Joy, unjust Fears, unsound Hopes, and whatsoever either distemper or misplacing of these Passions. If we love the world more than God, if we hate any enemy more than sin, if we grieve at any loss more than of the favour of God, if we joy in anything more than the writing of our names in heaven, if we fear anything more than offence, if we hope for anything more than salvation; and, much more, if we change objects, loving what we should hate, joying in what we should grieve at, hoping for what we should fear, and the contrary; in one word, if our desires and affections be earthly, groveling, sensual, not spiritual, sublimed, heavenly; we fall into the damnable fashion of the World. Away, therefore, with all evil concupiscence, all ambitious affectations, all spiteful emulations, all worldly sorrows, all cowardly fears, all carnal heats of false joy. Let the World dote upon vanity, and follow after lies: let our affections and conversation be above, where Christ Jesus sitteth at the right hand of God. Let the base earthworms of this world be taken up with the best of this vain trash: the desires of us Christians must soar aloft ; and fix themselves upon those objects, which may make us perfectly and unchangeably blessed. Thus, fashion not your Hearts to the Carnal Desires and Affections of the World.

10. Affections easily break forth into actions; and actions perfect our desires. Let us from the Heart look to the HANDS and FEET, the instruments of motion and execution of the world. Fashion not yourselves, lastly, therefore to the Practice and Carriage of the World.

The World makes a God of itself; and would be serving any God, but the true one. Hate ye this cursed Idolatry; and say with Joshua, I and my house will serve the Lord.

The World would be framing religion to policy; and serving God, in his own forms. Hate ye this Will-worship, Superstition, Temporizing; and say with David, I esteem all thy precepts to be right, and all false ways I utterly abhor; Psalm cxix. 128.

The World cares not how it rends and tears the Sacred Name of their Maker with oaths, and curses, and blasphemies. Oh, hate ye this audacious Profaneness, yea this profane Devilism, and tremble at the dreadful Majesty of the name of the Lord our God.

The World cares not how it slights the ordinances of God, violates his days, neglects his assemblies. Hate ye this common Impiety; say with the Psalmist, Oh, how sweet is thy Law, how amiable thy Tabernacles!

The World is set to spurn at authority, to despise God's messengers, to scorn the nakedness of their spiritual fathers. Hate ye this lawless Insolency; and say, Quam speciosi pedes! How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the Gospel of peace! Isaiah lii. 7. Rom. x. 15.

The World is set upon cruelty, oppression, violence, rapine,

revenge, sieging, sacking, cutting of throats. Hate ye this bloody Savageness: Put on, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, meekness, long suffering; Col. iii. 12.

The World is a very brothel, given over to the prosecutions of noisome and abominable lusts. Hate ye this Impurity, and possess your vessels in holiness and honour.

The World is a cheater; yea, to speak plain, a thief: every where abounding with the tricks of legal fraud and cozenage; yea, with sly stealths; yea, with open extortions. extortions. Hate ye this Injustice; and, with quietness work, and eat your own bread; 2 Thess. iii. 12.

Thus, fashion not yourselves to the Actual Wickednesses of the World. All these are the unfruitful works of darkness; they are not for our fellowship; they are for our abomination and reproof.

III. And now I have laid before you some patterns, if not models, of the ill fashions of the World, in the Thoughts, Dispositions, Affections, Actions thereof. Like them, if ye can, O ye Christian Hearers, and follow them.

I am sure, from our outward fashions of attire, we need no other dissuasive, than their ugliness and misbecoming.

1. And what shall I need to tell you how loathsomely DEFORMED these fashions of the World would make us to appear in the sight of God? The toad or the serpent are lovely objects to us, in comparison of these disguises to the pure eyes of the Almighty yea, so perfectly doth God hate them, that he professes those hate him that like them. Whosoever will be a friend to the world, is an enemy to God; James iv. 4. Oh, then, if we love our souls, let us hate those fashions, that may draw us into the detestation of the Almighty; for our God is a consuming fire.

2. Besides misbeseeming, it is a just plea against any fashion, that it is PAINFUL. For, though there be some pain in all pride, yet too much we endure not; and, behold, these fashions shall pinch and torture us to death, to an everlasting death of body and soul. The ill guest in the parable was thus clad; Matt. xxii. 12: the King abhors his suit; and, after expostulation, gives the sentence, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into utter darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Oh, fear and tremble at the expectation of this dreadful doom, all ye, that will needs be in the Fashion of the World. If ye so foolish, as to flatter yourselves here in the conceit of your liberty, there shall be binding; in the conceit of a lightsome and resplendent magnificence, there shall be darkness; in the conceit of pleasure and contentment, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

be

3. COMMONNESS and age are the usual disparagements of fashions. The best may not go like every body: where a fashion is taken up of the basest, it is disdained of the eminent. Behold,

these are the fashions, if not of all, I am sure of the worst: the very scum of the world is thus habited. Let us, that are Chris

tians, in a holy pride, scorn to be suited like them.

4. As common, so OLD fashions are in disgrace. That man would be shouted at, that should come forth in his great-grandsire's suit, though not rent, not discoloured. Behold, these are the overworn and misshapen rags of the old man: away with them, to the frippery of darkness; yea, to the brokery of hell. Let us be for a change. Old things are passed, all things are become new. As we look to have these bodies once changed from vile to glorious; so let us now change the fashions of our bodies and souls, from corrupt and worldly, to spiritual and heavenly: and, loathing all these Misbeseeming, Painful, Common, Old Fashions of the World, let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ; that, being clad with the robes of his righteousness here, we may be clothed upon with the robes of his Glory in the Highest Heavens. Amen.

SERMON XIX.

THE ESTATE OF A CHRISTIAN :

LAID FORTH IN A SERMON PREACHED AT GRAY'S INN, ON CANDLEMAS DAY.

ROMANS XII. 2.

-But be ye changed (or transformed) by the renewing of your minds.

THE true method of Christian practice is first destructive, then astructive according to the Prophet, Cease to do evil, learn to do good. This our Apostle observes; who first unteacheth us ill fashions, and then teacheth good.

We have done with the Negative duty of a Christian, what he must not do hear now the affirmative, what he must do: wherein our speech, treading in the steps of the blessed Apostle, shall pass through these Four Heads: First, that here must be a CHANGE! Secondly, that this change must be BY TRANSFORMATION; Thirdly, that this transformation must be BY RENEWING; Fourthly, that this renewing must be oF THE MIND: But be ye changed, or transformed, by the renewing of your minds. All of them points of high and singular importance; and such as do therefore call for your best and carefullest attention.

I. Nothing is more changing than the Fashion of the World: Mundus transit, The world passeth away, saith St. John; 1 John ii. 17. Yet here, that we may not fashion ourselves to the

world, we must be CHANGED: we must be changed from these changeable fashions of the world, to a constant estate of regeneration. As there must be once a perfect change of this mortal to immortality, so must there be, onwards, of this sinful to gracious: and, as holy Job resolves to wait all the days of his appointed time, for that changing; so, this change contrarily waits for us, and may not be put off one day.

What creature is there, wherein God will not have a change? They needed not as he made them: nothing could fall from him but good: we marred them; and, therefore, they both are changed, and must be. Even of the very heavens themselves, it is said, As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: how much more these sublunary bodies that are never themselves! We know the elements are in a perpetual transmutation: so are those bodies, that are compounded of them: as he said of the river, we cannot step down twice into the same stream. And, every seven years, as philosophy hath observed, our bodies are quite changed from what they were.

And, as there is a natural change in our favours, colour, complexion, temper; so there is no less voluntary change in our diets, in our dispositions, in our delights. With what scorn, do we now look upon the Top which our Childhood was fond on! how do we either smile or blush, in our mature age, to think of the humours and actions of our youth! How much more must the depravedness of our spiritual condition call for a change!

It is a rule in Policy, Not to alter a well-settled evil. I am sure it holds not in the Economy of the Soul; wherein length of prescription pleads rather for a speedy removal. No time can prejudice the King of Heaven.

In some cases indeed, change is a sign of a weak unsettledness. It is not for a wise man, like shell-fish, to rise or fall with the moon: rather, like unto the heaven, he must learn to move, and be constant. It was a good word of Basil to the governor; Utinam sempiterna sit hæc mea desipientia; "Let me dote thus always." It was not for nothing, that Socrates had the reputation of wisdom: that famous shrew of his, Xantippe, could say, she never but saw him return with the countenance that he went out with. Give me a man, that, in the changes of all conditions, can frame himself to be like an auditor's counter; and can stand, either for a thousand, or a hundred, or, if need be, for one: this man comes nearest to him, in whom there is no shadow of turning.

But, in case of present ill, there can be no safety but in change. I cannot blame the angels and saints in heaven, that they would not change: I bless them, that they cannot; because they are not capable of better: and every motion is out of a kind of need. I cannot wonder at the damned spirits, that they would be any thing but what they are. We, that are naturally

in the way to that damnation, have reason to desire a change: worse we cannot be upon earth, than in a state of sin. Be changed therefore, if ye wish well to your own souls; that it may be said of you, in St. Paul's words, Such ye were. What an enemy would upbraid by way of reproach, is the greatest praise that can be, Faults that were. O happy men, that can hear, "Ye were profane, unclean, idolatrous, oppressive, riotous !" Their very sins honour them: as the very devils, that Mary Magdalen had, are mentioned for her glory; since we do not hear of them, but when they were cast out.

As there are some careless, nasty creatures, that can abide to wear none but their old, patched, sordid rags, (such as that miscreant Cistercian, Spanish Deist, whom we saw walk in and pollute our streets,) men, that, out of sullenness or affection, are habited as the Gibeonites were out of craft: so there are spiritually such; natural men, yea, natural fools, that please themselves in a false constancy, and brag they are no changelings, Whose glory is their shame, whose end, if they go on so, is damnation. Let the Great Bridegroom come in, and find one of these crept into his feast, he shall be sure to send him out with a mischief; How camest thou in hither? Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into utter darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth; Matt. xxii. 13. Away with this frippery of our nature. Old things are passed: if ever we look to have any party in God, in heaven, we must be changed.

II. But, secondly, every change will not serve the turn. The word is not αλλοίωσις Alteration, nor μεταβολὴ, but ΜΕΤΑΜORPHOSIS; a word, whose sound we are better acquainted with, than the sense the meaning is, There must be a change in our very form.

There is no motion, no action we pass through, without a change: As there is no step, wherein we change not our meridian; so there is no act, which works not some mutation in us.

But there are slight changes, wherein the places, habits, actions, vary, without any change of the form: as, Cœlum, non animum, was an old word: and we know the body is the same, while the suits are divers.

And, again, there are changes, that reach to the very forms, whence all actions arise: as when of evil, we are made good; of carnal, spiritual. This is the Metamorphosis, that is here called for. Indeed it hath been a not more ancient than true observation, that the change of some things makes all things seem changed: as when a man comes into a house, wherein the partitions are pulled down, the roof raised up, the floor paved, baywindows set out, the outside rough-cast; he shall think all the frame new; and yet the old foundation, beams, studs, roof, stand still so it is here; the very substance of the soul holds still, but the dispositions and qualities and the very cast of it are altered;