an will-worship, or man-worship. It hath not the stamp of truth on
it,--an express conformity to the truth of God as his truth.

But we must press this out a little more. Truth is opposed to a ceremony
and shadow. The ceremonies of old were shadows, or the external body of
religion, in which the soul and spirit of godliness should have been
enclosed; but the Lord did always urge more earnestly the substance and
truth than the ceremony,--the weightier matters of the law, piety, equity,
and sobriety, than these lighter external ceremonies. He sets a higher
account upon mercy than sacrifice, and upon obedience than ceremonies. But
this people turned it just contrary. They summed up all their religion in
some ceremonial performance, and separated those things God had so nearly
conjoined. They would be devout men in offering sacrifices, in their
washings, in their rites, and yet made no conscience of heart and soul
piety towards God and upright just dealing with men. Therefore the Lord so
often quarrels with them, and rejects all their service as being a device
and invention of their own, which never entered into his heart. Isa. v.
10-15, Jer. vii. throughout, Isa. lxvi. 3-4, Isa. xxviii. Now, if you will
examine it impartially, it is even just so with us. There are some
external things in religion which, in comparison with the weightier things
of faith and obedience are but ceremonial. In these you place the most
part if not all your religion, and think yourselves good Christians, if
you be baptized, and hear the word, and partake of the Lord's table, and
such like, though in the meantime you be not given to secret prayer, and
reading, and do not inwardly judge and examine yourselves that ye may flee
unto a Mediator--though your conversation be unjust and scandalous among
men. I say unto such souls as the Lord unto the Jews, "Who hath required
this at your hands? Who commanded you to hear the word, to be baptized, to
wait on public ordinances? Away with all this, it is abomination to his
majesty!" Though it please you never so well, the more it displeases him.
If you say, Why commands he us to hear? &c., I say, the Lord never
commanded these external ordinances for the sum of true religion; that was
not the great thing which was in his heart, that he had most pleasure unto
but the weightier matters of the law, piety, equity, and sobriety, a holy
and godly conversation adorning the gospel. "What doth the Lord require of
thee,