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this great work, and will give you a title to that great reward: but, Madam, when I received your commands for dispersing some copies of this sermon, I perceived it was too little to be presented to your Eminence; and if it were accompanied with something else of the like nature, it might, with more profit, advance that end which your Grace so piously designed; and, therefore, I have taken this opportunity to satisfy the desire of some very honourable and very reverend personages, who required that the two following sermons should also be made fit for the use of those who hoped to receive profit by them. I humbly lay them all at your Grace's feet, begging of God, that even as many may receive advantages by the perusing of them, as either your Grace will desire, or he that preached them did intend. And if your Grace will accept of this first testimony of my concurrence with all the world that know you, in paying those great regards, which your piety so highly merits, I will endeavour hereafter, in some greater instance, to pursue the intentions of your zeal of souls, and, by such a service, endeavour to do more benefit to others, and by it, as by that which is most acceptable to your Grace, endear the obedience and services of,

MADAM,

Your Grace's most humble

And obedient Servant,

JER. DOWN.

THE

RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL

DESCRIBED.

SERMON I.

For I say unto you, that except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.-Matt. v. 20.

REWARDS and punishments are the best sanction of laws; and although the guardians of laws strike sometimes with the softest part of the hand in their executions of sad sentences, yet in the sanction they make no abatements, but so proportion the duty to the reward, and the punishment to the crime, that by these we can best tell what value the lawgiver puts upon the obedience. Joshua put a great rate upon the taking of Kiriath-Sepher, when the reward of the service was his daughter and a dower. But when the young men ventured to fetch David the waters of Bethlehem, they had nothing but the praise of their boldness, because their service was no more than the satisfaction of a curiosity. But as lawgivers, by their rewards, declare the value of the obedience, so do subjects also, by the grandeur of what they expect, set a value on the law and the lawgiver, and do their services accordingly.

And, therefore, the law of Moses, whose endearment was nothing but temporal goods and transient evils, "could never make the comers thereunto perfect;" but the Taywy ngeástovos éλmídos,—"the superinduction of a better hope,”a hath endeared a more perfect obedience. When Christ brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel, and hath

a Heb. vii. 19.

promised to us things greater than all our explicit desires, bigger than the thoughts of our heart, then yyigoμev tŵ Deŵ, saith the apostle," then we draw near to God ;" and by these we are enabled to do all that God requires, and then he requires all that we can do; more love and more obedience than he did of those who,-for want of these helps, and these revelations, and these promises, which we have, but they had not, were but imperfect persons, and could do but little more than human services. Christ hath taught us more, and given us more, and promised to us more, than ever was in the world known or believed before him; and by the strengths and confidence of these, thrusts us forward in a holy and wise economy; and plainly declares, that we must serve him by the measures of a new love, do him honour by wise and material glorifications, be united to God by a new nature, and made alive by a new birth, and fulfil all righteousness; to be humble and meek as Christ, to be merciful as our heavenly Father is, to be pure as God is pure, to be partakers of the Divine nature, to be wholly renewed in the frame and temper of our mind, to become people of a new heart, a direct new creation, new principles, and a new being, to do better than all the world before us ever did, to love God more perfectly, to despise the world more generously, to contend for the faith more earnestly; for all this is but a proper and a just consequent of the great promises, which our blessed Lawgiver came to publish and effect for all the world of believers and disciples.

The matter which is here required is certainly very great; for it is to be more righteous than the Scribes and Pharisees; more holy than the doctors of the law, than the leaders of the synagogue, than the wise princes of the sanhedrim; more righteous than some that were prophets and high-priests, than some that kept the ordinances of the law without blame ; men that lay in sackcloth, and fasted much, and prayed more, and made religion and the study of the law the work of their lives this was very much; but Christians must do more.

Nunc te marmoreum pro tempore fecimus; at tu,

Si fætura gregem suppleverit, aureus esto.

They did well, and we must do better; their houses were marble, but our roofs must be gilded and fuller of glory.

But as the matter is very great, so the necessity of it is the greatest in the world. It must be so, or it will be much worse: unless it be thus, we shall never see the glorious face of God. Here it concerns us to be wise and fearful; for the matter is not a question of an oaken garland, or a circle of bays, and a yellow riband: it is not a question of money or land; nor of the vainer rewards of popular noises, and the undiscerning suffrages of the people, who are contingent judges of good and evil: but it is the great stake of life eternal. We cannot be Christians, unless we be righteous by the new measures: the righteousness of the kingdom is now the only way to enter it; for the sentence is fixed, and the judgment is decretory, and the Judge infallible, and the decree irreversible: "For I say unto you," said Christ, "unless your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in nowise enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

Here, then, we have two things to consider. I. What was the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. II. How far that is to be exceeded by the righteousness of Christians.

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I. Concerning the first. I will not be so nice in the observation of these words, as to take notice that Christ does not name the Sadducees, but the Scribes and Pharisees, though there may be something in it: the Sadducees were called Caraim,' from cara, to read;' for they thought it religion to spend one-third part of their day in reading their Scriptures, whose fulness they so admired, they would admit of no suppletory traditions: but the Pharisees were called 'Thanaim,' that is, deuregúra, they added to the word of God words of their own, as the Church of Rome does at this day; they and these fell into an equal fate; while they ' taught for doctrines the commandments of men,' they prevaricated the righteousness of God: what the Church of Rome, to evil purposes, hath done in this particular, may be demonstrated in due time and place; but what false and corrupt glosses, under the specious title of the tradition of their fathers, the Pharisees had introduced, our blessed Saviour reproves, and are now to be represented as the åvrızagúderyμa, that you may see that righteousness, beyond which all they must go, that intend that heaven should be their journey's end.

VOL. VI.

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1. The Pharisees obeyed the commandments in the letter, not in the spirit: they minded what God spake, but not what he intended: they were busy in the outward work of the hand, but incurious of the affections and choice of the heart. Υμεῖς πάντα σαρκικῶς νενοήκατε, said Justin Martyr to Tryphon the Jew,-' Ye understand all things carnally;' that is, they rested tλáoμarı eùosßeías, as Nazianzen calls it,—' in the outward work of piety,' which not only Justin Martyr but St. Paul calls carnality,' not meaning a carnal appetite, but a carnal service. Their error was plainly this: they never distinguished duties natural from duties relative; that is, whether it were commanded for itself, or in order to something that was better; whether it were a principal grace, or an instrumental action: so God was served in the letter, they did not much inquire into his purpose: and, therefore, they were curious to wash their hands, but cared not to purify their hearts; they would give alms, but hate him that received it; they would go to the temple, but did not revere the glory of God that dwelt there between the cherubims; they would fast, but not mortify their lusts; they would say good prayers, but not labour for the grace they prayed for. This was just as if a man should run on his master's errand, and do no business when he came there. They might easily have thought, that by the soul only a man approaches to God, and draws the body after it; but that no washing or corporal services could unite them and the shechinah together, no such thing could make them like to God, who is the Prince of Spirits. They did as the dunces in Pythagoras's school, who, when their master had said "Fabis abstineto," by which he intended they should not ambitiously seek for magistracy,' they thought themselves good Pythagoreans if they did not eat beans;' and they would be sure to put their right foot first into the shoe, and their left foot into the water, and supposed they had done enough; though if they had not been fools, they would have understood their master's meaning to have been, that they should put more affections to labour and travel, and less to their pleasure and recreation; and so it was with the Pharisee for as the Chaldees taught their morality by mystic words, and the

b Gal. iii. 3; and vi. 12, 13. Phil. iii. 34.

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