An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

These things thus laid down, let us consider, Why all the fore-mentioned steps of a Church-Saint are nothing without the latter. To be a Saint by the outward Covenant, by dedication to God, by outward profession and vocation: Yea, to be a Saint, having some works of Gods Spirit on us, unless we be born of God, and so have holy Natures, holy affections, and an holy conversation; it's to be like the foolish Virgins, who have lamps, and those lighted, but want oil. Let us therefore consider, What may provoke us to be Saints indeed. And

These things thus laid down, let us consider, Why all the fore-mentioned steps of a Church-Saint are nothing without the latter. To be a Saint by the outward Covenant, by dedication to God, by outward profession and vocation: Yea, to be a Saint, having some works of Gods Spirit on us, unless we be born of God, and so have holy Natures, holy affections, and an holy conversation; it's to be like the foolish Virgi•s, who have lamps, and those lighted, but want oyl. Let us therefore consider, What may provoke us to be Saints indeed. And

1. What matter of shame and reproach is it, to have the name of a Saint only, ¹and nothing else. Thy life, not the life of a Saint, thy words, thy actions, not the expressions of a Saint. Is not this ridiculous, even as when they called the Blackmoors [Greek or Hebrew], silver white? Thou art a Saint in that sense he said, Auri sacri fames; indeed thou art most accursed, and art but a mockery in respect of God and man. As it is a shame, so it is an horrible reproach; even as Revel. 2. there is the blasphemy of some, who said they were Jews, and were not. Thus it is a blasphemy in thee to be externally a Saint, and not really; as the Apostle, Rom. 2. 24. speaking of such, saith, The Name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you. The mischief of the scandalous, profane lives in the Church, hath been the cause not only of Gods eminent judgements upon it, even at last to unchurch them, but also hath been like winds in the bowels of the earth, making a dreadful earthquake. Heresies in Doctrine have not more molested the Church, than profaneness in life. The troubles of the Donatists made in the Church for many years together, was it not because of the profaneness of Christians lives? In our days, What is the great argument against our Churches, that they are no true Churches, that they are the Synagogue of Satan? Doth not this arise wholly from the ungodliness of most mens lives? Call such Saints; you may as well name darkness, light. Yea, what is the cause that the bringing in of any good Order in a Church, the purging out of the old leaven, is such a grievous tormenting matter? Why do generally people dislike and rage at it? Is not all this, because though men are contented with the name of a Saint, yet they cannot endure the practical power of it? So that we may say, the real ungodliness of such who are in the Church, is the cause of all the evil that comes in