread of life, simply because it was broken by a hand that did not have the approval of the prelate? O that every congregation was thus supplied with its bread! But everything cannot be done at once. They had a long time to settle a corrupted ministry; and when the ignorant and the scandalous are thrown out, we cannot readily create abilities in others to replenish the supply. We must await the time of their preparation and growth. And then, if England does not drive away the gospel by their abuses, and their willful lack of reform, and their hatred of the light, then they are likely to be the happiest nation under heaven. As for all the sects and heresies that are creeping in and troubling us daily, I do not doubt that the gospel, if managed by an able and self-denying ministry, will effectually disperse and shame them all.170

But, you may say, “This is not confessing sin; it applauds those whose sins you pretend to confess.” To this I answer, it is due acknowledgment of God’s kindness, and it is thanksgiving for his admirable mercies. I say it so that I may not appear unthankful in confessing it, nor appear to cloud or vilify God’s graces as I expose the frailties that accompany them in many of us; for many things are sadly out of order in the best of us, as will become apparent from the following particulars.

1. One of our most heinous and palpable sins is PRIDE. This sin has too large an interest in the best of us, but it is more hateful and inexcusable in us than in other men. Yet is it so prevalent in some of us, that it dictates our discourses, it chooses our company, it shapes our demeanor, and it puts the accent and emphasis on our words. It fills some men’s minds with aspirations and designs: it possesses them with envious and bitter thoughts against those who stand in their light, or who eclipse their glory in any way, or hinder the growth of their reputation. Oh what a constant companion, what a tyrannical commander, what a sly, subtle, and insinuating enemy this sin of pride is! It goes with men to the draper, the mercer, and the tailor171: it chooses for them their cloth, their trimming, and their fashion. Fewer ministers would style their hair and clothing according to the latest fashion, if it were not for the command of this tyrannous vice. And I wish this were all of it, or the worst of it. But, alas! How frequently it goes with us into our study, and there it sits with us and does our work! How often it chooses our subject, and, more frequently still, our words and ornaments! God commands us to be as plain as we can, so that we may inform the ignorant; and as convincing and serious as we are able, so that we may melt and change their hardened hearts. But pride stands by and contradicts everything, and produces its toys and trifles. It pollutes rather than polishes; and under a pretense of laudable flourishes, it dishonors our sermons with childish decorations: as if a prince was to be dressed in the costume of a stage-player, or a painted fool. It persuades us to paint the window, so that it may dim the light: and to say to our people things they cannot understand; to let them know we are able to speak well – but unprofitably. If we have a plain and cutting passage of Scripture, our flowery speech takes off the edge, and dulls the life of our preaching under the pretense of filing off the roughness, unevenness, and excess. When God charges us to deal with men as if for their lives, and to beg them with all the earnestness that we are able to muster, this cursed sin controls all of it, and condemns the most holy commands of God. It says to us, “What! Will you make people think you are mad? Will you make them say you are raving? Can you not speak soberly and moderately?”172 And thus pride makes many a man’s sermons; and what pride makes, the devil makes; and what sermons the devil would make, and to what end, we may easily conjecture. Though the subject matter is about God, yet if the dress, and manner, and end are from Satan, then we have no great reason to expect success. And when pride has made the sermon, it goes with us into the pulpit; it forms our tone; it animates us in the delivery; it takes us away from what may be displeasing, however necessary; and it sets us in pursuit of vain applause. In short, the sum of all this is that pride makes men, both in studying and preaching, seek themselves and deny God, when they should seek God’s glory and deny themselves. When they should inquire, “What will I say, and how will I say it, to please God best, and do the most good?”, it makes them ask instead, “What will I say, and how will I deliver it, to be thought a learned and able preacher, and to be applauded by all who hear me?” When the sermon is done, pride goes home with them; it makes them more eager to know whether they were applauded, than whether they prevailed to save souls. Were it not for shame, they could find it in their hearts to ask people how they liked them, and to elicit their praise. If they perceive that they are highly thought of, then they rejoice, having attained their purposes; but if they see that they are considered only weak or common men, then they are displeased, having missed the prize that they had in mind. But even this is not all or the worst of it, if there can be worse. Oh, that it should ever be said of godly ministers, that they are intent upon popular air, and sitting high in men’s estimation. Or if it should be said that they envy the talents and names of their brothers who are preferred above them, as if any praise given to another was taken from their own praise; and as if God had given them his gifts to be their personal ornaments and trappings, so that they might walk as men of great reputation in the world; and as if all his gifts to others were to be trodden down and vilified, because they stood in the way of their own honor! What! A saint, a preacher of Christ, and yet he envies someone who bears the image of Christ, and he maligns his gifts for which Christ should receive the glory, and all because they seem to hinder his own glory. Is not every true Christian a member of the body of Christ, and, therefore he partakes of the blessings of the whole, and of each particular member of it? And does not every man owe thanks to God for his brothers’ gifts, not only having himself a part in them, as the foot has the benefit of the guidance of the eye; but also because his own ends may be attained by his brother’s gifts, as well as by his own? For if the glory of God and the Church’s happiness are not his end, then he is not a Christian. Will any workman malign another workman because he helps him do his master’s work? Yet, alas! How common this heinous crime is among the ministers of Christ! They secretly blot the reputation of those who stand in the way of their own reputation. What they cannot do plainly and openly, for fear they may be proved liars and slanderers, they do generally, and by malicious intimations; they raise suspicions where they cannot fasten accusations. And some go so far that they are unwilling to have anyone abler than themselves come into their pulpits, lest that person receive more applause than themselves. It is a fearful thing for anyone who has the least fear of God, to so envy God’s gifts that he would rather his carnal hearers remain unconverted, and the drowsy remain unawakened, than their conversion and awakening come at the hands of someone preferred above him. Indeed, this cursed vice prevails so far that in a number of large congregations, which need the help of many preachers, we can rarely get two of equality to live together in love and quietness, and to unanimously carry on the work of God. They contend for precedence, unless one of them is quite below the other in some area, and is content to be less esteemed; or unless he is an assistant to the other and is ruled by him. They envy each other’s influence, and they walk like strangers, with jealousy towards one another. This shames their profession, and greatly wrongs their people. I am ashamed to think that when I have been laboring to convince people of public influence and power, of the great need for more than one minister in large congregations, they tell me that two would never agree to work together. I hope the objection is unfounded for most; but it is a sad case that it would be true of any. No, some men are so far gone in pride, that when they might have an equal assistant to further the work of God, they would rather take the whole burden on themselves (even though it is more than they can bear), than to have anyone share their honor, or to have their influence diminished in the eyes of the people.

Out of pride, men also magnify their own opinions; they are as critical of anyone who differs from them in little things, as if it were the same to differ from them as from God. They expect everyone to conform to their judgment, as if they were the rulers of the Church’s faith; and while we decry papal infallibility, too many of us would be popes ourselves, and have everyone submit to our determinations, as if we were infallible. It is true that modesty will not let us say that expressly. Instead, we pretend that it is only the evidence of truth, apparent in our reasons, that we expect men to yield to; it is only our zeal for the truth, and not for ourselves. But if our reasons must be accepted as valid, then so must our truth. And if our reasons are openly examined, and found to be fallacious, then we refuse to see it, because they are our reasons; and so we become angry if our fallacious reasoning is disclosed to others. We defend the cause of our errors as if anything said against them is said against us personally; and as if we were heinously injured to have our arguments thoroughly refuted, those same arguments by which we injured the truth and the souls of men. Through our pride, the matter has come to this: that if an error or a fallacious argument comes under the patronage of a reverend name (which is nothing rare), then we must allow that argument the victory and give up the truth, or else we will injure the name that patronizes it. For even though you do not attack them personally, they put themselves under all the blows by which you assault their arguments. They feel them as sensibly as if you had spoken of them, because they think it follows in the eyes of others that weak arguing is a sign of a weak man. Therefore, if you consider it your duty to shame their errors and false reasonings by revealing their nakedness, they will take it as if you shamed them personally; and so their names become a garrison or fortress for their mistakes, and the reverence of their name requires them to defend all their sayings from attack. So haughty indeed are our spirits, that when it is the duty of anyone to reprove or contradict us, we are commonly impatient with both the matter and the manner of it. We love the man who will say as we say, and have our opinion, and promote our reputation, though in other respects he may be less worthy of our esteem. But someone who contradicts us, and differs from us, and deals plainly with us as to our miscarriages, and tells us of our faults, is somehow ungrateful. Especially in managing our public discussions, where the eyes of the world are upon us, we can scarcely endure any contradiction or plain dealing. I know that railing language is to be abhorred, and that we should be as tender with each other’s reputation as our fidelity to the truth permits. But our pride makes too many of us think that all men despise us who do not admire us, indeed, who do not admire all we say, and do not subjugate their own judgments to our most obvious mistakes. We are so sensitive that a man can scarcely touch us without hurting us. We are so high-minded, that a man who is not versed in complimenting us, and skilled in flattery above the norm, can scarcely tell how to handle us. He must be so observant as to meet our expectations at every turn, not saying or neglecting anything that our haughty spirits will fasten on and take as injurious to our honor.173

I confess I have often wondered how this most heinous sin can be made so light of, and thought so consistent with a holy frame of heart and life, when we proclaim far less sins are so damnable in our people? And I have wondered even more to see the difference between godly preachers and ungodly sinners in this respect. When we speak to those who are drunkards, worldly, ignorant, and unconverted, we completely disgrace them, and lay it on as plainly as we can. We tell them of their sin, shame, and misery; and we expect them not only to bear all this patiently, but to receive it all thankfully. And most with whom I deal do take it patiently. Many gross sinners will commend blunt preachers the most, and say they do not care to hear a man who will not tell them plainly of their sins. But when we speak to godly ministers against their errors or their sins, if we do not honor them and reverence them, and if we do not speak as smoothly as we are able, indeed, if we do not mix commendations with our reproofs, and if the praise does not drown all the force of the reproof or refutation, then they take it as an almost insufferable injury.

Brothers, I know this is a sad confession, but the fact that all this exists among us should be more grievous to us than being told about it. If the evil could be hidden, I would not have disclosed it, at least not so openly, and in the view of all. But, alas! It was open to the eyes of the world long ago. We have dishonored ourselves by idolizing our honor; we print our shame, and we preach it, thus proclaiming it to the whole world. Some will think I speak with too much charity when I call such persons godly men, those in whom so great a sin prevails, and to such an extent. I know, indeed, that where it is predominant in them, and it is not hated and bewailed, and it is not greatly mortified, there can be no true godliness; and I beg every man to exercise a strict wariness, and to search his own heart. But if all are graceless who are guilty of any pride, or who are guilty of most of the fore-mentioned evidences of pride, then may the Lord be merciful to the ministers of this land, and give us another spirit quickly; for then grace is rarer than most of us supposed. Yet I must say, that I do not mean to include all the ministers of Christ in this charge. It is spoken to the praise of Divine grace that we have some among us who are eminently known for their humility and meekness, and who are exemplary in these respects to their flocks and to their brothers. It is and it will be their glory; and it makes them truly honorable and lovely in the eyes of God and of all good men, and even in the eyes of the ungodly themselves. O that the rest of us were but such ministers! But, alas! This is not the case with all of us.

O that the Lord would lay us at his feet, in the tears of unfeigned sorrow for this sin! Brothers, may I expostulate this case a little with my own heart and yours, so that we may see the evil of our sin and be reformed! Is not pride the sin of devils – the first-born of hell? Is it not that in which Satan’s image greatly consists? And is it then to be tolerated in men who are engaged against him and his kingdom, as we are? The very design of the gospel is to abase us; and the work of grace is begun and carried on in humiliation. Humility is not a mere ornament of a Christian, but an essential part of the new creature. It is a contradiction in terms to be a Christian, and not be humble. All who will be Christians must be Christ’s disciples, and “come to him to learn,” and the lesson which he teaches them is, to “be meek and lowly.” 174 Oh, how many precepts and admirable examples our Lord and Master has given us to this end! Can we behold him washing and wiping his servants’ feet, and yet still be proud and lordly? Will he converse with the lowliest of people, and yet we avoid them as beneath our notice, and we think that only persons of wealth and honor are fit for our company? How many of us are found more often in the houses of gentlemen than in the cottages of the poor, of those who most need our help? Many of us would think it beneath us to be with the most needy and beggarly people daily, instructing them in the way of life and salvation; as if we had taken charge only of the souls of the rich!

Alas! What do we have to be proud of? Is it of our physical body? Why, is it not made of the same materials as the beasts; and will it not shortly be as loathsome and abominable as any other carcass? Is it of our graces? Why, the more proud we are of them, the less we have to be proud of. When so much of the nature of grace consists in humility, it is absurd to be proud of it! Is it of our knowledge and learning? Why, if we have any knowledge at all, we know how much reason we have to be humble; and if we know more than other men, we have more reason than they do to be humble. How little the most learned know compared to what they are ignorant of! Knowing that things are beyond your reach, and how ignorant you are, should be no great cause for pride. Do not the devils know more than you? And will you be proud of that in which the devils excel you? Our very business is to teach the great lesson of humility to our people; how unfitting it is, then, for us to be proud ourselves. We must study and preach humility; must we not also possess and practice humility? A proud preacher of humility is at least a self-condemning man. What a sad case it is, that so vile a sin is not more easily discerned by us. Instead, many who are most proud blame others for it, and yet ignore it in themselves! The world can recognize some among us who have aspirations, and seek the highest positions, and must be the rulers, and hold sway wherever they go, or else there is no living or dealing with them. In any consultations, these men do not search for truth; rather they dictate to others who perhaps are better fit to teach them. In a word, they have such arrogant and domineering spirits, that the world buzzes about it, and yet they will not see it in themselves!

Brothers, I desire to deal closely with my own heart and yours. I beg you to consider whether it will save us to speak well of the grace of humility while we do not possess it, or to speak against the sin of pride while we indulge in it? Do not many of us have cause to inquire diligently whether sincerity is consistent with the measure of pride we feel in ourselves? When we are telling the drunkard that he cannot be saved unless he becomes temperate, and the fornicator that he cannot be saved unless he becomes chaste, do we not have as great a reason, if we are proud, to say to ourselves that we cannot be saved unless we become humble? Pride, in fact, is a greater sin than drunkenness or whoredom; and humility is as necessary as sobriety and chastity. Truly, brothers, a man may just as certainly (and more slyly) hasten to hell, despite his earnest preaching of the gospel, and his seeming zeal for a holy life, as he would by way of drunkenness and filthiness. For what is holiness but being devoted to God and living for him? And what is a damnable state, but being devoted to our carnal self and living for ourselves? And does anyone live more for himself, or less for God, than the proud man? And may not pride make a preacher study for himself, and pray and preach for himself, and live for himself, even when he seems to surpass others in the work? The work, without the right principle175 and end, will not prove us upright. The work may be God’s, and yet we may do it for ourselves and not for God. I confess that I feel such a continual danger on this point, that if I do not watch, I will study for myself, and preach for myself, and write for myself, rather than for Christ, and I would soon go wrong; after all, if I must condemn the sin, then I must not justify it in myself.

Consider, I beg you, brothers, what baits there are in the work of the ministry to entice a man to selfishness, even in the highest works of piety. The fame of a godly man is as great a snare as the fame of a learned man. Woe to the one who seeks the fame of godliness instead of godliness itself! “Truly I say unto you, they have their reward.”176 When the times were all about learning and empty formalities, the temptation of the proud inclined that way. But now, through the unspeakable mercy of God, the most vital and practical preaching is now in favor, and godliness itself is in favor. And so, the temptation of the proud is to pretend to be zealous preachers and godly men. Oh, what a fine thing is it to have the people crowding around to hear us, and to be influenced by what we say, yielding their judgments and preferences to us! What a captivating thing it is to be acclaimed as the ablest and godliest man in the country, to be famed throughout the land for the highest spiritual excellences! Alas, brothers, a little grace combined with such inducements, will serve to make you join those who would be pre-eminent in promoting the cause of Christ in the world. No, pride may do it by itself, without special grace.

Oh, therefore, be jealous of yourselves; and, amid all your studies, be sure to study humility. “The one who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”177 I commonly observe that almost all men, whether good or bad, loathe the proud and love the humble. But pride so denies itself that, conscious of its own deformity, it often borrows the homely dress of humility. We have all the more cause to be wary of it, because it is a sin most deeply rooted in our nature, and as unlikely as any to be fully purged from the soul.

2. We do not lay ourselves out in the work of the Lord as seriously, unreservedly, and laboriously as men of our profession and activities should. I bless the Lord that there are so many who do this work with all their might. But, alas! How imperfectly and negligently most do their work, even those we take for godly ministers! How few of us behave ourselves in our office as men who are wholly devoted to it should, as men who have consecrated all they have to that end! And because you will see my grounds for this confession, I will mention some instances of our sinful negligence.

(1) If we were duly devoted to our work, we would not be so negligent in our studies. Few men take the pains necessary to rightly inform their understanding, and to equip them for further work. Some men have no delight in their studies, but take only an hour now and then, as it if it were an unwelcome task which they are forced to undergo; and they are glad when they are out from under the yoke. Will neither the natural desire for knowledge, nor the spiritual desire to know God and things Divine, nor the consciousness of our great ignorance and weakness, nor the sense of the weight of our ministerial work – will none of all these things keep us closer to our studies, and make us more laborious in seeking after truth? O what an abundance of things there are that a minister should understand! And what a great defect it is to be ignorant of them! And how much we will miss178 such knowledge in our work! Many ministers study only to compose their sermons and little more, when there are so many books to be read, and so many matters that we should not be unacquainted with. No, we are too negligent in the study of our sermons, gathering only a few naked truths, and not considering the most forcible expressions by which we may drive them home to men’s consciences and hearts. We must study how to convince and get inside our people, and how to bring each truth alive, and not leave all this to hasty preparation179, unless in cases of absolute necessity. Certainly, brothers, experience will teach you that men are not made learned or wise without hard study and unwearied labor and experience.

(2) If we were heartily devoted to our work, it would be done more vigorously, and more seriously, than it is by most of us. How few ministers preach with all their might, or speak about everlasting joys and everlasting torments in such a way as to make men believe they are passionate about it! It should make a man’s heart ache to see a group of dead and drowsy sinners sitting under a minister, not hearing a word that is likely to enliven or awaken them. Alas! We speak so drowsily, and so softly, that sleepy sinners cannot hear our words. The blow falls so lightly that hard-hearted sinners cannot feel it. Most ministers will not strain their voice, stirring themselves up to speak passionately. And if they do speak loud and earnestly, few accompany it with weighty and passionate subject matter! And yet without this, the voice does little good; the people will consider it mere wailing if the content does not match the voice. It should grieve one to the heart to hear what excellent doctrine some ministers have in hand, and yet they let it die in their hands for lack of a familiar and lively application. What appropriate matter they have to convince sinners, and yet how little they make of it. And what good they might do if they would only drive it home; yet they cannot or will not do it.

O sirs, how plainly, how familiarly, how passionately, we should deliver a message of such import as ours, when the everlasting life or death of our fellowmen is involved! I think we lack nothing more than we lack this seriousness; nothing is more unsuitable to such a business than to be delicate and dull. What! Speak coldly for God, and for men’s salvation? Can we really believe that our people must be converted or condemned, and yet we speak to them in a drowsy tone? In the name of God, brothers, labor to awaken your own hearts before you go to the pulpit, so that you may be fit to awaken the hearts of sinners! Remember they must be awakened or damned: a sleepy preacher will hardly awaken drowsy sinners. If your words give the highest praises to the holy things of God, and yet you say them coldly, then your manner will seem to unsay the matter. It is a kind of contempt to speak of great things, especially these great things, without much affection and fervency. The manner as well as the words, must deliver them. If we are commanded, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might,”180 then certainly preaching for men’s salvation should be done with all our might. But, alas, how few there are of such men! It is only here and there, even among good ministers, that we find one who has an earnest, persuasive, and powerful way of speaking, so that the people can feel him preach when they hear him.

I am not urging you to have a constant loudness in your delivery (that will make your fervency scorned); yet see to it that you have a constant seriousness; and when the matter requires it (as it should, in the application at least), then lift up your voice, and do not spare your spirits. Speak to your people as you would to men who must be awakened, either here or in hell. Look around at them with the eye of faith, and with compassion, and think about which state of joy or torment they must be in forever; and then, I think, it will make you earnest, and it will melt your heart to a sense of their condition. Oh, do not speak one cold or careless word about so great a business as heaven or hell. Whatever you do, let the people see that you are in good earnest. Truly, brothers, these are great works which you have to do, and you must not think that trifling will somehow fulfill them. You cannot break men’s hearts by jesting with them, or telling them a smooth tale, or pronouncing a gaudy oration. Men will not throw away their dearest pleasures at the drowsy request of someone who does not seem to mean what he says, or to care much whether his request is granted or not. If you say that the work is God’s, and he may do it by the weakest means, I answer, “It is true, he may do so”; yet his ordinary way is to work by means, and to make not only the matter, but also the manner of preaching, instrumental to the work. With most of our listeners, the very pronunciation and tone of speech is a great point. The best matter will scarcely move them, unless it is movingly delivered. See, especially, that there is no affectation, but that you speak as familiarly to them as you would if you were talking to any of them personally. The lack of a familiar tone and expression is a great fault in most of our deliveries, and we should be very careful to amend it. When a man has a reading or reciting tone, like a school-boy saying his lesson, or repeating an oration, few are moved by anything he says. Let us, therefore, rouse ourselves up to the work of the Lord, and speak to our people as if it was for their very lives, and save them by force, “pulling them out of the fire.” Satan will not be charmed out of his possession: we must lay siege to the souls of sinners, discover where his garrison is located, find out where his chief strength lies, and then lay the battery of God’s ordnance against it, and work it at close quarters until a breach is made; and then do not allow them by their evasions181 to repair it again. Because we have reasonable creatures to deal with, and because they abuse their reason against the truth, we must see that all our sermons are convincing, and that we make the light of Scripture and Reason shine so bright in the faces of the ungodly that it may even force them to see, unless they willfully shut their eyes. A sermon full of mere words, if it lacks the light of evidence and the life of zeal, however neatly it might be composed, is only an image of a well-dressed carcass. In preaching, there is a communion of souls, and a communication of something from our souls to theirs. Just as we and they have understanding and will and affections, so the bent of our endeavors must be to communicate the fullest light of evidence from our understanding to theirs, and to warm their hearts by kindling in them a holy affection by communicating it from our own. The great things which we have to commend to our hearers have reason enough on their side, and lie plainly before them in the Word of God. We should, therefore, be furnished with all kinds of evidence so that we may come like a torrent upon their understanding; and so that with our reasoning and persuasion we may pour shame on all their vain objections, knocking them all down before us, so that their souls may be forced to yield to the power of truth.

(3) If we are heartily devoted to the work of God, then why do we not pity the poor unprovided congregations around us, and take care to help them to find able ministers? And, in the mean time, why do we not go out now and then to their assistance, when the business of our particular charge allows it? A sermon given in the more ignorant places, done purposely for the work of conversion, delivered by the most lively, powerful preachers, might be a great help where constant means are lacking.

3. Another sad evidence that we have not devoted ourselves and all we have to the service of God as we ought to have done, is our prevailing regard to our worldly interests – in opposition to the interest and the work of Christ. I will manifest this with three instances:

(1) The temporizing182 of ministers. I do not want anyone to be contentious with those who govern them, nor to disobey any of their lawful commands. But it is not the least accusation against ministers that most of them, for worldly advantage, accommodate the party which will most likely promote their ends. If they look for secular advantages, they accommodate secular power; if they look for applause, they accommodate the Church party that is most in favor. Alas! This malady is epidemic. In Constantine’s days, the Orthodox were prevalent! In Constantius’183 days, almost all of them became Arians. There were very few bishops who did not apostatize or betray the truth, including the very men who had been at the Council of Nicaea. Indeed when not only Liberius,184 but great Ossius185 himself fell, the man who had been the president in so many orthodox councils, what more could be expected of weaker men? Were it not for secular advantage, how would it come to pass that ministers in all countries of the world are nearly all of whichever religion is most in favor, and most consistent with their worldly interests? Among the Greeks, they are all of the Greek profession: among the Papists, they are almost all Papists: in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, they are almost all Lutherans: and so it is in other countries. It would be strange that they are all “in the right” in one country, and all “in the wrong” in another, if carnal advantages did not hold much sway with men, as they engage in the search for truth. The variety of intellect, and innumerable other circumstances, would unavoidably cause a great variety of opinions on various points if it did not. But if the prince and the stream of men who are in power run one way, most ministers will agree with them to a hair, without going out of their way to search for the truth. Look how common ministers generally changed their religion with a change in prince at various times in this land!186 Indeed, not all of them did, as our Martyrology can attest, yet most did. And that same subservient weakness still follows us; it causes our enemies to say that reputation and preference are our religion and our reward.

(2) We mind worldly things too much, and shrink from any duties that will injure or hinder our temporal interests. How common it is for ministers to drown themselves in worldly business! Too many are just what the sectarians want us to be, who tell us that we should go to the plow and labor for our living, and preach without so much study. This is a lesson which is easily learned. Men are not anxious to cast off supporting themselves, so that their own souls and the Church may have all their care. And especially how common it is to neglect any duties that are likely to diminish our own estates! Are there not many, for example, who dare not, and will not, exercise discipline in their churches because it may keep the people from paying them their dues? They will not offend sinners with discipline, lest the sinners offend them in their own estates. I find money is too strong an argument for some men to rebut, who yet proclaim that “the love of money is the root of all evil,”187 and who still make long orations about the danger of covetousness. I will say no more to them at present except this: If money was so deadly a sin in Simon Magus who offered to buy the gift of God with money, then what kind of sin is it to sell God’s gift, his cause, and the souls of men for money? And what reason do we have to fear, lest our money perish with us!188

(3) We are barren in works of charity, and in improving all we have for our Master’s service. If worldly interest did not prevail much against the interest of Christ and the Church, then surely most ministers would be more fruitful in good works, and would lay out more of what they have for his glory.

Experience has fully proven that works of charity remove prejudice most powerfully, and they open the heart to words of piety. If men see that you are addicted to doing good, then they will more easily believe that you are good, and that what you persuade them to is good. When they see that you love them, and seek their good, they will more easily trust you. And when they see that you are not seeking the things of the world,189 they will suspect your intentions less, and be more easily drawn by you to seek what you seek. Oh, how much good ministers might do if they set their minds entirely on doing good, and dedicated all their faculties and substance to that end! Do not say it is a minor thing to do good to men’s bodies, or that this will only win them to us and not to God; for prejudice is a great hindrance to men’s conversion, and this will help to remove it. We might do men more good, if they were only willing to learn from us; and this will make them willing. Then our further diligence may profit them. I beg you, brothers, do not think that ordinary charity is what is expected from you, any more than ordinary piety is expected. You must go far beyond others in proportion to your talents. It is not enough to give a little to a poor man: others do that as well as you. But what exceptional thing do you do with your estates for your Master’s service?

I know you cannot give away what you do not have; but I think all that you have should be devoted to God. I know the great objection is, “We have a wife and children to provide for: a little will not serve them at present, and we are not obligated to leave them beggars.” To this I answer:

[a] There are few texts of Scripture more abused than this one from the apostle Paul: “The one who does not provide for his own, and specially for those of his own house, has denied the faith, and he is worse than an infidel.”190 This has become a pretense for hording savings, and providing a full estate for our heirs; the apostle was only speaking against those who threw their poor relations and family onto the Church, to be maintained out of the common funds, when they were able to do it themselves. This is like someone who has a widow in his house, such as his mother or daughter, and he would prefer to have her kept by the parish, even though he has enough to support her himself. The following shows that it is present and not future provisions that the apostle is speaking about when he bids “those who have widows relieve them, and do let not the church be charged, so that it may relieve those who are indeed widows.”191

[b] You may educate your children as other people do, so that they may be able to gain their own livelihood by some honest trade or employment, but do not make unnecessary provisions for them. I know that your charity and care must begin at home, but it must not end there. You are bound to do the best you can to educate your children so that they will be capable of serving God the most. But you are not bound to leave them rich, nor to withhold other necessary works of charity, merely to make a larger provision for them. There must be some proportionality between the provision we make for our families, and those we make for the Church of Christ. A truly charitable, self-denying heart, that has devoted itself and all it has to God, would be the best judge of the due proportions, and it would see which expenditures are likely to do God the greatest service; and that is the way it should take.

[c] I confess I would not have men lie too long under temptations of sexual impropriety, or they will wound themselves and their profession by their falls. And yet I think it is hard that men can do nothing more to mortify the desires of the flesh than to be single, and to have none of those temptations of caring for wife and children that may hinder them from furthering their ministerial ends through charitable works. If the man who does not marry, does better than one who does, surely ministers should labor to do what is best. And if the one who can “receive this saying,”192 must receive it, then we should strive after it. This is one of the highest points of the Romish policy, which alleges that it is the duty of bishops, priests, and other religious orders not to marry. Then they will have no posterity to drain the church’s revenues, nor will their families require the church’s care. Instead, they can make the public cause their interest, and lay themselves out for it while they live, and leave all they have to it when they die. It is a pity that, for lack of a better reason, we can only imitate them in self-denial where possible.

[d] But for those who must marry, they should take what is needed to support themselves and their children, or support them at whatever rate their temporal means will afford, and then devote as much of the church’s means to the church’s service as they can.

I would put no man to extremes. But in this case, flesh and blood makes even good men so biased that they regard their duties as extremes, and they are indeed duties of very great worth and weight. But if worldly vanities did not blind us, we might see when a public good, or greater good, called us to deny ourselves and our families. Why should we not live simpler and poorer in the world, rather than leave works undone which may be of greater use than our own plentiful provision? But we contemplate our duties with flesh and blood; and what counsel we can expect from our flesh is easily known. It will tell us that we must have a sufficient income; and thus many a pious man’s income is just below the rich man’s rates in the parable (Luke 16:19). If they are not clothed in the best, and “feast sumptuously every day,”193 they think they do not have a sufficient income. A man who preaches about an immortal crown, should not pursue transitory vanity so hard. And if he preaches about having a contempt for riches, they he should deny them himself, and show it by his life. And if he preaches about self-denial and mortification of sin, then he should practice these virtues in the eyes of those to whom he preaches; at least, if he wants his doctrine believed.

All Christians are sanctified; and therefore they, and all they have, are consecrated “to the Master’s use.”194 But ministers are doubly sanctified: they are devoted to God both as Christians and as ministers. And therefore, they are doubly obligated to honor him with all they have. Oh, brothers, what an abundance of good works are set before us, and how few have our hands put to them! I know the world expects more from us than we have; but even if we cannot meet the expectations of unreasonable men, let us do what we can to meet the expectations of God, and of conscience, and of all just men. “This is the will of God: that with well-doing we should silence the ignorance of foolish men.”195 Especially ministers who have larger incomes must be larger in doing good. I will give only one example at this time. There are some ministers who have a hundred and fifty, two hundred, or three hundred pounds a-year of salary. Their parishes are so large that they are not able to do a quarter of the ministerial work, nor do they once in a year deal personally with half their people to instruct them. And yet they will content themselves with public preaching, as if that was all that is necessary, leaving almost all the rest undone, to the everlasting danger or damnation of multitudes. They do this rather than support one or two diligent men to assist them. Or if they have an assistant, it is some young man who is poorly qualified for the work; he is not one who will faithfully and diligently watch over the flock, and afford them that personal instruction which is so necessary. If this is not serving ourselves instead of God, and selling men’s souls to have a better lifestyle in the world, then what is? I think such men should fear that, while they may be considered excellent preachers and godly ministers by men, they will be considered cruel soul-murderers by Christ; and that the cries of those souls, whom they have betrayed to damnation, will ring in their ears forever and ever. Will preaching a good sermon serve in your defense when you never again look after them, and deny them the close help that is necessary? Will it serve when you divert for your own fleshly desires, what should have provided relief for so many souls? How can you open your mouths against oppressors, when you yourselves are such great oppressors, and not only of men’s bodies, but of their souls? How can you preach against unmercifulness, while you are so unmerciful? And how can you talk against unfaithful ministers, while you are so unfaithful yourselves? The sin is not small just because it is unobserved, or because it is not odious in the eyes of men, or because the people do not blame you for withholding the charity. Satan himself, who is their greatest enemy, has their consent all along in the work of their destruction. It does not reduce your sin, therefore, that you have their consent: for you may sooner receive their consent for their everlasting hurt, than you will receive it for their everlasting good. And now, sirs, I beg you to take into consideration what has been said; and see whether this is not the great and lamentable sin of the ministers of the gospel: that they are not fully devoted to God, and do not give themselves, and all they have, to carrying on the blessed work which they have undertaken. And consider whether flesh-pleasing, and self-seeking, and seeking an interest distinct from that of Christ, make us neglect much of our duty, and make us serve God in the cheapest and most applauded part of his work, and make us withdraw from whatever would subject us to cost and suffering? Then consider whether this does not show that too many of us who seem to be heavenly, are in fact earthly, and that they mind things below, while preaching things above, and they idolize the world while they call men to deny it? As Salvian says, “No one neglects salvation more than the one who prefers something above God.”196 Those who despise God, will despise their own salvation.

4. We are sadly guilty of undervaluing the unity and peace of the whole Church. Though I rarely meet with anyone who will not speak for unity and peace, or at least, anyone who will expressly speak against it, yet it is uncommon to meet someone who seriously promotes it. Too often, instead, we find men who are averse to it, and wary of it, even if they are not themselves the instruments of division. The Papists have so long abused the name of the “catholic” Church that, in opposition to them, many either leave the word out of their creeds, or they merely retain the name without understanding it, or considering its nature. Or they think it is enough to believe that there is such a “catholic” body, even though they do not behave like members of it. If the Papists idolize the Church, will we therefore deny it, disregard it, or divide it? It is a great and a common sin throughout the Christian world, to take up religion through factions. Instead of having a love and tender care for the universal Church, they confine that love and respect to a party. This is not to deny that we must prefer, in both our estimation and communion, the purer parts of the Body above the impure; and we must refuse to participate with anyone in their sins. Yet the most infirm and diseased part of the body should be pitied and assisted to the best of our power; and communion must be held, as far as it is lawful to do so; it is an urgent necessity, and not to be avoided. We must do this just as we must love those in our neighborhood who have the plague or leprosy, and afford them all the relief we can, and acknowledge our proper relationship to them, and communicate with them, even though we may not have local communion with them. In other diseases which are not so infectious, we may be with them more for their help, according to how much help they need. Of the multitude who say they belong to the catholic Church, it is rare to meet with men of a catholic spirit. Men do not have a universal consideration of, and respect for, the whole Church; instead, they look at their own party as if it were the whole. If there are some called Lutherans, some called Calvinists, some subordinate divisions among these, and other parties among us, most of them will pray hard for the prosperity of their own party, and rejoice and give thanks when it goes well with them. But if any other party suffers, they regard it as if it were no loss at all to the Church. If it is the smallest parcel that does not contain many of the nations or cities on earth, they are still ready to support it as if they were the whole Church, and as if whatever goes well with them, goes well with the Church. We decry the Pope as the Antichrist for including the Church under the Roman umbrella; and there is no doubt that it is an abominable schism. But, alas! How many imitate them too far, even while they reprove them! Just as the Papists foist the word “Roman” into their creed, and turn the catholic Church into the Roman Catholic church, as if there were no other catholics, and as if the Church had no larger extent than their own, so it is with many others as to their separate parties. Some want it to be the Lutheran catholic church, and some the Reformed catholic church; some the Anabaptist catholic church, and so on with some others. If they do not differ among themselves, they are little troubled by differing from others, even though they differ from almost all the Christian world. They take the peace of their party for the peace of the Church. No wonder, therefore, that they carry this peace no further.

How rare it is to meet with a man who smarts or bleeds with the Church’s wounds, or sensibly takes them to heart as his own, or ever entertains thoughts of a cure! Instead, almost every party thinks that the happiness of the rest consists in turning to them; and because the rest are not of their mind, they cry, “Down with them!” They are glad to hear of their fall, thinking that is the way to the Church’s rising, that is, their own church. How few there are who understand the true state of controversies between the various parties, or who understand the difference between controversies over words, and ones that are real! If those who understand were to disclose it to others, in order to correct the information and be of service, it is seen as diminishing the error, and becoming complicit in their sin. Few men grow zealous for peace until they grow old, or gain enough experience of men’s spirits and principles, to better see the true state of the Church, and the various differences, than they did before. And then they begin to write their Irenicons,197 and many of them still exist today. If a young man in the heat of his lust and passion was judged not to be a fit auditor of moral philosophy, we may find that this same young man is zealous for peace and unity when he has grown more experienced, and may have become zealous for the very factions which opposed him in his youthful heat. Therefore, such peace-makers as these can seldom do greater good than to quiet their own consciences in the discharge of so great a duty, and to moderate some others, and save them from further guilt, and to leave behind a witness against a willful, self-conceited, and unpeaceable world. But commonly it brings a man under suspicion, either of favoring some heresy or of abating his zeal, if he merely attempts peace-making. It is as if no zeal were needed for the fundamental truths of the Church’s universal unity and peace, but only for factions, and their parochial truths. And the devil has gotten a great advantage this way by employing his own agents, the unhappy Socinians,198 who wrote so many treatises for catholic unity and peace, but for their own benefit. By such means, the enemy of peace has brought it to pass, that whoever moves for peace, is shortly under suspicion of being someone who wants peace only to indulge his own errors. It is a fearful case that heresy should gain favor by this means, as if there were no better friends to unity and peace than they are. It is also fearful that so great and necessary a duty, on which the Church’s welfare so depends, should be brought into such suspicion or disgrace by heretics.199 Brothers, I do not say all this without apparent reason. We have had as sad divisions among us in England, considering the piety of the persons involved, and the smallness of the reasons for our discord, as most nations under heaven have known. What most keeps us at odds is only the right form and order of Church government. Is the distance so great that Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Independent might not be well-agreed? If they were just heartily willing and forward for peace, they might; I know they might. I have spoken with some moderate men of all the parties, and I perceive, by their concessions, that it would be an easy work. If men’s hearts were only sensitive to the Church’s need, and sincerely touched with love toward one another, and if they would heartily set themselves to seek it, settling a safe and happy peace would be an easy work. If we could not agree in every point, we might easily narrow our differences, and at least hold communion on our agreement in the main; we could determine the safest way to manage our few and small disagreements, without danger or trouble to the Church. But is even this much done? No, it is not done. To the shame of all our faces, let it be said: it is not done. Let each party flatter themselves now as they please, it will be recorded to the shame of the ministry of England as long as the gospel abides in the world. And oh what heinous aggravations accompany this sin! Not since the days of the apostles, I think, have men made a greater profession of their godliness. Most of them are bound by solemn oaths and covenants for unity and reformation: they all confess the worth of peace, and most of them will preach for it, and talk for it, even while they sit still and neglect it, as if it were not worth looking after. They will read and preach on those texts that command us to “pursue peace with all men,”200 and “as much as it lies in us to do it, live peaceably with them.”201 And yet they are so far from following it, and doing all they possibly can for it, that many snarl at it, and malign and censure anyone who endeavors to promote it. It is as if all zeal for peace required us to abate our zeal for holiness; and as if holiness and peace were so fallen out with one another, that there is no reconciling them. And yet it has been found, by long experience, that concord is a sure friend to piety, and piety always moves toward concord. On the other hand, errors and heresies are bred by discord, just as discord is bred and fed by errors and heresies. We have seen, to our sorrow, that where the servants of God should have lived together as one – of one heart, one soul, and one mouth – and should have promoted each other’s faith and holiness, and admonished and assisted each other against sin, and rejoiced together in the hope of future glory, we have, on the contrary, lived in mutual jealousies. We have drowned holy love in bitter contentions, and studied how to disgrace and undermine one another, and to increase our own parties by right or wrong. We, that were accustomed to glory about our love to the brothers as a mark of our sincerity in the faith, have now turned it into the love of a party; and those who are against that party have more of our anger, envy, and malice, than our love.

I know this is not so with all, nor is it prevalent with any true believer; yet it is so common, that it may cause us to question the sincerity of many who are thought by themselves and others to be most sincere. And it is not just ourselves who are scorched in this flame, but we have drawn our people into it, and trained them in it, so that most of the godly in the nation have fallen into factions. They have turned much of their ancient piety into vain opinions and disputes, envy and animosity. Indeed, it was customary to think that deriding the godly was the certain mark of a graceless wretch; how few are there now who hesitate to secretly deride and slander those who are not of their opinions! A pious Prelate can reverently scorn and slander a Presbyterian; and a Presbyterian can scorn and slander an Independent; and an Independent can scorn and slander both. And, what is worst of all, is that average people take notice of all this, and not only deride us, but are hardened by us against religion; and when we try to persuade them to be religious, they see so many factions, that they do not know which one to join. They think it is just as good to belong to none at all, as to belong to any, since they are uncertain which is right. And thus, by our divisions, thousands have contempt for all religion. Many poor carnal wretches begin to think they have the better of the two, because they hold to their old formalities, when we hold to nothing. I know that some of these men are learned and reverend, and they do not intend to produce such mischievous outcomes as these. Hardening men in ignorance is not their design. But this is the thing effected. To intend well in doing ill is no rarity. Who can, in reverence to any man on earth, sit still and hold his tongue while he sees people run to their own destruction, and the souls of men undone by the contentiousness of divines for their various parties and interests? The Lord that knows my heart, knows (if I know it myself) that as I am not a member of any of these parties, so I am not speaking a word of this in a factious partiality for one party, or against another as such, and much less do I speak in anger against any person; but if I could have dared in good conscience, I would have silenced all this, for fear of giving offense to those whom I must honor. But what am I but a servant of Christ? And what is my life worth, but to do him service? And whose favor can recompense me for the ruin of the Church? And who can be silent while souls are undone? Not I, for my part, not while God is my Master, and his word my rule; his work is my business; and the success of it, to save souls, is my end. Who can be reconciled to what is so lamentably at cross purposes to his Master’s interest, and his main end in life? Nor would I have spoken any of this, had it only been in respect to my own charge where, I bless God, the sore is only small compared to what it is in many other places. But the knowledge of some neighboring congregations, and others more remote, has drawn these observations out of me. We may talk of peace, indeed, as long as we live, but we will never obtain it except by returning to apostolic simplicity. The Papists’ faith is too big for all men to agree upon, or even all of their own, if they did not enforce it with arguments drawn from the fire, the halter, and the strappado.202 And many Anti-papists imitate them too far, in the tedious length of their subscribed confessions, and the novelty of what they impose, and when they go furthest from the papists in the quality of the things imposed. Once we return to the ancient simplicity of faith, then, and not until then, we will return to the ancient love and peace. I would therefore recommend to all my brothers, as the thing most necessary to the Church’s peace, that they unite in necessary truths, and bear with one another in things which may be borne203; do not make a larger creed, and more necessities, than God has made. To this end, let me entreat you to attend to the following things:

(1) Do not lay too great a stress upon controversial opinions, which have godly men and, especially, whole churches on both sides.

(2) Do not lay too great a stress on those controversies which ultimately lead into philosophical uncertainties; these would include some unprofitable controversies about free-will, the manner of the Spirit’s operations, and the Divine decrees.

(3) Do not lay too great a stress on those controversies which are merely verbal, and which, if properly analyzed, appear to evaporate. There are far more of this sort (I say this confidently and upon certain knowledge); they make a great noise in the world, and they tear the Church more than almost anyone I ever spoke with seems to discern, or is likely to believe.

(4) Do not lay not too much stress on any point of faith which was disowned by, or unknown to the whole Church of Christ, in any age since the Scriptures were delivered to us.

(5) Much less should you lay great stress on those points of which any of the more pure or judicious ages were wholly ignorant.

(6) And least of all should you lay much stress on any point which no single age since the apostles has ever received, but rather, all commonly held the contrary as true.

I know it is said that a man may subscribe to the Scripture, and subscribe to the ancient creeds, and yet maintain his Socinianism, or other heresies. To this I answer, “So he may pass another test which your brains will contrive: and while you make a snare to catch heretics, instead of a test for the Church’s communion, you will miss your intended purpose; and the heretic will break through by the slipperiness of his conscience, but the tender Christian may possibly be ensnared. And by your new creed, the Church is likely to have new divisions if you do not keep close to the words of Scripture.” The man who lives until that happy time when God heals his broken churches, will see all this that I am pleading for reduced to practice; and this moderation takes the place of new-dividing zeal, and the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture is established; and all men’s confessions and comments will be valued only as subservient helps, instead of being made the test of Church communion, but no further than Scripture allows. However, until the healing age comes, we cannot expect that healing truths will be entertained, because there are no healing spirits in the leaders of the Church. But when the work is to be done, the workmen will be equipped for it; and blessed will be the agents of so glorious a work.

5. Lastly, we are sadly negligent in performing our acknowledged duties: for example, church discipline. If there is any work of reformation to be set in motion, how many are there who will go no further than they are drawn! It would be good if all of us would do even that much. And when a work is likely to prove difficult and costly, how averse we are to it, and how many excuses we make to omit it! What has been more talked of, and prayed for, and contended about in England for many years past, than discipline? There are, in fact, only a few men who do not seem zealous in disputing for one side or the other; some for the Prelate’s way, some for the Presbyterian, and some for the Congregational. And yet, when we come to the practice of it, for all I see, we are quite agreed: most of us are for no way. It has made me wonder sometimes to look at the face of England, and to see how few congregations in the land have any semblance of discipline, and to think about the volumes that have been written about it, and how almost the entire ministry of the nation is enlisted for it. How zealously they have contended for it, and made many just outbursts against its opposers, and yet, notwithstanding all this, they will do little or nothing to exercise it. I have marvelled as to what would make them so zealous in siding with what their practice shows their hearts are against. But I see that a zeal for disputing is more natural than a holy, obedient, practicing zeal. How many ministers are there in England who do not know their own charge,204 and cannot tell who its members are; who never cast out one obstinate sinner, nor brought one to public confession and to a promise of reformation, nor even admonished one publicly to call him to such repentance! But they think they have done their duty if they do not give them the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper (when it is perhaps voluntarily avoided by the persons themselves). In the meantime, we leave them as stated members of our churches, (for church membership does not consist merely in partaking of the Lord’s Supper, or else what are the children who have been baptized in their infancy?); and they grant them all other communion with the Church; and they do not call them to personal repentance for their sin. Is it not God’s ordinance that they should be personally rebuked, and admonished, and publicly called to repentance, and be separated if they remain impenitent? If these are not our duties, then why have we made such an uproar about them in the world? If they are our duties, then why do we not practice them? Many of these sinners avoid the very hearing of the Word. The ancient discipline of the Church was stricter: the Sixth General Council at Trull205 ordained that, “Whoever misses three consecutive days206 from church, without urgent necessity, is to be excommunicated.”

Brothers, I do not desire to offend any specific party, but I must say that these sins are not to be covered over with excuses, diminishments, or denials. We have long cried for discipline, and every party has cried for its particular way. Would you have people value your form of government, or would you not? No doubt you would. Now, if you would have them value it, then it must be for some excellence. Show them that excellence. What is it? In what does it consist? And if you would have them believe you, then show it to them, not merely on paper, but in practice; not simply in words, but in deeds. How can the people know the worth of discipline, without the thing itself? Is it a name and a shadow that you have made all this noise about? How can they think something is good, if it does no good? Truly, I fear we do not take the right way to maintain our cause; and that we betray it, even while we hotly dispute for it.

Speak truly. Is it not the following two things that sustain the reputation of the long-contended-for discipline among men: with the godly, it is the mere reputation of their ministers who favor it that persuades them; and with many of the ungodly, we are not executing discipline, and so they are not dissuaded from it; they find it is toothless, and not as troublesome as they expected. If our Government is to be upheld by the votes of those who would be corrected or ejected by it, and the worst men were its friends, because it is a friend to them in their ungodliness, then we will enlist the Lord against it, and he will appear as enlisted against us. Sum up all the discipline that has been practiced in an entire county, ever since it was contended for, and I doubt it would be enough to attract godly people to like it for the effects it produces. How can you wonder, if many who desire deeds and not words, who desire reformation and not merely the name “reformation,” turn to separate congregations when you show them nothing but the bare name of discipline in your own? All Christians value God’s ordinances; they do not think they are vain things; and therefore, they are unwilling to live without them. Discipline is not a needless thing to the Church: if you will not make a difference between the precious and the vile by discipline, then people will do it by separation. If you keep many in your churches who are notoriously ignorant, and utterly destitute of religion, and never publicly (nor, perhaps, privately) reprove them, nor call them to repentance, nor throw them out, then you need not marvel if some fearful souls run out of your churches, as they would run from a ruinous structure which they fear is ready to fall on their heads. Consider, I ask you, if you would act the same way with the sacrament as you do with discipline? Would you only show them the bread and wine, and never let them taste these memorials of their Redeemer’s love? Could you expect that the mere name “sacrament” would satisfy them, or that they would like your communion? Why then should you think that they will be satisfied with the empty sound of the word “church-government”?

Besides, consider the disadvantage to your cause, in all your disputes with men of different views. If your principles are better than theirs, and their practice is better than yours, the people will suppose that the question is whether it is the name, or the thing itself, that is more desirable, the shadow or the substance; and they will think your way is a mere formality, a delusion, because they only see you being formal in using it, or indeed, that you do not use it at all. In what I now say, I am not speaking against your form of government, but for it; and I tell you that it is you who are against it, though you seem so earnest for it. You disgrace it more by your lack of exercising it, than you credit it by all your arguments. And you will find, before you are done, that faithfully executing it would be your strongest argument. Until then, the people will understand you as though you openly proclaimed, “We want no public admonitions, confessions, or excommunications; our way is not to do good, but to set up the bare name of government.” I do not desire to spur anyone on to an unseasonable performance of this great duty. But will it never be a fit season? Would you withhold sermons and sacraments for so many years using the pretense that it is unseasonable to give them? Will you have a better season for it when you are dead? How many are dead already, before they ever did anything in this important work, even though they long prepared for it! I know that some have more discouragements and hindrances than others; but what discouragements and hindrances can excuse us from such a duty?

Besides the reasons which we have already stated, let these few be seriously considered:

(1) In preaching to our people, we make a sad sign by living in the willful and continued omission of our known duty! And will we continue to do so year after year, in fact, all our days? If excuses will hide the danger of this sign, then what man will not find them out, as well as you?

(2) We plainly manifest laziness and sloth, if not unfaithfulness, in the work of Christ. I speak from experience. It was laziness that kept me from this duty for so long, and that pleaded hard against it. It is indeed a troublesome and painful work, and it calls for some self-denial, because it will bring the displeasure of the wicked upon us. But dare we prefer our carnal ease and peace, or the love and peace of wicked men, before our service to Christ our Master? Can slothful servants expect a good reward? Remember, brothers, that we of this county have promised before God, in the second article of our agreement, this: “We agree and resolve, by God’s help, that so far as God makes known our duty to us, we will faithfully endeavor to discharge it, and we will not stop because of any fears or losses in our estates, or because of the frowns and displeasure of men, or because of any similar carnal inducements whatever.” I pray that you study this promise, and compare your performance with it. And do not think you were ensnared by subscribing to it: for God’s law laid an obligation on you to perform the very same duty before your signature did. There is nothing here except what others are bound to, as well as you.

(3) The neglect of discipline has a strong tendency to delude immortal souls, by making some think they are Christians when they are not, and permitting them to assume the character of a Christian, and not separating them from the rest by God’s ordinance. It may make the scandalous think their sin is tolerable, because it is tolerated by the pastors of the church.

(4) We corrupt Christianity itself in the eyes of the world. We to make them believe that Christ is no more in favor of holiness than Satan, or that the Christian religion no more requires holiness than the false religions of the world. For if the holy and the unholy are all permitted to be sheep of the same fold, without using any means to separate them, then we defame the Redeemer, as if he was guilty of it, and as if this was the nature of his precepts.

(5) We push some to separate from us, by permitting the worst to be uncensured in our churches, so that many honest Christians think they are obliged to withdraw from us. I have spoken with some members of the separated churches who were moderate men, and have argued with them against separation. They have assured me that they were Presbyterian minded, or had nothing to say against it; but they joined themselves to other churches out of pure necessity, thinking that discipline, being an ordinance of Christ, must be used by all who can. Therefore, they dare no longer live without it when they might have it; and they could find no Presbyterian churches which executed discipline as they prescribed it. They told me, that they separated only pro tempore, until the Presbyterians use discipline, and then they will willingly return to them again. I confess I was sorry that such persons had any such occasion to withdraw from us. Keeping offenders from the sacrament does not excuse us from the further exercise of discipline while they remain members of our churches.

(6) We do much to bring the wrath of God upon ourselves and our congregations, and thereby destroy the fruit of our labors. If the angel of the church of Thyatira was reproved for suffering seducers in the church,207 we may be reproved on the same basis: for suffering open, scandalous, and impenitent sinners. And what hindrances now keep the ministers of England from executing that discipline for which they have contended so hard? The main reason, as far as I can learn, is this:

“The difficulty of the work, and the trouble or suffering we are like to incur by it. We cannot publicly reprehend a sinner without his storming about it, and bearing us deadly malice. We can prevail with very few to make a public profession of true repentance. But if we proceed to excommunicate the others, they will be raging mad against us. If we were to deal with all the obstinate sinners in the parish as God requires us, there would be no living with them; we would be so hated of all that, just as our lives would become uncomfortable, so our labors would become unprofitable. For men will not hear us when they hate us: therefore duty ceases to be duty for us, because the hurt that would follow would be greater than the good.”

These are the main reasons for not executing discipline, together with the exceeding labor that privately admonishing each offender would cost us. Now, to all of this I answer:

[a] Are these reasons not as valid against Christianity itself, especially in some times and places, as they are against discipline? Christ did not come to bring peace on earth: We will have his peace, but not the world’s peace; for he told us that the world will hate us. Might not Bradford, or Hooper, or any who were burned in Queen Mary’s208 days, have alleged more than all this against the duty of supporting the Reformation? Might they not have said, “It will make us hated, and it will expose our very lives to the flames?” Christ concludes that someone who does not hate all that he has, including his own life, is no Christian;209 and yet we claim the risk of worldly loss is a reason for not doing his work! Is it not hypocrisy to shrink from our sufferings, and to take up only safe and easy works, and make ourselves believe that the rest are not our duties? Indeed, this is the common way to escape suffering: to neglect the duty that would expose us to it. If we did our duty faithfully, we ministers would find our lot was the same among professed Christians as our predecessors found among Pagans and other infidels. But if you cannot suffer for Christ, then why did you put your hand to his plow?210 Why did you not first sit down and count the cost?211 This is what makes the ministerial work so unfaithfully executed: because it is so carnally undertaken. Men enter the ministry to find a life of ease, and honor, and respectability; they resolve to attain these ends, and they will get what they are looking for, whether by right or wrong. They did not look for hatred and suffering, and so they avoid it, even though they do it by avoiding their work.

[b] As for making yourselves less able to do them good by disciplining them, I answer that such an excuse is just as valid against plain preaching, reproof, or any other duty for which wicked men will hate us. God will bless his own ordinances to do them good, or else he would not have appointed such ordinances. If you publicly admonish and rebuke the scandalous, and call them to repentance, and cast out the obstinate, you may do good to many whom you reprove, and possibly to the excommunicated themselves. I am at least sure it is God’s means; and it is his last means when reproofs will do no good. It is therefore perverse to neglect the last means, lest we frustrate the foregoing means, for the last means are not to be used unless all the former means were frustrated. However, those within and those outside the Church may still receive good by it, even if the offender receives none. God receives the honor when his Church is manifestly distinguished from the world, and the heirs of heaven and hell are not totally confused with one another. He does not receive it when the world is made to think that Christ and Satan only contend for superiority, and that they both have the same inclination toward holiness or sin.

[c] But still, let me tell you that there are no such difficulties in the way of discipline, nor is discipline so useless as you imagine. I bless God at the small and tardy test which I made of discipline myself. I can speak by experience that it is not in vain; nor are its risks the kind that may excuse our neglect.

I confess, if I had my way, the man who will not rule his people by discipline, should be ejected as a negligent pastor, the same as one who will not preach; for ruling, I am sure, is as essential a part of the pastor’s office as preaching.

I will proceed no further in these confessions. And now, brothers, what remains except for all of us to cry “guilty!” of these fore-mentioned sins, and to humble our souls for our miscarriages before the Lord? Is this “taking heed to ourselves and to all the flock?”212 Is this like the pattern that is given to us in the text? If we should now prove hard-hearted and unhumbled, how sad a symptom it would be to ourselves, and to the Church! The ministry has often been threatened and maligned by many sorts of adversaries; and though this may show their impious malice toward us, yet it may also intimate God’s just indignation. Believe it, brothers, that the ministry of England is not the least nor the last among the sins of the land. It is time, therefore, for us to take our part in that humiliation to which we have been calling our people for so long. If we have our wits about us, we may perceive that God has been offended with us, and that the voice that called this nation to repentance, spoke to us as well as to others. “He that has ears to hear, let him hear”213 the precepts of repentance that have been proclaimed in so many admirable deliverances and recordings; he that has eyes to see,214 let him see these precepts written in so many lines of blood. By fire and sword has God been calling us to humiliation. Just as “judgment has begun at the house of God,” if humiliation does not begin there too, then it will be a sad forecaster to us and to the land.

What! Will we deny or diminish our sins while we call our people to a free and full confession? Is it not better to give glory to God by our humble confession, than to protect ourselves by looking for fig-leaves to cover our nakedness; and put it on God to build his glory (which we denied him) on the ruins of our own, which we preferred ahead of him; and to aggravate it by still worse judgments which we refused to voluntarily surrender to him? Alas! If you put it on God to get his honor as best he can, he may get it, but to your everlasting sorrow and dishonor. Sins openly committed are more dishonorable to us when we hide them, than when we confess them. It is the sin, and not the confession, that is our dishonor. We have committed them under the sun, so they cannot be hidden; and attempts to cloak them only increase our guilt and shame. There is no way to repair the breaches in our honor which our sin has made, except by free confession and humiliation. I dare not avoid confessing my own sins: and if any is offended that I have confessed theirs, let them know that I only do to them what I have done to myself. And if they dare disown the confession of their sin, let them do it at their peril. But as for all the truly humble ministers of Christ, I do not doubt that they would prefer to be provoked to lament their sins more solemnly in the face of their various congregations, and to promise reformation.

SECTION 2 – THE DUTY OF PERSONAL CATECHIZING INSTRUCTING THE FLOCK PARTICULARLY IS RECOMMENDED

Having disclosed and lamented our miscarriages and neglects, our duty for the future lies plainly before us. God forbid that we should now continue in the sins we have confessed, as carelessly as we did before. Leaving these things, therefore, I will now proceed to exhort you to faithfully discharge the great duty which you have undertaken: namely, personal catechizing and instructing everyone in your parishes or congregations who will submit to it.

First, I will state some motives to persuade you to perform this duty.

Secondly, I will answer some objections which may be made to this duty.

Lastly, I will give you some directions for performing this duty.