tell it to all the world, much less at all times, and in all circumstances; but we must never deny that, which we believe to be the cause of God, in such circumstances, in which we can and ought to glorify him. But this extends also to other instances. He that swears a false oath with his lips, and unswears it with his heart, hath deceived one more than he thinks for; himself is the most abused person: and when my action is contrary to men, they will reprove me; but when it is against my own persuasion, I cannot but reprove myself; and am witness, and accuser, and party, and guilty, and then God is the judge, and his anger will be a fierce executioner, because we do the Lord's work deceitfully.

3. They are" deceitful in the Lord's work," that reserve one faculty for sin, or one sin for themselves; or one action to please their appetite, and many for religion.-Rabbi Kimchi taught his scholars, "Cogitationem pravam Deus non habet vice facti, nisi concepta fuerit in Dei fidem et religionem;""That God is never angry with an evil thought, unless it be a thought of apostacy from the Jews' religion;" and therefore, provided that men be severe and close in their sect and party, they might roll in lustful thoughts; and the torches they light up in the temple, might smoke with anger at one end, and lust at the other, so they did not flame out in egressions of violence and injustice, in adulteries and fouler complications: nay, they would give leave to some degrees of evil actions; for R. Moses and Selomoh taught, that if the most part of the man's actions were holy and just, though in one he sinned often, yet the greater ingredient should prevail, and the number of good works should outweigh the lesser account of evil things; and this pharisaical righteousness is too frequent even among Christians. For who almost is there that does not count fairly concerning himself, if he reckons many virtues upon the stock of his religion, and but one vice upon the stock of his infirmity; half a dozen to God, and one for his company, or his friend; his education or his appetite? And if he hath parted from his folly, yet he will remember the flesh-pots, and please himself with a fantastic sin, and call it home through the gates of his memory, and place it at the door of fancy, that there he may behold it, and consider concerning what he hath parted withal, out of the fears and terrors of religion, and a neces

sary unavoidable conscience. Do not many men go from sin to sin, even in their repentance? they go backward from sin to sin, and change their crime as a man changes his uneasy load, and shakes it off from one shoulder to support it with the other. How many severe persons, virgins, and widows are so pleased with their chastity, and their abstinence even from lawful mixtures, that by this means they fall into a worse pride? Insomuch that I remember St. Augustine said, "Audeo dicere superbis continentibus expedit cadere," 'They that are chaste and proud, it is sometimes a remedy for them to fall into sin," and by the shame of lust to cure the devil of pride, and by the sin of the body to cure the worser evils of the spirit; and therefore he adds, that he did believe, God in a severe mercy did permit the barbarous nations, breaking in upon the Roman empire, to violate many virgins professed in cloisters and religious families to be as a mortification of their pride, lest the accidental advantages of a continent life should bring them into the certain miseries of a spiritual death, by taking away their humility, which was more necessary than their virgin-state; it is not a cure that men may use, but God permits it sometimes with greater safety through his wise conduct and overruling providence; St. Peter was safer by his fall (as it fell out in the event of things) than by his former confidence. Man must never cure a sin by a sin; but he that brings good out of our evil he can when he please. But I speak it, to represent how deceitfully many times we do the work of the Lord. We reprove a sinning brother, but do it with a pompous spirit; we separate from scandal, and do it with glory, and a gaudy heart; we are charitable to the poor, but will not forgive our unkind enemies; or, we pour relief into their bags, but we please ourselves and drink drunk, and hope to commute with God, giving the fruit of our labours or effluxes of money for the sin of our souls: and upon this account it is, that two of the noblest graces of a Christian are to very many persons made a savour of death, though they were intended for the beginning and the promotion of an eternal life; and those are faith and charity; some men think if they have faith, it is enough to answer all the accusations of sin, which our consciences or the devils make against us: if I be a wanton person, yet my faith shall hide it, and faith shall cover

the follies of drunkenness, and I may all my life rely upon faith, at last to quit my scores. For he that is most careful is not innocent, but must be saved by faith; and he that is least careful may have faith, and that will save him. But because these men mistake concerning faith, and consider not, that charity or a good life is a part of that faith that saves us, they hope to be saved by the word, they fill their bellies with the story of Trimalcion's banquet, and drink drunk with the news of wine; they eat shadows, and when they are drowning, catch at the image of the trees, which hang over the water, and are reflected from the bottom.

But thus many men do with charity; "Give alms and all things shall be clean unto you," said our blessed Saviour: and therefore, many keep a sin alive, and make account to pay for it, and God shall be put to relieve his own poor at the price of the sin of another of his servants; charity shall take lust or intemperance into protection, and men will not be kind to their brethren, unless they will be also at the same time unkind to God. I have understood concerning divers vicious persons, that none have been so free in their donatives and offerings to religion and the priest as they: and the hospitals that have been built, and the highways mended at the price of souls, are too many for Christendom to boast of in behalf of charity. But as others mistake concerning faith, so these do concerning its twin-sister. The first had faith without charity, and these have charity without hope; "For every one that hath this hope," that is, the hope of receiving the glorious things of God promised in the Gospel, "purifies himself even as God is pure;" faith and charity too, must both suppose repentance; and repentance is the abolition of the whole body of sin, the purification of the whole man. But the sum of the doctrine and case of conscience in this particular is this.

1. Charity is a certain cure of sins that are past, not that are present. He that repents and leaves his sin, and then relieves the poor, and pays for his folly by a diminution of his own estate, and the supplies of the poor, and his ministering to Christ's poor members, turns all his former crimes. into holiness; he purges the stains and makes amends for his folly, and commutes for the baser pleasure with a more noble usage: so said Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, "Break off

thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poort:" first be just, and then be charitable; for it is pity, alms,-which is one of the noblest services of God, and the greatest mercy to thy brother, should be spent upon sin, and thrown away upon folly.

2. Faith is the remedy of all our evils; but then, it is never of force, but when we either have endeavoured or undertaken to do all good; this in baptism, that after: faith and repentance at first; and faith and charity at last; and, because we fail often by infirmity, and sometimes by inadvertency; sometimes by a surprise and often by omission; and all this even in the midst of a sincere endeavour to live justly, and perfectly; therefore the passion of our Lord pays for this, and faith lays hold upon that. But without a hearty and sincere intent, and vigorous prosecution of all the parts of our duty, faith is but a word, not so much as a cover to a naked bosom, nor a pretence big enough to deceive persons, that are not willing to be cozened.

3. The bigger ingredient of virtue and evil actions will prevail, but it is only when virtue is habitual, and sins are single, interrupted, casual, and seldom, without choice and without affection; that is, when our repentance is so timely, that it can work for God more than we served under the tyranny of sin; so that if you will account the whole life of man, the rule is good, and the greater ingredient shall prevail; and he shall certainly be pardoned and excepted, whose life is so reformed, whose repentance is so active, whose return is so early, that he hath given bigger portions to God, than to God's enemy. But if we account so, as to divide the measures in present possession, the bigger part cannot prevail; a small or a seldom sin spoils not the sea of piety; but when the affection is divided, a little ill destroys the whole body of good; the cup in a man's right hand must be акραTоÇ KEKEρаσμévos, it must be "pure, although it be mingled;" that is, the whole affection must be for God, that must be pure and unmingled; if sin mingles in seldom and unapproved instances, the drops of water are swallowed up with a whole vintage of piety, and the bigger ingredient is the prevailing; in all other cases it is not so: for one sin that we choose and love and delight in, will not be excused

Dan. iv. 27.

by twenty virtues: and as one broken link dissolves the union of the whole chain, and one jarring untuned string spoils the whole music; so is every sin that seizes upon a portion of our affections; if we love one, that one destroys the acceptation of all the rest: and as it is in faith, so it is in charity. He that is a heretic in one article, hath no saving faith in the whole; and so does every vicious habit, or unreformed sin, destroy the excellency of the grace of charity; a wilful error in one article is heresy, and every vice in one instance is malice, and they are perfectly contrary, and a direct darkness to the two eyes of the soul, faith and charity.

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4. There is one deceit more yet, in the matter of the extension of our duty, destroying the integrity of its constitution for they do the work of God deceitfully, who think God sufficiently served with abstinence from evil, and converse not in the acquisition and pursuit of holy charity and religion. This Clemens Alexandrinus affirms of the pharisees; they were μετὰ ἀποχὴν κακῶν δικαιούμενοι, they hoped to be "justified by abstinence from things forbidden;" but if we will be βασιλικοί, “ sons of the kingdom,” we must μετὰ τῆς ἐν τούτοις τελειώσεως καὶ τὸν πλησίον ἀγαπᾶν, καὶ εὐεργετεῖν; besides this, and supposing a proportionable perfection in such an innocence, we must love our brother and do good to him,' and glorify God by a holy religion, in the communion of saints, in faith and sacraments, in alms and counsel, in forgivenesses and assistances. "Flee from evil, and do the thing that is good, and dwell for evermore," said the Spirit of God in the Psalms: and St. Peter, "Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust, give all diligence to add to your faith virtue, to virtue patience, to patience godliness, and brotherly-kindness, and charity:" many persons think themselves fairly assoiled, because they are no adulterers, no rebels, no drunkards, not of scandalous lives; in the meantime, like the Laodiceans, they are "naked and poor;" they have no catalogue of good things registered in heaven, no treasures in the repositories of the poor, neither have the poor often prayed concerning them, "Lord, remember thy servants for this thing at the day of judgment." A negative religion is in many things the effects of laws, and the appendage of sexes, the product of education, the issues of company and of the public, or the daughter of fear and