608 AN HUMBLE ATTEMPT, &C. or practice, nor to impose any one right or ceremony of worship, but what he himself has framed and enjoined. And yet, to our universal reproach, there is scarce any party of christians, but hath been too ready to impose some doctrines upon the belief of their proselytes, which Christ has not imposed, or to require of them some practices or some abstinences, about meats or days, or things indifferent which Christ has not required. It is this assuming power, that has turned christianity into an hundred shapes, and every one of them in some degree unlike the glori- ous gospel. It is this has brought in all the superstitions and fooleries, the splendid vanities, the useless austerities and the childish trifles of the Greek and Roman churches; and it is this has too far corrupted the, purity and defaced thebeauty of most of those churches who boast of reformation, and wear the protes- tant name. Now to discourage and deterus all from suchpresumption: let us remember that this imposing spirit has generally found it necessary to support its commands withpenalties and persecutions. Ilence proceed the imprisonments and, murders, the cruelties, the tortures, and the wild and bloody fury that has ravaged the nations of Christendom, and cast á foul and lasting blot and infamy, upon the religion of the blessed Jesus. Blessed Jesus ! when shall this stain be washed out from thy religion, and this scandal die ? Ifwe survey the persecuting laws and edicts that have been framed and executed in Great-Britain, or in foreign nations, in ancient or later times, we shall seldom find that the plain and explicit doctrines and duties of the gospel have been guarded with these terrors: but it is the wretched inven- tions of men, it is the institutions of priests, or the ap- pointments of kings, (all which have been mere additions to the word of God) that have had the honour, shall I say, or the infamy to be thus guarded with bloody severities, and with engines of death., It is the absolute determination of men, upon somepoints which Christ has not plainly determined ; it is some forms of pretended orthodoxy which scripture knows nothing of, or at least which the ,word of God has not made ne- cessary to our faith ; it is some ceremonies or modes of worship, which Christ and his apostles never commanded, that have gene- rally been the shameful occasion of excommúnications, and prisons, of banishments and martyrdoms. See to it therefore with a holy and religious care, when you dictate any thing to . your hearers as necessary to be believed or practised, that you have the plain and evident direction of scripture to sup- port you in it. It is this corrupt mixture of human opinions, and human' forms of divine service, that has so disguised the pure religion of the gospel, as to tempt the deist to renounce it entirely. The
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