TO THE MOST NOBLE AND VIRTUOUS PRINCESS, THE LADY DUCHESS OF ORMOND HER GRACE. MADAM, I PRESENT your grace here with a testimony of my obedience, and of your own zeal for the good of souls. You were in your great charity not only pleased to pardon the weakness of this discourse, but to hope it might serve as a memorial to those that need it, of the great necessity of living virtuously and by the measures of christianity. Madam, you are too great and too good to have any ambition for the things of this world; but I cannot but observe that in your designs for the other world, you by your charity and zeal adopt yourself into the portion of those ecclesiastics, who humbly hope and truly labour for the reward that is promised to those wise persons who convert souls, if our prayers and your desires that every one should be profited in their eternal concerns, cast in a symbol towards 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, J. D. SERMON I. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED. MATT. v. 20. 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. 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 law-giver, 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 έπεισαγωγὴ κρείττονος ἐλπίδος, the 'superinduction of a better hope' hath endeared a more perfect obedience. When Christ "brought life and immortality to light through the gospel," and hath promised to us things greater than all our explicit desires, bigger than the thoughts of our heart, then yyíCOME TO EQ, 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 im[? Caleb.-Josh. xv. 16; Judg. i. 12.] a [1 Chron. xi. 17.] c Heb. vii. 19, [et x. 1.] [SERM. perfect 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 law-giver 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, 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 into it; 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 no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." [Virg. eclog. vii. 35.] for |