CHAPTER LXVIII.

Enemy of all Society, Relations, and common Good.

6. MOREOVER, this selfishness is the enemy to all societies, and relations, and consequently to the common good. And it is not only indirectly and consequentially, but directly that it strikes at the very foundation of all. For the manifesting of this, consider in what respects this selfishness is at enmity with societies.

1. The end of societies is essential to them; and this end is the common good of the society; and therefore a republic hath its name from hence, because it is constituted and to be administered for the commonwealth, or the good of all. Now selfishness is contrary to this common good which is the end of all societies. Every selfish person is his own end; and cares not to hinder the common good, if he do but think it will promote his own. And how is that family, church, or commonwealth like to prosper, where most (alas, most indeed) have an end of their own, that is set up against the end and being of the society? For though the real good of particular persons is usually comprehended in the common good, yet that is but in subserviency to the public good, and is not observed usually by these persons, who principally look at themselves. And it commonly falls out that the public welfare cannot be obtained but by such self-denial of the members, which these men will not submit to; though they incur a greater hurt by their selfishness. Little do they think of the common good; it is their own matters that they regard and mind. So it go well with them, let the church and commonwealth do what it will; they can bear any one's trouble or losses save their own. They are every man as a church, as a commonwealth, as a world to themselves. If they be well, all is well with them; if they prosper, they think it is a good world, whatever others undergo. If they be poor, or sick, or under any other suffering, it is all one to them as if calamity had covered the earth; and if they see that they must die, they take it as if it were the dissolution of the world, (unless as they leave either name or posterity be

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hind them, in which a shadow of them may survive), and therefore they use to say, 'When I am gone, all the world is gone with me.'

2. Moreover, selfishness is contrary to that disposition and spirit that every member of a society should be possessed with. The public good will not be attained without a public spirit, to which a private spirit is contrary. Men must be disposed to the work that they must be employed in. The work of every member of a society, is such as Mordecai is approved for: "Seeking the wealth of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed;" Esth. x. 3. Every true member of the church must have such a spirit as Nehemiah, that in the midst of his own prosperity and honours is cast down in fasting, tears, and prayers, when he heareth of the affliction, reproach, and ruins of Jerusalem, and saith, Why should not my countenance be sad, when the city the place of my fathers' sepulchres lieth waste?" Neh. i. 3. ii. 3, 4. And as the captivated Jews; (Psal. cxxxvii.) that lay by all their mirth and music, and sit down and weep at the remembrance of Zion.. A private, selfish disposition is quite contrary to this; and is busy about his own matters, and principally looketh to his own ends and interests, whatever come of the church; and falls under the reproof that Baruch had from God: "Behold that which I have built will I break down, and that which I have planted I will pluck up, even this whole land; and seeketh thou great things for thyself? seek them not;" Jer. xlv. 4, 5. This private disposition makes men so foolish as to lose themselves, by seeking themselves; looking to their own goods or cabins when the ship is sinking in which they are; and to their own rooms, when the house is all on fire. But a public spirit saith, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy ;" Psal. cxxxvii. 5, 6. His love is to the church as the spouse of Christ, and as to the body of which he is himself a member, and his prayers endeavours are for its prosperity and peace. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, they shall prosper that love thee: peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces: for my brethren and companions' sake, I will now say, peace be within thee: because of the house of the Lord our God,

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I will seek thy good;" Psal. cxxii. 6-9. The body of Christ, is all animated by one spirit, that it might aim at one end; and it is so tempered by God, that there should be no schism in it, but that the " members should have the same care one for another, that if one member suffer, all the members should suffer with it; or if one member be honoured, all should rejoice with it;" 1 Cor. xii. 13, 24-27. There is no serving public ends with a private selfish spirit.

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3. Moreover, selfishness is an enemy to the laws of societies, whether it be the laws of God or man. For it would have them all bended to their private interest, and fitted to their selfish disposition. And therefore for the immutable laws of God, which they cannot change, they corrupt them by misinterpretations, expounding them according to the dictates of the flesh, and putting such a sense on all, as self can bear with. And what they cannot misinterpret, they murmur at and disobey. And for the laws of men, where selfish persons are the makers of them, you shall perceive by the warping of them, who they were made for. Hence it is that princes and parliaments have looked at the laws, and church, and ministers of Christ, with an eye of jealousy as if they had been some enemies that they stood in danger of, and all for fear lest the personal, selfish, fleshly interest of noblemen, and gentlemen, and others, should be encroached upon by the laws and government of Christ. And hence it is that so many endeavours and hopes of a reformation have been so long frustrated, and even among wise and pious law-makers there hath been so much pains to keep ministers from doing their duty in governing the churches, and laying such restrictions on them, that pastors might be no pastors, that is, no guides and overseers of the church in the worship of God. And when good laws are made, they have as many enemies as selfish men. If the law were not hated, the execution of it would not be hated. so much.

4. Also selfishness in an enemy to the very being of magistracy, and to all public officers, and their works; for the very end of the magistracy is the public benefit, as I said before of the end of the commonwealth; and therefore this selfishness is contrary to his end; and such men will not value a magistrate as a public officer, but only as one that is able to help them, or to hurt them; which is but to fear

him as a potent enemy, and not to love or honour him as a ruler. They look at magistrates as tyrants that are too strong for them; and as a cur will crouch to a mastiff dog, so they will crouch to them to save themselves; and this is their love, and honour, and obedience; (even such as Hobbs hath taught them in his Leviathan.) But they do not reverence that beam of divinity which God hath communicated to them in their authority; nor love their governors as the fathers of the church and commonwealth, for the common good and the honour of God, which they are appointed to promote..

5. And this selfishness is the deadly enemy of all right administrations of justice, and the due exercise of authority in church or commonwealth. If a minister be selfish, he will be shifting off the troublesome part of his duty, and will overrule his understanding to believe that it is no duty, because disbelieving is easier than obeying. He will be forward in those duties that are necessary to his maintenance and applause, and are imposed on him by the laws of men, but out of the pulpit it is little that he will do: as if it were the pulpit only that were God's vineyard where he is set to labour. Flesh and blood shall be consulted, and men shall be pleased, and all that the interest of self may be maintained.

And if the people be selfish, they will rebel against their most faithful guides, and kick against their doctrine and reproofs, and fly from discipline, which seems to their distempered minds to be against them. Let but one most notorious, lamentable instance suffice. The greater part of our pa rishioners in most places of the land are lamentably ignorant and careless in the matters of their salvation, and all that we can do is too little to bring them to understand the matters of absolute necessity: and yet almost all of them are so much wiser in their own conceits than the ablest of their teachers, that if we do not humour them, and be not ruled by them in our doctrine and administrations, about sacraments, prayers, burial, and the rest, yea, if we obey them not in gestures and forms, they turn their backs upon officers, and ordinances, and the church itself, and pour out their reproach upon their teachers, as if we were ignorant in comparison of them (even of them that know not so much as children of seven or eight years old should know). See here the wonderful bewitched power of a selfish disposition.

And in matters of the commonwealth, what is it more than this? nay, what is it besides this, that maketh princes become tyrants, and rulers keep under the ordinances and interest of Christ, or fearfully neglect them, and look after the church in the last place, when they have no business of their own to call them off, and to begin to build God's house when they have first built their own? Not imitating Nehemiah's labourers, that had the sword in one hand, and the trowel in the other, and builded in their arms. What else makes them give God but their leavings, who giveth them all? And what else could make them such enemies to truth, as to side with those parties, whatever they be, that side most with them, and promote their interest?

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And, alas, what work doth selfishness made with inferior magistrates? It is this only that opens the hand to a reward, and the ear to the solicitations of their friends; and it is this that perverteth the judgment, and this that oppresseth the poor and innocent, and this that tieth the tongues and hands of justices, so that abundance of them do little more than possess the room, and stand like an armed statue or a sign-post, which hurteth none; alehouses do what they list for them, and drunkards and swearers are bold at their noses, and they are no terror to evil doers, nor revengers to execute wrath upon them, nor ministers that use their power for much good, but bear the sword almost in vain, contrary to the very nature of their office; Rom. xiii. 14.

And it is selfishness in the people that causeth the trouble of faithful magistrates: every man would do what he lists. The worst offender abhors him that would punish him : and those that will commend justice, and cry down vice in the general, yet when they fall under justice themselves, they take all that they suffer to be injury, and will do all that they can against justice, and the officers of it, when it is to defend themselves, or theirs, from the execution of it: so rare a thing is it to meet with a man that is a friend to laws and justice, when themselves must suffer by it.

6. Selfishness also makes men withdraw from all those necessary burdens and duties that are for the preservation of church or commonwealth. Such wretches had rather the Gospel were thrust out of doors than it should cost them much and had rather have the unworthiest man that would be their teacher for a little, than allow the best that mainte