heaven, not wine in bowls, not strange flesh and beastly dalliance, not unnatural titillations nor violent filthiness; that feast without fear, and drink without measure, and swear without feeling, and live without God; their bodies are vigorous, their coffers full, their state prosperous, their hearts cheerful: Oh, how thou blesseth such men!" Lo, these," thou sayest, "these are the darlings of heaven and earth: Sic ô sic juvat vivere: while those other sullen mopish creatures are the xalápuara, off-scouring and recrements of the world." Thou fool; give me thy hand; let me lead thee with David into the Sanctuary of God. Now, what seest thou? The end, the end of these men is not peace: Surely, O God, thou hast set them in slippery places, and castest them down into desolation: how suddenly are they perished, and horribly consumed! Woe is me! they do but dance a galliard over the mouth of hell, that seems now covered over with the green sods of pleasure the higher they leap, the more desperate is their lighting. O woeful, woeful condition of those godless men; yea, those Epicurean Porkets, whose belly is their God, whose heaven is their pleasure, whose cursed jollity is but a feeding up to an eternal slaughter! The day is coming, wherein every minute of their sinful unsatisfying joys, shall be answered with a thousand thousand millions of years' frying in that unquenchable fire: and, when those damned Ghosts shall, forth of their incessant flames, see the glorious remuneration of the penitent and pensive souls which they have despised, they shall then gnash and yell out that late recantation; We fools thought their life madness, and their end without honour; now they are counted among the children of God, and their portion is among the saints, ours amongst devils: Judge not, therefore, according to appearance. 4. Should we judge according to appearance, ALL WOULD BE GOLD THAT GLISTERETH; ALL DROSS, THAT GLISTERETH NOT. Hypocrites have never shewed more fair, than some Saints foul. Saul weeps; Ahab walks softly; Tobias and Sanballat will be building God's walls; Herod hears John gladly; Balaam prophesies Christ, Judas preaches him, Satan confesses him: When even an Abraham dissembles: a David cloaks adultery with murder; a Solomon gives, at least a toleration to idolatry; a Peter forswears his master; briefly, the prime disciple is a Satan, Satan an angel of light. For you: how gladly are we deceived, in thinking you all such as you seem: none but the Court of Heaven hath a fairer face. Prayers, sermons, sacraments, geniculation, silence, attention, reverence, applause, knees, eyes, ears, mouths full of God: oh, that ye were thus always! oh, that this were your worst side! but, if we follow you from the Church, and find cursing and bitterness under your tongues, licentious disorder in your lives, bribery and oppression in your hands; if God look into the windows of your hearts, and find there be, intùs rapina, we cannot judge you by the appearance; or, if we could, what comfort were it to have deceived our charity with the appearance of Saints, when the Righteous Judge shall give you your portion with Hypocrites? Whatever We do, He will be sure not to judge according to appearance. 5. If appearance should be the rule, FALSE RELIGION SHOULD BE TRUE; TRUE FALSE. Quædam falsa probabiliora quibusdam veris, is the old word; "Some falsehoods are more likely than some truths." Native beauty scorns art. Truth is as a matron; error, a courtesan : the matron cares only to conciliate love, by a grave and graceful modesty; the courtesan, with philtres and farding. We have no hierarchy mounted above kings; no pompous ostentation of magnificence; no garish processions; no gaudy altars; no fine images clad with taffeties in summer, with velvets in winter; no flourishes of universality; no rumours of miracles; no sumptuous canonizations: we have nothing but yáλa adoλov; the sincerity of Scriptures, simplicity of sacraments, decency of rare ceremonies, Christ crucified. We are gone, if you go by appearance: gone? alas, who can but blush and weep and bleed, to see that Christian souls should, after such beams of knowledge, suffer themselves to be thus palpably cozened with the gilded slips of error! that, after so many years' pious government of such an incomparable succession of religious princes, Authority should have cause to complain of our defection! Dear Christians, I must be sharp, are we children or fools, that we should be better pleased with the glittering tinsel of a painted baby from a pedlar's shop, than with the secretly rich and invaluable jewel of Divine Truth? Have we thus learned Christ? Is this the fruit of so clear a Gospel of so blessed sceptres? For God's sake, be wise and honest, and ye cannot be Apostates. 6. Shortly; for it were easy to be endless; if appearance might be the rule, GOOD SHOULD BE EVIL; EVIL, GOOD. There is no virtue, that cannot be counterfeited; no vice, that cannot be blanched: we should have no such friend, as our enemy, a flatterer; no such enemy, as our friend, that reproves us. It were a wonder, if ye Great Ones should not have some such burs hanging upon your sleeves: as soon shall corn grow without chaff, as greatness shall be free from adulation. These servile spirits shall sooth up all your purposes, and magnify all your actions, and applaud your words, and adore your persons: sin what you will; they will not check you: project what you will; they will not thwart you say what ye will; they will not fail to second you be what ye will; they will not fail to admire you. Oh, how these men are all for you, all yours, all you. They love you, as the ravens do your eyes. How dear was Sisera to Jael, when she smoothed him up, and gave him milk in a lordly dish! Sampson to Dalilah, when she lulled him in her lap! Christ to Judas, when he : kissed him!" See how he loved him!" would some fool have said, that had judged by appearance. In the mean time, an honest plain-dealing friend is like those sauces, which a man praises with tears in his eyes: like a chestnut, which pricks the fingers, but pleases our taste; or, like some wholesome medicinal potion, that distastes and purges us, perhaps makes us sick, that it may heal us. Oh, let the righteous smite me, for that is a benefit; let him reprove me, and it shall be a precious oil that shall not break my head: break it? no; it shall heal it, when it is mortally wounded by mine own sin, by others' assentation. Oh, how happy were it, if we could love them, that love our souls and hate them, that love our sins! They are these rough hands, that must bring us savoury dishes, and carry away a blessing. Truth is for them now, thanks shall be for them hereafter; but, in the mean time, they may not be judged by the appearance. Lastly, if we shall judge friendship, by compliment; salubrity, by sweetness; service, by the eye; fidelity, by oaths; valour, by brags; a saint, by his face; a devil, by his feet; we shall be sure to be deceived: Judge not, therefore, according to appearance. But, that ye mistake not, though we may not judge only by the appearance, yet appearance may not be neglected in our judgment. Some things, according to the philosopher, dokeî μèv, εστί δε, seem and are, are as they seem. Semblances are not always severed from truth. Our senses are safe guides to our understandings. We justly laugh at that sceptic in Laertius, who, because his servants robbed his cupboard, doubted whether he left his victuals there. What do we with eyes, if we may not believe their intelligence? That world is past, wherein the gloss, Clericus amplectens fæminam presumitur benedicendi causâ fecisse; "The wanton embracements of another man's wife, must pass, with a Clerk, for a ghostly benediction." Men are now more wise, less charitable. Words and probable shews our appearances, actions are not; and yet even our words also shall judge us: if they be filthy, if blasphemous, if but idle, we shall account for them, we shall be judged by them; Ex ore tuo. A foul tongue shews ever a rotten heart: By their fruits ye shall know them, is our Saviour's rule. I may safely say, Nobody desires to borrow colours of evil. If you do ill, think not that we will make dainty to think you so; when the God of Love can say by the Disciple of Love, Qui facit peccatum, ex diabolo est. He, that committeth sin, is of the Devil. Even the Righteous Judge of the World judgeth secundum opera, according to our works; we cannot err, while we tread in his steps. If we do evil, sin lies at the door; but it is on the street-side: every passenger sees it, censures it; how much more He, that sees in secret? Tribulation and anguish upon every soul that doth evil. Every soul: here is no exemption by greatness; no buying off with bribes; no blearing of the eyes with pretences: no shrouding ourselves in the night of secrecy; but if it be a soul that doth evil, tribulation and anguish is for it: contrarily, if we do well, shall we not be accepted? If we be charitable in our alms, just in our awards, faithful in our performances, sober in our carriages, devout in our religious services, conscionable in our actions; Glory, and honour, and peace to every man that worketh good; we shall have peace with ourselves, honour with men, glory with God and his angels: yea, that peace of God, which passeth all understanding; such honour as have all his Saints, the incomprehensible glory of the God of Peace, the God of saints and Angels to the participation whereof, that good God that hath ordained us, as mercifully bring us, for the sake of his dear Son Jesus Christ the Just. To whom, with thee, O Father, and thy Good Spirit, One Infinite God, our God, be given all praise, honour, and glory, now and for ever. Amen. SERMON IX. THE GREAT IMPOSTOR: LAID OPEN IN A SERMON AT GRAY'S INN, FEBRUARY 2, 1623. TO THE MOST NOBLE AND WORTHILY HONOURED SOCIETY OF GRAY'S INN: AT WHOSE BAR THIS IMPOSTOR WAS OPENLY ARRAIGNED: JOSEPH HALL HUMBLY DEDICATES THIS PUBLIC LIFE OF HIS WEAK AND UNWORTHY LABOUR. JEREMIAH XVII. 9. The heart is deceitful above all things. I KNOW where I am: in one of the famous Phrontisteries of Law and Justice. Wherefore serve Law and Justice, but for the prevention or punishment of fraud and wickedness? Give me leave, therefore, to bring before you, Students, Masters, Fathers, Oracles of law and justice, the greatest cheater and Malefactor in the world; our own Heart. It is a great word, that I have said, in promising to bring him before you; for this is one of the greatest advantages of his fraud, that he cannot be seen that, as that old juggler, Apollonius Thyanæus, when he was brought before the Judge, vanished out of sight; so this great Impostor, in his very presenting before you, disappeareth and is gone; yea, so cunningly, that he doth it with our own consent, and we would be loth that he could be seen. Therefore, as an Epiphonema to this just complaint of deceitfulness, is added, Who can know it? It is easy to know that it is deceitful, and in what it deceives; though the deceits themselves cannot be known, till too late as we may see the ship, and the sea, and the ship going on the sea; yet, the way of a ship in the sea, as Solomon observes, we know not. God asks, and God shall answer. What he asks by Jeremiah, he shall answer by St. Paul; Who knows the heart of man? Even the spirit of man that is in him; 1 Cor. ii. 11. If then the heart have but eyes enow to see itself by the reflection of thoughts, it is enough. Ye shall easily see and hear enough, out of the analogy and resemblance of hearts, to make you both astonished and ashamed. : The heart of man lies in a narrow room; yet all the world cannot fill it but that, which may be said of the heart, would more than fill a world. Here is a double style given it; of Deceitfulness, of Wickedness; either of which knows no end, whether of being, or of discourse. I spend my hour, and might do my life, in treating of the first. See then, I beseech you, the Impostor, and the Imposture : the IMPOSTOR himself, The heart of man; the IMPOSTURE, Deceitful above all things. I. As deceitful persons are wont ever to go under many names, and ambiguous, and must be expressed with an aliàs; so doth the HEART of man. Neither man himself, nor any part of man, hath so many names, as the heart alone: for every faculty that it hath, and every action it doth, it hath a several name. Neither is there more multiplicity, than doubt in this name: not so many terms are used to signify the heart, as the heart signifies many things. When ye hear of the heart, ye think straight of that fleshy part in the centre of the body, which lives first, and dies last; and whose beatings you find to keep time, all the body over. That is not it, which is so cunning. Alas, that is a poor harmless piece, merely passive and if it do any thing, as the subministration of vital spirits to the maintenance of the whole frame, it is but good: no; it is the spiritual part, that lurks in this flesh, which is guilty of such deceit. We must learn of witty idolatry, to distinguish betwixt the stock and the invisible powers that dwell in it. It is not for me, to be a stickler betwixt the Hebrews and the Greek philosophers and physicians, in a question of natural learning, concerning the seat of the soul; nor to insist upon the reasons, why the Spirit of God rather places all the spiritual powers in the heart than in the brain: |