Page:Behemoth 1889.djvu/83

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

requisite, either of faith or honesty, for the salvation of one man than of another? What needs so much preaching of faith to us that are no heathens, and that believe already all that Christ and his apostles have told us is necessary to salvation, and more too? Why is there so little preaching of justice? I have indeed heard righteousness often recommended to the people, but I have seldom heard the word justice occur in their sermons; nay, though in the Latin and Greek Bible the word justice occur exceeding often, yet in the English, though it be a word that every man understands, the word righteousness (which few understand to signify the same, but take it rather for rightness of opinion, than of action or intention), is put in the place of it.

A. I confess I know very few controversies amongst Christians, of points necessary to salvation. They are the questions of authority and power over the Church, or of profit, or of honour to Churchmen, that for the most part raise all the controversies. For what man is he, that will trouble himself and fall out with his neighbours for the saving of my soul, or the soul of any other than himself? When the Presbyterian ministers and others did so seriously preach sedition, and animate men to rebellion in these late wars; who was there that had not a benefice, or having one feared not to lose it, or some other part of his maintenance, by the alteration of the Government, that did voluntarily, without any eye to reward, preach so earnestly against sedition, as the other party preached for it? I confess, that for aught I have observed in history, and other writings of the heathens, Greek and Latin, that those heathens were not at all behind us in point of virtue and moral duties, notwithstanding that we have had much preaching, and they none at all. I confess also, that considering what harm may proceed from a liberty that men have, upon every Sunday and oftener, to harangue all the people of a nation at one time, whilst the state is ignorant of what they will say; and that there is no such thing permitted in all the world out of Christendom, nor therefore