A Preservative against unsettled Notions, and want of Principles,
in regard to Righteousness and Christian Perfection.
Being a more particular Answer to Doctor _Trapp_’s Four Sermons
upon the same Text.
To all the True Members of Christ’s Holy Church.
_Dear Fellow Christians_,
THE great, and indeed the only motive which prompted me to publish this
sermon, was the desire of providing for your security from error, at
a time when the deviators from, and false pretenders to truth, are so
numerous, that the most discerning find it a matter of the greatest
difficulty to avoid being led astray by one or by other into downright
falshood. There is no running divisions upon truth; like a mathematical
point, it will neither admit of subtraction nor addition: And as it is
indivisible in its nature, there is no splitting the difference, where
truth is concerned. Irreligion and enthusiasm are diametrical opposites,
and true piety between both, like the center of an infinite line, is
at an equal infinite distance from the one and the other, and therefore
can never admit of a coalition with either. The one erring by defect,
the other by excess. But whether we err by defect, or excess, is of
little importance, if we are equally wide of the mark, as we certainly
are in either case. For whatever is less than truth, cannot be truth;
and whatever is more than true must be false.
Wherefore, as the whole of this great nation seems now more than ever
in danger of being hurried into one or the other of these equally
pernicious extremes, irreligion or fanaticism, I thought myself more
than ordinarily obliged to rouze your, perhaps, drowsy vigilance, by
warning you of the nearness of your peril; cautioning you from leaning
towards either side, though but to peep at the slippery precipice; and
stepping between you and error, before it comes nigh enough to grapple
with you. The happy medium of true christian piety, in which it has
pleased the mercy of GOD to establish you, is built on a firm rock,
“and the gates of hell shall never prevail against it.” While then you
stand steadily upright in the fulness of the faith, falshood and sin
shall labour in vain to approach you; whereas, the least familiarity
with error, will make you giddy, and if once you stagger in principles,
your ruin is almost inevitable.
But now I have cautioned you of the danger you are in from the enemies
who threaten your subversion, I hope your own watchfulness will
be sufficient to guard you from any surprise. And from their own
assaults you have nothing to fear, since while you persist in the
firm resolution, through GOD’s grace, to keep them out, irreligion and
enthusiasm, falshood and vice, impiety and false piety, will combine in
vain to force an entrance into your hearts.
Take then, my dearly beloved fellow-members of CHRIST’s mystical body,
take the friendly caution I give you in good part, and endeavour to
profit by it: attend wholly to the saving truths I here deliver to you,
and be persuaded, that they are uttered by one who has your eternal
salvation as much at heart as his own.
“And thou, O LORD JESUS CHRIST, fountain of all truth, whence
all wisdom flows, open the understandings of thy people to the
light of thy true faith, and touch their hearts with thy grace,
that they may both be able to see, and willing to perform
what thou requirest of them. Drive away from us every cloud
of error and perversity; guard us alike from irreligion and
false pretensions to piety; and lead us on perpetually towards
that perfection to which thou hast taught us to aspire; that
keeping us here in a constant imitation of thee, and peaceful
union with each other, thou mayest at length bring us to that
everlasting glory, which thou hast promised to all such as
shall endeavour to be perfect, even as the Father who is in
heaven is perfect, who with thee and the Holy Ghost lives and
reigns one GOD, world without end! _Amen, Amen._”
ECCLESIASTES vii. 16.
_Be not righteous over-much, neither make thyself over-wise:
Why shouldest thou destroy thyself?_
RIGHTEOUS over-much! may one say; Is there any danger of that? Is it
even possible? Can we be too good? If we give any credit to the express
word of GOD, we cannot be too good, we cannot be righteous over-much.
The injunction given by GOD to _Abraham_ is very strong: “Walk before
me, and be thou perfect.” The same he again lays upon all _Israel_, in
the eighteenth of _Deuteronomy_: “Thou shalt be perfect, and without
blemish, with the LORD thy GOD.” And lest any should think to excuse
themselves from this obligation, by saying, it ceased when the old law
was abolished, our blessed Saviour ratified and explained it: “Be ye,
therefore, perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.”
So that until our perfection surpasses that of our heavenly Father, we
can never be too good nor righteous over-much; and as it is impossible
we should ever surpass, or even come up to him in the perfection of
goodness and righteousness, it follows in course that we never can
be good or righteous in excess. Nevertheless Doctor _Trapp_ has found
out that we may be righteous over-much, and has taken no small pains,
with much agitation of spirit, to prove that it is a _great folly and
weakness_, nay, a _great sin_. “O LORD! rebuke thou his spirit, and
grant that this false doctrine may not be published to his confusion in
the day of judgment!”
But if what this hasty, this deluded man advances had been true,
could there be any occasion, however, of warning against it in these
times, “when the danger (as he himself to his confusion owns) is on
the contrary extreme; when all manner of vice and wickedness abounds
to a degree almost unheard of?” I answer for the present, that “there
must be heresies amongst you, that they who are approved may be made
manifest.”
However, this earthly-minded minister of a new gospel, has taken a text
which seems to favour his naughty purpose, of weaning the well-disposed
little ones of CHRIST from that perfect purity of heart and spirit,
which is necessary to all such as mean to live to our LORD JESUS.
O LORD, what shall become of thy flock, when their shepherds betray
them into the hands of the ravenous wolf! when a minister of thy word
perverts it to overthrow thy kingdom, and to destroy scripture with
scripture!
_Solomon_, in the person of a desponding, ignorant, indolent liver,
says to the man of righteousness: “Be not righteous over-much, neither
make thyself over-wise: Why shouldest thou destroy thyself?” But
must my angry, over-sighted brother _Trapp_, therefore, personate a
character so unbecoming his function, merely to overthrow the express
injunction of the LORD to us; which obliges us never to give over
pursuing and thirsting after the perfect righteousness of CHRIST, until
we rest in him? Father, forgive him, for he knows not what he says!
What advantage might not satan gain over the elect, if the false
construction, put upon this text by that unseeing teacher, should
prevail! Yet though he blushes not to assist satan to bruise our heel,
I shall endeavour to bruise the heads of both, by shewing,