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Honest.] Fair or beautiful: the same word doth fitly signify goodness and beauty: For that which is the truest and most lasting beauty, grows fresher in old age, as the Psalmist speaks of the righteous", as trees planted in the house of God. Could the beauty of virtue be seen, said a philosopher, it would draw all to love it. A christian holy conversation hath such a beauty, as when they that are strangers to it begin to discern it any thing right, they cannot chuse but love it; and where it begets not love, yet it silences calumny, or at least evinces its falshood.

The goodness or beauty of a christian's conversation consisting in symmetry and conformity to the word of God as its rule, he ought diligently to study that rule, and to square his ways by it; not to walk at random, but to apply that rule to every step at home and abroad, and to be as careful to keep the beauty of his ways unspotted, as those women are of their faces and attire, that are most studious of comeliness.

But so far are we that call ourselves christians from this exact regard of our conversation, that the most part not only have many foul spots, but they themselves, and all their ways, are nothing but defilement, all one spot, as our apostle calls them, blots are they and spots, and even they that are christians indeed, yet are not so watchful and accurate in all their ways as becomes; but stain their holy profession either with pride or covetousness, or contentions, or some other such like uncomeliness.

Let us all therefore resolve more to study this good and comely conversation the Apostle here exhorts to, that it may be such as becometh the gospel of Christ, as St. Paul desires his Philippians, i. 27. And if you live amongst profane persons, that will be to you as the unbelieving Gentiles were to these believing Jews that lived amongst them, traducers of you, and given to speak evil of you, and of re

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ligion in you, trouble not yourselves with many apologies and clearings, when you are evil spoken of, but let the tract of your life answer for you, your honest and blameless conversation: that will be the shortest, and most real and effectual way of confuting all obloquies. As when one in the schools was proving by a sophistical argument, that there could be no motion, the philosopher answered it fully and shortly, by rising up and walking. If thou wouldst pay them home, this is a kind of revenge not only allowed thee, but recommended to thee; be avenged on evil speakings by well-doing, shame them from it. It was a king that said, It was kingly to do well and be ill spoke of. Well may christians acknowledge it to be true, when they consider, that it was the lot of their king Jesus Christ; and well may they be content, seeing he hath made them likewise kings, (as we heard, v. 9) to be conformable to him in this too. This kingly way of suffering, to be unjustly evil spoken of, and still to go on in doing the more good, always aiming in so doing, (as our Lord did) at the glory of our heavenly Father, that is the third thing.

III. The good end or certain effect of this care recommended, That they may glorify God in the day of their visitation. He says not, they shall praise or commend you, but shall glorify God. What way soever this time, this day of visitation be taken, the effect itself is this, They shall glorify God. It is this the apostle still holds before their eye, and that upon which a christian doth willingly set his eye, and keep it fixed on it in all his ways; he doth not teach them to be sensible of their own esteem as it concerns themselves, but only as the glory of their God is interested in it. Were it not for this, a generous minded christian could set a very light rate upon all the thoughts and speeches of men concerning him, whether good or bad; and could easily drown all their mistakes in the conscience of the favour and approbation of his God. It is a small thing for me to be judged of man, or VOL. I. X

the day of man, he that judgeth me is the Lord". Man hath a day of judging, but it and his judgment with it, soon passes away; but God hath his day, and it and his sentence abideth for ever, as the apostle there adds, as if he should say, I appeal to God. But considering that the religion he professes, and the God whom he worships in that religion, are wronged by those reproaches, and that the calumnies cast upon Christians, reflect upon their Lord; this is the thing that makes him sensible, he feels on that side only, the reproaches of them that reproach thee are fallen upon me, says the Psalmist: and this makes a christian desirous, even to men to vindicate his religion and his God, without regard to himself; because he may say, the reproaches of them that reproach only me, have fallen upon thee.

This is his intent in the holiness and integrity of his life, that God may be glorified; this is the axis about which all this good conversation moves and turns continually.

And he that forgets this, let his conversation be never so plausible and spotless, knows not what it is to be a christian; as they say of the eagles, who try their young ones whether they be of the right kind or not, by holding them before the sun, and if they can look stedfastly upon it, they own them, if not, they throw them away. This is the true evidence of an upright and real christian, to have a stedfast eye on the glory of God, the Father of Lights. In all, Let God be glorified, says the christian, and that suffices: that is the sum of his desires; he is far from glorying in himself, or seeking to raise himself, for he knows that of himself he is nothing, but by the free grace of God he is what he is. "Whence any glorying to thee, rotten"ness and dust? (says S. Bern.) whence is it to "thee if thou art holy Is it not the Holy Spirit "that hath sanctified thee? if thou couldst work "miracles, though they were done by thy hand,

P 1 Cor. iv. 3.

9 Psal. Ixix. 9.

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yet it were not by thy power, but by the power "of God."

To the end that my glory may sing praise unto thee, says David'. Whether his tongue, or his soul, or both. What he calls his glory he shews us; and what use he hath for it, namely, to give the Lord glory, to sing his praises, and that then it was truly David's glory when it was so employed, in giving glory to him, whose peculiar due glory is. What have we to do in the world as his creatures, once and again his creatures, his new creatures, created unto good works, but to exercise ourselves in those, and by those to advance his glory? that all may return to him, from whom all is, as the rivers run back to the sea from whence they came. Of him, and through him, and therefore, for him are all things, says the apostle. They that serve base gods, seek how to advance and aggrandize them. The covetous man studies to make his Mammon as great as he can; all his thoughts and pains run upon that service, and so do the voluptuous and ambitious for theirs; and shall not they that profess themselves to be the servants of the only great and the only true God, have their hearts much more, at least, as much possessed with desires of honouring and exalting him? Should not this be their predominant design and thought? What way shall I most advance the glory of my God? How shall I that am engaged more than they all, set in with the Heavens and the earth, and the other creatures, to declare his excellency, his greatness, and his goodness?

In the day of visitation.] The beholding of your good works may work this in them, that they may be gained to acknowledge and embrace that religion and that God, which for the present they reject; but that it may be thus, they must be visited with that same light and grace from above, which hath sanctified you. This I conceive is the sense of this word, though it may be, and is taken divers other * Eph. ii. 10.

Psal. xxx. 12.

* Rom. xi. 36.

ways by interpreters. Possibly in this day of visitation is implied the clearer preaching of the gospel amongst those Gentiles, where the dispersed Jews dwell; and that when they should compare the light of that doctrine with the light of their lives, and find the agreement betwixt them, that might be helpful to their effectual calling, and so they might glorify God: but to the end that they might do thus indeed, along with the word of God, and the good works of his people, there must be a particular visiting of their souls by the Spirit of God. Your good conversation may be one good mean of their conversion therefore this may be a motive to that; but to make it an effectual mean, this day of gracious visitation must dawn upon them, the day spring from on high must visit them, as it is".

Ver. 13. Submit yourselves unto every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king, as supreme,

14. Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well.

It is one of the falsest, and yet one of the commonest prejudices that the world hath always entertained against true religion, that it is an enemy to civil power and government. The adversaries of the Jews charged this fault upon their city, the then seat of the true worship of God. The Jews charged it upon the preachers of the christian religion, as they pretended the same quarrel against Christ himself. And generally the enemies of the christians in the primitive times loaded them with the slauder of rebellion and contempt of authority: therefore our apostle descending to particular rules of christian life, by which it may be blameless; and to silence calumny, begins with this, not only as a thing of prime importance in itself, but as particularly fit for those he wrote to, (being both Jews and

" Luke i. 78.

a Ezra iv. 15.

b Acts xvii. 7.

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