petual law; so that it is moral in a secondary order. It were ART. easy to give instances of this in many more particulars, and VII. to shew, that a precept may be said to be moral, when there is a natural suitableness in it to advance that which is moral in the first order, and that it cannot be well preserved without such a support. It will appear what occasion there is for this distinction, when we consider the Ten Commandments which are so many heads of morality, that are instanced in the highest act of a kind; and to which are to be reduced all such acts as by the just proportions of morality belong to that order and series of actions.

The foundation of morality is religion. The sense of God, that he is, and that he is both a rewarder and a punisher, is the foundation of religion. Now this must be supposed as antecedent to his laws, for we regard and obey them from the persuasion that is formed in us concerning the being and the justice of God: the two first commandments are against the two different sorts of idolatry; which are, the worshipping of false gods, or the worshipping the true God in a corporeal figure the one is the giving the honour of the true God to an idol, and the other is the depressing the true God to the resemblance of an idol. These were the two great branches of idolatry, by which the true ideas of God were corrupted. Religion was by them corrupted in its source. Nobody can question but that it is immoral to worship a false god; it is a transferring the honour, which belongs immediately and singly to the great God, to a creature, or to some imaginary thing which never had a real existence. This is the robbing God of what is due to him, and the exalting another thing to a degree and rank that cannot belong to it. Nor is it less immoral to propose the great and true God to be worshipped under appearances that are derogatory to his nature, that tend to give us low thoughts of him, and that make us think him like, if not below, ourselves. This way of worshipping him is both unsuitable to his nature, and unbecoming ours; while we pay our adorations to that which is the work of an artificer. This is confirmed by those many express prohibitions in scripture, to which reasons are added, which shew that the thing is immoral in its own nature: it being often repeated, that no similitude of God was ever seen: and 'to whom will ye liken me? All things in heaven and earth are often called the 'work of his hands:' which are plain indications of a moral precept, when arguments are framed from the nature of things to enforce obedience to it. The reason given in the very command itself, is taken from the nature of God, who is jealous; that is, so tender of his glory, that he will not suffer a diminution of it to go unpunished; and if this precept is clearly founded upon natural justice, and the proportion that ought to be kept between all human acts and their objects, then it must be perpetual; and that

VII.

ART. the rather, because we do plainly see that the gospel is a refining upon the law of Moses, and does exalt it to a higher pitch of sublimity and purity; and by consequence the ideas of God, which are the first seeds and principles of religion, are to be kept yet more pure and undefiled in it, than they were in a lower dispensation.

The third precept is against false swearing: for the word vain is often used in the scripture in that sense: and since in all the other commandments, the sin which is named is not one of the lowest, but of the chief sins that relate to that head; there is no reason therefore to think, that vain or idle swearing, which is a sin of a lower order, should be here meant, and not rather false swearing, which is the highest sin of the kind. The morality of this command is very apparent; for since God is the God of truth, and every oath is an appeal to him, therefore it must be a gross wickedness to appeal to God, or to call him to vouch for our lies.

The fourth commandment cannot be called moral in the first and highest sense; for from the nature of things no reason can be assigned, why the seventh day, rather than the sixth, or the eighth, or any other day, should be separated from the common business of life, and applied to the service of God. But it is moral that a man should pay homage to his Maker, and acknowledge him in all his works and ways: and since our senses and sensible objects are apt to wear better things out of our thoughts, it is necessary that some solemn times should be set apart for full and copious meditations on these subjects; this should be universal, lest, if the time were not the same every where, the business of some men might interfere with the devotions of others. It ought to have such an eminent character on it, like a cessation from business: which may both awaken a curiosity to inquire into the reason of that stop, and also may give opportunity for meditations and discourses on those subjects. It is also clear, that such days of rest must not return so oft, that the necessary affairs of life should be stopped by them, nor so seldom, that the impressions of religion should wear out, if they were too seldom awakened: but what is the proper proportion of time, that can best agree both with men's bodies and minds, is only known to the great Author of nature. Howsoever, from what has been said, it appears that this is a very fit matter to be fixed by some sacred and perpetual law, and that from the first creation; because there being then no other method for conveying down knowledge, besides oral tradition, it seems as highly congruous to that state of mankind, as it is agreeable to the words in Genesis, to believe that God should then have appointed one day in seven for commemorating the creation, and for acknowledging the great Creator of all things. But though it seems very clear, that here a perpetual law was given the world for the separating the seventh day; yet it was

VII.

a mere circumstance, and does not at all belong to the stand- ART. ing use of the law, in what end of the week this day was to be reckoned, whether the first or the last: so that even a less authority than the apostles, and a less occasion than the resurrection of Christ, might have served to have transferred the day. There being in this no breach made on the good and moral design of this law, which is all in it that we ought to reckon sacred and unalterable: the degree of the rest might be also more severely urged under the Mosaical law, than either before it or after it. Our Saviour having given plain intimations of an abatement of that rigour, by this general rule, that the Markii.27. sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.' We, who are called to a state of freedom, are not under such a strictness as the Jews were. Still the law stands for separating a seventh day from the common business of life, and applying it to a religious rest, for acknowledging at first the Creator, and now, by a higher relation, the Redeemer, of the world.

Deut. v.

21.

These four commandments make the first table, and were generally reckoned as four distinct commandments, till the Roman church having a mind to make the second disappear, threw it in as an appendix to the first, and then left it quite out in her catechisms: though it is plain that these commandments relate to two very different matters, the one being in no sort included in the other. Certainly they are much more different than the coveting the neighbour's wife is from the coveting any of his other concerns; which are plainly two different acts of the same species; and the house being set before the Ex.xx.17. wife in Exodus (though it comes after it in Deuteronomy, De which, being a repetition, is to be governed by Exodus, and not Exodus by it) stands for the whole substance, which is afterwards branched out in the particulars; and so it is clear that there is no colour for dividing this in two; but the first two commandments relating to things of such a different sort, as is the worshipping of more gods than one, and the worshipping the true God in an image, ought still to be reckoned as different: and though the reason given from the jealousy and justice of God may relate equally to both, yet that does not make them otherwise one, than as both might be reduced to one common head of idolatry, so that both were to be equally punished. In the second table this order is to be observed. four branches of a man's property, to which every thing that he can call his own may be reduced: his person, his wife and children, his goods, and his reputation: so there is a negative precept given to secure him in every one of these, against killing, committing adultery, stealing, and bearing false witness to which, as the chief acts of their kind, are to be reduced all those acts that may belong to those heads: such as injuries to a man in his person, though not carried on nor designed to kill him; every temptation to uncleanness, and all those ex

There are

ART.

V I.

cesses that lead to it; every act of injustice, and every lie or defamation. To these four are added two fences; the one exterior, the other interior. The exterior is the settling the obedience and order that ought to be observed in families, according to the law of nature: and, by a parity of reason, if families are under a constitution, where the government is made as a common parent, the establishing the obedience to the civil powers, or to such orders of men who may be made as parents, with relation to matters of religion: this is the foundation of peace and justice, of the security and happiness of mankind. And therefore it was very proper to begin the second table, and those laws that relate to human society, with this; without which the world would be like a forest, and mankind, like so many savages, running wildly through it.

The last commandment is an inward fence to the law: it checks desires, and restrains the thoughts. If free scope should be given to these, as they would very often carry men to unlawful actions, for a man is very apt to do that which he desires, so they must give great disturbance to those that are haunted or overcome by them. And therefore as a mean both to secure the quiet of men's minds, and to preserve the world from the ill effects which such desires might naturally have, this special law is given; Thou shalt not covet.' It will not be easy to prove it moral in the strictest sense, yet in a secondary order it may be well called moral: the matter of it being such both with relation to ourselves and others, that it is a very proper subject for a perpetual law to be made about it. Rom. vii. And yet, as St. Paul says, he had not known it to be a sin, if it had not been for the law that forbids it; for, after all that can be said, it will not be easy to prove it to be of its own nature moral. Thus, by the help of that distinction of what is moral in a primary and in a secondary order, the morality of the Ten Commandments is demonstrated.

Matt. v.

17, 18.

That this law obliges Christians as well as Jews, is evident from the whole scope of the New Testament. Instead of derogating from the obligation of any part of that law, our Saviour after he had affirmed, that he came not to dissolve the law, but to fulfil it,' and that heaven and earth might pass away, but that one tittle of the law should not pass away;' he went through a great many of those laws, and shewed how far he extended the commentary he put upon them, and the obligations that he laid upon his disciples, beyond what was done by the Jewish rabbies: all the rest of his gospel, and the writings of his apostles, agree with this, in which there is not a tittle that looks like a slackening of it, but a great deal to the contrary: a strictness that reaches to idle words, to passionate thoughts, and to all impure desires, being enjoined as indispensably necessary; for without holiness no man can see the Lord.' And thus every thing relating to this Article is considered, and I hope both explained and proved.

6

ART.
VIII.

ARTICLE VIII.

Of the Three Creeds.

The Three Creeds, Nice Creed, Athanasius Creed, and that which is commonly called the Apostles' Creed, ought throughly to be received and believed; for they may be proved by most certain Warrants of Holy Scripture.

reto.

ALTHOUGH no doubt seems to be here made of the names or designations given to those creeds, except of that which is ascribed to the apostles, yet none of them are named with any exactness: since the article of the procession of the Holy Ghost, and all that follows it, is not in the Nicene creed, but In Ancho was used in the church as a part of it; for so it is in Epiphanius, before the second general council at Constantinople; and it was confirmed and established in that council: only the article of the Holy Ghost's proceeding from the Son, was afterwards added first in Spain, anno 447, which spread itself over all the west: so that the creed here called the Nice creed is indeed the Constantinopolitan creed, together with the addition of filioque made by the western church. That which is called Athanasius's creed is not his neither; for as it is not among his works, so that great article of the Christian religion having been settled at Nice, and he and all the rest of the orthodox referring themselves always to the creed made by that council, there is no reason to imagine that he would have made a creed of his own; besides, that not only the Macedonian,* but both the Nesto

* The Macedonian heresy, so called from Macedonius, its founder. Upon the death of Eusebius, bishop of Constantinople, Paulus, who had been before disThe Arians at the saine placed by the Emperor, was again chosen to that see. time close Macedonius. When the Emperor Constantius became acquainted with this matter, he sent instructions to the president, to remove Paulus, and to establish Macedonius in that see. The installation of Macedonius was accompanied with an awful event-the slaughter of (according to Socrates) about 3150 persons. Such, says that historian, were the means that Macedonius and the Arians used to climb by slaughter and murder to be magistrates in the church. Afterwards, Macedonius gave place to Paulus, who, however, was not long after banished through the influence of the Arians, and in his exile murdered. Macedonius again took possession of the see of Constantinople, and grievously persecuted the orthodox, who adhered to the article of 'one substance,' or the essential deity of Christ; not only cutting them off from the churches, but banishing them from the city. He continued for a time to make war with and wear out those who held the truth as in Jesus, but was at length deposed. He was first an Arian, and then fell into another heresy. His opinion was, that although the Son of God was like unto the Father, as well in substance as in all other things, yet the Holy Ghost had not these titles of honour, but was only the servant or drudge of the Father and the Son.' His followers were called Macedonians, or Pneumatomachians. His heresy was condemned at the second general council at Constantinople, A.D. 381, at which 150 bishops were present, and the finishing touch' was there given to the decrees of Nice respecting the three persons in the Godhead.-[ED.]