works of discipline and government, public
reproof to sinners, confessions and absolutions. What would ye think if we
should change the terms of sacrifices and new moons, and speak all this to
you? To what purpose is the multitude of your fasts and feasts, of your
preachings and communions, of your praying in secret, and in your
families, of conference and prayer with others, of running to and fro to
hear preaching, to partake of the Lord's table? I am full of them, I
delight not in them. When ye come here on the Sabbath, who required at
your hand to tread my courts? Come no more to hear the word, run no more
after communions, seek no more baptism to your children, call no more
solemn assemblies, it is all iniquity. O, say ye, that is a strange
preaching indeed! Must we pray no more, hear no more, sing no more? Did
not God command these? Why do ye discharge them? We do not mean so, that
these should not be, but they should be in another way: all these want the
soul and life of them, which is Jesus Christ in them. Do ye not think
yourselves religious, because ye frequent these? The multitude of the
people think that these please God, and pacify his wrath: ye have no other
thing in your mind but these. If ye can attain any sorrow or grief for
sin, or any tears to signify it, presently you absolve yourselves for your
repentance. The scandalous who appear in public, think the paying of a
penalty to the judge, and bowing the knee before the congregation,(284)
satisfies God. Ye miss nothing when ye have these. I speak to the
professors of religion also, who pretend to more knowledge than others,
when ye have gone about so many duties, ye are well satisfied if ye get
liberty in them. If ye can satisfy yourselves, ye doubt not of God's
satisfaction; and if ye do not satisfy yourselves in your duties, ye
cannot believe his satisfaction. Ye get the ordinance, and miss nothing.
Now, I say, in all this ye do not reach to the end of this ministry, Jesus
Christ; ye do not steadfastly behold him, to empty yourselves in his
bosom, to turn over all the unrighteousness of your holy things upon him
who bears it. That which pleaseth you, is not "he in whom the Father is
well-pleased," but the measure of your own duty. O, the establishing of
our own righteousness is the ruin of the visible Church! This is the grand
idol, and all sacrifice to it. Know, therefore, that the most part of your
performances are abomination and iniquity, because ye h