03.03. CHAP. III. Containing the first property mentioned of true religion

CHAP. III.

Coniaining the first property mentioned of true religion — namely, The freeness and unconstrainedness of it — this discovered in several outivard acts of morality and ivorship — as also in the more inward acts of the soul — This freedom considered first as to its author — in which is examined how far the command of God may he said to upon act a pious soul Secondly, Considered as to its object — Two cautionary concessions — 1. That some things without the soul may be said to be motives — how far afflictions and temporal prosperity may be said to be so — 2. That there is a constrai?it lying upon the pious soul — which yet takes not away its freedom — An inquiry into forced devotion — first, into the causes of it, namely. Men themselves, and that upon a threefold account, other men, or the providences of God — and next, into the properties of it, proving that it is for the most part dry and spiritless, needy and penurious, uneven, and not permanent.

I PROCEED now, from the nature of religion, to speak of the properties of it, as many of them as are couched under this phrase, “ springing up into everlasting life.’’ Not to push the phrase any farther than it will naturally afford discourse, I shall only take notice of these three properties of true religion, contained in the word, “ springing up,”“ namely, the freeness, activity, and permanency, or perseverance of it. The first property of it, couched under this phrase, is, that it is free and unconstrained, lleligion is a principle, and it flows and acts freely in the soul, after the manner of a fountain; and, in the day of its mighty power, makes the people a willing people, and the soul, in whom it is truly seated, to become a free will-offering unto God.

Alexander the Great subdued the world with force of arms, and made men rather his tributaries and servants, than his lovers and friends; but the great God, the King of souls, obtains an amicable conquest over the hearts of his people, and overpowers them in such a manner, that they love to be his servants, and do willingly and readily obey him, without dissimulation or constraint, without mercenariness or morosity: in which they are unlike to the subjects of the kingdoms of this world, who are kept in their duties by fear and force, not from a pure kindness and benevolence of mind, to whom “ the present yoke is always grievous.” Hence it is that the increase of this people is called their flowing unto the Lord, “ The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be esteiblished, and all nations shall flow unto it;” and again, “ They shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord.’’ And the disposition of this people is described to be a hearty and willing frame, Ephesians 6:6-7, and elsewhere often to the same purpose. Now this willingness or freeness of pious souls might be explained and confirmed by the consideration both of their outward and inward acts.

1. As to the outward acts of service which the true Christian doth perform, he is freely carried out towards them, without any constraint or force. If he keep himself from the evil of the place, and age, and company, wherein he lives and converses, it is not by a restraint which is upon him merely from without him, but by a principle of holy temperance planted in the soul: it is the seed of God abiding in him that preserves him from the commission of sin. He is not kept back from sin as a horse by a bridle, but by an inward and spiritual change made in his nature. On the other hand, if he employ himself in any external acts of moral or instituted duty, he does it freely, not as of necessity or by constraint. If you speak of acts of charity, the pious man gives from a principle of love to God, and kindness to his brother, and so cheerfully, not grudgingly, or of necessity. An alms may be wrung out of a miser; but it proceeds from the liberal soul as a stream from its fountain: therefore he is called a deviser of liberal things, and one that standeth upon liberalities, as those last words of Isaiah 32:8, are rendered by the Dutch translators.

If you speak of righteousness or temperance, he is not overruled by power, or compelled by laws, but indeed actuated by the power of that law which is written and engraven upon his mind. If you speak of acts of worship, whether moral or instituted, in all these he is also free, as to any constraint. Prayer is not his task, or a piece of penance, but it is the natural cry of the new-born soul; neither does he take it up as a piece of policy, to bribe God’s justice, or engage men’s charity, to purchase favour with God or man, or his own clamorous conscience: but he prays, because he wants, and loves, and believes; he wants the fuller presence of that God whom he loves; he loves the presence which he wants; he believes that he that loves him will not suffer him to want any good thing that he prays for. And therefore he does not bind up himself severely, and limit himself penuriously to a morning and evening sacrifice and solemnity, as unto certain rent-seasons, wherein to pay a homage of dry devotion; but his loving and longing soul, disdaining to be confined within canonical hours, is frequently soaring in some heavenly raptures or other, and sallying forth in holy ejaculations: he is not content with some weak essays towards heaven, in set and formal prayer, once or twice a-day, but labours also to be all the day long drawing in those divine influences, and streams of grace, by the mouth of faith, which he begged in the morning by the tongue of prayer; which has made me sometimes to think it a proper speech to say, the faith of prayer, as well as the prayer of faith; for believing, and hanging upon divine grace, doth really drink in what prayer opens its mouth for, and is, in effect, a powerful kind of praying in silence: by believing we pray, as well as in praying we believe. A truly religious man hath not his hands tied up merely by the force of a national law, no, nor yet by the authority of the fourth commandment, to keep one in seven, a day of rest; as he is not content with mere resting upon the Sabbath, knowing that neither working, nor ceasing from work, doth of itself commend a soul to God, but doth press after intimacy with God in the duties of his worship; so neither can he be content with one Sabbath in a week, nor think himself absolved from holy and heavenly meditations any day in the week; but labours to make every day a Sabbath, as to the keeping of his heart up unto God in a holy frame, and to find every day to be a Sabbath, as to the communications of God unto his soul: though the necessities of his body will not allow him, it may be, (though indeed God hath granted this to some men) to keep every day us a Sabbath of rest; yet the necessities of his soul do call upon him to make every day, as far as may be, a Sabbath of communion with the blessed God.

If you speak of fasting, he keeps not fasts merely by virtue of civil, no, nor a divine institution; but, from a principle of godly sorrow afflicts his soul for sin, and daily endeavours more and more to be emptied of himself, which is the most excellent fasting in the world. If you speak of thanksgiving, he does not give thanks by laws and ordinances, but having in himself a law of thankfulness, and an ordinance of love engraven upon, and deeply radicated in his soul, delights to live unto God, and to make his heart and life a living descant upon the goodness and love of God; which is the most divine way of thank-offering in the world; it is the hallelujah which the angels sing continually. In a word, wherever God hath a tongue to command, true godliness will find a hand to perform; whatever yoke Christ Jesus shall put upon the soul, religion will enable to bear it, yea, and to count it easy too; the mouth of Christ hath pronounced it easy, and the Spirit of Christ makes it easy. Let the commandment be what it will, it will not be grievous. The same spirit doth, in some measure, dwell in every Christian, which without measure dwelt in Christ, who counted it his meat and drink to do the will of his Father.

2. And more especially, the true Christian is free from any constraint as to the inward acts which he performeth. Holy love to God is one principal act of the gracious soul, whereby it is carried out freely, and with an ardent love towards the object that is truly and infinitely lovely and satisfactory, and to the enjoyment of it. I know indeed that this springs from self-indigency, and is commanded by the sovereignty of the Supreme Good, the object that the soul eyes: but it is properly free from any constraint. Love is an affection that cannot be extorted as fear is; nor forced by any external power, nor indeed internal either: the revenues of the King of Persia, or the treasures of Egypt, cannot commit a rape upon it, neither indeed can the soul itself raise and lay this spirit at pleasure; which made the poet complain of himself, as if he were not sole emperor at home.

Though the outward bodily acts of religion are ordinarily compelled, yet this pure, chaste, virgin affection cannot be forced; it seems to be kind a of a peculiarity in the soul, though under the jurisdiction of the understanding. By this property of it, it is elegantly described by the Spirit of God, “ If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.” It cannot be bought with money, or money-worth, cannot be purchased with gifts or arts; and if any should offer to bribe it, it would give him a sharp and scornful check, in the language of Peter to Simon, “ Thy money perish with thee;” love is no hireling, no base-born mercenary affection, but noble, free, and generous. Neither is it low-spirited and slavish, as fear is: therefore, when it comes to full age, it will not suffer the son of the bond-woman to divide the inheritance, the dominions of the soul with it; when it comes to be “perfect, it casteth out fear,”“ says the Apostle. Neither indeed is it directly under the authority of any law, whether human or divine: it is not begotten by the influence of a divine law, as a law, but as holy, just, and good, as we shall see more anon: the law of love; or, if you will, in the Apostle’s phrase, “the spirit of love, and of power, in opposition to the spirit of fear, doth more influence the believer in his pursuit of God than any law without him: this is as a win ST to the soul; whereas outward commandments are but as guides in his way, or, at most, but as spurs in his sides. The same I may say of holy delight in God, which is indeed the flower of love, or love grown up to its full age and stature, which hath no torment in it, and consequently no force upon it. Like unto which are holy confidence, faith, and hope, ingenuous and natural acts of the religious soul, whereby it hastens into the divine embraces, ’as the eagle hasteneth to the prey,” swiftly and speedily, and not by force and constraint, “ as a fool to the correction of the stocks,’** or a bear to the stake.

These are all genuine offsprings of holy religion in the soul, and they are utterly incapable of force; violence is contrary to the nature of them; for to use the Apostle’s words, with the change of one word, “ Hope that is forced, is not hope.’“

Now a little farther to explain this excellent property of true religion, we may a little consider the author, and the object of it. The author of this noble and free principle is God himself, who hath made it a partaker of his own nature, the agency of which is free; himself is the fountain of his own acts. The uncreated life and liberty hath given this privilege to the religious soul, in some sense, to have life and liberty in itself, and a dominion over its own acts. I do not know that any created being in the world hath more of divinity in it than the soul of man, as Cicero expresses himself; nor that anything in the soul doth more resemble the divine essence, than the noble freedom which the soul hath in itself; which freedom is never so divine and generous, as when it has God himself for its object. This excellent freedom is something of God in the soul of man, and therefore may justly claim the free spirit for its author; or the Son of God for its origin, according to that expression in John 8:36, “ If the Son shall make you free, then shall ye be free indeed.” But here it may be demanded, whether the command of God doth not actuate the pious soul, and set it upon its holy emotions? I confess indeed that the command of God is much eyed by a godly man, and is of great weight with him, and does in some sense lay a constraint upon him; but yet I think not so much the authority of the law, as the reasonableness and goodness of it, prevail principally with him. The religious soul does not so much eye the law under the notion of a command, as under the notion of holy, just, and good, as the Apostle speaks, and so embraces it, chooses it, and longs to be perfectly conformable to it. I do not think it so proper to say that a good man loves God, and all righteousness and holiness, and religious duties, by virtue of a command to do so, as by virtue of a new nature that God hath put into him, which doth instruct and prompt him so to do. A religious soul being reconciled to the nature of God, does embrace all his laws by virtue of the equitableness and perfection that he sees in them; not because they are commanded, but because they are in themselves to be desired, as David speaks, Psalms 19:10. In which Psalm the holy man gives us a full account why he did so love and esteem the laws and commandments of God, namely, because they are perfect, right, pure, clean, true, sweet, and lovely, as you will find, Psalms 19:7-10. To love the Lord our God with all our heart, and strength, and mind, is not only a duty, by virtue of that first and great commandment that doth require it; but indeed the highest privilege, honour, and happiness of the soul. To this purpose may that profession of the Psalmist’s be applied — “ I have chosen thy precepts;’“* and, “ I have chosen the way of truth.”

Choosing is an act of judgment and understanding, and respects the quality of the thing, more than the authority of the command. David did not stumble into the way of truth accidentally, by virtue of his education, or acquaintance, or the like circumstance; nor was he lashed or driven into it by the mere severity of a law without him; but he chose the way of truth, as that which was indeed most eligible, pleasant, and desirable. What our blessed Saviour says concerning himself, is also true of every true Christian in his measure; he makes it his meat and drink to do the will of God. Now, we know that men do not eat and drink because physicians prescribe it as a means to preserve life; but the sensual appetite is carried out towards food, because it is good, sweet, and suitable: and so the spiritual appetite is carried out towards spiritual food, not so much by the force of an external precept, as by the attractive power of that higher good which it finds suitable and sufficient for it. As for the object of this free and generous spirit of religion, it is no other than God himself principally and ultimately, and other things only as they are subservient to the enjoyment of him. God, as the Supreme Good, able to fill, and perfectly satisfy all the wants and indigencies of the soul, and so to make it wholly and eternally happy, is the proper object of the souFs most free and cheerful movements. The soul eyes God as the perfect and absolute Good, and God in Christ as an attainable good, and so finds every -way enough in this object, to encourage it to pursue after him, and throw himself upon him. Religion fixes upon God, as upon its own centre, as upon its proper and adequate object; it views God as the infinite and absolute Good, and so is drawn to him without any external force. The pious soul is overpowered indeed, but it is only with the infinite goodness of God, which exercises its sovereignty over all the faculties of the soul: which overpowering is so far from straitening or pinching it, that it makes it truly free and generous in its motions.

Religion wings the soul, and makes it take a flight freely and swiftly towards God and eternal life: it is of God, and by a sympathy that it hath with him, it carries the soul out after him, and into conjunction with him. In a word, the pious soul being loosed from self-love, emptied of self-fulness, beaten out of all self-satisfaction, and delivered from all selfconfining lusts, wills, interests, and ends, and being mightily overcome with a sense of a higher and more excellent good, goes after that freely, centres upon it firmly, grasps after it continually, and had rather be that than what itself is, as seeing that the nature of that Supreme Good is infinitely more excellent and desirable than its own.

Thus have I briefly explained and confirmed the freeness of this principle in the truly pious soul, I would now make some little improvement of it, but that it seems needful I should here interweave a cautionary concession or two.

1. It must be granted, that some things without the soul may be motives, in our common sense, and encouragements to the soul to quicken, and hasten, and strengthen it in its religious acts. Though grace be an internal principle, and most free from any constraint, yet it may be excited, or stirred up, as the Apostle speaks, 2 Timothy 1:6, by such means as God hath appointed hereunto, as prayer, meditation, reading, as the Apostle intimates in the body of that fore-quoted Epistle. But perhaps there will a question arise concerning some other things, which may seem to lay a constraint upon the spirits of men. I deny not but that the seemingly religious emotions of many men are merely violent, and their devotion is purely forced, as we shall see by and by; but I affirm, and I think have confirmed it, that true and sincere religion is perfectly free and unconstrained. This being premised; now, if you ask me, what I think of aflSictions; I confess God doth ordinarily use them as means to make good men better, and it may be sometimes to make bad men good: these may be as weights to hasten and speed the souFs motion towards God, but they do not principally originate such motions. If you ask me of temporal prosperity, commonly called mercies and blessings, of promises and rewards propounded; I confess they may be as oil to the wheels, and ought to quicken and encourage to the study of true and powerful godliness; but they are not the spring of the souFs emotions; they ought to be unto us, as dew upon the grass to refresh and fructify the soul; but it is the root which properly gives life and growth.

It may be granted, that there is a kind of constraint and necessity lying upon the pious soul in its holy and most excellent motions: according to that of the Apostle — “ The love of Christ constraineth us;” and again — “ Necessity is laid upon me*” to preach the gospel. But yet it holds good, that grace is a most free principle in the soul, and that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. For the constraint that the Apostle speaks of is not opposed to freedom of soul, but to not acting; »ow although the soul, so principled and spirited, cannot but act, yet it acts freely. Those things that are according to nature, though they be done necessarily, yet are they done with the greatest freedom imaginable. The water flows, and the fire burns necessarily yet freely. Religion is a new nature in the soul; and the religious soul being touched effectually with the sense, and impressed with the influences of divine goodness, fulness, and perfection, is carried indeed necessarily towards God, as its proper centre, and yet its motions are pure, free, generous, and with the greatest delight and pleasure conceivable. The necessity that lay upon Paul to preach the gospel is not to be understood of any external violence that was done to him, much less of bodily necessity, by reason of which many men serve their own bellies in that great function, more than the Lord Jesus; for though he preached the gospel necessarily, yet did he preach freely and willingly, as he often professeth. The pious man cannot but love God as his chief good, yet he delights in this necessity under which he lieth, and is exceeding glad that he finds his heart framed and enlarged to love him. I say enlarged, because God is such an object, as does not contract and pinch and straiten the soul, as all created objects do, but ennoble, ampliate, and enlarge it. The sinful soul, the more it lets out, and lays out, and spends itself upon the creature, the more it is straitened and contracted, and the native freedom of it is enslaved, debased, and destroyed; but grace does establish and ennoble the freedom of the soul, and restore it to its primitive perfection: so that a pious soul is never more at large, more at rest, more at liberty, than when it finds itself delivered from all self-confining creature-loves and passions and under the most powerful influences and constraint of infinite love and goodness. By this that hath been said of the free and generous spirit of true religion, we may learn what to think of the forced devotion of many pressed soldiers of Christ in his church militant; that there is a vast difference and distance between the pressed, and unpressed Christian. Though indeed the freedom of the will cannot be destroyed, yet, in opposition to a principle, many men’’s devotion may be said to be wrung out of them, and their obedience may be said to be constrained. 1 shall explain it briefly in two or three particulars.

(1.) Men force themselves, many times, to some things in religion that are besides, yea, and against their nature and genius. I need not instance in a slight conformity to the letter of the law, and some external duties which they force themselves to perform, as to hear, pray, give alms, or the like: in all which the violent and unnatural obedience of a Pharisee may be more popular and specious, than the true and genuine obedience of a free-born disciple of Jesus Christ. If going on hunting, and catching of venison might denominate a good and dutiful son, Esau may indeed be as acceptable to his father as Jacob; but God is not such a father as Isaac, whose affections were bribed with fat morsels; he feeds not upon the pains of his children, nor lives on the sweat of their brows. I doubt not but that an unprincipled Christian, that hath the heart of a slave, may also force himself to imitate the more spiritual part of religion, and, as it were, to act over the very temper and disposition of a son of God. Therefore we read of a semblance of joy and zeal which was found in some, whom yet our Saviour reckons no better than stony ground, and of great ecstasies in others, whom yet the Apostle supposes may come to nothing, and what appearance of the most excellent and divine graces of patience, and contempt of the world, many of the sourer sort of monastical devotees, and our mongrel breed of CathoUcs, the Quakers, do make at this day, all men know: nay, some of the last sort do seem to themselves, I believe, to act over the temper and experience of the chief Apostles, rejoicing with Peter, and the rest, that they are “counted worthy to suffer shame,”“’ and keeping a catalogue of their stripes with Paul, and in these things I am confident, to use the Apostle’s words, that they think themselves “not a whit behind the very chief Apostles:’’ nay, they are not ashamed to lay claim to that grace of graces, self-denial, which they have forced themselves to act over so artificially, that even a wise man might almost be deceived into a favourable opinion of them, but that we know that whilst they profess it they destroy it; for it is contrary to the nature of self-denial, to magnify and boast itself: and indeed it is very evident to a wise observer, that these men, by a pretence of voluntary humility, and counterfeit self-denial, do, in truth, endeavour most of all to establish their own righteousness, and erect an idol of self-supremacy in themselves, and do really fall in love with an avTapKua, or self-sufficiency, instead of the infinite fulness of God.

Now there seem to be three things in a formal hypocrite that do especially force a kind of devotion, and show of religion from him, namely, consciousness of guilt, self-love, and false apprehensions of God. 1st. There is in all men a natural consciousness of guilt, arising from that imperfect and glimmering light they have of God, and of their duty towards him; which, though it be in some men more quick and stinging, in others more remiss and languid, yet, I think, is not utterly extinguished and choked, no, not in the worst and most dissolute men, but that it doth sometimes beget a bitter sadness in the midst of their sweetest merriments, and doth disturb their most supine and secure rest, by fastening its stings in their very souls at some time or other, and filling them with agonies and anguish, and haunting them with dreadful apparitions, which they cannot be perfectly rid of, any more than they can run away from themselves. This foundation of hell is laid in the bowels of sin itself, as a preface to eternal horror.

Now, although some more profligate and desperate wretches do furiously bluster through these briars, yet others are so caught in them, that they cannot escape these pangs and throes, except they make a composition, and enter into terms to live more honestly, or at least, less scandalously. In which undertaking they are carried on in the second place, by the power of self-love, or a natural desire of selfpreservation: for the worst of men hath so much reason left him, that he could wish that himself were happy, though he hath not so much light as to discover, nor so much true freedom of will as to choose, the right way to happiness. Conscience having discovered the certain reward and wages of sin, self-love will easily prompt men to do something or other to escape it. But now, what shall they do? why, religion is the only expedient that can be found out; and therefore they begin to think how they may become friends with God; they will up and be doing. But how come they to run into so great a mistake about religion? why, their false and gross apprehensions of God, in the third place, do drive them from him, in the way of superstition and hypocrisy, instead of leading them in the way of sincere love, and self-resignation to him. Self being the great Diana of every natural man, and the only standard by which he measures all things, he knows not how to judge of God himself, but by this; and so he comes to fancy God in a dreadful manner, as an austere, passionate, surly, revengeful majesty, and so something must be done to appease him: but yet he fancies this angry Deity to be of an impotent, mercenary temper like himself, and not hard to be appeased either; and so imagines that some cheap services, specious oblations, external courtesies, will engage him, and make him a friend; a sheep, or a goat, or a bullock, under the Old Testament; a prayer, or a sacrament, or an alms, under the New: for it is reconciliation to an angry God that he aims at, not union with a good God; he seeks to be reconciled to God, not united to him, though indeed these two can never be divided. Thus we see how a man void of the life and spirit of religion, yet forces himself to do God a kind of worship, and pay him a kind of homage.

(2.) Sometimes men may be said, in a sense, to be forced by other men, to put on a mask of holiness, a dress of religion. And this constraint men may lay upon men by their tongues, hands, and eyes. By their tongues, in the business of education, often and ardent exhortation and inculcation of things divine and heavenly; and thus an unjust man, like the unjust judge in the gospel, though he fear not God sincerely, yet may be overcome by the importunity of his father, friend, minister, tutor, to do some righteous acts. This seems to have been the case of Joash king of Judah, the spring-head of whose religion was no higher than the instructions of his tutor and guardian Jehoiada the high-priest. By their hands; that is, either by the enacting and executing of penal laws upon them, or by the holy example which they continually set before them. By their eyes; that is, by continually observing and watching their behaviour; when many eyes are upon men, they must do something to satisfy the expectations of others, and purchase a reputation to themselves. It may be said, that sometimes God doth lay an external force upon men; as particularly by his severe judgments, or threatenings of judgments, awakening them, humbling them, and constraining them to some kind of worship and religion. Such a forced devotion as this was the humiliation of Ahab, and the supplication of Saul. For God himself acting upon men, only from without them, is far from producing a living principle of free and noble religion in the sovd.

Now, the better to discern this forced and violent religion, I will briefly describe it by three or four of its properties, with which I will shut up this point.

1. This forced religion is, for the most part, dry and spiritless. I know, indeed, that fancy may be screwed up to a high pitch of joy and transport, so as to raise the mind into a kind of rapture, as I have formerly hinted in my discourse upon these words. A mere artificial and counterfeit Christian may be so strongly acted on by imagination, and the power of self-love, that he may seem to himself to be fuller of God than the sober and constant soul.

You may sec hov/ the hypocritical Pharisees, swollen with self-conceit, gloried over the poor man that had been blind, but now saw more than all they, “ Thou wast altogether born in sin, and dost thou teach us?” — and indeed over the whole people, “ This people that knoweth not the law is cursed.” A counterfeit Christian may rise high as a meteor, and blaze much as a comet, which is yet drawn up by mere force from the surface of the earth or water. And as to the external and visible acts and duties of religion, which depend much upon the temper and constitution of the body, it may easily be conceived and accounted for, how the mimical and mechanical Christian may rise higher in these, and be more zealous, watchful, and cheerful, than many truly religious and sincere men, as having greater power of quickness and fancy, and a greater portion of animal spirits; upon which the motions and actions of the body do mainly depend. The animal spirits may so nimbly serve the soul in these corporal acts, that the whole transaction may be a fair imitation of the motions of the divine Spirit, and one would verily think there were a gracious principle in the soul itself This seems to be notably exemplified in Captain Jehu, whose religious actions, as he would fain have them be esteemed, were indeed rather fury than zeal, and proceeded more from his own fiery spirits, than from that spirit of fire, or spirit of burning, which is of God. But commonly this forced devotion is jejune and dry, void of zeal and warmth, and drives on heavily in pursuit of the God of Israel, as Pharaoh did in pursuit of the Israel of God, when his chariot-wheels were taken off. God’s drawing the soul from within, as a principle, doth indeed cause that soul to run after him, but you know the motion of those things that are drawn by external force is commonly heavy, slow, and languid.

2. This forced religion is penurious and needy.

Something the slavish-spirited Christian must do to appease an angry God, or to allay a storming conscience, as I hinted before; but it shall be as little as may be. He is ready to grudge God so much of his time and strength, and to find fault that Sabbaths come so thick, and last so long, and that duties are to be performed so often: so he is described by the Prophet, “When will the Sabbath be past, and the new moon gone? ““ But yet I will not deny, but that this kind of religion may be very liberal and expensive too, and run out much into the branches of external duties, as is the manner of many trees that bear no fruit; for so did the base spirit of the Pharisees, whose often fasting, and long praying, is recorded by our Saviour in the gospel, but not with approbation. Therefore these are not the things by which you must take measure, and make estimate of your religion. But in the great things of the law, in the grand duties of mortification, self-denial, and resignation; here this forced religion is always very stingy and penurious. In the duties that do nearly touch upon their beloved lusts, they will be as strict with God as may be, they will break with him for a small matter, God must have no more than his due, as they blasphemously phrase it in their hearts; with the slothful servant in the gospel, “Lo, there thou hast that is thine; ’’ self and the world sure may be allowed the rest. They will not part with all for Christ. Is it not a little one? let me escape thither, and take up my abode there, said Lot. They will not give up themselves entirely unto God; “the Lord pardon me in this one thing,”“ cries Naaman; so they, in this or that, let God hold me excused. The slavish-spirited Christian is never more shrunk up within himself, than when he is to converse with God indeed: but the pious soul is never freer, larger, gladder, than when he doth most intimately and familiarly converse with God. The soul that is free as to liberty, is free also as to liberality and expenses; and that not only in external, but internal and spiritual obedience, and compliance with the will of God; he gives himself wholly up to God, knows no interest of his own, keeps no reserve for himself, or for the creature.

3. This forced religion is uneven, as depending upon inconstant causes. As land-floods, that have no spring within themselves, vary their motions, are swift and slow, high and low, according as they are supplied with rain; even so these men’s motions in religion, depending upon fancy for the most part, than which nothing is more fickle and flitting, have no constancy nor consistency in them.

I know indeed, that the spirits of the best men cannot always keep one pace, nor their lives be always of one piece; but yet they are never willingly quite out of the call or compass of religion. But this I also touched upon formerly. Therefore,

4. This forced religion is not permanent. The meteors will down again, and be choked in the earth whence they arose. Take away the weight, and the motion ceases; take away Jehoiada, and Joash stands still, yea, runs backward. But this I shall speak more to, when I come to speak of the last property of religion, namely, its perseverance.