PREFACE. AMONGST the many stupendous spectacles that are wont to surprise and amuse inquisitive minds, there seems to be nothing in the world sadder and more astonishing, than the small progress of the Christian religion. This I call a sad observation, because religion is a matter of the most weighty and necessary importance, without which it is not possible for an immortal soul to be perfected and made happy: I call it astonishing, because the Christian religion hath in itself such advantages of recommending itself to the minds of men, and contains such mighty engines to work them into a hearty compliance with it, and to captivate their reason to itself, as no other religion in the world can with any face pretend to. 1 do earnestly, and I suppose rationally and scripturally, hope that this great truth, those sacred oracles, will yet more prevail; and that the Founder of this most excellent religion, who was lifted up upon the cross, and is now exalted to his throne, will yet draw more men unto himself: and this, perhaps, is all the millennium that we can warrantably look for. But, in the mean time, it is too too evident, that the kingdom of Satan doth more obtain in the world, than the gospel of Christ, either in the letter, or power of it. As to the former, if we will receive the probable conjecture of learned inquirers, we shall not find above one sixth part of the known world yet Christianized, or giving so much as an external adoration to the crucified Jesus. As to the latter, I will not be so bold as to make any arithmetical conjectures, but judge it more becoming a charitable and Christian spirit, to sit down in secret, and weep over that sad but true account given in the gospel, "Few are chosen ;" and again, "Few there be that find it;" being grieved, after the example of my compassionate Redeemer, "for the hardness of their hearts," and praying with Joab, in another case, "The Lord make his people an hundred times so many more as they be!" It is not my present purpose, to inquire into the immediate causes of the non-propagation of the gospel in the former sense; only it is easy to guess, that few will enter in by the way of the tree of life, when it is guarded with a flaming sword! And it were reasonable to hope, that if the minds of Christians were more purged from a selfish bitterness, fierce animosity, and arbitrary sourness, and possessed with a more free, generous, benign, compassionate, condescending, candid, charitable, and Christ-like spirit, which would be indulgent toward such as are, for the present, under a less perfect dispensation, as our Saviour's was, would not impose any thing harsh or unnecessary upon the sacred and inviolable consciences of men, but would allow that liberty to men, which is just and natural to them in matters of religion, and no way forfeited by them; then, I say, it might be reasonable to hope, that the innate power and virtue of the gospel would prove most victorious; Judaism, Mahomedanism, and Paganism, would melt away under its powerful influences, and Satan himself fall down as lightning before it, as naturally as the eyelids of the morning, do chase away the blackness of the night, when once they are lifted upon the earth. But my design is chiefly to examine the true and proper cause of the non-progress of the gospel, as to the power of it, and its inefficaciousness upon the hearts and consciences of those that do profess it. And now, in finding out the cause hereof, I shall content myself to be wise on this side heaven, leaving that prying course of searching the decrees of God, and rifling into the hidden rolls of eternity, to those who can digest the uncomfortable notion of a self-willed, arbitrary, and imperious deity; which, I fear, is the most vulgar apprehension of God, men measuring him most grossly and unhappily by a self-standard. And as I dare not soar so high, so neither will I adventure to stoop so low, as to dive into particulars; which are differently assigned, according to the different humours and interests of those that do assign them; each party in the world being so exceedingly favourable to itself, as to be ready to say, with David, "The earth and all the inhabitants of it, are dissolved; I bear up the pillars of it;" ready to think that the very interest of religion in the world is involved in them and their persuasions and dogmas, and that the whole church is undone, if but a hair fall from their heads, if they be in the least injured |