and enticed as much by their own lusts as by the tempter's subtilty. They are very near as deep in guilt as the deceivers themselves are, because the same corrupt principles are common to both; only there is this difference, that one spreads the false doctrine, the other gladly receives it, and by receiving encourages it, and so is passively instrumental in seducing others, and is but one remove from the more active seducer. Having thus considered the several cases both of deceivers and deceived, it remains now only, in the third and last place,

III.

To subjoin some advices proper to prevent our falling in with either.

The best preservative, in this case, is an honest and good heart, well disposed towards truth and godliness, having no by-ends to serve, no favourite lust or passion to indulge. If any man is but willing to know and do God's commandments, he will easily discern, in most cases, whether a doctrine be of God, or whether it be of men. The evidences of the true religion and of its main doctrines are so bright and strong, when carefully attended to, that common sense and reason are sufficient to lead us, when there is no bias to mislead us. If we intend well, and sincerely aim at truth, and have no inclination to turn from it, either to the right or left, we shall not miss of it; at least, not in any points of weight or concernment. Retain but this honest and upright disposition of heart, and then, as you can have no inclination to deceive others, so neither will you be liable to be grossly or dangerously deceived yourselves. Many particular cautions might be given, which I have no room to mention : but he who has once well learnt the general rule before mentioned, will need no other, or will himself find out, as occasion offers, all the

rest.

And now to apply very briefly what hath been here said to our particular case and circumstances. We live in an age of deceivers, and so did the Apostles themselves :

and if their authority, even among their own disciples, was not sufficient to keep out false doctrines and dangerous; so neither will any more disputable authority be able to do it now. It is our happiness however, that both the truth, and the whole truth, purged from every gross error or superstition, is here publicly professed and taught, and every one that runs may read it. What has been calmly, wisely, and deliberately settled by excellent men, martyrs here, and now saints with God, let none lightly depart from, lest they justly fall under the censure of the text, of being "like children tossed to and fro with every wind "of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive." Such deceivers we are to expect, and such we have had lately, more perhaps than ever.

66

For several years last past, rude and bold attacks have been making against the important doctrines of Christianity, and against all revealed religion: and this is what they are still carrying on with exquisite subtilty and craftiness many ways, and with a great deal of fruitless pains and labour. For I may have leave to suppose, that no man can in this case be deceived, who has not first a desire to be so, and is not the dupe and bubble to his own lusts and vices. Attempts have been made to persuade us, that private vices are public benefits: who sees not that their lusts dictate what their pens write, and that the very corruption of the heart is come up into the head? Others presume to tell us, that man is no free agent, and has no liberty of will; from whence it would immediately follow, that there is no virtue nor vice, no future reckoning. Such dogmatizers as these only betray their own guilty fears, and, if there be any such thing, have prejudged themselves beforehand to everlasting damnation. Others, lastly, have run riot upon the miracles of our blessed Lord, and have thrown out more blasphemies in a few months' time, than bath ever been known in any Christian country in a course of ages. Can any serious person be deceived by

these things, which are frightful and hideous enough, almost to chill his blood, or to make it run backward in his veins ?

It would be affronting a Christian audience, to exhort them not to be carried about with any such wind of doctrines as have been taught by these blasphemers. The cunning serpent, in these instances, seems to have gone beyond himself, and to have forgot his wonted subtilty. The imposition is too gross, and the language too coarse to fetch in converts. All it can do is, to make those worse who were always bad, to render them perhaps ten times more the children of hell, than they were before.

As to men of any good sense or sobriety, I presume, such attempts will only fill them with horror and astonishment, and stir up their pious zeal for God and religion. May all attacks upon our most holy faith, or against any branch of it, have no other effect: and may our blessed Lord God, who alone can bring good out of evil, direct and overrule all things for the good of his Church, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

SERMON XXX.

The Case of St. Paul, in persecuting the Church.

ACTS ix. 4, 5.

And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

THE festival of St. Paul's conversion is of great note, and of long standing in the Church, not much short of a thousand years. The memorial of that happy, miraculous conversion, may suggest to us many pious and useful reflections; for which reason I choose, conformably to our Church Offices, to entertain you, this day, upon that subject. Saul was once a grievous persecutor of the Church of God: but, by the Divine blessing, he at length changed his principles, changing also his Jewish name Saul into the Roman Paul, and became a chief Apostle. None of the Apostles had so considerable a hand in converting men to the Christian faith, as this St. Paul had. He "laboured "more abundantly than they all." He had for his province the whole Gentile world, being therefore called the Apostle of the Gentiles. And as his sermons, while living, drew many thousands, or even thousands of thousands, after him, to profess the faith of Christ; so the writings which he left behind him, making up a great part of the Canon of the New Testament, have been of admirable use to feed and support the Christian Church ever since. Of

this great man and blessed saint I am now going to treat. The history of his conversion is particularly related in this chapter by St. Luke, and by St. Paul himself once and again in chapters the twenty-second and twenty-sixth of this book of the Acts. Such particular care has been taken by Divine Providence that an event so memorable should be transmitted down to posterity with marks of honour and advantage.

It was above two years after our Lord was gone to heaven, that this so famed conversion was wrought. Saul, for a year or two before, had behaved as blind zealots are used to do, with great warmth and fury. He was then in the heat of his youth, about thirty years old, very honest and sincere in his way, and exceedingly zealous for the law of his God. As he had been bred up a Jew, and of the strictest sect among them, "a Hebrew of the He"brews" by descent, and by party a Pharisee; he thought it became him to maintain the religion of his country, and the faith of his ancestors, with all imaginable vigour against all opposers. The prejudices of education were so strong, and his natural temper withal so eager and impetuous, that he staid not to examine into the merits of the Christian cause, into the truth or credibility of the then new and just commencing religion: but as he very well knew that his own religión was from God, he too hastily concluded that this other, now pretending to rival it, could not be Divine also. Under this false persuasion he laboured to destroy it, believing it his duty so to do, and that the honour of God required it at his hands. Fired with the thought, he entered a kind of volunteer into the service, went of his own accord to the magistrates to take out his warrants for persecuting the poor Christians. He had commission given him to break open their houses, to seize and apprehend Christian men or women, and to hale them by force to prison, in order to have still greater severities exercised upon them. While he was thus driving on with unbridled zeal, he distressed the Christians all about Jerusalem, and pursued them even to strange cities. One