A Christian Library, Chapter 5
CHAP. V.
§ 1. NOw these things we ought to do; thus thankful we ought to be to God, for his inestimable and unspeakable benefits towards us. But do we thus requite the Lord? or do we what we are able for him again? O that I could say we did! Y…, I would we were but so thankful to Christ for all his mercies: (the least whereof is greater then all the courtesies of men) as we are to a friend for some one good turn.
But wo worth us, a people not worthy the crumbs of Christs, & our Makers least mercy: Yea, well worthy of more plagues, then either Tyre, or Sydon, Chorazin, or Bethsaida, Capernaum, Sodome, or Gomorrah, Matth. 11.21, to 25. or any people since the Creation: For as if all that Christ hath done for us, were nothing to move us; we are so far from being thankful, from loving, and serving him: that did we seriously think of Christs love, and our odious unthankfulness: and compare Gods goodness with our ingratitude, rightly weighing how we have from time to time abused his mercy, and those many means of grace, which he in his long-suffering hath afforded for our reclaiming: it would even make us speechless, like him in the Gospel, as neither expecting pardon, nor daring to ask it. Yea, ô Lord, it is thine unspeakable mercy, that our Land hath not long since spued us out; and that we are not at this present frying in Hell. For whereas God hath removed so many evils spiritual and corporal, temporal and eternal, from us; and conferred so many good things upon us, that they are beyond thought or imagination.
§ 2. We have striven to multiply offences against him, and to make them as infinite in number, as his blessings. We have done nothing from our infancy, but added sin unto sin; as he hath added mercy to mercy… whereby our sins are become for number, as the sands in the Sea; and as the Stars of heaven; and answerable to their multitude, is the magnitude of them, as I have (in the former Part) shewn, and shall further amplifie in this. As tell me; may not God justly another day, call Heaven and Earth to witness against us? that he would have saved us? yea did woo us to accept of salvation; saying, Turn ye; turn ye, from your evil ways: for why will you die, ô people of England? Ezek. 33.11. But we would not be converted nor saved. As thus,
§ 3 Whereas God hath offered us a pardon (in tendering Christ unto us, upon the condition of faith and repentance) even his own Son, to be a means of our reconciliation; which is such a spectacle of unspeakable mercy, as might ravish our souls with admiration: We are so far from accepting it thankf…lly; that we not onelyonly refuse and contemn it, but in a manner deride the offer of it our selves; oppose the Gospel of glad tydings, and persecute Christ in his Members; either with hand, or tongue, or both. We are so far from being holy our selves, (most of us) that we hate holiness in …thers. For if any become Religious, and conscionable; and will not for company grievously sin against God; wrong their bodies, destroy their own soules, and wilfully leap into Hell-fire with us: we envy, hate, censure, scoff at, nick-name, rail on, and slander them; that we may flout them out of their faith, damp, or quench the spirit where we perceive it is kindled; discourage them in the way to heaven; baffle them out, and make them ashamed of their holy profession, and religious course, and consequently pull them back to the World; that so we may have their company here in sin, and hereafter in torment. Nor do we so serve the most sincere onelyonly, in whom the graces of Gods Spirit do as apparently shi…t as the Sun at noon-day, to the dazling of their eyes: But we condemn all that have more religion then an Heathen; or more knowledge of heavenly things, then a childe in the wombe hath of the things of this life; or more conscience then an Atheist, or care of his soul then a Beast: That live religiously, and will not revel it with us in a shoreless excess; for Round-heads, and Puritans, a name so full of the Serpents enmity, as the egge of a Cockatrice is full of poison.
§ 4. And in all (which is worst of all) we have caused others to do the same abominations, by our evil example. Yea, worse yet then all this, our abominable wickedness, hath brought such a scandal upon our Religion, and the Gospel; that it is even abhorred of the Heathen, and the great and glorious Name of God blasphemed among them. Yea, what else but the unchristian-like behaviour of Christians? hath caused the Turks and Iews, and many among our selves, even to protest against their own conversion. Or what else hath alienated the Indians from the Christian Religion, making them to refuse the Gospel; but this? that they saw our lives more savage, then those Savages themselves: yea, it hath made those poor souls resolve, that whatsoever Religion the Christians were of, they would be the contrary; thinking it impossible, that such beastly and bloody d…eds could proceed from any true Religion: Or, that he could be a good God, who had such evill sons. Whereas in the Primitive times, more of them were won to the faith, by the holy lives of Christians; then by the Doctrine which they taught: for it caused them to say, This …s a good God, whose servants are so good.