place either expresly or implicitly to direct our prayers to God the Father that he would be pleased to forgive us our sins to be reconciled unto us and bestow such blessings upon us as he hath promised to such as shall be reconciled unto him In the Second place either expressly or implicitly we are to beseech him to forgive us our sins to be reconciled and blesse us for the merits of his only Son who hath made satisfaction for us This is a Point which every Christian is bound expressely to believe that God the Father doth neither forgive sins nor vouchsafe any Term or Plea of Reconciliation but only for the merits and satisfaction made by the sacrifice of the Son of God who by the eternal spirit offered himself in our humane nature upon the Crosse In the next place we are to believe and acknowledge that as God the Father doth neither forgive nor vouchsafe Reconciliation but for the merits and satisfaction of his only Son so neither will he vouchsafe to conveigh this or any other blessing unto us which his Son hath purchased for us but only through his Son not only through him as our Advocate or Intercessor but through him as our Mediator that is through His humanitie as the Organ or Conduit or as the only Bond by which we are united and reconciled unto the Divine Nature For although the Holy Spirit or Third Person in Trinitie doth immediately and by Personal Proprietie work faith and other spiritual Graces in our Souls yet doth he not by these Spiritual Graces unite our souls or Spirits immediately unto himself but unto Christs Humane Nature He doth as it were till the ground of our hearts and make it fit to receive the seed of life But this seed of righteousnesse immediately flows from the Sun of Righteousnesse whose sweet influence likewise it is which doth immediately season cherish and ripen it The Spirit of life whereby our Adoption and Election is sealed unto us is the real participation of Christs Bodie which was broken and of Christs Blood which was shed for us This is the true and punctual meaning of our Apostles speech 1 Cor. 15. 45. The first man Adam was made a living soul or as the Syriack hath it Animale Corpus an enlivened bodie but the second Adam was made a quickning spirit and immediately becometh such to all those which as truely bear his image by the Spirit of Regeneration which issues from him as they have born the Image of the first Adam by natural propagation And this again is the true and punctual meaning of our Saviours words John 6. 63. It is the Spirit that quickneth the flesh profiteth nothing the words that I speak unto you are spirit and life For so he had said in the verses before to such as were offended at his words what if you should see the Son of man ascend up where he was before The Implication conteined in the Connexion between these two verses and the precedent is this That Christs Virtual presence or the influence of life which his Humane Nature was to distil from his heavenly Throne should be more profitable to such as were capable of it then his Bodily presence then the bodily Eating of his flesh and blood could be although it had been convertible into their bodily substance This distillation of life and immortalitie from his glorified Humane Nature is that which the Ancient and Orthodoxal Church did mean in their Figurative and lofty speeches of Christs Real presence or of eating His very Flesh and drinking His very Blood in the Sacrament And the Sacramental Bread is called His Bodie and the Sacramental Wine His Blood as for other reasons so especially for This that the vertue or influence of his Bloody Sacrifice is most plentifully and most effectually distilled from heaven unto the worthy Receivers of the Eucharist And unto this Point and no further will most of the Testimonies reach which Bellarmin in his books of the Sacraments or Maldonat in his Comments upon the sixth of Saint John do quote out of the Fathers for Christs Real Presence by Transubstantiation or which Chemnitius that Learned Lutheran in his Books De duabus in Christo naturis and de Fundamentis sanae doctrinae doth avouch for Consubstantiation And if thus much had been as distinctly granted to the Ancient Lutherans as Calvin in some places doth the controversie between the Lutheran and other Reformed Churches had been at an end when it first begun Both Parties acknowledging Saint Cyrill to be the fittest Umpire in this Controversie The end of the Third Chapter A Transition of the Publisher's IT must not be dissembled that I had no Intimation much lesse Commission of the Author's to Insert the Two following Chapters herein this place Yet besides that I knew not of any fitter place where to dispose of them I had these Reasons so to do 1. I held it fit that His Powerful Disputes against the Church of Rome about The Lords Supper in the fourth Chapter and about another Point in the fifth should immediately follow his Learned Argument with the Lutheran 2. The sequence seems very Methodical The Subject of the first Chapter being partly About Christs Exaltation by becoming The Chief Corner-Stone cut out of the Rock or quarrey by his Resurrection from The New Scpulchre lifted up by his Ascension and placed at the Chief Corner by his Sitting at Gods Right-hand and partly about The Union of Christ with true Christians which Union is both a Considerable part of the fourth Chapter and was happily touched upon in the Close of the Third 3. In case any Restive soul should perhaps some faint Dejected Spirit having read Christs Great Exaltation may say Who shall ascend into Heaven that is to bring Christ down from above Such an one besides the quickenings he may hear from other Remembrancers Saint Peter telling us that we are pilgrims here and Saint Paul that we seek a Countrie and look for a Citie Jerusalem that is Free and that being Fellow-Citizens with the Saints and of Gods hous-hold our Conversation or Traffick is to be in heaven for those things which are above where Christ sitteth at Gods Right-hand c. may receive mightie encouragement by Experimenting the Contents of these two next Chapters The avowed neer approach and Intimacie of our Lord Jesus Christ with the Believing and Receiving Christian The word is nigh thee even in thy mouth and in thy heart When the holy Sacramental pledges be in the mouth and Faith in the heart The Word the Eternal Word that was made flesh is nigh indeed For Verily Verily He that eateth my Fesh and drinketh my Blood dwelleth in Me and I in Him CHAP. 1111. A Paraphrase upon the sixth of St. John In what sense Christ's flesh is said to be truly Meat c. What it is To eat Christs Flesh and drink his Blood Of eating and drinking Spiritual and Sacramental And whether of them is meant
place of Sacramental eating and drinking was because they saw no possibilitie how to maintain the peremptorie decrees of the Councels of Constance and Basil concerning Communion under one kind if the words of our Saviour ver 53. of this Chapter be to be understood of Sacramental eating and drinking For it is granted by all that the Consecrated bread is Sacramentally his Bodie not his Blood and that the Cup is Sacramentally his Blood not his Bodie And yet our Saviours words are express Except ye eate the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood ye have no life in you So that all which hope to have life must Sacramentally drink his blood aswel as eat his flesh if this place be meant of Sacramental eating That evasion which most oâ—â— modern Priests and Jesuites use for eluding rather then answering this Objection was too palpable in the Judgement of these two great Divines as it since hath seemed to others of that Church which yet maintain that the former words of our Saviour are to be understood of Sacramental eating Christs flesh and drinking Christs blood The evasion of modern Priests and Jesuits is that he which Sacramentally receives Christs Bodie under the shape or form of Sacramental bread doth with it receive his blood per Concomitantiam by way of concomitancie because there is blood conteined in his bodie which they thus receive But this cannot satisfie any Romish Divine which understands himself or the ancient Doctrine which that Church pretends to follow For this device of receiving Christs blood in the bread per concomitantiam was but a late invention little above 200. years before Jansenius or Hessels lived And the newnesse of this imagination or invention which was generally applauded in the Romish Church in his time was one special motive why that Reverend Pastor of Blessed memorie Mr. Gilpin did disclaim the Romish Churches Doctrine in the Point of Transubstantiation as Bishop Tunstall his Uncle before him had done Secondly Admitting the bread were turned into Christs very bodie and after this conversion had blood in it as truly as flesh and bones yet all this would not salve the literal sense of our Saviours words in the 53 d verse if the eating and drinking which he there speaks of were Sacramental For suppose a man should feed upon raw flesh or upon flesh which had visible or material blood in it we might say indeed that he did eat blood per concomitantiam by way of concomitancie because the flesh which he eats had blood in it But no man would say That he did drink blood per concomitantiam For eating and drinking are two distinct acts and incompatible at one and the same time He that eateth flesh with blood in it doth not eat the flesh and drink the blood whilest he only eats but eats both together the one as principal the other as an appurtenance if he eat as a man and not as Swine do draugh which is no more an eating then a drinking Or if a man should drink blood mingled with some small portions of flesh we might say He did drink flesh by way of Concomitancie but no man would say that he did eat blood per concomitantiam albeit there were flesh in the blood which he drinks for he drinks both together he doth not eat either And for these reasons Pope Innocent expressely denies that he which eats Christs bodie whilst he only eats it doth drink his blood In his fourth Book Myster Evangel Legis ac Sacramenti Eucharist Chap. 21. Edit Venet. in quarto 8. The only refuge which the most learned in the Romish Church since Jansenius and Hessels dyed have found out for answering the former Objection of Reformed Writers is That the words of our Saviour Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of man And drink his blood ye have no life in you are to be Expounded disjunctively as thus Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of man Or drink his blood ye have no life in you The use or Corollarie of this Exposition is That if Christian people do Sacramentally Either eat Christs flesh Or drink his Blood as they ought that is with due preparation this will suffice seeing as they pretend there is no Divine precept which enjoynes all Christian People Sacramentally to receive Christs bodie and blood under both kindes Nor all Priests but only such as do Officiate or Consecrate The precept of Institution Bibite ex hoc omnes Drink ye all of this was punctually directed as they alledg to our Saviours Apostles only who were at this time made Priests and authorized to minister Christs bodie and blood after his death Yet were they not by their leave at this time Sacerdotes conficientes Our Saviour Christ himself did Consecrate both the Bread and Wine the Apostles were as much inferior to him as the meanest Lay-people are to the greatest Priest in the Romish Church to the Pope or summus Pontifex himself But the further Discussion of this Point belongs more properly to the words of the Institution The other Point of expounding et by vel or of shuffling in Or for And belongs to the Cognizance of the 53 and 56. verses To justifie this exposition Cardinal Tollet would perswade us That St Johns Greek Text is full of Hebraismes and there is nothing more familiar with Moses or with other sacred Hebrew writers then to use And for Or Et for Vel. And he brings divers instances to this purpose As for example that in Exod. 21. 17. He that curseth father And mother shall surely be put to death So it is word for word in the Hebrew and yet our English Translation as well as the Vulgar Latin renders the Original thus He that curseth father Or mother shall surely be put to death And it would be an ungodly Evasion for any Magistrate not to censure him as a transgressour of this Law which curseth his father albeit he do not curse his mother or which curseth his mother albeit he do not curse but rather blesse his father But must the true interpretation of such as are to judge according to this Law be derived from the peculiar phrase or dialect of the Hebrews No this was Cardinal Tollet's Errour for the Rule of Interpretation so the matter or circumstance be the same would hold as true in any dialect or language whatsoever The Question then is What certain general Rule we have when or in what cases the conjunctive particle And doth produce this or the like disjunctive sense or may warrant this or the like Exposition of this Law He that curseth father And mother shall surely die that is he which curseth Either father Or mother shall surely die For the like Exposition the Rules are Two One General and infallible Rule is this Whensoever the particle And doth couple not two parts of one and the same proposition but two intire propositions together That which is thus conjunctively affirmed of
very Bodie and Blood to be locally present in every place where and at all times when that blessed Sacrament shall be celebrated This we deny And the former Principle or Antecedent That God is able to create the self same body as often as it pleases him will never infer their intended Conclusion Not to question what God can do we further add For Christs body or whole Christ God and man to be bodily present by this means in many places at once or in all places at all times wherein that blessed Sacrament shall be celebrated is one of those things which according to their rules as well as ours cannot be done as implying an evident Contradiction in nature It may not be believed nor imagined because God did never bind any man to believe such an impossibilitie or Contradiction as is involved in this doctrine It is altogether without the compass of the most miraculous work which God hath at any time wrought or ever promised to work All the former Instances or Cases possible concerning Gods Power to make one and the same man again after he had been annihilated are most unlike to their intended Conclusion All the former Instances or suppositions are free from all color or suspition of Contradiction in nature This supposed Creation of Christs Body often since his death implies as many and as manifest Contradictions as there have been Masses in the Romish Church Not only these Assertions but the dissimilitude also of the Case in question to the former Cases will be immediately made clear from the very Definition of Creation To create a body is to make it of nothing and to make the self same Body which formerly had been but is resolved into Nothing out of Nothing again is but a second exercise of his Creative Power and whatsoever God before hath done he is able to do the same again But the Body of Christ they acknowledge to be immortal and absolutely exempted not only from Annihilation or resolution into Nothing but from all danger of Corruption or diminution Again whatsoever is Created whether at the first second or third time hath no Actual being until it begin to be by Creation Now to make that very thing begin to be or to begin to be out of nothing which already actually is is something is immortal and more glorious then any other creature implies a manifest Contradiction But Christs Body they grant to be immortal since his Resurrection more unalterable then the heaven of heavens so immortal that it can never cease to be what it is therefore it is impossible that it should begin to be by a new creation or be created again For that which is created or may be created again must first be resolved into nothing or cease to be before it can be created again seeing creation is the making of that which is not out of Nothing or be made again by means miraculous If then Christs Body be locally present in the Sacrament it must either be created again and this supposeth either annihilation or dissolution of it or else it must be brought out of the heavens into the Priests hands or else the presence of it in many places must be created but Local Presence is altogether uncapable of Creation for it is a Meer Relation which can neither be created nor made but resulteth from or followeth upon the motion of things created from one place to another or from their creation or beginning to be in that place wherein they are said to be created 12. So it fares with our Adversaries in this Argument as it doth with Boot-halers or night-riders which have caught an unlawful prey being hotly pursued by the right owners Now their manner is to divide the spoil and their company that they may carry one part one way and another part another way that so whilst one is pursued others may escape without pursuit or rescue of the prey Through the ignorance or carelesness of Gods people which should have kept a better watch over their own souls the Romish Priests had made a gainful prey by transporting the native sense of our Saviours Words in the institution of the Sacrament to justifie the doctrine of Transubstantiation And since they have been pursued by reformed Writers as Cozeners and Cheaters of Gods people some of them run one way some another Some of them seek to maintain Christs local presence or Transubstantiation by the former doctrine of Gods Almighty Power which is able to create one and the same body often Others seek to maintain the same doctrine and carry away the prey by the manner of Angelical motion from one place to another in an instant or moment of time And if they could draw such as pursue them into these straits and subtilities they hope to make their part good against such as are not much conversant in the School-mens nice disputes concerning the nature or motions of Angels or know not the difference between the nature and motions of Spirits and Spiritual Bodies Others seek to maintain the same doctrine by the infinitie of divisible quantities as if it were possible for a flies wing to overspread the whole earth as a hen doth her chickens And that Christs Body may by this kind of Infinitie be in many places at once in as many as God shall appoint hoping by this means to cast a mist before the eyes of such Readers as know not the difference betwixt a real material or substantial and a mathematical or imaginary quantitie But all these fictions or suppositions they cast forth only to offer play unto their adversaries or to gain some time for invention of new shifts None of them dare pitch upon any or all of these wayes or imaginations or put the Case upon this issue Whether any of them be in nature possible or agreeable to the Analogie of Faith The only point wherein they agree is the submission of their judgments or imaginations to the authoritie of the Church which is no better agreement then if amongst a multitude of unlearned men one of them should maintain that snow is white another black another pawn his estate that it is blew and a fourth that it is green and yet in the end refer themselves to be tried by some Philosopher which had written of the nature of Snow in a language that none of them understands whose books they know not where to find For what the Church is that cannot err or of whom it consists the French and Italian Catholicks do not agree Or if we take the Church for the Trent Council confirmed by the Pope the Jesuites themselves cannot agree about the meaning of it in this point Divers of them do in Effect deny any Transubstantiation in this Sacrament albeit that Council under pain of curse enjoyneth all Christians to believe That there is a true Conversion of the bread into the substance of Christs Body and of the wine into the substance of his Blood and
that this conversion is rightly called Transubstantiation So that in fine the unitie whereof the children of that Church do so much brag is not an unity of faith or belief but an unity of faction or conspiracy for their own gain such as may be between the Jews the Turks the Heathens and the Arian hereticks which denied the Divinity of Christ to rob or spoil the Orthodoxal or true Catholick Christians 13. Most men have often read All almost have often heard of a Twofold Resurrection The one from death in sin unto newness of life The other from bodily death unto glory and immortality The second Resurrection is the End of our whole life here on earth the first Resurrection from death in sin to newness of life is the mean most necessary for attaining this joyful and happy End Now as the second Resurrection from bodily death unto glory is the End of the first Resurrection from sin to newness of life So is the first Resurrection the End of the blessed Sacrament or solemn commemoration of Christs death till he come to Judgment And although the Omnipotent Power of God by which all things were created of nothing be the most prime and powerful Cause of the second Resurrection yet of our Resurrection unto that Glory and Immortality whereof Christ is now possest Christ as man is not only the Idaeal or Exemplarie but the immediate Efficient or working Cause also Howbeit the power of his Efficiency or working as man be derived from the Omnipotent Power of the Godhead dwelling in him bodily But unto the real participation of this All-powerful Influence from Christs humanity by which the dead shall be quickned by which these mortal bodies shall be cloathed with glory and immortality the bodily or local presence of Christ is not required by the Romish Church It doth not hold it necessary that all or any body which shall be quickened or raised to Glorie shall first swallow Christs Body or be touched by it Of Angelical ministerie or service for gathering the dispersed reliques of mens bodies which have been dissolved by death some use there shall be in the last day as some Romanists with divers Antients think but no use at all of any Mass-Priest to make Christs Body to be locally present unto all that shall be quickened by it There shall be no need then of Transubstantiating Sacramental bread into Christs Body or wine into his bloud for giving life unto those that have been long dead or for effecting that change which shall be wrought in the living Now if by the meer virtual presence of Christs Body and Blood the men which have been long dead shall be restored to perfect life immortalitie shall not the souls of all which receive him in the Sacrament by Faith and true repentance be raised to Newness of life by the same virtual presence without any local touch of His Body but only by that sweet Influence which daily issueth from this Sun of righteousness now placed at the Right hand of God as in its proper Sphere This manner of Christs presence of his real presence in the Sacrament to wit by powerful Influence from his Humanitie our Church did never deny nor doth God the Father or Christ the Son deny this Real Influence of life unto any that hunger and thirst after it in the Sacrament CHAP. XIV 1 COR. 15. 36 c. But some will say How are the dead raised up and With what body do they come Thou Fool That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die c. That this Argument drawn from Seed sown is a Concludent Proof of the Resurrection of The Bodie THe Questions are Two First How the dead shall be raised The second With what bodies shall they come forth The former imports thus much How is it possible that the Dead shall be raised Or it being admitted that it is possible for the dead in some sort or manner to arise to life the next branch of the same Question is in what particular manner they shall de Facto arise as whether by Gods Creative Power by which he made all things of nothing or by his Conservative Power by which he preserveth all things that are in their proper Being or advanceth them to an higher estate or better Tenure of Being The second Question or Quaerie is With what kind of bodies shall the dead arise Whether with the self same bodies wherein they died Or if not every way the same what alteration or change shall be wrought in them Unto Both these Questions our Apostle vouchsafeth but this one Answer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O Fool that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die But this Answer may seem in the first place to break the Rule of Christian Charity For many of these Corinthians though in this point of the Resurrection erroneous and ignorant were yet Christian though weak brethren and the Law is general he that shall say unto his brother THOU FOOL shall be guilty of Hell fire Matth. 5. 22. The Rule indeed is General if this or the like opprobrious speech be hatched out of malice leavened wrath or invetered hatred But this sentence they do not incur out of whose mouthes these or the like speeches issue by way of just reproof or instruction as from a Master to his Scholers or from a Lord to his Servants in points wherein they err and are to be corrected or instructed by him In these cases or upon these occasions their censure passeth rather upon the folly then upon the persons of them whom they so chastise correct or seek to instruct And it is not altogether impertinent which some have noted upon that place That our Apostles censure doth not aim at any particular or determinate person but it is indefinitely directed to all those which seriously make the former questions either concerning the Possibilitie of mens arising from the dead or the particular Manner how this Resurrection should be wrought or with what bodies they should come forth But many such as will confess his reason or Argument to be free from breach of Christian Charitie or good manners will question the Logical strength or pertinence of it The strength or efficacy of it is questionable upon These points As first How the dayly experiment of seed-corn which first dies and is quickned again can inferr the Fundamental conclusion by our Apostle intended to wit the Resurrection of mens bodies which have been dead and rotten for many hundred years and their Reliques dispersed into so many several Elements or places that if the seed-corn which men sow were but dispersed into half so many places the husband-man should in vain expect an increase or his seed again Secondly admitting this yearly experiment of the seed dying and reviving were of force sufficient to inforce our belief of the former conclusion that the bodies of men dead may be raised to life again yet the
blood he himselfe here saith it He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him and for this reason his flesh is meat indeed and his blood is drink indeed the onely meat and the onely drink which men should hunger and thirst after Other meates and drinks should be sought for yea life bodily it self should be desired onely to this End that by the prolonging of it wee might be partakers in greater measure of this meat and drink which preserves the Bodie and soul unto everlasting life 5. The Questions then to be discussed are Two First What it is to eat Christs flesh and drink his Blood Secondly What it is for Christ to Dwell or abide in us and us to dwell or abide in Him All agree that there is A Twofold eating of Christs Bodie and A Twofold drinking of his Blood One meerly Sacramental and another Spiritual Which agreement notwithstanding There ariseth A Third Question viz. What manner of eating Christs Flesh and drinking his Blood is in this place either onely or principally meant For the Resolution of this Question we are breifly to explicate each member of this Division viz. 1. What it is to eat Christs Bodie and drink his Blood Sacramentally onely 2. What it is to eat his Bodie and Drink his Blood Spiritually First then All that are partakers of this Sacrament eat Christs Bodie and Drink his Blood sacramentally that is they eat that Bread which Sacramentally is his Bodie and drink that Cup which Sacramentally is his Blood whether they eat or drink faithfully or unfaithfully For All the Israelites 1 Cor. 10. Drank of the same Spiritual Rock which was Christ Sacramentally All of them were partakers of his presence when Moses smote the Rock Yet with many of them God was not well pleased because they did not faithfully either Drink or participate of his presence And more displeased he is with such as eat Christs Bodie and Drink his blood unworthily though they eat and drink them Sacramentally For eating and drinking so onely that is without faith or due respect they eat and drink to their own Condemnation because they do not Discern or rightly esteem Christs Bodie or presence in the H. Sacrament May we say then that Christ is Really present in the Sacrament as well to the unworthy as to the faithful receivers Yes this we must grant yet must we add withal that he is really present with them in a quite contrary manner really present he is because virtually present to both because the operation or efficacie of his Bodie and blood is not metaphorical but real in both Thus the bodily Sun though locally distant for its substance is really present by its heat and light as well to sore eyes as to clear sights but really present to both by a contrarie real operation and by the like contrary operation it is really present to clay and to wax it really hardneth the one and really softeneth the other So doth Christs Bodie and Blood by its invisible but real influence mollifie the hearts of such as come to the Sacrament with due preparation but harden such as unworthily receive the consecrated Elements If he that will hear the word must take heed how he hears much more must he which means to receive the Sacrament of Christs bodie and blood be careful how he receives He that will present himself at this great Marriage Feast of the Lamb without a wedding garment had better be absent It was alwayes safer not to approach the presence of God manifested or exhibited in extraordinarie manner as in his Sanctuarie or in the Ark then to make appearance before it in an unhallowed manner or without due preparation Now when we say that Christ is really present in the Sacrament our meaning is that as God he is present in an extraordinarie manner after such a manner as he was present before his incarnation in his Sanctuarie in the Ark of his Covenant and by the Power of his God-head thus extraordinarilie present he diffuseth the vertue or operation of his Humane Nature either to the vivification or hardning of their hearts who receive the Sacramental Pledges So then a man by eating Christs bodie meerly Sacramentally may be hardned may be excluded from his gracious presence But no man hath Christ dwelling in him by this manner of eating his flesh and drinking his blood unlesse withal he eate the one and drink the other Spiritually The Eating then of Christs bodie and drinking his blood meerly Sacramentally is not the eating and drinking here meant 6. They are said to eat Christs Flesh and drink his Blood Spiritually which rightly apprehend his Death and Passion which by Faith meditate and ruminate upon them making application to themselves aswel of the great danger which may ensue upon the neglect of such great benefits as he hath purchased for them as of the inestimable good which alwayes accompanies the right esteeme or contemplation of his Bodie which was given for them and of his Blood which was shed for them He which thus eateth Christs Flesh and drinketh his Blood by Faith although he do not for the time present eat his Bodie or drink his blood Sacramentally hath a true interest in this promise He that eateth my Flesh and drinketh my Blood dwelleth in me and I in him so he do not neglect to eat his Bodie and drink his Blood Sacramentally when occasion requires and opportunitie serves So that Spiritual eating and drinking Christ by Faith is the true preparative for the worthy receiving of his bodie and blood Sacramentally He that doth not so prepare himself for the receiving of his body and blood doth receive him unworthily whilest he receives him Sacramentally The main Question is Whether Christs words be to be understood at all of Sacramental eating and drinking or of Spiritual eating and drinking onely 7. Many there were and yet are in Reformed Churches which deny this place to be meant of Sacramental Eating But as Beza amongst others well observes they which deny this place to be meant at all of Sacramental eating err no lesse then they do which restrain it only to Sacramental eating Their error which deny it to be meant at all of Sacramental eating is so much the worse because it gave advantage to our Adversaries of the Romish Church which want no wit to work upon all advantages given To omit others Jansenius and Dr. Hessels two of the most exquisite expositors of Scriptures and most Judicious Divines which the Romish Church had after the Reformation was begun by Luther and Zuinglius and prosecuted by Calvin expressely deny our Saviours dispute in this Chapter with the Jews to be meant at all of Sacramental eating or drinking The Reason which enforced these two great Divines to slight the authoritie of most writers in their own Church and to wave the authoritie of most ancient Fathers which it is evident do understand this
two propositions coupled together must be disjunctively expounded of either proposition divided one from the other Now when it is said He that curseth Father And Mother shall die there be two intire propositions coupled together by this particle And implicitly the explicit sense or Resolution of which speech is this He that curseth his Father shall surely die And he that curseth his Mother shall surely die And if both these propositions conjunctively taken be true this disjunctive will be as true He that curseth either father or mother shall die Secondly the Rule is universally true When two incompatible attributes are conjunctively avouched of one and the same subject in one and the same ê“position universally taken the particle And in this case must be resolved into the particle Or when the universall ê“position or subject of it is divided into its parts Quae dicuntur conjunctim de genere dicuntur divisim de specie As for example the Philosopher describing the native propertie of quantitie saith maximè proprium est quantitati ut ex ea dicantur res aequales inaequales But in as much as equalitie and inequalitie are incompatible if wee apply them to the the same particular things which are compared together for quantitie hence it is that every particular substance which is compared to or measured with another must either be equal or unequal unto it That one and the same particular substance should be both equal and unequal to another for quantitie is impossible So the Philosopher saith and it is a naturall truth which none can deny that the living or sensitive creature universally taken is rational and irrational but because one and the same living Creature cannot be both rational and irrational when wee descend to particular living creatures wee cannot say that any of them is both rationall and irrationall but either rationall or irrationall Yet in as much as every particular living creature is either endowed with reason or not endowed with reason the living creature universally taken that is as it comprehends every particular living creature must be both rationall and irrationall For Quicquid dicitur divisim de Specibus dicitur conjunctim de Genere 9. To give such a direct and punctuall answer to the Cardinals instance out of Exod. 21. 17. He that curseth father and mother shall dye as may satisfie all the rest which he brings or can be brought to like purpose we say as was intimated before there be two intire propositions 1. He that curseth his father shall dye 2. He that curseth his mother shall dye and the explication or unfolding of these two propositions is disjunctively set down by our Saviour himself Matth. 15. 4. He that curseth father or mother shall surely dye But there are not two propositions but one proposition in this Text He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him He doth not say here or elswhere He that eateth my flesh dwelleth in me and I in him and he that drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him Nor is this disjunctive any where in Scripture exprest That he which eateth Christs flesh or drinketh his blood dwelleth in Christ and he in him That instance which the Cardinall would wrest to justifie his interpretation of our Saviours words in the 53. and 56. verses doth make against him His instance is 1 Cor. 11. ver 27. Whosoever shall eat this bread or drinke the cup of the Lord unworthily is guiltie of the body and blood of the Lord. For in as much as S t Paul had said before vers 26. that as often as wee eat this bread and drink this cup wee shew the Lords death till he come it will necessarily follow that albeit wee eat the bread not unworthily and yet put such a Case drink the cup unworthily we become guiltie both of his Body and Blood because in both wee solemnize the memory of his death and he that should both eat the bread and drink the cup unworthily is twice guiltie of the body and blood of the Lord As he that curseth both farther and mother is worthy of double death because he that curseth either father or mother is guiltie of death Nor can it be alledged that the severall parts of this proposition He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me are incompatible or cannot be performed at one and the same sacramentall action by one and the same man or that they are to be universally or collectively understood of the whole Church as consisting of Priests and Laicks and not distributively of every man and therefore to seek a disjunctive sense of these words to this or like effect he that eateth my flesh or drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him is to seek a knot in â—â—ulrush or a division in Unitie Again The form of our Saviours speech ver 53. is exceptive Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood ye have no life in you The form is the very same as if we should say Except a man honour his Father and Mother his seed shall not long prosper upon earth Now it would be impiously absurd to make this construction of that Commandment Except a man honour Either his Father Or his Mother his seed shall not long prosper upon the earth And no better then Thus is the Construction which Cardinal Tollet or his followers make of our Saviour's words in the 53. verse Our Saviour had told them before that He was the Bread of life which came down from heaven And pressing the Belief of this Point upon them further not by division but by addition he addeth ver 51. That The Bread which he meant was his Flesh And when the Jews ver 52. strove about this He further adds ver 53. Verily Verily Except ye eat and drink ye have no life in you 10. But besides the former plunge whereto the best Scholars in the Romish Church are put in justifying their practice for Deteining the Cup from the Laitie if This Chapter be meant of Sacramental eating there is another Difficultie which neither the late Device of Drinking Christs Blood per concomitantiam nor the Cardinals interpretation of ver 56. by Disjunction will any way touch much lesse satisfie And the Difficultie is this If these words be literally meant of Sacramental eating and drinking their literal sense must be as plain and as void of all Trope or Metaphor as the words of the Institution related by Saint Matthew Chap. 26. 26. are by them supposed to be Now when Christ saith in Saint Matthew That the bread is his Bodie this speech in the literal sense as they contend inferreth a substantial change of the Bread into the substance of his bodie Now our Saviours words are in this place as plain and as certain as in that He avoucheth again and again that he is the bread of life that the bread which he will
give is his flesh that his flesh is meat indeed that his blood is drink indeed Now if the sacramental bread in S t Matthew cannot literally be said to be his body unlesse it be converted into the substance of his body then cannot Christ himselfe literally be said to be bread unlesse his substance be converted into the substance of bread His flesh cannot literaly be said meat indeed unlesse it be really and substantially converted into meat his blood cannot be said drink indeed unlesse it be really transubstantiated into drink If they grant these words to be meant of Sacramental eating or to be equivalent to the words of the Institution Now to deny these words to be meant of sacramentall eating is every way lesse expedient for reformed Churches than for the Romish And yet to restrayn them either to Sacramental eating onely or to Spirituall eating excluding sacramental is worst of all We are therefore to consider that sacramental eating and spiritual eating are not opposite or incompatible but subordinate Our eating of Christs body and drinking of Christs blood are then compleat when they are Sacramentally spiritual or spiritually sacramentall For as Calvin excellently observes albeit such as professe themselves zealous followers of him either do not understand him or do not second him to eat Christs body and drink Christs blood Sacramentally is more then to beleive in Christ more than to have our faith awaked or quickned by the sacramentall pledges For no man can spiritually eat Christ but by beleeving his death and passion yet sacramental eating addes some what to spiritual eating how quick and lively soever our faith be whilest wee eat him onely spiritually For though our faith were in both the same as well for degree as qualitie yet the object of our faith is not altogether the same at least the Union of our faith unto the same object is not altogether the same in sacramental and in spiritual eating Christs body and blood are so present in the Sacrament that wee receive a more speciall influence from them in use of the sacrament than without it wee do so we receive it worthily or with hearts prepared by spiritual eating precedent that is by serious meditation of Christs death and passion It is not all one either not to think on Christs death and passion out of the sacrament or to think on them negligently or not reverently and to receive the sacrament of his body and blood unworthily negligently or irreverently Now as the effects or consequence of the unworthy Receiving the Holy Sacrament is more Dangerous then the Effects or Consequence of not eating Christ Spiritually or of Careless Meditation upon Christs death and passion so the Effect of Sacramental Receiving worthily and faithfully performed is a Greater refreshing to the Soul then the effect of Receiving Him Spiritually onely though reverently and as becomes us Now unto the reverent and worthy Receiving of Christs Bodie and Blood both ways that is both Spiritually and Sacramentally as being the most complete performance of the Condition required is the Promise of our Saviour most immediatly annexed He that So eateth my Flesh and drinketh my Blood Dwelleth in Mee and I in Him The meaning of which Promise was the Second Point proposed paragraph the 5 th and should be next handled but that the Application here desireth to be inserted 11. What hath been spelled apart let us now put together He that intends aright to eat Christs flesh and drink his Blood Sacramentally to his Souls Health must come prepared by a right and worthy receiving of Both Spiritually Now we Spiritually eat Christs Flesh and drink his Blood as often as we reverently and faithfully meditate upon Christs Death and remember it aright And this we do when we take a true Estimate of ourselves and of his death and sufferings for us For this is both duely to examine our selves or our own soules and rightly to Esteem or Discern the Lord's Bodie To Discern his Bodie from the bodies of other men we cannot unlesse we believe and acknowledge it to be The Bodie of the Son of God The bodie of God Blessed for ever as was shewed at large before in other Tracts and in the fore-part of this Book And this we may do and yet not rightly esteem that Love which Christ shewed unto us in offering his Bodie and Blood in respect of the love of others which would perhaps adventure their Bodies and shed their blood for us 12. To remember a A Good turn done by a friend and not to value and prize it as we ought is rather to forget then to remember his Friendlinesse Now no man can rightly prize the Death of Christ and the benefits thereof unlesse he truely believe that Christ Dyed for him But is Every one bound to believe This Yes He that doth not believe This doth not believe that Christ is The Messias or the Redeemer of the World To doubt of This is a degree of Infidelitie to denie it is more then Heresie a point of Jewish Infidelitie Yet to believe thus much and no more doth not immediately make a good Christian or worthy receiver of the Holy Sacrament What more then must every one believe That Christ dyed for him in particular certainly he must Nor doth the belief of This make him sure of his Salvation Every one must believe that Christ dyed for him in particular that he may be a worthy Receiver And Every One must worthily receive this Holy Sacrament that is worthily remember Christs death that he may make his Election sure But in what sense must Every one believe that Christ dyed for him in particular not Exclusively as if he dyed not for others as well as for him for this were to have the faith of Christ with respect of persons without charitie and contrarie to reason For if Every one must believe that Christ died for him in particular then every man must believe that Christ dyed for all men as well as for him Otherwise some men should be bound to believe an untruth But if he died for all men how is he said to die for thee and me in particular Verie well Thus. Though He dyed for all as well as for Thee or me yet did he not Die partly for thee and partly for me and partly for others but intirely for every one 13. Plato as Seneca in his 6. Book De Beneficijs Cap. 18. tells us thought himself obliged in kindnesse to one that had Transported him over a River without paying his Fare he reckoned it Positum apud Platonem officium But when he saw others partakers of the same Benefit he Disclaimed the Debt Hence Seneca draws This Aphorism It is not enough for him that will oblige me unto him to do me a good Turn unlesse he do it as to my self directly non tantùm mihi sed tanquà m mihi If upon the like considerations or to the end that they may think themselves obliged to
And I beseech the Infinite Mercie to pardon these and all others as fully freely and upon the same termes I desire pardon for mine own I have but Two Things more to say and the One concernes the Vulgar Reader 1. That this Book seems no way lyable to the Objection of Obscurity which hath been sometimes made against some other parts of this Authors Writings the Style here being more easie and Popular as first prepared for His Charge at Newcastle Though to say the truth The Darkness was most-what in the Readers Eye and not in the Object or Authors Writings 2. That the longer the world lasts the more seasonable every day then other will this Book be yea so it must needs be the Essential parts thereof treating of and proving Christs Coming to Judgement The Resurrection and Life Everlasting If any One shall either by reading the Book or the Preface be any thing bettered I beseech him make his Return in Prayers for the Church of England once the Envie and Fear now by the folly of her own children made the scorn of her Aemula That the Lord would so build up her walls set up her Gates and erect her Towers That Her Militancie in his strength may be victorious for His Truth and at last changed into a Triumph in His Glory Which shall be the earnest Request of Her most Unworthy Son and the Readers Humble Servant in the Lord Jesus B. O. ERRATA In the Tenth Book Fol. 3137. lin 16. read some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of R. In this Book Fol. 3327. lin 26. read Fifth Chapt. Fol. 3789. lin 16. read Cui à nobis reddenda A TABLE Of the Principal Arguments of the several Sections and Chapters contained in this BOOK SECT I. Of Christs Sitting at the Right Hand of God Of the Grammatical sense of the Words and of the Real Dignity answering thereto CHAP. I. Of the Grammatical sense of the words Heb. 10. 12. But this man after he had offered one Sacrifice c. and whether they be meerly Metaphorical pag. 3307 2. Of the Real Dignitie contained in this Article viz. The Exaltation of Christ That Christ was exalted both as the Son of God and the son of David p. 3311 3. In what sense Christs humane Nature may in what sense it may not be said to be infinitely exalted The Question concerning the Ubiquity of Christs Bodie handled p. 3317 4. A Paraphrase upon the sixth of S. John In what sense Christs flesh is said to be truly meat c. What it is To eat Christs Flesh and drink his Blood Of Eating and Drinking Spiritual and Sacramental and whether of them is meant John 6. 56. Of Communion in one kind and Receiving Christs Blood per Concomitantiam Tollets Exposition of Except ye Eat And Drink by disjunction turning And into Or confuted and Rules given for better expounding like Cases How Christ dwells in Us and We in Him The Application All which be seasonable Meditations upon the Lords Supper p. 3328 5. The Great Attribute of Christ His being the Chief Corner stone handled in the foregoing Chapter prosecuted more amply in this Christ is the Foundation of the Apostles and Prophets How Christians being built upon this Foundation do grow into an Holy Temple p. 3348 SECT II. Of Christs Lordship or Dominion Phil. 2. 11. That every tongue should confess c. p. 3358 CHAP. 6. What it is to be a Lord. Though there be many called Lords yet there is but One Absolute Lord. ibid. 7. In what Respects or upon what Grounds Christ by peculiar Title is called The Lord. And first of the Title it self Secondly of the Real Grounds unto this Title 3362 8. What our confession of Christ to be The Lord importeth and how it redoundeth to the glory of God the Father SECT III. Of Christs Coming to Judgment CHAP. 9. 2 Cor. 5. 10. insisted upon p. 3375 10. Of the Natural Notions which the Heathens had and the Internal Experiments which every true Christian may have answering to those Notions of a final Judgment 3377 11. By what Authority of Scripture this exercise of the final Judgment is appropriated unto our Lord Jesus Christ p 3390 12 The manner of Christs coming to Judgment which was the third General proposed in the ninth Chapter p. 3401 SECT IV. Of the Resurrection of the Dead CHAP. 13. The Belief of the Article of the Resurrection of high concernment malignantly impugned by Satan and his Agents needs and deserves our best Fortification The Heathens had Implicite notions of a Resurrection The obstacle of impossibility removed by proof of this Conclusion That though all things were annihilated yet God is able to retrieve or recover The Numerical same p. 3422 14. This Argument drawn from Seed sown 1 Cor. 15. 36. c. is a concludent proof of the resurrection of the Bodie p 3434 15. The Objections of the Atheist and the Exceptions of the Naturalist both put fully home and as fully answered The falsitie of the Supposals and Paradoxes rather then Principles of the Atheist discovered and made even palpable by ocular demonstration and by Instances in Bodies Vegetant and Sensitive A Scruple that might trouble some pious mind after all this satisfied A short Application of the Doctrin contained in the whole Chapter p 3444 16 The Apostles method 1 Cor. 15. 16 17 20. in proving the Resurrection peculiar and yet Artificial His way of Natural or reciprocal Infeference both Negative and Assertive justified and shewed That both these Inferences naturally arise and may concludently be gathered from the Text and from the Principles of Christian Belief Wherein the witness false upon supposition ver 14 15. should consist That Philosophical Principle Deus et Natura nihil faciunt frustra divinely improved Gods special and Admirable works have ever a Correspondent that is some extraordinary end How sin is taken away by Christs Death How by his Resurrection How we are justified by Christs Resurrection How we may try our selves and know whether we rightly believe this Article of the Resurrection or no. p 3455 SECT V. Of the Article of Everlasting Life CHAP. XVII Rom. 6. 21 22 23. What fruit had ye then of those things c. The Connexion of the fifth and sixth Chapters to the Romans A Paraphrase upon the sixth chapter The importance of the phrase Dead to sin No Christians in this life so dead to sin as to come up to the Resemblance of Death natural True Christians dead to sin in a proportion to civil death All Christians at least all the Romans to whom S. Paul writes did so in Baptism professe themselves dead to sin and vow death to sin by a true Mortification thereof All have in Baptism or may have a Talent of Grace as an Antidote or Medicine against the deadly Infection of sin as a strengthning to make us victorious over sin Three Motives to deter us from the service of sin 1. It is fruitless 2. It
place of more honourable attendance yet the warlike Princes of ancient times made choice of men most trusty and valourous for their Favourites But the Almighty unto whose future designs the Rites and Customs of the Kings of Judah were haply praefashioned needs no Defendant no assistant either on the Right-hand or on the Left The former occasion of imbecillitie or need of Defendants being set apart as the Right-hand is ordinarily more worthy then the Left so to be on the Right-hand of Supreme Honour is simply more honourable then to be on the Left specially according to the Custome of the Jews The Sons of Zebedee or their Mother or both were not ignorant in rerespect of the general matter but in the particular Form or Manner or Circumstance of their Petition when they desired that the one might sit on their Masters Right-hand and the other on the Left in his Kingdome To sit by him in his Kingdom was to their apprehension and according to the custome of their Native Country a greater Dignity then to stand by him or to go in and out before him To sit on the Right-hand was affected by the Mother as a place of praecedence for her elder Son and therefore rank't in the former place in her Petition She saith not That the one may sit on the Left-hand and the other on the Right but that one may sit on the Right-hand and the other on the Left Mat. 20. 21. That to sit on the Right-hand of Majesty was the greatest honour whereof any Subject or inferiour Prince in Jurie was capable may be gathered from the honour which Solomon did unto his Mother Bathsheba 1 King 2. 19. The King rose up to meet her and bowed himself unto her and sate down on his Throne and caused a seat to be set for the Kings Mother and she sate on his Right-hand Nor hath the Royall Psalmist any better place for the Spouse whose Dignity he sought to emblazon Psal 45. 9. Kings daughters were among thine honourable women upon thy Right-hand did stand the Queen in a vesture of gold of Ophir To have the power of superiours on the Right-hand or for the enemy to have the Right-hand is in Sacred Heraldrie a sign of victory or pre-eminence whether in Civil or Warlike proceedings The greatest plague and root of curses which David did wish unto the enemies of his God and which did afterwards fall on Judas the greatest enemy of Davids Son and Lord was that the wicked might be set over him and that the adversary might stand at his Right-hand for so he knew that he should be condemned when he was judged and that his prayers should be turned into sin Psal 109. 6 7. The surest Anchor of Davids Confidence was Gods being on his Right-hand Psal 16. 8. The Lord is at my Right-hand therefore I shall not slide or fall And the final Consummation of all the happinesse which he hoped for whether in his own person or in the person of his expected Son the Messias was to be placed at the Right-hand of God In thy presence is fulnesse of joy and at thy Right-hand there are Pleasures for evermore Psal 16. 11. And so will it be found at the last Day when The Son of Man shall set the Sheep on his Right-hand and the goats on the Left and shall say to them on his Right-hand Come ye Blessed But to them on the Left Go ye cursed Mat. 25. 33. c. 2. So then This Article of Christs sitting at the Right-hand of God is as A Trophie of his Victory gotten over death and over all the temptations of the World and the divel whilest he lived on earth and a certain Prognostick of his final Triumph over all his succeeding enemies for he must sit at the Right-hand of God until all his enemies be made his foot-stool But before we come to decypher the Real Dignity here described it may be questioned whether the Description it self be meerly Metaphorical or Symbolical that is a language borrowed from the visible customes of men without any real sensible Similitude between the things signified by the same words That this Phrase of Sitting at the Right hand of God is a meere borrowed speech most Divines do hold giving us withal this General Rule That no Corporeal Substance Quality Habit or Gesture can be attributed unto God otherwise then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is by a kind of Poetical Fiction or Figurative speech borrowed from the fashions of men The proper Logical Subject notwithstanding of this Rule or Maxim must be the God-head or Divine Nature in the Abstract It holds not so truly of God or at least of every Divine Person The Divine Nature or God-head is Simple Pure and Immixt The God-head hath neither eyes nor eares nor body much lesse can there be in it any distirction of Right-hand or Left yet may we not deny but the Son of God who is truly God hath eyes and eares feet and hands Right-hand and Left-hand and all the parts of the humane body which any perfect man hath His Blood though humane blood is as truly the Blood of God as of Man His Blood is the Blood of God his Body the Body of God in such a sense as neither the body nor blood of any other creature are said to be Gods whose all things are in heaven and earth His Flesh and Blood and all the parts of his humane Body are the Flesh Blood and parts of God in as strict and proper sense as our hands are said our own that is by strict and Personal Propriety The Son of God hath flesh and blood hands and feet in such a sense as God the Father or God the Holy Ghost hath not 3. But when it is said that Christ sitteth at the Right-hand of God this must be understood of God the Father not of God the Son for so it is expressed in the Apostles Creed that The Son of God who was Crucified dead and buried and who rose the third day from the dead now sits at the Right-hand of God the Father Almightie Now if God the Father have no bodie no Right-hand or Left-hand as God the Son hath the case seems clear that Christs sitting at the right-hand of the Father must needs be a speech meerly Metaphorical borrowed from the custom of earthly Princes to be placed at whose Right hand is the greatest honour that can be to their chief Peers or Subjects This is most certain if we speak of the Nature or Essence of the God head or of the Divine Person of the Father Yet all this hinders not why the Divine Majesty or Person of the Father who is every where Essentially present may not be more Conspicuously present in respect of created sights in some visible heavenly Throne then in any other place The Father for ought we know may have a distinct Throne and the Son another or they may have distinct manifestations of Glory upon the same
and meekenesse than Moses did albeit they had no such occasion of murmuring as their forefathers had For their Fathers murmured in their hunger or thirst whereas this great Prophet had prevented this occasion of murmuring by feeding them plenteously before they had sought to him for food That which Moses saith unto the murmuring Israelites Exod. 16. 8. was now exactly fullfilled The Lord saith he heareth your murmurings which you murmur against him and what are wee Your murmurings are not against us but against the Lord. These Jewes murmur against the son as they suppose of Joseph and Mary lesse weening that in murmuring against him they did personally murmur against the Son of God then their Fathers did when they murmured against Moses that they had murmured against their God But the same Lord which heard their murmurings then by the mediate presence or infinite knowledge of his God head heares them now with the eares of man as immediately and as sensibly as Moses heard their Fathers murmur Now as God in the wildernesse though he heard their Fathers murmurings did yet grant them their desire at evening ye shall eat flesh in the morning ye shall be filled with bread and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God Exod. 16. 12 So the same Lord now albeit this foolish people murmur against him to his face not for denying but for proffering them the true food of life is so farre from chiding them as Moses did that he presseth them to make try all of his bountie and to accept his proffer with greater vehemency of words yet with more meeknesse of language than Moses did at any time use Murmur not saith he amongst your selves ver 43. c. I am that bread of life your fathers did eat Manna in the wildernesse and are dead This is the bread which cometh downe from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not dye I am the living bread that came downe from heaven if any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever and the bread that I will give is my flesh w ch I will give for the life of the world 48 49 50 51. And here again they increase their murmuring for they strove among themselves saying how can this man give us his flesh to eat v. 52. Thus as their Fathers tempted God in their hearts by asking meat for their Lust Ps 78. 18. so have their posteritie They fought him out that they might have their bellye 's filled with corporal bread and yet when he had given them this in great abundance by meanes miraculous they will not beleive that he is able to give them what he promiseth bread from heaven or his flesh to eate which is the bread or staff of life So incredulous their Fathers had been that after the sight of many miracles in Egypt they would not trust him in the wildernesse after the experience of one miracle in the wildern esse they would not trust him for a second They Spake against God they said can God furnish a table in the wildernesse Behold he smote the Rock that the waters gushed out and the streames over-flowed but can he give bread also can he provide flesh for his people therefore the Lord heard this and was wroth so a fire was kindled against Jacob and anger came up against Israel because they beleived not in God and trusted not in his salvation But now this Salvation of God even God himself made their Jesus or Salvation for all is one is come neerer unto this later people and yet they will not beleeve him they will not trust in him Yet his anger is not presently kindled against them for not beleiving The more they doubt the more they question the more they murmur or strive the more he presseth the necessitie of eating his flesh upon them first Negatively verily verily I say unto you except yee eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood yee have no life in you then Affirmatively Who so eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternall life and I will raise him up at the last day vers 53 54. And lastly he gives the reason as well of the negative as of the affirmative For my flesh is meat indeed and my blood is drink indeed vers 55. So that in him these Jewes were to expect the fulnesse of the body of all those contentments for whose shadowes their Fathers so greedily longed in the wildernesse and for want of which they so murmured against Moses as these men now do against the Lord which appeared to Moses for giving them assurance of them 4. In what sense Christs flesh is said to be truely meate and his blood to be truely drink I have shewd elswhere The summe was this His flesh is meat indeed his blood is drink indeed non Formaliter sed Eminenter meat indeed and drink indeed not in respect of the natural qualities of corporal meat and drink for these must be swallowed concocted digested and finally converted into our bodily substance That Christs flesh according to these qualities is truely meat or his blood truely drink the Romish Church doth not avouch For if his body should be concocted or digested or converted into our bodily substance it should suffer corruption And to be swallowed only and not concocted is no propertie of meat or drink Christs Flesh then is said truly meat and his blood drink indeed in respect of the End whereto all manner of food is destinated The best End of all bodily food is to preserve or continue bodily life And that is the best food or diet which most effectually procureth this End Howbeit bodily life cannot be first given or implanted by the best bodily meat that is but only continuated or preserved But Christs Flesh was given not only to continue life but to give life unto the world it is the root of life as well as the food of life If we speak of life spiritual or Everlasting which onely is life indeed And in as much as his flesh and blood are the rootes and fountaines of this kind of life the one is most truely said to be meat indeed the other most truely drink indeed That is meat and drink more effectuall and more necessary for the attainement of everlasting life than bodily food is for life temporal Again Temporal or bodily life cannot be continued or preserved otherwise than by the corruption or destruction of the bodily meate which preserves it But Christs flesh and blood preserve life spiritual or our soules and bodies unto everlasting life because they are incorruptible and cannot be changed be not so much as subject to alteration Now if all other meat besides this must suffer corruption and lose its nature before it can become a cause or meanes of preserving bodily life Such meat cannot be truely said to remain in us much lesse can wee be said to remain or abide in it But of Christs flesh and
more probable it is that our Apostle did aim at the 97. Psal then at the forecited place of Deut. because the other Testimonies following in that Hebr. 1. 8 9. are evidently taken out of the Book of Psalmes unto the SON he saith O GOD Thy throne is for ever and ever the Scepter of thy Kingdome is a Scepter of righteousness Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquitie wherefore God even thy God hath anointed thee with the oyle of gladness above thy fellowes This Testimonie is evident in the 45. Psal v. 6 7. So is that other Heb. 1. 10 11 12. expressely contained in Psal 102 Thou Lord in the beginning hast established the earth and the heavens are the workes of thine hands They shall perish but thou dost remain and they all shall wax old as doth a garment And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up and they shall be changed But thou art the same and thy yeares shall not fail The former testimonie is perhaps Typically Propheticall and may in some sort concern Salomon according to the literal sense but Salomon only as he was a Type of that Son of David who was likewise to be the Son of God But the Character almost of every line in the hundred and second Psalm testifies that the Psalmist in this grievous complaint had more then a Typical representation such a distinct and clear vision of Christs Glorie and Exaltation as the Prophet Esay Chap. 53. had of his humiliation in our flesh or humane nature The Title of this Psalm is A prayer of the afflicted when he shall be in distress and powr forth his meditations before the Lord. And The only fountain of comfort to all afflicted in bodie or soul is the Exaltation of Christ the Son of God in our flesh or nature That which must sweeten all our bodily sorrowes or afflictions even the bitterness of death it self whereof this Psalmist and the people of God in his time had tasted must be our meditation upon that and the like speeches of our Apostle If we suffer with Christ we shall also reign with him And for your comfort in all distress I cannot commend any fitter matter of meditation to you then is contained in this 102 Psalm and in the 2. 4. and 12. Chapters to the Hebrews This Exaltation of Christ to be Lord is alike clearly fore-prophesied Psalm 99. and Psalm 145. as every observant Reader may of himself collect 4. The more extraordinary and more special Grounds or Bases whereupon this Title of Lord as it is peculiar to Christ is erected are these First Christ is in peculiar sort called The LORD because it was God the Son not God the Father or God the Holie Ghost who did personally pay the ransom of our Sins and this he fully payed by offering up part of our nature made his own in a bloody Sacrifice to the Father Servants we were by creation of our nature not onely to God the Son but to God the Father and to God the Holie Ghost to the Divine nature or blessed Trinity But we had sold our selves for enjoying the pleasures of the flesh unto Gods adversary And albeit we could not by any compact or Covenant whether implicit or express made with Satan by our first Parents or by our selves alienate our selves from Gods Dominion of Jurisdiction over us yet we did renounce his Service and that Interest which we had in his gracious protection as he was our Lord and alienate unto his enemy that property or disposal of our imployments which by right of creation intirely belong'd to God God after our first Parents Fall was no otherwise our Lord then any King is Lord over Rebels Traytors Murtherers or of others who by their misdemeanors may alienate their allegeance from him and exempt themselves from his gracious protection but not from his power or Dominion of Jurisdiction for he is the minister of God for executing vengeance upon such Our first Parents had declared themselves to be Traytors and we had continued a race of Rebels against our God and Creator without all hope of being restored unto Gods favor and service unless satisfaction were made for our transgression and means purchased for establishing us in a better estate then the estate of Servants which we had by the gift of Creation Now not onely our redemption from the estate of Slaverie unto Satan but all the means for our further advancement after our ransom was paid were purchased by the Son of God And that which most advanceth the peculiar Title of Christs Dominion and Lordship over us was the price which he gave for us For we were not redeemed with corruptible things as with silver and gold though men with these and things more corruptible then these do purchase the real title of Lords and exercise the dominion of Lords over Lands or Servants so purchased but we were redeemed by the precious blood of Christ as of a Lamb undefiled and without spot 1 Pet. 1. 18 19. Blood is the most precious and dearest part of mans bodie and greater love we cannot testifie unto our dearest friends then by spending our blood for them Losses we value none so deeply as forgetfulness ungrateful neglects or contempt from them for whose sakes and credit we have been content specially out of sinceritie of love and sober resolution to shed our blood Never was any blood either so copiously shed or out of the like sinceritie of love or sobriety of resolution as Christs blood was shed for all and every one of us This blood did immediatly issue from his Man-hood whereof it was a true and lively part yet was it the blood not of Man onely but of God whence if we consider either our own miserable estate being then the enemies of God or his dignitie that made Attonement for us What real portion branch or degree of service can we imagin answerable to this Soveraign Title of Lord which Christ hath not more then fully purchased over all that are partakers of flesh and blood 5. Yet Besides this Ground or Title of Christs peculiar Lordship or dominion over us there is another more forcible to command our most chearful service unless our hope be quite dead or the affection of love utterly extinguished in us For Christ by his precious blood did not onely purchase our Freedom from the Slavery of Satan but being set free doth by the everlasting efficacie of this blood once shed both wash and nourish us not as his Servants but as the Sons of his and our heavenly Father Sin and slaverie was the Terminus a quo the condition or state from which he redeemed us but the end of our redemption from these was to invest us in the libertie of the Sons of God The height of all our hopes in the life to come is to be Kings and Priests as he is but in the mean time we are or may be live members of his Glorious Body and being such
it is fitting that we refer the particular manner how our bodies shall be intirely restored unto God himself We will not dispute whether the Resurrection of every man in his own body shall be wrought de facto by recollecting of the dust into which men are turned or of the same material parts which every man had when he died or whether it shall be wrought by Creation of some new matter or only by preparing some other Elementary matter prae-existent and working it into the same individual temper or constitution into which our bodily food or nutriment was wrought whilst we lived It sufficeth to have shewed that every man may arise with his own body by any of the former wayes or partly by one partly by another Lastly the Recollection of the same material fragments or reliques into which our bodies are dissolved is no more necessary by the Principles of nature or true Philosophie unto the constitution of the same bodies at the day of the Resurrection which before have been then the recollection or regresse of the same matter or nutriment whereof our blood or flesh was made or by which our life was preserved in childhood is unto the continuance or constitution of the same life flesh or blood in old age The life of every man in old age is the same the body the same the flesh the same the blood the same which it was it childhood albeit the blood or greatest part of our bodies in childhood was made of one kind of nutriment and the blood which we have in mature or old age be made of another much different nutriment Yea albeit we alter our food or diet every year yet our bodies remain still the same every finger the same whilst it continues in the body and whilst this bodily life continues For albeit the nutriment be of divers kinds yet nature or the digestive facultie works all into one temper and this temper continues the same in divers portions of the matter which is continually fluent and the same only by Equivalencie Now if nature by Gods appointment and co-operation can work divers kinds of food or nutriment into the same form or constitution it will be no improbable supposall to say that The God of nature can work any part of the Element of water of ayre or of earth any fragment or relique of Adams body into the same individual form or mould wherein the bodily life of the man that shall be last dead before Christs coming to Judgement did consist Yet will it be no hard thing for God to make Adam the self same body wherein he died out of the reliques of this mans body To work this mutual exchange between the material parts of several mens bodies without any hinderance or impeachment to the numerical Identity of any mans body or without any prejudice to this truth That every man shall arise with his own body which we Christians believe is impossible to nature or to any natural causes they can be no Agents in this work yet it is no wayes impossible for it implyeth no contradiction for nature thus to be wrought and fashioned by the Creator and preserver of mankind In avouching thus much we say no more then some I take it meer Philosophers have delivered in other Termes Quicquid potest prima causa per secundam idem potest per se sola Whatsoever the first cause doth by the instrumental Agencie or service of second causes the same he may do by his sole Power without the service of any instrumental or second cause Now God by the heart by the Liver and by the digestive facultie as by causes instrumental or secondary doth change the substance of herbs of fruits of fish of roots into the very substance of mans body without dissolving the unitie of his bodily life and therefore if it please him may change the material parts of one man into another mans body or substance without the help or instrumental service of the nutritive or digestive faculty or any other instrumental cause All this he may do immediatly by His sole Power But whether it be His Will so to do or no at the last day be it ever reserved with all reverence and submission to his infinite wisdom alone 9. One scruple more there is wherewith ingenuous minds and well affected may be sometimes touched The doubt may be framed Thus. Although it be most true and evident from the Book of nature that the natural or digestive faculty of man doth preserve the unitie of bodily life entire by diversitie of mater or nutriment yet the living body so preserved is one and the same by continuation of existence or duration His dayes whilst natural life continues are not cut off by death he doth not for a moment cease to be what he was But when we speak of Resurrection from death when we say the dead shall arise with their own bodies here is a manifest interruption of bodily life or of mans duration in bodily life His body ceaseth to be a living body as it was And therefore if he must live again in the body the body to which his soul shall be united at his Resurrection may be called his own body because it shall be inhabited or possessed with his immortal soul but how shall it be The same body which he formerly had seeing the existence or duration of him or of his soul in the body is divided by death and division destroyeth unitie This leaf or paper is one yet if we divide it in the middle it is no more one but two papers The question then comes to this short and perspicuous issue Whether the uninterrupted continuance of duration or existence or unitie of time wherewith the duration of mans life is measured be as necessary to the Unitie or Identity of his bodily Nature or Being as Unitie or Continuation of Quantitie is unto the Unitie of Bodies divisible or quantitative The determination or Judgment is easie The Book of Nature being Judge it is evident That Unitie of Time or continuation of mans life without interruption is but Accidental to the unitie of bodily nature or being It is a circumstance only no such part of the Essence or nature as continuation or unitie of quantitie is of the unitie of bodies divisible for time and quantitie are by nature divisible whereas the nature of man or other things that exist in time is indivisible It is true Division makes a pluralitie in things that are by nature divisible but not in natures indivisible Every thing that is divisible though it be unum actu yet it is plura in potentiâ In that it may be divided it is not purely simply or altogether one but may be made two or more And whilst it remains one it is one by conjunction of parts The entire substance of any natural bodie as it is divisible or subject to dimension cannot be contained under one part of quantitie but part of it is
wrath malice blasphemie silthy communication out of your mouth Lie not one to another seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds All of us have put off the old man by profession and Solemn Vow at our Baptism and a double Wo or Curse shall befal us unless we put him off in practise and resolution and labour to put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the Image of him that created him The particular Limbs of this New man are set forth unto us by our Apostle verse 13 14. Forbearing one another and forgiving one another if any man have a quarel against any even as Christ forgave you so also do ye And above all these things put on Charity which is the bond of perfectnesse The particular Duties required of men and women according to their several conditions or states of life as of Wives to Husbands and of Husbands to Wives as of Children to Parents and of Parents to Children of Servants to Masters and of Masters to Servants are set down by the same Apostle in the verses following unto the end of the Chapter Now we must be altogether as certain that we do truely sincerely and constantly perform these duties which are by our Apostle in this place required whether as General to all Christians or such as concern particular estates of life as we are of This general That whosoever doth truly mortifie the deeds of the body and perform the other duties here required shall be undoubted partaker of the Resurrection unto Glory before we can be certain certitudine fidei by certaintie of faith of our salvation or Resurrection unto glory in particular 12. Doth any amongst us upon the examination required before the receiving of the Sacrament find himself extreamly negligent or generally defective in performance of these duties Let not such a one take his negligence past as any sign or undoubted mark of reprobation yet would I withall advise him not to approach the Lords Table without a wedding garment without a sincere and hearty sorrow for his negligences past without a sincere hearty desire of doing better hereafter If consciousness of former negligence in these duties or of practises contrary unto them be seasoned with sorrow and hearty desire of amendment the point whereon I would advise such a man for the present to pitch his faith shall not be his own Election nor the Certaintie of his present and future estate in Grace or Real and infallible Interest in Christ his Resurrection But upon that Character or description of our Saviour given by the Evangelical Prophet Esay 42. 3. and experienced upon Record by the Evangelist St. Matthew Matth. 12. 20. That he quencheth not smoaking flax that he will not shake the bruised Reed Remember that as the Second Resurrection unto glorie must be wrought by vertue of Christs Resurrection from the dead so the first Resurrection from the dead works of sin unto newness of life must be wrought by the participation of his Body which was given and of his Blood which was shed for us Remember that by his death and passion he became not only the Ransom but the Soveraign Medicine for all our sins A Medicine for our sins of wilfulness and commission to make us more wary not to offend A Medicine for our sins of negligence and omission to make us more diligent in the works of pietie And the time and place appointed for the receiving of the body and blood of Christ is the time and place appointed by Him for our cure Heal us then O Lord and we shall be healed Thou O Lord who hast abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel Enliven and enlighten our hearts by thy Spirit and in them thus enlightned kindle a love of doing thy Will bring good intentions to good desires and good desires to firm resolutions and confirm our Resolutions with constancie and perseverance in thy service Amen ALmighty God which hast given thine only Son to die for our Sins and to rise again for our Justification mercifully grant that we both follow the example of his patience and be made partakers of his Resurrection through the same Jesus Christ our Lord Amen Almighty God give us Grace so to cast away the works of Darknesse and put on the Armour of light now in the Time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humilitie that at the last day when he shall come again in his Glorious Majestie to judge both the Quick and the Dead we may rise to the life immortal through him who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holie Ghost now and ever Amen The End of the fourth Section SECTION V. Of the Article of Everlasting life A Transition of the Publishers VVE are now by the Good hand of God upon the Work arrived at The fifth Section A very Considerable Part of this Eleventh Book The Subject matter of this Section according to what was cut out by the Method proposed in the oft mentioned Ninth Chapter is The Final Doom Award or Sentence of Life and Death which The King of Glorie our most worthy Judge Eternal shall respectively pronounce and pass upon all at that Dreadful and yet Ioyful Day of Iudgment when he shall deal and distribute Palms and Prizes Crowns and a Kingdom to the little or in Comparison the less Flock or Sheep set at his Right hand for whom such good things were prepared from the Foundation of the world But utter Extermination to the goats on the Left hand whom he will send accursed into Everlasting Prisons there to be tormented in that fire which was first prepared not for them but for their Tempter and tormentors the Divel and his Angels I confess our Great Author closes not with the Point of Everlasting life till he come to the Twentieth Chapter But I thought my self bound here to insert the Three next Chapters viz. the 17 18 and 19 for these reasons following 1. Because they be Three and the First Three of Thirteen Excellent and most Elaborate Tracts all in order composed upon The sixth Chapter to the Romans and pity it was to sever them from the Other with which they so well consort and sure 2. If I had left out These Three I should not onely have done prejudice to the Author and his work but to the Reader and his Content or benefit who will find that these Three Chapters are as comely and as useful Introductions to his Rich Discourses about the Domus Aeternitatis the two several long Homes of all mankind as any Propylaea or Areae can possibly be to any two Houses of this Worlds Building 3. The Doctrine delivered in these Three Next Chapters is so promotive and incentive of Christian Pietie and some of it so Homogeneal to the ensuing Tracts that they could not be more fitly placed then before the Discourses about the Final Award or Sentence 4.
in the first place 3. All of them did solemnly promise and vow to mortifie the deeds of the body as we now do But so may others do which never meant to be baptized It is true and therefore the full and onely Reason why these Romans one and other were reckoned as dead to sin was not because they had promised or vowed to mortifie the deeds of the flesh or to put sin unto a civil death that is to break the Raign or Dominion of it For thus to promise or thus to vow without sufficient means or probable hopes such hopes and means as by nature they could not have to perform what they thus vow were presumption a tempting of God and provocation of Satan to take that opportunitie which they themselves offer to assault them To compell all that come unto the Sacred Laver to undertake that treble vow which is and hath been alwayes solemnly made and undertaken either by the parties themselves which are to be baptized in case they be of years or by their sureties were the part rather of a cruel Stepdame than the office of a loving Mother unlesse the Church our Mother which exacts this vow of all and every one could give full assurance to all and every one of her sons that God in baptisme for his part never failes to give means sufficient for quelling the reign of sin for mortifying the deeds of the body Means I mean sufficient not in themselves only but sufficient to every one of us unlesse we will be defective unto our selves Now adde this Reason unto the former and you have the true and full meaning of our Apostle when he saith that all that are Baptized are dead to sin that is First they are dead unto it by solemn vow or profession Secondly they are said to be dead unto sin or sin to be dead in them in as much as they in Baptism receive an Antidote from God by which the rage and poison of it might easily be asswaged or expelled so they would not either receive that grace or means which God in Baptisme exhibits unto them in vain or use it amisse So we may say that any popular disease is quelled or taken away after a soveraign remedie be found against it which never fails so men will seek for it seasonably apply it and observe that Dyet which the Physitian upon the taking of it prescribes unto them 4. Some in our times there be and more I think than have been in all the former which deny all Baptismal Grace Others there be which grant some Grace to be conferred by Baptisme even unto infants but yet these restrain it onely to infants Elect. And This they take to be the meaning of our Churches Catechisme wherein Children are taught to believe That as Christ the second Person in the Trinitie did Redeem them and all mankind So the Holy Ghost the third Person doth sanctifie them and all the Elect People of God But can any man be perswaded that it was any part of Our Churches meaning to teach Children when they first make profession of their Faith to believe that they are of the number of the Elect that is of such as cannot finally perish This were to teach them their Faith backwards and to seek the Kingdom of Heaven not Ascendendo by ascending but Descendendo by descending from it For higher then thus Saint Paul himself in his greatest perfection could not possibly reach no nor the blessed Angels which have kept their First station almost these 6000 years Yet certain it is that Our Church would have every one at the very first profession of his Faith to believe that he is One of the Elect People of God But those Reverend Fathers which did compose that Catechisme and the Church our Mother which did approve and authorize it did in charity presume that every one which would take upon him to expound this Catechisme or other principles of Faith should first know the Distinction between the Elect that is such persons as cannot perish and the Elect People of God or between Election unto Gods ordinarie Grace or means of salvation and Election unto eternal glory Every People or Nation every company of men when they are first converted from Gentilism to Christianitie become an Elect People a chosen generation or company of men that is they and their seed after them are made capable of Baptism receive an Interest in Gods promises made unto us in Christ which the heathens whilst they continue heathens cannot have And all of Us are in Baptism thus far sanctified that we are made true members of the visible Church qualified for hearing the word for receiving the Sacrament of Christs Body and Blood and whatsoever Benefits of Christs Priestly Function are committed to the dispensation of his Ministers And thus far sanctified by Baptisme no man can be but by the Holy Ghost Our Apostle saith 1 Cor. 7. 14. That the unbelieving Husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing Husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy So that he attributes an holiness unto the children of believing Parents by which they are more capable of Baptisme then the children of unbelieving Parents are And of this holiness by which they are capable of Baptisme all children are partakers although but one of their Parents whether Father or Mother do believe much more are the children of believing Parents to be reputed holy or sanctified after baptisme by which alwayes some Gift of the Holy Ghost is conferred upon them For even that holiness which was communicated or derived unto them from their Parents before they were baptized or by which they became capable of Baptisme was conferred upon their Parents by Baptisme 5. Whether This gift or Qualification wherewith The Holy Ghost is said to sanctifie all the Elect people of God be or include in it the Grace of Regeneration I will not dispute That infants are by Baptisme regenerated we may not deny unlesse we will take upon us to put another sense upon the Articles of our Church than they will naturally bear But whether such as were baptized when they came to years of discretion as most of these Romanes were did in Baptisme receive the Grace of Regeneration or were forthwith regenerated That I leave unto the Schools It sufficeth us to know the true meaning of our Apostle in this place And this it is All of us in baptisme receive A gift or Talent which by nature we had not we could not have For the use of this talent we shall be called unto a strict accompt And when this accompt shall be taken it shall go harder with those which either have abused it misimployed it or not used it than with the Gentiles Heathens or Infidels which never received the like For to whom more is given of them more shall be required And unlesse their means to vanquish Satan
habit or custome of it because it is implanted in us by nature But that which one wittily said of good Arts or learning is most true of the service of righteousness Radices amarae fructus dulces The root or beginning of it is commonly unpleasant because it cannot be ingrafted into our corrupted nature but as it were by incision but the growth of it is pleasant and the fruits to such as are exercised therein most sweet and wholsome This is in effect the very same that Siracides saith perhaps himself had experimented Ecclus. 4. 17. At the first wisdom will walk with a man by crooked wayes and bring fear and dread upon him and torment him with her discipline untill she may trust his soul and try him by her Laws Then will she return the straight way unto him and comfort him and shew him her secrets For planting a firm Resolution in us to endeavor the performance of those duties whereto our Apostle in this place exhorts us It is an Excellent motive which another Heathen Philosopher Musonius a Greek as I take it commended to his Scholars and Cato urged the same to his Souldiers at Numantia If saith he you bestow your pains in the studie of virtue and goodnesse the pains will go away as fast as they come but the vertue or goodnesse will abide with you But if you take delight or pleasure in that which is evil the pleasure will vanish the evill will habituate it self and incorporate it self in your nature from which it may be more easily repelled then ejected after it hath taken possession Now to review honest pains or labors past is a thing grateful to our memorie a good fruit in it self of labors past if they were not otherwise fruitful But the regretting remembrance of time mis-spent in the pursuit of fruitless or unlawful pleasures is irksome is tedious is loathsome even to corrupted nature Thus far and further some of the Heathens did run parallel with our Apostle in this place What manner of men then may we think these Philosophers would have proved as well in practise as speculation if their speculations had been seasoned or ballanced as ours are either with the certain hope of everlasting life by perseverance in well-doing or with fear of an everlasting death for continuance in doing evill And yet we say that even the best works the best endeavors and speculations of these Heathens were but splendida peccata more neat and handsome sins God grant that most of our own works or speculations may prove much better 6. Whilest I compare the industrie of these Heathen Philosophers in imploying those poor Talents which were bestowed upon them with the sluggish and decrepit temper of this age wherein the plentiful revelation of Divine truth to them unknown becomes but barren methinks the Epigrammatists Case might be a fit Emblem for the world as it stood affected whilest civilitie and good literature were but young and as it is now disposed whilest it hath all experience and helps of former ages The Tenor of the Epigrammatist's complaint was thus Pauper eram juvenis senio confectus inerti Sum locuples miserè sorte in utraque miser Whilest I was young and able to enjoy the contentments which wealth affords my fortunes were mean and my estate but poor But now wealth is fallen upon me when I have one foot in the grave and know no use of it So that in both ages in both Fortunes I am a miserable man But why the revelations of Divine Truth are so plentiful in this dull this old and sleepie age of the world which will not make right use of them when as they were so rare and scant in those times and Nations which in all humane probabilitie would have used them much better this is a depth or Abyssus which may not be dived into Only this we are bound to believe in General that the only wise immortal God whose Judgments are unsearchable and his wayes past finding out hath reasons in themselves most iust though known to himself alone why he thus dispenseth his blessings and such reasons as shall appear not only most just but most admirable unto us when we shall know as we are known 7. If in the mean time our Consciences tell us that we our selves or common report informs us that many of our brethren fall short not of our calling only but even of those Heathers in the knowledge or practise of many moral duties required of both let us not make the final Resolution of this defect into the Eternal and Irresistible Decree or into the want of means of Grace for doing either better or less amiss then we do For even those Heathens which had not half the ordinary means nor any portion of these special gifts which we have received did much better then most of us do Oh say not oh think not That even this want of Grace or neglect or ill imployment of those talents which God hath given us are to be imputed either to Adam's Fall or our pollution in him Adam's Fall indeed was the only Cause why we stood in need of Grace or means extraordinary for our recovery but neither His Fall nor any Preterition of our persons or individuals which have fallen in him are either the only or the principal cause why we are destitute of that measure of Grace which is not but should be in us or of our present unbelief or misbelief The true Cause of all these is Our non-imployment or misimployment of our Talent which we have received in Baptism or our abuse of that favour or mercie which God for his part in Baptism sincerely hath plighted unto us But now that we have not only shamefully broke but almost perpetually broken That Vow which we made to God in Baptism are we in the same estate that Adam was Or is this Covenant no better then that which God made with him Yes He had no promise of being renewed by repentance if he should fall from His first estate The first Covenant being once broken was not to be renewed but a second to come in its place And into this Covenant we entred by Baptism And though the Sacrament of Baptism or the visible sign of it may not be iterated yet the Astipulation or answer of a good conscience to God may and ought to be renewed and at no time more fitly or opportunely then at the receiving of the Sacrament of Christs body and blood One special Use of this Sacrament in the primitive Church in the times of persecution was to resume or ratifie the Vow made in Baptism as appears by Plinie the second who had the Christians in Bithynia in examination upon the meaning or intent of this Sacrament For the very name of it was suspitious to the Roman State And that very Preparation which is required of all which mean to be partakers of the Sacrament may be reduced to these Three Heads First To
arraign accuse and judge our selves for our former frequent neglect of our Vow in Baptism Secondly To request Absolution and pardon of God which no man humbly and seriously doth but he solemnly promiseth amendment of what is past Thirdly To implore the special aid or assistance of Gods Spirit for better performance of our Vow and of what we now promise And all this only for the merits of Christ and through the efficacy of his Body and Blood I will conclude with that of the Psalmist Vovete vota reddite Jehovae CHAP. XX. ROMANS 6. 21. 21. For the end of those things is Death 23. For the wages of sin is Death The first and second Death Both literally meant The wages of Sin Both described Both compared and shewed How and wherein the Second Death exceeds the First The greater deprivation of Good the worse and more unwelcom death is Every member of the Bodie every facultie of the Soul the Seat and Subject of the Second Death A Map and Scale The Surface and Soliditie of the Second Death Pain improved by inlarging the capacitie of the Patient and by intending or advancing the activitie of the Agent Three Dimensions of the second Death 1. Intensiveness 2. Duration 3. Un-intermitting Continuation of Torment Poena Damni Sensus Terms Co-incident Pains of the Damned Essential and Accidental Just to punish momentanie sin with pain eternal The reflection and revolution of thoughts upon the sinners folly The Worm of Conscience 1. DEath and life have the same Seat and Subject Nothing dieth unless it first live and Death in the General is An Extinction of life Death in Scripture is two Wayes taken First For bodily Death which is the First Death Secondly For the Death of both Body and Soul which is called the Second Death Both are here literally meant both are the wages of sin The former Death is common to all excepting such of the Godly as shall be found alive at Christs coming to Judgment they shall not die but be changed First then of bodily death and secondly of supernatural or the second death and wherein it exceedeth the first death The Opposition between Bodily Death and Bodily Life is meerly Privative such as is between light and darkness or between sight and blindness And this death must be distinguished according to the degrees of life of which it is the Privation Of life the degrees be three The First of meer Vegetables as of trees of plants of herbs or whatsoever is capable of growth or nourishment The Second is of Creatures indued with sense The third is the life of man who besides sense is endued with reason The reasonable life includes the sensitive as the sensitive doth the life vegetable Whatsoever bodily creature is endowed with reason is likewise endowed with sense But many things which are endowed with sense are uncapable of reason And again what Creature soever it be which is partaker of the life sensitive is partaker likewise of Vegetation of growth or nourishment But many things which are nourished and grow as trees herbs plants grass and corn are uncapable of the life sensitive and yet even these are said to die as they properly do when their nutriment fails But albeit the first beginning of mans life in the womb be only vegetative not sensible or reasonable yet no man dieth according to this kind of death only For such as fall into an Atrophie which is a kind of death or privation of the nutritive facultie yet are they not to be accounted as dead so long as they have the use of any sense no nor after they be deprived of all outward senses so long as their hearts do move or their lungs send out breath So that the bodily death of man includes a privation of sense and motion This difference again may be observed in the degrees of bodily death 2. Trees and vegetables alwayes die without pain so do not man and beast For that both of them are endowed with sense and motion both of them are capable of pain And pain if it be continued and extream drawes sensitive death after it Nor can this death approach or finde entrance into the seat of life but by pain And in as much as this kind of life is sweet death which is the deprivation of it is alwayes unpleasant and terrible unto man not only in respect of the pain which ushers it in but in respect of the loss of vitall sweetness which it brings with it The pains of dying may be as great in beasts as in man so is not the loss of that goodness which is conteined in life for reasonless creatures perceive it not A memorie they have of pains past a sense or feeling of pains present and a fear of death when it approacheth But no fore-thought or reckoning of what followes after death This is proper to the reasonable creature Now this Fore-thought of what may follow after makes death more bitter to man then it can be to reasonless creatures And amongst men the more or greater the contentments of life have been and the better they are provided for the continual supply of such contentments the more grievous is the conceipt or fore-thought of death natural unto them The summons of death are usually more unwelcome to a man in perfect health then to a crased body So it is to a man of wealth and credit more then to one of a forlorn estate or broken fortunes So saith Ecclesiasticus Chap. 41. 1. O death how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that liveth at rest in his Possessions unto the man that hath nothing to vex him and that hath prosperitie in all things yea unto him that is yet able to receive meat Yet is not the loss of life of sense or the foregoing of worldly contentments the only cause why men naturally fear death For though it deprive them of all these yet doth not the death of man consist in this deprivation The body loseth all these by the divorce which death makes betwixt it and the soul But seeing the substance of the soul still remains the greatest fear which can possess a natural man is the future doubtful estate of the soul after this dissolution Many which never hoped or expected any Re-union or second marriage between the soul and body after death had once divorced them had yet a true Notion that the soul did not die with the body and out of this conceipt some were more afraid of death then any brutish or reasonless creature can be Some other few became as desirous of it as Prisoners which hope to scape are of a Gaol deliverie and thought it a great freedom especially in their discontented melancholy passion to have the keyes of this mortal prison in their own keeping to be able to let their souls and life out at their pleasure But though it be universally true that the corruptible body during the time of this
never dieth which is the chief part of the second Death as heaviness of spirit or grudgings are of Fevers or other diseases which without preventing Physick or diet do alwayes follow them 4. But this Prognostick of the second death or this fear of hell pains which the Sting of Conscience alwayes exhibits must be warily taken and weighed with Judgment The right observance of them as every other good quality or habit is beset with Two contrary extremes The one in defect The other in excess The defect is Carelesnesse The excesse Despere or too much dejection of mind The intimations or Prognosticks which the Sting of Conscience exhibits of death spiritual are often mistaken for the effects of bodily melancholy and the best medicine for melancholy is pleasant society or mirth Out of this mistaking most men prevent that Compassion which is due to their own souls after such a manner as Jewish parents did prevent their natural pity towards their children when they sacrificed them unto Molech by filling their ears with the loud sound of wind Instruments lest the shrikes of the Infants whom they inclosed in an Image of hot glowing brass by entring in at their ears might move their Jewish hearts to pity And most men lest they should be stung with grief of spirit or conscience seek to stifle their first murmurings and repinings either with unhallowed or unseasonable mirth Others by seeking to avoid this common extreme often fall into the contrary which is of the Two the worse to wit dispere or too much dejection of spirit That which the Heathen observed of grief in General is most true of this Particular the grief of a Wounded Spirit Dolori si fraena remitt as nulla materia non est maxima If we let loose the reins to grief or sorrow the least matter or occasion of either will be more weighty then we can well bear Mans unbridled fancie is as a multiplying Glasse which represents every thing as well matter of sorrow as of pleasure in a far greater quantity then it really hath And unless our Cogitations or sad remembrances of sins past be moderated with Judgment and discretion they will appear to our fancies like Cains transgression greater then can be forgiven or then we can hope that the God of mercy will forgive For holding the right mean betwixt these Extrems Carelesnesse and despere there is no means so effectual as to be rightly instructed in the hope of everlasting Life and Fear of everlasting death Immature or unripe hopes of the One ingendereth carelesnesse or presumption so doth erroneous fear of the other bring forth despere He that is perswaded that every one always is in the Estate of the Elect or of the Reprobate cannot avoid the one or other extreme And the only remedy to prevent despere or being swallowed up with grief either in the consciousnes of grosser sins lately committed or whiles we reflect upon sins past is to purge our selves of that Erroneous Opinion concerning Absolute Reprobation or irreversible ordination to death before we were born or from the time of our second birth by baptisme 5 To purge our brain or fancie of this opinion let us take the form and Tenor of the Final sentence into consideration which we may do without digression or diversion Both branches of this sentence we have Mat. 25. The first branch ver 34. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world he doth not say before all worlds though this in a good sense is true most true if we speak of Gods designe or Act for all his Acts or designes are as he is Eternal without beginning so are not the things designed or enacted by him they take their beginning in time or with time The Kingdom prepared for Gods people was prepared when the world was made not before so good and gracious was our God that he did not make man or Angel untill he had prepared a place convenient for them take them as they were his creatures or workmanship and they were all ordained to a life of bliss Paradise was made for man and it may be after man was made but the Heaven of Heavens was prepared for man before he was made and made for the Angels if not before they were made yet when they were made But the Sentence of death ver 41. runs in another Tenor Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire he doth not say prepared for you from the foundation of the world but prepared for the Divel and his angels Those immortal spirits which now are divels were sometime Angels God made them so They made themselves divels Now hell fire was not prepared for them whilst they were Angels not from the foundation of the world but from the time wherein of Angels they became Divels Nor are men at all ordained to it untill of men they become Satans angels And as Satan and his angels the spirits which fell with him continue the self same individual substances which they were when God first created them yet are no way the same but quite contrary for qualitie and disposition so the place whereto they are confined may be for substance space and dimension the same it was at the first creation but not the same for quality it became a prison or place of torment when Satan and other spirits which fell with him of Angels made themselves Divels Satan as some think brought that fire wherein he and his Angels shall be tormented into the bowels of the earth when he fell like lightning from heaven However if the Angels had not sinned there had been no hell no tormenting fire and unless men become the Divels Angels they shall not be cast into hell fire God doth not ordain men to be Satans angels but men continuing his sons or servants God ordaines them to take their portion with him So that if we remove the opinion of Absolute-Reprobation or of irreversible ordination of mens persons unto death before they were baptized or born or if men would be confirmed in faith that no such Sentence or Decree is gone out against them whilst they have either will desire or opportunitie to call upon God through Jesus Christ for remission of sins whether by confession of them or by absolution from them upon such confession or by receiving the Sacrament of Christs body and blood no danger can accrue from the frequent meditation of everlasting death or from such representations of the horrours of it as the often reflecting upon our sins past and the working of the Sting of Conscience upon such reflections will present unto us 6. Another excellent Use and that a Positive One there is of these meditations For no man ordinarily can have a true Tast or rellish of Eternal Life but he which hath had some Tast or grudging of everlasting
outwardly and for fashion sake unless it be to persons of their own Rank whose evils and calamities they can apprehend as their own Secondly which is the worst of evils that can be imagined whilst they perform some Branches of the Affirmative Precept that is whilst they seek to pleasure others in their eagre desires of preferment or such things wherein they would be pleasured again they bring a necessity upon themselves of transgressing the Negative part of this Precept that is Of doing that to others which they would not have done unto themselves if they were in their Case I am perswaded That the miseries which fall upon the inferior sorts of men by the mutual desires of great men to do one to another as they would be done unto that is by pleasuring one another in their suites of honour preferment or inlarging their estates are more then all that God doth otherwise lay upon them in this life Many thousands whom God never cursed are by these meanes forced to seek their bread in stony places And is it possible that any man can perswade himself that if he were in such poor mens Cases he should be well pleased with their dealings who seek to enlarge their superfluities by the certain diminishing of other mens necessaries for life And yet who is he almost that thinks he doth not observe this Precept well enough if he be willing to do another man as good a Turn as he expects from him although he know not to whose harm it may redound If no determinate person for the present feel the smart they think Conscience hath no cause to cry As if God Almighty did not see as well what evil will hereafter insue as what is present and did not punish immoderate desires which necessarily bring on with them publick Calamities as well as outragious but private Facts 7. With this Fallacie A Dicto secundum quid ad Simpliciter we usually deceive our selves in the performance of this Dutie We think it sufficient to do as we have been done unto or if we do to some one or few as we expect from them or as we could desire to be done unto if their Case were ours Whereas we should examin it not from our affection to This or That man but by our Indifferencie of receiving and Returning good towards All. Oft-times to do one man good may be conjoyned with some others harm whom we have more reason to respect And here we may quickly mistake in the proposal of their Exigence as our own If you fulfil the Royal Law according to the Scripture which saith Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self ye do well saith St. James Chap. 2. 4. But if ye regard persons ye commit sin and are rebuked of the Law as Transgressors The Apostles Discourse in that place inferres as much as I have said And his meaning is that which our Saviour had taught in the Parable of the Samaritan That every man as man is our neighbor and therefore this Dutie of loving others as our selves and doing as we would be done unto was to be performed to all alike without respect of persons For that which we are to respect is the Exigence of their estate So much is Formally and Essentially included in the Dutie it self Not that we may not be more ready to do good to one man then to another for this we may do without respect of Persons Do good to all but especially to such as are of the Houshold of Faith The Object of this Dutie is man as man in his lawful desires Our love then or readiness of doing good must be increased according to the just exigencies of their desires where These are equal our desire of doing good may be augmented according to particular respects of nearness c. as To a Christian before a Turk to an English man before another For if we must love others as our selves we must be most ready to respect that in others which we in a Regular Way desire should be most respected in our selves Now next to eternal happiness life and the necessities thereof we most respect And if we stand in danger of losing the one or suffer want of the other we desire that those main Chances as we say may be secured before we begin to hunt after pleasures or superfluities If then we must Do to all men as we would be done unto without respect of persons that is excluding none we must first releive the necessities of such as want and tender the life of such as are in sickness or danger and then if occasion require we may require or deserve kindnesses in matters of innocuous pleasure as in feasting sporting furthering mens advancements or the like Otherwise to respect the pleasuring of a Dear Friend in these before the Releif of an Enemies necessities is preposterous and a breach of the Law Because it is to have respect of persons 8. The Rule is General in all Christian duties Our affections must be directed to the Adaequate Object as we term it and set not more upon one part then another but upon every essential part alike Or if any increase of affection or liking be to be made it should alwayes proceed from the increase of some Exigence essentialy included in the right Motive or Ground of our affection or from some Actual Intention of that Qualitie or Propertie in some part of the Object which is the Modus Considerandi or which is the allurement or Term of our desires or affections Otherwise setting our affections more upon one part than upon another for some Extrinsecal or Accidental Reasons not included as we say in modo Considerandi in the Formal Reason or property of the Object the observing of our duty in that part doth usually inforce a Defalcation or breach of it in some other just as uneven and irregular zeal to one or some few Commandments doth alwayes produce a dispensing with or neglect of the rest Ense Thyestaeo poenas exegit Orestes Orestes in seeking to Revenge his Fathers unnatural violent Death did no otherwise then he himself would have given the Son of his Body in charge if he had lyen upon his Death-bed But yet he ought this honour to his cruel and adulterous Mother to have let her die at least by some others Hands not to have imbrued his own in her blood not to have taken life from that body from which he received life The Poets Censure of his Fact is accute Mixtum cum pietate nefas dubitandaque Caedis Gloria maternae laudem cum crimine pensat A righteous man saith Solomon is merciful to his beast but the mercies of the wicked are cruel Pity upon dumb beasts is commanded in the Law especially to such as do man service And he that is merciful unto them upon a true respect in as much as they are partakers with us of Life and sense and communicate with us in our more general nature will be
ferratusque sones Ego divitis Aurum Harmoniae dotale geram It was a dishonour in her esteem to be disclaimed by an Imprecation for a Princes Daughter to adorn her head and neck with costly Jewels like a Bride whilest her Husband was clad in steel and yet so clad every hour in peril of life During the time of this his danger abroad she desires no greater train at home then would suffice to expel Melancholick fear And that artire doth please her best which best suted with her pensive heart most likely to move her Gods to Commiseration of her widdowhood For such costly ornaments as were now profferd she thought a fitter time would be to wear them when her Husband returned in peace with such rich spoiles from the enemies Court And in this Resolution well fitting her present estate she leaves them to the proud upstart insolent baggage whose longing desires after those unseasonable fooleries had inchanted the poor Prophet her husband to Countenance an Ominous unfortunate war the issue whereof was this that after most of the Noble Argives sent thither by the enemies sword the Prophet himself went quick down to hell This Conclusion you will say is false in the litteral sense or rather fained but I would to God the Fiction were not too true an Emblem of the most State-Prophets in later Ages Such as are here represented and no better are the usual fruits of untimely desires or discording appetites of parties united in strict bond of common dutie especially in men consecrated to publick ministerie Alwayes they are displeasing to God in nature preposterous hateful as death to civil and ingenuous minds 10. But herein the Poet as the Philosopher well observes exceeds the Historian for moral instructions He may paint men and women as they should be not as they are whereas the Historian must express them as he finds them Most Women indeed are not for their affections like this Poetical Picture of Argia Yet the Carriage of Portia as the ingenious Historian hath exprest it did farre exceed it When her Husband Brutus had disclosed that inward grief and perplexitie by his ill rest by night which he had purposely concealed from her in his waking thoughts she takes his Concealment as a disparagement to her birth and education and as a tacit impeachment of her honestie Brutus saith she I had Cato to my Father and was matched into thy family not as a whore to be thy Companion only at bed and bord but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be as true a Consort of thy miseries as of thy welfare I had never cause to complain of thy usage no occasion to suspect thy loving affection towards me but what assurance canst thou have of my love to thee If I may not be permitted to sympathize with thee in thy secret greif nor bear a part in those anxieties whose communication might ease thy mind and much set forth my fidelitie I know well the imbecillity of our Sex we need no rack to wrest a secret from us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But know O Brutus that there is a secret vertue in good parentage ingenuous breeding and conversation for setling and strengthening the frame of our affections even where they are by nature brickle and unconstant And this is my portion in these Pre-eminences A woman I am by sex but Cato his Daughter and Brutus his Wife To give him a sure experiment answerable to these Protestations how ready she could be in all misfortunes to take grief and sorrow at as low a Note as for his life he could She had cast her self into a burning Feaver by a grievous wound of her own making before she vented the former complaint which she uttered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the extremity of her Fit or pangs I may truly here apply that verse of old Ennius as the late extinguished Lamp of this University once out of this Lantern in another Case did Vos Juvenes shall I say nay verily Nos viri Patres Fratres animos gerimus muliebres Illaque Virgo viri Was this praeeminency that she was Cato's daughter and Brutus's wife of power sufficient to arm her female heart with man-like resolution and true heroical constancy to bear the yoke of all misfortunes with her Conjugal Mate and is it no Praerogative in Christian men before a Heathen woman that they have God for their father and holy Church for their mother Christ Jesus supream Governour of the world the Lord of life and Conquerour of Death and Hell for their Brother Is Baptisme into his death but a naked name that our professed unitie therein cannot unite our hearts in like affections Is the effusion of Gods spirit but as the sprinkling of Court Holy-water are our dayly Sermons but as so many Bevers of wind whose efficacy vanisheth with the breath that uttereth them or hath the frequent participation of Christ precious body blood no better operation on our harts then the exhalation of sweet odours upon our brains Be they no longer comfortable then whilst they be in taking Are all those glorious similitudes of one head and many members of one Vine and many branches but Hyperbolical Metaphors Is our mystical union only a meer Mathematical imagination are those or the like Praerogatives of our calling but like the Soloecisms of the Romish Church matters of meer title or ceremony without realitie Beloved in Christ if either we actually were or heartily desired or truly meant to be true branches of that Coelestial Vine were it possible the strongest boughes thereof should be so often shaken with dangerous blasts of temptations and we no whit therewith moved could so many flourishing Boughes dayly fade and we hope that our Luxuriant branches should always flourish should their goodly leaves hourly fall and we live still as if we never looked for any winter or should God so often threaten to pluck up the vineyard which his own right hand hath planted and yet the dressers of it still seek after great things for themselves as if they never dreamt of dispossession would the most of us either seek to raise our selves as high as the highest room in the Lords house or make it a chief part of our care how to forecast mispense of time in merriment gameing or other worldly pleasures or contentments whilst sundry of our poor brethren and fellow Prophets perhaps in worth our betters die of discontent whilst others younger run mad after riot abroad least they should be attached by sorrow and grief at home whilst other begin to expect a change and entertain a liking of Romish Proffers Others which have ever hated Rome more then death begin to loath their lives and set their longing on the Grave desirous to give their bodies to be devoured by that earth which hath not ministered necessary sustenance to them as being overcharged with maintaining the unnecessary desires and superfluous pleasures of worse deservers Or would so many were they
wanton motions and mimick gestures into wailing and gnashing of teeth And as for you Reverend Fathers or you my much Respected Brethren to whom any charge of others either private or publick is committed Consider I beseech you what places you bear in these Houses of God All of you in your several Charges sustain the place of righteous Job in his Familie for your fatherly care over inferiors Whilest then your Sons thus banquet in their houses every one his day and send and call their friends to eat and drink with them Be you sure the Lord will require at your hands that you be so much more vigilant in your Callings not only in punishing the Chief Offendors in this kind as some of you have begun though this no doubt will be an acceptable sacrifice unto God but even in offering up your evening and morning sacrifice for them according to the number of their transgressions For doubtless your Sons have grievously offended and blasphemed God in their hearts And therefore you must be so much the more diligent to offer up the sweet incense every day For all of us Beloved in our Lord and Saviour see the dayes wherein we live are extraordinary evil and the time must be redeemed by our extraordinary vigilancie sobriety and sanctitie As others double and treble the sins of this present in respect of former times so must we in like proportion increase our industry and diligence fervent prayer good exhortation charitable deeds and sacred functions Thus would you Reverend Fathers go before us in these duties as you do in dignitie God would restore your lost sons to you again and besides Jobs Restitution in this life you shall certainly be partakers of Daniels Blessing in the life to come For thus turning others unto righteousness by your good Examples you shall shine like Starrs for ever God grant you Governors wise hearts thus to rule And all inferiors Grace to follow your good Examples and Advice Amen The Later Sermon upon this Text. CHAP. XXXVI JEREM. 45. v. 5. For Behold I will bring a Plague or evil upon All Flesh saith the Lord but thy life will I give thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest The Second Doctrine propounded Chap. 35. Sect. 4. handled 1. In Thesi Touching the natural esteem of life in general 2. In Hypothesi Of the Donative of Life to Baruch as the Case then stood That men be not of the same Judgment About the price of Life when they be in heat Action and prosperitie which they be of in dejection of spirit and adversitie proved by instances Petrus Strozius Alvarez De Sande Gods wrath sharpens the Instruments and increases the Terror of Death Life was a Blessing to Baruch though it shewed him all those evils from sight of which God took away good King Josiah in favour to him Baruch as man did sympathize with the miseries of his people As a faithful man and a Prophet of the Lord He conformed to the just will of God The Application 1. OF the Two Aphorisms deduced out of the Text The later left before untouched comes now to be handled And it is This. In times of publick Calamitie or desolation the bare Donative of life and liberty is a priviledge more to be esteemed then the Prerogative of Princes Or in other Terms thus Exemption from General Plagues is more then a full recompence for all the Grievances which attend our ministerial charge or service in denouncing them Of this by Gods Assistance I shall treat without further Division or Method more accurate then that Usual One 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 First Of the Natural Esteem of Life or Exemption from common Plagues in General Secondly Of it as the Case here stands with Baruch Vox populi etiam vox Dei est It is the voice of Nature uttering only what is engraven by the Creators Finger in the heart of man and of creatures otherwise dumb Life is sweet and would be so esteemed of all could we resolve to live at home endeavouring rather to improve those seeds of happiness which grace or Nature have sown in us then to encompass large or vast materials of forreign Contentments But unto men whose desires are once diverted from the true End of life unto the remote Meanes destinated for its procurement unto such men as have set their thoughts such Roving Progresses as Pyrrhus did or with the fool in the Gospel are not able to give their souls their Acquietances until they have enlarged their store-houses and laid up goods for many years the attaining of such particulars as for the present they most seek after doth rather whet then satiate their appetite of the like Hence life attended with mean appurtenances becomes either loathsom or little set by because the provision of necessaries actually enjoyed is as nothing in respect of those impertinencies which they have swallowed in hope or have in continual chase The want of these latter unto men wedded unto vast desires is more irksom then the possession of them can be pleasant so that to live without them seems a kind of loss Me-thinks Plinies Hyperbolical or Fabulous Narration of the greedy wild-goose which plucks so eagerly at the roots of what plants I now remember not but so fixt to the ground that she oft-times leaves her neck behind her may be a true Emblem of such mens intemperate pettish hopes usually so fastened to the matters which they much desire that sooner may their souls be drawn out of their bodies then weaned from these Wounds though deep and grievous are scarce felt to smart whilst the blood is hot or the body in motion No marvel then if in the fervent pursuit of honour gain or pleasure men sometimes suffer their souls to escape out of their prison before the flight be discerned In fine as young Gallants for speedy supplies of luxurious expences usually morgage their Lands ere they know their worth So life it self is oftentimes hazarded upon light termes by such as know not what it is to live We have heard of a Souldier so forward to take the advantage which Chance of War had given that he cried out unto his Captain Follow and we shall have a day of them whereas a perpetual night was taking possession of his eyes his entrals being let out whilst he uttered these words I can more easily believe this of an English spirit though not in print because it is upon Authentick Record that Petrus Strozius a famous Italian Commander being shot with a bullet of a larger size under the left pap fell down dead to the ground leaving these words behind him in the air The French King hath lost a true and faithful servant It seems his heart had been too full fraught with swelling Conceits of his own worth I could instance in many did the time permit which have either encountred death with such und antedness or suffered life to be taken from them with so
Kiriath-jearim who for prophesying against Hicrusalem was put to death 240. years after Zechariah by Jehoiachim King of Judah and by his Council of State and of Warre and was fetcht back from Egypt whither he had fled for refuge by Elnathan the son of Achbor a great Counsellor of State and other Commissioners for this purpose unto Iehoiachim who slew him with the sword and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people And this Prophets blood and other indignities done unto him and to his Calling after his death were Required of that Present Generation of the King especially For as Ieremie perhaps taking his hint from this Bloody Fact had foretold so it came to pass that Iehoiachim was cast out of Ierusalem not into the Graves of the Common people but into the Open Fields for he had no other burial then the Burial of the Ass or other like contemptible creature But however the blood perhaps of this Prophet amongst many others was to be further Required of this Present Generation Yet Zacharias was the Last and I think the First of all the Prophets which at the moment of his death did beseech God to Require his blood and to revenge his death And this I take is the true Reason why Our Saviour after he had indicted the Jews of the blood of all the Prophets and righteous men shed from the foundation of the world should instance only in Abel the son of Adam and Zacharias the son of Iehoiada or Barachiah Christs Instance in Abel literally and punctually referres to that Dialogue betwixt God and Cain Gen. 4. 10. The Lord said unto Cain where is Abel thy Brother And he said I know not Am my brothers keeper And he said what hast thou done The voyce of thy brothers blood cryeth to me from the ground and now art thou cursed from the earth which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brothers blood from thy hand But did the voyce of Zacharias his blood cry in like manner unto the Lord after his death or sollicit the like Curse or vengeance upon them which shed it or their posteritie as Abels did yes besides the fore-mentioned Imprecation Lord look upon it and Require it which was uttered by him after a great part of his blood and Spirits were spent his blood spake as bad things as that of Abels For so the Iewish Rabbins besides that Cluster of seven deadly sins committed by their fore-fathers at once in the murther of Zacharias mention another Circumstance subsequent not recorded in Scripture or not so plainly as a Christian Reader without their Comment or Tradition would take notice of it which in my Opinion doth better illustrate that passage of Scripture whereon they ground or seek to countenance it then any Christian Commentator hath done Our Fathers say they in shedding Zacharias's blood did not observe the Law of the blood of the Deer or Hart For so it was commanded Levit. 17. 13. Whatsoever man there be of the children of Israel or of the strangers that so journ among you which hunteth and catcheth any beast or fowl that may be eaten he shall even pour out the blood thereof and cover it with dust But Zacharias blood though shed in the Temple was not so covered it was apparent To this purpose they allege that of the Prophet Ezekiel chap 24. 6. Wo unto the bloody City Her blood is in the middest of her she set it upon the top of a rock she poured it not upon the ground to cover it with dust that it might cause fury to come up to take vengeance No question but the Prophets entire purpose was to indict Jerusalem as our Saviour doth in my Text of all the Innocent blood that had been shed before his time within her Territories and withall to note her Impudence in committing such foul sins so openly without care to cover the conspicuous marks of her own shame Yet this no way argues that the Prophets did not point out some Memorable and Prodigious Fact which might serve as an Emblem of her shameless carelessness in all the rest Such Allusions to particulars sufficiently known in their own times are very usual in the Prophets This is the special Reason why their Writings in General are so obscure to us why some of their Metaphors seem harsh or farre fetcht because in truth their speeches in these Cases are not meerly Metaphorical but include Historical References to some famous Accidents present or fresh in memory From the same Cause all antient Satyrists or such as tax the capital vices of their own times are hardly understood by later Ages without the Comments of such as lived with them or not long after them as our Posterity within few years will hardly understand some passages in the Fairie Queen or in Mother Hubbards or other Tales in Chaucer better known at this day to old Courtiers then to young Students It may be these murtherers sayd of Zachariah as their posteritie said of our Saviour His blood be on us and on our Children It is not likely they would be careful to cover it with dust or wipe the stain of it whilest fresh out of the wals or stones of the Temple because they had solemnly forsaken the House of the Lord and made a league to serve Groves and Idols willing perhaps to let the Print of his blood remain to terrifie others from beeing too forward in reproving the King and His Council for their offences against God But whether the marks of it were left on purpose or through mere forgetfulness of this people God in his Providence as the Prophet intimates suffered it so to remain To cause fury to come and to take vengeance For whereas this fact or forgetfulness to cover it was in the words before attributed to Jerusalem Her blood is in the middest of her she set it up on the top of the Rock she poured it not upon the ground to cover it with dust The Prophet after intimation of the Cause why it so remained To cause fury c. Immediately adds in the Person of God I have set her blood upon the top of a rock that it should not be covered Of these words no meaning can be rendred more natural then This To wit That God did suffer the print of Zachariah's righteous blood to remain in the Temple as it were to sollicit vengeance for all the rest that had been or should be shed in Jerusalem to crie unto him as Abel's did from the earth which as it seems was not covered certainly the voice of it was not smothered with dust How long the stain of blood especially dashed out of the body by violence will be apparent upon stones or moist wals experience doth not often teach because it is usually covered or wiped off whilest it is fresh Yet some prints of blood have longer remained unless Domestick Traditions be false on stones then the blood it self could have done by course of
destroy but rather to save and heal you If your impenitencie and perverseness have moved me to speak severely or threaten you it is still for your good Severum medicum ager intemperans facit Your obdurate hearts have caused me oft-times the mildest Physician that ever took cure of the body or soul upon him to use tart speeches unto you yet shall it never provoke me to be cruel in my practice So farre am I from seeking your blood or harm that my blood which you have continually sought whensoever you shed it shall make an Attonement for you shall procure a Free and Gracious General Pardon for all your sins and for all the sins of your fore-fathers in shedding the Blood of Prophets sent unto them But when I have done all when all is done that could be done unto this Vineyard which my Father planted according to the Rules of Equity of mercy and benignity without wrong or prejudice to eternal Iustice Unless by sincere Repentance as well for your own sins as for the sins of your fore-fathers wherein you have been too deep part-takers with them you submit your selves unto my Fathers will and with all humility crave allowance of that most Free and Gracious Pardon which my blood shall purchase for you and for all the world besides The City of Abel's and of Zachariah's blood will at the last prevail against you the blood of both of them and of all the Prophets whom your fore-fathers have slain will be Required of this Generation in fuller measure then it was of those which slew them and this will be a burden too heavy for you to bear much heavier then the punishment of Cain albeit neither my blood nor the blood of any of mine Apostles or Disciples do come at all upon the Score or Reckoning wherewith Moses in whom ye trust and the Prophets whose Tombs and Sepulchres ye build and garnish will be ready to charge you in the day of your Account or Visitation For if the blood of Christ or of his Apostles had been Required at their hands which shed it me thinks this Emphatical Ingemination Verily I say unto you it shall be required c. should not be so needful and weighty as were all the words uttered by Him who spake as never man spake 10. But may we from any or all these Premisses conclude that This present Generation was not punished at all for putting our Saviour to death Or that his death or the indignities done unto His more then sacred Person at or before his death was no Cause at all of those Exemplary Punishments or unparalleld plagues which fell upon Ierusalem and Iudah upon this whole present generation God forbid The Question is not Whether our Saviours death was any Cause at all of the exemplary punishments but What manner of Cause it was or In what sense they may be said to be plagued for wronging him thus We answer that the indignities done unto Him at his death and at his arraignment were such Causes of the ensuing Woes and calamities which came upon this Generation as Absentia Nautae is naufragii The Case or Species facti is thus Suppose a skilful Navigator and experienced Pilot which had long governed some tall and goodly Ship with good success in many difficult voyages should at the length either by the greediness of the Owner be casheerd or inforced to leave his place and a storm upon his departure should arise and through want of good steerage or sounding should run them on ground or dash them against the rocks we may say without Solecisme that the Abandoning or Absence of the former Master or Pilot was the Cause of the shipwrack or the loss of men or goods although he neither were any Cause of raising the storm nor prayed against them as Zacharias did against his persecutors nor gave them any wrong directions before he left them Now the Son of God from the time of his peoples thraldom in Egypt but more especially from the time of their deliverance thence had been in Peculiar manner the King and Governor of the Iews in all their Consultations of Peace or Warre their only Pilot in all their storms And however throughout their several Generations they were often greivously punished yet were they alwayes punished Citra condignum much less then their iniquities had deserved Briefly by His wisdom he preserved them safe in such distresses as without his only skill would utterly have overwhelmed the State and Nation And by his Intercession prevented the Out-bursting or fall of that hideous storm which had been secretly and by degrees more insensible gathering against them then that Cloud which Eliah's servant saw rising out of the Sea even from the death of Zachariah the son of Iehoiada and other Prophets and righteous men whose blood their fore-fathers before and after his had shed But after this last Generation had both by express words and practice verified that saying of God to Samuel They have not cast off thee from being King over them but they have cast off Me. That other prophesie or sweetly mild fore-warning for which they took occasion to stone Zachariah to death in the Courts of the Lords House was exactly fulfilled in upon them This Prophecie or fore-warning we have 2 Chron. 24. verse 20. Thus saith God Why transgress ye the Commandements of the Lord that ye cannot prosper because ye have forsaken the Lord he hath also forsaken you This Prophesie with that other of Samuel was most exactly fulfilled Tam verbis quam factis male ominatis mala ominantibus when they solemnly protested before Pilate that they had no other King but Caesar From this time the hideous storms of Gods wrath and anger against them for their own sins and the sins of their fore-fathers did dayly encrease and at last were poured out in full measure upon them when they had no Prophet nor any man that understood any more no Signs or Tokens but such as were dismal no Pilot or skilful Governor to direct them no pious Priest to make Intercession for them For having thus solemnly abandoned The Son of God their King and Lord who had been their continual Sanctuary the destroying Angels who had long waited their Opportunity to put their Commission in Execution did Arrest their bodies delivering up some to the Famine some to the Sword others to the Fowls of the air and Beasts of the field and did seize upon their Land which God had given to their Fore-fathers for the use of others even for the most wicked of the Heathens first bestowing it upon the Romans afterward upon the Saracens and last of all upon the Barbarous Turk under whose heavy yoke the inheritance and some of the posterity of Iacob have long groaned and still must groan until they confess their own sins and the sins of their fore-fathers and return unto the Allegiance of their Gracious Lord and Sovereign whom their Fore-fathers this
he hath a more peculiar right of Dominion over us over all that pertain unto his Church then by right of Creation he hath as God then by right of Redemption or Attonement he hath as God and Man For That part of our nature that flesh and blood which he took of his Mother was his by a more peculiar Title and real property then it was God the Fathers or the Holie Ghosts and we by mystical and spiritual union with that part of the humane nature which he assum'd into the Unitie of his Divine Person are His at least He by this union is our Head and Lord by a more strict and proper Title then God the Father or God the Holie Ghost is By the former Title of Redemption or satisfaction made for us he is our Lord and we his servants By this Title of mystical Union with him he is the Bridegroom or Head the Church is his Spouse and being Head of the Church every member of it is bound as God by the Psalmist exhorts the Spouse Psal 45. to worship him as our Lord and God for the husband is Lord of the wife He bought all our souls being in the state of Aliens or bond-servants and after cleansed and purified them that they might be espoused to him and finally presented to his Father He hath purchased the Church of God saith St. Paul with his own blood Acts 20. 28. And again Eph. 5. Christ gave himself for the Church that he might Sanctifie it and cleanse it by the washing of water through the word That he might make it unto himself a glorious Church c. ver 25 26 27. CHAP. VIII What our Confession of Christ to be The Lord importeth and how it redounds to the Glory of God the Father 1. EVery tongue must confess that Jesus Christ is Lord Our Lord by a peculiar real Title To this Confession every Son of Adam to whom God hath given the use of the tongue is bound de Iure but many sons of Adam to whom God hath given the use of the tongue do not confess so much de Facto The Jews with their tongues flatly deny him to be the Lord or their promised Messias The Turks and Mahumetans confess him to be a Lord of Christians but deny him to be The Lord The chief Lord under God the Father This title of Chief Lord they ascribe to Mahomet and under his right they pretend a title of dominion over Christendom The Heathens which know not God do not so much as question whether he be a Lord or whether He or Mahomet be under God the chief Lord. But as for us Christians we all to whom God hath given the use of the tongue do confess him to be The Lord As for those to whom the use of the tongue is by the course of nature and Gods ordinarie providence denyed others for them do ingage themselves at Sacred Baptisme that they when God shall grant them a heart to understand and a tongue to speak shall confess him to be the Lord and to be unto them their Lord. And in case they dye before they come to possesse the use of their hearts or of their tongues the Church or parish wherein this profession of faith was made on their behalfs are bound to profess thus much for them And as God no doubt accepts the prayers of the Church wherein they are baptized for them which cannot so much as speak to men much less pray to God or to Christ That they may be admitted into his visible Church and be reputed as members of his mystical bodie so doubtless he will accept the prayers of the Church and of every faithfull member of the Church wherein they live and dye that they may be accepted into the Church Triumphant and to us invisible albeit they never attained unto the use of the tongue or when as the Lord which gave others this blessing hath taken it from them For even of the tongue or of the use of the tongue that of Iob is most true and to be resumed by all as well by the dying as by the living by him for his owne part and by the living on his behalfe the Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away blessed be the name of the Lord Job 1. 21. 2. Thus every tongue is bound de Jure to confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord that Lord whom Job so long before did confess But though every tongue of men throughout the world every tongue of Christians of Jewes of Mahumetans or Infidels should from their birth confess thus much would this be enough for that acknowledment which here is required that Jesus Christ is the Lord or would such acknowledgement of every tongue be sufficient to pay that tribute which is due unto the Glorie of God the Father from this Confession which is here required that Jesus Christ is the Lord No it is not the Confession of every tongue that will suffice albeit the acknowledgment or Confession of every tongue be de jure required In this speech Every tongue must confess c. there is a Twofold Universalitie included The One of the Parties thus confessing or aknowledging The Other of the Duties or services to be performed by everie party thus acknowledging Christ to be the Lord. To begin with the Former when the Apostle saith That every tongue must Confesse that Jesus Christ is THE LORD You must take this Universal note to be equivalent to that phrase so often used in the Book of the Revelation by the Evangelist and Apostle all nations and Kindreds all people and Tongues every one of all Sorts of the Sons of Adam are bound de Jure to confesse That Jesus Christ the son of God and the son of man conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the virgin Marie is THE LORD of the Dying and of the Living of the Quick and of the Dead As for all such as do not either in heart or tongue or in both either by themselves or by others for them truly acknowledge Him in this life to be such a Lord they shall acknowledge Him to be such A Lord after their Resurrection from death of which likewise He is Lord. 3. But the acknowledgment of Every Tongue or of every one to whom God hath vouchsafed either a tongue or the use of the tongue will not suffice to find him a Gracious Lord at the resurrection from the dead and at the day of finall Judgment There must be as is said an Universalitie as well of duties and services to be performed by every particular person to whom God hath given an heart to understand as an universalitie of tongues or lips which are to make this confession The real language of every heart will be sufficient for every one in particular whom God hath deprived or denied the use of the tongue But unto him to whom God hath given an understanding heart and the use of the tongue also the hearty prayers and
true members of Christ suffer that flock which he hath purchased with his precious blood to starve for want of spiritual Food That flock from which they have reap't carnal Commodities in greatest plenty But here I will not dispute whether Non-Residence or Pluralitie be simply unlawful suppose in former times both had been lawful both necessary when the greatest scarcitie was of Scholars sufficiently qualified for the ministry Is it therefore Now as expedient It had been once more lawful for Baruch to have sought the Ease of a retired life then ever it was for any man to trouble himself with joyning house to house Land to Land or Church to Church But now it is unlawful seekest thou great things for thy self Yet what was his seeking to theirs or what are many of their deserts to his Theirs especially who have scarce been so much as scribes to a learned Prophet scarce ever brought up in Jerusalem at any Gamaliels feet but only came to this our Sion as so many spies to find out the weakness of the place to discover by what devices good Statutes might be frustrate and means made for conferring degrees upon Drones And Drones having once gotten A degree or place in this Bee-hive by others perjury will make shift to get spiritual preferment by their own After unto their Titles in the Schools they have gotten an Ite Praedicate from the Generals of our spiritual warfare they make their entrance into the Church of Christ just so as if it were into the Enemies soyl once inabled to compass a convenient Seat they never think they were placed there as labourers in Christs harvest to gather and break the bread of life to his people they only use it as a Fort or Sconce to gather strength in till they can watch an opportunity for expugning a better And advancements into highest Offices in this spiritual Charge go oft not so much by virtues as the golden mean Experiments are so rife and frequent that not the meanest Arcadian Creature but lives in hope to make himself Lord of the greatest dignitie the Land affords if he be once furnished sufficiently for practise of the Macedonian Stratagem This seeking after great things especially in men of so little worth is at all times odious in the sight of God and injurious to men But in these present times fraught either with examples or fearful threatnings of Gods heavie Judgments in these times wherein superstition increaseth as a Plague growing up to quell hypocrisie and licentiousness farre less desires even all unnecessary seekings are preposterous and abominable and yet in all States through the Land very usual and being so They are Ominous Which was the Corollary proposed I must omit discourse and fall to instance 12. One Age may afford sufficient store of Examples A curious Searcher shall not be able to find any disease either more Dangerous or more Genoral then this late specified disease of Baruch in the Christian world at that time when the Lord did so grievously lance the whole body of it with the swords and spears of the Vandals Gothes Hunnes and other Barbarians scarce known before by name The approach of all or most of them was so sudden and unexpected that a man could scarce imagine what other Errand they had to visit these parts of Europe save only to be Gods Chirurgions in cutting of the dead and unrecoverable members of the Church Of what sort or kind soever the sins of any Age or People be when sinners once come to such height or progress in them as the sight of Gods Judgments or experience of his displeasure cannot perswade men to forsake them It is a true Crisis of General plagues or desolations approaching No sign more deadly then intemperate longing after unseasonable mirth or pleasures of what kind soever especially of such as are contrary to that course of life whereunto God for the present cals men For they that seek after such things plainly declare That they say in their hearts VVe shall have Peace albeit we walk according to the stubbornness of our own hearts Deut. 29. 19. At cum dicant Pax tuta omnia tunc repentinum eis imminet Exitium That the General constitution of the Christian World when the Barbarians over-ran it was altogether such as we have said such as this people for the most part is at this day Salvianus A Reverend Bishop of those times hath left recorded The disease of Carthage he thus discribeth Captivus corde sensu nonne er at populus iste qui inter suorum supplicia ridebat qui jugulari se in suorum jugulis non intelligebat qui se in suorum mori mortibus non putabat Fragor ut it a dixerim extra muros intra muros Proeliorum Ludicrorum Confundebatur c. The like stupiditie and intemperance the same Author out of his experience attributes unto one of the Chief Cities of the Galles whose Inhabitants were so besotted with drunkenness that they could not shake it of when they were beset with death Ad hoc postremo rabida vini aviditate Perventum est ut Principes urbis istius ne tunc quidem de conviviis Surgerent cum jam urbem hostis intraret He that made the Sword then to them hath also made the Plague of Pestilence his Messenger unto us both their Commissions are of equal authority both their Summons should be alike dreadful and yet what day did any die in this City by the Arrow of God but as many or more were dead drunk or had surfeited of their beastly banquets Again in Trevers one of the most flourishing Cities of the Galles and as I take it the Reverend Bishops native soyl so intemperately were the Inhabitants set on their wonted delights and vanitites that after their Citie had been three or four times sacked and did not retain so much as the likeness of what it had been yet they are still the same And as if they had never sowen unto the spirit but altogether unto the flesh as if their sportings and pastimes had been the only harvest they cared to reap No sooner was this storm of War and blood broken up And the beams of peace restored again but they errected their stages even in the fresh Sent of deadly vapors exhaling from their murthered Citizens buried in their Cities ashes Pauci nobiles qui excidio super-fuerant quasi pro summo deletae urbis remedio Circenses ab Imperatoribus postulabant And may not we think unless our Magistrates Religious care had been the greater to have prohibited Stage-playes in these dangerous times of visitation that a great many in this City would have adventured to have been in Circo though death had been appointed to keep the Play-house door Should the Stage-player or other instrument of vanitie have visited our Suburbs within two monethes after our fourth or fifth visitation past more of better rank amongst us would have been more