PART III. sions in fruition, and redundancy. For they that are last shall be first, and the first shall be last; and the despised people of this world shall reign like kings, and contempt itself shall swell up into glory, and poverty into an eternal satisfaction. And these rewards shall not be accounted according to the privileges of nations, or priority of vocation, but readiness of mind, and obedience, and sedulity of operation after calling, which Jesus taught his disciples in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, to whom the Master gave the same reward, though the times of their working were different; as their calling and employment had determined the opportunity of their labours.

Ad Num. 3.

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DISCOURSE XVI.

Of Scandal, or giving and taking Offence.

ASAD curse being threatened in the Gospel to them, who offend any of Christ's little ones, that is, such as are novices and babes in Christianity, it concerns us to learn our duty and perform it, that we may avoid the curse; for, woe Matt. xviii. 7. to all them, by whom offences come. And although the duty

Rom. xiv.

1 Cor. viii. Gal. ii

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is so plainly explicated and represented in gloss and case by the several commentaries of St. Paul upon this menace of our blessed Saviour, yet because our English word (offence) which is commonly used in this question of scandal, is so large and equivocal, that it hath made many pretences, and intricated this article to some inconvenience, it is not without good purpose to draw into one body those propositions, which the masters of spiritual life have described in the managing this question.

1. By whatsoever we do our duty to God we cannot directly do offence, or give scandal to our brother; because in such cases where God hath obliged us, he hath also obliged himself to reconcile our duty to the designs of God, to the utility of souls, and the ends of charity. And this proposition is to be extended to our obedience to the lawful constitutions of our competent superiors, in which cases we are to look upon the commandment, and leave the accidental events to the disposition of that providence, who reconciles dissonances in nature, and concentres all the variety of accidents into his own

glory. And whosoever is offended at me for obeying God PART III. or God's vicegerent, is offended at me for doing my duty, and in this there is no more dispute, but whether I shall displease God or my peevish neighbour. These are such whom the spirit of God complains of under other representments; they think it strange we run not into the same excess of riot: their eye is evil, because their master's eye is good: and the abounding of God's grace also may become to them an occasion of falling, and the long-suffering of God, the encouragement to sin. In this there is no difficulty; for in what case soever we are bound to obey God or man, in that case and in that conjunction of circumstances, we have nothing permitted to our choice, and have no authority to remit of the right of God or our superior. And to comply with our neighbour in such questions, besides that it cannot serve any purposes of piety, if it declines from duty in any instance, it is like giving alms out of the portion of orphans, or building hospitals with the money and spoils of sacrilege. It is pusillanimity, or hypocrisy, or a denying to confess Christ before men to comply with any man, and to offend God, or omit a duty. Whatsoever is necessary to be done, and is made so by God, no weakness or peevishness of man can make necessary not to be done. For the matter of scandal is a duty beneath the prime obligations of religion.

2. But every thing which is used in religion is not matter of precise duty, but there are some things, which indeed are pious and religious, but dispensable, voluntary, and commutable; such as are voluntary fasts, exterior acts of discipline, and mortification not enjoined; great degrees of exterior worship, prostration, long prayers, vigils; and in these things although there is not directly a matter of scandal, yet there may be some prudential considerations in order to charity and edification. By pious actions, I mean; either particular pursuances of a general duty, which are uncommanded in the instance, such as are the minutes and expresses of alms; or else they are commended, but in the whole kind of them unenjoined, such as divines call the counsels of perfection. In both these cases a man cannot be scandalous. For the man doing in charity, and the love of God such actions which are aptly expressive of love, the man (I say) is not uncharitable in his purposes; and the actions themselves, being either attempts or proceedings toward perfection, or

PART III. else actions of direct duty, are as innocent in their productions as in themselves. And therefore without the malice of the recipient cannot induce him into sin; and nothing else is scandal. To do any pious act proceeds from the spirit of God, and to give scandal from the spirit of malice, or indiscretion; and therefore a pious action, whose fountain is love and wisdom, cannot end in uncharitableness or imprudence. But because when any man is offended, at what I esteem piety, there is a question, whether the action be pious or no; therefore it concerns him that works to take care, that his action be either an act of duty, though not determined to a certain particular, or else be something counselled in Scripture, or practised by a holy person there recorded, and no where reproved, or a practice warranted by such precedents, which modest, prudent, and religious persons account a sufficient inducement of such particulars: for he that proceeds upon such principles derives the warrant of his actions from beginnings, which secure the particular and quits the scandal.

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This I say is a security against the uncharitableness and the sin of scandal; because a zeal of doing pious actions is a zeal according to God: but it is not always a security against the indiscretion of the scandal. He that reproves a foolish person in such circumstances, that provoke him or make him impudent or blasphemous, did not give scandal, and brought no sin upon himself, though he occasioned it in the other. But if it was probable such effects would be consequent to the reprehension, his zeal was imprudent and rash, but so long as it was zeal for God, and in its own matter lawful, it could not be an active or guilty scandal; but if it be no zeal and be a design to entrap a man's unwariness, or passion, or shame, and to disgrace the man, by that means or any other to make him sin, then it is directly the offending of our brother. They that preached Christ out of envy intended to do offence to the Apostles, but because they were impregnable, the sin rested in their own bosom, and God wrought his own ends by it. And in this sense they are scandalous persons, who fast for strife, who pray for rebellion, who entice simple persons into the snare by colours of religion. Those very exterior acts of piety become an offence, because they are done to evil purposes, to abuse proselytes and to draw away disciples after them, and make them love the sin, and march under so splendid and fair colours. They who out of strict

ness and severity of persuasion represent the conditions of PART III. the Gospel alike to every person, that is, nicer than Christ described them in all circumstances, and deny such liberties of exterior desires and complacency, which may be reasonably permitted to some men, do very indiscreetly, and may occasion the alienation of some men's minds from the entertainments of religion; but this being accidental to the thing itself, and to the purpose of the man, is not the sin of scandal, but it is the indiscretion of scandal, if by such means he divorces any man's mind from the cohabitation and unions of religion : and yet if the purpose of the man be to affright weaker and unwise persons, it is a direct scandal, and one of those ways which the devil uses toward the peopling of his kingdom, it is a plain laying of a snare to entrap feeble and uninstructed souls.

But if the pious action have been formerly joined with any thing that is truly criminal, with idolatry, with superstition, with impious customs, or impure rites, and by retaining the piety, I give cause to my weak brother to think I approve of the old appendage, and by my reputation invite him to swallow the whole action without discerning, the case is altered; I am to omit that pious action, if it be not under command, until I have acquitted it from the suspicion of evil company. But when I have done, what in prudence I guess sufficient to thaw the frost of jealousy, and to separate those dissonances, which formerly seemed united, I have done my duty of charity by endeavouring to free my brother from the snare, and I have done what in Christian prudence I was obliged, when I have protested against the appendant crime; if afterwards the same person shall entertain the crime upon pretence of my example, who have plainly disavowed it; he lays the snare for himself, and is glad of the pretence, or will in spite enter into the net, that he might think it reasonable to rail at me. I may not with Christian charity or prudence wear the picture of our blessed Lord in rings or medals, though with great affection and designs of doing him all the honour that I can, if by such pictures I invite persons, apt more to follow me than to understand me, to give divine honour to a picture; but when I have declared my hatred of superstitious worshippings, and given my brother warning of the snare, which his own mistake, or the devil's malice was preparing for him, I may then without danger signify my

*

• Ἐν δακτυλῳ

Θες εικονα μη περιφέρειν.

Dictum proverbialiter,

contra leves et inanes ce

remonias ci

vilis et popularis religio

nis.

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PART III. piety and affections in any civil representments which are not against God's law, or the customs of the church, or the analogy of faith. And there needs no other reason to be given for this rule than that there is no reason to be given against it; if the nature of the thing be innocent, and the purpose of the man be pious, and he hath used his moral industry to secure his brother against accidental mischances, and abuses; his duty in this particular can have no more parts and instances. But it is too crude an assertion to affirm indefinitely that whatsoever hath been abused to evil or superstitious purposes must presently be abjured and never entertained for fear of scandal; for it is certain that the best things have been most abused; have not some persons used certain verses of the Psalter as an antidote against the toothache? and carried the blessed sacrament in pendants about their necks as a charm to countermand witches, and St. John's Gospel as a spell against wild beasts and wilder untamed spirits? Confession of sins to the ministers of religion hath been made an instrument to serve base ends; and so indeed hath all religion been abused; and some persons have been so receptive of scandal, that they suspected all religion to be a mere stratagem, because they have observed very many men have used it so. For some natures are like sponges, or sugar, whose utmost verge if you dip in wine, it drowns itself by the moisture it sucks up, and is drenched all over, receiving its dissolution from within; its own nature did the mischief, and plucks on its own dissolution. And these men are greedy to receive a scandal, and when it is presented but in small instances they suck it up to the dissolution of their whole religion, being glad of a quarrel, that their impieties may not want all excuse. But yet it is certainly very unreasonable to reject excellent things because they have been abused; as if separable accidents had altered natures and essences, or that they resolve never to forgive the duties for having once fallen into the hands of unskilful or malicious persons. Hezekiah took away the brazen serpent because the people abused it to idolatry; but the serpent had long before lost its use; and yet if the people had not been a peevish and refractory and superstitious people, in whose nature it was to take all occasions of superstition; and further yet, if the taking away such occasions and opportunities of that sin in special had not been most agreeable with the designs of God in forbidding to