PREFACE. THOUGH it be a great question, whether serious diligence in a corrupt religion will save a man, it is past all question, and agreed on by all sides, that no religion will save a man that is not serious, sincere and diligent in it. If thou be of the truest religion in the world, and art not true thyself to that religion, the religion is good, but it is none of thine: for if thou art not serious, hearty, and diligent in it, it is certain that thou dost not truly entertain it, and make it thine; but it is thy books that have the the true religion, or thy tongue, or brain, but not thy heart. And the best meat on thy table, or that goeth no farther than thy mouth, will never feed thee, or preserve thy life. So certain is the salvation of every holy mortified Christian, and so certain the damnation of every ungodly, worldly, fleshly sensualist, that I had a thousand fold rather have my soul in the case of a godly monk or friar, among the papists, that liveth a truly heavenly life, in the love of God and man, and in a serious, diligent obedience to God, according to his knowledge, than in the case of a Protestant, or whomsoever you can imagine to be soundest in his opinions, that is worldly and sensual, and a stranger, if not an enemy, to the power and serious practice of his own professed religion, and void of a holy and heavenly heart and life. If ever such a man be saved, the principles of all religion deceive us. And certainly such men's hypocrisy aggravates their sin, and will increase their misery. So many as there are in the world, that profess themselves Christians, and yet are not serious and diligent in their religion, but are ungodly neglecters or enemies of a holy life, so many hypocrites are in the world and I wonder that their consciences call them not hypocrites, when they stand up at the Creed, or profess themselves believers. Though the congregation seeth not hypocrite written in their foreheads, God seeth it written on their hearts, and those that converse with them may see it written in their lives. And yet these men are the most forward to cry out against hypocrites. The devil hath taught it them, to stop the suspicion and the chafe of conscience, as he has taught the greatest schismatics, or church dividers, (the papists) to cry out most against schism and division, and pretend to unity. But these shifts blind none but fools, and forsaken consciences; and the cheat that is now detected by the wise, will quickly by God be detected before all the world; till then let them make merry in their deceits: who would envy the drunkard the pleasure of an hour's sick delight? This is their portion, and this is their time. As we have chosen and covenanted for another portion, we are content to stay the time assigned, till God shall tell them, and all the world, who was sincere, and who was the hypocrite. For our parts we believe that he is most or least sincere, that is most or least serious in the practice of his own professed religion. For my part, I must confess that, by the mercy of God, I have made it the work of many a year, to look about me, and think wherein the felicity of man doth indeed consist. And I have long been past doubt, as much as that I am a man, that it is not in transitory sensual delights, and that these are such lean and dry commodities, and pitiful pleasures, leaving men so speedily in a forlorn state, that I am contented that my greatest enemy have my part of them. I have renounced them to God, as any part of my felicity, and I renounce them to men. Let them do with me about these things as God will give them leave. I will have a portion after death, or I will have none. And the case is so palpable, that it is my admiration, that the contrary deceit is consistent with the nature and reason of a man; and that so many gentlemen and scholars, and persons of an ingenuous education, can no better distinguish, and can possibly conquer their reason so easily with the presence of sensual delights, and so easily make nothing of that which will be to-morrow and for ever, merely because it is not to-day. Well, I must say the wisdom and justice of God are abundantly seen in the government of the world with the liberty of the will, and determining that all men should speed as they choose. Though I am far from crediting the many fabulous stories in that and such other books, yet I shall recite one instance in the life of Philip Nerius, the father of the Oratorians, which shall show you, that even among the Papists, holy serious diligence where it is, hath the same usage from the profane, both |