42. I shall add nothing but this single consideration: God said to the children of Israel, "Ye are a royal priesthood'," a kingdom of priests: which was therefore true, because God reigned by the priests, and the priests' lips did then preserve knowledge, and the people were to receive the law from their mouths; for God having, by laws of his own, established religion and the republic, did govern by the rule of the law, and the ministry of the priests. The priests said, "Thus saith the Lord;" and the people obeyed. And these very words are spoken to the Christian church: "Ye are a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him, that hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." That is, God reigns over all Christendom, just as he did over the Jews. He hath now so given to them and restored respectively all those reasonable laws, which are in order to all good ends, personal, economical, and political, that if men will suffer Christian religion to do its last intention, if men will live according to it, there needs no other coercion of laws or power of the sword. The laws of God, revealed by Christ, are sufficient to make all societies of men happy; and over all good men God reigns by his ministers, by the preaching of the word. And this was most evident in the three first ages of the church, in which all Christian societies were, for all their proper intercourses, perfectly guided, not by the authority and compulsion, but by the sermons of their spiritual guides; insomuch that St. Paul sharply reprehends the Corinthians, that “brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers ;" as if he had said, "Ye will not suffer Christ to be your Judge, and his law to be your rule:" which indeed was a great fault among them, not only because they had so excellent a law, so clearly described, (or, where they might doubt, they had infallible interpreters,) so reasonable and profitable, so evidently concurring to their mutual felicity; but also because God did design Jesus to be their King, to reign over them by spiritual regiment, as himself did over the Jews, till they chose a king. And when the emperors

f 1 Pet. ii. 9.

became Christian, the case was no otherwise altered, but that the princes themselves, submitting to Christ's yoke, were (as all other Christians are), for their proportion, to be governed by the royal priesthood, that is, by the word preached by apostolical persons, the political interest remaining as before, save that, by being submitted to the laws of Christ, it received this advantage, that all justice was turned to be religion, and became necessary, and bound upon the conscience by Divinity. And when it happens, that a kingdom is converted to Christianity, the commonwealth is made a church, and Gentile priests are Christian bishops, and the subjects of the kingdom are servants of Christ, the religion of the nation is turned Christian, and the law of the nation made a part of the religion; there is no change of government, but that Christ is made King, and the temporal power is his substitute, and is to promote the interest of obedience to him, as before he did to Christ's enemy; Christ having left his ministers as lieger ambassadors, to signify and publish the laws of Jesus, to pray all, in Christ's stead, to be reconciled to God; so that, over the obedient, Christ wholly reigns by his ministers publishing his laws; over the disobedient, by the prince also putting those laws in execution. And in this sense it is, that St. Paul says, "Bonis lex non est posita;" "To such (who live after the Spirit) there is no law;" that is, there needs no coercion. But now, if we reject God from reigning over us, and say, like the people in the Gospel, "Nolumus hunc regnare," "We will not have him to reign over us," by the ministry of his word, by the empire of the royal priesthood, then we return to the condition of heathens, and persons sitting in darkness; then God hath armed the temporal power with a sword to cut us off. If we obey not God, speaking by his ministers, that is, if we live not according to the excellent laws of Christianity, that is, holily, soberly, and justly in all our relations, he hath placed three swords against us; the sword of the Spirit, against the unholy and irreligious; the sword of natural and supervening infelicities, upon the intemperate and unsober; and the sword of kings, against the unjust; to remonstrate the excellency of Christianity, and how certainly it leads to

all the felicity of man; because every transgression of this law, according to its proportion, makes men unhappy and unfortunate.

43. What effect this discourse may have, I know not; I intended it to do honour to Christianity, and to represent it to be the best religion in the world, and the conjugation of all excellent things, that were in any religion, or in any philosophy, or in any discourses. For "whatsoever was honest, whatsoever was noble, whatsoever was wise, whatsoever was of good report, if there be any praise, if there be any virtue," it is in Christianity: for even to follow all these instances of excellency, is a precept of Christianity. And methinks, they, that pretend to reason, cannot more reasonably endear themselves to the reputation of reason, than by endearing their reason to Christianity; the conclusions and belief of which is the most reasonable and perfect, the most excellent design, and complying with the noblest and most proper ends of man. And if this gate may suffice to invite such persons into the recesses of the religion, then I shall tell them, that I have dressed it in the ensuing books with some variety: and as the nature of the religion is, some parts whereof are apt to satisfy our discourse, some to move our affections, and yet all of this to relate to practice; so is the design of the following pages. For some men are wholly made up of passion, and their very religion is but passion, put into the family and society of holy purposes; and, for those, I have prepared considerations upon the special parts of the life of the holy Jesus: and yet there also are some things, mingled in the least severe and most affectionate parts, which may help to answer a question, and appease a scruple, and may give rule for determination of many cases of conscience. For I have so ordered the considerations, that they spend not themselves in mere affections and ineffective passions, but they are made doctrinal and little repositories of duty. But because of the variety of men's spirits and of men's necessities, it was necessary I should interpose some practical discourses more severe: for it is but a sad thought to consider, that piety and books of devotion are counted

Phil. iv. 8.

but entertainment for little understandings and softer spirits; and although there is much fault in such imperious minds, that they will not distinguish the weakness of the writers from the reasonableness and wisdom of the religion; yet I cannot but think, the books themselves are, in a large degree, the occasion of so great indevotion; because they are (some few excepted) represented naked in the conclusions. of spiritual life, without or art or learning, and made apt for persons, who can do nothing but believe and love; not for them, that can consider and love. And it is not well, that, since nothing is more reasonable and excellent in all perfections spiritual than the doctrines of the Spirit, or holy life; yet nothing is offered to us so unlearnedly as this is, so miserable and empty of all its own intellectual perfections. If I could, I would have had it otherwise in the present books; for, since the understanding is not an idle faculty in a spiritual life, but hugely operative to all excellent and reasonable choices, it were very fit, that this faculty were also entertained by such discourses, which God intended as instruments of hallowing it, as he intended it towards the sanctification of the whole man. For want of it, busy and active men entertain themselves with notions infinitely unsatisfying and unprofitable: but, in the mean time, they are not so wise; for, concerning those, that study unprofitable notions, and neglect not only that which is wisest, but that also which is of most real advantage, I cannot but think, as Aristotle did of Thales and Anaxagoras, that "They may be learned, but they are not wise; or wise, but not prudent, when they are ignorant of such things, as are profitable to them: for, suppose they know the wonders of nature, and the subtilties of metaphysics, and operations mathematical; yet they cannot be prudent, who spend themselves wholly upon unprofitable and ineffective contemplations"." He is truly wise, that knows best to promote the best end, that which he is bound to desire; and is happy if he obtains, and miserable if he misses; and that is the end of a happy eternity, which is obtained by

* Διὸ ̓Αναξαγόραν, καὶ Θαλῆν, καὶ τοὺς τοιούτους, σοφοὺς μὲν, φρονίμους δ ̓ οὔ φασιν εἶναι, ὅταν ἴδωσιν ἀγνοοῦντας τὰ συμφέρονθ ̓ αὑτοῖς· καὶ περιττὰ μὲν, καὶ θαυμαστά, καὶ χαλεπὰ, καὶ δαιμόνια ειδέναι αὐτούς φασιν· ἄχρηστα δ ̓, ὅτι οὐ τὰ ἀνθρώπινα ἀγαθὰ ZnToŭow.—Arist. 1. vi. Eth. cap. 7. p. 244. ed. Wilk.

the only means of living according to the purposes of God, and the prime intentions of nature; natural and prime reason being now all one with the Christian religion. But then I shall only observe, that this part of wisdom, and the excellency of its secret and deep reason, is not to be discerned but by experience; the propositions of this philosophy being (as in many other) empirical, and best found out by observation of real and material events. So that I may say of spiritual learning, as Quintilian said of some of Plato's books: "Nam Plato, cùm in aliis quibusdam, tum præcipuè in Timæo, ne intelligi quidem, nisi ab iis qui hanc quoque partem disciplinæ [musica] diligenter perceperint, potest." The secrets of the kingdom of heaven are not understood truly and thoroughly but by the sons of the kingdom; and by them too, in several degrees, and to various purposes: but to evil persons the whole system of this wisdom is insipid and flat, dull as the foot of a rock, and unlearned as the elements of our mother tongue. But so are mathematics to a Scythian boor, and music to a 'camel.

44. But I consider, that the wisest persons, and those who know how to value and entertain the more noble faculties of their soul, and their precious hours, take more pleasure in reading the productions of those old wise spirits, who preserved natural reason and religion in the midst of heathen darkness, (such as are Homer, Euripides, Orpheus, Pindar, and Anacreon, Æschylus and Menander, and all the Greek poets; Plutarch and Polybius, Xenophon, and all those other excellent persons of both faculties, (whose choicest dictates are collected by Stobæus,) Plato and his scholars, Aristotle, and after him Porphyry, and all his other disciples, Pythagoras and his, especially Hierocles; all the old academics and stoics within the Roman schools:) more pleasure, I say, in reading these, than the triflings of many of the later schoolmen, who promoted a petty interest of a family, or an unlearned opinion, with great earnestness; but added nothing to Christianity but trouble, scruple, and vexation. And from hence I hope, that they may the rather be invited to love and consider the rare documents of Christianity, which certainly is the great treasure-house of those excellent, moral, and perfective discourses, which,