Right Honorable,
It is truly resolved by learned men, that theology is not a bare speculative science, which ultimately terminates and stops in the understanding, but that it is a doctrine ordered and directed to practice, prescribing not only the knowledge of spiritual truth, but the doing and loving of spiritual good. The Apostle calls it the acknowledgment of the truth which is after godliness; the learning of Christ, and of the truth as it is in Jesus. As light and heat, luster, motion, and influence, are united in the Sun, the one working with and by the other; so treasures of wisdom and knowledge are joined with fullness of grace and holiness, in the Sun of Righteousness, whose wings have healing in them. The doctrine of religion is like the Prophet's vision of cherubims, where he saw wheels full of eyes; the one for vision, the other for motion; and hands under wings; these to soar in contemplation, those to be employed in action; and lamps, and burning coals of fire; the one for light, the other for heat. As a heathen's and heretic's moral actions do not benefit him without faith in Christ; so a Christian's speculative knowledge, and mere doctrinal faith will not save him without good works, and the fruits of new obedience. Fides esse sine charitate potest, prodesse non potest. Though therefore we dare not ascribe to good works any meritorious dignity, or proper causality, whereby they procure or produce salvation for us, yet such a necessity of them we ever acknowledge, as that without walking in the way of holiness, we shall not arrive at the kingdom of glory. Without doing the will of God, we can never expect to receive the promises. And as it is a dangerous temptation of Satan on the one hand, to persuade men to deify their own good works, by putting confidence in them; so it is no less dangerous on the other hand by mere notional, airy and Platonic speculations to eat out all care of good works, and those moral duties of piety, temperance, righteousness, and charity, in which the life and proper virtue of true saving faith does exert itself.
These considerations moved me, when I was invited to preach before you at that solemn time when many proper objects of good works use to be presented to your eyes, to single out that argument to treat upon. And that so much the rather, because we live in times wherein there is a concurrence of many of those symptoms and distempers, upon which our Savior has concluded, that the love of many should wax cold: wars, and rumors of wars, nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom; many offended, many hating one another, many false teachers, many seduced people, and, above all, an abundance of iniquity. And indeed, it may be justly feared, that where there are so many divisions, prejudices, animosities, differences both of judgment and interest, to say nothing of the luxury, delicacy, vanity and excess in private expenses, there cannot but consequently be a very great obstruction in the current of good works.
My hearty desire and prayer is, that as this Sermon received favorable audience from you, and is now by your own direction exposed to a more general view, so some signal blessing may follow the publication thereof, that thereby the hearts of many rich men may be enlarged to honor the Lord with their substance, and to let their merchandise, and their treasures have inscribed upon them, Holiness to the Lord.
Your Honor's most humble servant in Christ, EDWARD REYNOLDS.
