now put ye away the evil of your doings by sanctification,
&c. And if ye would know what sanctification is, "cease to do evil," do
not return to the old puddle to wallow in it. Ye that are cleansed by this
blood, O think how unbeseeming it is to you to defile yourselves again
with those things ye are cleansed from! but now, "learn to do well." Ye
are given up to Christ, ye must be his disciples, and he will teach you.
"Learn of me," saith Christ, (ye need no other law almost but his example,
he is a visible and speaking law), yet "seek judgment." As ye ought to
look on my example, so especially ponder that word and rule of practice
and behaviour that I have left behind me, and given out as the lawgiver of
the redeemed. Have I redeemed you, and should not I be the redeemed and
ransomed one's king? Is there any society in the world wants a law, order,
and government? Neither must ye who are delivered from bondage,
enfranchised and made free indeed. Now, ye should of all men most live by
a law. And when ye know that rule, then apply it to your several vocations
and callings. Let the magistrate act according to it, and every man
according to it. Religion consists not in a general notion, but
condescends to our particular practice, to reform it. You see then what we
would press upon your consciences. It is true religion that we would have
you persuaded unto. All men have some kind of religion, even heathens who
worship idols, but the true religion respects the true and living God.
Now, what is it to worship the true and living God? What is the service of
him that may be called religion indeed? Should we be the prescrivers of
it?(287) No certainly, he must carve solely in that, or else it cannot
please him, therefore "to the law and to the testimony," if ye speak not
according to this, and worship not according to this word of God, "it is
because there is no light in you." Ye may have a religion before men pure
and undefiled, but if it be not so before God and the Father, I pray you
to what purpose is it? I am sure it is all lost labour, nay, it is labour
with loss, instead of gain. O that ye were persuaded to look and search
the scriptures. Think ye to have eternal life out of them?--and think ye to
have eternal life by them, who do not labour to know the way of it set
down there? Every one of you hath a different model of religion, according
to your fancies and breedings, according as your lusts will suffer you.
The rule that