many woful experiments. For how many instances of men are there among ourselves, who had once an honest zeal for the life and substance of religion, and made great conscience of living soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, but afterwards becoming bigots to such a sect or party, have diverted the stream of their zeal into another channel, where its irregular current hath only made a noise, and filled the world with a loud and turbulent clamour about little things, but as to those great and important duties upon which their happiness depends, hath been profoundly mute and indifferent: and so their religion, like an hectic body, hath by degrees been consumed by its own heats, whilst that zeal and fervour which should move and animate it hath been converted into its disease, and wholly evaporated into faction and turbulency: and whilst their zeal is thus misemployed about the little trifles of their sect, and they are ready to start at an innocent ceremony, and to swoon at the sight of an indifferent mode and appendage of religion, as if they were afraid lest it should infect them at a distance, they can swallow camels though they strain at these gnats, and glibly digest the grossest immoralities. 3. And lastly, schisms and unnecessary breaches of church-communion do naturally lead to downright irreligion. For when once a man departeth from an established church without a just warrant, there is nothing can confine or set shores to him; he hath no principles that can stay him any where, or set any measures of changing to him. For when upon a mere humour or fancy he hath run from the church to such a sect, what should hinder him from run ning from that sect to another, and so on from sect to sect, till he hath run himself out of all religion? He is rolling down a steep hill, and hath no principles to stay him; so that it is impossible to determine whither he will go, or where he will stop. He may perhaps stay at such an opinion; but if he doth, it is by chance; and if he doth not, he will be endlessly rolling from one opinion to another, and shifting his church as often as his almanack. For schism is a large labyrinth, that naturally divides and subdivides into infinite paths and alleys, wherein a man may wander to eternity, and the farther he goes, the more he may lose himself: and then, when he hath wandered a while out of one wild opinion into another, and still perceives that the farther he goes the more he is dissatisfied, it is a thousand to one if he doth not at last suspect and question all religion, as if the whole were an intricate maze of absurd or doubtful opinions, contrived on purpose to amuse men's minds, and entangle them in endless perplexities. For the schismatic, as I shewed before, doth commonly place a great part of his religion in that opinion upon which he divides and separates; so that if once he be dissatisfied with this, as in all probability he will quickly be, having begun already to ring changes, he will be under a great temptation to mistrust the whole religion to be as great an imposture as he finds this darling opinion is, especially after he hath run through several sets of opinions, and finds them at last to be all delusions. For as weak heads when they perceive the battlements shake are apt to suspect that the foundations are infirm; so weak understandings will be ready to suspect even the fundamental principles of religion, when once they perceive those darling notions totter which they have confidently presumed to superstruct upon it. Upon this account therefore I make no doubt, but that the atheism of this present age is very much owing to its sects and divisions. For how many woful examples have we of persons, who had once a great deal of zeal for and satisfaction in religion, that upon their causeless defection from the church's communion have run from sect to sect, and from one extravagant opinion to another, till being at last convinced of the cheats and impostures of them all, they have discarded religion itself, and made their last resort into atheism and infidelity. Since therefore schism hath so many mischiefs attending it, and such as do manifestly endanger our perseverance in religion, it highly concerns us, as we would hold out to the end in the course of our Christian warfare, to keep close to the communion of the church. VI. To our final perseverance in the Christian warfare, it is also necessary that we should not stint our progress in religion (out of a fond opinion that we are good enough already) to any determinate degrees or measures of goodness. For thus we are enjoined not only to have grace, but still to be growing in it, 2 Pet. iii. 18. and not only to do the work of the Lord, but to abound in the doing it, 1 Cor. xv. 58. and not only to walk in all well-pleasing to God, but to abound in so doing more and more, 1 Thess. iv. 1. to forget what is behind, i. e. the degrees of virtue and goodness we have already attained, and to be still pressing forward to the mark of our high calling, Phil. iii. 13, 14. The sense of all which is, that we should not limit ourselves to our present attainments, out of a slothful opinion that we are good enough already, but that we should still be proceeding on to farther and farther degrees of perfection. For holiness is every where enjoined in the gospel in unlimited and indefinite measures, and our progress in it had no other boundary than the farthermost degree of possible perfection. An injunction which will keep us for ever sufficiently employed, and oblige us to eternity to be still aspiring beyond our present attainments; and the neglect of this is doubtless the occasion of many a man's final miscarriage. They aim at no more than what is absolutely necessary to remove them from the brink of eternal perdition; and if they can but so far prevail against their sin, as to arrive at the lowermost degree of sincere obedience, and but just pass the line which separates between a bad and good state, that so if they die as they are they may hope to escape hell, and arrive at some degree of happiness, they think they have very fairly acquitted themselves. But now, besides that line which parts those two states of sin and grace is not so easily discernible but that you may very probably be deceived, and imagine that you are got over it into the state of grace, whilst you are yet upon the frontiers of the dominion of sin, and so may perish at last at the very mouth of your harbour; besides that it is a fearful sign that you are yet in your sins, that you design no farther but just to escape that everlasting ruin that attends them, which plainly shews that the fear of hell is the soul of your religion, and that there is not the least degree of true love to God intermingled with it, without which your religion will be altogether insignificant; besides all this, I say, while you rest in such an imperfect state of goodness, you dwell in the next neighbourhood to a sinful state, and so are in continual danger of returning thither again. For how is it possible you should be safe, while you stay upon the brink of that miserable state out of which you are but just emerged and recovered, and have so many strong inclinations within you, concurring with the numberless temptations without you, to thrust you headlong back again into it? So that if you would be secure, it is not sufficient for you just to get out of your sinful state, and stay there, but you must still be removing farther and farther from it, by proceeding on still to farther degrees of perfection. For you must consider that there is a vast distance between a state of sincere and of confirmed goodness, and that all the while you are passing on from the one to the other, you are more or less in danger of relapsing. For you have been sincerely good, ever since your first entrance into a firm and hearty resolution of amendment; but, alas! since that, how many times have you been in danger of relapsing into your old sinful courses again! What strong contentions have there been between your flesh and your spirit, your bad inclinations and your pious re solutions! And though the latter hath been most commonly victorious, yet how often hath it been yielding, yea, how often hath it been vanquished! Insomuch, that if you had not by a quick repentance revived it immediately, it had been dead long since, and you had been as much enslaved to your lusts as ever. And from these dangers you will never be wholly free, till you have utterly extinguished your vicious inclinations, and inwrought all the virtues of religion into your natures; and then you will be arrived to that confirmed state of good |