THE PREFACE,

I CANNOT but expect that so slender a discourse, on so weighty a subject, should seem to some judicious men unnecessary; and that I owe them satisfaction concerning the reasons of this attempt. I confess I have many a time privately wished, and sometimes publicly expressed my desires, that some of the ablest teachers in the church would purposely undertake this weighty task of drawing out the chiefest arguments, for the defence of the christian cause and truth of Scripture, which lie scattered so wide in the writings of the ancients, and might afford much light to shame the cause of unbelievers. I know Marsilius Ficinus, Lodovicus Vives, the Lord du Plessis, especially Grotius, and others have done much already this way; but yet, I think, a fuller improvement may be made of their arguments, at least to the advantage of those that we have now to do with. The account that I can give of the publication of this discourse is only this. I find myself most effectually excited to action, cæteris paribus, by the nearest objects; but especially when they are the greatest as well as the nearest. It hath long grieved me to see how the stream of errors, that beareth down this present age, doth plainly lead to the gulph of infidelity. While I only heard and read of infidels in the remote parts of the world, I was either of their judgment that thought it best not once to name, much less confute, so vile a sin, or at least I was not awakened to the sight, because the enemy was no nearer; but when I perceived such a formidable approach, I thought it time to look about us. It is many years since I observed the tendency of the prevailing giddiness, unruliness, and levity of these times. When, through the great ignorance, looseness, or ungodly violence of too many ecclesiastics, the officers of Christ among us had once lost their authority, and were grown into contempt, the people grew suspicious of almost all that they had taught them, and the proud, self-conceited, wanton professors did see no further need of guides, but contemned all that was truly government, and rejoiced in it as a part of their christian liberty that they were from

under the yoke of Christ. They either chose to themselves a heap of teachers, or thought themselves sufficient to be their own guides, yea, and the teachers of others; they take themselves no longer for children, and, therefore, will go to school no more; they will be disciples of Christ, if either the name will serve or he will come down from heaven and teach them immediately himself; but if he must teach them by these his ministers or ushers, he may go look him new disciples for them. Hereupon this pride and passion leads them to open schism; and they gather into separated societies where they may freely vent themselves with little contradiction, and where the spirit of light and unity doth seldom trouble them in their self-pleasing way. They now scorn that which once they called 'The Church.' It is none of the smallest points of their zeal, nor the least piece of their pretended service to God, to make his messengers and some of his ordinances odious unto others, and to deride them in their conference, preaching, and prayers; they now rejoice that they have got out of the supposed darkness of this or that error, which they suppose all the priests, as they call them scornfully by an honourable name, to be involved in. The devil and seducers having got them at this advantage, they are presently told that it is yet many more things that the priests have deceived them in, as well as these; and so they fall upon one ordinance of God after another, till they have made them think hardly of them all. The first of them that must be here opposed is infant baptism, that their posterity may be kept more disengaged from Christ, and so great a part of his church may be unchurched, and the breach may begin where the closure and engagement did begin; but especially that the seducer may the better succeed, by beginning at a point which may hold so much disputation, and whose evidence the more dull, unexercised wits cannot easily discern, because the Scripture hath not spoken of it so expressly as they expect, or would prescribe. Here, also, they grow to many singularities in the Lord's supper, and other ordinances singing of God's praises in David's psalms they fall to deride; first, as it is done in mixed assemblies, and, next, as by any at all. Praying in families they account unnecessary, for, as in infant baptism, the proof, though plain enough to the humble and wise, yet is not palpable enough for them; catechizing they deride as superstitious forms; and teaching children is to make them hypocrites, because they cannot yet understand. Here their foolish reason controlleth the confessed precepts of

the word. (Deut vi. and xi., Eph. vi. 4.) In doctrinals they presently fall into a subdivision: the one-half of them are pelagian anabaptists, the other are antinomian anabaptists; but these foxes that are thus sent out to fire the harvest, are so tailed together for and by their joint opposition to the truth and the university of the church, and by their consent to an universal liberty or toleration, that their manifest differences disjoin not 'their posteriors, nor hinder them much from setting all their faces against the church of Christ. The pelagian party proceedeth next to be Socinians; and they find by the light of their benighted reason, that it was the deceit of the anti-christian priests that persuaded men that Christ or the Holy Ghost is God; and that they may escape anti-christianity, they will deny Christ's Godhead, and his satisfaction for sin; and when they have come so near the borders of infidelity as to make Christ and the Spirit to be but creatures, a little thing leads them the other step, even to take him with the Mahometans to be but a prophet; and lastly, with the Jews and infidels, to blaspheme him as a deceiver. The other stream or subdivision that went the antinomian way, do often turn libertines in opinion and conversation, and thence turn familists, seekers, and, lately, ranters or quakers. And here some of them, to save their reputation, do play with the name of Christ and Scripture, and the life to come; but when they dare speak out you may know their minds, that they take the Scripture to be fabulous delusions, and Christ to be an impostor, and the resurrection of the dead to be an idle dream. But where they dare not speak out, for fear of making themselves odious and marring all their work, their course is sometime to keep their opinions to themselves; so that you may live many years with them and never shall know what religion they are of. This is the course especially of the more subtle and politic part of them; and I wonder not at it, for there is nothing in their opinions that should induce them to be very zealous in promoting them. But those of them that are of hotter or less reserved minds do use to vent themselves more freely; and that is commonly against all our ministry, churches, and ordinances; against supernatural grace, and all truths of supernatural revelation, that they can contradict without too great suspicions, especially against the immortality of the soul, though that be a truth, that nature may reveal. Also, they will be much quarrelling with the Scripture, and labouring to prove it guilty of self-contradictions and untruths; and vilifying it as a dead letter. By this, those

that hear them not plainly revile Christ, may smell them out; and thus the divided and subdivided streams do all fall together into the gulph of infidelity, and there they are one in the depth of sin and misery that would not be one with the church of Christ, in faith, sanctity, and everlasting felicity; though, I confess, some few I have known that have come to infidelity by a shorter way.

Having the unhappy opportunity, many years ago, of discoursing with some of these, and perceiving them to increase, I preached the sermons on Gal. iii., which are here first printed. Long after this, having again and again too frequent occasion to confer with some of them, the nearness and hideousness of this deplorable evil did very much force my thoughts that way, especially when I found that I fell into whole companies of them, besetting me at once, and with great scorn and cunning subtlety endeavoured to bring my special friends to a contempt of the Scripture and the life to come; and also when I considered how many of them were once my intimate friends, whom I cannot yet choose but love with compassion, when I remember our former converse and familiarity: and some of them were ancient professors, who have done and suffered much in a better cause; and whose uprightness we were all as confident of as most men's living on earth. All this did make the case more grievous to me; yet I must needs say that the most that I have known to fall thus far were such as were formerly so proud, or sensual, or giddy professors, that they seemed then but to stay for a shaking temptation to lay them in the dirt; and those of better qualifications, of whose sincerity we were so confident, were very few. It yet troubled me more that those of them, whose welfare I most heartily desired, would never be drawn to open their minds to me, so that I was out of all capacity of doing them any good, though sometime to others they would speak more freely. And when I have stirred sometime further abroad, I have perceived that some persons of considerable quality and learning, having much conversed with men of that way, and read such books as Hobbs' Leviathan,' have been sadly infected with this mortal pestilence: and the horrid language that some of them utter cannot but grieve any one that heareth of it, who hath the least sense of God's honour, or the worth of souls. Sometimes they make a jest at Christ; sometimes at Scripture; sometimes at the soul of man; sometimes at spirits; challenging the devil to come and appear to them, and professing

how far they would travel to see him, as not believing that indeed he is; sometimes scorning at the talk of hell, and presuming to seduce poor, carnal people that are too ready to believe such things, telling them that it were injustice in God to punish a short sin with an everlasting punishment; and that God is good, and therefore there cannot be any devils or hell, because evil cannot come from good: sometimes they say that it is not they, but sin that dwelleth in them; and therefore sin shall be damned and not they and most of them give up themselves to sensuality, which is no wonder; for he that thinks there is no greater happiness hereafter to be expected, is like enough to take his fill of sensual pleasure while he may have it; and, as I have said once before, he that thinks he shall die like a dog, is like enough to live like a dog.

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Being awakened by these sad experiences and considerations to a deeper compassion of these miserable men, but especially to a deeper sense of the danger of weak unsettled professors, whom they labour to seduce, another providence also instigating thereto, I put those sermons on Gal. iii. to the press; and remembering that the end of a larger discourse on 1 John v. 10-12, was somewhat to the same purpose, I added it thereto; and next added the two following discourses, which were not preached, as supposing them conducible to the same end: and though I am truly sensible that it is so hasty, superficial, and imperfect a work, as is very disagreeable to the greatness of the matter; yet, 1. Because of the aforesaid irritations; 2. And because that in so sad a combustion, every one should cast in the water that he hath next at hand to quench the flames; 3. And because I saw many others so backward to it, not only withdrawing their help, but some of them opposing all such endeavours; 4. And because I had begun on the same subject before, in the second part of the 'Saint's Rest,' and intend this but for a supplement to that, I thought it therefore my duty to do this little, rather than nothing.

Having given this account of my endeavours, I shall add a few words to the persons, for whose sake I publish this discourse and that is principally to the raw, unsettled Christians that are tempted by Satan or his instruments to infidelity; and also, to those apostates that are not unrecoverable, and have not sinned unto death, for of the other I have no hope. To these, my request is, that they would impartially read and consider what I have here said, and that in the reading they would so far abate