farther direction from the Lord Samuel condescendeth to them and dismisseth them with a promise that it should be done to them as they desired and a King they should have ere it were long 3. And within a while he made good his promise The Lord had designed Saul to be their King and had secretly revealed the same to Samuel Who did also by God's appointment first anoint him very privately no Man being by but they two alone and after in a full Assembly of the people at Mispeth evidenced him to be the Man whom God had chosen by the determination of a Lot Whereupon the most part of the people accepted Saul for their King elect testifying their acceptance by their joyful acclamations and by sending him Presents Yet did not Saul then immediatly enter upon his full Regalities whether by reason of some contradiction made to his Election or for whatsoever other cause but that Samuel still continued in the Government till upon occasion of the Ammonites invading the Land and laying siege against Iabesh Gilead Saul made such proof of his valour by relieving the Town and destroying the enemy that no Man had the forehead to oppose against him any more Samuel therefore took the hint of that Victory to establish Saul compleatly in the Kingdom by calling the people to Gilgal where the Tabernacle then was where he once more anointed Saul before the Lord and in a full Congregation investing him into the Kingdom with great solemnity Sacrifices of Peace-offerings and all manner of rejoycings 4. Now had the people according to their desire a King and now was Samuel who had long governed in chief again become a private Man Yet was he still the Lord's Prophet and by virtue of that Calling took himself bound to make the people sensible of the greatness of their sin in being so forward to ask a King before they had first asked to know the Lord's pleasure therein And this is in a manner the business of the whole Chapter Yet before he begin to fall upon them he doth wisely first to clear himself and for the purpose he challengeth all and every of them if they could accuse him of any injustice or corruption in the whole time of his Government then and there to speak it out and they should receive satisfaction or else for ever after to hold their tongues in the three first verses of this Chapter but especially in this third verse Behold here I am witness against me before the Lord c. 5. In which words are observable both the Matter and Form of Samuel's Challenge The Matter of it to wit the thing whereof he would clear himself is set down first in general terms that he had not wrongfully taken to himself that which was anothers Whose Oxe have I taken or whose Ass have I taken And then more particularly by a perfect enumeration of the several species or kinds thereof which being but three in all are all expressed in this Challenge All wrongful taking of any thing from another Man is done either with or without the parties consent If without the parties consent then either by cunning or violence fraud or oppression over-reaching another by wit or over-bearing him by might If with the parties consent then it is by contracting with him for some Fee Reward or Gratification Samuel here disclaimeth them all Whom have I defrauded whom have I oppressed or of whose hand have I received a bribe to blind mine eyes therewith That is the matter of the Challenge 6. In the form we may observe concerning Samuel three other things First his great forwardness in the business in putting himself upon the trial by his own voluntary offer before he was called thereunto by others Behold here I am Secondly his great Confidence upon the conscience of his own integrity in that he durst put himself upon his trial before God and the World Witness against me before the Lord and before his Anointed Thirdly his great Equity in offering to make real satisfaction to the full in case any thing should be justly proved against him in any of the premisses Whose Oxe or whose Ass c. and I will restore it you 7. The particulars are many and I may not take time to give them all their due enlargements We will therefore pass through them lightly insisting perhaps somewhat more upon those things that shall seem more material or useful for this Assembly than upon some of the rest yet not much upon any Neither do I mean in the handling thereof to tie my self precisely to the method of my former division but following the course of the Text to take the words in the same order as I find them here laid to my hand Behold here I am witness against me c. 8. Behold here I am More haste than needeth may some say It savoureth not well that Samuel is so forward to justify himself before any Man accuse him Voluntary purgations commonly carry with them strong suspicions of guilt We presume there is a fault when a Man sweareth to put off a crime before it be laid to his charge True and well we may presume it where there appeareth not some reasonable cause otherwise for so doing But there occur sundry reasons some apparent and the rest at least probable why Samuel should here do as he did 9. First He was presently to convince the people of their great sin in asking a King and to chastise them for it with a severe reprehension It might therefore seem to him expedient before he did charge them with innovating the Government to discharge himself first from having abused it He that is either to rebuke or to punish others for their faults had need stand clear both in his own conscience and in the eye of the World of those faults he should censure and of all other crimes as foul as they lest he be choaked with that bitter Proverb retorted upon him to his great reproach Physician heal thy self Vitia ultima fictos contemnunt Scauros castigata remordent How unequal a thing is it and incongruous that he who wanteth no ill conditions himself should bind his neighbour to the good behaviour That a sacrilegious Church-robber should make a Mittimus for a poor Sheep-stealer Or as he complained of old that great Thieves should hang up little ones How canst thou say to thy brother Brother let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye when behold there is a beam in thine own eye That is with what conscience nay with what face canst thou offer it Turpe est doctori every School-boy can tell you See to it all you who by the condition of your Callings are bound to take notice of the actions aud demeanors of others and to censure them that you walk orderly and unreproveably your selves It is only the sincerity and unblameableness of your conversations that will best add weight to your words win
forestal the publick hearing by private informations even to the Iudg himself if the access be easie or at leastwise which indeed maketh less noise but is nothing less pernicious to his Servant or Favorite that hath his ear if he have any such noted Servant or Favorite He therefore that would resolve not to receive a false report and be sure to hold his Resolution let him resolve so far as he can avoid it to receive no Report in private for a thousand to one that is a false one or where he cannot well avoid it to be ready to receive the Information of the adverse part withal either both or neither but indeed rather neither to keep himself by all means equal and entire for a publick hearing Thus much he may assure himself there is no man offereth to possess him with a Cause before-hand be it right be it wrong who doth not either think him unjust or would have him so Secondly let him have the conscience first and then the patience too and yet if he have the s conscience certainly he will have the patience to make search into the truth of things and not be dainty of his pains herein though matters be intricate and the labour like to be long and irksom to find out if it be possible the bottom of a business and where indeed the fault lieth first or most It was a great oversight in a good King for David to give away Mephibosheth's living from him to his Accuser and that upon the bare credit of his accusation It had been more for his honour to have done as Iob did before him to have searched out the cause he knew not and as his son Solomon did after him in the cause of the two mothers Solomon well knew what he hath also taught us Prov. 25. that it was the honour of Kings to search out a matter God as he hath vouchsafed Princes and Magistrates his own name so he hath vouchsafed them his own example in this point An example in the story of the Law Gen. 18. where he did not presently give judgment against Sodom upon the cry of their sins that was come up before him but he would go down first and see whether they had done altogether according to that cry and if not that he might know it An example also in the Gospel story Luk. 16. under the Parable of the rich man whos 's first work when his Steward was accused to him for embezeling his good was not to turn him out of doors but to examine his accounts What through Malice Obsequiousness Coverture and Covetousness counterfeit reports are daily raised and there is much cunning used by those that raise them much odd shuffling and packing and combining to give them the colour and face of perfect truth As then a plain Country-man that would not willingly be cosened in his pay to take a slip for a currant piece or brass for silver leisurely turneth over every piece he receiveth and if he suspect any one more than the rest vieweth it and ringeth it and smelleth to it and bendeth it and rubbeth it so making up of all his senses as it were one natural touch stone whereby to try it such jealousie should the Magistrate use and such industry especially where there appeareth cause of suspicion by all means to sift and to bolt out the truth if he would not be cheated with a false report instead of a true Thirdly let him take heed he do not give countenance or encouragement more than right and reason requireth to contentious persons known Sycophants and common informers If there should be no Accusers to make complaints Offenders would be no offenders for want of due Correction and Laws would be no Laws for want of due Execution Informers then are necessary in a Common-wealth as Dogs are about your houses and yards If any man mislike the comparison let him know it it Cicero's simile and not mine It is not amiss saith that great and wise Orator there should be some store of Dogs about the house where many goods are laid up to be kept safe and many false knaves haunt to do mischief to guard those and to watch these the better But if those Dogs should make at the throat of every man that cometh near the house at honest mens hours and upon honest mens business it is but needful they of the house should sometimes rate them off and if that will not serve the turn well favouredly beat them off yea and if after all that they still continue mankeen knock out their teeth or break their legs to prevent a worse mischief Magistrates are petty Gods God hath lent them his name Dixi Dii I have said ye are Gods Psa. 82. and false Accusers are petty Devils the Devil hath borrowed their name Sathan 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Accuser of his brethren For a Ruler then or Magistrate to countenance a Sycophant what is it else but as it were to pervert the course of nature and to make God take the Devils part And then besides where such things are done what is the common cry People as they are suspicious will be talking parlously and after their manner Sure say they the Magistrates are sharers with these fellows in the adventure these are but their setters to bring them in gain their Instruments and Emissaries to toll grist to their mills for the increasing of their moulter He then that in the place of magistracy would decline both the fault and suspicion of such unworthy Collusion it standeth him upon with all his best endeavours by chaining and muzling these beasts to prevent them from biting where they should not and if they have fastned already then by delivering the oppressed with Iob To pluck the prey from between their teeth and by exercising just severity upon them to break their jaws for doing farther harm I am not able to prescribe nor is it meet I should to my Betters by what means all this might best be done For I know not how far the subordinate Magistrates power which must be bounded by his Commission and by the Laws may extend this way Yet some few things there are which I cannot but propose as likely good Helps in all reason and in themselves for the discountenancing of false accusers and the lessening both of their number and insolency Let every good Magistrate take it into his proper consideration whether his Commission and the Laws give him power to use them all or no and how far And first for the avoiding of Malicious sutes and that men should not be brought into trouble upon slight informations I find that among the Romans the Accuser in most cases might not be admitted to put in his libel until he had first taken his corporal oath before the praetor that we was free from all malicious and Calumnious intent Certain
it is said of our blessed Saviour Luke 2. that he encreased in favour with God and men My son let not mercy and truth forsake thee c. so shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man saith our Solomon Prov. 3. And S. Paul Rom. 14. He that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men In all which places favour and acceptation with God goeth before favour and approbation with men followeth after 23. You may see the proof of it in the whole course of the Sacred Story wherein the Lords dealing with his own people in this kind is remarkable When they started aside to walk after their own counsels and displeased him how he stirred them up enemies round about them how he sold them into the hands of those that spoiled them how he hardened the hearts of all those that contended with them that they should not pity them Again on the other side when they believed his Word walked in his Ways and pleased him how he raised them up friends how he made their Enemies to bow under them how he enclined the hearts of Strangers and of Pagans to pity them Instances are obvious and therefore I omit them 24. Of which Effect the first and principal cause is none other than the over-ruling hand of God who not only disposeth of all outward things according to the good pleasure of his will but hath also in his hands the hearts of all men even of the greatest Kings as the rivers of water to turn them which way soever he will as our Solomon speaketh at the 21. Chapter of this Book The Original there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Palge majim as you would say the divisions of waters Which is not to be understood of the great Rivers though the greatest of them all even the wide and great Sea also is in the hands of God to turn which way soever he will as he turned the waters of the Red Sea backwards to let his people go through and then turned them forward again to overwhelm their enemies But the Allusion there is clearly to the little trenches whereby in those drier Eastern Countries husbandmen used to derive water from some Fountain or Cistern to the several parts of their Gardens for the better nourishing of their Herbs and Fruit-trees Now you know when a Gardiner hath cut many such trenches all over his Garden with what ease he can turn the water out of any one into any other of those Channels suffering it to run so long in one as he thinketh good and then stopping it thence and deriving it into another even as it pleaseth him and as he seeth it most conducible for the necessities of his Garden With much more ease can the Lord stop the current of any mans favour and affections in the course wherein it presently runneth and turn it quite into another Channel drying it up against one man and deriving it upon another even as it seemeth good in his sight and as will best serve other his holy and just purposes whether he intend to chastize his Children or to comfort them or to exercise any other part or passage of his blessed providence upon them Thus he gave his people favour in the sight of the Aegyptians so as they lent them all their precious things at their departure who but a little before had consulted the rooting out the whole generation of them And thus after that in his just displeasure against them for their sins he had given them over into captivity into their enemies hands when he was pleased again with their Humiliations he not only pitied them himself according to the multitude of his mercies but he turned the hatred of their Enemies also into compassion and made all those that had led them away captives to pity them as it is in Psalm 160. 25. The Lord is a God of Power and therefore can work such effects as he pleaseth for our peace without any apparent means on our parts But being withal a God of order for the most part therefore and in the ordinary course of his providence he worketh his own purposes by second Causes and subordinate means At least he hath so tied us to the use of probable means for the bringing about of what he hath promised that although we ought to be perswaded he can yet we may not presume he will work our good without our Endeavours Now the subordinate means to be used on our part without which we cannot reasonably expect that God should make our Enemies to be at peace with us is our fair and amicable conversation with others For who will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good saith St. Peter As if he had said so long as you carry your selves graciously and wisely if the hearts of your Enemies will not be so far wrought upon as to love and affect you yet their mouths will be muzled and their hands â—anacled from breaking out into any outragious either terms or actions of open hostility so as you shall enjoy your peace with them in some measure Though they mean you no good yet they shall do you no harm 26. But it may be objected both from Scripture and Experience that sundry times when a mans Ways are right and therefore pleasing unto God his Enemies are nothing less if not perhaps much more enraged against him than formerly they were Our Saviour often foretold his Disciples that they should be hated of all men for his sake And David complaineth in Psal. 38. of some that were against him eo nomine and for that very reason because he was a follower of that which was good What a seeming distance is there between the Prophets and the Apostles speeches Or else how may they be reconciled Who is he that will harm you if you be followers of that which is good saith the one Yea saith the other there are some against me even therefore because I follow that which is good As if by seeking to please God he had rather lost his friends than gained his Enemies 27. There are sundry Considerations that may be of good use to us in the present difficulty As First if God have not yet made our Enemies to be at peace with us yet it may be he will do it hereafter being no way bound to us we may give him leave to take his own time Non est vestrum nôsse if it be not for us to know much less is it for us to prescribe the seasons which the Father hath kept in his own power It is his Prerogative to appoint the times it is our Duty to wait his leisure It may be secondly neither is it unlikely that we do not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 walk with an even foot and by a straight line But tread awry in something or other which displeaseth God and for
confident that friend will not fail to assist him therein to his utmost power Now if a man be bold to do but what he may and should do and that withal he have some good ground for his confidence from the consideration of his friends ability the experience of his love some former promises on his friends or merit on his own part or other like so as every man would be ready to say he had reason to presume so far of his friend this is a good reasonable and warrantable presumption But if he fail in either respect as if he presume either to do unlawful unworthy or unbefitting things or to do even lawful things when there appeareth no great cause why any man should think his friend obliged by the laws of friendship to assist him therein then is such his presumption a faulty and an evil presumption And whatsoever may bear the name of a Presumptuous sin in any respect is some way or other tainted with such an evil irrational presumption 9. But we are further to note that presumption in the worser sence and as applied to sin may be taken either Materially or Formally If these terms seem obscure with a little opening I hope the difference between these two will be easily understood Taken materially the sin of presumption is a special kind of sin distinguished from other species of sins by its proper Object or Matter when the very matter wherein we sin and whereby we offend God is Presumption and so it is a branch of Pride When a man presuming either upon his own strength or upon Gods assisting him undertaketh to do something of himself not having in himself by the ordinary course of nature and the common aid which God affordeth to the actions of his creatures in the ordinary ways of his providence sufficient strength to go through therewithal or expecteth to receive some extraordinary assistance from the Mercy Power c. of God not having any sufficient ground either from the general Promises contained in the Scriptures or by particular immediate revelation that God will certainly so assist him therein 10. All those men that over-value themselves or out of an overweening conceit of their own abilities attempt things beyond their power That lean to their own understandings as Solomon That mind high things and are wise in their own conceits as St. Paul That exercise themselves in great matters and such as are too high for them as David expresseth it All those that perswade themselves they can persist in an holy course without a continual supply of Grace or that think they can continue in their sins so long as they think good and then repent of them and forsake them at their leisure whensoever they list or that doubt not but to be able by their own strength to stand out against any temptation All these I say and all other like by presuming too much upon themselves are guilty of the sin of Presumption ' 'To omit the Poets who have set forth the folly of this kind of Presumption in the Fables of Phaethon and Icarus A notable example we have of it in the Apostle Peter and therein a fair warning for others not to be high-minded but to fear who in the great confidence of his own strength could not believe his Master though he knew him to be the God of truth when he foretold him he would yield but still protested that if all the world should forsake him yet he would never do it 11. Nor only may a man offend in this kind by presuming upon himself too much but also by presuming even upon God himself without warrant He that repenteth truly of his sins presuming of Gods mercy in the forgiveness thereof or that walketh uprightly and conscionably in the ways of his Calling presuming of Gods Power for his protection therein sinneth not in so presuming Such a presumption is a fruit of Faith and a good presumption because it hath a sure ground a double sure ground for failing first in the Nature and then in the Promise of God As a man may with good reason presume upon his Friend that he will not be wanting to him in any good Office that by the just Laws of true friendship one friend ought to do for another But as he presumeth too much upon his friend that careth not into what desperate exigents and dangers he casteth himself in hope his friend will perpetually redeem him and relieve him at every turn So whosoever trusteth to the Mercy or to the Power of God without the warrant of a Promise presumeth farther than he hath cause And though he may flatter himself and call it by some better name as Faith or Hope or Affiance in God yet is it in truth no better than a groundless and a wicked Presumption Such was the Presumption of those Sons of Sceva who took upon them but to their shame and sorrow to call over them that had evil spirits the name of the Lord Iesus in a form of adjuration Acts 19. when they had no calling or warrant from God so to do And all those men that going on in a wretched course of life do yet hope they shall find mercy at the hour of death All those that cast themselves into unnecessary either dangers or temptations with expectance that God should manifest his extraordinary Power in their preservation All those that promise to themselves the End without applying themselves to the means that God hath appointed thereunto as to have Learning without Study Wealth without Industry Comfort from Children without careful Education c. forasmuch as they presume upon Gods help without sufficient Warrant are guilty of the sin of Presumption taken in the former notion and Materially 12. But I conceive the Presumptuous sins here in the Text to belong clearly to the other notion of the word Presumption taken formally and as it importeth not a distinct kind of sin in it self as that Groundless Presumption whereof we have hitherto spoken doth but a common accidental difference that may adhere to sins of any kind even as Ignorance and Infirmity whereunto it is opposed also may Theft and Murther which are sins of special kinds distinguished either from other by their special and proper Objects are yet both of them capable of these common differences inasmuch as either of them may be committed as sometimes through Ignorance and sometimes through Infirmity so also sometimes through Wilfulness or Presumption 13. The distribution of Sins into sins of Ignorance of Infirmity and of Presumption is very usual and very useful and compleat enough without the addition which some make of a fourth sort to wit Sins of Negligence or Inadvertency all such sins being easily reducible to some of the former three The ground of the distinction is laid in the Soul of man wherein there are three distinct prime faculties from which all our actions flow the Understanding the Will and the sensual
Dean of Westminster's House for the space of five months or more But not long after that time when Dr. Sanderson had made the Reformation ready for a view the Church and State were both fall'n into such a confusion that Dr. Sanderson's Model for Reformation became then useless Nevertheless the Repute of his Moderation and Wisdom was such that he was in the year 1642. propos'd by both Houses of Parliament to the King then in Oxford to be one of their Trustees for the settling of Church affairs and was allowed of by the King to be so but that Treaty came to nothing In the year 1643. the two Houses of Parliament took upon them to make an Ordinance and call an Assembly of Divines to debate and settle Church-controversies of which many that were elected were very unfit to judge in which Dr. Sanderson was also named by the Parliament but did not appear I suppose for the same reason that many other worthy and learned men did forbear the Summons wanting the King's Authority And here I must look back and tell the Reader that in the year 1642. he was Iuly 21. named by a more undoubted Authority to a more noble imployment which was to be Professor Regius of Divinity in Oxford but though Knowledge be said to puff up yet his modesty and too mean an opinion of his great Abilities and some other real or pretended reasons exprest in his Speech when he first appear'd in the Chair and since printed kept him from entring into it till October 1646. He did for about a years time continue to read his matchless Lectures which were first de Iuramento a Point very Seraphical and as difficult and at that time very dangerous to be handled as it ought to be But this learned man as he was eminently furnished with Abilities to satisfie the Consciences of men upon that important Subject so he wanted not courage to assert the true obligation of it and Oaths in a degenerate Age when men had made perjury a main part or at least very useful to their Religion How much the learned World stands obliged to him for these and his following Lectures de Conscientia I shall not attempt to declare as being very sensible that the best Pens fall short in the commendation of them So that I shall only add That they continue to this day and will do for ever as a complete standard for the resolution of the most material doubts in that part of â—asuistical Divinity And therefore I proceed to tell the Reader That about the time of his reading those Lectures the King being then Prisoner in the Iste of Wight that part of the Parliament then at Westminster sent the Covenant the Negative Oath and I know not what more to Oxford to be taken by the Doctor of the Chair and all Heads of Houses and all the other inâ—eriour Scholars of what degree soever were also to take these Oaths by a fixed day for those that did not were to abandon their Colledges and the University too within 24 hours after the beating of a Drum And if they remain'd longer they were to be proceeded against as Spies Dr. Laud the Archbishop of Canterbury the Earl of Strafford and many others had been formerly murthered but the King yet was not and the University had yet some faint hopes that in a Treaty then in being betwixt him and them that confined him or pretended to be suddenly there might be such an Agreement made that the Dissenters in the University might both preserve their Consciences and the poor Subsistance which they then enjoyed by their Colledges And being possess'd of this mistaken hope That the men in present Power were not yet grown so merciless as not to allow manifest reason for their not submitting to the enjoyn'd Oaths the University appointed twenty Delegates to meet consider and draw up a Manifesto to them why they could not take those Oaths but by violation of their Consciences And of these Delegates Dr. Shelden late Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Hammond Dr. Sanderson Dr. Morley now Bishop of Winchester and that most honest very learned and as judicious Civil Lawyer Dr. Zouch were a part the rest I cannot now name but the whole number of the Delegates requested Dr. Zouch to draw up the Law part and give it to Dr. Sanderson and he was requested to methodize and add what referr'd to Reason and Conscience and put it into form He yielded to their desires and did so And then after they had been read in a full Convocation and allow'd of they were printed in Latin that the Parliaments proceedings and the Universities sufferings might be manifested to all Nations and the Imposers of these Oaths might repent or answer them but they were past the first and for the latter I might swear they neither can nor ever will And these reasons were also suddenly turn'd into English by Dr. Sanderson that all those of these three Kingdoms might the better judge of the cause of the Loyal Parties sufferings About this time the Independants who were then grown to be the most powerful part of the Army had taken the King from a close to a more large imprisonment and by their own pretences to liberty of Conscience were obliged to allow somewhat like that to the King who had in the year 1646. sent for Dr. Sanderson Dr. Hammond Dr. Sheldon the late Archbishop of Canterbury and Dr. Morley the now Bishop of Winchester to attend him in order to advise with them how far he might with a good Conscience comply with the Proposals of the Parliament for a Peace in Church and State but these having been then denied him by the Presbyterian Parliament were now by their own rules allow'd him by those Independants now in present power And with some of those Divines Dr. Sanderson also gave his attendance on his Majesty in the Isle of Wight preach'd there before him and had in that attendance many both publick and private Conferences with him to his Majesties great satisfaction At which time he desired Dr. Sanderson that being the Parliament had then propos'd to him the abolishing of Episcopal Government in the Church as inconsistant with Monarchy and selling theirs and the Cathedral Church-Land to pay those Soldiers that they had rais'd to fight against him that he would consider of it and declare his judgment He undertook to do so and did it but it might not be printed till our King 's happy restoration and then it was And at Dr. Sanderson's then taking his leave of his Majesty in this his last attendance on him the King requested him to betake himself to the writing Cases of Conscience for the good of Posterity To which his answer was That he was now grown old and unfit to write Cases of Conscience But the King was so bold with him as to say It was the simplest answer he ever heard from Dr. Sanderson for no young man was fit to be made a Iudge or
have bestowed also upon the Ceremonies the Epithet of Superstitious Which is a word likewise as the former of late very much extended and standeth in need of a Boundary too and a definition as well as it But howsoever they do with the words I must needs set bounds to my discourse lest I weary the Reader The point of Superstition I have had occasion to touch upon more than once as I remember in some of these Sermons and proved that the Superstition lyeth indeed at their door not ours They forbid the things commanded by the Church under the obligation of Sin and that Obligation arising not from their forbidding them but from the things themselves which they judge to be unlawful and thence impose upon all men a necessity of not using them which is Superstition Whereas the Church requires obedience indeed to her Commands and that also under the obligation of Sin but that obligation arising not at all from the nature of the things themselves always held and declared Indifferent but immediately from the Authority of the Superior commanding the thing and originally from the Ordinance of God commanding Obedience to Superiors as already hath been said and this is not Superstition For further satisfaction therefore in this matter referring the Reader to the Sermons themselves I shall only by way of addition represent to the Objectors St. Paul's demeanor at Athens Where finding the City full of Idols or wholly given to Idolatry he doth not yet fall foul upon them nor exclaim against them in any reproachful manner no nor so much as call them Idolaters though they were such and that in a very high degree but tempering his Speeches with all lenity and condescension he telleth them only of their Superstition and that in the calmest manner too 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the comparative degree in such kind of speaking being usually taken for a diminuent term How distant are they from his Example with whom every thing they mislike is presently an Idol Christmas day an Idol the Surplice an Idol the Cross after Baptism a great Idol the Common-Prayer Book an abominable Idol When yet if the worst that can be said against them were granted the most it could amount to is but Superstition and till that be granted which must not be till it be well proved it is more childish than manly to cry out Superstition Superstition § XVII Their next is a Suspicion rather than Objection and that upon no very good ground But Charity is not easily suspicious nor without cause Wherein I have somewhat to say in behalf of my self and other my Brethren and somewhat by way of return to them For my self I had a desire I may truly say almost from my very Childhood to understand as much as was possible for me the bottom of our Religion and particularly as it stood in relation both to the Papists and as they were then stiled Puritans to inform my self rightly wherein consisted the true differences between them and the Church of England together with the grounds of those differences For I could even then observe which was no hard matter to do that the most of mankind took up their Religion upon trust as Custom or Education had framed them rather than choice It pleased God in his goodness to afford me some opportunities suitable to that my desire by means whereof and by his good blessing I attained to understand so much of the Romish Religion as not only to dislike it but to be able to give some rational account why I so do And I doubt not but these very Sermons were there nothing else to do it will sufficiently free me from the least suspicion of driving on any design for Rome As for those other regular Sons of the Church of England that have appeared in this Controversie on her behalf how improbable and so far forth uncharitable the suspicion is that they should be any way instrumental towards the promoting of the Papal Interest may appear amongst other by these few Considerations following 1. That those very persons who were under God the Instruments of freeing us from the Roman Yoke by casting Popery out of the Church and sundry of them Martyred in the cause those very Persons I say were great favourers of these now accounted Popish Ceremonies and the chief Authors or Procurers of the Constitutions made in that behalf Hae manus Trojam erigent 2. That in all former times since the beginning of the Reformation our Archbishops and Bishops with their Chaplains and others of the Prelatical Party many of them such as have written also in defence of the Church against the Puritans were the Principal I had almost said the only Champions to maintain the Cause of Religion against the Papists 3. That even in these times of so great distraction and consequently thereunto of so great advantage to the Factors for Rome none have stept into the gap more readily nor appeared in the face of the Enemy more openly nor maintained the Fight with more stoutness and Gallantry than the Episcopal Divines have done as their late learned Writings testifie Yea and some of them such as beside their other sufferings have lain as deep under the suspicion of being Popishly-affected as any other of their Brethren whosoever 4. That by the endeavours of these Episcopal Divines some that were bred Papists have been gained to our Church others that began to waver confirmed and setled in their old Religion and some that were fallen from us recovered and reduced notwithstanding all the disadvantages of these confused times and of each of these I am able to produce some instance But I profess sincerely as in the presence of God and before the World that I have not known at least I cannot call to remembrance so much as one single Example of any of this done by any of our Anti-Ceremonian Brethren whether Presbyterian or Independent § XVIII But I have somewhat to return upon these our Brethren who thus causelesly suspect us Possible it will not please them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But I must speak it out both for the truths sake and theirs To wit that themselves are in truth though not purposely and intentionally whereof in my own thought I freely acquit them yet really and eventually the great promoters of the Roman Interest among us and that more ways than one These three among the rest are evident First by putting to their helping hand to the pulling down of Episcopacy It is very well known to many what rejoycing that Vote brought to the Romish party How even in Rome it self they sang their Io-â—aeans upon the tydings thereof and said triumphantly Now the day is ours Now is the fatal blow given to the Protestant Religion in England They who by conversing much with that Nation were well acquainted with the fiery turbulent spirits of the Scottish Presbyterians knew as well how to make their advantage
thereof and handled the matter with so much cunning by fomenting their discontents under-hand till they had framed them and by their means some of the same party here to become the fittest Instruments for the carrying on of their great design And this I verily believe was the very Master-piece of the whole Plot. They could not but fore-see as the event hath also proved that if the old Government a main Piller in the Building were once dissolved the whole Fabrick would be â—ore shaken if not presently shattered in pieces and ruined things would presently run into confusion distractions and divisions would certainly follow And when the waters should be sufficiently troubled and muddied then would be their opportunity to cast in their Nets for a draught Some who have undertaken to discover to the World the great Plot the Papists had of late years for the introducing of Popery in the several parts of it might have done well to have taken some little notice of this also I wonder how they could look beside it being so visible and indeed the fundamental part of the Plot. Without which neither could the sparks of Errors and Heresies have been blown to that height nor that Libertinism and some other things therewith mentioned have so soon overspread the whole face of the Land as now we find they have done Secondly They promote the Interest of Rome by opposing it with more violence than reason Which ought not to seem any strange thing to us since we see by daily experience the like to happen in other matters also Many a man when he thought most to make it sure hath quite marred a good business by over-doing it The most prudent just and in all likelihood effectual way to win upon an adversary is by yielding him as much as with safety of truth can be yielded who if he shall find himself contradicted in that which he is sure is true as well as in that which is indeed false will by a kind of Antiperistasis be hardned into more obstinacy than before to defend all true and false with equal fierceness It hath been observed by some and I know no reason to question the truth of the observation that in those Counties Lancashire for one where there are the most and the most rigid Prebyterians there are also the most and the most zealous Roman Catholicks Thirdly they promote the Interest of Rome and betray the Protestant Cause partly by mistaking the Question a very common fault among them but especially through the necessity of some false Principle or other which having once imbibed they think themselves bound to maintain Some of them especially such as betook themselves to Preaching betimes and had not the leisure and opportunity to look much into Controversies understand very little as it is impossible they should much of the true state of the Question in many controverted points and yet to shew their zeal against Popery are forward enough to be medling therewithal in the Pulpit But with so much weakness and impertinency not seldom that they leave the Question worse than they found it and the Hearer if he brought any doubts with him to go from Sermon more dissatisfied than he came The rest of them that have better knowledge are yet so bound up by some false Principle or other they have received that they cannot without deserting the same and that they must not do whatsoever betideth them treat to the satisfaction of a rational and ingenuous adversary Among those false Principles it shall suffice for the present to have named but this one That the Church of Rome is no true Church The disadvantages of which assertion to our Cause in the dispute about the visibility of the Church besides the falseness and uncharitableness of it their Zeal or Prejudice rather will not suffer them to consider With what out-cries was Bishop Hall good man who little dreamt of any peace with Rome pursued by Burton and other Hot-spurs for yielding it a Church Who had made the same concession over and over again before he was Bishop as Iunius Reynolds and our best Controversie-Writers generally do and no notice taken no noise made of it You may perceive by this one instance where the shooe wringeth § XIX In their next that they may not appear so uncharitable as to suspect their Brethren without cause they tell us Upon what grounds they so do viz. these two The endeavours of Reconciliation in the Sixth and the pressing of Ceremonies in the Seventh Objection As to the former First All endeavours of Peace without loss of Truth are certainly commendable in the undertakers prove the event as it will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 12. is every mans warrant for that If any particular private man have made overtures of peace in this kind upon other terms than he ought let him answer it as he can what is that to us Admit Secondly which I fear is too true that there is little hope scarce a possibility of reconcilement if we well preserve as we are in Conscience bound the truth and purity of our Religion yet ought not that fear to hinder any man fitted with abilities and opportunities for it from such Endeavours whereof whatsoever the success be otherwise these two good effects will follow It will be some comfort to him within his own bosom that he hath done what was his duty to do to his utmost power And it will appear to the world where the business stuck and through whose default most the Endeavour proved fruitless Thirdly though there be little hope and since the Trent Council less than before of bringing things to a perfect agreement yet methinks it should be thought worth the while Est quadam prodire tenus si non datur ultra to bring both sides to as near an agreement and reduce the differences to as small a number and as narrow a point as may be That if we cannot grow to be of the same belief in every thing we might at least be brought to shew more Charity either to other than to damn one another for every difference and more Ingenuity than to seek to render the one the other more odious to the World than we ought by representing each others opinions worse than they are § XX. The Seventh Objection containeth the other ground of their said former suspicion to wit the vehement pressing of the Ceremonies Wherein First they do not well in calling them Popish and Superstitious but that having already fully â—leared I shall not now insist upon Secondly by requiring to have some Command or Example of Scripture produced to warrant to their Consciences the use of the Ceremonies They offer occasion to consider of that point wherein the very Mystery of Puritanism consisteth viz. That no man may with a safe Conscience do any thing for which there may not be produced either Command or Example from the Scripture Which erroneous Principle being
of spirits divers kinds of tongues interpretation of tongues All which and all other of like nature and use because they are wrought by that one and self-same Spirit which divideth to every one severally as he will are therefore called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Spiritual gifts and here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the manifestation of the Spirit The word Spirit though in Scripture it have many other significations yet in this place I conceive it to be understood directly of the Holy Ghost the third Person in the ever-blessed Trinity For First in ver 3. that which is called the Spirit of God in the former part is in the latter part called the Holy Ghost f I give you to understand that no man speaking by the spirit of God calleth Iesus accursed and that no man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost Again that variety of gifts which in ver 4. is said to proceed from the same Spirit is said likewise in ver 5. to proceed from the same Lord and in ver 6. to proceed from the same God and therefore such a Spirit is meant as is also Lord and God and that is only the Holy Ghost And again in those words in ver 11. All these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit dividing to every man severally as he will The Apostle ascribeth to this Spirit the collation and distribution of such gifts according to the free power of his own will and pleasure which free power belongeth to none but God alone Who hath set the members every one in the body as it hath pleased him Which yet ought not to be so understood of the Person of the Spirit as if the Father and the Son had no part or fellowship in this business For all the Actions and operations of the Divine Persons those only excepted which are of intrinsecal and mutual relation are the joynt and undivided works of the whole three Persons according to the common known Maxim constantly and uniformly received in the Catholick Church Opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa And as to this particular concerning gifts the Scriptures are clear Wherein as they are ascribed to God the Holy Ghost in this Chapter so they are elsewhere ascribed unto God the Father Every good gift and every perfect giving is from above from the Father of Lights Jam. 1. and elsewhere to God the Son Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ Eph. 4. Yea and it may be that for this very reason in the three verses next before my Text these three words are used Spirit in ver 4. Lord in ver 5. and God in ver 6. to give us intimation that these spiritual gifts proceed equally and undividedly from the whole three persons from God the Father and from his Son Iesus Christ our Lord and from the eternal Spirit of them both the Holy Ghost as from one intire indivisible and coessential Agent But for that we are gross of understanding and unable to conceive the distinct Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Godhead otherwise than by apprehending some distinction of their operations and offices to us ward it hath pleased the Wisdom of God in the holy Scriptures which being written for our sakes were to be fitted to our capacities so far to condescend to our weakness and dulness as to attribute some of those great and common works to one person and some to another after a more special manner than unto the rest although indeed and in truth none of the three persons had more or less to do than other in any of those great and common works This manner of speaking Divines use to call Appropriation By which appropriation as power is ascribed to the Father and Wisdom to the Son so is Goodness to the Holy Ghost And therefore as the work of Creation wherein is specially seen the mighty power of God is appropiated to the Father and the work of Redemption wherein is specially seen the wisdom of God to the Son and so the works of sanctification and the infusion of habitual graces whereby the good things of God are communicated unto us is appropriated unto the Holy Ghost And for this cause the gifts thus communicated unto us from God are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spiritual gifts and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the manifestation of the Spirit We see now why spirit but then why manifestation The word as most other verbals of that form may be understood either in the active or passive signification And it is not material whether of the two ways we take it in this place both being true and neither improper For these spiritual gifts are the manifestation of the spirit actively because by these the Spirit manifesteth the will of God unto the Church these being the Instruments and means of conveying the knowledge of salvation unto the people of God And they are the manifestation of the spirit Passively too because where any of these gifts especially in any eminent sort appeared in any person it was a manifest evidence that the Spirit of God wrought in him As we read it Acts 10. that they of the Circumcision were astonished when they saw that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gifts of the Holy Ghost If it be demanded But how did that appear it followeth in the next verse For they heard them speak with tongues c. The spiritual Gift then is a manifestation of the Spirit as every other sensible effect is a manifestation of its proper cause We are now yet further to know that the Gifts and graces wrought in us by the holy Holy Spirit of God are of two sorts The Scriptures sometimes distinguish them by the different terms of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 although those words are sometimes again used indifferently and promiscuously either for other They are commonly known in the Schools and differenced by the names of Gratiae gratum facientes Gratiae gratis datae Which terms though they be not very proper for the one of them may be affirmed of the other whereas the members of every good distinction ought to be opposite yet because they have been long received and change of terms though haply for the better hath by experience been found for the most part unhappy in the event in multiplying unnecessary book-quarrels we may retain them profitably and without prejudice Those former which they call Gratum facientes are the Graces of Sanctification whereby the person that hath them is enabled to do acceptable service to God in the duties of his General Calling these latter which they call Gratis datas are the Graces of Edification whereby the person that hath them is enabled to do profitable service to the Church of God in the duties of his particular Calling Those are
him to be first assured his cause was right and good for that purpose if it were doubtful I searched it out and examined it before I would countenance either him or it Certainly thus to do is agreeable to the rule of Iustice yea and of Mercy too for it is one Rule in shewing Mercy that it be ever done salvis pietate justitiâ without prejudice done to piety and justice And as to this particular the commandment of God is express for it in Exod. 23. Thou shalt not countenance no not a poor man in his cause Now if we should thus understand the coherence of the words the special duty which Magistrates should hence learn would be indifferency in the administration of Justice not to make difference of rich or poor far or near friend or foe one or other but to consider only and barely the equity and right of the cause without any respect of persons or partial inclination this way or that way This is a very necessary duty indeed in a Magistrate of Justice and I deny not but it may be gathered without any violence from these very words of my Text though to my apprehension not so much by way of immediate observation from the necessity of any such coherence as by way of consequence from the words themselves otherwise For what need all that care and pains and diligence in searching out the cause if the condition of the person might over-rule the cause after all that search and were not the judgment to be given meerly according to the goodness or badness of the cause without respect had to the person But the special duty which these words seem most naturally and immediately to impose upon the Magistrate and let that be the third Observation is diligence and patience and care to hear and examine and enquire into the truth of things and into the equity of mens causes As the Physician before he prescribe receipt or diet to his patient will first feel the pulse and view the urine and observe the temper and changes in the body and be inquisitive how the disease began and when and what sits it hath and where and in what manner it holdeth him and inform himself every other way as fully as he can in the true state of his body that so he may proportion the remedies accordingly without error so ought every Magistrate in causes of Justice before he pronounce sentence or give his determination whether in matters judicial or criminal to hear both parties with equal patience to examine witnesses and other evidences advisedly and throughly to consider and wisely lay together all Allegations and Circumstances to put in quaeries and doubts upon the by and use all possible expedient means for the boulting out of the truth that so he may do that which is equal and right without error A duty not without both Precept and President in holy Scripture Moses prescribeth it in Deut. 17. in the case of Idolatry If there be found among you one that hath done thus or thus c. And it be told thee and thou hast heard of it and inquired diligently and behold it to be true and the thing certain that such abomination is wrought in Israel Then thou shalt bring forth that man c. The offender must be stoned to death and no eye pity him but it must be done orderly and in a legal course not upon a bare hear-say but upon diligent examination and inquisition and upon such full evidence given in as may render the fact certain so far as such cases ordinarily are capable of certainty And the like is again ordered in Deut. 19. in the case of false witness Both the men between whom the controversie is shall stand before the Iudges and the Iudges shall make diligent inquisition c. And in Iudg. 19. in the wronged Levites case whose Concubine was abused to death at Gibeah the Tribes of Israel stirred up one another to do justice upon the inhabitants thereof and the method they proposed was this first to consider and consult of it and then to give their opinions But the most famous example in this kind is that of King Solomon in 3 Kings 3. in the difficult case of the two Mothers Either of them challenged the living Child with a like eagerness either of them accused other of the same wrong and with the same allegations neither was there witness or other evidence on either part to give light unto the matter yet Solomon by that wisdom which he had obtained from God found a means to search out the truth in this difficulty by making as if he would cut the child into halfs and give either of them one half at the mentioning whereof the compassion of the right mother betrayed the falshood of her clamorous competitor And we read in the Apocryphal Story of Susanna how Daniel by x examining the two Elders severally and apart found them to differ in one circumstance of their relation and thereby discovered the whole accusation to be false Iudges for this reason were anciently called Cognitores and in approved Authors Cognoscere is as much as to do the office of a Judge to teach Iudges that one chief point of there care should be to know the Truth For if of private men and in things of ordinary discourse that of Solomon be true He that answereth a matter before he heareth it it is folly and shame unto him certainly much more is it true of publick Magistrates and in matters of Justice and Judgment by how much both the men are of better note and the things of greater moment But in difficult and intricate businesses covered with darkness and obscurity and perplexed with many windings and turnings and cunning and crafty conveyances to find a fair issue out and to spy light at a narrow hole and by wisdom and diligence to rip up a foul matter and search a cause to the bottom and make a discovery of all is a thing worthy the labour and a thing that will add to the honour I say not only of inferiour governours but even of the Supreme Magistrate the King It is the glory of God to conceal a thing but the honour of Kings is to search out the matter To understand the necessity of this duty consider First that as sometimes Democritus said the truth lyeth in profundo and in abdito dark and deep as in the bottom of a pit and it will ask some time yea and cunning too to find it out and to bring it to light Secondly that through favour faction envy greediness ambition and otherwise innocency it self is often laden with false accusations You may observe in the Scriptures how Naboth Ieremy S. Paul and others and you may see by too much experience in these wretched times how many men of fair and honest conversation have been accused and troubled
account him no wiser than he should be that sluggeth in his own business or goeth heartlesly about it It is the Kings business who hath entrusted you with it and he is scarce a good subject that slacketh the Kings business or doth it to the halves Nay it is the Lords business for Ye judge not for man but for the Lord who is with you in the cause and in the judgment and Cursed is he that doth the Lords business negligently That you may therefore do all under one your own business and the Kings business and the Lords business with that zeal and forwardness which becometh you in so weighty an affair lay this pattern before your eyes and hearts See what Phinees did and thereby both examine what hitherto you have done and learn what henceforth you should do First Phinees doth not post off the matter to others the fervency of his zeal made him willing to be himself the Actor He harboured no such cool thoughts as too many Magistrates do Here is a shameful crime committed by a shameless person and in a shameless manner pity such an audacious offender should go unpunished My heart riseth against him and much ado I have to refrain from being my self his executioner rather than he should carry it away thus But why should I derive the envy of the fact upon my self and but gain the imputation of a busie officious fellow in being more forward than others A thousand more saw it as well as I whom it concerneth as nearly as it doth me and if none of them will stir in it why should I Doubtless my Uncle Moses and my father Eleazer and they that are in place of Authority will not let it pass so but will call him to an account for it and give him condign punishment If I should do it it would be thought but the attempt of a rash young fellow It will be better discretion therefore to forbear and to give my betters leave to go before me Such pretensions as these would have kept off Phinees from this noble Exploit if he had been of the temper of some of ours who owe it to nothing so much as their lukewarmness that they have at least some reputation of being moderate and discreet men But true zeal is more forward than mannerly and will not lose the opportunity of doing what it ought for waiting till others begin Alas if every man should be so squeamish as many are nothing at all would be done And therefore the good Magistrate must consider not what others do but what both he and they are in conscience bound to do and though there should be many more joyned with him in the same common care and with equal power yet he must resolve to take that common affair no otherwise into his special care than if he were left alone therein and the whole burden lay upon his shoulders As when sundry persons are so bound in one common bond for the payment of one entire sum conjunctim divisim every one per se in toto in solidum that every particular person by himself is as well liable to the payment of the whole as they all together are Admit loose or idle people for who can hold their tongues shall for thy diligence say thou art an hard and austere man or busiest thy self more than thou hast thank for thy labour First that man never cared to do well that is afraid to hear ill He that observeth the wind saith Solomon shall not sow and the words especially of idle people are no better Secondly He maketh an ill purchace that fore-goeth the least part of his duty to gain a little popularity the breath of the people being but a sorry plaster for a wounded conscience Thirdly what a man by strict and severe execution of Iustice loseth in the breadth he commonly gaineth it all and more in the weight and in the length of his Credit A kind quiet man that carrieth it for the present and in the voice of the multitude but it is more solid and the more lasting praise to be reputed in the opinion of the better and the wiser sort a Iust man and a good Patriot or Commonwealths-man Fourthly if all should condemn thee for that wherein thou hast done but well thy comfort is thine own conscience shall bestead thee more than a thousand witnesses and stand for thee against ten thousand tongues at that last day when the hearts of all men shall be made manifest and every man that hath deserved well shall have praise of God and not of man Secondly Phinees as he did not post off this execution to other men so he did not put it off to another day Phinees might have thought thus We are now in a religious work humbling our selves in a publick solemn and frequent assembly before the face of God to appease his just wrath against us for our sins Et quod nunc instat agamus It would be unseasonable leaving this work now another time may serve as well to inflict deserved punishment upon that wicked miscreant But zeal will admit no put offs it is all upon the spur till it be doing what it conceiveth fit to be done There are no passions of the mind so impetuous and so impatient of delay as Love and Anger and these two are the prime ingredients of true zeal If any man should have interposed for Zimri and taken upon him to have mediated with Phinees for his reprival I verily think in that heat he might sooner have provoked his own than have prorogued Zimri's exécution Delays in any thing that is good are ill and in the best things worst As Wax when it is chafed and Iron when it is hot will take impressions but if the Seal or Stamp be not speedily put to the hear abateth and they return to their former hardness so the best affections of the best men if they be not taken in the heat abate and lessen and die In the administration then of Iustice and the execution of Iudgment where there is Zeal there will be Expedition and the best way to preserve Zeal where it is is to use Expedition I am not able to say where the want is or where specially but certainly a great want there is generally in this Kingdom of Zeal to Iustice in some that should have it if that complaint be as just as it is common among men that have had sutes in the Courts that they have been wronged with far less damage than they have been righted there have been so many frustratoriae and venatoriae dilationes as St. Bernard in his time called them so many lingring and costly delays used And for Executing Iudgment upon Malefactors if Phinees had suffered Zimri to have lived but a day longer for any thing we know the plague might have lasted also a day longer and why might
and obedience other fruits of grace in some good and comfortable measure it is a good sign of grace and sanctification in the heart But if thou hast these things only by fits and starts and sudden moods and art sometimes violently hot upon them and other sometimes again and oftner key cold presume not too much upon shews but suspect thy self still of hypocrisie and insincerity and never cease by repentance and prayer and the constant exercises of other good graces to physick and dyet thy soul till thou hast by Gods goodness put thy self into some reasonable assurance that thou art the true child of God a sincere believer and not an hypocrite as Ahab here notwithstanding all this his solemn humiliation was Here is Ahab an Hypocrite and yet humbled before the Lord. But yet now this humiliation such as it was what should work it in him That we find declared at vers 27. And it came to pass that when Ahab heard these words c. There came to him a message from God by the hand of Eliah and that was it that humbled him Alas what was Eliah to Ahab a silly plain Prophet to a mighty King that he durst thus presume to rush boldly and unsent-for into the presence of such a potent Monarch who had no less power and withal more colour to take away his life than Naboth's and that when he was in the top of his jollity solacing himself in the new-taken possession of his new-gotten Vine-yard and there to his face charge him plainly with and shake him up roundly for and denounce Gods judgments powerfully against his bloody abominable oppressions We would think a Monarch nusled up in Idolatry and accustomed to blood and hardened in Sin and Obstinacy should not have brooked that insolency from such a one as Eliah was but have made his life a ransom for his sawciness And yet behold the words of this underling in comparison how they fall like thunder upon the great guilty Offender and strike palsie into his knees and trembling into his joints and tumble him from the height of his jollity and roll him in sackcloth and ashes and cast him into a strong fit of legal humiliation Seest thou how Ahab is humbled before me And here now cometh in our second Observation even the power of Gods Word over the Consciences of obstinate sinners powerful to Cast down strong holds and every high thought that exalteth it self against God That which in Heb. 4. if I mistake not the true understanding of that place is spoken of the Essential word of God the second person in the ever blessed Trinity is also in an analogy true of the revealed Word of God the Scriptures of the Prophets and Apostles that it is Quick and powerful and more cutting than any two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow Is not my word like as a fire saith the Lord and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces Jer. 23. Like a soft fire to dissolve and melt the hearts of relenting sinners and true Converts but like a strong hammer to batter and break in pieces the rocky and flinty consciences of obstinate and hardened offenders Examples hereof if you require behold in the stories of the Kings Saul whining when Samuel reproveth him in the books of the Prophets Ninevites drooping when Ionas threatneth them in the Acts of the Apostles Felix trembling when Paul discourseth before him in the Martyrologies of the Church Tyrants and bloody Persecutors maskered at the bold consessions of the poor suffering Christians in this Chapter proud Ahab mourning when Eliah telleth him his sin and foretelleth him his punishment Effects which might justly seem strange to us if the Causes were not apparent One cause and the Principal is in the instrument the Word not from any such strength in it self for so it is but a dead letter but because of Gods Ordinance in it For in his hand are the hearts and the tongues and the ears both of Kings and Prophets and he can easily when he seeth it good put the spirit of Zeal and of Power into the heart of the poorest Prophet and as easily the spirit of fear and of terrour into the heart of the greatest King He chooseth weak Instruments as here Eliah and yet furnisheth them with power to effect great matters that so the glory might not rest upon the instrument but redound wholly to him as to the chief agent that imployeth it We have this treasure in earthen Veslels saith St. Paul that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us 2 Cor. 4. We say words are but wind and indeed the words of the best Minister are no better as they are breathed out and uttered by sinful mortal man whose breath is in his nostrils but yet this wind as it is breathed in and inspired by the powerful eternal Spirit of God is strong enough by his effectual working with it not only to shake the top branches but to rend up the very bottom-root of the tallest Cedar in Lebanon Vox Domini confringens Cedros Psal. 29. The voice of the Lord is mighty in operation the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice The voice of the Lord breaketh the Cedars yea the Lord breaketh the Cedars of Lebanon Another Cause is in the Object and that is the force of Natural Conscience which the most presumptuous sinner can never so stifle though he endeavour all he can to do it but that it will be sometimes snubbing and stinging and lashing and vexing him with ugly representations of his past sins and terrible suggestions of future vengeance And then of all other times is the force of it most lively when the voice of God in his Word awakeneth it after a long dead sleep Then it riseth and Sampson-like rouseth up it self and bestirreth it self lustily as a Giant refreshed with Wine and it putteth the disquieted patient to such unsufferable pain that he runneth up and down like a distracted man and doth he knoweth not what and seeketh for ease he knoweth not where Then he would give all Dives his wealth for A drop of Water to cool the heat he feeleth and with Esau part with his birth-right for any thing though it were never so little mean that would give him but the least present refreshing and preserve him from fainting Then sack-cloth and ashes and fasting and weeping and mourning and renting the garments and tearing the hair and knocking the breast and out-cries to heaven and all those other things which he could not abide to hear of in the time of his former security whilest his conscience lay fast asleep and at rest are now in all haste greedily entertained and all too little if by any means they can possibly give any ease or asswagement to the present torment
other person that should but touch them So not only our Fathers Sins if we touch them by imitation but even their Lands and Goods and Houses and other things that were theirs are sufficient to derive God's Curse upon us if we do but hold them in possession What is gotten by any evil and unjust and unwarrantable means is in God's sight and estimation no better than stollen Now stollen Goods we know though they have passed through never so many hands before that man is answerable in whose Hands they are found and in whose Custody and Possession they are God hateth not Sin only but the very Monuments of Sin too and his Curse fasteneth not only upon the Agent but upon the brute and dead Materials too And where theft or oppression or Perjury or Sacrilege have laid the foundation and reared the house there the Curse of God creepeth in between the walls and ceilings and lurketh close within the stones and the timber and as a fretting moth or canker insensibly gnaweth asunder the pins and the joynts of the building till it have unframed it and resolved it into a ruinous heap for which mischief there is no remedy no preservation from it but one and that is free and speedy restitution For any thing we know what Ahab the Father got without justice Iehoram the Son held without scruple We do not find that ever he made restitution of Naboth's vineyard to the right heir and it is like enough he did not and then between him and his Father there was but this difference the Father was the theif and he the receiver which two the Law severeth not either in guilt or punishment but wrappeth them equally in the same guilt and in the same punishment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And who knoweth whether the very holding of that vineyard might not bring upon him the curse of his father's oppression It is plain that vineyard was the place where the heaviest part of that Curse overtook him But that which is the upshot of all and untieth all the knots both of this and of all other doubts that can be made against God's justice in punishing one for another ariseth from a third consideration which is this That the children are punished for the fathers sins or indefinitely any one man for the sins of any other man it ought to be imputed to those sins of the Fathers or others not as to the causes properly deserving them but only as occasioning those punishments It pleaseth God to take occasion from the sins of the fathers or of some others to bring upon their children or those that otherwise belong unto them in some kind of relation those evils which by their own corruptions and sins they have justly deserved This distinction of the Cause and Occasion if well heeded both fully acquitteth God's justice and abundantly reconcileth the seeming Contradictions of Scripture in this Argument and therefore it will be worth the while a little to open it There is a kind of Cause de numero efficientium which the learned for distinctions sake call the Impulsive Cause and it is such a cause as moveth and induceth the principal Agent to do that which it doth For example a Schoolmaster correcteth a Boy with a rod for neglecting his Book Of this correction here are three dictinct causes all in the rank of Efficients viz. the Master the Rod and the Boys neglect but each hath its proper causality in a different kind and manner from other The Master is the Cause as the principal Agent that doth it the Rod is the Cause as the Instrument wherewith he doth it and the Boy 's neglect the impulsive Cause for which he doth it Semblably in this judgment which befel Iehoram the principal efficient Cause and Agent was God as he is in all other punishments and judgments Shall there be evil in the city and the Lord hath not done it Amos 3. and here he taketh it to himself I will bring the evil upon his house The Instrumental Cause under God was Iehu whom God raised up and endued with zeal and power for the execution of that vengeance which he had determined against Ahab and against his house as appeareth in 4 Kings 9. and 10. But now what the true proper Impulsive Cause should be for which he was so punished and which moved God at that time and in that sort to punish him that is the point wherein consisteth the chiefest difficulty in this matter and into which therefore we are now to enquire viz. Whether that were rather his own sin or his Father Ahab's sin Whether we answer for this or for that we say but the truth in both for both sayings are true God punished him for his own and God punished him for his fathers sin The difference only this His own sins were the impulsive cause that deserved the punishment his fathers sin the impulsive cause that occasioned it and so indeed upon the point and respectively to the justice of God rather his own sins were the cause of it than his fathers both because justice doth especially look at the desert and also because that which deserveth the punishment is more effectually and primarily and properly the impulsive cause of punishing than that which only occasioneth it The terms whereby Artists express these two different kinds of impulsive causes borrowed from Galen and the Physicians of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 would be excellent and full of satisfaction if they were of easie understanding But for that they are not so especially to such as are not acquainted with the terms and learning of the Schools I forbear to use them and rather than to take the shortest cut over hedge and ditch chuse to lead you an easier and plainer way though it 's something about and that by a familiar Example A man hath lived for some good space in reasonable state of health yet by gross feeding and through continuance of time his Body the whilst hath contracted many vicious noisom and malignant humours It happeneth he had occasion to ride abroad in bad weather taketh wet on his feet or neck getteth cold with it cometh home findeth himself not well falleth a shaking first and anon after into a dangerous and lasting Fever Here is a Fever and here are two different causes of it an antecedent cause within the abundance of noisom and crude humours that is Causa 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the evident cause ab extra his riding in the wet and taking cold upon it and that is Galen's causa 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let us go on a little and compare these causes The Physician is sent for the sick man's friends they stand about him and in cometh the Physician among them and enquireth of him and them how he got his Fever They presently give him such Information as they can and the Information
course for the time and to wait God's leisure and a farther opportunity And if after some reasonable expectation upon further tender with modest importunity he cannot yet hope to prevail he must begin to resolve of another Course submit himself to Authority and Order acknowledge God's Providence in it possess his soul in patience and think that for some secret corruption in himself or for some other just cause God is pleased that he should not or not yet enter into that Calling On the other side a Gentleman liveth in his Country in good credit and account known to be a sufficient man both for Estate and Understanding thought every way fit to do the King and his Country service in the Commission of the Peace yet himself either out of a desire to live at ease and avoid trouble or because he thinketh he hath as much business of his own as he can well turn him to without charging himself with the cares of the publick or possibly out of a privy conscientiousness to himself of some defect as it may be an Irresolution in Iudgment or in Courage or too great a propension to foolish pity or for some other reason which appeareth to him just thinketh not that a fit Calling for him and rather desireth to be spared But for so much as it is not fit a man should be altogether his own Judge especially in things that concern the Publick he must herein depend upon those to whom the power of sparing or imposing in this kind is committed He may excuse himself by his other many occasions alledge his own wants and insufficiences and what he can else for himself and modestly crave to be spared But if he cannot by fair and honest sute get off he must submit himself to Authority and Order yield somewhat to the Iudgment of others think that God hath his secret work in it and rest upon the warrant of his outward Calling The outward Calling then is not a thing of a small moment or to be lightly regarded Sometimes as in the case last proposed it may have the chief and the casting voice but where it hath least it hath always a Negative in every regular choice of any Calling or Course of life And it is this outward Calling which I say not principally but even alone must rule every ordinary Christian in the judging of other mens Callings We cannot see their hearts we know not how God might move them we are not able to judge of their inward Callings If we see them too neglectful of the duties of their Calling if we find their Gifts hold very short and unequal proportion with the weight of their Calling or the like we have but little comfortable assurance to make us confident that all is right within But yet unless it be such as are in place of Authority and Office to examine mens sufficiences and accordingly to allow or disallow them what hath any of us to do to judge the heart or the Conscience or the inward Calling of our Brother So long as he hath the warrant of an orderly outward Calling we must take him for such as he goeth for and leave the trial of his heart to God and to his own heart And of this second general point the choice of a Calling thus far Remaineth now the third and last point proposed The Use of a Mans calling Let him walk in it vers 17. Let him abide in it ver 20. Let him abide therein with God here in my Text. At this I aimed most in my choice of this Text and yet of this I must say least Preachers oft-times do with their proposals as Parents sometimes do with their Children though they love the later as well yet the first go away with the largest portions But I do not well to trifle out that little sand I have left in Apologies let us rather on to the matter and see what Duties our Apostle here requireth of us under these Phrases of abiding in our Callings and abiding therein with God It may seem he would have us stick to a Course and when we are in a Calling not to forsake it nor change it no not for a better no not upon any terms Perhaps some have taken it so but certainly the Apostle never meant it so For taking the word Calling in that extent wherein he treateth of it in this Chapter if that were his meaning he should consequently teach that no single man might marry nor any Servant become free which are apparently contrary both unto common Reason and unto the very purpose of the Chapter But taking the word as we have hitherto specially intended it and spoken of it for some setled Station and Course of Life whereby a man is to maintain himself or wherein to do profitable service to human Society or both is it yet lawful for a man to change it or is he bound to abide in it perpetually without any possibility or liberty to alter his course upon any terms I answer it is lawful to change it so it be done with due caution It is lawful first in subordinate Callings For where a man cannot warrantably climb unto an higher but by the steps of an inferiour Calling there must needs be supposed a lawfulness of relinquishing the inferiour How should we do for Generals for the Wars if Colonels and Lieutenants and Captains and common Soldiers might not relinquish their charges and how for Bishops in the Church if beneficed-men and College-Governours were clench'd and riveted to their Cures like a Nail in a sure place not to be removed Nay we should have no Priests in the Church of England since a Priest must be a Deacon first if a Deacon might not leave his Station and become a Priest But St. Paul saith They that have used the Office of a Deacon well purchase to themselves a good degree and so in lower Callings it is that men should give proof of their worthiness for higher It is lawful secondly yea necessary when the very Calling it self though in it self good and useful doth yet by some accident become unlawful or unuseful As when some Manufacture is prohibited by the State or when some more exact device of later Invention hath made the old unprofitable It is lawful thirdly when a man by some accident becometh unable for the duties of his Calling as by Age Blindness maim decay of Estate and sundry other impediments which daily occur It is lawful fourthly where there is a want of sufficient men or not a sufficient number of them in some Callings for the necessities of the State and Country in such cases Authority may interpose and cull out men from other Callings such as are fit and may be spared to serve in those Not to branch out too many particulars it is lawful generally where either absolute Necessity enforceth it or lawful Authority enjoyneth it or a concurrence of weighty Circumstances
Mystery that driveth at all this must needs be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the highest degree the great mystery of Godliness That for the scope 27. Look now secondly at the parts and parcels the several pieces as it were whereof this mystery is made up those mentioned in this verse and the rest and you shall find that from each of them severally but how much more then from them altogether joyntly may be deduced sundry strong motives and perswasives unto Godliness Take the material parts of this Mystery the Incarnation Nativity Circumcision Baptism Temptation Preaching Life Death Burial Resurrection Ascension Intercession and Second coming of Christ. Or take if I may so call them the formal parts thereof our eternal Election before the World was our Vocation by the Preaching of the Gospel our Iustification by Faith in the merits of Christ our Sanctification by the Spirit of grace the stedfast Promises we have and hopes of future Glory and the rest It would be too long to vouch Texts for each particular but this I say of them all in general There is not one link in either of those two golden chains which doth not straitly tye up our hands tongues and hearts from doing evil draw us up effectually unto God and Christ and strongly oblige us to shew forth the power of his Grace upon our souls by expressing the power of Godliness in our lives and conversations That for the parts 28. Thirdly Christian Religion may be called the Mystery of Godliness in regard of its Conversation because Godliness is the best preserver of Christianity Roots and Fruits and Herbs which let alone and left to themselves would soon corrupt and putriâ—ie may being well condited with Sugar by a skilful Confectioner be preserved to continue for many years and be serviceable all the while So the best and surest means to preserve Christianity in its proper integrity and power from corrupting into Atheism or Heresie is to season it well with Grace as we do fresh meats with salt to keep them sweet and to be sure to keep the Conscience upright Holding the mysteries of faith in a pure Conscience saith our Apostle a little after at verse 9. of this Chapter and in the first Chapter of this Epistle vers 19. Holding faith and a good Conscience which latter some having put away concerning faith have made shipwrack Apostasie from the faith springeth most an end from Apostasie in manners And he that hath but a very little care how he liveth can have no very fast hold of what he believeth For when men grow once regardless of their Consciences good affections will soon languish and then will noysom lusts gather strength and cast up mud into the soul that the judgement cannot run clear Seldom is the head right where the heart is amiss A rotten heart will be ever and anon sending up evil thoughts into the mind as marish and fenny grounds do foggy mists into the air that both darken and corrupt it As a mans taste when some malignant humour affecteth the organ savoureth nothing aright but deemeth sweet things bitter and sowre things pleasant So where Avarice Ambition Malice Voluptuousness Vain-glory Sedition or any other domineering lust hath made it self master of the heart it will so blind and corrupt the judgment that it shall not be able to discern at any certainty good from evil or truth from falshood Wholsome therefore is St. Peters advice to add unto faith Vertue Vertue will not only keep it in life but at such a height of vigour also that it shall not easily either degenerate into Heresie or languish into Atheism 29. We see now three Reasons for which the Doctrine of Christianity may be called The mystery of Godliness because it first exacteth Godliness and secondly exciteth unto Godliness and is thirdly best preserved by Godliness From these Premisses I shall desire for our nearer instruction to infer but two things only the one for the trial of Doctrines the other for the bettering of our lives For the first St. Iohn would not have us over-forward to believe every spirit Every spirit doth he say Truly it is impossible we should unless we should believe flat contradictions Whilst one Spirit saith It is another Spirit saith It is not can a man believe the one and not disbelieve the other if he hear both Believe not every spirit then is as much in St. Iohn's meaning as if he had said Be not too hasty to Believe any Spirit especially where there appeareth some just cause of Suspicion but try it first whether it be a true spirit or a false Even as St. Paul biddeth us prove all things that having so done we may hold fast what upon trial proveth good and let the rest go 30. Now holy Scripture is certainly that Lapis Lydius that Test whereby this trial is to be made Ad legem ad testimonium when we have wrangled as long as we can hitherto we must come at last But sith all Sectaries pretend to Scripture Papists Anabaptists Disciplinarians All yea the Devil himself can vouch Texts to drive on a Temptation It were good therefore we knew how to make right applications of Scripture for the Trial of Doctrines that we do not mistake a false one for a true one Many profitable Rules for this purpose our Apostle affordeth us in sundry places One very good one we may gather from the words immediately before the Text wherein the Church of God is said to be the pillar and ground of truth The Collection thence is obvious that it would very much conduce to the guiding of our judgments aright in the examining of mens doctrines concerning either Faith or Manners wherein the Letter of Scripture is obscure or the meaning doubtful to inform our selves as well as we can in credendis what the received sence and in agendis what the constant usage and practice of the Church especially in the ancient times hath been concerning those matters and that to consider what conformity the Doctrines under trial hold with the principles upon which that their sence or practice in the Premisses was grounded The Iudgment and Practice of the Church ought to sway very much with every sober and wise man either of which whosoever neglecteth or but slighteth as too many do upon a very poor pretence that the mystery of iniquity began to work betimes runneth a great hazard of falling into many errors and Absurdities If he do not he may thank his good fortune more than his forecast and if he do he may thank none but himself for neglecting so good a guide 31. But this now mentioned Rule although it be of excellent use if it be rightly understood and prudently applied and therefore growing so near the Text I could not wholly baulk it without some notice taken of it it being not within the Text I press it no farther but come to another that springeth out of the very Text it self And
it is this a very good one too viz. That when we are to try the Doctrines we should duly examine them whether they be according unto Godliness yea or no. Our Saviours direction for the discovery of false Prophets Mat. 7. is to this very purpose Ex fructibus Ye shall know them by their fruits Meaneth he it trow you of the fruits of their lives in their outward Conversation Verily no not only no nor principally neither perhaps not at all For Falshood is commonly set off by Hypocrisie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the next following verse here Shews of Sanctity and Purity pretensions of Religion and Reformation is the wool that the woolf wrappeth about him when he meaneth to do most mischief with least suspicion The Old Serpent sure is never so silly as to think his Ministers the Ministers of darkness should be able to draw in a considerable party into their communion should they appear in their dismal colours therefore he putteth them into a new dress before he sendeth them abroad disguising and transforming them as if they were the Ministers of righteousness and of the light Our Saviour therefore cannot mean the fruits of their lives so much if at all as the fruits of their Doctrines that is to say the necessary consequents of their Doctrines such Conclusions as naturally and by good and evident discourse do issue from their Doctrines And so understood it is a very useful Rule even in the Affirmative taking in other requisite conditions withal but in the Negative taken even alone and by it self it holdeth infallibly If what is spoken seem to be according to Godliness it is the better to like onward and the more likely to be true yet may it possibly be false for all that and therefore it will be needful to try it farther and to make use of other Criterions withal But if what is spoken upon examination appear to have any repugnancy with Godliness in any one branch or duty thereunto belonging we may be sure the words cannot be wholsom words It can be no heavenly Doctrine that teacheth men to be Earthly Sensual or Devilish or that tendeth to make men unjust in their dealings uncharitable in their censures undutiful to their superiors or any other way superstitious licentious or prophane 32. I note it not without much rejoycing and gratulating to us of this Church There are God knoweth a-foot in the Christian World Controversies more than a good many Decads Centuries Chiliads of novel Tenents brought in in this last Age which were never believed many of them scarce ever heard of in the Ancient Church by Sectaries of all sorts Now it is our great comfort blessed be God for it that the Doctrine established in the Church of England I mean the publick Doctrine for that is it we are to hold us to passing by private Opinions I say the publick Doctrine of our Church is such as is not justly chargeable with any Impiety contrarious to any part of that Duty we owe either to God or Man Oh that our Conversations were as free from exception as our Religion is Oh that we were sufficiently careful to preserve the honour and lustre of the Truth we profess by the correspondency of our lives and actions thereunto 33. And upon this point we dare boldly joyn issue with our clamourous adversaries on either hand Papists I mean and Disciplinarians Who do both so loudly but unjustly accuse us and our Religion they as carnal and licentious these as Popish and superstitious As Elijah once said to the Baalites that God that answereth by fire let him be God so may we say to either of both and when we have said it not fear to put it to a fair trial That Church whose Dostrine Confession and Worship is most according to Godliness let that be the Church As for our Accusers if there were no more to be instanced in but that one cursed position alone wherein notwithstanding their disagreements otherwise they both consent That lawful Soveraigns may be by their Subjects resisted and Arms taken up against them for the cause of Religion it were enough to make good the Challenge against them both Which is such a notorious piece of Ungodliness as no man that either feareth God or King as he ought to do can speak of or think of without detestation and is certainly if either St. Peter or St. Paul those two great Apostles understood themselves a branch rather of that other great mystery 2 Thes. 2. the mystery of Iniquity than of the great mystery here in the Text the mystery of Godliness There is not that point in Popery besides to my understanding that maketh it savour so strongly of Antichrist as this one dangerous and desperate point of Iesuitism doth Wherein yet those men that are ever bawling against our Ceremonies and Service as Antichristian do so deeply and wretchedly symbolize with them The Lord be judge between them and us whether our Service or their Doctrine be the more Antichristian 34. I have done with the former Inference for the trial of Doctrines there is another yet behind for the bettering of our lives For sith Christianity is a mystery of Godliness it concerneth every Christian man so to take the mystery along with him that he leave not Godliness behind That is whatsoever becometh of doubtful Controversies to look well to his life and to make conscience of practising that which without all Controversie is his Duty I know Controversies must be looked into and it were well if it were done by them and by them only whose Gifts and Callings serve for it For Truths must be maintained Errors must be refuted and the Mouths of gain-sayers must be stopped All this must be done it is true but it is as true when all this is done still the shortest cut to heaven is Faith and Godliness 35. I know not how better to draw my Sermon towards a conclusion than by observing how the great Preacher concludeth his Eccles. last After he had taken a large and exact survey of all the travels that are done under the Sun and found nothing in them but Vanity and Vexation of Spirit he telleth us at length that in multitude of Books and much reading we may sooner meet with weariness than satisfaction But saith he if you will hear the end of all here it is this is the Conclusion of the whole matter Fear God and keep his Commandments for this is the whole business of man upon which all his care and employment in this world should be spent So I say we may puzzle our selves in the pursuit of knowledg dive into the mysteries of all Arts and Sciences especially ingulph our selves deep in the studies of those three highest Professions of Physick Law and Divinity For Physick search into the Writings of Hippocrates Galen and the Methodists of Avicen and the Empyricks of Paracelsus and the Chymists for Law wrestle through the large bodies
disobedience nor refuse to do the thing commanded by such authority whosoever should take offence thereat 39. Fourthly though lawfulness and unlawfulness be not yet expediency and inexpediency are as we heard capable of the degrees of more and less and then in all reason of two inexpedient things we are to do that which is less inexpedient for the avoiding of that which is more inexpedient Say then there be an inexpediency in doing the thing commanded by authority when a brother is thereby offended is there not a greater inexpediency in not doing it when the Magistrate is thereby disobeyed Is it not more expedient and conducing to the common good that a publick Magistrate should be obeyed in a just command than that a private person should be gratified in a causless scruple 40. Fifthly when by refusing obedience to the lawful commands of our Superiours we think to shun the offending of one or two weak brethren we do in truth incur thereby a far more grievous scandal by giving offence to hundreds of others whose consciences by our Disobedience will be emboldened to that where to corrupt nature is but too too prone to affront the Magistrate and despise Authority 41. Lastly where we are not able to discharge both debts of Iustice are to be payed before debts of Charity Now the duty of obedience is debitum Iustitiae and a matter of right my Superior may challenge it at my hands as his due and I do him wrong if I with-hold it from him But the care of not giving offence is but debitum Charitatis and a matter but of courtesie I am to perform it to my brother in love when I see cause but he cannot challenge it from me as his right nor can justly say I do him wrong if I neglect it It is therefore no more lawful for me to disobey the lawful command of a Superiour to prevent thereby the offence of one or a few brethren than it is lawful for me to do one man wrong to do another man a courtesie withal or then it is lawful for me to rob the Exchequer to relieve an Hospital 24. I see not yet how any of these six Reasons can fairly be avoided and yet which would be considered if but any one of them hold good it is enough to carry the Cause and therefore I hope there need be no more said in this matter To conclude then for the point of Practice which is the main thing I aimed at in the choice of this Text and my whole meditations thereon we may take our direction in these three Rules easie to be understood and remembred and not hard to be observed in our Practice if we will but put our good wills thereunto First if God command we must submit without any more ado and not trouble our selves about the expediency or so much as about the lawfulness of the thing commanded His very Command is warrant enough for both Abraham never disputed whether it were expedient for him nor yet whether it were lawful for him to sacrifice his Son or no when once it appeared to him that God would have it so 43. Secondly if our Superiours endued with lawful authority thereunto command us any thing we may and where we have just cause of doubt we ought to enquire into the lawfulness thereof Yet not with such anxious curiosity as if we desired to find out some loop hole whereby to evade but with such modest ingenuity as may witness to God and the world the unfeigned sincerity of our desires both to fear God and to honour those that he hath set over us And if having used ordinary moral diligence bonâ fide to inform our selves the best we can there appear no unlawfulness in it we are then also to submit and obey without any more ado never troubling our selves farther to enwhether it be expedient yea or no. Let them that command us look to that for it is they must answer for it not we 44. But then thirdly where Authority hath left us free no Command either of God or of those that are set over us under God having prescribed any thing to us in that behalf there it is at our own liberty and choice to do as we shall think good Yet are we not left so loose as that we may do what we list so as the thing be but lawful for that were licentiousness and not liberty but we must ever do that which according to the exigence of present Circumstances so far as all the Wisdom and Charity we have will serve us to judge shall seem to us most expedient and profitable to mutual Edification This is the way God give us all Grace to walk in it So shall we bring Glory to him and to our selves Comfort so shall we further his Work onward and our own Account at the last AD AULAM. Sermon XIII WHITE-HALL JULY 1641. Rom. 15. 6. That ye may with one mind and with one mouth glorifie God even the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ. THe sence hangeth unperfect unless we take in the former verse too Both together contain a Votive Prayer or Benediction wherewith the Apostle for the better speeding of all the pains he had taken in the whole former Chapter and in the beginning of this to make the Romans more charitably affected one towards another without despising the weakness or judging the liberty one of another concludeth his whole discourse concerning that Argument His Exhortations will do the better he thinketh if he second them with his Devotions I have shewed you saith he what you are to do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now God grant it may be done Now the God of patience and of Consolation grant you to be like-minded one towards another according to Christ Iesus that ye may with one c. 2. In the matter or substance of which Prayer besides the formality thereof in those first words Now the God of Patience and Consolation grant you St. Paul expresseth both the thing he desired even their unity in the residue of the fifth verse To be like-minded one towards another according to Christ Iesus and the end for which he desired it even Gods glory in this sixth verse That ye may with one mind and with one mouth glorifie God even the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ. Of that I have heretofore spoken now some years past of this I desire by Gods grace presently to speak And like as in that former part we then considered three particulars First the thing it self Unity or like-mindedness to be like-minded and then two amplifications thereof one in respect of the Persons that it should be universal and mutual one towards another the other in respect of the manner that it should be according to Christ Iesus So are we at this time in this latter part to consider of the like three particulars First the End it self the glory of God that ye may
friends acquaintance or indeed more generally yet all wordly comforts stays and helps whatsoever 2. But then why these named the rarest and the rest to be included in these Because we promise to our selves more help from them than from any of the other We have a nearer relation to and a greater interest in them than any other and they of all other are the unlikest to forsake us The very brute Creatures forsake not their young ones A Hen will not desert her Chickens nor a Bear indure to be robbed of her Whelps 3. But then Thirdly why both named Father and Mother too Partly because it can hardly be imagined that both of them should forsake their child though one should hap to be unkind Partly because the Fathers love being commonly with more providence the Mothers with more tenderness both together do better express than alone either would do the abundant love of God towards us who is infinitely dear over us beyond the care of the most provident Father beyond the affection of the tenderest Mother 4. But then Fourthly When may they be said to forsake us When at any time they leave us destitute of such help as we stand in need of Whether it be out of Choice when they list not to help us though they might if they would or out of necessity when they cannot help us though they would if they could 4. The meaning of the words in the former part of the verse thus opened the result thereof is that There is a possibility of failing in all inferiour helps Fathers and Mothers our nearest and dearest friends all earthly visible helps and comforts always may fail us sometimes will fail us and at last must fail us leaving us destitute and succourless The truth whereof will the better appear if instancing especially in our natural Parents as the Text leadeth us we take a view of sundry particular causes of their so failing us under the two general heads but now mentioned to wit Choice and Necessity Under either kind three Sometimes they forsake us voluntarily aad of their own accord and through their own default when it is in their power to help us if they were so pleased which kind of forsaking may arise from three several Causes 5. First Natural Parents may prove unnatural meerly out of the naughtiness of their own hard and incompassionate hearts For although God hath imprinted this natural affection towards their own off-spring in the hearts of men in as deep and indelible characters as almost any other branch of the Law of Nature O nimiùm potens Quanto parentes sanguinis vinculo tenes Natura yet so desperately wicked is the heart of man that if it should be left to the wildness of its own corruption without any other bridle than the light of natural principles only it would eftsoons shake off that also and quite raze out all impressions of the Law of Nature at least so blur and confound the Characters that the Conscience should be able to spell very little or nothing at all of Duty out of them Else what needed the Apostle among other sins to have listed this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this want of natural affection in two several Catalogues Rom. 1. and 2 Tim. 3. Or to have charged Titus that young women should be taught among other things to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to love their Children If he had not observed some to have neglected their duty in that particular whereof Histories and experience afford us many examples Can a woman forget her sucking Child that she should not have compassion of the Son of her womb Saith the Lord by the Prophet He speaketh of it as of a monstrous thing and scarce credible of any Can she forget she in the single number But withal in the same words implyedly confessing it possible in more than one Yea they may forget They in the plural number Isa. 49. 15. 6. Secondly Parents not altogether void of natural affection may yet have their affections so alienated from their children upon some personal dislike as to forsake them Of which dislike I deny not but there may be just cause As among the Hebrews in the case of Blasphemy the Fathers hand was to be first in the execution of his Son Deut. 13. And both Civilians and Casuists allow the Father jus abdicationis a right of abdication in some cases But such cases are not much pertinent here or considerable as to our purpose For they that give their earthly Parents just cause to forsake them can have little confidence that God as their heavenly Father should take them up But when Parents shall withdraw their love and help from their Children upon some small oversights or venial miscarriages or take distaste at them either without cause or more than there is cause upon some wrong either surmise of their own or suggestion of others as Saul reviled Ionathan and threw a Iavelin at him to smite him interpreting his friendship with David as it had been a plotted Conspiracy between his Son and his Servant to take his Crown and his life from him Or when they shall disinherit their Children for some deformity of Body or defect of parts or the like As reason sheweth it to be a great sin and not to be excused by any pretence so it is an observation grounded upon manifold experience that where the right heirs have been disinherited upon almost whatsoever pretence the blessing of God hath not usually followed upon the persons and seldom hath the estate prospered in the hands of those that have succeeded in their rooms 7. Thirdly Parents whose affection towards their Children hath not been sowred by any personal dislike may yet have their affection so over-powered by some stronger lust as to become cruel to their children and forsake them For as in the World Might oftentimes over-beareth Right so in the soul of man the violence of a stronger passion or affection which in the case in hand may happen sundry ways beareth down the weaker It may happen as sometimes it hath done out of Superstition So Agamemnon sacrificed his Daughter Iphigenia The Heathens generally deceived by their cheating Oracles and some of the Iews led by their example sacrificed their sons and daughters unto devils and caused their children to pass through the fire to Moloch Sometimes out of revenge As Medea to be revenged of Iason for leaving her and placing his affection elsewhere slew her own two Sons begotten by him in his sight Saevus amor docuit natorum sanguine matres Commaculâsse manus Sometimes out of fear So the Parents of the blind man owned their Son indeed Ioh. 9. but for fear of being cast out of the Synagogue durst not speak a word in his just defence but left him to shift as well as he could for himself And Herod the great for no other cause than his own causeless fears and jealousies
blood by Man shall his blood be shed And that Iudges should be very shy and tender how they grant Pardons or Reprievals in that case he established it afterwards among his own people by a most severe sanction Num. 35. Ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a Murderer which is guilty of death but he shall surely be put to death And there is a reason of it there given also For blood saith he defileth the land and the land cannot be cleansed from the blood that is shed therein but by he blood of him that shed it Read that passage with attention and if both forehead and conscience be not harder than the neither milstone thou canst not have either the heart or the face to glory in it as a brave exploit whoever thou art that hast been the instrument to save the life of a Murderer 20. Indeed all offences are not of that hanious nature that Murder is nor do they cry so loud for vengeance as Murder doth And therefore to procure undeserved favour for a smaller offender is not so great a sin as to do it for a Murderer But yet so far as the proportion holdeth it is a sin still Especially where favour cannot be shewn to one Man but to the wrong and grievance of some other as it hapneth usually in those judicial controversies that are betwixt party and party for trial of right Or where favour cannot be shewn to an offender but with wrong and grievance to the publick as it most times falleth out in criminal causes wherein the King and Commonwealth are parties Solomon hath taught us that as well he that justifieth the wicked as he that condemneth the just are an abomination to the Lord. Yea and that for any thing that appeareth to the contrary from the Text and in thesi for circumstances may make a difference either way in hypothesi they are both equally abominable In doubtful cases it is doubtlesly better and safer to encline to Mercy than to Severity Better ten offenders should escape than one innocent person suffer But that is to be conceived only when things are doubtful so as the truth cannot be made appear but where things are notorious and evident there to justifie the guilty and to condemn the innocent are still equal abominations 21. That which you are to do then in the behalf of the poor is this First to be rightly informed and so far as morally you can well assured that their cause be just For mean and poor people are nothing less but ordinarily much more unreasonable than the great ones are and if they find the ear of the Magistrate open to hear their grievances as is very meet it should be they will be often clamorous and importunate without either cause or measure And if the Magistrate be not very wary and wise in receiving informations the Country swain may chance prove too cunning for him and make him but a stale whereby for himself to get the start of his Adversary and so the Magistrate may in fine and unwares become the instrument of oppression even then when his intention was to vindicate another from it The Truth of the matter therefore is to be first throughly sifted out the circumstances duly weighed and as well as the legal the equitable right examined and compared and this to be done with all requisite diligence and prudence before you engage in the poor Man's behalf 22. But if when this is done you then find that there is much right and equity on his side and that yet for want of skill or friends or means to manage his affairs he is in danger to be foiled in his righteous cause Or if you find that his Adversary hath a legal advantage of him or that he hath de rigore incurred the penalty of some dis-used statute yet did not offend wilfully out of the neglect of his known duty or a greedy covetous mind or other sinister and evil intention but meerly out of his ignorance and inexperience and in the simplicity of his heart as those two hundred Israelites that followed after Absalom when he called them not knowing any thing of his conspiracy had done an act of treason yet were not formally traitors In either of these cases I say you may not forsake the poor Man or despise him because he is poor or simple But you ought so much the rather to stick by him and to stand his friend to the utmost of your power You ought to give him your counsel and your countenance to speak for him and write for him and ride for him and do for him to procure him right against his Adversary in the former case and in the latter case favour from the Iudge In either case to hold back your hand to draw back your help from him if it be in the power of your hand to do him any help is that sin for which in the judgment of Solomon in the Text the Lord will admit no excuse 23. Come we now in the last place to some reasons or motives taken from the effects of the duty it self If carefully and conscionably performed it will gain honour and estimation both to our persons and places purchase for us the prayers and blessings of the poor yea and bring down a blessing from God not upon us and ours only but upon the State and Commonwealth also But where the duty is neglected the effects are quite contrary First do you know any other thing that will bring a Man more glory and renown in the common opinion of the World than to shew forth at once both justice and mercy by doing good and protecting the Innocent Let not mercy and truth forsake thee bind them about thy neck write them upon the table of thine heart so shalt thou find favour and good understanding or acceptance in the sight of God and Man Prov. 3. As a rich sparkling Diamond addeth both value and lustre to a golden Ring so do these vertues of justice and mercy well attempered bring a rich addition of glory to the Crowns of the greatest Monarchs Hoc reges habent magnificum ingens Prodesse miseris supplices fido lare Protegere c. Every Man is bound by the Law of God and of Charity as to give to every other Man his due honour so to preserve the honour that belongeth to his own person and place for Charity in performing the duties of every Commandment beginneth at home Now here is a fair and honest and sure way for all you that are in place of authority and judicature or sustain the persons of Magistrates to hold up the reputation both of your Persons and Places and to preserve them from scorn and contempt Execute judgment and justice with wisdom and diligence take knowledge of the vexations of those that are brought into the Courts or otherwise troubled without cause be sensible of the groans and pressures of poor Men in the
according to truth and pronounce of them as they are and not as they seem may we not much rather invert the Proverb and say One tale cannot be good till the other be told that is whether it be good or not the Iudg may not give credit to either till he hath heard both Nay may we not many times farther say when both tales are told that neither is good Because there is most-what in every Man's tale a mixture of some falshoods with some truths whereby it may so happen sometimes that he which hath in truth the more equity on his side by the mingling in some easily discoverable falshoods in telling his tale may render his cause the more suspicious to him that heareth it to think the whole tale naught and he that hath indeed and upon the whole matter the worst cause may yet by the weaving in some evident truths or pregnant probabilities in the telling of his tale gain such credit with him that heareth it that he will be very inclinable to believe the whole tale to be good Or howsoever they may be both so equally false or at least both so equally doubtful as no one that heareth them can well tell whether of both to give credit to It was so in the famous case of the two inmate Harlots whereof King Solomon had the hearing The living Child is mine the dead one thine faith the one No faith the other The dead Child is thine and the living mine Here were presumptions on both sides for why should any Woman challenge another Woman's Child but proofs on neither for being there were none in the house but they two neither of them could produce any witnesses The case hung thus even no more evidence on the one side than on the other no less confidence on the one side than on the other Solomon indeed by that wisdom wherewith God had endowed him in a transcendent measure found out a means whereby to turn the scales to unty that hard knot and to discover the hidden truth But what could a Iudg or a Iury of no more than ordinary wisdom then have been able to have said or done in such a case but even to have left it as they found it And truly for any thing I know Ignorance must have been their best excuse 12. And as first in the Information so there may be a defect secondly in the Proofs He that hath the better cause in veritate rei may yet fail in his proofs and not be able to make it judicially appear that he hath the better cause In which case the old Axiom holdeth Idem est non esse non apparere it is all one in foro externo and as to the determination of a Judg upon the Bench who is to pronounce secundum allegata probata for a Man not to have a right and not to be able to make it appear in a legal way and by such evidence as is requisite in a judicial proceeding that he hath such a right Or he may be out-sworn by the depositions of the witnesses produced on the behalf of the adverse part tho it may be utterly false yet direct and punctual against him and so strong enough howsoever to cast him in his Suit For what Judg but the great Judg of Heaven and Earth can certainly and infallibly know when two or three Men swear directly to a point and agree in one whether yet they swear a falshood or no Or what should induce a mortal Iudg not to believe them especially if withal he see the proofs on the other side to fall short And if in such a case following the evidence in the simplicity of his heart he gave away an honst Mans right from him to a knave he is not to be charged with it as a perverter of justice but hath his Apology here ready fitted for him in the Text Behold we knew it not 13. Add hereunto in the third place the great advantage or disadvantage that may be given to a cause in the pleading by the artificial insinuations of a powerful Orator That same flaxanimis Pitho and Suadae medulla as some of the old Heathens termed it that winning and persuasive faculty which dwelleth in the tongues of some men whereby they are able not only to work strongly upon the affections of Men but to arrest their judgments also and to encline them whether way they please is an excellent endowment of nature or rather to speak more properly an excellent gift of God Which whosoever hath received is by so much the more bound to be truly thankful to him that gave it and to do him the best service he can with it by how much he is enabled thereby to gain more glory to God and to do more good to human Society than most of his brethren are And the good blessing of God be upon the heads of all those be they few or many that use their eloquence aright and employ their Talent in that kind for the advancement of justice the quelling of opression the repressing and discountenancing of insolency and the encouraging and protecting of innocency But what shall I say then of those be they many or few that abuse the gracefulness of their elocution good speakers but to ill purposes to enchant the ears of an easie Magistrate with the charms of a fluent tongue or to cast a mist before the eyes of a weak Iury as Juglers may sport with Country people to make white seem black or black seem white so setting a fair varnish upon a rotten post and a smooth gloss upon a course cloth as Protagoras sometimes boasted that he could make a bad cause good when he listed By which means judgment is perverted the hands of violence and robbery strengthned the edge of the sword of justice abated great offenders acquitted gracious and vertuous Men molested and injured I know not what fitter reward to wish them for their pernicious eloquence as their best deserved Fee than to remit them over or what David hath assigned them in Psal. 120. What reward shall be given or done unto thee O thou false tongue Even mighty and sharp arrows with hot burning coals I might add to those how that sometimes by the subtilty and cunning of a sly Commissioner sometimes by the wilful misprision of a corrupt or the slip of a negligent or the oversight of an ignorant Clerk and by sundry other means which in regard of their number and my inexperience I am not able to recite it may come to pass that the light of Truth may be so clouded and the beams thereof intercepted from the eyes of the most circumspect Magistrate that he cannot at all times clearly discern the Equity of those Causes that are brought before him In all which cases the only Apology that is left him is still the same as before even this Behold we knew it not 14. But when he perfectly understandeth the whole business and seeth
awe and esteem to your persons preserve the authority of your places put life into your spirits and enable you to do the works of your Callings with courage and freedom 10. Secondly Samuel here justifieth himself for their greater conviction and for the more aggravating of their sin If his Government had been tyrannous or corrupt it had been somewhat the more excusable in them to have attempted a change tho I cannot say that the greatest tyranny or corruption in a Governor imaginable could have warranted such an attempt in toto Yet whatsoever fault there had been in them for so doing had he been liable to any just exceptions in that kind he must have born his share also of the blame as well as they they for that their seditious attempt and he for giving them the occasion Whereas his innocency putteth off all the blame from him and leaveth it wholly upon them who now can no more excuse themselves than they can accuse him They had rejected him with a Nolumus hunc regnare rather they had rejected God in him They have not rejected thee but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them Chap. 8. It stood him therefore upon to clear himself from all sinister surmises and suspicions of injustice that it might appear to them and to all the World that he had given them no cause why they should so reject him and that therefore they must thank themselves for it and not him if in any after-times they should have cause to repent it It is a brave thing for a Magistrate or indeed for any Man to walk with an even foot and in an upright course that when bad people shall go about to disparage him or to speak or but think unworthily of him he may be able to contest with them for the maintenance of his innocency and to stand upon his own justification as St. Paul did I have coveâ—ed no Man's silver or gold or apparel And as Moses did I have not taken an Ass from them neither have I hurt one of them And as our blessed Saviour himself did I have done many good works among you for which of those works do you stone me And as Samuel here doth Behold here I am witness against me whose Ox c. 11. Thirdly Samuel had now surrendred the administration into the hands of the new King and so having given up his Office he thought it meet to render an account how he hath carried himself therein It goeth sore with an evil steward to hear of a reckoning whereas he that hath been faithful desireth nothing more Whatsoever our Callings are we are but stewards over some part of God's Houshold and it were good for us estsoons to remember that our Master will require of us an account of our stewardships The time will come when we must all appear before the Iudgment-seat of Christ to give in our accounts And we must look to have them examined most strictly even ad ultimum quadranteâ—i to the very utmost Farthing Not an idle word nor a vain thought but must then be accounted for They that judg others now shall then be re-judged and all their proceedings re-examined and re-viewed with a most curious unerring and unpartial eye O happy thrice happy that servant who conscious to his own faithfulness shall not need to seek to the Hills and Rocks to hide him from the face of the great Iudg or to run to the Thickets as Adam did till he be fetcht out with that terrible process Adam where art thou but shall readily present himself with much assurance and comfort before him as Samuel here did before the King and the People and say Behold here I am 12. And why might not Samuel do this fourthly even in wisdom for the timely preventing of future cavil and danger There were some pretensions against his Sons of Injustice and Corruption and if matters should come to publick scanning like enough much might be proved against them Which how far they might be stretched to the Father's prejudice in after-times who could tell Little reason had he howsoever to trust a giddy people so unthankful and so new-fangled as he had found them to be and to suffer either his safety or credit to lie at their courtesie So long as these things should hang upon the file or lie in the desk he might perhaps be safe but he could not be secure That therefore the miscarriages of others might not fall on his neck he might think it safest for him toget his Quietus est betimes And therefore he requireth them all if any Man had ought to object against him that they would now produce it in open Court if they had not Reason would they should forthwith acquit him by their general Suffrages By which means having obtained a publick Testimony from them as we see in the Verses following and so being as it were quit by Proclamation he is thenceforth safe against all evil calumniations and fearless of after-claps It is a base and unmanly thing to use indirect and under-hand dealing to shift off a just Trial but a point of honest and Christian wisdom in a fair and open way handsomly to prevent an unjust Accusation No fault for a Man to use the Serpent's wisdom so it be not tainted with the Serpent's poison too but rightly tempered with a due mixture of Dove-like simplicity and innocency 13. Lastly To dissuade the people formerly from asking a King Samuel had told them what a King might do de Iure if he should use his absolute Power and what if a King should do it de Facto no remedy but submit they might not at any hand resist And he knew that by their obstinacy in asking a King they had so highly displeased the Lord that it were but just with him if he should suffer their new King to rule over them with rigour and tyranny It might very well be that out of this very consideration Samuel was the rather induced at this time to declare his own integrity that so he might propose unto the new King now in the entrance of his Reign a pattern of Equity and Justice in his own Example Even as St. Paul oftentimes proposeth his own example to the Churches for their imitation I beseech you Brethren to be followers of me Those things which ye have heard and seen in me do c. We see the World is much given to be led by example Whatever the attempt be usually one of the first enquiries is not whether there be any Law or any Reason or any Conscience but whether there be any Precedent for it yea or no And if any such be to be found it seldom sticketh it helpeth out many an ill matter it giveth a fair colour to many foul proceedings when Men have this yet to plead for themselves that they do but as others have done before them and continue things as
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Diphilus apud Stob. Serm. 8. e Pro 1. 12 13. f Luke 3. 14. g Exod. 20. 17. 22. h 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Septuag Non suscipies vocem mendacii Vulg. edit Thou shalt not receive a false report Genev. hunc sensum sequitur Chaldaeus Vatabl. i 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Phocyl k Non solum ille reus est qui falsum de aliquo profert sed is qui cito aurem criminibus praebet Isâ—d l. 3. de summo bono l Psal. 52. m 1 Sam. 24. 9. n 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thucyd. apud Stob. Ser. 40. 23. o Prov. 18. 17. Est vitium cujus si te immunem sentis inter omnes quos novi ex his qui Cathedras ascendunt sedebis me judice solitarius Facilitas credulitatis haec est cujus callidissime vulpeculae Magnorum neminem compeâ—i satis cavisse versutias Bern. 3. de confid in fine p inde eis ipsis pro nihilo ira multa inde innocentium frequens addictio inde praejudicia in absentes Bernard Ibid. q Lyr. hic r 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Demosth. de Cor. 24. f The righteous considereth the cause of the poor but the wicked regardeth not to know it Prov. 29. 7. t 2 Sam. 16. 4. u Job 29. 16. x 3 King 3. 23. y Prov. 25. 2. Quo exemplo moniti ne ad proferendam sententiam aut temere indiligenterque indiscussa quaeque quoquo modo judicemus sed exemplo Domini descendamus videamus justo examine criminosos diligenter perscrâ— temur Concil Trid. c. 22. z Psal. 82. 6. a Gen. 18. 20 21. b Luk. 16. â— 25. c Accusatores multos esse in civitate utile est ut metu contineatur audacia veruntamen hoc ita est vtile ut non plane illudamur ab accusatoribus Ibid. d Nihil mali est Canes ibi quamplurimos esse ubi permulti observandi multaque servanda sunt Cic. pro Sex Roscio e Canes aluntur in Capitolio ut significent si fures venerint Quod si luce quoque canes latrent cum Deos salutatum aliqui venerint opinor iis crura suffringantur Ibid. c. f Psal. 82. 6. g Apoc. 12. 9 10. De ipso eliam nomine Diaboli delatorem de anima c. 35 h Job 29. 17. 26. i Cael. ad Cicer 8. Fam. Epist 8. vide l. 7. l. 13. Sect. qui damni ff de damno infect In omnibus causis sive-sancimus non aliter Nisi prius qui eas exposcunt juramentum de calumnia praestiterint quod non c. l. Unic Cod. de jurejurando proptercalum 27. k Nam sacramenti timore contentiosa litigantium instantia compescitur Ibidem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sophocl 28. l Solio audire in potestate esse judicis mollire sententiam mitius vindicare quam jubeant leges Aug. Ep. 158. m Summum jus summa injuria Ib. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arist. 5. Eth. 10. n Existunt et iam saepe injuriae calumnia quadam nimis â—alida sed malit iosa interpretatione Cic. l. 1. de offic Scriptum sequi caluâ—â—iatoris esse boni judicis voluntatem scriptoris authoritatemque defendere Id. pro A. Cecin o Aucupia verborum literarum tendicula Cic. pro. A. Cecin 29. p Quartam accusatoribus secundum necessitudinem legiâ— Tacit. lib. 4. Annal. q Quadruplatores accusatores seu delatores criminum publicorum sub poena quadrupli sive quod ipsi ex damnatorum bonis quos accusaverant quartam partem consequebantur Ascon in Ver. See Fest. in Quadruplatore Turneb 3. Adver 9. Lips in lib. 4. Ann. Taciti Bisciol 14. subses 15. r Quadruplator ut breviter describam capitalis est Est enim improbus pestifer civis Cic. lib. 2. ad Heren s 1 Cor. 9. 7. t Aequitas in paribus causis paria jura desiderat Cic. in Top. Quis hoc statuit quod aequum sit in Quintium id iniquum esse in Nevium Id. pro Quin. u Praevaricatio est accusatoris corruptela ab reo Cic. in partit orat Praevaricatorem eum esse ostendimus qui colludit cum reo translatitiè munere accusandi defungitur Mar. in lib. 1. ff ad Senatusc Turpil x V. Plin. 3. Epist. 9. lib. 1. ff ad Senatusc Turpil Rosiâ— 9. Antiq. Rom. 25. 30. y V. Asconâ— in Vertin 3. z V. lib. 1. Sect. 2. c. ss ad Senatusc Turpil Rosin 9. Antiq. Rom. 25. a Lege Rommia v. l 1. sec. 2. ff ad Senatusc Turpil Gothifâ—ed in annot ibid. Rosin 8. Antiqu. Rom. part 2. cap. 22. literam illam i ta vehementer ad caput affigent c. Cic. pro Sext. Ros. b 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plutarch iâ— Pyrrho 31. c Luk. 19. 8. d Lucian in Hermot e Syrac 10. 2. f 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Isoâ—r apud Stob. Ser. 44. Si innocentes existimari volumus non sâ—lum nos abstinentes sed etiam nostros comites praestare debemus Cic. 2. in Ver. 2. g Prov. 29. 12. h Nemo unquam tam reus tam nocens adducitur qui ista defensione non possit uti Cic. 2. in Verr. 2. i Aiunt eum queri solere nonnunquam se miserum quod non suis sed suorum comitum peccatis criminibus prematur Cic. ibid. k In tanta felicitate nemo potest esse in magnâ familiâ qui neminem neque servum neque libertum improbum habeat Cic. pro Sex Roscio l Dedecus ille domûs sciet ultimus Juvenal Satyr 10. m Neh. 5. 15. n Matth. 29. 30. o Psal. 101. 5. c. 32. 1. The Argument a Cited out of Guevara 2. and matter of this Psalm 3. The Coherence Scope 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. b Breviter totum dixit quia non hic nescientes docet sed commemorat scientes Aug. hic 4. and division of the Text. 5. Balak s Plot c Num. 22. 1. d Ibid. 2. 3. e Sihon King of the Amorites and Og King of Basan Num. 21. f Ascitos sentores Madiani qui proximi regno ejus erant amici consuluit quid facto opus esset Hist. Scholast in Num. c. 32. g Num. 22. 5 .... 7. h Num. 23. 23. i 2 Pet. 2. 15. k Num 23. 11. 24 10. l Num. 14. 11. 6. and Balaam's policy against Israel m Num. 13. 16. Revel 2. 14. See also Joseph 4. Antiq. Jud. 5. 7. with the success thereof both in their sin n Num. 25. o Psal. 106. 28. p Quem Oracia Priapum dixit Hist. Scholast in Num. 34. alii secuti Hieronym in c. 9. Osee 1. cont Io. 12. See Vatabl. in Num. 25. 3. Selden Synt. 1. de DIS Sâ—r. c. 5. Lael Bisciol 3. hor. subces 20. q Exod. 20. 5. 8. r Esa. 42. 8. and punishment s Deut. 7. 6. t Ezek. 16. 8. u Ibid. 38. x Psal. 106. 29. y Num. 25. 4 5. z 1 Cor. 10. 8 9. the other thousand Num. 25. 9. it seemeth were