Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions, Volume 7

ROMANS xii. 18.

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

CHRISTIANITY, if we well weigh and consider it, in the several parts and members of it, throughout the whole system, may be justly called the last and the most correct edition of the law of nature; there being nothing excellent amongst the heathens, as deducible from the external light of nature, but is adopted into the body of Christian precepts. Neither is there any precept in Christianity so severe and mortifying, and at the first face and appearance of things grating upon our natural conveniencies, but will be resolved into a natural reason; as advancing and improving nature in the higher degrees and grander concerns of it.

And of so universal a spread is the benign influence of this religion, that there is no capacity of man but it takes care for; not only his religious, but his civil and political. It found the world under government, and has bound those bonds of government faster upon it, by new and superadded obligations. And by the best methods of preservation, it secures both the magistrate’s prerogative and the subject’s enjoyment, by the happy provisions of peace; the encomiums of which great blessing I shall not now pursue, nor forestall here what will more aptly be inserted hereafter.