cause,

dealt withal, if you shall account them worthy to be the companions of the basest and meanest of your servants. I could almost be silent in this did not our enemies in Gath know of it, and if it were not published in the streets of Askalon; insomuch, that you have given cause to the enemies of God to blaspheme our glorious and undefiled religion.

42. I will conclude this doctrine of restitution, most necessary certainly to be prosecuted in these times, only with proposing to your considerations two motives, which in all reason ought to persuade you to the practice of it: the one shall be, that you would do it for your own sakes; the other, for your children's sake. For the former, though I could never be scanted of arguments sufficient to enforce it, though I should make it the subject of my sermons to my life's end; yet because I perceive it is time for me to hasten to your release, I will only desire you to remember how much I have told you already, that this doctrine concerns you, since it is impossible for any man, while he is guilty of the breach of this duty, to put in practice even the most necessary and indispensable precepts of the Christian religion.

43. But concerning the second motive, which I desire should induce to the practice of restitution, namely, that you should be persuaded to it even for your children's sake, I beseech you, take this seriously into your consideration: that whereas it may be you may think, that by heaping wealth, howsoever purchased, upon your heirs, you shall sufficiently provide for them against all casualties; yet that God also hath his treasures in store to countervail yours, and to provide so,

that your heirs shall take but little content, God knows, in all their abundance: for, as it is in Joh xx. 8. "God will lay up the iniquity of sinners for their children;" i. e. he will not satisfy himself with wreaking vengeance of other men's wrongs upon your heads, that have done them, but will take care, also, that your children shall be no gainers by the bargain: therefore, as you desire the welfare of those, for whose sake especially you dare adventure to hazard your own souls, bequeath not to them for a legacy a canker and moth, that will assuredly consume and devour all your riches: take pity of those poor souls, who are nothing interested, in their own persons, in those crimes, wherewith their wealth was purchased, and leave not unto them a curse from God upon their inheritance. But I see I must be forced even abruptly to break from this argument of restitution: I come, therefore, briefly, to my last particular, namely, the excess and extraordinary measure of Zaccheus's restitution, which he professeth shall be fourfold, to be dispatched in one word.

44. However, I found it something a hard task, to clear my first particular of confession from the danger and neighbourhood of popery; yet I fear that, in most men's opinions, it will prove more difficult to do as much for this: for here is an action performed by Zaccheus (namely, fourfold restitution), without all question good and acceptable to God, and yet not enjoined by virtue of any commandment; and what is that but plain popish supererogation? For the judicial law of restoring fourfold, is only in strictness and propriety applicable to plain, direct stealing.

45. Sol. I confess, that some particular men, for fear of this consequence, have thought themselves obliged to dissent not only from St. Paul's distinction of counsels from precepts in the gospel, but also from the general, uniform consent of all antiquity; whereas, if we shall well consider it, they have feared where no fear was: for our churches never condemned that distinction, as if there were danger from thence of making way for popery; but this is that abomination of more than pharisaical, self-justifying pride in the church of Rome, that upon so weak a foundation they have most inartificially erected their Babel of supererogation, whereby they teach, that they can, not only through the whole course of their lives, exactly perform all the commandments of God, without offending in any one mortal sin; by this means challenging at God's hands remission of their sins, and everlasting salvation for themselves; but also by their voluntary, unrequired obedience unto evangelical counsels, leave God in arrearages unto them, and make an extraordinary stock of merits, which shall be left unto the pope's care and providence to manage and dispense to any man's use for ready money. This is that doctrine, which the church of England, in express words, most worthily professeth a detestation unto, in their fourteenth article, which hath been transcribed into the five-and-fortieth of this church. And yet, for all this, neither of these churches has any quarrel to that distinction of St. Paul, when, speaking of voluntary chastity, he saith, *"I have received no such commandment from

the Lord, yet I give my advice or counsel;" as hath been excellently discovered by the late incomparable Bishop of Winchester, in his Resp. ad Apologiam.

46. And now, though I have gone through and quite absolved my text, yet I can scarce think my sermon finished, till I have endeavoured to make it beneficial unto you, by applying it to your consciences and practice: but when I should come to that, I confess I find these times, wherein we live, so indisposed for such an application, that I know not which way to begin with you; for, shall I seriously enjoin you, as by a precept from God, that where you have unjustly oppressed, or cunningly and closely defrauded your neighbour, that you should, as Zaccheus did here, restore unto him fourfold? No, I dare not adventure so far, I have received no such commandment from the Lord; and, then I should be guilty of that, which was an unjust accusation laid upon Moses and Aaron: "Ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi."

47. Shall I then endeavour to persuade you to conform yourselves to this pattern of Zaccheus, as to a counsel? Alas! the times are such, that well were we, if, as some have turned all counsels into precepts, that the same men would not, at least in their practice, convert all precepts into counsels: if they would not think, that the moral, legal precepts were antiquated and dissolved by bringing in the new covenant of grace; or if not quite abrogated, yet left so arbitrary, that they should become matters of no necessary importance and consequence; duties which, if we shall perform, we shall thereby approve our gratitude and thank

fulness unto God our Saviour; and yet, if by chance they are left undone, since they are esteemed no necessary conditions of the new covenant, there is no great danger, as long as we can keep a spark of faith alive, as long as we can persuade ourselves, that we have a firm persuasion of God's mercy in Christ to ourselves in particular; which kind of newly-invented faith an * adversary of our church pleasantly, and I fear, too truly, defines, when he says, It is nothing but a strong fancy.

48. These things therefore considered, I will leave the application of Zaccheus's extraordinary restitution to your own consciences, according as God and your own souls shall agree together: only I beseech you not to make a counsel of restitution in general, but to free yourselves from the burden and weight of other men's riches, lest they over-leaven and swell you so unmeasurably, that you shall not be able to press in at that strait gate, which would lead you unto those blessings and glorious habitations, which Christ hath purchased for you, not with these corruptible things of silver and gold, but with his own precious blood unto which habitations God of his infinite mercy bring us all, for the same our Lord Jesus Christ's sake: to whom with the Father, &c.

* Dr. Carrier, in his Epistle to King James.