duct of souls. And there is nothing to be said against this, if we do not suffer the devil in this affair to abuse us, as he does many people in their opinions, teaching men to suspect there is a design and a snake under the plantain. But so may they suspect kings when they command obedience, or the Levites when they read the law of tithes, or parents when they teach their children temperance, or tutors when they watch their charge. However, it is better to venture the worst of the design, than to lose the best of the assistance: and he that guides himself, hath much work and much danger; but he that is under the conduct of another, his work is easy, little, and secure; it is nothing but diligence and obedience: and though it be a hard thing to rule well, yet nothing is easier than to follow and be obedient.

SERMON X.

PART III.

7. As it is a part of Christian prudence to take into the conduct of our souls a spiritual man for a guide; so it is also of great concernment that we be prudent in the choice of him, whom we are to trust in so great an interest.

Concerning which it will be impossible to give characters and significations particular enough to enable a choice, without the interval-assistances of prayer, experience, and the grace of God. He that describes a man, can tell you the color of his hair, his stature and proportion, and describe some general lines, enough to distinguish him from a Cyclops or a Saracen ; but when you chance to see the man, you will discover figures or little features, of which the description had produced in you no phantasm or expectation. And in the exterior significations of a sect, there are more semblances than in men's faces, and greater uncertainty in the signs; and what is faulty, strives so craftily to act the true and proper images of things; and the more they are defective in circumstances, the more curious they

are in forms; and they also use such arts of gaining proselytes, which are of most advantage towards an effect, and, therefore, such which the true Christian ought to pursue, and the Apostles actually did; and they strive to follow their pat terns in arts of persuasion, not only because they would seem like them, but because they can have none so good, so effective to their purposes; that it follows, that it is not more a duty to take care that we be not corrupted with false teachers, than that we be not abused with false signs: for we as well find a good man teaching a false proposition, as a good cause managed by ill men; and a holy cause is not always dressed with healthy symptoms, nor is there a cross always set on the doors of those congregations who are infected with the plague of heresy.

6

When St. John was to separate false teachers from true, he took no other course but to mark the doctrine which was of God, and that should be the mark of cognisance to distinguish right shepherds from robbers and invaders: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; he that denieth it, is not of God.' By this, he bids his scholars to avoid the present sects of Ebion, Cerinthus, Simon Magus, and such other persons as denied that Christ was at all before he came, or that he came really in the flesh and proper humanity. This is a clear note; and they that conversed with St. John, or believed his doctrine, were sufficiently instructed in the present questions. But this note will signify nothing to us; for all sects of Christians confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh,' and the following sects did avoid that rock, over which a great Apostle had hung out so plain a lantern.

In the following ages of the church, men have been so curious to signify misbelievers, that they have invented and observed some signs, which, indeed, in some cases were true, real appendages of false believers; but yet such which were also, or might be, common to them with good men and members of the catholic church. Some few I shall remark, and give a short account of them, that by removing the uncertain, we may fix our inquiries and direct them by certain significations, lest this art of prudence turn into folly and faction, error and secular design.

1. Some men distinguish error from truth by calling their adversaries' doctrine, "new and of yesterday." And certainly this is a good sign, if it be rightly applied; for since all Christian doctrine is that which Christ taught his church, and the Spirit enlarged or expounded, and the Apostles delivered; we are to begin the Christian era for our faith, and parts of religion by the period of their preaching; our account begins then, and whatsoever is contrary to what they taught is new and false, and whatsoever is besides what they taught is no part of our religion;—and then no man can be prejudiced for believing it or not;—and if it be adopted into the confessions of the church, the proposition is always so uncertain, that it is not to be admitted into the faith; and, therefore, if it be old in respect of our days, it is not, therefore, necessary to be believed; if it be new, it may be received into opinion according to its probability, and no sects nor interests are to be divided on such accounts. This only. I desire to be observed, that when a truth returns from banishment by a postliminium, if it was from the first, though the holy fire hath been buried, or the river ran under ground, yet we do not call that new; since newness is not to be accounted of by a proportion to our shortlived memories, or to the broken records and fragments of story left after the inundation of barbarism and war, and change of kingdoms, and corruption of authors; but, by its relation to the fountain of our truths, and the birth of our religion under our fathers in Christ, the holy Apostles and disciples. A camel was a new thing to them that saw it in the fable, but yet it was created as soon as a cow or the domestic creatures; and some people are apt to call every thing new which they never heard of before, as if all religion were to be measured by the standards of their observation or country customs. Whatsoever was not taught by Christ or his Apostles, though it came in by Papias or Dionysius, by Arius or Liberius, is certainly new as to our account; and whatsoever is taught to us by the doctors of the present age, if it can show its test from the beginning of our period for revelation, is not to be called new, though it be pressed with a new zeal, and discoursed of by unheard-of arguments; that is, though men be ignorant and need to learn it, yet it is not therefore new or unnecessary.

2. Some would have false teachers sufficiently signified by a name, or the owning of a private appellative, as of Papist, Lutheran, Calvinist, Zuinglian, Socinian; and think it enough to denominate them not of Christ, if they are called by the name of a man. And, indeed, the thing is in itself ill: but then, if by this mark we shall esteem false teachers sufficiently signified, we must follow no man, no church, nor no communion; for all are, by their adversaries, marked with an appellative of separation and singularity, and yet themselves are tenacious of a good name, such as they choose, or such as is permitted to them by fame, and the people, and a natural necessity of making a distinction. Thus the Donatists called themselves" the Flock of God," and the Novatians called the Catholics "Traditors," and the Eustathians called themselves "Catholics;" and the worshippers of images made "Iconoclast" to be a name of scorn; and men made names as they listed, or as the fate of the market went. And if a doctor preaches a doctrine which another man likes not, but preaches the contradictory, he that consents, and he that refuses, have each of them a teacher; by whose name, if they please to wrangle, they may be signified. It was so in the Corinthian church, with this only difference, that they divided themselves by names which signified the same religion; I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I am of Peter, and I of Christ.' These Apostles were ministers of Christ, and so does every teacher, new or old, among the Christians pretend himself to be. Let that, therefore, be examined; if he ministers to the truth of Christ and the religion of his Master, let him be entertained a servant of the Lord; but, if an appellative be taken from his name, there is a faction commenced in it, and there is a fault in the man, if there be none in the doctrine; but that the doctrine be true or false, to be received or to be rejected, because of the name, is accidental and extrinsical, and, therefore, not to be determined by this sign.

3. Amongst some men a sect is sufficiently thought to be reproved, if it subdivides and breaks into little fractions, or changes its own opinions. Indeed, if it declines its own doctrine, no man hath reason to believe them on their word, or to take them on the stock of reputation, which, themselves being

judges, they have forfeited and renounced in the changing that which at first they obtruded passionately. And therefore in this case there is nothing to be done, but to believe the men so far as they have reason to believe themselves; that is, to consider when they prove what they say; and they that are able to do so, are not persons in danger to be seduced by a bare authority unless they list themselves; for others that sink under an unavoidable prejudice, God will take care for them, if they be good people, and their case shall be considered by and by. But for the other part of the sign, when men fall out among themselves for other interests or opinions, it is no argument that they are in an error concerning that doctrine, which they all unitedly teach or condemn respectively; but it hath in it some probability, that their union is a testimony of truth, as certainly as that their fractions are a testimony of their zeal, or honesty, or weakness, as it happens. And if we Christians be too decretory in this instance, it will be hard for any of us to keep a Jew from making use of it against the whole religion, which, from the days of the Apostles, hath been rent into innumerable sects and undersects, springing from mistake or interest, from the arts of the devil or the weakness of man. But from hence

we may make an advantage in the way of prudence, and become sure that all that doctrine is certainly true, in which the generality of Christians, who are divided in many things, yet do constantly agree and that that doctrine is also sufficient, since it is certain that because in all communions and churches there are some very good men, that do all their duty to the getting of truth, God will not fail in any thing that is necessary to them that honestly and heartily desire to obtain it; and therefore if they rest in the heartiness of that, and live accordingly, and superinduce nothing to the destruction of that, they have nothing to do but to rely on God's goodness, and if they perish it is certain they cannot help it; and that is demonstration enough that they cannot perish, considering the justness and goodness of our Lord and Judge.

4. Whoever break the bands of a society or communion, and go out from that congregation in whose confession they are baptised, do an intolerable scandal to their doctrine and persons, and give suspicious men reason to decline their assemblies,