our self-guiltiness Quae in alto quaeris intus in visceribus haerent Thou O man saith the Apostle that condemnest another dost the same things thy self or if not the self same as bad or worse Thou abhorrest a sin it may be some sin thou dost not practise some sin will not yield thee any profit or no surther profit some sin will do thee no pleasure now Thou abhorrest Idols or thou dost not commit Adultery but thou committest Sacrilege Is there not a Vbi tu for thee Will there not be a calling to Judgement one day for that and then where art thou And so against all fig-leaves against all pretences and excuses here 's nothing in this Vbi in this place but bare and naked Tu. Thou mayest condemn the Serpents envy and thy wive solicitation thou mayst as well lay thy gluttony unto the Cook or to thy friend inviting thee God singles out his Dear and shoots this ungaged arrow deep into our several brests but yet such wounds from his hand are better then the kisses of an enemy All flattering all false inflations of the Serpent will but make us Pharisees With Lord I am not like other men But such a touch of this would take out that venom make us all strike on our proper bosoms and every man answer God Where art thou with Lord Here I am But Lord be mercifull to me a sinner and so Lord be mercifull to us all miserable sinners Be mercifull O Lord to us not for ours but for his sake who was made sin for us the second Adam that bore all our sins in his body on the Tree even Jesns Christ the Righteons to whom c. S. D. G. THE THIRD SERMON ON THIS TEXT GEN 3.9 The Lord God called unto the man and said Adam where art thou THIS is now the third Entrance on this Entrance of Gods Judgement upon man after his Lapse which is the first of all the three pieces of Divinity And this Third this our new consideration of this Judgement and Gods Method in proceeding may open by his assistance another door of utterance and so we may make another and another Method of proceeding with this or any other Text of Scripture For as there is little reason for that Painter who uses to inscribe his pieces to bind all other Work-men to his device So though it is impossible for any man dividing the Truth aright and speaking out of the pure Word of God things consentaneous thereunto for instruction of Gods people to avoid Doctrine or for any but grraceless Hearers not to suffer the Word of Exhortation of Reproof of Consolation to have a gracious use in their hearts and hands for Religion should be hearted first and handed after in their Understanding first and then in their Life and Conversation Yet I never found in the Sermons of the Lord Jesus himself nor in those of his Apostles nor in their Successors the Primitive Fathers of the first well-formed Churches nor in those of the now deformed Church of Rome nor in those of the first Reformed Churches that they confin'd themselves much less bound over all others on pain of sin or absurdity to one and such only form and way of Teaching which beside the violence offered to mens spirits is to my Understanding a kind of Restraint put upon the free Spirit of that God which works all in all yet deals by a diversity of gifts and distributes in variety of those gifts to every mans necessity and Capacity So that in this for the Divine that rule of the Moralist will hold Nullius addictus c. tied to none nor ever to a mans own Methode witness this attempt of mine in this farther process upon this very Text as it includes a Judgement and the Method of that Judgement These are now our two and all our parts 1. For the first When the story hath told us of Man and Womans Disobedience it shews us after their sin their shame for that 's the first born issue of sin Now they saw and knew themselves every way outwardly and inwardly in bodies and souls naked despoil'd and destitute They run from God and would hide themselves then both from him and themselves Arguments ever of guilty minds fore casting cruel things and then enters the Text with Judgement but what is here begun spreads as far as v. 20. before the sentence be ended 2. Whence the point of Doctrine on easie Inference may be that our Judgement shall certainly overtake and come upon us Hath the Senate condemned me to die saith he Why so Hath Nature condemned them to die too So hath God called me to sit and judge other men perchance those other men might better sit upon me and peradventure they shall yet ere I die If that be unexampled it is not impossible but it is impossible to escape the Judgement of God There is a Prevision of that and of the Conflagration and of the Consternation which shall be then all as old as the visions of Daniel chap. 9. verse 9. When the Thrones were cast down and the Antient of days did sit A fiery stream issued and came forth before him Thousands of thousands ministred unto him and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him the Judgement was set and the Books were opened And another vision of that as new and as late as the last piece of all Gods Revealed Will to men in Rev. 20.11 12 13. verses I saw a white Throne saith St. John and him that sat thereon from whose face the earth and the heaven fied away and there was found no place for them and I saw the dead small and great stand before God and the books were opened and another book was opened which is the book of life and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works and the sea gave up his dead and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them and they were judged every man according to their works And these proofs these large allegations from the old and new Testament we may use instead of larger reasons for if those reasons men speak so much of rise clearly from the fountain Truth of Gods eternal Word they are worthy of some higher and nobler names then Reasons but if not taken from clear Scripture Grounds or if they flow from other principles then to the clearing of divine Truth what reasons are they Two things only then I would gladly print on every soul and from this double vision which opens and closes up this Instruction 1. Put you first in mind of St. Pauls Caveat Rom. 14.10 where the Doctrine is not to judge Not to set at nought our Brother and this is made the reason We shall all stand before the Judgement-seat of Christ and every one of us give account of himself to God 2. The other is St. Judes Induction remembring us of Gods constant course preceding in destruction
SERMONS AND DEVOTIONS OLD and NEW Revived and publisht as an Oblation of gratitude to all such of the Nobility Gentry and Clergy as retain the noble conscience of having ministred to the weak Condition of the Author now aged 73. The SERMONS at Court were before the War brake forth betwixt King and Parliament Also a Discourse of DUELS being a Collection and Transtation of other mens Opinions with some Addition of his own And this in special dedicated for their Use To the Right Honourable THOMAS LORD VISCOVNT BEAVMONT of Coleorton and Mr. ROBERT SVTTON Heir to Mr. Rich. Sutton of Tongue in Leicestershire By THOMAS PESTEL the meanest amongst his late Majesties Chaplains in ordinary Nonumque premantur in annum Hor. LONDON Printed for Nathaniel Ekins at the Gun in Pauls Charch-yard 1659. DEVOTIONS ON Certain Anniversary FEASTS and other Occasions First on Ascension Day 1625. TO day white Saints and holy Angels sing To that pure Lamb some new triumphant thing Whereat the whole frame of the world ascends Each Bird on wings across his Journeys bends Upright and from the most exalted twist His voioe proclaims his Joyes above consist Earth swels to rise and heaves her Issue fair In swift perfumes to latch the mounting Air. Rise then my soul and every power awake Can wals of Dust so strong Resistance make Lo Thy Redeemer that brave Eagle flies With Cage and all breaking the marble skies His way to climb was fitst to be deprest Lay then his bloody Cross upon thy brest Which will be such a load as birds wings are To bear thee where his pleading wounds prepare A Crown of Glory made by conquest thine Was his by Nature where he will refine Thee and thy case of clay bright as his own When join'd in Glory both ascend one Throne The Relief on EASTER EVE LIke an Hart the live-long day That in thorns and thickets lay Rouse thee soul thy flesh forsake Got to relief from thy brake Shuddring I would have thee part And at every motion start Look behind thee still to see If thy frailties follow thee Deep in silence of the night Take a sweet and stoln delight Graze on Clover by this calm Precious spring of bleeding Balm Thou remembrest how it ran From his side that 's God and man Taste the pleasures of this stream Thou wilt think thy fâ—â—sh a dream Nightly this Repast go take Got to Relief from thy brake On WHITSUNDAY or God is Light GOD is all Light All eye who first gave sight To the dark Caos yielding no delight To him the double Parent whiles it lay So deep in night that nothing yet was day Wherein nought pleas'd his eye that blindly stood But when it saw He saw that all was good He whose eternal Essence House and Robe Are all one Light one boundless Christal Globe Fathers of Lights whose Son is from on high The day-spring and whose spirit an inward eye Which through this worlds wide Engine moves and rouls But dwels in us illumining our souls To search and find that whole and only Bliss Which of all three in one the Vision is Expostulation on the loss of a noble Gentlemans eye Mr. H. Ha. 1634. THou dreadfull Potter may thy humble clay Ask if Deformities or Darkness may Be pleasing in thy sight or why we find So many born so many striken blind Troops of diseases Change of chance to marr Thy work and leave a cloud where was a star If sin still made thy wrath thus heavy fall Alas thou mightst rain Darkness on us all If sins excess their pride that have their eyes Would all exceed for they would all despise But what on sins slaves as a plague is thrown Like manna fals and mercy to thine own The Sodomites were blind so Tobie was It fell on Paul as well as Elymas And to thy book thy glass when we repair Where as all scruples all solutions are That blind-born man so pos'd and quarrel'd there His parents too by thine own doom are clear And opening his thou giv'st us eyes to see That Natures Blemish may thy Glory be So canst thou blend these things and make us wealth Of Poverty and of a sickness health Want teaches Plenties use were night away We should grow wanton-weary of the day Blows Bruises Blindness ere thy work be done May into Medcine Balm and Eye-salve run God that through Darkness se'st down through my Rains And knowst how close this grief my heart constrains How this blow striks my eyes still that to weep I find them apter then to look or sleep Thou know'st the Muse was no phantastick fit Brought forth this verse I am not sick of wit But these disordered lines like Amraes deep Fetcht srom my soul in lowly murmur creep Up to thy Throne of Grace The rest is lost On New-years Day a New-years Gift Out of Gal. 4.4 God sent his Son made of a woman made under the Law First God sent his Sone GOD sent his Son to make mans joy begun From first to last in endless circle run Without Beginning God who never ends From boundless Being mans Beginning sends Mans double guard of Sun and stars we see Angels unseen all of his sending be A foodfull Garden after food came rest Then woman came of Visibles the best Her seed in Promise then in Gods intent Before all worlds into the world was sent But till all other sendings fail and fade The Blood that seal'd this mission was unmade Man first was sent to Reasons goodly Lamp Which dul'd he found and dim'd in sinful damp Then Sacrifice and Prayer which heard he saw New Light down sent him in a flaming Law Wild sinners scourge But School and Guide to those That tir'd by sin by Faith on him repose To make whose joyes in endless circle run From first to last Behold God sent his Son Made of a Woman MAde of a woman Heark you Race Of men no more this Sex disgrace The Lord of Glory leaves his place To Bour with Mary full of Grace God above all that 's great or good Is made of womans flesh and blood How rare a Vivary was this Our Lord within our Lady is O look Amazed Angels look But cannot read this my stick Book Till that Babes blood unclose the seal And so himself himself reveal The woman first that wrought our wo Remember first from man did grow Here all by Virgins blood was done Gods only Partner in his Son Made of a woman Heark you Race Of men no more this Sex disgrace Made under the Law UNder the Law He that the Ground-work laid Of Earth and gave the seas a Law was made Who gives the charge to this Eternal Word Supream-and-sole-law-giving mighty Lord. Proud slime and worms God bows our yoak to bear Put on in love to put us out of fear To service homage vassalage descends * Jan. 1. To day and first fruit of his blood he spends What Feind Eccentrick then shall force our souls
Dominus and then qua Servus 1. As Dominus For we may ask Pharoahs question but not with Pharoahs mind Whois the Lord and nothing but Jehovah will answer that in excellency which takes in all the three persons of the glorious Trinity but yet as we are forbidden by the Christian verity to say there be three but one Lord so observing both old and new Testament the second person by joynt assent of both the other is made made both Lord and Christ Lord every way Lord by Creation 〈◊〉 him were all things made Lord by preservation The Government upon his shoulder who is the mighty Lord and all things upheld by him who is the mighty word Lord by Redemption too The Lord our Righteousness made unto us Wisdom Righteousness Sanctification and Redemption 1 Cor. 1.20 So to him all Power and Dominion is given in Heaven and Earth and at his exaltation his Coronation confirmed The homage of knees and tongues That Jesus is the Lord is was and is to come yesterday to day and the same for ever so goes our hope He shall come to judge so begins our Christian Creed In Jesus Christ our Lord so end our prayers through Jesus Christ our Lord so every Christian with St. Thomas makes a glad profession My Lord and my God If our eyes be not held that we shall not know him if once out of weakness we be made strong in the Lord if once out of darkness we be made light in the Lord if anointed with the eye-salve of the Sanctuary we then in him in whom the eye of Judas the worlds eye the Jews eye could see no beauty in that Worm they trod and spit upon that slave they scourged that Malefactor they crucified shall clearly find to our everlasting comfort both a gracious man and a glorious God breaking through all those clouds darting majestick raies contracting all our sight and uniting and fixing all our eyes on that only lovely Object who after all the Eclipses and shadows of the earth and hell gone over him shines forth in perfect beauty crowned with the Sun and under his feet a Moon with deaths pale head and a red Dragon upòn his thigh his name inscribed Dominus Dominorum Men and Brethren what shall we do What manner of men ought we to be in holiness and fear What think you Is not our obedience due in reason a reasonable service to this Lord above others Other Lords have ruled over us Satan and our vices have been Lords of Misrule But there goes vertue still out of this Dominus and vertue there is in Dominus a magnetick intrinsique vertue to draw even Ironhearts to his service Stands not Dominus over Domus here and so over every Church and Chappel like the herald star to beckon us to invite all that are wise to salvation O come let us worship and fall down before the Lord. Down O down with every high thing and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ Jesus our Lord This qua Dominus 2. And then qua servus still more reasonable service if such a Dominus stoop to Servus strange if all those houses you heard of prove our houses another while and he 'l do us service in them all first in the great house of the round world it is so both in the Mechaniks and Oeconomicks In the beginning of his book we find him as a Carpenter at work by the week making partitions measuring and figuring with his Elements in square and skies in circle stricking up Lights and pinning them to the body of the Sun then mixing other mysteries of Gardiner and Painter limming to the life his pieces this our Lords doing all Thou Lord in the beginning hast laid the foundation the work of thy hands Heb. 1.10 And for whose sake so fair a frame for Birds or Beasts the Heathen could tell you no 〈◊〉 Sanctius his Man made Lord to name his vassals at his pleasure and when God gives him possession the very word is Dominamini all at his service So in Occonomy as built so all upheld for us Habendum Tenendum by his Manu-tenency kept in repair from crumbling out to Atoms and not an empty house that would do us no service but herein by 10000 hidden providential quils distils and works out food and rayment by whole loads saith David Psal 68. and changes fresh every morning saith Jeremie Lam. 3.22 And therein descending past Offices of Stateâ—eward Treasurer Chamberlane to the meanest of Baker Cook and Butler with his bottles of Heaven clouds droping fatness finest wheat and liquor of the Grape so low in this great Domus is this greatest Dominus diminisht doing his servants all these Services 2. Secondly As Terram dedit so Coelum dabit His upper house shall be ours after one life that but a span long 'T is his by nature ours by conquest we come in with the Conqueror therefore we look at it still in hope as Travellers going home that abiding City whose Builder and Maker he is and where he is still at work for us preparing a place many Mansions Crescit sub principe Coelum where he keeps possession for us in our name and in our nature and whence he sends to us continually his holy Angels to serve us and thence will come with all those Angels to fetch us up to his last supper and there again serve us himself while we sit down with Abraham Jsaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven 3. Thirdly In the womb of the blessed Virgin he was an humble servant abased himself in not abhorring that whereon we dare not stay our trembling thoughts so many minutes as he endured it moneths and this service only for us for us men and for our salvation he was incarnate to burn out our stains and corrosive the leprosie of our nature For he by the holy Ghost which at first moving on the Chaos created a world of beauty being there conceived was thereby filled with Grace in out Nature which Grace in our measure was from him to be spread and shed in our hearts by the same holy Ghost which is given us Rom. 5. So was he our servant there and Factor for us and therefore stript of all that might unfit him for that Ministry 4. In the fourth house of our flesh he comes lowly with love I come to do service in the form of a servant to minister to serve the curt of souls and bodies too See the great Arch-Prelate Primate of Heaven and Earth Lord and Bishop of our souls whose Sea is from sea to sea and from the River to the worlds end to whom we may give all Bellarmines fifteen great names and all too little is yet content and that not in jest but in Deed and in Truth with servus servorum Domini who though he served his foes for a mocking-stock and never was man so shamefully served yet despising the shame he served out his time and counted it his
and partakers of the divine Nature and all these Unions contracted in the blood red shining Summit of his cross by the power whereof that Throne and Robe and all those Crowns are become ours and we become one with him in an union most high and holy even as he and his Father are one and higher we need not we cannot go nor well so high for that it should be thus we scarce dare ask but how it should be thus is above all that we are able to ask or think Thus far the first priviledge of Gods servants in being his Peculiar The second now should follow of being his Jewels with the usefull application of them both together with the Assignation of those several Dayes wherein these Jewels are to be made up all which I believe will make up a second and a third Exercise For this time I proceed no further but to beg the Blessing of God upon what we now have heard P.R. S.D.G. THE SECOND SERMON September 1643. MALAC. 3.17 And they shall be mine said the Lord of Hosts in that day when I make up my Jewels THE Word of God saith St Paul is not bound nor we that preach it bound to Formalities and courtly Decencies or much to care whether our Hearers be in good humor or no t is true nor are we to be Time-servers as we have been charged nor Men-pleasers in any ill sense yet since we are at liberty throughout the Garden of the Scripture to cull a Posie such as seemes best to us affording us a pleasure why may we not be thought therein also to preserve our just Devotion to God together with an intention for the complacency of good men too For which cause I blush not to acknowledge my respective choice or rather my recollection of this Text whereon I have preacht in royal audience before because though it look back upon vicious times and most ungodly men yet it will allow us for the present a Prospect as I verily belive upon some choice spirits and Gods gracious servants yet by his Reserve and special Mercy left alive while they are yet alive and I alive to apply this Scripture to them in special which in general suits with the condition of this time As men the sons of Time so Times themselves have their Parallels As the days of Noah were saith our Saviour Mat. 24. so shall also the coming of the son of man be eating drinking marrying till the day that Noah entered into the Ark and knew not till the flood came and tooke them all away so it shall be in the last times and so it is And we have no livelier proof that these are the last times then such our usages and in them such our security The Scripture foretels a soul and dangerous Sea of corruption that should prove rough and swell run high and the waves thereof rage horribly toward the end of the world when men should be more then imbrutished void of natural affection 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implacable traiterous heady high minded lovers of pleasures more then lovers of God pretending the Spirit but being sensual and bringing in damnable Heresies having a show of godliness but denying the power thereof pretending to Piety and Law and Order but reviling Dignities which God hath ordained with Balaam greedily loving the wages of unrighteousness and perishing in the contradiction of Core But alas We have undone both Prophesie and Description put down both History and Poetry Examples and Imagination too even those Gyants before the flood are now not monstrous for we have defiled and made the earth more corrupt filled it with a bloodier cruelty and violence provoking the holy one of heaven to hurle down hils of miseries on our heads and hearts and to let in Torrents of his fierce wrath mingled wiih Christian blood in every street and a surrounding universal Scourge and Deluge to overwhelm three whole flourishing Kingdoms at once from end to end and burie them in endless desolation while senseless sinners we seem to contemn the Power of Gods wrath by letting loose the reins to all licenciousness when he is pouring down the vials of his anger and tumbling delightfully in our own tear up the wounds of our Saviour betrampling the sacred Blood that redeemed us and counting the blood of his Covenant a Covenant of Mercy and Peace an unholy thing crucifying again to our selves the Lord of Life and Glory and making a mock of him by grieving quenching and doing despight to the Spirit of his Grace So that our condition is worse then of this people here in this Prophet though in very many things resembling us for in the first chapter we read of their Unkindness Irreligiousness Profaness snuffing at the Table of the Lord and holding it contemptible In the second we find their Idolatry Adultery Infidelity In this third Sorcery false Swearing Oppression Sacriledge and at last it breaks into open rebellion and defiance of God voting down all divine service and decreeing it vain and no profit to walk longer in his Ordinances and then this was a brave time it must needs be so for proud and wicked people which were lift up like a skum over the face of clear and wholsom waters only such saith our Prophet were built to Wealth and Honor. And yet for all this sorrow there is a comfort comes up close at the sixteenth verse of use and advantage now for us Gods people still remained though secret not altogether silent they spake one to another admonished exhorted comforted one another mutually and these their Colloquies and Consultations were frequent and succesfull God came into their Assembly sate President in this Council and a book of Remembrance was written before him for all them that â—eared before him and thought upon his name and after all comes out his gracious Proclamation of Peace and Love The Patent under seal Teste meiâ—so and they shall be mine saith the Lord of Hosts in that day when I make up my Jewels Which words afford a double priviledge of Gods servants be the times what they will in reference to their Owner described by his high and stately stile of Dominus Exercituum First His own they are his peculiar Secondly Esteemed of him at a high rate for they are his Jewels There is a third part The day or time set for the making up of these Jewels admitting a four-fold Interpretation 1. Either the day of punishing the ungodly or 2. The day of powerfull preaching the Word 3. The day of death and 4. The last day the day of final Judgement In all these days God will manifest his Mercy and his Power both enwrapt in Dominus exercituum here and then the Specification the Verification the real and actual spreading of both in this that God in his holiness hath spoken it It shall certainly be so for so saith the Lord of Hosts The first priviledge is laid down in this plain conclusion They that in a
Salvation and I come to feel and know this of a certainty by Gods Power made perfect in my weakness which I discern in finding his Holy fear rooted in my heart and so fixt that no stout words of prophane nor incursions nor invasious nor seas of overwhelming Corruptions in the examples of godless men about me can prevail over me to abandon my Religion which is bottomed on my holy fear and reverend thinking on his blessed Name For as I have said the mercy of our indulgent Father appears not only in tying this amulet to our own bosom that every man is sav'd by his own faith and not another mans bnt also in the manner of this ancorage 'T is his special Grace that my being Gods own is made descernable in the Light imparted to my own soul from his Word and Spirit whereby I perceive the Covenant sealed betwixt God and me in Christ Jesus But this is more wonderfull mercy still that my assurance and modest infallibility of salvation is fastened by his Almighty Power and so surely fastened to so slender a cordage so weak and tender and bruised reeds as my Faith and fear are for these two are to our purpose terms convertible This fear in my Text hath Gold and Treasure in it and contains the precious nature of faith too and discovers the same Efficacy and Properties of lively faith so that he who possesses or is bereft of it is so of God himself See for this Jer. 2.19 This is an evil and bitter thing that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God and that my fear is not in thee saith the Lord God of Hosts So he puts Fear for our whole Religion So rare a Builder is that Lord of Heaven that as he made the Heavens themselves and the earth of nothing and hung saith Job the earth in the midst of the air upon just nothing So in this mighty work of Grace when I am afraid of not being fast enough his goodness makes that very fear the means of fastning and confirmation and anchors my assurance to my fear Behold the unsearchable and unspeakable riches of his mercy in this that he forsakes not man therefore because he finds not in flesh and blood the Pority of Angels but as it s said to Levi Mal. 2.5 My Covenant was with him of life and Peace and Life and Peace include all Blessings and I gave them to him For what Observe it well The free Grace of God in this exchange I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me and was afraid before my name and just such is the Appliance here of all this consolation for God hears and hearkens at verse 16. and a book of Remembrance is written before him for whom now all this and sor what For them that feared the Lord and thought upon his name and they shall be mine for that I will love them for that inward testimony and qualification and that inward Testimony and Qualification shall assure them of my love Is not this enough to make every one of us say at parting hence Well! I shall think the better of the fear of God as long as I live for this Sermon Do so in the name of God and take this further resolution with us Never to listen to the harsh and cruel doctrine of the Romish which a man would think were enough to throw down all the rest of their building in unstable soules if those souls would but seriously stay to think upon it if they would not like unclean beasts still swallow and never chew the cud and yet since it is fallen from them they must their Priests must by the oath ex officio all desperately maintain it as if they were told openly by one of their own Doctors at the Council of Trent and that is this That God will never be so assured never so contracted and espoused to believers hearts in everlasting love but even after all their Merits and Satisfactions and Penances and Pilgrimages and Supererogations too Is it not strange considering how wide they open their Ark at first and assure all clean and unclean beasts that will come in of never perishing Nay after all Pardons under the swelling seal and all plenary Indulgences Is it not a miserable case The wretched fluctuating Penitent after ablution extream Unction Absolution and all must be content to die in discontent and fall with horror and perplexity of Conscience and all his comfort in a little faint hope that it is not wholly impossible for him to get through long and dreadfull purging flames at length to the joyes of heaven But let us in Gods name still continue to repose our souls on Christ and resting on this ground of comfort in this appropriation we shall find no reason to conceive hardly of him who is the Father of Mercies and God of all consolation or impute a rigidness and tetrical sowerness or rather a tyrannous enwrapping us in inevitable damnation To admit no such jealousies and fears and suspitions of our Lord here but wisely learn to compound and keep close in conjunction that which God hath mixt and and put together That is a rejoycing in the Lord with trembling a worship joined with godly fear and joy in the holy Ghost and so we may return from his service as the women returned from his Sepulchre with fear and great joy PART 2. WE are come to our second part the Prospect the day of our deliverance and making up amongst Gods Jewels which day is fore-fold 1. The day of punishing the ungodly such a day as some think is described here at cap. 4.1 In such burning days the trial shall be made and then God will resolve this scruple here at verse 17. twixt them that serve him and such as serve him not and his Jewels in that day he will save spare as a man spares his own son as men incline to favour their peculiar and their Jewels and Treasure above all their stuff of less value as men in danger of shipwrack reserve a Jewel though forced to unlade the ship of all her other burden or as they catch away in times of war or fire or thieves some precious thing above all other goods And this renews the former consolation that to these Saints which excel in vertue these precious Jewels whose saith is precious sastned on the most precious blood of Christ belong all those precious Promises of compassing hiding embracing covering relieving defending comforting setting his eye heart soul upon them of opening his ears and hearkning to their cries of drawing near helping respecting assisting establishing blessing delivering by Protection Exaltation Coronation and this no empty but a real comfort including all time He hath and doth and will deliver us saith St. Paul He hath done it to his servants in the evil day in all their evil days of sorrow Sickness War Plague Famine Prison Deluge of waters or of ungodliness So Noah was boxed up in his ark
it the foulness of the offence Sauls first seems a grosser disobedience then Adams Regardless of Gods express prohibition he reserves Agag and the fattest and best of the spoils as Adam took the fruit forbidden and then iterates his offence in offering Sacrifice intruding on the sacred function which never King could violate without exemplary punishment As Jeroboam and Vzziah stand for proofs in Chronicles and then Davids sin seems souler then Cains Adulterating Vriahs wife making him drunk and then contriving so to murder him though it drew on the slaughter of many of his own Souldiers and Gods servants and occasioned the enemy the uncircumcised enemy to triumph in their bloods A sin doubtless most horrible and as the School-men thwack and throng into Adam sin almost all kind of wickednesses as Pride Gluttony c. so is this of Davids a Rapsody and Fardel horribly complicated and enwrapped with other sins And the wonder is enlarged in the greatness of these royal persons to whom God could have addrest Angels as he might in Adams cause for he had those winged Pursivants even then as we read he did by a destructive execution of the Assyrians in many thousands by one Angel 2 Reg. 19 35. And as he did even to David punishing his other sin of Pride by the sword of a destroying Angel in 2 Sam. 24. 7. For Resolution of this we learn first from some Interpreters that this was done with this difference because there those Kings offences were manifest and had witnesses enough These Delinquents sinning the fruit think to escape under the leaves as if God could mistake them for trees To teach Rulers in such cases that Rule of Joh in searching out the matter diligently When Herod feared the ruine of his Kingdom by an Hebrew Infant he enquired diligently of the Wise men all that could inform him for prevention So all wise and just Judges both Soveraign and Dependant ought to be curious and not to cast to non-regardance the search and tryal of gross Offenders For as on the one side no such acceptable sacrifice to God and Angels and good men as the blood af a bloody Murderer or such like Monster No such golden world as where great and grievous sinners are shel'd and disheltered from out their trees and fig-leaves all presumptions in wealth or power So on the other side The Lord beholds all Iniquity wrongful dealing when by clear evidence of naked Truth as in the example here men are careless in judging or punishing their brethren For if to accuse be enough you know who said none could be innocent 8. Which sad and serious Jndagation of the Truth and Execution of Judgement and Justice in inferior Courts would be a blessed sight where too commonly men crie that the Rod of coertion is turned into a devouring Serpent or made an angle-rod to fish for silver in the deep purse of a muddy sinner where the gallant guilt-head or soul Porcpisce and all above his size shall easily break the line or be let go but the poor Pilcher is fetcht up with a vengeance though his greatest fault perchance be but Faut d'argent But these are things like his Aruspices ever complained of and evermore retained and I do but only call upon them in my passage being upon a point of Judgement here which is executed immediately by the Almighty himself to teach all Judges and Rulers some think at least in some crimes a personal Inspection Solomon to that purpose hath a speech of Kings sitting in the Throne of Justice and chasing away all iniquity with their eyes And as we read of Jehosaphat 2 Chron. 19.8 In Jerusalem he set of the Levites and of the ' Priests and of the chief fathers of Israel For what For the Judgement of the Lord and for Controversies This was a Commission Yes it was so to Priests and Levites and chief Fathers of Israel This was a standing Court of Justice in Jerusalem But the King himself in person at the fourth verse goes through the people from Bersheba to mount Ephraim and sets Judges in all the fenced Cities and there he gives them a charge a Caveat with an Enim Take heed what you do for you judge not for man but for God verse 6. 9. Again For Gods referring some to his Ministers of Justice and proceeding to immediate judging others another reason is given or another instruction is gained which is all one namely this That if we can evade or elude humane Tribunals yet none should be so shameless as to hope avoidance of him who is Supernus Inspector that holy One in his Watch-tower above which Lucretius that lookt into the book of nature markt in the usual break of too great Greatness Res abdita quaedam some hidden thing there was so he stiles the divine Peovidence which did Proculcare still kick down the highest things Et sibi Ludibrio habere seemed to take a pleasure in so doing And in the book of Scripture we find what desolation God threatns oft and oft seems delighted to bring upon the high ones of the world in bringing them low So he seems to triumph over the Amorite whose height was as the Cedars yet I destroyed saith he his friut from above and his root from beneath So he doth menance Edom though high-roosted and nested among the stars yet even thence will I fetch thee down saith the Lord Jer. 49.16 These high ones may escape all Power on earth but yet become the quarrie of him that is higher then the highest So the Hern and Vulture outflying both Falcon and gree-falcon are by the Sacre seized on in an instant which fowl as the name imports is made by all a Symbol and Hieroglyphick of the Deity which in sharpest Judgements comes horribly and speedily upon wicked Governors in high places which little of this Methode in Gods proceeding may help us much against distrust in Gods Providence or fretting our souls too far against the Execution of his Justice 10. Thus far upon these words in a review as they deliver us this Text taken in those two parts Of Judgement and the Methode of that Judgement Now we shall further make good our former Assertion that every part of Holy Scripture sets open to several Expositors or Preachers several doors of utterance Be pleased in this last passage over the words to recall that which in the first Sermon I called the Mystick sense of Gods question here that is for so I find it opened Where is thy former Happiness To what a miserable state art thou now by thy sin reduced How hath thy fall bruised the Seal and defaced that glorious Image I erected in thee Alas Adam where art thou From which passionate Increpation and Rebuke mixt with a gracious Bemoaning of Mans Fall divers doctrinal Points might be raised as the term is if a man should raise as some do such things as would sleep and be quiet or lie for dead if no such Raisers