wert the most orthodox professor, or preacher in the world, thou art ungodly if thou have no more, All have not faith that say the creed. The notional apprehension, and the practical judgment are often contrary. The opinion that is insufficient to change the heart, to move the will, to renew the life, shall prove insufficient to save the soul.

2. You may see that Godliness is not the adhering to a party, though such a party as pretendeth to some special excellency, or calls itself the only church, or the purest church. It is a sin to make and cherish parties, divisions, and factions, in the universal church, and it is not godliness to sin. A godly man, through weakness, may be of a sinful party, but that is contrary to his godliness. He will worship God with his best, and be where he may have best advantage to his soul, and therefore if he can, will hold personal local communion with the best and purest congregations; but not as separating from the rest, and betaking himself to a party set against the church universal, or a party sinfully distant from others in the church universal. The grand design of the devil is, when men will needs look after religion, to make them believe that to be of such a church, or party, is to be religious, and to trust to that instead of godliness for the saving of their souls. And carnal, 'self-seeking teachers are the principal instruments of this deceit; who for their honour or commodity would draw away disciples after them, and make poor souls believe that they must be their followers, or of their side, or opinion, or church, if they will be saved. The Papist saith, You must follow the pope, and be of our church, or you are no true catholics, nor in the true church, and cannot be saved. And some other sects say the like of their churches. And how many thousand ungodly wretches do think to be saved, because they are of such a church or party. But the catholic, or universal church is the whole company of believers headed only by Christ; and godliness must prove thee a living member of this society, unless thou wilt be burnt with the withered branches. And God will never condemn any one that is truly godly because he is not of this sect or party, or of that. And the Papists that are the most notorious sect and grand dividers of the church, and condemners of the justified, shall know one day, that ambition was not true religion; and that the name of unity, and universality and antiquity, were unmeet

instruments to be used to the destruction of unity, and contradiction of universality and antiquity; and that God hath set apart himself the man that is godly, though the accuser of the brethren would cast such out; Psal. iv. 3. And who shall condemn when it is Christ that justifieth? Rom. viii, 33.

3. You may see now, that Godliness is not any mere external act of worship. External worship there must be, and that with all decency and reverent behaviour. But it is hypocrisy if there be nothing but the corpse without the internal godliness which is the life and soul. Bodily exercise is here by the apostle distinct from godliness.

4. You may now see that Godliness is not the mere forbearance of the outward acts or practice of any sin. For else a sleep, or a prison might make a man godly by restraining him from the acts of sin. He is ungodly that would rather live in the sin which through some restraint he doth forbear. If you would do it, you have done it, in God's ac

count.

5. You may see also that whatsoever religiousness, obedience, or endeavours subject Christ to the flesh and world, and make him give place to them and come behind, do not deserve the name of Godliness. You are not godly, how far soever else you go, if God and your salvation take not place before all the honours, profits, and pleasures of the world. As he is not God that hath any greater, wiser, or better than himself; so that is not Godliness which giveth the precedency practically to any thing but God; that pretendeth never so highly to honour him, and yet more esteemeth their own honour with the world: or that professeth love and obedience to him, and yet loveth and obeyeth a lust before him, and sets more by love and obedience to themselves, than by their own or other men's love or obedience to God. All these are the cheating counterfeits of Godliness.

6. And if none of these be Godliness, much less doth it consist in any sin; in superstition, idolatry, or in cruelty, blood, and persecution through a carnal zeal; in a bringing all others by violence to our proud, impious wills, in murmuring, sedition, rebellion, or resisting lawful powers, under pretence of propagating religion. Godliness consisteth not in Jesuitical contrivances, and undermining others, and equivocations and pious frauds. In disturbing kingdoms, killing kings, blowing up parliaments, absolving subjects from

allegiance, and giving away the dominions of temporal lords, if they will not obey the pope in exterminating their heretics (as is decreed to be done in the Approved General Council at the Lateran under Innocent III. Can. 3.); nor doth it consist in murdering thirty thousand or forty thousand treacherously in a few weeks, as in France, or much above twice as many in Ireland; nor in butchering Christians by hundreds or thousands, as they did long ago by the Waldenses and Albigenses, and Bohemians; nor in racking and tormenting them by inquisition; nor in frying them in the flames of fagots, as in Queen Mary's days, and frequently elsewhere. This is the religion of the father of malice, that thirsts for blood, and not of the merciful Prince of Peace. Godliness is not the running to arms, and pulling down governments to set up the proud, selfconceited actors, under pretence of setting up Christ and preparing for his kingdom; snatching in their dream at crowns and kingdoms, and finding when they awake that they have caught a gallows. When the Friars had spawned the turbulent people among us in England, that thought they must do any thing, and overturn the governments of the world to make Christ the fifth monarch, and bring him from heaven to reign visibly on earth before he is willing to come, I must confess I oft thought that their cunning was much more wonderful to keep these people from being undeceived, than at first to deceive them. To keep them (in despite of all our discoveries and warnings) in such furious blindness, as to go on and do their father's work, and rage against these that told them their original, and whither they were going. The poor seduced people never read such books as Friar Campanella's "de Regno Dei, et sacerdotio Christi," &c. wherein he brings up all the prophetical texts in Isaiah, Daniel, &c. which these men use, laboureth to shew what a golden age is coming, in which divisions shall cease, and unity become the strength and beauty of the world, and this by the universal reign of Christ; and what a happy people the saints will be, and how they shall then judge and rule the world (and, O the comfort! the time is near), and just such words he useth for his fifth most glorious, universal monarchy, as others now do. But when all comes to all, the mystery unveiled is but this; that Christ must reign by the pope his deputy; and that all princes and VOL. X.

nations must submit and stoop; and their kingdoms must all become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ, to be governed by his deputy, the pope; and (the power falsely called spiritual, being first well settled) the other key or sword also (the temporal), must for unity sake be put into the same hand. The heavens therefore should rejoice, and the earth be glad, for the Lord thus cometh to judge the world. The fifth monarchy is at hand: the universal, holy reign of Christ, not by profane princes, but by his Holiness the Pope, and by the saints (the Friars, Jesuits, Monks, and Clergy), that shall judge the world, to whom ere long all knees shall bow.

But you will say, We are so far from joining with these Friars, that we hate the pope much more than you do. I answer, You have received their frame of doctrine of the universal fifth monarchy that is at hand. There is but one thing to do, and you are theirs; which is, to convince you that he is not to come and reign here personally, but by his great vicegerent. And they that could bring you to believe things more improbable, may more easily bring you to them from your unreasonable conceit.

Pardon this digression; I thought meet to tell you that Godliness lieth not in breaking the law of God, nor in obeying pride, nor being the enemies of government and order in the world, nor in an impatient striving by right or wrong, to break away from the yoke of suffering, that God for our sin (or for his cause) shall lay upon us. And now I have fully and distinctly told you, what Godliness is, and what is not. And now go thy way, malicious soul, and say if thou dare, (as the devil's informers frequently do) that it is sedition, or faction, or schism, or disobedience, that we draw the people to under the name of Godliness. Hold on if thou wilt a little longer in such impudent calumniations against me and other ministers of Christ. But know that thy day is coming, and that for all these things thou shalt come to judgment; and if thou justify the ungodly, yet remember, that "It is not good to have respect of persons in judgment; and he that saith to the wicked, Thou art righteous; the people shall curse him, nations shall abhor him;" Prov. xxiv. 23, 24. "He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the Lord;" chap. "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good

xvii. 15.

evil; that put darkness for light, and light for aarkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter;-which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him. Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as the dust; because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel;" Isa. v. 20.23,24. Let the malicious serpent accuse Job before God; in the end it shall turn to his own confusion. And if any of the princes of the earth, will by dogs be provoked to destroy the priests, or by jealousy kindled by malicious whisperers, be incited to do by the servants of Christ, as they did by the Waldenses, Bohemians, and Protestants in many places, &c. we will remember the memorable words of David, 1 Sam. xxvi. 18, 19. and let the sufferers imitate him in the submissive part, "Wherefore doth my Lord pursue after his servant? For what have I done, or what evil is in my hand? Now therefore I pray thee let my Lord the King hear the words of his servant. If the Lord have stirred thee. up against me, let him accept an offering. But if it be the children of men, cursed be they before the Lord; for they have driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the Lord, saying, Go serve other gods." (By going where they are served.)

Having fully shewed you what Godliness is, I now beseech thee, reader, to inquire, Whether this described case be thine? Art thou devoted to God without reserve, as being not thine own but his? And hast thou devoted all thou hast to him with thyself, to be used according to his will? Art thou more subjected to his authority, and observant of his laws and government, than of man's? And can his word do more with thee, than the word of any mortal man, or than the violence of thy lusts and passions? Art thou heartily engaged to him as thy felicity, and dost thou give up thyself to him in filial love, dependance, and observance, as to thy dearest friend and father? Dost thou most highly esteem him, and resolvedly choose him, and sincerely seek him, preferring nothing in thy estimation, choice, resolution, or endeavour before him? Try by these and the other particulars in the description, whether you are godly or ungodly; and do it faithfully. For the day is at hand, when the ungodly