have received of the Lord; and how you have discharged that you have received of us in the Lord's name. Against which day your consciences stand charged with many things at many times heard. "O seek not death in the error of your Wisd. 1.12. life," deceive not yourselves; think not that when my words shall be at an end, both they shall vanish in the air and you never hear of them again. Surely you shall, the day is coming when it shall be required again at your hands. A fearful day for all those that for a little riches think basely of others; upon all those that repose in these vain riches-as they shall see then, a vain confidence; upon all those that enjoy only with the belly and the back, and do either no good, or miserable sparing good, with their riches; whose riches shall be with them to their destruction. Beloved, when your life shall have an end, as an end it shall have, when the terror of death shall be upon you; when your soul shall be cited to appear before God, in novissimo; I know and am perfectly assured all these things will come to mind. again, you will perceive and feel that which possibly now you do not. The devil's charge cometh then, who will press these points in another manner than we can; then it will be too late. Prevent his charge, I beseech you, by regarding and remembering this now. Now is the time while you may, and have time wherein, and ability wherewith; think upon it and provide for eternal life; you shall never in your life stand in so great need of your riches as in that day; provide for that day, and provide for eternal life. It will not come yet it is true, it will be long in coming; but when it comes, it will never have an end.

This end is so good that I will end with "eternal life," which you see is St. Paul's end. It is his and the same shall be my end, and I beseech God it may be all our ends. To God immortal, invisible, and only wise, God Who hath prepared this eternal life for us, Who hath taught us this day how to come unto it, Whose grace be ever with us, and leave us not till it have thereto brought us, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be all glory, power, praise, and thanksgiving, now and for ever. Amen.

ONE OF THE SERMONS

UPON THE

SECOND COMMANDMENT,

PREACHED IN THE

PARISH CHURCH OF ST. GILES, CRIPPLEGATE,

ON THE NINTH OF JANUARY, A.D. MDXCH.

SERM.

11.

I.

ACTS ii. 42.

And they continued in the Apostles' doctrine, and fellowship, and breaking of bread and prayers.

[Erant autem perseverantes in doctrind Apostolorum, et communicatione fractionis panis, et orationibus. Lat. Vulg.]

[And they continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. Eng. Trans.]

There had been, two sundry days before, Sermons concerning the positive outward worship of God, out of this Text, consisting of these four parts :

1. The Apostles' doctrine; 2. their society or fellowship; 3. breaking of bread; 4. prayers.

The effect of this last was to acquaint the auditory with sundry imaginations by divers erected, which many unstable persons do run after and worship instead of those four, the Apostles' doctrine, &c. The order was to begin with the doctrine first, and so after through the rest as they stand.

THAT Such imaginations there are, Solomon complaineth Eccl. 7. 29. of ratiocinia plurima, whereby men were withdrawn from the simplicity of their creation. And under the Gospel, St. Paul likewise of venti doctrinarum, whereby Christian people

began to be blown and carried about from the steadfastness of Eph. 4. 14. the truth.

But especially under the Gospel. For that, as St. Augustine saith, Videns diabolus templa dæmonum descri, et in nomen De Civit. 18. [c. 51. Christi currere genus humanum, &c. Seeing idolatrous images init. would down, he bent his whole device in place of them to erect and set up divers imaginations, that the people instead of the former might bow down to these and worship them. Since which it hath been and is his daily practice, either to broach doctrinas noras et peregrinas, "new imaginations never Heb. 13.9. heard of before," or to revive the old and new dress them. And these for that by themselves they will not utter-to mingle and to card with "the Apostles' doctrine," &c., that at the least yet he may so vent them.

And this indeed is the disease of our age, and the just complaint we make of it: that there hath been good riddance made of images; but for imaginations, they be daily stamped in great number, and instead of the old images set up, deified and worshipped, carrying the names and credit of "the Apostles' doctrine," government, &c.

Rev. 2. 14.

Touching these imaginations then, to find some heads of them. They be, in respect of the devil who inspireth them, called doctrinæ dæmoniorum. In respect of the instruments, 1 Tim. 4. 1. by whom he breathes them out, doctrinæ hominum; as "the Matt. 15.9; doctrine of the Pharisees," "the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes." Rev. 2 15. These men were of two sorts, as St. Paul sorteth them:

16. 12.

30.

1. "wolves" which from without entered into the Church; Acts 20.29, 2. "men arising from among themselves," teaching "perverse things."

1. Those which from without entered, were philosophers Imagina

from the Gentiles, Pharisees from the Jews. Both which tions from bred many imaginations in Christian religion.

without the

Against them both St. Paul giveth a double caveat: not to Church. be seduced by "philosophy," meaning, as he sheweth, the "vain Col. 2. 8. deceit" of that profession-that is the former; 2. nor with the human traditions and rudiments of the Pharisees-that is the latter. To avoid "oppositions of science falsely so called”— 1 Tim. 6. there is the first. To avoid " Jewish fables" and traditions- Tit. 1. 14. there is the second. For from these two forges came a great part of the imaginations which ensued. Each of these sects

20.

SERM. esteeming his "old wine" good, and consequently brewing it with the "new wine" of the Gospel.

Lu. 5. 37, 8, 9.

1. By Phi.

full, adv.

ret. Libel.

Imaginations by philosophy. First, by the course of the losophy. ccclesiastical history it appeareth that Simon Magus-who Vid. Ter of a heathen philosopher became a Christian, and was bapomn. He- tized-after, through "the gall of bitterness" wherein he was, c.c. 2. et fell away again and proved the first of all heretics. IIc first, and after, Valentine; and then, Basilides devised many Acts &. 23. Strange speculative fancies. And indeed, whosoever they be that dote about unprofitable curious speculations, from this kind they sprung first.

sq. inter

Routh.

Opusc.]

2. By Judaism.

Ep. 119. [ul. 55. s. 35. ad finem.]

After these, those two main heresies that so mightily troubled the Church: first, that of the Manichee, who brought a necessity upon all things by means of his duo principia, making men secure how they lived, because it was ordained what should become of them; secondly, the other of the Pelagian, who ascribed to man's free will and ability to keep God's law, and thereby made void the grace of Christ. Both these were but two bastard slips of corrupt philosophy: the former, an imagination issuing from the sect of the Stoics and their fatal destiny; the latter, from the sect of the Peripatetics, and their pure naturals.

Imaginations by Judaism. As the curious speculations came from the philosophers of the Gentiles, so whatsoever superstitious observations were imagined, came from the Pharisees and sects of the Jews. As Simon Magus is reckoned the first heretic, so Ebion the Jew is the second. And from him sprang the opinion of the necessity of Jewish observances, which was the occasion of the council in Acts the fifteenth chapter; and the opinion of "worshipping angels" as mediators, as Theodoret testifieth upon the second chapter of Colossians, the eighteenth verse. And for those ceremonies, as at the first they desired to retain those very same that were Judaical, so when it was withstood by the Apostles they did after but turn them, and new varnish them over into others like, and with them so clogged the Church as the Jews' estate was much more tolerable than the Christians'St. Augustine's complaint.

Now from these two sorts of persons proceeded those two several means whereby, as it were in two moulds, all imagi

nations have been cast, and the truth of God's word ever perverted. 1. From the Pharisee, that piecing out the new garment with old rags of traditions, that is, adding to and Mat. 9. 16. cking out God's truth with men's fancies, with the phylacteries and fringes of the Pharisees, who took upon them to observe many things beside it. 2. From the philosopher, Mark 7. 4. that wresting and tentering of the Scriptures, which St. Peter 2 Pet.3.16. complaineth of, with expositions and glosses newly coined, to make them speak that they never meant; giving such new and strange senses to places of Scripture, as the Church of Christ never heard of. And what words are there or can there be, that being helped out with the Pharisees' addition of a truth unwritten, or tuned with the philosopher's wrest of a devised sense-may not be made to give colour to a new imagination? Therefore the ancient Fathers thought it meet that they that would take upon them to interpret "the Apostles' doctrine," should put in sureties that their senses they gave were no other than the Church in former time hath acknowledged. It is true the Apostles indeed spake from the Spirit, and every affection of theirs was an oracle; but that, I take it, was their peculiar privilege. But all that are after them speak not by revelation, but by labouring in the word and learning; are not to utter their own fancies, and to desire to be believed upon their bare word-if this be not dominari fidei, to be lords of their auditors' faith,' I know not [See 1 Pet. what it is-but only on condition that the sense they now give be not a feigned sense, as St. Peter termeth it, but such a one as hath been before given by our fathers and forerunners in the Christian faith. "Say I this of myself," saith the Apostle, 1 Cor. 9. [1 8.] "saith not the law so too?" Give I this sense of mine own head? hath not Christ's Church heretofore given the like? Which one course, if it were straitly' holden, would rid our [' strictly. ed. 1661.] Church of many fond imaginations which now are stamped daily, because every man upon his own single bond is trusted to deliver the meaning of any Scripture, which is many times. nought else but his own imagination. This is the disease of our age. Not the Pharisee's addition, which is well left; but, as bad as it, the philosopher's gloss, which too much aboundeth. And I see no way but this to help it.

5. 3.]

Imaginations from the Christians. Secondly, from among 2 From

within by Christians.