stream a River that suffic'd that people and their cattle out of a Rock How in the midst of lightning and thunder God himself promulgated his Law to the whole Nation audibly at once How his glorious presence shew'd it self in all necessities upon the Ark in which the Tables of the Law were laid up How the waters of the river Jordan fled from that Ark both waies flow'd upwards to give passage to the people into Canaan How the walls of Jericho without any other battery any other force but that the Ark was there fell down before it But to name no more If these be true that power by which these were wrought was great enough to give that Law require obedience to it and reward it and to punish all transgression according to the tenor of these Scriptures that is it was God and he that wrote those Scriptures must have had communication with and bin inspir'd from God to write them But 2. whether they were true or no according as they are recorded in those Scriptures that whole people from the greatest almost to the least must know because they are recorded as all don not only in the presence of them all but as the objects and the entertainments of their senses every one so that if they were forg'd not one of the whole Nation could be ignorant of it And then 3. If they knew them forg'd all that 600000. men besides their wives and families should endure this Moses having brought them forth only into a wilderness there to lay such a heavy Law and so severe a yoke upon them with such penalties annext to every least transgression and adjure them to observe it on account of all those prodigies that had bin wrought among them and upbraid them with stiffneckedness rebellion and appeal to their own senses for the truth of all this and record all to posterity in this Scripture cause all to be read before them and that they should bear all this from him they knew so impudent a deceiver and conveigh that Scripture and the faith of it to their posterity ground their so strict so chargeable Religion on that book which they were certain had no word of truth in it this sure transcends belief and possibility T is certain therefore since the Jews of that age did perform the services requir'd and in performing them according as that book directs did teach their children the great works that God had don in their sight therefore they believ'd those Miracles and Scriptures And since it was impossible that they should be deceiv'd if they believ'd them they were true their posterity receiv'd from them the faith of this and so deriv'd it on that neither Gods dread judgments nor mans cruelty can yet shake it Now had they not bin don and on that account conveigh'd when ever they were broacht and that book first appeard the men of that age must needs know their Fathers never had perform'd such services had such a book read to them constantly nor told them of such Miracles that had bin wrought and therefore it was impossible that they could have believ'd it had bin so from Moses if it had bin true that it had first begun to be taught in their own time or in theirs with whom they liv'd And this discourse must be of force concerning every age if we ascend until we come to that of Moses wherein all was effected Yet besides this they had also that perpetual Miracle in the High Priests Pectoral the Oracle of Vrim and Thummim that did keep alive their faith and strengthen it and they had Prophets constantly foretelling as from God things that were somtimes suddenly to come to pass and somtimes not till many ages after the event of which depended often on the will of those that would not of some hundred years be born others on Gods own immediat will and hand and therefore none but God could look into foretel and bring to pass all those events Now such were Jeremies predictions of the taking of Jerusalem and the captivity of the people and the express number of years it would continue Esays naming Cyrus who was to release it near two hundred years e're he was born All Daniels prophecies particularly that must eminent one of the Messiah this Christ Jesus of whose Scriptures we are next to speak That that Jesus whom Cornelius Tacitus the heathen historian in the fifteenth book of his Annals calls Christiani dogmatis autorem the Author of the Christian Doctrine did work Miracles and prophesy both Jews and learned Heathens do confess But these Books tell us when he first began to preach he publicly cast out a Devil in the Synagogue on the Sabbath day and at even when the whole City was assembled he heal'd all their sick and cast out many Devils which confest before all that he was the Son of God Then he cast out a Legion of such mischievous malign Spirits as having got license drove two thousand Swine headlong into the Sea and choakt them which was known to the whole Country of the Gadarens Before the Pharisees and Doctors that came out of all the Cities both of Galilee and Jewry and Jerusalem and so great a crowd as forc'd them to unroof the house to come to him he freed one from his palsy and his sins A multitude was witness of the death of Jairus's daughter and bewailing her laught him to scorn that undertook to raise her yet he call'd her into life And on a feast day in the Temple before all the people he recover'd one that had lain lame eight and thirty years and when a widows son was carried to his funeral and all the City follow'd him he only toucht the bier and bid him live With two fishes and five loaves he fed 5000 men besides women and children and with what they left they fill'd twelve baskets when one basket carried all before they ate so that they were convinc'd he was that Prophet that was to come into the world and with seven loaves he fill'd 4000 afterwards and seven baskets He commanded a dumb spirit out of him that had bin Lunatic vext with a Devil from his infancy before the people and the Scribes whom his Disciples could not cast out And when Lazarus had bin dead four daies and buried till he stank yet at his call altho bound hand and foot with grave cloaths he came forth all the multitude beholding From so many more I chose out these because they are reported don before the people and the Scribes and Pharisees and Doctors I might name his Prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the propagation and continuance of his Religion even of the womans box of Spikenard which event hath made notorious to the world But his death was so even at the present when if the rending of the veil of the Temple was
them as they shall grow capable Why when they are but newly born their children do they take care they shall be regenerate and born again Gods Children if they do not furnish them with necessaries educate them into all the qualities and hopes that appertain to the condition of Gods children as well as they do to that of their own That parent which not only like some delicate ones refuses her own breasts to her own infant but provides no other to sustain it that does only wash her babe from it's first blood and uncleanness to expose it the more handsom prey to wolves and tigers in the desert is more savage then those tigers even the sea monsters draw out the breasts they give suck to their young ones saith lamenting Jeremy but he adds the daughter of my people is cruel like the Ostrich in the wilderness which leaveth her eggs in the earth and forgetteth that the foot may crush them or that the wild beast may break them she is hardned against her young ones such are they who when their children are so born again to God yet as they shall wax capable provide not that which St Peter calls the sincere milk of the word that they may grow thereby but from their being washt so in the laver of regeneration take no more care but expose them forthwith to such lusts and conversations as are much more wild and savage then those beasts in the comparison to which they cannot choose but be a prey They strive indeed they say to educate them into men betime that is make them conversible and bold and since for that they must engage them into frequent company where they see and hear mens follies that I say no worse by that means they come to have their understandings stor'd with nothing but the Modes and sins of conversation fill'd with froth and puddle men betimes only thus as they have forwarded their inclinations to and got an early understanding and experience of those vices which one would think men only could be equal for But by this means the mind that only part that makes us be men is not only not improv'd but dwarft They do not only still continue children in their understanding as to any thing that 's real and solid but the hopes of reason are destroy'd in them and its growth kill'd by turning all its nurishment to feed the beast part and the Christian is quite starv'd There needs no other cause be given for the most part why so many men have no Religion own being Libertiâ—es and profess vice for want of education they have nothing in them that does check this for they had no principles of a Religion instil'd into them And if at any time it comes to pass that they think it is their interest to take upon them the profession of some Religion they therefore since they have no Principles nor rules to judg by are most apt to choose to profess that Religion which is like to be most gentle to the courses they have steer'd and are engag'd in Now that men hope to find such an one whether by its constitution I shall not enquire but by its practice is but too apparent Accordingly when they go over to it they carry with them and preserve in it the vices of their no Religion and by consequence they went not over seriously for Religion and are therefore so much worse now then when they own'd no Religion that they do their wickednesses with certainty of easy absolution and so hopes of salvation and by this are likely to be made two-fold more children of Hell then before and let them triumph in such conquests There 's nothing in the world that contributes so much to this as mens being not acquainted early with instructed in those Divine rules and obligations to piety and vertue which this book the Bible does afford If men had bin season'd first with the knowledg and the sense of duty with the comforts that are in it with the apprehensions of great blessings that attend it and the mischiefs that are consequent indeed essential to impiety and vice here and their minds were furnisht with examples of both which this book abounds with and their hearts too rais'd with expectations of far greater blessedness in a life hereafter and with the belief that both that blessedness and life shall have no end and were made sensible also of strange dreadful torments that await the breach of duty which shall also last for ever if these impressions I say did prevent all other and take up the mind and had in them the stamp and character of God and so there were a reverence and awe of him wrought in them and they lookt upon him as concern'd in all this how it was his word that said it and these sentiments were grown into the very habit of their mind as it would not be easy to corrupt or soften such so 't would be much more difficult to shake them since their faith is founded on the rock of ages Besides the Holy Scriptures carry in them such an obligation of adhering to them and to them alone since they are sufficient to make us wise unto salvation and are Gods word that men would not be apt to exchange them for Legends pious forgeries for things that can make good no certain title from the Lord for let them shew an equal derivation of it bring it down through all the ages as we have don the Scripture's title to him Otherwise it justly may provoke Gods exclamation in the Prophet Jeremy Be astonisht O ye Heavens and be horribly afraid be yee very desolate saith the Lord for my people have committed two evils they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters and hew'd them out cisterns broken cisterns that can hold no water cisterns therefore that may leave them in a state to want a drop of water when their tongue shall be horribly tormented whereas he that drinks that living water which Christ gives his word shall never thirst but it shall be a well of water in him springing up to everlasting life A SERMON OF THE OBLIGATION OF BAPTISM Rom. 6. 3. Know yee not that so many of us as were baptiz'd into Jesus Christ were baptiz'd into his death THE Ancient Severities of this season by which men strove as if they had design'd a fellowship with him in sufferings to celebrate Christs death in mortifying Rigors and Austerities at least to use the body of Sin as cruelly as his was us'd these I say were not only for the discipline of Penitents of Christians that had sin'd against their solemn undertaking and profession so to actuate their Repentance and to mortify their lusts and inclinations and by that prepare them for an Absolution on Good-friday Eve but they also were much earlier employ'd upon the Catechumens that were Candidates of Christianity as by which they did express their sorrow for and detestation of their former
accompanied with foolish discourses very oft prophane and with swearings idle and bitter jestings at those which are present and detractions of those that are absent whence proceed quarrels and the like they are also full of apishness in the process of them below the gravity of common sense much more of a Christian a member of the Son of God we should find these I say to jarr with more than one of the former requisites of recreation Some other sorts are oft the instruments of infinite vanity the great engines of lasciviousness and lust Wanton Songs and unchast books these very things they put a fucus upon sin and they dress iniquity with all the adulteries of possible art that they may the more enticingly prostitute her here are young souls ensnar'd by these to whom the very description of sin is invitation and conquest Do not sit by a woman that is a Singer saith the wise Son of Syrach and if innocent beauty be irresistible temtation if it do at once assault both at the eyes and ears charge the soul with charms at both those ports how then shall the very pleasure of that temtation the wantoness it self be resistible when it comes drest with harmony when it do's melt the imagination into the soft looseness of its own smooth airs and gentle warblings How shall they escape when they see sin cloath'd in all the flowers of Rhetorick as books present when they see the example of men temting to it and learn the method when they see it acted and the delight of it exprest with all the advantages of sinful art with very prurient words and committing language Some others as great gaming 's not that I condemn the thing in general when they are us'd with much appetite either of the sport it self or of the price they become immoderate too much time is spent upon them And Causinus saith did a man commit no other sin but conversing a good part of his life with kings and knaves of cards being invited to the conversation of Angels yet were it no small offence But besides that they are the nurses of anger they dictate ill language and they are the apprentiship of cursings oaths and blasphemy so that if you put all these together you shall find that by all these recreations we do but bait and temt our sins we do the Devils work against our selves and we that know our strength is not miraculous that find how oft and easily we fall are bound in conscience to avoid those things which we find are occasions to us of sin and if you would instead of those impressions which the vain pleasures of those recreations do leave upon your desires entertain and heighten these few considerations to your selves it might a little bridle 1. A Christian is a mourner my blacks my dark sad veils are are spread over me and should I see a woman in that habit and while it was new go to revels sing obscene catches and spend much of her time in gaming 's what would I think of that woman Why even the same strumpet lewd thing is my soul that in the days of her mourning does thus luxuriate And is it not a sad thing that a Christian a very serious name that a man that hath the delights of heaven to refresh himself with that hath God to converse with should not yet know how to pass his time without these lighter vain follies which yet he would be loath to do before a man of quality and discretion yea that he cannot refresh himself without sinful delights that he must go take a walk in Hell to divert himself for fear he nauseate upon Heaven 2. All the holy Angels that so great cloud of witnesses they look upon me acting these my impertinent ridiculous follies and it do's break off their melody they mourn to see me a Christian a man that should be one of them thus foolishly passing my irrevocable time idly spending my hours of repentance and vainly throwing away my possibilities of Heaven and doing this so unseemly destroying my self with lightness and to no purpose 3. How many now do mourn in their state and expectation of miseries and with sad yellings bewail their lost hours and the sins which their lightnesses and recreations drew upon them the curses and ill language of their gaming the fornications of the lusts which their songs and dances did provoke them to and the intemperance of their revels and the idle words of all of them in general of which yet our Savior saith we must give an account and have I not reason to fear the same expectations and woes and then had I not better be a little more serious and grave put on the strictness and severity of a Christian here unless I can resolve so I may but sing wantonly here not to care tho I howl in hell eternally so I may but revel and drink here let the never-dying worm for ever gnaw upon the very marrow of my soul and Gods fury drink up my spirits and my self for ever suffer the perpetual thirst of feavor dwell with everlasting burnings and rather than I will put on black and be a mourner here I will be thrust into the land of utter darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth But I will now descend to the particular exercises of this duty of which I will name but two the first is to bewail and mourn for the calamities that befal or are impendent on a Church and State or any member of it either others or our selves without considering whether this be like to be our case or no I onely put it in the general as a duty and a particular exercise of this in the text whensoever any judgment do befal a Land to be truly humbled and sadded by it and to compassionate any one that is afflicted by it and as St Paul bid us Rom. 12. 15. to weep with them that weep Now to move us to this he that is not affected he declares plainly that he is no fellow-member of him whose sufferings he does not partake in nor a part of that Church in whose judgment he is not humbled for saith St Paul if one member be afflicted all the rest suffer with it and experience saith it too and then shall the body of our Head Christ a whole Church be wounded and maim'd have its last death-pangs upon it lie strugling and gasping and we unmov'd at this have the same full delights and tast them too feel no gripes no sympathy of convulsions and shall we yet think our selves members of that body of Christ Oh no we hold not of the Head our Savior we have no communion with him for if we had we should have communion of sufferings a fellow-sense There is no such convincing sign as this in the world this flowing from the very nature of greif for greif cannot properly be but for an evil that is some way annext and proper to
commandment begets sin but how it makes sin condemning begets death and therefore I believe they are mistaken who expound sin taking occasion by the commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence as if it meant the Law onely prohibiting but not quelling sin in me the more it was restrain'd the more it wrought all manner of concupiscence in me especially since there was no punishment assign'd to that sin in the Law it took advantage thence more powerfully to engage me in the pursuit of all my lusts since thence I might have hop't without any fear of punishment to pursue them For this seems perfectly to thwart his aim which was to shew us how the Law wrought condemnation and inflicted death by threatning it It seems to mean I had not onely not known sin to be so dangerous but I had not known some things to be sins and by consequence condemning things but by the Law particularly I had not known concupiscence to be so had not the Law said thou shalt not covet The next words do not seem intended to declare how the Commandment work sin that being brought in by the by as it were thus but sin the corruption of my nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had wrought in me all manner of concupiscence all actual lusts and wickednesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 got advantage over me or strength against me by the Law which he there proves for without the law sin is dead not as to stirring in us by its sinful motions sure corruption would not fail to do that and more if there were no check but dead had no strength nor power to condemn me For it follows when the commandment came sin reviv'd got strength to do that and I died was sentenc'd to death by it and the commandment which was ordain'd to life could I have obey'd it I found to be unto death by condemning me to death for my transgression of it For sin by the Commandment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 getting advantage over me slew me not onely made me liable to death but by its guilt envenoming that death for the sting of death is sin which that it is and how it is so is the second thing I am to speak to Sin is the sting of death which I could make appear two manner of ways in relation to two senses that may be given to the words both pertinent and the one but the Anticipation of the other The first is this Sin is the sting of death 't is Sin makes the thoughts of death pungent and stinging the wicked man cannot think of his last dying day without horrors the onely imagination of a sickness stings him because he is conscious to himself of sin and he knows that that after Death cometh the Judgment and he dares not think of beholding the face of his Judg with his guilt upon him To prove this to you I shall not need to fetch any heathen Testimonies that call the Conscience of Sin a whip a sting a goad a lancing knife things that gash and prick and gall and fret all words of all kinds of terrifying punishment but if there be any gross customary Sinner that now hears me I shall need no other way of proof but by appealing to his own conscience whether when he comes hot from his iniquity he dares entertain the thought of dying And why not Alas he is too deep in arrears to venture upon account with so impartial a Judg books must be laid open if he come there the closet curtain sins nay the bosom villanies must be displaied and every one receive his doom he hath heard that all the refuge of a deplored Sinner at that great and terrible Day of the Lord is but to fly unto the Mountains to cover him and to the Rocks to hide him A wretched hope for how shall the Hills hide him whose iniquities are like Mountains or how shall the rocks cover him whose rebellions are like the great deep as the Scripture words it To such a person Death and Judgment are words of too dangerous a sense and it 's easier for him as many do to resolve there is no such thing as one of them than to think of them and go merrily on in sinning For tell me what is the design of that variety of iniquities in which thou dost ingulf thy self that circle of sins wherein one relieves and succeeds another Sure by such a perpetuity of diversified delights to stave off those severer thoughts which if there were an intermission of sinning or a nauseating of one sin for want of variety would creep in the noise of our riots is not to please the ear but to drown the barking of our consciences When the Sinner's candle is put out if weariness in wickedness do not at once close up his eyes and thoughts if the dark solitary night do but suggest some melancholly thoughts into him how do's he tumble up and down as if he thought to role away from his imagination and he do's ransack his fancy and call up the memory of his past sins about him to entertain himself with all and keep out the torturing remembrance of that sad Day which the Scripture calls putting far from them the evil day for the truth is he dares not give it place least it should happen to him as to a man upon a pointed precipice as himself is indeed situated to whom the apprehension would be as mortal as the danger and he would tumble down for fear of falling So here his sin adds such sharps to the imagination of death that he dares not entertain the thought And if Sin be such a sting in the onely thought of death that the mere remembrance of it is insupportable the use is very natural by the frequent calling of death to mind to stop the current of sin For if the wicked cannot endure to think of death he that does think on it cannot well go on to be wicked Remember thy latter end and thou shalt not do amiss I would give this counsel Think thou art to die while doing it The original of the Turks Turbant which was but by continual wearing of his winding sheet by wrapping his head in his grave-cloaths to have always a shrowd and death upon his thoughts and the Philosophers defining their wisdom to be but contemplatio mortis are not such pregnant inforcers of this use as this practical apprehension of it The man that liv'd among the Tombs tho he had a legion of Devils in him yet when he saw Jesus afar off he ran and worshipped him Mark 5. 6. The sight of graves and conversation with monuments will make even Demoniacks Religious and is so far from thrusting Praiers out of the Liturgy of Burial that it brings the very Devils on their knees But there is yet another and a fuller sense of these words which St Paul repeats out of the LXX translation of Hosea 13. 14. tho not verbatim for there insteed of 〈◊〉
Testimony is assur'd and certain so far they must grant the Faith we give that that writing is the Rule must be assur'd and certain And since all the means and kinds of their Tradition make that very Testimony and Conveyance of that Book therefore all that certainty and that infallibility their faith can have from those grounds the same certainty and infallibility the faith we give to that Book must needs have too on their own grounds But it hath more for since the ground of all faith must be testimony and by consequence none but Divine Testimony can be ground sufficient for Divine Faith and that Testimony was I shew'd you Miracles wrought by the Publisher to confirm the Doctrine both which are in this Rule of ours Therefore altho that universal Testimony all their Tradition for it which is merely humane may be a sufficient method of conveyance to derive all notice as the first men's eyes and ears that saw the Miracles and heard Christ tho they be but humane senses were sufficient to them also they suffice not yet to a Divine Belief they cannot ground that Faith which must be given to Divine supernatural Doctrines upon a Divine Testimony which Tradition is not but our Rule hath So that the resolution of our Faith is made by a Divine Rule such as theirs pretends not to be made by and the mere conveyance of that Rule to us hath all that certainty and that infallibility that they pretend their Rule it self to have and so we may have Faith and may be Christians But we are never the nearer however for if the Rule of Faith if true must be a means to make our assent more infallible than Science upon Demonstration and there can be no other such Rule besides the living voice and present practice of that Church which does and always did resolve her Faith into it by this Principle not to believe or teach or practise any thing as of Faith but what they did receive from their immediate Forefathers as of Faith and saw their practice of which most undeniably renders their Faith impossible to be erroneous therefore we that owne neither such a resolution rule or principle can neither have true rule nor Faith But yet how fine soever and self-evident this Principle and Resolution appear to them as speculators if it were practically enquir'd into it would appear the weakest of all other For first I might evince that ever since the first beginnings of Religion and mankind while either they had no other rule at all but this of oral practical tradition as in the first times before the Law was given and Scripture wrote their faith and practice grew all false and diabolical or when they had another rule so far as they made use of this rule thereby that they did make void their own Faith and God's Laws as the Pharisees among the Jews or lastly when they had not an entire rule written as in the first Age of Christianity while the Scriptures were not spread amongst Believers but they had the living and inspir'd voice of the Apostles to resolve their Faith into and by that Rule and Principle of oral practical Tradition most perfectly yet then the most execrable Heresies that ever infested the Church had their rise and growth Secondly I might demonstrate their Church did not always so resolve their Faith and by that Principle Look thro their Councils all from the beginning where their Church sometimes the whole Church met together either to confirm the true Faith or confound the false and you shall find no footsteps of this oral practical Tradition but of doctrinal enough The Sayings of the Fathers and Decrees of Former Councils and the Texts of Scripture these they call their Demonstrations Thirdly where there is most need still of a certain rule and resolution there this is unpracticable wholly namely in all great divisions of the Church in points of Faith To instance in the Arrian contentions where the World was against St Athanasius and St Athanasius against the World and the Pope himself Liberius was then Arrian who could then hear and distinguish the living voice of the Church When the whole East was so universally and bloudily divided in the matter of Images one Greek Council defining against them and another for it and the West as much the French Italian German Bishops presently in a great Synod declaring against them and the British Church particularly Now I will not ask how it was possible the greater parts of the whole Church should so at once have laid aside their infallible self-evident Rule and chanc'd together to forget it should not once bethink themselves whether they had seen their Forefathers practise that Worship or no and heard them teaching that they had received it too from their Forefathers nor ask how it was possible their Enimies should not mind them of it if it were the Churches rule and had bin generally taught and practised and assure them by their Principle how impossible that it should be erroneous But there is not a word of this in the whole two Nicene Councils but some Texts of Scripture and some Sayings of the Fathers which no more evince the practice than Tentordin steeple does cause Goodwin Sands But I will ask how in the noise and the confusion of both States and Churches while wars and Anathemas thunder'd in the quarrel how it was possible poor souls could hear and distinguish what the living voice and present practice of that Age was which was so extremely various and contradictory Those that were then to be instructed in the Faith what could they hearken to How could they guide themselves by that Rule when as in their Doctrines they condemn'd each other in their practice murder'd one another And when each party pleaded that theirs was the Faith deliver'd to them which should they believe The major party How should they know infallibly which was How be assured the major party is requir'd Why truth must be on that side where the most are What self-evident Rule had they to judge of these by Surely none Accordingly it was not by this Rule but by being overpower'd they receiv'd that Faith and practice Fourthly that it may appear in no case useful in the calmest Sun-shine of the Church and when if ever they were all of one mind namely before Luther when if ever there were any Article that the Latin Church was possessed of an explicit belief of it was that of Purgatory as it is now held amongst them there was all expresses of an oral practical Tradition for it and if there were not 't is impossible to know when any Doctrine is receiv'd upon that Principle so that the Rule is frivolous as to practice yet as if that Principle had ow'd the very Founder of it a great spight he must go write a Book against that Purgatory which stood by his own Principle for which he is under censure by his own Church But least
blasphemy and persecution tho 't was conscience guilts these of a bloudy and deep scarlet and this very conscientious man found cause to call himself the chief of Sinners v. 15. Howbeit secondly he tells us v. 16. for this cause I obtained mercy that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all long-suffering for a pattern to them that should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting that in me the worst of men might have example and encouragement to depend upon him for eternal mercies if they will but come in to him he was pleas'd to shew me mercy call me in the very flagrancy and execution of my crimes Whereupon as he says thirdly he not onely was not disobedient to the Heavenly Calling but as if by owning himself chief of Sinners he had set himself a standard for his service put upon himself an obligation to be chief of all Christ's Votaries he became more laborious in his duty than all others and particularly so sincere faithful resolute and constant as nothing could remove him neither opposition stop him nor temtation divert him Now it is this faithfulness this being honest-hearted to Almighty God 't is the firmness of this purpose to go thro with duty in a constant tenor of obedience in whatever circumstance we are plac'd whatever happens not to be allur'd nor frighted neither biass'd nor forc'd out of it with the consciencious pursuance of this resolution that particularly qualifies for this secure dependance upon God for success it does dispose a man for perfect resignation of himself and full assurance It was St Pauls case here for this I suffer saith he and indeed he liv'd almost in constant martyrdom yet all this does not in the least discourage me but by God's gracious assistance I will do my duty come what can come Now discerning himself thus resolv'd and thus assisted he concludes that he hath ground enough for trust for he that is thus faithful to him may trust on him then he says I know whom I have believed And that we may not think this is an instance solitary in the third of Daniel when Nebuchadnezzar told the three Children If ye worship not the Image I have set up ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands Shadrach Meshach and Abednego answered and said to the King O Nebuchadnezzar we are not careful to answer thee in this matter if it be so our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of thine hand O King but if not i. e. but if he would not be it known unto thee O King that we will not serve thy Gods nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up The being conscious to themselves that they were thus resolv'd in earnest not to offend against the Lord but to obey how dear soever their obedience cost them and so casting themselves on him to do what he would with them gave them confidence made them know and say he would deliver them and so he did It is according to the measures of discerning the integrity and faithfulness of our own hearts that we assure our hearts before him as St John expresseth 1 Epist. 3. 19. and then tells us if our heart condemn us God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things v. 20. If we find not that sincerity within if any thing be false there if our conscience accuse us our own hearts condemn us 't is most certain God will do so too because he knows all those things of us that we can know of our selves But if we truly cannot charge that insincerity upon our selves we need not fear that God will charge us with the things we are not guilty of No surely as he there goes on Beloved if our heart condemn us not then have we confidence towards God v. 21. And this is the confidence that we have towards him that if we ask any thing according to his will he heareth us and if we know that he hears us whatever we ask we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him c. 5. 14 15. And whatsoever we ask we receive of him c. 3. 22. Thus by assuring their own hearts to God they know this have this confidence towards him i. e. have the trust and the dependance in the Text which in what cases it admits this strong assurance that is here exprest by the word know is my next inquiry I know Now by the last words it should seem as if in every case in every thing that he can want or does desire the person that is qualified so had a ground to trust with full assurance We know saith St John that whatsoever we ask we receive of him and accordingly in all the Spiritual needs of the Thessalonians both in particular and as the Church St Paul when he had blest them and praied for them thus The very God of peace sanctify you wholly and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ 1 Thess. 5. 23. adds in the 24thâ—erse Faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it And here in this Epistle of himself he says The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work and will preserve me unto his Heavenly Kingdom 2 Tim. 4. 18. Nor did good men want this confidence as to the things of this life for in times of publick consternation in the want of all things Habbakuk does thus assure himself c. 3. 16 17 18. When I heard my belly trembled my lips quiver'd at the voice rottenness entred into my bones when he cometh up unto the people he will invade them with his troops but in that state he adds Altho the Fig-tree shall not blossom neither shall fruit be in the Vines the labor of the Olive shall fail and the fields shall yield no meat the flock shall be cut off from the fold and there shall be no herd in the stalls yet I will rejoice in the Lord I will joy in the God of my salvation The exstasy of trust the rapture is too elegant and gay too high and full of transport to admit of any descant Holy Job went yet a little farther Tho he slay me yet will I trust in him c. 13. 15. In a word at once in whatsoever God hath promis'd there the Faithful Christian hath a right to trust I will not be so rude as to suppose my Auditors so unacquainted with the rich and precious Promises those Christian Treasures which God's Book is the Repository of that I should need to mind them of them and indeed to do it were to read a very great part of that Book 'T is sure in every case of every whether publick or particular real just concern whether in temporal spiritual or eternal things in some indeed
Cities might be spar'd in fine when once they have wrought out the measure of God's mercies and their iniquity is full it is no wonder if the measure of their Judgment be full too and it self irreversible and utter But yet tho in all these Judgments whether partial or final Innocent and Righteous persons suffer with the wicked All things come alike to all there is one event to the clean and to the unclean to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not as is the good so is the sinner and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath Ecclesiastes 9. 2. So as that it should seem the sincere Christian can no more depend than others or if he do his trust will fail him yet to omit the reasons of this dispensation of God's Providenc which are many very just ones that alone sufficeth good men in the midst of all such Judgments to depend upon which St Paul writes on the very account of such distresses and necessities Rom. 8. 28. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God even those afflictions working for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory 2 Cor. 4. 17. They are God's words and so trusting and depending on them we know whom we have believed namely God the person and my last part wherein I am to enquire on what accounts especially he that does depend upon him in these cases hath assurance such as that he can profess I know whom I have believed Now there is scarce that Attribute in God which is not a firm ground for resignation of our selves to and of reliance on him But to pass all those which are every where in God's Book to be met with and are urg'd with all advantage and to name two other onely First 't is certain that we may with the most comfortable hope and greatest confidence rely on him who when we have most need is readiest to relieve As we read in the Scripture of an accepted time of the day of Salvation to let us know that it is not to be catcht in every season as if whensoever we shall have a mind to be delivered and ask for it God must hearken and command deliverances no sure there are proper set times and we must be unwearied in waiting for it so also ordinarily that the time of greatest need is God's opportunity and the day of extremity the day of Salvation is obvious All other times he tries us and does exercise our virtues but when we are past all other help then he relieves us Therefore David is most peremtory with the Lord on that account Psalm 102. 13 14. Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Sion for it is time that thou have mercy upon her yea the time is come And why thy servants think upon her stones and it pitieth them to see her in the dust and Psalm 9. 9. The Lord also will be a refuge 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 LXXII in opportunitatibus in tribulatione in the true opportunity that is when trouble comes And we shall find a reason for this way of working in his Praier Psalm 109. 26 27. O save me according to thy mercy that they may know that this is thy hand and that thou Lord hast don it When we are in such distress as is past man's aid then if deliverance come we cannot chuse but know the hand when we are in darkness and dimness of anguish and if we look unto the earth behold nothing but darkness as of the shadow of death then if any light arise we know it is the day-spring from on high that visits us And if besides this reason and those Texts we but consult the Annals of God's actings we shall find it always thus and not to mention those that refer to particular persons of which Joseph's single story is a manifold instance which also gave birth to those great events which shall make up a demonstration that this is the way of God's procedure In Egypt when the design was laid so that the People of Israel could not have lasted longer than one Age for posterity was forbidden and the Nation was to be murder'd by a prohibition of being born and when they could not to avoid this persecution get out thence except the sea would at once make a passage for them and a wall and rampart to secure that passage and if it also should do so it would but land them in a wilderness and they but fled from water to perish for want of it and escapt being drown'd to die with thirst a place too where unless the desert can bring forth the bread of Heaven unless Flesh and Manna can grow there where nothing grew they have but chang'd their fate and brought themselves into a more unavoidable and speedy ruin when this state of exigence was come then God comes in by weak means a stammering tongue and little rod works all deliverance And again afterwards in the captivity of that Nation a state which Jeremy the Prophet when he had bewailed in sorrowful eloquence in lamentations that live still yet wish'd his head had bin a fountain of tears to weep for it when in seventy years the people was so mixt incorporated with their Conquerors as must needs be very hard to separate and tear them asunder and as for their Temple it was ruin'd and despoil'd of all its holy furniture which was not onely rob'd but desecrated and profan'd so as not to be likely nor scarce fit to be returned the vessels of the Sanctuary being made the utensils of their Idol-feasts and their own riots and those holy bowls made up their drunkeness as well as sacriledge yet when these conquering Robbers were enjoying their spoils and crimes as if wine in those holy bowls did stupity men past all sense they and the great Babylon are taken ere they knew it and the Jews return strait follow'd Again when Cestius Gallus had sate down before Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles when the Nation being oblig'd by their Religion was all in that City and the Christians of the Land were there too after several assaults and when he might have taken it he on a sudden rais'd the siege 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Josephus without any reason no body knows why but onely as God put it in his heart to do so to give way for the Christians to obey that voice which the same Josephus saith was heard in the Temple at the Feast of Pentecost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 let us go hence and upon it all the Christians went to Pella not one staid but every one escapt that ruin which Titus sitting down before that City brought upon that People the great Enimies of his Church to a final utter desolation Once more when after the nine Persecutions which like so many torrents of fire had swept away the Christians in flame Dioclesians like a tenth wave came as if it meant to swallow not
utmost that they understood if so be that there were no Treason to discolour it and they that did inflict all this appear but Christian Dioclesians and stand at that sad Day in the train of the Persecutions on the same hand O then those Fires which these Boutefeus called for and kindled shall blaze out into everlasting burnings And now it may seem strange that they who most of all pretend the Spirit of Christ are yet of the most distant temper in the World from that of Gospel always endeavouring to do that which our Saviour here checks his Disciples for proposing and did threaten Peter for attempting There are among our selves that seem to live by Inspiration that look and speak as in the frame of the Gospel as if every motion were impulse from Heaven and yet as if Christ had fulfilled his promise to them without Metaphor baptized them with the Holy Ghost and fire onely that they might kindle fire and the unction of the Spirit did but add Oyl to those flames as if the cloven Tongues of fire in which the Spirit did descend were made to be the Emblems of Division and to call for fire these mens life their garb their very piety is faction they pray rebel and murder and all by the Spirit 'T is true indeed they plead now what we seem to say that they should not be persecuted for not being satisfied in their Conscience so they mince their breaking of the Laws for which they suffer But do these know themselves what manner of Spirit they are of or are we bound not to remember when they had the Power how they persecuted all that would not do at once against their King their Conscience and the Law And we do thus far know what Spirit they are of and if they have not yet repented of all that then it is plain if they can get an opportunity they will do it again nay they must by their Spirit think themselves obliged to do it But these are not all those that above all the World pretend to the Infallible assistance of the Spirit our Church is bold in her Offices of this day to say do turn Religion into Rebellion she said it more severely heretofore and the attempts of this day warrant the saying when not like our Disciples that would call for fire from Heaven on the Village that rejected Christ these will raise up fire from Hell to consume their own Prince and his Progeny the whole line of Royalty the Church and Nation also in their Representative and all this onely for refusing him that calls himself Christ's Vicar There are I must confess among them that renounce the practice and say 't was the device onely of some few desperate male-contents wicked Catholiques and design'd by the Devil And they will allow their Father Garnett to have had no other guilt but that he did not discover it having received it in Confession And this gives me occasion to propose a story to your patience and conjectures Not long before the time of this Attempt a Priest of the Society of Jesus in a Book he publish'd does propose this case of Conscience Whether a Priest may make use of what he hath learn'd in Confession to avert great impendent mischiefs to the Government as for Example One confesses that himself or some other had laid Gunpowder and other things under such an House and if they be not taken thence the House will be burnt the Prince must perish all that pass throughout the City will be either certainly destroy'd or in great peril and resolves it thus 'T is the most probable and safe Opinion and the more suitable to Religion and to that reverence which is due to the Sacrament of Confession that it is not lawful to make use of this his knowledg to that end That his Holiness Clement the 8. had just before by a Bull sent to the Superiours of the Regulars commanded most studiously to beware they make not use of any thing which they come to know by Confession to the benefit of the secular Government He adds that in cases of Confession the Priest must not reveal though death be threatned to him but may say he knows it not nor ever heard it quia reverà non scit nec audivit ut homo seu pars reipub Yea he may swear all this if he but mentally reserve so as to tell you 'T is Del Rio in 6th Book of his Mag. dis 1. Cap. Sec. 2. It seems 't is safer to break all the Obligations to Allegiance and to truth his duty and his Oaths the Princes and Gods bonds than the Seal of Confession But I did not mention this to let you see the kindness these men have to Princes and their Government I shall avoid producing any the Opinions of particular persons howsoever horrid in my arguments this day but I onely ask whether it be not very probable this instance was the thing to be attempted on this day Whether the resolution was not publish'd the Pope's Bull if not made yet produc'd at least to caution any Priest that should receive it in Confession and should be so honest as to abhor the Fact yet from betraying it and hindring the Execution of it If it were the case this was not then any rash attempt of some few desperate malecontents but a long contrivance and of many heads and its taking its effect was the great care of their Church Well they are even with us yet and lay as horrid Projects to the charge of Protestants Among our other Controversies this is one whether are the worse Subjects bloody sayings are produc'd from Authors on both sides yea there is the Image of both Churches Babel and Jerusalem drawn by a Catholique Pen and then you may be sure all Babel's divisions and confusions make the draught of ours and are said to be the issue of the Protestant Doctrines Whereas such things are countenanc'd by some particular Authors of their Church were never own'd by any publique Act or Doctrine of a general Council to which they provoke us I must confess our Calendar can shew a thirtieth of January as well as a fifth of November There are indeed that say the Romanists hatch'd that days guilt and challenge any man to call them to account for saying so But whether so or not which Churches Doctrines such things are more suited to I will now put to trial that we may know what Spirit each is of And I will try it by the publique Acts and most establish'd Doctrines of the Churches and here undertake to shew the Church of England most expresly does declare against all practices against the Prince for the cause of Religion But the Romish in those acts wherein she hath most reason to expect infallibility of Spirit also in the publique Acts of the Church representative in General Councils does abett the doing them not onely for Religion but for the cause of Holy