us cruel, as if we had never given to any. 6. That the malignant enmity of the world to godliness doth dispose men to a slander all godly persons, without proof or reason, and to carry on any lie which they hear from others. 7. That there are more and greater good works than giving alms. A poor minister, that saith with Peter and John, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give thee," shall be accepted for what he would have given if he had had it. And if he d convert souls, and turn many to righteousness, and help men to heaven, and all the year long doth waste himself in study and labour to do it, and liveth a poor despised life, and suffereth poverty, scorn, and wrath, from the ungodly, which, if he would change his calling, he might escape; doth not this man do more and greater good works, at a dearer rate than he that should glut his flesh, and gratify his pride, and lust, and ease, with a thousand or six hundred pounds a-year, and give as much more to charitable uses? Though I never knew such a one that did so.

And because you have said so much for good works, I take the boldness to entreat you to do more. We that are your neighbours see nothing that you do, but only give Lazarus a few scraps at your door; but we see that you are clothed in purple and silk, and that not only you, but your children and servants, fare sumptuously and deliciously every day. How much you spend in taverns, and pomp, and state, and feasting, and gaming, and visits, and on your pride and pleasure, the country talks of; but we hear little of any impropriations that you buy in for the church, or of any free-schools, or hospitals, that you settle, or of any poor children that you set to school, or apprenticeships, or the like. The sins of Sodom are your daily business; pride, fulness of bread, and idleness, and want of compassion to the poor, make them up. (Ezek. xvi. 49.) O what a dreadful account will you have, when all this comes to be reckoned for, as is foretold; (Matt. xxv.;) when it is found, on your accounts, so many pounds on visits and needless entertainments, and pomp; so many on sports, and on superfluities of horses, dogs, and furniture; so many to tempt all in your house to gluttony, to say nothing of other wasteful lusts; and to pious and charitable uses, alas, how little! The Lord convert you, lest you hear, "Take the slothful and unprofitable

Matt. v. 10-12. 2 Cor. viii. 12.

Acts iii. 6.
d Jam. v. 20.

servant, and cast him into outer darkness;" and lest you want a drop of water for your tongue. At least, O do less hurt, if you will do no good.

El. I will talk no longer with you, lest you think to make me tremble, with Felix, or to say, 'Almost you persuade me to be a precisian,' you put such a face of reason upon your religion.

P. Sir, I beseech you let me end all our controversy with one question more. You profess yourself a Christian. Had you denied the Scripture, or the life to come, or the immortality of the soul, I had proved them, and talked to you at another rate. I ask you, then, if Saul had never been baptised till now, would you advise him to be baptised or not?

El. Yes; do you think I would not have him a Christian? P. And would you have him do it understandingly? or ignorantly to do he knoweth not what?

El. Understandingly; or else why is he a man?

P. And would you have him do it seriously, or hypocritically; dissemblingly, or in jest?

El. Do you think I am for hypocrisy and jesting about our Christianity?

P. I have done, sir. Saul, mark what your master saith. He would advise you to be baptised, if you had not been baptised before; and, therefore, now to stand to your baptism (for I will never ask him whether he would have you renounce it as an apostate). He would have you do it understandingly and seriously I desire no more of you. Remember that we are agreed of your duty. I call you to no other conversion nor holiness, than understandingly and seriously to renew your baptismal vow and covenant with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Whatever you hear scorners talk of puritans and preciseness, and troublesome religion, and of our many sects and many religions, of conformity and nonconformity, of a hundred controversies, remember that the serious renewing and faithful keeping your baptismal covenant is all that I preach to you and persuade you to. I will therefore write you out this covenant, desiring you to take it home with the exposition of it which I gave you, and consider of it with your most serious thoughts; and when you are resolved, come and tell me.

THE HOLY COVENANT.

I Do believe in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy • Matt. xxviii. 18-20; Mark xvi. 15, 16; Luke xiii. 3, 5, and xiv. 26, 33; Rom. viii. 8, 9, 17, 18.

Ghost, according to the particular articles of the christian faith; and heartily repenting of my sinful life, I do personally, absolutely, and resolvedly give up myself to him, my Creator and reconciled God and Father in Christ, my Saviour and my Sanctifier; renouncing the devil, the world, and the sinful desires of the flesh that, taking up my cross, and denying myself, I may follow Christ, the Captain of my salvation, to the death, and live with him in endless glory.

Read but our church liturgy, yea the papists' liturgies, and you will see that here is not a word but what is in the sense of baptism, and what papists, and protestants, and all Christians, are agreed on.

I pray you, Sir Elymas, read it, and tell him here whether there be any word that you except against.

El. I cannot deny it without denying Christianity. God make us all better Christians; for I perceive we are not what we promised to be. It was you that I talked against, I thought, all this while; but I begin to perceive that it is Christianity itself (in the practice, though not in the name) which my heart is against. I cannot like this godliness, and self-denying, and mortification, and cross-bearing; and yet I perceive that I vowed it, when I was baptised: and if I renounce it, I must renounce my Christianity itself. I would I had not talked with you, for you have disquieted my mind; and I find that it is serious religion itself that is against my mind and course of life, and my mind against it, and that I must be either a saint or an atheist ; and which I shall prove I cannot tell. But if I must repent, there is no haste.

THE FOURTH DAY'S CONFERENCE.

The Resolving and Actual Conversion of a Sinner.

Speakers.-Paul, a Teacher; and Saul, a Learner.

PAUL. Welcome, neighbour; you have been longer away than I expected; what was the matter with you?

SAUL. O, sir, I have seen and felt the heavy hand of God since I saw you. We had a violent fever common among us, and my landlord, Sir Elymas, is dead, and so is his servant that

f Prov. iii. 18, 19.

was with him when you talked with him; and I narrowly escaped with my life myself.

I

P. Alas! is he dead? pray you tell me how he took our conference, and how he died?

S. He told me that you were too bold and saucy with him; but he thought you were an honest man, and that you had more reason for your religion than he thought any of you had : and that the truth is, you had the Scripture on your side; and while he disputed with you on Scripture principles, you were too hard for him. But though he was loth to tell you so, he liked the papists better, who set not so much by Scripture; and when a man hath sinned, if he confess to the priest, they absolve him. Yea, rather than believe that none but such godly people could be saved, and rather than live so strict a life, he would not believe that the Scripture was the word of God.

P. Alas, how the rebellious heart of man stands out against the law and grace of God! As for the papists, I assure you they confess all the Scriptures to be the word of God, and of certain truth, as well as we; and they will deny never a word of that which I persuaded you to consent to. They differ from us in this, and they take in more books into the canonical Scripture than we do; and they say, that all that is in their Scripture and ours, is not religion enough for us; but we must have a great deal more, which they call tradition. See, then, the ignorance of these men that because they think we make them too much work, they will run to them that make them much more. Though I confess their additions consist so much in words, and ceremonies, and bodily exercise, that flesh and blood can the more easily bear it. When the papists dispute with us, they would make men believe that our religion is too loose and favoureth the flesh, and that theirs is far more strict and holy; and yet our sensualists turn papists to escape the strictness of our religion.

And as for their pardons and absolutions, I assure you, their own doctrine is, that they profit and save none but the truly pe nitent. And even their Gregory VII., called Hildebrand (and the firebrand of the church and empire), and that, in a council at Rome, professeth, that neither false penitence, nor false baptism, is effectual: though some of them make attrition, without contrition, or bare fear without love, to serve the turn. And if their priests do flatter the presumption and false hopes of fornicators, drunkards, and such grosser sinners, by absolving them

as oft as they confess their sin, without telling them that it is all ineffectual, unless, by true conversion, they forsake it, they do this but as a mere cheat for worldly ends; to increase their church, and win the great and wealthy of the world to themselves; quite contrary to their own knowledge and professed religion.

But as for his not believing the Scriptures: the truth is, there lieth the core of all their errors. There are abundance amongst us, that call themselves Christians, because it is the religion of the king and country, who are no Christians at the heart, which made me say so much of the hypocrisy of ungodly men. And I cannot see how a man, that truly believeth the Scripture, can quiet himself in a fleshly and ungodly life, but his belief would either convert him or torment him.

S. But I am persuaded he had some convictions upon his conscience, which troubled him. When he was taken first with the fever, they all put him in hopes that there was no danger of death; and so he was kept from talking at all of his soul, or of another world, till the fever took away his understanding; but twice or thrice he came to himself for half an hour, and Mr. Zedekiah, his chaplain, advised him to lift up his heart to God, and believe in Christ; for he was going to a place of joys, and angels were ready to receive his soul. And he looked at him with a direful countenance, and said, 'Away, flatterer! You have betrayed my soul! Too late! too late! And he trembled so that the bed shook under him.

P. And how died his servant, Malchus?

S. O, quite in another manner! He heard, in the next room, all the talk between his master and you, and, doubtless, it convinced him; but he went on in his former course of life, till

sickness took him, and then he was greatly terrified in conscience, especially when he heard that his master was dead. And he would often talk of you, and wish that he could have spoken with you; but none would endure to hear of sending for you. O! if you had but heard how he cried out toward the last O, my madness! O, my sinful, wicked life! O, what will become of my miserable soul? O that I had the time again which I have lost! Would God but try me once again, I would lead another life than I have done; I would make nothing of all the scorns of fools, and all the temptations of the world!' His groans did strike me as a dagger at the heart: methinks I still hear them which way ever I go.

Eccl. vii. 2-6.