all your faculties with his corrections yet he shall doe that but to change your water into wine as he did there he shall make his very Judgements Sacraments conveyances and seals of his mercy to you though those manifold sins be got over your heads as a roof as a noise as an overflowing of waters And that which is the heaviest of all and our last consideration sicut Dominus as a Lord as a Tyran as an Usurper Pretiâ— redempti esâ—is nolite fieri servi says the Apostle you are bought with a price therefore glorifie God There he shews you your own value and then Ne dominetur peccasâ—um Let not sin have dominion over you there he shews you the insolency of that Tyran You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free says Christ to the Iews Well They stood not much upon the truth but for the freedome We were Abrahams seed and were never bound to any but Christ replies Whosoever committesh sin is the servant of sin And of whomsoever a man is overcome to the same he is in bondage Now we are slaves to sin not onely as we have been overcome by sin for he that is said to be overcome by sin is presumed to have made some resistance but as we have sold our selves to sin which is a worse and a more voluntary act There was none like him like Ahab says the holy Ghost wherein was his singularity above all He had sold himself to work wickednesse in the fight of the Lord. Now how are we sold to sin By Adam That 's true Ejus praevaricatione ut it a dicam Negotiatione demnoso frandulento commercio venditi sumus Wee were all sold under hand fraudulently sold and sold under foot cheaply sold by Adam But thus wee might seem to be sold by others so Ioseph was and no fault in himself But we have sold our selves since Did not Adam sell himself too Did God sell him by any secret Decree or contract between the Devil and him Was God of counsel in that bargain God forbid Thus faith the Lord Where is the bill of your mothers divorce whom I have put away or which of my creditours is it to whom I have sold you Behold for your iniquities you have sold your selves and for your transgressions is your mother put away In Adam we were sold in grosse in our selves we are sold by retail In the first and generall sale we all pass'd even the best of us We know the Law is spirituall but I am carnall sold under sin says the Apostle even of himselfe But when does the Apostle say this in what state was hee when he accuses himselfe of this mancipation and sale under sin Says he this onely with relation to his former times when he was a Iew and under the Law Or but then when he was newly come to the light of the Gospel and not to a clear sight of it It is true that most of the Eastern Fathers and it is true that S. Augustine himselfe was of that opinion that S. Paul said of himselfe that he was sold under sin respecting himself before his regeneration Non qui vult esse sapiens statim fit sapiens says Origen A man is not presently learned because he hath a good desire to be learned nor hath he that hath begun a conversion presently accomplished his regeneration nor is he discharged of his bargain of being sold under sin as soon as hee sees that he hath made an ill bargain But when he growes up in grace say they as S. Paul had done when hee said this then he is discharged But as S. Augustine ingenuously retracts that opinion which as he says he had held when he was a young Priest at Carthage so is there nothing clearer by the whole purpose of the Apostle in that place then that he in his best state was still sold under sin As David speaks of himself being then regenerated In thy sight shall no man living be justified So S. Paul speaks of himself in his best state still he was sold under sin because still that concupiscence under which he was sold in Adam remains in him And that concupiscence is sin Quia inest ei inobedientia contra dominâ—â—m mentis Because it is a rebellion against that soveraignty which God hath instituted in the soul of man and an ambition of setting up another Prince so it is peccatum sin in it self And it is poena peccati says that Father Quia reddita est meritis inobedientis Because it is laid upon us for that disobedience it hath also the nature of a punishment of sin as well as so sin it self And then it is Causa peccati too Defectione consentientis because man is so enfeebled by this inherence and invisceration of Originall sin as that thereby he is exposed to every emergent tentation to any actuall sin So Originall sinne is called by many of the Ancients the cause of sin and the effect of sin but not so exclusively as that it is not sin really sin in it self too Now as Originall sin causes Actuall in that consideration as we sell our selves over again in our acts of recognition in ratifying our first sale by our manifold sins here so is sin gone over our heads by this dominion as a Tyran as an usurper Hoc lex posuit Non concupisces This is the Law Thou shalt not covet Non quod sic valcamus sed ad quod persiciendo tendamus Not that we can perform that Law but that that Law might be a rule to direct our endevours Multum boni facit qui facit quod scriptum est Post concupiscentias tuas non eas He does well and well in a fair measure that fulfils that Commandement Thou shalt not walk in the concupiscences of thine own heart sed non perficit quia non implet quod scriptum est Non concupisces But yet says he hee does not all that is commanded because he is commanded not to covet at all Vt sciat quò debeat in hac mâ—â—talitate conari That that commandement might teach him what he should labour for in this life Et quò possit in illa immortalitate pervenire to what perfection wee shall come in the life to come but not till then Though therefore we did our best yet we were sold under sin that is sold by Adam but because we doe not but consent to that first sale in our sinfull acts and habits wee have sold our selves too and so sin is gone over our heads in a dominion and in a tyrannicall exercise of that dominion If we would goe about to expresse by what customes of sin this dominion is established we should be put to a necessity of entring into every profession and every conscience And the morall man says usefully Si tantum irasci vis sapientem quantum exigit indignitas scelerum we will
of rising as some exaltation of his power that he is to Judge And that place in the beginning of that Psalme many of the antients read in the future Dijudicabit God shall judge the Gods because the frame of the Psalme seems to referre it to the last Judgment Turtullian reads it Dijudicavit as a thing past God hath judged in all times and the letter of the text requires it to be in the present Dijudicat Collect all and Judgment is so essentiall to God as that it is coeternall with him he hath he doth and he will judge the world and the Judges of the world other Judges die likemen weakely and they fall that 's worse ignominiously and they fall like Princes that 's worst fearfully and yet scornfully and when they are dead and faln they rise no more to execute Judgment but have Judgment executed upon them the Lord dyes not nor he falls not and if he seem to slumber the Martyrs under the Altar awake him with their Vsque quo Domine how long O Lord before thou execute Iudgment And he will arise and Judge the world for Judgment is his God putteth downe one and setteth up another says David where hath he that power Why God is the Judge not a Judge but the Judge and in that right he putteth downe one and setteth up another Now for this Judgment which we place in God we must consider in God three notions three apprehensions three kinds of Judgment First God hath Iudicium detestationis God doth naturally know and therefore naturally detest evill for no man in the extreamest corruption of nature is yet fallen so far as to love or approve evill at the same time that he knows and acknowledges it to be evill But we are so blind in the knowledge of evill that we needed that great supplement and assistance of the law it self to make us know what was evill Moses magnifies and justly the law Non appropinquâ—vit says Moses God came not so neare to any nation as to the Iews Non taliter fecit God dealt not so well with any nation as with the Iews and wherein because he had given them a law and yet we see the greatest dignity of this law to be That by the law is the knowledge of sinne for though by the law of nature written in our hearts there be some condemnation of some sinnes yet to know that every sinne was Treason against God to know that every sinne hath the reward of death and eternall death annexed to it this knowledge we have onely by the law Now if man will pretend to be a Judge what an exact knowledge of the law is required at his hand for some things are sinne to one nation which are not to another as where the just authority of the lawfull Magistrate changes the nature of the thing and makes a thing naturally indifferent necessary to them who are under his obedience some things are sinnes at one time which are not at another as all the ceremoniall law created new sinnes which were not sinnes before the law was given nor since it expir'd some things are sinnes in a man now which will not be sinnes in the same man to morrow as when a man hath contracted a just scruple against any particular action it is a sinne to doe it during the scruple and it may be sinne in him to omit it when he hath devested the scruple onely God hath Iudicium detestationis he knows and therefore detests evill and therefore flatter not thy self with a Tush God sees it not or Tush God cares not Doth it disquiet him or trouble his rest in heaven that I breake his Sabbath here Doth it wound his body or draw his bloud there that I swear by his body and bloud here Doth it corrupt any of his virgins there that I sollicit the chastity of a woman here Are his Martyrs withdrawn from their Allegeance or retarded in their service to him there because I dare not defend his cause nor speake for him nor fight for him here Beloved it is a degree of superstition and an effect of an undiscreet zeale perchance to be too forward in making indifferent things necessary and so to imprint the nature and sting of sin where naturally it is not so certainly it a more slippery and irreligious thing to be too apt to call things meerely indifferent and to forget that even in eating and drinking waking and sleeping the glory of God is intermingled as if we knew exactly the prescience and foreknowledge of God there could be nothing contingent or casuall for though there be a contingency in the nature of the thing yet it is certain to God so if we considered duly wherein the glory of God might be promov'd in every action of ours there could scarce by any action so indifferent but that the glory of God would turne the scale and make it necessary to me at that time but then private interests and private respects create a new indifferency to my apprehension and calls me to consider that thing as it is in nature and not as it is considered with that circumstance of the glory of God and so I lose that Iudicium detestationis which onely God hath absolutely and perfectly to know and therefore to detest evill and so he is a Judge And as he is a Judge so Iudicat rem he judges the nature of the thing he is so too as he hath Iudicium discretionis and so Iudicat personam he knows what is evill and he discernes when thou committest that evill Here you are fain to supply defects of laws that things done in one County may be tryed in another And that in offences of high nature transmarine offences may be inquir'd and tryed here But as the Prophet says Who measured the waters in the hollow of his hand or meted 〈◊〉 the heavens with a span who comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure or weighed the mountains in a scale So I say who hath divided heaven into shires or parishes or limited the territories and Jurisdictions there that God should not have Iudicium discretionis the power of discerning all actions in all places When there was no more to be seen or considered upon the whole earth but the garden of Paradise for from the beginning Deliciae ejus esse cum filiis hominum Gods delight was to be with the sons of men and man was only there shal we not deminish God nor speak too vulgarly of him to say that he hovered like a Falcon over Paradise and that from that height of heaven the piercing eye of God saw so little a thing as the forbidden fruit and what became of that and the reaching â—are of God heard the hissing of the Serpent and the whispering of the woman and what was concluded upon that Shall we think it little to have seen to have things done in Paradise when there was nothing else to divert
no husband such a superiority no father such a soverainty but that there lies a burden upon them too to consider with a compassionate sensiblenesse the grievances that oppresse the other part which is coupled to them For if the servant the wife the sonne be oppressed worne out annihilated there is no such thing left as a Master or a husband or a father They depend upon one another and therefore he that hath not care of his fellow destroys himselfe The wife is to submit herselfe and so is the husband too They have a burden both There is a greater subjection lies upon her then upon the Man in respect of her transgression towards her husband at first Eyen before there was any Man in the world to sollicite or tempt her chastity she could sinde another way to be salfe and treacherous to her husband both the husband and the wife offended against God but the husband offended not towards his wife but rather eate the Apple Ne contristaretur delicias suas as S. Hierome assignes the cause left by refusing to cate when she had done so he should deject her into a desperate sense of her sinne And for this fault of hers her Subjection was so much aggravated Thy desire shall be subject to thy husband and he shall rule over thee But if she had not committed that fault yet there would have been a mutuall subjection between them as there is even in Nature between both the other couples for if Man had continued in innocency yet it is most probably thought that as there would certainly have been Mariage and so children so also there would have been Magistracy and propriety and authority and so a mutuall submitting a mutuall assisting of one another in all these three relations Now that submitting of which the Apostle speakes of here is a submitting to one another a bearing of one anothers burthens what this submission is on the wives part is expressed in the two former verses And I forbeare that because husbands at home are likely enough to remember them of it but in the duty in the submitting of the husband we shall consider first what that submitting is and that is love Husbands love your wives Even the love of the husband to the wife is a burthen a submitting a descent and secondly the patterne and example of this love Even as Christ loved his Church In which second part as sometimes the accessory is greater then the principall the Symptome the accident is greater then the disease so that from which the comparison is drawn in this place is greater then that which is illustrated by it the love of Christ to his Church requires more consideration then the love of the husband to the wife and therefore it will become us to spend most of our thoughts upon that and to consider in that Quod factum and Quis sinis what Christ did for his Church and that was a bounty which could not be exceeded seipsum tradidit he gave he delivered himselfe for it And then secondly what he intended that should worke and that was first that he might make it to himselfe a glorious Church and without spot and wrinkle in the Triumphant state of the Church at last And then that whilst it continues in a Militant state upon Earth it might have preparations to that glory by being sanctified and cleansed by the washing of water through his Word he provides the Church meanes of sanctification here by his Word and Sacraments First then De Amoremaritali of this contracting a Mans love to the person of a wife of one woman as we find an often exclamation in the Prophets Onus visionis The burden of my prophecy upon Nineveh and Onus verbi Domini The burden of the word of God upon Israel so there is Onus amoris a burden of love when a Man is appointed whom he shall love When Onan was appointed by his father Iudah to goe in to his brothers widow and to doe the office of a kinsman to her he conceived such an unwillingnesse to doe so when he was bid as that he came to that detestable act for which God slew him And therefore the Panegyrique that raised his wit as high as he could to praise the Emperour Constantine and would expresse it in praising his continence and chastity he expressed it by saying that he waried young that as soon as his years endangered him formavit animum maritalem nihil de concessu atati voluptatibus admittens he was content to be a husband and accepted not that freedome of pleasure which his years might have excused He concludes it thus Novum jam tum miraculum Iuvenis â—xorius Behold a miracle such a young Man limiting his affections in a wife At first the heates and lusts of youth overflow all as the waters overflowed all at the beginning and when they did so the Earth was not onely barren there were no Creatures no herbs produced in that but even the waters themselves that did overflow all were barren too there were no fishes no fowls produced out of that as long as a Mans affections are scattered there is nothing but accursed barrennesse but when God says and is heard and obeyed in it Let the waters be gathered into one place let all thy affections be setled upon one wife then the earth and the waters became fruitfull then God gives us a type and figure of the eternity of the joyes of heaven in the succession and propagation of children here upon the earth It is true this contracting of our affections is a burden it is a submitting of our selves All States that made Lawes and proposed rewards for maried Men conceived it so that naturally they would be loth to doe it God maried his first couple as soone as he made them he dignified the state of Mariage by so many Allegories and figures to which he compares the uniting of Christ to his Church and the uniting of our soules to Christ and by directing the first Miracle of Christ to be done at a Mariage Many things must concurre to the dignifying of Mariage because in our corrupt nature the apprehension is generall that it is burdenous and a submitting and a descending thing to mary And therefore Saint Hierome argues truly out of these words Husbands love your Wifes Audiant Episcopi audiant presbyteri audiant doctores subjectis suis se esse subjectos let Bishops and Priests and Doctors learne in this that when they have maried themselves to a charge They are become subject to their Subjects For by being a husband I become subject to that sex which is naturally subject to Man though this subjection be no more in this place but to love that one woman Love then when it is limited by a law is a subjection but it is a subjection commanded by God Nihil majus à te subjecti animo factum est quam quod imper are coepistiâ— A Prince
between God and him he is well-near learned enough There may be enough in remembring our selves but sometimes that 's the hardest of all many times we are farthest off from our selves most forgetfull of our selves It was a narrow enlargement it was an addition that diminish'd the sense when our former Translators added that word themselves All the world shall remember themselves there is no such particularity as themselves in that text But it is onely as our later Translators have left it All the world shall remember and no more Let them remember what they will what they can let them but remember thoroughly and then as it follows there They shall turn unto the Lord and all the kindreds of the Nations shall worship him Therefore David makes that the key into this Psalme Psalmus ad Recordationem A Psalm for Remembrance Being lock'd up in a close prison of multiplied calamities this turns the key this opens the door this restores him to liberty if he can remember Non est sanitas there is no soundnesse no health in my flesh Doest thou wondet at that Remember thy selfe and thou wilt see that thy case is worse then so That there is no rest in thy bones That 's true too But doest thou wonder at that Remember thy self and thou wilt see the cause of all that The Lord is angry with thee Find'st thou that true and wondrest why the Lord should be angry with thee Remember thy self well and thou wilt see it is because of thy sins There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne So have I let you in into the whole Psalm by this key by awaking your memory that it is a Psalm for Remembrance And that that you are to remember is that all calamities that fall upon you fall not from the malice or power of man but from the anger of God And then that Gods anger fals not upon you from his Hate or his Decree but from your sins There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne Which words we shall first consider as they are our present object as they are historically and literally to be understood of David And secondly in their retrospect as they look back upon the first Adam and so concern Mankind collectively and so you and I and all have our portion in these calamities And thirdly we shall consider them in their prospect in their future relation to the second Adam in Christ Iesus in whom also all mankinde was collected and the calamities of all men had their Ocean and their confluence and the cause of them the anger of God was more declared and the cause of that anger that is sin did more abound for the sins of all the world were his by imputation for this Psalm some of our Expositors take to be a historicall and personall Psalm determin'd in David some a Catholique and universall Psalm extended to the whole condition of man and some a Propheticall and Evangelicall Psalm directed upon Christ. None of them inconveniently for we receive help and health from every one of these acceptations first Adam was the Patient and so his promise the promise that he received of a Messiah is our physick And then David was the Patient and there his Example is our physick And lastly Christ Iesus was the Patient and so his blood is our physick In Adam we shall finde the Scriptum est the medicine is in our books an assurance of a Messiah there is In David we shall find the Probatum est that this medicine wrought upon David and in Christ we finde the deceit it self Thus you may take this physick thus you may apply it to your selves In every acceptation as we consider it in David in our selves in Christ we shall consider first That specification of humane misery and calamity expressed here sicknesse and an universall sicknesse No soundnesse in the flesh And more then that trouble and an universall trouble No peace no rest not in the bones And then in a second branch we shall see that those calamities proceed from the anger of God we cannot discharge them upon Nature or Fortune or Power or Malice of Men or Times They are from the anger of God and they are as the Originall Text hath it à facie irae Dei from the face of the anger of God from that anger of God that hath a face that looks upon something in us and growes not out of a hate in God or decree of God against us And then lastly this that Gods anger lookes upon is sin God is not angry till he see sin nor with me till it come to be my sinne and though Originall sinne be my sinne and sicknesse and death would follow though there were no more but Originall sinne yet God comes not to this Non sanitas Nâ— soundnesse in my flesh nor to this Nâ—n pax No rest in my bones till I have made sinne my sinne by act and habit too by doing it and using to doe it But then though it bee but Peccatum in the singular so the Text hath it One sinne yet for that one beloved sinne especially when that my sinne comes to have a face for so the Originall phrase is in this place too à facie peccati from the face of my sinne when my sin looks bigge and justifies it self then come these calamities No soundnesse in the flesh â—o rest in the bones to their heighth because the anger of God which exals them is in the exaltation There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither any rest in my bones because of my sin All these particulars will best arise to us in our second consideration when wee consider Hamanitatem not Hominem our humane condition as we are all kneaded up in Adam and not this one person David But because we are in the consideration of health and consequently of physick for the true and proper use of physick is to preserve health and but by accident to restore it we embraâ—e that Rule Medioâ—rum theoria experientia est Practise is a Physicians study and he concludes out of events for says he He that professes himself a Physician without experience Chronica de future scribit He undertakes to write a Chronicle of things before they are done which is an irregular and a perverse way Therefore in this spirituall physick of the soul we will deal upon Experience too and see first how this wrought upon this particular person upon David David durst not presume that God could not or would not bee angry Anger is not always a Defect nor an inordinatenesse in man Be angry and sin not anger is not utterly to be rooted out of our ground and cast away but transplanted A Gardiner does wel to grub up thornes in his garden there they would
find him upon the consideration of the cause of all these distresses That it is from the Contemplation of the anger of God There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine Anger there wee shall finde a way offered to him that may if hee pursue it aright bring him to a Reparation to a Redintegration for if hee look upon the Anger of God in a right line it will shew him that as that Anger is the cause of his Calamities so his sinnes are the cause of that Anger May wee not piously apply that Proverbiall speech Corruptio optimi pessima that when good things take in another nature then their own they take it in the highest exaltation thus that when God who is all mercy growes angry he becomes all anger The Holy Ghost himselfe seemes to have given us leave to make that application when expressing God in the height of his anger hee calls God then in that anger a Dove wee read it the fiercenesse of an oppressour but Saint Hierome reads it The anger of a Dove And truly there is no other word then that in that tongue the word is Ionah that signifies a Dove and that word does signifie a Dove in many other places of Scripture And that Prophet which made his flight from God when hee sent him to Nineveh is called by that name Ionah a Dove And the Fathers of the Latine Church have read and interpreted it so of a Dove Some of them take Nebuchadnezzar to be this angry Dove because hee left his owne Dove-coat to feed abroad to prey upon them and some because the Dove was the Armes and Ensigne of the Assyrians from the time of Semiramis But the rest take this Dove to bee God himselfe and that the sinnes of men had put a Gall into a Dove Anger into God And then to what height that anger growes is expressed in the Prophet Hosea I will meet them says God when hee is pleased he says hee will wait for them as a Bear no longer a Dove as a Bear robbed of her whelpes sensible of his injuries and I will rent the caule of their hearts shiver them in peeces with a dispersion with a discerption And I will devour them as with a Lyon nothing shall re-unite them again But I will break them as a Potters vessell that cannot be made whole again Honour not the malice of thine enemy so much as to say thy misery comes from him Dishonour not the complexion of the times so much as to say thy misery comes from them justifie not the Deity of Fortune so much as to say thy misery comes from her Finde God pleased with thee and thou hast a hook in the nostrils of every Leviathan power cannot shake thee Thou hast a wood to cast into the waters of Marah the bitternesse of the times cannot hurt thee thou hast a Rock to dwell upon and the dream of a Fortunes wheel can not overturn thee But if the Lord be angry he needs no Trumpets to call in Armies if he doe but sibilare muscam hisse and whisper for the flye and the Bee there is nothing so little in his hand as cannot discomfort thee discomfit thee dissolve and powr-out attenuate and annihilate the very marrow of thy soul. Every thing is His and therefore every thing is Hee thy sicknesse is his sword and therefore it is Hee that strikes thee with it still turne upon that consideration the Lord is angry But then look that anger in the â—face take it in the right â—line as the Originall phrase in this text directs à facieirae Dei There is no soundnesse in my flesh from the face of thine anger As there is a Manifestation of Gods anger in this phrase The face of Gods anger so there is a Multiplication a plurality too for it is indeed Mippenei à faciebus the faces the divers manifestations of Gods anger for the face of God and so of every thing proceeding from God is that by which God or that work of God is manifested to us And therefore since God manifests his anger so many usefull and medicinall ways unto thee take heed of looking upon his anger where his anger hath no face no manifestation take heed of imagining an anger in God amounting to thy Damnation in any such Decree as that God should be angry with thee in that height without looking upon thy sinnes or without any declaration why hee is angry Hee opens his face to thee in his Law he manifests himself to thee in the Conditions by which he hath made thy salvation possible and till he see thee in the transgression of them he is not angry And when he is angry so be glad he shews it in his face in his outward declarations that fire smothered would consume all Gods anger reserved till the last day will last as long as that day as that undeterminable day for ever When should we goe about to quench that fire that never bursts out or to seek reconciliation before a hostility be declared Therefore Saint Bernard begs this anger at Gods hands Irascaris mihi Domine O Lord be angry with me And therefore David thanks God in the behalf of that people for his anger Thou forgavest them though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions The fires of hell in their place in hell have no light But any degrees of the fires of Hell that can break out in this life have in Gods own purpose so much light as that through the darkest smother of obduration or desperation God would have us see him Therefore Saint Hierome makes this milder use of this phrase that God shewes faciem irae but non iram that his face of anger is rather a telling us that hee will bee angry then that hee is angry yet the corrections that God inflicts to reduce us if wee profit not by them were anger Ab initio wee shall suffer for the sinnes from which those corrections should have reduced us and for that particular sinne of not being reduced by them but if they have their effect there was not a drop of gall there was not a dramme of anger in the anger Now that that God intends in them is that as wee apprehend our calamities to proceed from Gods anger and to discharge Destiny and Fortune so wee apprehend that anger to proceed from our own sinnes and so discharge God himselfe There is no rest in my bones because of my sin As we are the sons of Dust worse the sonnes of Death we must say to Corruption Thou art my Father and to the worm Thou art my Mother so we may say to the anger of God it is our grandfather that begot these miseries but wee must say too to our sinne Thou art my great-grandfather that begot Gods anger upon us and here is our wofull pedegree howsoever wee be otherwise descended 'T is true there is no soundnesse there is misery enough
upon thee and true that God is angry vehemently angry But Expone juststiam irae Dei deal clearly with the world and clear God and confesse it is because of thy sinne When Cain says My sin is greater then can be forgiven that word Gnavon is ambiguous it may bee sinne it may bee punishment and wee know not whether his impatience grew out of the horrour of his sinne or the weight of his punishment But here wee are directed by a word that hath no ambiguity Kata signifies sin and nothing but sinne Here the holy Ghost hath fixed thee upon a word that will not suffer thee to consider the punishment nor the cause of the punishment the anger but the cause of that anger and all the sin Wee see that the bodily sicknesse and the death of many is attributed to one kind of sinne to the negligent receiving of the Sacrament For this cause many are weak and sick amongst you and many sleep Imaginem judicii ostenderat God had given a representation of the day of Judgement in that proceeding of his for then we shall see many men condemned for sinnes for which we never suspected them so wee thinke men dye of Fevers whom we met lately at the Sacrament and God hath cut them off perhaps for that sin of their unworthy receiving the Sacrament My miseries are the fruits of this Tree Gods anger is the arms that spreads it but the root is sin My sin which is another consideration We say of a Possession Transit cum onere It passes to me with the burthen that my Father laid upon it his debt is my debt so does it with the sin too his sin by which he got that possession is my sin if I know it and perchance the punishment mine though I know not the sin Adams sin 6000 years agoe is my sin and their sin that shall sinne by occasion of any wanton writings of mine will be my sin though they come after Wofull riddle sin is but a privation and yet there is not such another positive possession sin is nothing and yet there is nothing else I sinned in the first man that ever was and but for the mercy of God in something that I have said or done might sin that is occasion sin in the last man that ever shall be But that sin that is called my sinne in this text is that that is become mine by an habituall practise or mine by a wilfull relapse into it And so my sin may kindle the anger of God though it bee but a single sinne One sinne as it is delivered here in the singular and no farther Because of my sinne Every man may find in himself Peccatum complicatum sinne wrapped up in sinne a body of sin We bring Elements of our own earth of Covetousnesse water of unsteadfastnesse ayre of putrefaction and fire of licentiousnesse and of these elements we make a body of sinne as the Apostle says of the Naturall body There are many members but one body so we may say of our sin it hath a wanton eye a griping hand an itching ear an insatiable heart and feet swift to shed blood and yet it is but one body of sin It is all â—and yet it is but One But let it be simply and singularly but One which is a miracle in sin truly I think an impossibility in sin to be single to be but One for that unclean Spirit which possessed the man that dwelt amongst the tombs carryed it at first as though he had been a single Devill and he alone in that man I I adjure thee says he to Christ and torment not me not me so far in the singular but when Christ puts him to it he confesses we are many and my name is legion So though thy sinne slightly examined may seem but One yet if thou dare presse it it will confesse a plurality a legion if it be but One yet if that One be made thine by an habituall love to it as the plague needs not the help of a Consumption to kill thee so neither does Adultery need the help of Murder to damn thee For this making of any One sin thine thine by an habituall love thereof will grow up to the last and heaviest waight intimated in that phrase which is also in this clause of the Text In facie paccati that this sin will have a face that is a confidence and a devesting of all 〈◊〉 or disguises There cannot bee a heavier punishment laid upon any sinne then Christ lays upon scandall It were better for him a mil-stone were hanged about his neck and hee drowned in the Sea If something worse then such a death belong to him surely it is eternall Death And this this eternall death is interminated by Christ in cases where there is not always sinne in the action which wee doe but if we doe any action so as that it may scandalize another or occasion sin in him we are bound to study and favour the weaknesse of other men and not to doe such things as they may think sins We must prevent the mis-interpretation yea the malice of other men for though the fire be theirs the fewell or at least the â—ellows is ours The uncharitablenesse the malice is in them but the awaking and the stirring thereof is in our carelesnesse who were not watchfull upon our actions But when an action comes to be sin indeed and not onely occasionally sin because it scandalizes another but really sin in it selfe then even the Poet tels you Maxima debetur pueris reverentia si quid Tâ—rpe paras Take heed of doing any sinne in the sight of thy Child for if we break through that wall we shall come quickly to that faciâ—m Sacerdotis non erubuerunt they will not be afraid nor ashamed in the presence of the Priest they will look him in the face nay receive at his hands and yet sin their sinne that minute in their hearts and to that also faciem seniorum non erubuerunt they will not be afraid nor ashamed of the Office of the Magistrate but sin for nothing or sin at a price bear out or buy out all their sins They sin as Sodom and bide it not is the highest charge that the Holy Ghost could lay upon the sinner When they come to say Our lips are ours who is Lord ever us They will say so of their hands and of all their bodies They are ours who shall forbid us to doe what wee will with them And what lack these open sinners of the last judgement and the condemnation therof That judgement is that men shall stand naked in the sight of one another and all their sinnes shall be made manifest to all and this open sinner does so and chuses to doe so even in this world When David prays so devoutly to be cleansed from his secret sins and Saint Paul glories so devoutly in having renounced the
hidden things of dishonesty how great a burthen is there in these open and avowed sins sins that have put on so brasen a face as to out-face the Minister and out-face the Magistrate and call the very Power and Justice of God in question whether he do hate or can punish a sinne for they doe what they can to remove that opinion out of mens hearts Truly as an Hypocrite at Church may doe more good then a devout man in his Chamber at home be cause the Hypocrites outward piety though counterfeit imprints a good example upon them who doe not know it to bee counterfeit and wee cannot know that he that is absent from Church now is now at his prayers in his Chamber so a lesser sinne done with an open avowment and confidence may more prejudice the Kingdome of God then greater in secret And this is that which may be principally intended or atleast usefully raised our of this phrase of the Holy Ghost in David A facie peccati that the habituall sinner comes to sin not onely with a negligence who know it but with a glorious desire that all the world might know it and with a shame that any such Iudge as feared not God nor regarded man should be more feareless of God or regardless of man then he But now beloved when we have laid man thus low Miserable because Man and then Diseased and that all over without any soundnesse even in his whole substance in his flesh and in the height of this disease Restlesse too and Restlesse even in his bones diffident in his strongest assurances And when we have laid him lower then that made him see the Cause of all this misery to be the Anger of God the inevitable anger of an incensed God and such an anger of God as hath a face a manifestation a reality and not that God was angry with him in a Decree before he shewed man his face in the Law and saw Mans face in the transgression of the law And laid him lower then that too made him see the cause of this anger as it is sinne so to be his sinne sinne made his by an habituall love thereof which though it may be but one yet is become an out-facing sinne a sinne in Contempt and confidence when we have laid Man laid you thus low in your own eyes we returne to the Canon and rule of that Physician whom they call Evangelist aâ—â— medicinae the Evangelist of Physique Sit intentio prima in omni medicina comfâ—rtare whether the physician purge or lance or sear his principall care and his end is to comfort and strengthen so though we have insisted upon Humane misery and the cause of that the anger of God and the cause of that anger sinne in that excesse yet we shall dismisse you with that Consolation which was first in our intention and shall be our conclusion that as this Text hath a personall aspect upon David alone and therefore we gave you hit case and then a generall retrospect upon Adam and all in him and therefore we gave you your own case so it hath also an Evangelicall prospect upon Christ and therefore for your comfort and as a bundle of Myrrhe in your bosomes we shall give you his case too to whom these words belong as well as to Adam or David or you There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne If you will see the miseries of Man in their exaltation and in their accumulation too in their weight and in their number take them in the Ecce home when Christ was presented from Pilate scourged and scorned Ecce home behold man in that man in the Prophets They have reproched the feetsteps of thine Anointed says David slandred his actions and conversation He hath no form nor comlinesse nor beauty that we should desire to see him says Esay Despised rejected of men A man of sorrows and acquainted with griefes And Ecce homo behold man in that man in the whole history of the Gospell That which is said of us of sinfull men is true in him the salvation of men from the sole of the foot even unto the Head there is no soundnesse but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores That question will never receive answer which Christ askes Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow Never was never will there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow because there can never be such a person to suffer sorrow Affliction was upon him and upon all him for His soule was heavy unto death Even upon his Bones fire was sent into his bones and it prevailed against him And the highest cause of this affliction was upon him the anger of God The Lord had afflicted him in the day of his fierce anger The height of Gods anger is Dereliction and he was brought to his Vt quid dereliquisti My God my God why hast thou forsaken me We did esteem him striken of the Lord says Esay And we were not deceived in it Percutiam pastorem says Christ himselfe of himselfe out of the Prophet I will smite the shepheard and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered And then the cause of this anger sinne was so upon him as that though in one consideration the raine was upon all the world and onely this fleece of Gedeon dry all the world surrounded with sinne and onely He innocent yet in another line we finde all the world dry and onely Gedeons fleece wet all the world innoceâ— and onely Christ guilty But as there is a Verè tulit and a Verè portavit surely he bore those griefes and surely he carried those sorrows so they were Verè nostri surely he hath borne our griefes and carried our sorrows he was wounded for our transgressioâ—â— and bruised for our iniquitles The Chastisement of our peace was upon him 〈◊〉 â—efore it must necessarily follow as it does follow there with his stripes wee 〈◊〉 for God will not exact a debt twice of Christ for me and of me too 〈◊〉 therefore Quare moriemini Domus Israel since I have made ye of the houshold â— of Israel why will ye die since ye are recovered of your former sicknesses why will die of a new disease of a suspicion or jealousie that this recovery this redemption in Christ Iesus belongs not to you Will ye say It is a fearfull thing to fall into the hands Dei viventis of the living God 'T is so a fearfull thing But if Deâ—s mortuus the God of life bee but dead for mee be fallen into my hands applied to mee made mine it is no fearefull thing to fall into the hands of the living God Non sat is est medicum fecisse suum officium nisi agrotus adstantes sua It is not enough for Christ Jesus to have prepared you the balm of his bloud
not thus angry for one sin And again they are such sins as have been long in going and are now got over supergressae sunt they are gone gone over And then lastly for that first part supergressae Caput they are gone my head In which exaltation is intimated all this first sicut tectum sicut fornix they are over his head as a roofe as a cieling as an Arch they have made a wall of separation betwixt God and us so they are above our head And then sicut clamor they are ascended as a noise they are got up to heaven and cry to God for vengeance so they are above our head And again sicut aquae they are risen and swollen as waters they compass us they smother us they blinde us they stupefie us so they are above our head But lastly and principally sicut Dominus they are got above us as a Tyran and an usurper for so they are above our head too And in these we shall determine our first part When from thence we come to our second part in which as in this we shall have done their number we shall consider their greatnesse we finde them first heavy sinne is no light matter And then they are too heavy a little weight would but ballast us this sinkes us Too heavy for me even for a man equall to David and where is he when is that man for says our text they are as heavy Burden And the nature and incovenience of a Burden is first to Crooken and bend us downward from our naturall posture which is erect for this incurvation implies a declination in the inordinate love of the Creature Incurvat And then the nature of a burden is to Tyre us our very sinne becomes fulsome and wearisome to us fatigat and it hath this inconvenience too ut retardet it slackens our pace in our right course though we be not tried yet we cannot goe so fast as we should in any way towards godliness and lastly this is the inconvenience of a burden too ut praecipitet it makes us still apt and ready to stumble and to fall under it It crookens us it deprives us of our rectitude it tires us extinguishes our alacrity It slackens us enfeebles and intepidates our zeale It occasions our stumbling opens and submits us to every emergent tentation And these be the dangers and the mischievous inconveniences notified to us in those two Elegancies of the holy Ghost the supergressae the multiplicity of sinnes They are gone over my head and the gravatae They are a heavy burden too heavy for me First then all these things are literally spoken of David By application of us and by figure of Christ. Historically David morally we Typically Christ is the subject of this text In Davids person we shal insist no longer upon them but onely to look upon the two generall parts the multiplicity of his sinne and the weight and greatnesse thereof And that onely in the matter of Vriah as the Holy Ghost without reproching the adultery or the murder after Davids repentance vouchsafes to mollifie his manifold and his hainous sinne First he did wrong to a loyall and a faithfull servant and who can hope to be well served that does so He corrupted that woman who for ought appearing to the contrary had otherwise preserved her honour and her Conscience entire It is a sinne To runne with a theife when thou seest him or to have thy pâ—rtion with them that are adulterers already to accompany them in their sinne who have an inclination to that sinne before is a sinne but to solicite them who have no such inclination nor but for thy solicitation would have had is much more inexcusable In Davids sinne there was thus much more he defrauded some to whom his love was due in dividing himselfe with a strange woman To steale from another man though it be to give to the poor and to such poor as would otherwise sterve if that had not been stollen is injustice is a sinne To divide that heart which is intirely given to a wife in mariage with another woman is a sinne though she to whom it is so given pretend or might truly suffer much torment and anguish if it were not done Davids sinne flew up to a higher spheare He drew the enemy to blaspheme the name of God in the victory over Israel where Vriah was slaine God hates nothing more in great persons then that prevarication to pretend to assist his cause and promove his Religion and yet underhand give the enemies of that Religion way to grow greater His sinnes indeed were too many to be numbred too great too to be weighed in comparison with others Vriah was innocent towards him and faithfull in his imployment and at that time in an actuall and in a dangerous service for his person for the State for the Church Him David betrays in his letter to Ioab Him David makes the instrument of his own death by carrying those letters the warrants of his own execution And he makes Ioab a man of honour his instrument for a murder to cover an adultery Thus many sinnes and these heavy degrees of sin were in this one and how many and how weighty were in that of numbring of his people wee know not We know that Satan provoked him to doe it and we know that Ioab who seconded and accomplished his desire in the murder of Vriah did yet disswade and dis-counsell this numbring of the people and not out of reason of State but as an expresse sin Put all together and lesse then all we are sure David belied not himself His iniquities were gone over his head and as a heavy burden they were too heavy for him Though this will be a good rule for the most part in all Davids confessions and lamentations that though that be always literally true of himself for the sinne or for the punishment which he says personally David did suffer that which he complains of in the Psalms in a great measure yet David speaks prophetically as well as personally and to us who exceed him in his sins the exaltation of those miseries which we finde so often in this book are especially intended That which David relates to have been his own case he foresees will be ours too in a higher degree And that 's our second and our principall object of all those circumstances in the multiplicity and in the hainousnesse of sin And therefore to that second part these considerations in our selves we make thus much hast First then they were peccata sins iniquities And we must not think to ease our selves in that subtilty of the School Peccatum nihil That sin is nothing because sinne We are not all Davids amabiles lovely and beloved in that measure that David was men according to Gods heart But we are all Adams terrestres and lutosi earth and durty earth red and bloudy earth and therefore in our selves as deriv'd from
how much more may we conceive an unexpressible association that 's too far off an assimilation that 's not neare enough an identification the Schoole would venture to say so with God in that state of glory Where as the Sunne by shining upon the Moone makes the Moone a Planet a Star as well as it selfe which otherwise would be but the thickest and darkest part of that Spheare so those beames of Glory which shall issue from my God and fall upon me shall make me otherwise a clod of earth and worse a darke Soule a Spirit of darkenesse an Angell of Light a Star of Glory a something that I cannot name now not imagine now nor to morrow nor next yeare but even in that particular I shall be like God that as he that asked a day to give a definition of God the next day asked a week and then a moneth and then a yeare so undeterminable would my imaginations be if I should goe about to thinke now what I shall be there I shall be so like God as that the Devill himselfe shall not know me from God so far as to finde any more place to fasten a tentation upon me then upon God nor to conceive any more hope of my falling from that kingdome then of Gods being driven out of it for though I shal not be immortall as God yet I shall be as immortall as God And there 's my Image of God of God considered altogether and in his unity in the state of Glory I shall have also then the Image of all the three Persons of the Trinity Power is the Fathers and a greater Power then he exercises here I shall have there here he overcomes enemies but yet here he hath enemies there there are none here they cannot prevaile there they shall not be So Wisedome is the Image of the Sonne And there I shall have better Wisdome then spirituall Wisdome it selfe is here for here our best Wisedome is but to goe towards our end there it is rest in our end here it is to seek to bee Glorified by God there it is that God may be everlastingly glorified by mee The Image of the holy Ghost is Goodnesse here our goodnesse is mixt with some ill faith mixt with scruples and good workes mixt with a love of praise and hope of better mixt with feare of worse There I shall have sincere goodnesse goodnesse impermixt intemerate and indeterminate goodnesse so good a place as no ill accident shall annoy it so good company as no impertinent no importune person shall disorder it so full a goodnesse as no evill of sinne no evill of punishment for former sinnes can enter so good a God as shall no more keep us in fear of his anger nor in need of his mercy but shall fill us first and establish us in that fulnesse in the same instant and give us a satiety that we can with no more and an infallibility that we can lose none of that and both at once Where as the Cabalists expresse our nearenesse to God in that state in that note that the name of man and the name of God Adam and Iehovah in their numerall letters are alike and equall so I would have leave to expresse that inexpressible state so far as to say that if there can be other world imagined besides this that is under our Moone and if there could be other Gods imagined of those worlds besides this God to whose Image we are thus made in Nature in Grace in Glory I had rather be one of these Saints in this heaven then of those Gods in those other worlds I shall be like the Angels in a glorified Soul and the Angels shall not be like me in a glorified body The holy noblenesse and the religious ambition that I would imprint in you for attaining of this Glory makes me medismiss you with this note for the feare of missing that Glory that as we have taken just occasion to magnifie the goodnesse of God towards us in that he speakes plurally Faciamus Let us All us do this and so powers out the blessings of the whole Trinity upon us in this Image of himselfe in every Person of the three and in all these wayes which we have considered so when the anger of God is justly kindled against us God collects himselfe summons himself assembles himselfe musters himselfe and threatens plurally too for of those foure places in Scripture in which onely as we noted before God speakes of himselfe in a Royall plurall God speakes in anger and in a preparation to destruction in one of those foure intirely as intirely he speakes of mercy but in one of them in this text here he says meerly out of mercy Faciamus Let us us all us make man and in the same plurality the same universality he says after Descendamus confundamus Let us us all us goe downe to them and confound them as meerly out of indignation and anger as here out of mercy And in the other two places where God speakes plurally he speakes not meerly in mercy nor meerly in justice in neither but in both he mingles both So that God carries himselfe so equally herein as that no Soul no Church no State may any more promise it selfe patience in God if it provoke him then suspect anger in God if we conforme our selves to him For from them that set themselves against him God shall withdraw his Image in all the Persons and all the Attributes the Father shall withdraw his Power and we shall be enfeebled in our forces the Sonne his Wisdome and we shall be infatuated in our counsailes the holy Ghost his Goodnesse and we shall be corrupted in our manners and corrupted in our Religion and be a prey to temporall and spirituall enemies and change the Image of God into the Image of the Beast and as God loves nothing more then the Image of himselfe in his Sonne and then the Image of his Sonne Christ Jesus in us so he hates nothing more then the Image of Antichrist in them in whom he had imprinted his Sonnes Image that is declinations towards Antichrist or concurrencies with Antichrist in them who were borne and baptized and catechised and blessed in that profession of his truth That God who hath hitherto delivered us from all cause or colour of jealousies or suspitions thereof in them whom he hath placed over us to conforme us to his Image in a holy life that sinnes continued and multiplyed by us against him doe not so provoke him against us that those two great helps the assiduity of Preaching and the personall and exemplary piety and constancy in our Princes be not by our sinnes made unprofitable to us For that 's the heighth of Gods malediction upon a Nation when the assiduity of preaching and the example of a Religious Prince does them no good but aggravates their fault SERMON XXX Preached to the Countesse of Bedford then at Harrington house
too much for so I may presume Of Schoolmen some affirm Prayer to be an act of our will for we would have that which we aske Others of our understanding for by it we ascend to God and better our knowledge which is the proper aliment and food of our understanding so that is a perplexed case But all agree that it is an act of our Reason and therefore must be reasonable For onely reasonable things can pray for the beasts and Ravens Psalme 147. 9. are not said to pray for food but to cry Two things are required to make a Prayer 1. Pius affectus which was not in the Devills request Matth. 8. 31. Let us goe into the Swine nor Job 1. 2. Stretch out thy hand and touch all he hath and stretch out thy hand and touch his bones and therefore these were not Prayers And it must be Rerum decentium for our government in that point this may inform us Things absolutely good as Remission of sinnes we may absolutely beg and to escape things absolutely ill as sinne But mean and indifferent things qualified by the circumstances we must aske conditionally and referringly to the givers will For 2 Cor. 8. when Paul begged stimulum Carnis to be taken from him it was not granted but he had this answer My grace is sufficient for thee Let us now not in curiosity but for instruction consider the reason They know not what they doe First if Ignorance excuse And then if they were ignorant Hast thou O God filled all thy Scriptures both of thy Recorders and Notaries which have penned the History of thy love to thy People and of thy Secretaries the Prophets admitted to the foreknowledge of thy purposes and instructed in thy Cabinet hast thou filled these with prayses and perswasions of wisedome and knowledge and must these persecutors be pardoned for their ignorance Hast thou bid Esay to say 27. 11. It is a people of no understanding therefore he that made them shall not have compassion of them And Hosea 4. 6. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge and now dost thou say Forgive them because they know not Shall ignorance which is often the cause of sinne often a sinne it self often the punishment of sinne and ever an infirmity and disease contracted by the first great sinne advantage them Who can understand his faults saith the man according to thy heart Psalme 19. 12. Lord cleanse me from my secret faults He durst not make his ignorance the reason of his prayer but prayed against ignorance But thy Mercy is as the Sea both before it was the Sea for it overspreads the whole world and since it was called into limits for it is not the lesse infinite for that And as by the Sea the most remote and distant Nations enjoy one another by traffique and commerce East and West becoming neighbours so by mercy the most different things are united and reconciled Sinners have Heaven Traytors are in the Princes bosome and ignorant persons are in the spring of wisdome being forgiven not onely though they be ignorant but because they are ignorant But all ignorance is not excusable nor any lesse excusable then not to know what ignorance is not to be excused Therefore there is an ignorance which they call Nescientiam a not knowing of things not appertaining to us This we had had though Adam had stood and the Angels have it for they know not the latter day and therefore for this we are not chargeable They call the other privation which if it proceed meerly from our owne sluggishnesse in not searching the meanes made for our instruction is ever inexcusable If from God who for his owne just ends hath cast clouds over those lights which should guide us it is often excusable For 1 Tim. 1. 13. Paul saith I was ablasphemer and a persecutor and an oppressor but I was received to mercy for I did it ignorantly through unbelief So though we are all bound to believe and therefore faults done by unbeliefe cannot escape the name and nature of sinne yet since beliefe is the immediate gift of God faults done by unbeliefe without malicious concurrences and circumstances obtaine mercy and pardon from that abundant fountaine of grace Christ Jesus And therefore it was a just reason Forgive them for they know not If they knew not which is evident both by this speech from truth it self and by 2 Cor. 2. 8. Had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory and Acts 3. 17. I know that through ignorance ye did it And though after so many powerfull miracles this ignorance were vincible God having revealed enough to convert them yet there seemes to be enough on their parts to make it a perplexed case and to excuse though not a malitious persecuting yet a not consenting to his Doctrine For they had a Law Whosoever shall make himself the sonne of God let him dye And they spoke out of their Lawes when they said We have no other King but Caesar. There were therefore some among them reasonably and zealously ignorant And for those the Sonne ever-welcome and well-heard begged of his Father ever accessible and exorable a pardon ever ready and naturall We have now passed through all those roomes which we unlockt and opened at first And now may that point Why this prayer is remembred onely by one Evangelist and why by Luke be modestly inquired For we are all admitted and welcommed into the acquaintance of the Scriptures upon such conditions as travellers are into other Countries if we come as praisers and admirres of their Commodities and Government not as spies into the mysteries of their State nor searchers nor calumniators of their weaknesses For though the Scriptures like a strong rectified State be not endangered by such a curious malice of any yet he which brings that deserves no admittance When those great Commissioners which are called the Septuagint sent from Hierusalem to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greeke had perfected their work it was and is an argument of Divine assistance that writing severally they differed not The same may prove even to weake and faithlesse men that the holy Ghost super-intended the foure Evangelists because they differ not as they which have written their harmonies make it evident But to us faith teacheth the other way And we conclude not because they agree the holy Ghost directed for heathen Writers and Malefactors in examinations do so but because the holy Ghost directed we know they agree and differ not For as an honest man ever of the same thoughts differs not from himself though he do not ever say the same things if he say not contraries so the foure Evangelists observe the uniformity and samenesse of their guide though all did not say all the same things since none contradicts any And as when my soule which enables all my limbs to their functions disposes my legs to go my whole body is truly said to
what ground he sayes or does or suffers that which he suffers and does and sayes Howsoever he pretend the honour of God in his testimony yet if the thing be materially false false in it self though true in his opinion or formally false true in it self but not known to be so to him that testifies it both ways he is an incompetent witnesse And this takes away the honour of having been witnesses for Christ and the consolation and style of Martyrs both from them who upon such evidence as can give no assurance that is traedi tions of men have grounded their faith in God and from them who take their light in corners and conventicles and not from the City set upon the top of a hill the Church of God Those Roman Priests who have given their lives those Separatists which have taken a voluntary banishment are not competent witnesses for the glory of God for a witnesse must know and qui testatur de scientia testetur de modo scientiae sayes the Law He that will prove any thing by his knowledge must prove how he came by that knowledge The Papist hath not the knowledge of his Doctrine from any Scripture the Separatist hath not the knowledge of his Discipline from any precedent any example in the primitive Church How farre then is that wretched and sinfull man from giving any testimony or glory to Christ in his life who never comes to the knowledge and consideration why he was sent into this life who is so farre from doing his errand that he knowes not what his errand was not whether he received any errand or no. But as though that God who for infinite millions of ages delighted himself in himself and was sufficient in himself and yet at last did bestow six dayes labour for the creation and provision of man as though that God who when man was sowr'd in the lumpe poysoned in the fountaine withered in the roote in the loins of Adam would then ingage his Sonne his beloved Sonne his onely Sonne to be man by a temporary life and to be no man by a violent and a shamefull death as though that God who when he was pleased to come to a creation might have left out thee amongst privations amongst nothings or might have shut thee up in the close prison of a bare being and no more as he hath done earth and stones or if he would have given thee life might have left thee a Toad or if he would have given thee a humane soule might have left thee a heathen without any knowledge of God or if he had afforded thee a Religion might have left thee a Iew or though he had made thee a Christian might have left thee a Papist as though that God that hath done so much more in breeding thee in his true Church had done all this for nothing thou passest thorough this world like a flash like a lightning whose beginning or end no body knowes like an Ignis fatuus in the aire which does not onely not give light for any use but not so much as portend or signifie any thing and thou passest out of the world as thy hand passes out of a basin of water which may bee somewhat the fouler for thy washing in it but retaines no other impression of thy having been there and so does the world for thy life in it When God placed Adam in the world he bad him fill it and subdue it and rule it and when he placed him in paradise he bad him dresse and keepe paradise and when he sent his children into the over-flowing Laud of promise he bad them fight and destroy the Idolaters to every body some task some errand for his glory And thou comest from him into this world as though he had said nothing unto thee but Go and do as you see cause Go and do as you see other men do Thou knowest not that is considerest not what thou wast sent to doe what thou shouldest have done but thou knowest much lesse what thou hast done The light of nature hath taught thee to hide thy sinnes from other men and thou hast been so diligent in that as that thou hast hid them from thy self and canst not finde them in thine owne conscience if at any time the Spirit of God would burne them up or the blood of Christ Jesus wash them out thou canst not finde them out so as that a Sermon or Sacrament can work upon them Perchance thou canst tell when was the first time or where was the first place that thou didst commit such or such a sinne but as a man can remember when he began to spell but not when he began to reade perfectly when he began to joyne his letters but not when he began to write perfectly so thou remembrest when thou wentest timorously and bashfully about sinne at first and now perchance art ashamed of that shamefastnesse and sorry thou beganst no sooner Poore bankrupt that hast sinned out thy soule so profusely so lavishly that thou darest not cast up thine accounts thou darest not aske thy selfe whether thou have any soule left how farre art thou from giving any testimony to Christ that darest not testifie to thy selfe nor heare thy conscience take knowledge of thy transgressions but haddest rather sleepe out thy daies or drinke out thy daies then leave one minute for compunction to lay hold on and doest not sinne alwaies for the love of that sinne but for feare of a holy sorrow if thou shouldest not fill up thy time with that sinne God cannot be mocked saith the Apostle nor God cannot be blinded He seeth all the way and at thy last gaspe he will make thee see too through the multiplying Glasse the Spectacle of Desperation Canst thou hope that that God that seeth this darke Earth through all the vaults and arches of the severall spheares of Heaven that seeth thy body through all thy stone walls and seeth thy soul through that which is darker then all those thy corrupt flesh canst thou hope that that God can be blinded with drawing a curtain between thy sinne and him when he is all eye canst thou hope to put out that eye with putting out a candle when he hath planted legions of Angels about thee canst thou hope that thou hast taken away all Intelligence if thou have corrupted or silenced or sent away a servant O bestow as much labour as thou hast done to finde corners for sin to finde out those sinnes in those corners where thou hast hid them As Princes giveâ— pardons by their own hands but send Judges to execute Justice come to him for mercy in the acknowledgement of thy sinnes and stay not till his Justice come to thee when he makes inquisition for blood and doe not think that if thou feel now at this presentâ— a little tendernesse in thy heart a little melting in thy bowels a little dew in thine eyes that if thou beest come to know that thou art a
and fragrancy which the word breaths out That they shall see it that is understand it consider it For as when the wicked come to say The Lord does not see it it is presently added Neither doth the God of Iacob regard it It is a seeing that induces a regarding so when the godly come to see their afflictions they come to regard them to regard Gods purpose in them Vidisti Domine ne sileas sayes David All this thou hast seen O Lord Lord do not hold thy peace David presumed that if God saw his afflictions he would stirre in them when we come to see them we stir we wake we rise we looke about us from whence and why these afflictions come and therein lyes this comfort Vidi I have seen afflictions I have been content to look upon them to consider them The Prophets in the Old Testament doe often call those sights and those prenotions which they had of the misery and destruction of others Onus visionis Onus verbi Domini O the burden of this sight O the burden of this message of God It was a burden to them to see Gods judgements directed upon others how much more is it a burden to a man to see his own affliction and that in the cause thereof But this must be done we must see our affliction in the Cause thereof No man is so blinde so stupid as that he doth not see his affliction that is feele it but we must see it so as to see through it see it to be such as it is so qualified so conditioned so circumstanced as he that sends it intends it We must leave out the malice of others in our oppressions and forgive that leave out the severity of the Law in our punishments and submit to that and looke intirely upon the certainty of Gods judgement who hath the whole body of our sins written together before him and picks out what sin it pleaseth him and punisheth now an old now a yesterdayes sin as he findeth it most to conduce to his glory and our amendment and the edification of others We must see the hand of God upon the wall as Belshazzar did for even that was the hand of God though wee cannot read that writing no more then Belshazzar could Wee must see the affliction so as we must see it to be the hand of God though wee cannot presently see for what sinne it is nor what will be the issue of it And then when we have seen that then we must turn to the study of those other particulars for till we see the affliction to come from God we see nothing There is no other light in that darknesse but he If thou see thy affliction thy sicknesse in that glasse in the consideration of thine own former licentiousnesse thou shalt have no other answer but that soure remorse and increpation you might have lived honestly If thou see thy affliction thy poverty in that glasse in the malice oppression of potent adversaries thou wilt get no farther then to that froward and churlish answer The Law is open mend your selfe as you can But Iactate super Dominum saith David Lay all thy burden upon the Lord and hee will apply to thee that Collyrium that soveraigne eye-salve whereby thou shalt see thy afffiction it shall not blinde thee And see from whence it commeth from him who as hee liveth would not the death of a sinner And see why it commeth that thou mightest see and taste the goodnesse of God thy selfe and declare his loving kindnesse to the Children of Men. And this is the comfort deduced from this word Vidi I have seen affliction And this leadeth us to our other Comfort That though these Afflictions have wrought deepe upon thee yet thou canst say to thy soule Ego vir I am that man Thy Morality thy Christianity is not shaked in thee It is the Mercy of God that wee are not conumed saith Ieremy here And it is a great degree of his mercy to let us feele that wee are not consumed to give us this sense that our case is not desperate but that Ego vir I am the man that there remaineth still strength enough to gather more That still thou remainest a man a reasonable man and so art able to apply to thy selfe all those medicines and reliefs which Philosophy and naturall reason can afford For even these helps deduced from Philosophy and naturall reason are strong enough against afflictions of this world as long as we can use them as long as these helps of reason and learning are alive and awake and actuated in us they are able to sustain us from sinking under the afflictions of this world for they have sustained many a Plato and Socrates and Seneca in such cases But when part of the affliction shall be that God worketh upon the Spirit it selfe and damps that enfeebles that that he casts a sooty Cloud upon the understanding and darkens that that he doth Exuere hominem devest strip the man of the man Eximere hominem take the man out of the man and withdraw and frustrate his naturall understanding so as that to this purpose he is no man yet even in this case God may mend thee in marring thee hee may build thee up in dejecring thee hee may infuse another Ego vir another Manhood into thee and though thou canst not say Ego vir I am that Morall man safe in my Naturall Reason and Philosophy that is spent yet Ego vir I am that Christian man who have seen this affliction in the Cause thereof so farre off as in my sinne in Adam and the remedy of this affliction so farre off as in the death of Christ Iesus I am the Man that cannot repine nor murmure since I am the Cause I am the man that cannot despair since Christ is the remedy I am that man which is intended in this Text Gheber Not onely an Adam a man amongst men able to convince me though they speak eloquently against me and able to prove that God hath forsaken me because he hath afflicted me but able to prevail with God himself as Iacob did and to wrastle out a blessing out of him though I doe halt become infirm with manifold afflictions yet they shall be so many seals of my infallibility in him Now this comfort hath three gradations in our text three circumstances which as they aggravated the discomfort in the former so they exalt the comfort in this part That they are His The Lords That they are from his rod That they are from the rod of his wrath We may compare our afflictions that come immediately from God with those that come instrumentally from others by considering the choice and election which David made and the choice which Susanna made in her case The Prophet Gâ—d offers David his choice of three afflictions War Famine or pestilence It does not appeare it is not
his family in one day as by the Commandement he must which could not be in likelyhood of lesse then 400. for he went out before to the rescue of Lot with 318. borne and brought up in his House he must make his House a Spittle of so many impotent Persons unable to helpe one another for many daies for such was the effect of Circumcision as we see in their Story when Simeon and Levi came upon the Sichemites three daies after they had beene by their perswasion circumcised the Sichemites were unable to resist or defend themselves and so were slaine Yea the sorenesse and incommodity upon Circumcision was so great as that the very Commandement it selfe of Circumcision was forborne in the Wildernesse because they were then put to suddaine removes which presently after a Circumcision they could not have perform'd Might not Abraham have come to his Quare tam molestum Why will God command me so troublesome and incommodious a thing as this And to contract this when he considered That one principall reason of the Commandement of Circumcision was that that marke might be alwaies a remembrance to them against intemperance and incontinency Might not Abraham have come to his Quare mihi What use is there of this in my Body which is now dried up and withered by 99. yeares What Quares what reluctations Abraham had or whether he had any or no is not expressed but very religious and good men sometimes out of humane infirmities have them But then God brings them quickly about to Christ's Veruntamen Yet not my will but thine be done and he delivers them from the tentation and brings them to an intire obedience to his will which is that which we proposed for the next Branch in this part Tu qui vas figuli sayes the Apostle whensoever any disputation against a commandement of God arises in Gods children the Spirit of God smothers that spirit of Rebellion with that Tu qui vas figuli wilt thou who art but the vessell dispute with the potter that fashioned thee If Abraham had any such doubts of a frivolousnesse in so base a seale of an obscenity in so foule a seale of an incommodiousnesse in so troublesome a seale of a needlesnesse in so impertinent a seale if he had these doubts no doubt but his forwardnesse in obeying God did quickly oppose these reasons to those and overcome them That that part of the body is the most rebellious part and that therefore onely that part Adam covered out of shame for all the other parts he could rule Ad hominis inobedientiam redarguendam suâ inobedientiâ quodammodo caro testimonium perhibet to reproach Mans rebellion to God God hath left one part of Mans body to rebell against him for though the seeds of this rebellion be dispersed through all the body yet In illa parte magis regnat additamentum Leviathan sayes Saint Bernard the spawns of Leviathan the seed of sinne the leven of the Devil abound and reignes most in that part of the body it is sentiva peccati saies the same Father the Sewar of all sinne not onely because all sinne is deriv'd upon us by generation and so implyed and involv'd in originall sinne but because almost all other sinnes have relation to this for Gluttony is a preparation to this sinne in our selves Pride and excesse is a preparation to it in others whom we would enveigle and assure by our bravery Anger and malice inclines us to pursue this sinfull and inordinate love quarrelsomly so as that then we doe not quarrell for wayes and walls in the street but we quarrell for our way to the Devil and when we cannot go fast enough to the Devil by wantonnesse in the chamber we will quarrell with him who hinders us of our Damnation and find a way to go faster in the field by Duells and unchristian Murder in so foule a cause as unlawfull lust In this rebellious part is the root of all sinne and therefore did that part need this stigmaticall marke of Circumcision to be imprinted upon it Besides for the Jewes in particular they were a Nation prone to Idolatry and most upon this occasion if they mingled themselves with Women of other Nations And therefore Dedit eft signum ut admoverentnr de generatione pura saies Saint Chrysostome God would be at the cost even of a Sacrament which is the greatest thing that passes between God and Man next to his Word to defend them thereby against dangerous alliances which might turne their hearts from God God imprinted a marke in that part to keep them still in mind of that law which forbade them foraigne Marriages or any company of strange Women Custodia pietati servandae ne macularent paternam Nobilitatem left they should degenerate from the Nobility of their race God would have them carry this memoriall about them in their flesh And God foresaw that extreme Idolatry that grosse Idolatry which that Nation would come to and did come to when Maachah the Mother of Asa worshipped that Idol which Saint Hierome calls Belphegor and is not fit to be nam'd by us and therefore in foresight of that Idolatry God gave this marke and this mutilation upon this part If Abraham were surprized with any suggestions any half reasons against this commandement he might quickly recollect himself and see that Circumcision was first Signum memorativum monimentum isti faederis it was a signe of the Covenant between God and Abraham the Covenant was the Messias who being to come by a carnall continuance of Abrahams race the signe and seale was conveniently placed in that part And that was secondly Signum representativum it represented Baptisme In Christ you are circumcised saies the Apostle in that you are buried with him through Baptisme And then that was Signum Distinctivum for besides that it kept them from Idolatry as the Greeks called all Nations whom they despised Barbares Barbarians so did the Jewes Incircumcisos Uncircumcised And that was a great threatning in the Prophet Thou shalt die the death of the Uncircumcised that is without any part in the everlasting promise and Covenant But yet the principall dignity of this Circumcision was that it was Signum figurativum it prefigured it directed to that Circumcision of the heart Circumcise the foreskin of your heart for the Lord your God is God of Gods and Lord of Lords And for all the other reasons that could be assigned of Remembrance of Representation of Distinction Caret ubique ratione Iudaica carnis Circumcisio sayes Lactantius Nisi quod est Circumcisionis figura quae est Cor Mundum The Jewish Circumcision were an absurd and unreasonable thing if it did not intimate and figure the Circumcision of the heart And that is our Second part of this Exercise But before we come to that we are to say a word of the fourth branch of this part That as there is
sheds such blessings upon us is to break that branch of this Commandement Gaudete semper Rejoyce evermore for he does not rejoyce in bonis temporalibus So is it also as not to seek them before so not to use them when we have them When in a feare of growing poore makes us think God to be poor too that if we spend this God can give us no more when for feare of lacking at our end we lack all the way when we abound and yet will pay no debts not to our own bellies our own backs our own respect and the decency that belongs to our rank these men so sordid so penurious suspitious of Gods Providence breake this branch of this Commandement too because they doe not rejoyce in bonis temporalibus And as the not-seeker and the not-user so the abuser of these temporall blessings is in the same transgression Hee that thinkes all the world as one Jewell and himselfe the Cabinet that all was made for him and hee for none forgets his owne office his Stewardship by which he is enabled and bound to the necessities of others to collect hee that seeks not hee that denies all to himself hee that denies all but himself break this branch for they doe not rejoyce in bonis temporalibus This we must doe but in bonis spiritualibus in the spirituall good things of this world much more we call those the spirituall good things of this world which advance our devotion here and consequently our salvation hereafter The rituall and ceremoniall the outward worship of God the places the times the manner of meetings which are in the disposition of Christian Princes and by their favours of those Churches which are in their government and not to rejoyce in the peacefull exercise of those spirituall helps not to be glad of them is a transgression Now the Prophet expresses this rejoycing thus Venite exultemus let us come and rejoyce We must doe both And therefore they who out of a thraldome to another Church abstaine from these places of these exercises that doe not come or if they doe come doe not rejoyce but though they be here brought by necessity of law or of observation yet had rather they were in another Chappell or that another kinde of service then in this and they also who abstain out of imaginary defects in this church think they cannot perform Davids De profundis they cannot call upon God out of the depth except it be in a Conventicle in a cellar nor acknowledge Solomons Excelsis Excelsior that God is higher then the highest except it be in a Conventicle in a garret when they are here wink at the ornaments stop their ears at the musique of the Church in which manner she hath always expressed her rejoycing in those helps of devotion or if there bee a third sort who abstain because they may not be here at so much case and so much liberty as at their own houses all these are under this transgression Are they in the Kings house at so much liberty as in their own and is not this the King of Kings house Or have they seene the King in his owne house use that liberty to cover himselfe in his ordinary manner of covering at any part of Divine Service Every Preacher will look and justly to have the Congregation uncovered at the reading of his Text and is not the reading of the Lesson at time of Prayer the same Word of the same God to be received with the same reverence The service of God is one entire thing and though we celebrate some parts with more or with lesse reverence some kneeling some standing yet if we afford it no reverence we make that no patr of Gods service And therefore I must humbly intreat them who make this Quire the place of their Devotion to testifie their devotion by more outward reverence there wee know our parts in this place and we doe them why any stranger should think himself more priviledged in this part of Gods House then we I know not I presume no man will mis-interpret this that I say here now nor if this may not prevaile mis-interpret the service of our Officers if their continuing in that unreverent manner give our Officers occasion to warn them of that personally in the place whensoever they see them stray into that uncomely negligence They should not blame me now they must not blame them then when they call upon them for this reverence in this Quire neither truly can there be any greater injustice then when they who will not do their duties blame others for doing theirs But that we are bound to a thankfull rejoycing in all that falls well to us In bonis admits lesse doubt and therefore requires lesse proof But the semper of our Text extends farther Gandete in malis we doe not rejoyce always except we rejoyce in evill days in all our crosses and calamities Now if we be not affected with Gods judgements if we conceive not a sorrow for them or the cause of them our sins God is angry will he be angry too if we be not glad of them if we doe not rejoyce in them Can this sorrow and this joy consist together very well The School in the mouth of Aquinas gives instances If an Innocent man be condemned Simul placet ejus justitia displices afflictio I congratulate his innocency and I condole his death both at once So Displicet mihi quod peccavi placet quod displicet I am very sorry that I have sinned but yet I am glad that I am sorry So that Ipsatristitia materia gaudii Some sorrow is so far from excluding joy as that naturally it produces it S. Augustine hath sealed it with this advice Semper doleat poenitens Let him who hath sinned always lament But then where is the Gaudete semper he tels us too Semper gaudeat de dolore Let him always rejoyce that God hath opened him a way to mercy by sorrow Lacrymae Seminium quoddam sunt foenus quibus increscit gaudium Sorrow is our Seminary from whence we are transplanted into a larger Orchard into the dilatation of the heart Joy sorrow says he Seminium est foenus est It is our interest our use And if we have sorrow upon sorrow it is use upon use it doubles the principall which is joy the sooner Cordae cum distenduntur it is S. Augustines musicall comparison when the strings of an instrument are set up the musicall sound is the clearer if a mans sinew be stretcht upon the rack his joy is not the lesse perfect Not that a man must seek out occasion of sorrow provoke the Magistrate by seditious intemperance and call it zeal or macerate the body with fastings or mangle it with whippings and call that merit Non ut quaerant materiam quam non habent sed at inveniant cam quam nescientes habent