N. BERNARD. 401 of men, cease to be God's ordinances, and he owns them no longer. It is not the single having of God's ordinances of public worship, but having them in their purity, that dignifies a nation. God's ordinances in their purity are a sure shield to a nation from public ruin and desolation. For the proof of this, I challenge all records, both human and divine, to produce one instance wherein God punished any part of his church, with any national ruin and destruction, before they had departed from, or corrupted, his ordinances. The gospel, which is the power of God to salvation, is the means, by which God manifesteth his omnipotent and irresistible power in the conversion and salvation of all those, who, from eternity, were ordained thereunto by God's absolute and immutable decree. This seems to confute their error, who think meanly and basely of the ordinances of God. These men turn their glory into shame. Is there not a generation of profane men among us, who are afraid and ashamed to preach twice on a Lord's day ; to preach plainly, powerfully, and spiritually to the souls and con- sciences of their people, lest they should be accounted puritans ?" But the principal exception was the conclusion of his sermon, and as follows : It is impossible, I say, that, any should be saved living and dying without repentance, in the doctrine and idolatrous worship of the church ofRome, as the late Tridentine council hath decreed. My reason is, that he who thinks of going to heaven in any other way than by faith in Christ only, shall never come there. Fur- thermore, if God's ordinances of public worship, in their divine purity, be the glory of a nation ; then it follows, that they who go about to deprive a nation of them, either wholly, or of their purity, go about to make the nation base and inglorious, and are the enemies and traitors of that nation. Hereby we may learn how to account of those among ourselves, (if any such there be,) who endeavour to quench the light and abate the glory of our Israel, by bringing their Pelagian errors .into the doctrine of our church established by law, and the superstitions of the church of Rome into our worship of God : as, high altars, crucifixes, bowing to them, and worshipping them ; whereby they very shamefully symbolize with the church of Rome, to the irreparable shipwreck of many souls. How can. we think that such men are not theenemies of this church and nation ? I say, they are enemies ; therefore, let us take up arms against them. But what arms ? The prayers of VOL. II. 2a
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