eans this reproof for well doing? The Lord is a hard master.
If we neglect sacrifices, and offer up the worst of the flock, he is
angry, if we have a care of them, and offer them punctually, and keep
appointed days precisely, he is angry. What shall we do to please him? I
think many of you are put to as great a non plus, when your prayers and
repentance and fasting are quarrelled, do ye not say in your hearts, we
know not what to do? Ministers are angry at us if we pray not, and our
praying they cry out against, they command us to repent and fast, and yet
say that God will abhor both these. This is a mystery, and we shall
endeavour to unfold it to you from the word. It concerns us to know how
God is pleased with our public services and fastings for the most part of
people have no more religion. Ye all, I know, desire to know what true
religion is. Consult the Scriptures, and search them, for there ye shall
find eternal life. We frame to ourselves a wrong pattern and copy of it,
and so we judge ourselves wrong. Our narrow spirits do not take in the
latitude of the Scripture's religion, but taking in one part we exclude
another, and think God rigid if it be not taken off our hand so. But, I
pray, consider these three things, which seem to make up the good old way,
the religion of the Old and New Testaments--

_First_, Religion takes in all the commands,--it is universal, hath respect
to all the commandments, Psal. cxix. 6. It carries the two tables in both
hands, the first table in the right hand, and the second in the left.
These are so entirely conjoined, that if you receive not both, you cannot
receive any truly.

_Secondly_, It takes in all the man, his soul and spirit as well as his
body, nay, it principally includes that which is principal in the man, his
soul and spirit, his mind and affections. If ye divide these, ye have not
a man present but a body, and what fellowship can bodies have with him who
is a Spirit? If ye divide these among themselves, ye have not a spirit
indeed present if the mind be not present, surely the heart cannot, but if
the mind be, and the heart away, religion is not religion, but some empty
speculation. The mind cannot serve but by the heart, where the heart is,
there a man is reckoned to be.

_Thirdly_, It takes in Jesus Christ as all, and excludes altogether a
man's self. He worships God in the spirit, but he rejoices not in himself,
and in his spirit, but in Jesus Christ, and hath no