we are in the wrong, and religion in the right, because it hath the best and soberest reason of mankind on its fide.

Let us then with all readiness of mind entertain that light which God hath afforded to us, to conduct us and shew us the way to happiness, whether by the principles of natural religion, or by the revelation of the gofpel in its primitive purity and luftre, and not as it hath been muffled and disguised by the ignorance and superstition which prevailed in afterages, till the light of the reformation sprang out, and restored a new day to us, and called us again out of darkness into a marvellous light, which by the blessing of God we have now enjoyed for many years, and which we cannot go about to quench, without incurring the condemnation in the text.

Thirdly, and lastly, Let us take heed of practical infidelity, of oppofing and contradicting the Christian religion by our wicked lives and actions. Though we profess to believe the gospel, yet if our deeds be evil, we do in effect and by interpretation reject it, and love darkness rather than light; though we afsent to the truth of it, yet we with-hold it in unrighteousness, we resist the virtue and efficacy of it, and do oppose and blafpheme it by our lives; nay, we do as much as in us lies to make others atheists, by expofing religion to the contempt and scorn of such perfons, and by opening their mouths against it; as either not containing the laws of a good life, or as deftitute of power and efficacy to perfuade men to the obedience of those laws. Where, will they say, is this excellent religion, so much boasted of? How does it appear? Look into the lives of Christians, and there you will best see the admirable effects of this doctrine; the mighty force of this institution! And what a shameful reproach is this to us! What a scandal and disparagement to our holy religion, to see some of the worst of men wearing the badge and livery of the best religion and institution that ever was in the world!.

I conclude all with the words of the Apostle, Phi

lip. i. 27. Only let your conversation be as it be

cometh the gospel of Christ; and stand fast in one Spirit, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel.

:

SERMON CCXLVI.

The ground of bad mens enmity to the

truth.

JOHN iii. 20.

For every one that doth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, left his deeds should be reproved.

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Mong all the advantages which God hath afforded mankind, to conduct them to eternal happiness, the light of the Christian religion is incomparably the greatest; which makes it the greater wonder, that at its first appearing in the world, it should meet with such unkind entertainment, and so fierce and violent an opposition. Of all the bleffings of nature, light is the most welcome and pleafant; and furely to the mind of man, rightly disposed, truth is as agreeable and delightful, as it is to the eye to behold the fun and yet we find, that when the most glorious light that ever the world saw, visited mankind, and Truth itself was incarnate, and came down from heaven to dwell among us, it was so far from being welcomed by the world, that it was treated with all imaginable rudeness, and was opposed by the Jews, with as much fierceness and rage, as if an enemy had invaded their country, with a design to take away their place and nation. No fooner did the Son of God appear, and begin to fend forth his light and truth among them, by the publick preaching of his doctrine, but the teachers and rulers among the Jews rose up against him as a common enemy, and were never quiet till they had taken him out of the way, and by this means, as they thought, quite extinguished that light.

Now what can we imagine should be the reason of all this, that a person who gave such clear evidence that he came from God, that a doctrine which carries such clear evidence of its divine original, should be rejected with so much indignation and scorn ? That light and truth, which are so agreeable to mankind and so universally welcome, should be so difdainfully repulfed? What account can be given of it, but that which our Saviour here gives in the text? Light is come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light; because their deeds were evil. For every one that doth evil, hateth the light, nei. ther cometh to the light, left his deeds should be reproved, (or discovered; for so the word likewise signifies, and may very fitly be fo rendered in this place) but (as it follows) he that doth the truth, cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God; that is, that they are of a divine stamp and original. In which words our Saviour represents to us the different difposition and carriage of good and bad men, as to the receiving or rejecting of truth, when it is offered to them: They that are wicked and worldly are enemies to truth, because they have designs contrary to it. Every one that doth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, left his deeds should be reproved. And on the contrary, a good man, he that doth the truth, and sincerely practises what he knows, cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest.

I shall not need to handle these distinctly, because in speaking to one, the contrary will fufficiently appear. That therefore which I shall speak to at this time, shall be the former of these, viz. The enmity of bad men, and of those who carry on ill designs to the truth, together with the causes and reasons of it. Every one that doth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, left his deeds should be difcovered. Here our Saviour's doctrine (as I have Thewn shewn in the three last discourses) is represented to us by the metaphor of light, becauseit was so clear a revelation of the will of God, and our duty; and carried in it so much evidence of its divinity; it being the chief property of light to discover itself, and other things: so that those great and important truths contained in our Saviour's doctrine, are the light here spoken of, and which men of bad designs and practices are said to hate and decline; Every one that doth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, left his deeds should be reproved.

In which words two things offer themselves to our confideration : First, The enmity of wicked men to the truth: Every one that doth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light.

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Secondly, The ground or reason of this enmity : Left his deeds should be discovered.

First, The enmity of wicked men to the truth : Every one that doth evil, hateth the light. Men of ill designs and practices hate the light, and because they hate it they shun it, and flee from it, neither cometh he to the light. Now this enmity to truth appears principally in these two things, in their resistance, and in their perfecution of it:

1. In their opposition and resistance of it. A bad man is not only averse from the entertainment of it, and loth to admit it, but thinks himself concerned to resist it. Thus the Jews opposed those divine truths, which our Saviour declared to them, they did not only refuse to receive them, but they set themselves to confute them, and by all means to blast the credit of them, and to charge them not only with novelty and imposture, but with a seditious design, and with blafphemous and odious consequences; they perverted every thing he said to a bad sense, and put malicious constructions upon all he did, though never so blameless and innocent. When he instructed the people, they faid he was stirring them up to sedition; when he told them he was the Son of God, they made him a blafphemer for saying fo; when he healed on the fabbath-day, they charged him with

pro

1

profaneness; when he confirmed his doctrine by miracles, the greatest and plainest that ever were wrought, they reported him a Magician; when they could find no fault with many parts of his doctrine, which was fo holy and excellent that malice itself was not able to misrepresent it, or take any exception to it, they endeavoured to destroy the credit of it, by raising scandals upon him for his life; because his conversation was free and familiar, they taxed him for a wine-bibber and a glutton: and because he accompanied with bad men, in order to the reclaiming and reforming of them, they represented him as a favourer of fuch perfons, a friend of publicans and finners.

By these and such like calumnies they endeavoured to disparage his doctrine, and to alienate men from it; being prejudiced against the truth themselves, they did what they could to keep others from embracing it; and as our Saviour tells us, shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, neither going in themselves, nor suffering others that were going in,

to enter.

2. The enmity of bad men to the truth likewife. appears in their perfecution of it, not only in those that propound it to them, but in all those that give entertainment to it: and this is the highest expreffion of enmity that can be, to be fatisfied with nothing less than the destruction and extirpation of what we hate. And thus the Jews declared their enmity to the gospel. When this great light came into the world, they not only shut their eyes against it, but endeavoured to extinguish it, by perfecuting the author of this doctrine, and all those that published it, and made profession of it ; they perfecuted our Saviour all his life, and were continually contriving mischief against him, seeking to intrap him in his words, and so render him obnoxious to the Roman government, and at last putting him to death upon a false and forged accufation, and all this out of enmity to that truth which he delivered to them from God; as he himself tells us, John viii. 40. But now

ye