means to be enlarged to any other but those particular subjects or matters to which it was given The Jews might not at that time have destroyed or invaded any other Nation upon the face of the Earth nor might the Levites at any other time have killed their Brethren on strength of that command much less may any other People of any other Nation on strength of that example And so now that such Commissioners are out-dated when all is left by God in the hands of standing Laws in opposition to new Revelations and consequently when that which is most just for me to suffer or God to permit or by prospering in him to inflict on me is most injurious in him that doth it were it not perfect fury much above the pitch of irrational to demand that Gods dearest Children should act as the vilest men To require such explicite contradictions that none but godly men should be permitted to oppress to kill to commit Sacriledge to lay waste and to destroy to break all those Commandments of God which he that doth ipso facto ceaseth be to godly If there be any wickedness to be done in a City shall the righteous be the onely men to doe it This were worth wondering at indeed But for the wicked whose trade it is whose joy of heart to be thus forever occupied he is in his element he needs no call or incitation to do it The turning him out of that office and employing any body else were the greatest unkindness to him as the casting the Divels out from tormenting the man was by them looked on as the destroying them before their time whereas the Angel of Light would have looked upon it as a degree of Hell had hee been sent in on that errant to torment him Sect. 14 Thirdly Beside the perfect reasonableness of having offenders punished temporally here which were reasonable if it were for ever in another World there is a second not onely Justice but Mercy in such sufferings on whomsoever they fall They are Admonitions and Doctrines and Spirituall Medicines Disciplines of the soul to awake us out of secure and stop in wilful sinning and are by God on purpose made use of to that end when prosperity hath been long used and experimented to have no such auspicious influences in it to be proper to feed and foment very improper to starve or subdue enormities And if the Physitian administer a bitter Potion if the Surgeon apply a Corrosive or Caustick when Julips or Balsoms are judged and proved to be uneffectuall sure it is not the manner of men to count such methods irrationall Sect. 15 Nay it will be no Hyperbole to affirme that the addition of such documents as these may sometimes deserve to be preferred and more pretiously valued then all the Doctrines in the Book of God it self without these one such seasonable Application then all other Receipts in his dispensatorie The Word of God gives rules of living to all men but those so general and unapplied that it is ordinary for passionate men not to see themselves concerned in them These punishments and visitations will be able to bring home and make us while we are under the Discipline confess that we are the very men to whom by peculiar propriety they appertain Sect. 16 But there is yet a third sublimer benefit of such dispensations of God under the Gospel which will render them abundantly rational And that is the exercise of many Christian graces of the greatest price in the sight of God and such as shall be sure to be the most richly rewarded by him which were it not for such changes as these would lie by us unprofitably such are Patience Meekness Humility Contentedness with whatever lot faithful dependance on God in all outward things thanksgiving for plenty and for scarcity too a submitting to Gods Will in suffering as well as doing it cheerfully yea and to his Wisdom too in resolving Gods choices for us to be absolutely fitter for our turns then any our own wishes and lastly that Wisdom which Saint James speaks of the skill of Spiritual judging which can really prefer this state of suffering for Christ an excellence that Angels do not partake of beyond any other state or condition of life Sect. 17 Were it but onely for the variety that all the burthen of the day might not lie on those graces which are exercised in fair weather but that those other provided for the storm or winter might take their turns and give them some relaxation this would be very rational and useful for us as Aristotle saith that the change of motions from up hill to down hill and so back again doth provide against lassitude more then the constancy of any one be it in the easiest smoothest plain because that layes all the burthen incessantly upon one pair of muscles without any relief or assistance from any other But when withall every exerise of each of these graces hath attending it an addition of more Gems in our Crown more degrees of Glory in another World that I may not adde also of present Joy and Satisfaction and Ravishment in the present exercises here then sure the superfluities and pleasures of this life the any thing that is ever taken from us by the Harpies and Vultures of this World are richly sold and parted with by the Christian which knows how much or indeed how little they are worth enjoying if they may thus bring him in that rich fraight of never fading bliss in another World And this will serve for justifying the rationalness of Gods dealing with us now under the Gospel in respect of his Providence CHAP. VI The exceptions against Christ's Commands Sect. 1 IT remains that I proceede to Christs Commands under the Gospel and shew the rationalness of them Sect. 2 And having done it so largely already on the head of Advantages I shall now onely descend to that one against which our Modern Exceptions are most frequently made viz. Sect. 3 The great Fundamentall dutie of taking up the Crosse to follow CHRIST i. e. of approving my Obedience to CHRIST in all and every particular even when the extreamest danger the loss of my Life is like to be the Price to be paid for it Sect. 4 The unreasonableness of this is argued and concluded from the contrarietie of it to that liberty of self-defence and to that Law of self-preservation which nature is supposed to dictate to every man And the shewing the weaknesse of this Objection will be a full vindication of the rationalness of the Precept Sect. 5 And this is done by putting us in minde what is meant by Self-preservation and what by Nature and what by Law A man is made up of a Body and a Soul a mortal and an immortal part and those may be considered either severally or united And consequently Self-preservation may be set to signifie any one or more of these four things Either first the preserving that material mortal
part of him from present hurt or secondly preserving the immortal part of him in well and happy being or thirdly preserving the present union of one of these with the other or fourthly the providing for the perpetual happy union of them eternally The first is the preserving the body and with it the estate and liberty and reputation c. from present loss or diminution The second is preserving the Soul in innocence or virtue The third is preserving of this life of ours which wee live in the naturall Body And the fourth is providing for a joyfull Resurrection and an everlasting Life attending it Sect. 6 Then for Nature that may signifie either blinde unenlightned Nature which sees no more then the reflection upon it self and the Book of the Creatures and Natural instincts represent to it or else Nature as it is enlightned by Revelation i. e. by Gods making known some things in his Word which Nature had never known had they not been thus revealed Such are the Doctrines of our Faith and particularly the eternal rewards and punishments which are revealed to us in the Scripture Sect. 7 Then for Laws those may be either absolute and peremptory which yield not to any superior Laws or else conditional and subordinate when a superior Law doth not interpose to the contrary Sect. 8 To bring all this home to our present discourse If by self-preservation be meant either the first or the third notion of the self the preserving my body or my life then though it may truly be said that it is a Law of Nature that men may and that when no superior Law requires the contrary they ought and are bound to preserve these imperfect mutilate selves these bodies yet then as there is a higher notion of a man then as that barely signifies his Body his Soul being the far more excellent part of him and the eternall union of body and Soul together being most eminently the Notion that he is concerned in so there must be a superior Law of self-preservation then that which commands onely the preserving the Body and though bare un-lightned Nature that is able to look no farther then this life doe not give any Law in this matter yet Nature being supposed instructed in the Christian Doctrine that there is another life of Body and Soul after this to last for ever must needs be resolved to do it it being impossible that reasonable Nature when two things are represented so distant as the life of a few yeers here in the midst of such sad mixtures and an everlasting life hereafter in the fulness of all joyes should not enjoyn the preserving of the latter even with the contempt of the former when the care of the former may bring any danger to the latter Sect. 9 The short of it is That when eternal life is in the hand of Christ to give to them that continue obedient and constant to him and to none else and when the fearing of them which can hurt and kill the body the caring for or preserving of this present life doth at any time or in any case resist or obstruct the performance of that duty which Christ then requires or expects from me there Nature commands me to despise the less and preserve the greater and if it be not absolutely willing to Sacrifice the present to the eternall Life and consequently to prefer the obeying of Christ to the preserving of this fading short life it must acknowledge it self a blinde Heathen Nature that knows nothing of an eternall future life and of him that can cast both Body and Soul into Hell or else an irrational wilde Nature that knows these distances of finite and infinite and doth not thinke them worth considering Sect. 10 It is therefore my most charitable opinion of those that object the Principle of self-preservation to the Doctrine of taking up the Crosse and determine us free from the Obligation of paying obedience to Christ when it cannot be done without endangering of Estate or Life that they speak out of their memory onely what they have read in Books of that supreame Law of the preserving ones self but do not withall remember that if that self signified onely the Body it was the Philosophie of them that knew nothing of the immortality of the Soul or the endlesness of an other Life or if they were aware of the Christian Doctrines of eternity they never called the Body that self that was to be so solicitously tended Sect. 11 And therefore it is observable in the first Ages of the Church that those Hereticks that were enemies of the Crosse of Christ that taught it to be a indifferent and lawfull in time of Persecution to forswear and renounce Christ and offer Sacrifice to Idols were a sort of men the Gnosticks that immerst themselves in all unnaturall filthiness and depended not at all on the Promises of another Life and having first taught that Christ did not b really suffer in the Flesh but onely in appearance would not be perswaded that either hee had any c need of their lives or indeed exspected it from them d being come as they said to save their lives to die that they might not be killed Where the mistake was clear and visible that they thought they were these transitory Lives that Christ came to preserve and not those other lives which were to be conveyed over to Eternity Sect. 12 The fate of those Gnosticks at that time was very remarkable and that which will render our irrational fondness of these bodily lives yet more irrational Their great care was to preserve their lives and their prime dexterity in order to that to comply constantly with the powerful persecutor that was especially with the Jews for though the Sword was in the Heathens hand yet the great malice against the Christians was in the Synagogue from * thence sprang all the Persecutions To this end those Gnosticks took upon them to be great zealots for the Mosaical Law of Circumcision and generally pieced with the Jews and approved themselves to them At last the Roman Army comes against Jerusalem takes Jews and Gnosticks together and destroyes them all and so Christ was as remarkably a true Prophet in that as in any one particular That he that would save his life should lose it that very temporall life that all his compliance with the Jews was designed to save and hee that would lose i. e. venture and lay down his Life for Christs sake should finde it i. e. have it more probably preserved and continued to him here then they that were most solicitous for it and whether he lost or kept it here have it restored to him to continue eternally Sect. 13 And if that promise of the Gospel have truth in any sense of it then is the command no irrational command of taking up the Cross to follow Christ when he can if it be for thy turn except of thy taking up the
Miracles The two things which he urged to the Jews or Heathens wheresoever he preached as things which he was sure they could no more contradict then demonstrations themselves there being so many then alive that could witness the truth of them In which respect he after tells them of Gods having confirmed them into Christ and anointed and sealed them all in the same sense to signifie Gods having afforded them these convincing testimonies of the truth of Christianity preached to them by those on whom the Holy Ghost had descended and who wrought Miracles among them Sect. 14 That this was a very competent confirmation of the Doctrine of Christ may yet farther appear by considering first the persons to whom this was to be done the then Church of God the people of the Jews which were acquainted with his voices and his Prophets and his Oeconomies formerly among them Secondly the matter that was thus to be confirmed no greater change then to which this way of attestation may in reason be deemed abundantly proportionable For the things to be beleived onely the real completion of some things which had been before foretold and the revealing some truths which had been more obscurely represented in the Old Testament and then those how high and mysterious soever yet being clearly revealed by Christ and the Apostles in the New and the explicit belief of them no further required of any then in proportion to the degree of the revelation of them the revealing of them must be looked on as the satisfying of an appetite a desire of more knowledg which is naturally in all men and is sharpened by the having received some imperfect rayes of it and consequently should not in reason be expected to be attested with such a pomp of signes and prodigies as impositions of tasks and exactings of obediences are wont to be Then for the things to be done in Christianity the duties and observances It is again considerable that the change in that respect was not such as would denominate it a new Religion but onely the reforming and perfecting that which was before received among the Jews and the making it more tolerable and easie to be received by other parts of the Gentile World The worship of the one true God Creator of Heaven and Earth contrary to the false worships of the many gods and idols of the Heathens and to all the unnatural lusts attending them had been sufficiently testified to the Nation of the Jews by many voices from Heaven and undeniable attestations of God himself and indeed to other Nations by the fearful miraculous judgments shewn in Egypt and on the Canaanites under the conduct of Moses and Joshuah c. and by Gods continual residing among that people and his attesting that by the Vrim and Thummim by the several Prophets sent by him and the other ways of revelations And to those that granted all this it was foretold so often that no Jew doubted of it that there should come days of Reformation that there should come a Messias This was long ago promised through all passages of their story to Adam under the title of the Seed of the woman to Sem that God should dwell or pitch his tabernacle in the Tents of Sem take flesh upon him in his family to Abraham to Judah to David and all along through the writings of their Prophets Concerning this Messias their carnal hearts had pre-conceived some mistakes as that he should be a glorious King here and make them again after their being subdued by the Romans a most victorious glorious people on Earth and this howsoever they demean'd themselves onely by the priviledg of having Abraham to whom great promises were made to their father At last this Messias otherwise described by their Prophets as one that should come in a mean and lowly manner no way desireable to the eye of the world Isa. 53. comes just as he had been fore-told a forerunner being sent before him on purpose to prepare his way to dispossess them of their fond perswasions of their absolute election by having Abraham to their father and pointing him out particularly as the Son of God the Messias that was now to be received as he had been so greedily and so long expected by them This forerunner that thus foretold and after pointed him out was as they that crucified Christ confess by all the * Jews taken for a Prophet And moreover to this testimony of this acknowledged Prophet comes in the addition of the miraculous descent of the holy Spirit and the voice from Heaven and all that hath been mentioned consequent to that And to those among whom this had always been acknowledged an authentick way of attesting Gods will nothing could be more required but this Christ then or God himself in humane nature assumed of a virgin and born after a supernatural manner when he came to thirty yeers old the age of a Doctor among that people sets to this business which it was foretold he should perform tells them how the former law was to be reformed and especially their former lives from external observances to internall purities and how to be filled up and perfected in some particulars and then lightly changes some ceremonies customary among them and accommodates them to present use removes the wall of division which had been between them and all the rest of the world shews them that that was meant onely to keep them from imitating the Heathens sins and now that there was more need that Heathens and they should love one another and joyn to reform both their lives and practice Christian virtues then keep that supercilious distance from one another and in a word he brings the whole matter to such a model as all other men but the Jews like extremely better then that which was before among them and consequently come in in sholes at the preaching of it And the Jews that doe not so acknowledg the onely reason why they do not to be their zeal to their law of outward performances and the perswasion of their absolute election that is in effect that they had no other quarrel to him but onely that he did not teach the doctrines that they liked and were before imbued with which if he had he had by that very means done contrary to the prophecies by them allowed of which foretold he should work a reformation Upon these unreasonable terms they crucifie him And by their doing so more wonderful attestations yet are given to all this In his very death the Sun is miraculously eclipsed at a time of the Moon when by nature it was absolutely impossible and so far against all rules of Astronomy that learned men in other places took notice of it to be a violence done to nature which must signifie some great matter Then a prodigy befalls the Temple and that a very significant one Then the bodies of many dead men arise and go to Jerusalem and are seen by many But above all