a participation of his felicities for he is strangely covetous who would enjoy the Sun or the Air or the Sea alone here was treasure sor him and all the world and by lighting his brother Simon' s taper he made his own light the greater and more glorious And this is the nature of Grace to be diffusive of its own excellencies for here no 〈◊〉 can inhabit the proper and personal ends of holy persons in the contract and transmissions of Grace are increased by the participation and communion of others For our Prayers are more effectual our aids increased our incouragement and examples more prevalent God more honoured and the rewards of glory have accidental advantages by the superaddition of every new Saint and beatified person the members of the mystical body when they have received nutriment from God and his Holy Son supplying to each other the same which themselves received and live on in the communion of Saints Every new Star gilds the firmament and increases its first glories and those who are instruments of the Conversion of others shall not only introduce new beauties but when themselves shine like the stars in glory they shall have some reflexions from the light of others to whose fixing in the Orb of Heaven themselves have been instrumental And this consideration is not only of use in the exaltations of the dignity Apostolical and Clerical but for the enkindling even of private charities who may do well to promote others interests of Piety in which themselves also have some concernment 4. These Disciples asked of Christ where he 〈◊〉 Jesus answered Come and see It was an answer very expressive of our duty in this instance It is not enough for us to understand where Christ inhabits or where he is to be found for our understandings may follow him afar off and we receive no satisfaction unless it be to curiosity but we must go where he is eat of his meat wash in his Lavatory rest on his beds and dwell with him for the Holy Jesus hath no kind influence upon those who stand at distance save only the affections of a Loadstone apt to draw them nigher that he may transmit his vertues by union and confederations but if they persist in a sullen distance they shall learn his glories as Dives understood the peace of Lazarus of which he was never to participate Although the Son of man hath not where to lay his head yet he hath many houses where to convey his Graces he hath nothing to cover his own but he hath enough to sanctifie ours and as he dwelt in such houses which the charity of good people then afforded for his entertainment so now he loves to abide in places which the Religion of his servants hath vowed to his honour and the advantages of Evangelical ministrations Thither we must come to him or any-where else where we may enjoy him He is to be found in a Church in his ordinances in the communion of Saints in every religious duty in the heart of every holy person and if we go to him by the addresses of Religion in Holy places by the ministery of Holy rites by Charity by the adherences of Faith and Hope and other combining Graces the Graces of union and society or prepare a lodging for him within us that he may come to us then shall we see such glories and interiour beauties which none know but they that dwell with him The secrets of spiritual benediction are understood only by them to whom they are conveyed even by the children of his house Come and see 5. S. Andrew was first called and that by Christ immediately his Brother Simon next and that by Andrew but yet Jesus changed Simon' s name and not the other 's and by this change design'd him to an eminency of Office at least in signification principally above his Brother or else separately and distinctly from him to shew that these Graces and favours which do not immediately cooperate to eternity but are gifts and offices or impresses of authority are given to men irregularly and without any order of predisponent causes or probabilities on our part but are issues of absolute predestination and as they have efficacy from those reasons which God conceals so they have some purposes as conccal'd as their causes only if God pleases to make us vessels of fair imployment and of great capacity we shall bear a greater burthen and are bound to glorifie God with special offices But as these exteriour and ineffective Graces are given upon the same good will of God which made this matter to be a humane Body when if God had so pleased it was as capable of being made a Fungus or a Sponge so they are given to us with the same intentions as are our Souls that we might glorifie God in the distinct capacity of Grace as before of a reasonable nature And besides that it teaches us to magnifie God's free mercy so it removes every such exalted person from being an object of envy to others or from pleasing himself in vainer opinions for God hath made him of such an imployment as freely and voluntarily as he hath made him a Man and he no more cooperated to this Grace than to his own creation and may as well admire himself for being born in Italy or from rich parents or for having two hands or two feet as for having received such a designation extraordinary But these things are never instruments of reputation among severe understandings and never but in the sottish and unmanly apprehensions of the vulgar Only this when God hath imprinted an authority upon a person although the man hath nothing to please himself withal but God's grace yet others are to pay the duty which that impression demands which duty because it rapports to God and touches not the man 〈◊〉 as it passes through him to the fountain of authority and grace it extinguishes all 〈◊〉 of opinion and pride 6. When Jesus espied 〈◊〉 who also had been called by the first Disciples coming towards him he gave him an excellent character calling him a true Israelite in whom was no guile and admitted him amongst the first Disciples of the Institution by this character in one of the first of his Scholars hallowing Simplicity of spirit and receiving it into his Discipline that it might now become a vertue and duty Evangelical For although it concerns us as a Christian duty to be prudent yet the Prudence of Christianity is a duty of spiritual effect and in instances of Religion with no other purposes than to avoid giving offence to those that are without and within that we cause no disreputation to Christianity that we do nothing that may incourage enemies to the Religion and that those that are within the communion and obedience of the Church may not suffer as great inconveniences by the indiscreet conduct of religious actions as by direct temptations to a sin These are the purposes of private Prudence to
its own fall and so perished God having fitted a Judgment to the Analogy and representment of her Sin Herodias her self with her adulterous Paramour Herod were banished to Lions in France by decree of the Roman Senate where they lived ingloriously and died miserably so paying dearly for her triumphal scorn superadded to her crime of murther for when she saw the Head of the Baptist which her Daughter Salome had presented to her in a charger she thrust the tongue through with a needle as Fulvia had formerly done to Cicero But her self paid the charges of her triumph Ad SECT XI Considerations upon the first Journey of the Holy Jesus to Jerusalem when he whipt the Merchants out of the Temple 1. WHen the Feast came and Jesus was ascended up to Jerusalem the first place we find him in is the Temple where not only was the Area and Court of Religion but by occasion of publick Conventions the most opportune scene for transaction of his Commission and his Father's business And those Christians who have been religious and affectionate even in the circumstances of Piety have taken this for precedent and accounted it a good express of the regularity of their Devotion and order of Piety at their first arrival to a City to pay their first visits to God the next to his servant the President of Religious Rites first they went into the Church and worshipp'd then to the Angel of the Church to the Bishop and begg'd his blessing and having thus commenced with the auspiciousness of Religion they had better hopes their just affairs would succeed prosperously which after the rites of Christian Countries had thus been begun with Devotion and religious order 2. When the Holy Jesus entred the Temple and espied a Mart kept in the Holy Sept a Fair upon Holy ground he who suffered no transportations of Anger in matters and accidents temporal was born high with an ecstasie of Zeal and according to the custom of the Zelots of the Nation took upon him the office of a private insliction of punishment in the cause of God which ought to be dearer to every single person than their own interest and reputation What the exterminating Angel did to 〈◊〉 who came into the Temple upon design of Sacriledge that the meekest Jesus did to them who came with acts of Profanation he whipt them forth and as usually good Laws spring from ill Manners and excellent Sermons are occasioned by mens 〈◊〉 now also our great Master upon this accident asserted the Sacredness of Holy places in the words of a Prophet which now he made a Lesson Evangelical My House shall be called a house of Prayer to all Nations 3. The Beasts and Birds there sold were brought for Sacrifice and the Banks of money were for the advantage of the people that came from far that their returns might be safe and easie when they came to Jerusalem upon the employments of Religion But they were not yet fit for the Temple they who brought them thither purposed their own gain and meant to pass them through an unholy usage before they could be made Anathemata Vows to God and when Religion is but the purpose at the second hand it cannot hallow a Lay-design and make it fit to become a Religious ministery much less sanctifie an unlawful action When Rachel stole her Father's gods though possibly she might do it in zeal against her Father's Superstition yet it was occasion of a sad accident to her self For the Jews say that Rachel died in Child-birth of her second Son because of that imprecation of Jacob With whomsoever thou findest thy gods let him not live Saul pretended Sacrifice when he spared the fat cattel of Amalek and Micah was zealous when he made him an Ephod and a Teraphim and meant to make himself an Image for Religion when he stole his mother's money but these are colours of Religion in which not only the world but our selves also are deceived by a latent purpose which we are willing to cover with a remote design of Religion lest it should appear unhandsome in its own dressing Thus some believe a Covetousness allowable it they greedily heap treasure with a purpose to build Hospitals or Colledges and sinister acts of acquiring Church-livings are not so soon condemned if the design be to prefer an able person and actions of Revenge come near to Piety if it be to the ruine of an 〈◊〉 man and indirect proceedings are made sacred if they be for the good of the Holy Cause This is profaning the Temple with Beasts brought for Sacrifices and dishonours God by making himself accessary to his own dishonour as far as lies in them for it disserves him with a pretence of Religion and but that our hearts are deceitful we should easily perceive that the greatest business of the Letter is written in Postscript the great pretence is the least purpose and the latent Covetousness or Revenge or the secular appendix is the main engine to which the end of Religion is made but instrumental and pretended But men when they sell a Mule use to speak of the Horse that begat him not of the Ass that bore him 4. The Holy Jesus made a whip of cords to represent and to chastise the implications and enfoldings of sin and the cords of vanity 1. There are some sins that of themselves are a whip of cords those are the crying sins that by their degree and malignity speak loud for vengeance or such as have great disreputation and are accounted the basest issues of a caitive disposition or such which are unnatural and unusual or which by publick observation are marked with the signature of Divine Judgments Such are Murther Oppression of widows and orphans detaining the Labourer's hire Lusts against nature Parricide Treason Betraying a just trust in great instances and base manners Lying to a King Perjury in a Priest these carry Cain's mark upon them or Judas's sting or Manasses's sorrow unless they be made impudent by the spirit of Obduration 2. But there are some sins that bear shame upon them and are used as correctives of pride and vanity and if they do their cure they are converted into instruments of good by the great power of the Divine grace but if the spirit of the man grows impudent and hardned against the shame that which commonly follows is the worst string of the whip a direct consignation to a reprobate spirit 3. Other sins there are for the chastising of which Christ takes the whip into his own hand and there is much need when sins are the Customs of a Nation and marked with no exteriour disadvantage or have such circumstances of encouragement that they are unapt to disquiet a Conscience or make our beds uneasie till the pillows be softned with penitential showers In both these cases the condition of a sinner is sad and miserable For it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God his
oftentimes the Custom or the Philosophy of the opinions of a Nation are made instrumental through God's acceptance to ends higher than they can produce by their own energy and intendment And thus the Astrological Divinations of the Magi were turned into the order of a greater design than the whole Art could promise their imployment being altered into Grace and Nature into a Miracle But then when the Wise men were brought by this means and had seen Jesus then God takes ways more immediate and proportionable to the Kingdom of Grace the next time God speaks to them by an Angel For so is God's usual manner to bring us to him first by ways agreeable to us and then to increase by ways agreeable to himself And when he hath furnished us with new capacities he gives new Lights in order to more perfect imployments and To him that hath shall be given full measure pressed down shaken together and running over the eternal kindness of God being like the Sea which delights to run in its old Chanel and to fill the hollownesses of the Earth which it self hath made and hath once watered 5. This Star which conducted the Wise men to Bethlehem if at least it was proproperly a Star and not an Angel was set in its place to be seen by all but was not observed or not understood nor its message obeyed by any but the three Wise men And indeed no man hath cause to complain of God as if ever he would be deficient in assistances necessary to his Service but first the Grace of God separates us from the common condition of incapacity and indisposition and then we separate our selves one from another by the use or neglect of this Grace and God doing his part to us hath cause to complain of us who neglect that which is our portion of the work And however even the issues and the kindnesses of God's Predestination and antecedent Mercy do very much toward the making the Grace to be effective of its purpose yet the manner of all those influences and operations being moral perswasive reasonable and divisible by concourse of various circumstances the cause and the effect are brought nearer and nearer in various suscipients but not brought so close together but that God expects us to do something towards it so that we may say with S. Paul It is not I but the Grace of God that is with me and at the same time when by reason of our cooperation we actuate and improve God's Grace and become distinguished from other persons more negligent under the same opportunities God is he who also does distinguish us by the proportions and circumstantiate applications of his Grace to every singular capacity that we may be careful not to neglect the Grace and yet to return the intire glory to God 6. Although God to second the generous design of these wise personages in their Enquiry of the new Prince made the Star to guide them through the difficulties of their journey yet when they came to Jerusalem the Star disappeared God so resolving to try their Faith and the activity of their desires to remonstrate to them that God is the Lord of all his Creatures and a voluntary Dispenser of his own favours and can as well take them away as indulge them and to engage them upon the use of ordinary means and ministeries when they are to be had for now the extraordinary and miraculous Guide for a time did cease that they being at Jerusalem might enquire of them whose office and profession of sacred Mysteries did oblige them to publish the MESSIAS For God is so great a lover of Order so regular and certain an exactor of us to use those ordinary ministeries of his own appointing that he having used the extraordinary but as Architects do frames of wood to support the Arches till they be built takes them away when the work is ready and leaves us to those other of his designation and hath given such efficacy to these that they are as perswasive and operative as a Miracle and S. Paul's Sermon would convert as many as if Moses should rise from the grave And now the Doctrines of Christianity have not only the same truth but the same evidence and virtue also they had in the midst of those prime demonstrations extraordinary by Miracle and Prophecy if men were equally disposed 7. When they were come to the Doctors of the Jews they asked confidently and with great openness under the ear and eye of a Tyrant Prince bloudy and timorous jealous and ambitious Where is he that is born King of the Jews and so gave evidence of their Faith of their Magnanimity and fearless confidence and profession of it and of their love of the mystery and object in pursuance of which they had taken so troublesome and vexatious journeys and besides that they upbraided the tepidity and 〈◊〉 baseness of the Jewish Nation who stood unmoved and unconcerned by all the Circumstances of wonder and stirred not one step to make enquiry after or to visit the new-born King they also teach us to be open and confident in our Religion and Faith and not to consider our temporal when they once come to contest against our Religious interests 8. The Doctors of the Jews told the Wise men where Christ was to be born the Magi they address themselves with haste to see him and to worship and the Doctors themselves stir not God not only serving himself with truth out of the mouths of impious persons but magnifying the recesses of his Counsel and Wisdom and Predestination who uses the same Doctrine to glorifie himself and to confound his enemies to save the Scholars and to condemn the Tutors to instruct one and upbraid the other making it an instrument of Faith and a conviction of Infidelity the Sermons of the Doctors in such cases being like the spoils of Bevers Sheep and Silk-worms design'd to clothe others and are made the occasions of their own nakedness and the causes of their death But as it is a demonstration of the Divine Wisdom so it is of humane Folly there being no greater imprudence in the world than to do others advantage and to neglect our own If thou dost well unto thy 〈◊〉 men will speak good of thee but if thou beest like a Chanel in a Garden through which the water runs to cool and moisten the herbs but nothing for its own use thou buildest a fortune to them upon the ruines of thine own house while after thy preaching to others thou thy self dost become a cast-away 9. When the Wise men departed from Jerusalem the Star again appeared and they rejoyced with exceeding great joy and indeed to new Converts and persons in their first addresses to the worship of God such spiritual and exterior Comforts are often indulged because then God judges them to be most necessary as being invitations to Duty by the entertainments of our affections with such
them not to retain them or invite them but as objects of displeasure to avert them from us 2. To resist all lustful desires and extinguish them by their proper correctories and remedies 3. To resuse all occasions opportunities and temptations to Impurity denying to please a wanton 〈◊〉 or to use a 〈◊〉 gesture or to go into a danger or to converse with an improper unsafe object hating the garment spotted with the flesh so S. Jude calls it and not to look upon a maid so Job not to sit with a woman that is a singer so the son of Sirach 4. To be of a liberal soul not mingling with affections of mony and inclinations of covetousness not doing any act of violence rapine or injustice 5. To be ingenuous in our thoughts purposes and professions speaking nothing contrary to our intentions but being really what we 〈◊〉 6. To give all our faculties and affections to God without dividing interests between God and his enemies without entertaining of any one crime in society with our pretences for God 7. Not to lie in sin but instantly to repent of it and return purifying our Conscience from dead works 8. Not to dissemble our faith or belief when we are required to its confession pretending a perswasion complying with those from whom 〈◊〉 we differ Lust Covetousness and Hypocrisie are the three great enemies of this Grace they are the motes of our eyes and the spots of our Souls The reward of Purity is the vision beatifical If we are pure as God is pure we shall also see him as he is When we awake up after his likeness we shall 〈◊〉 hold his presence To which in this world we are consigned by freedom from the cares of Covetousness the shame of Lust the fear of discovery and the stings of an evil Conscience which are the portion of the several Impurities here forbidden 17. Seventhly Blessed are the Peace-makers for they shall be called the children of God The wisdome of God is first pure and then peaceable that 's the order of the Beatitudes As soon as Jesus was born the Angels sang a Hymn Glory be to God on high and on earth peace good will towards men signifying the two great 〈◊〉 upon which Christ was dispatched in his Legation from Heaven to earth He is the Prince of Peace Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man ever shall see God The acts of this Grace are 1. To mortisie our Anger 〈◊〉 and fiery dispositions apt to enkindle upon every slight accident inadvertency or misfortune of a friend or servant 2. Not to be hasty rash provocative or upbraiding in our language 3. To live quietly and serenely in our families and neighbourhoods 4. Not to backbite slander misreport or undervalue any man carrying tales or sowing dissention between brethren 5. Not to interest our selves in the quarrels of others by abetting either part except where Charity calls us to rescue the oppressed and then also to do a work of charity without mixtures of uncharitableness 6. To avoid all suits of Law as much as is possible without intrenching upon any other collateral obligation towards a third interest or a necessary support for our selves or great conveniency for our families or if we be engaged in Law to pursue our just interests with just means and charitable maintenance 7. To endeavour by all means to reconcile disagreeing persons 8. To endeavour by affability and fair deportment to win the love of our neighbours 9. To offer satisfaction to all whom we have wronged or slandered and to remit the offences of others and in trials of right to find out the most charitable expedient to determine it as by indifferent arbitration or something like it 10. To be open free and ingenuous in reprehensions and fair expostulations with persons whom we conceive to have wronged us that no seed of malice or rancor may be latent in us and upon the breath of a new displeasure break out into a flame 11. To be modest in our arguings disputings and demands not laying great interest upon trifles 12. To moderate balance and temper our zeal by the rules of Prudence and the allay of Charity that we quarrel not for opinions nor intitle God in our impotent and mistaken fancies nor lose Charity for a pretence of an article of Faith 13. To pray heartily for our enemies real or imaginary always loving and being apt to benefit their persons and to cure their faults by charitable remedies 14. To abstain from doing all affronts disgraces slightings and 〈◊〉 jearings and mockings of our neighbour not giving him appellatives of scorn or irrision 15. To submit to all our Superiours in all things either doing what they command or suffering what they impose at no hand lifting our 〈◊〉 against those upon whom the characters of God and the marks of Jesus are imprinted in signal and eminent authority such as are principally the King and then the Bishops whom God hath set to watch over our Souls 16. Not to invade the possessions of our Neighbours or commence War but when we are bound by justice and legal trust to defend the rights of others or our own in order to our duty 17. Not to speak evil of dignities or undervalue their persons or publish their faults or upbraid the levities of our Governours knowing that they also are designed by God to be converted to us for castigation and amendment of us 18. Not to be busie in other mens affairs And then the peace of God will rest upon us The reward is no less than the adoption and inheritance of sons for he hath given unto us power to be called the sons of God for he is the Father of Peace and the Sons of Peace are the Sons of God and theresore have a title to the inheritance of Sons to be heirs with God and coheirs with Christ in the kingdom of Peace and essential and never-failing charity 18. Eightly Blessed are they which are Persecuted sor righteousness sake for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven This being the hardest command in the whole Discipline of Jesus is fortified with a double Blessedness for it follows immediately Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you meaning that all Persecution for a cause of Righteousness though the affliction be instanced only in reproachful language shall be a title to the Blessedness Any suffering for any good or harmless action is a degree of Martyrdom It being the greatest testimony in the world of the greatest love to quit that for God which hath possessed our most natural regular and orderly affections It is a preferring God's cause before our own interest it is a loving of Vertue without secular ends it is the noblest the most resigned ingenuous valiant act in the world to die for 〈◊〉 whom we never have seen it is the crown of Faith the confidence of Hope and our greatest Charity The Primitive
with purple and crowned him with thorns and put a cane in his hand for a scepter and bowed their knees before him and saluted him with mockery with a Hail King of the Jews and 〈◊〉 beat him and spate upon him and then Pilate brought him forth and shewed this sad spectacle to the people hoping this might move them to compassion who never loved to see a man prosperous and are always troubled to see the same man in misery But the Earth which was cursed for Adam's sake and was sowed with thorns and thistles produced the full harvest of them and the Second Adam gathered them all and made garlands of them as ensigns of his Victory which he was now in pursuit of against Sin the Grave and Hell And we also may make our thorns which are in themselves 〈◊〉 and dolorous to be a Crown if we bear 〈◊〉 patiently and unite them to Christ's Passion and offer them to his honour and bear them in his cause and rejoyce in them for his sake And indeed after such a grove of 〈◊〉 growing upon the head of our Lord to see one of Christ's members soft delicate and effeminate is a great indecency next to this of seeing the Jews use the King of glory with the greatest reproach and infamy 12. But nothing prevailing nor the Innocence of Jesus nor his immunity from the sentence of Herod nor the industry and diligence of Pilate nor the misery nor the sight of the afflicted Lamb of God at last for so God decreed to permit it and Christ to 〈◊〉 it Pilate gave sentence of death upon him having first washed his hands of which God served his end to declare the Innocence of his Son of which in this whole process he was most curious and suffered not the least probability to adhere to him yet Pilate served no end of his nor preserved any thing of his innocence He that 〈◊〉 upon a Prince and cries Saving your honour you are a Tyrant and he that strikes a man upon the face and cries him mercy and undoes him and says it was in jest does just like that person that sins against God and thinks to be excused by saying it was against his Conscience that is washing our hands when they are stained in bloud as if a ceremony of purification were enough to cleanse a soul from the stains of a spiritual impurity So some refuse not to take any Oath in times of Persecution and say it obliges not because it was forced and done against their wills as if the doing of it were washed off by protesting against it whereas the protesting against it declares me criminal if I rather chuse not death than that which I profess to be a sin But all the persons which cooperated in this death were in this life consigned to a fearful judgment after it The Jews took the bloud which Pilate seemed to wash off upon themselves and their children and the bloud of this Paschal Lamb stuck upon their forehead and marked them not to escape but to fall under the sword of the destroying Angel and they perished either by a more hasty death or shortly after in the extirpation and miserable ruine of their Nation And Pilate who had a less share in the crime 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a black character of a secular Judgment for not long after he was by Vitellius the President of Syria sent to Rome to answer to the crimes objected against him by the Jews whom to please he had done so much violence to his Conscience and by 〈◊〉 sentence he was banished to Vienna deprived of all his honours where he lived ingloriously till by impatience of his calamity he killed himself with his own hand And thus the bloud of Jesus shed for the Salvation of the world became to them a Curse and that which purifies the Saints stuck to them that shed it and mingled it not with the tears of Repentance to be a leprosie loathsome and incurable So Manna turns to worms and the wine of Angels to Vineger and Lees when it is received into impure vessels or tasted by wanton palats and the Sun himself produces Rats and Serpents when it reflects upon the dirt of Nilus The PRAYER O Holy and immaculate Lamb of God who wert pleased to 〈◊〉 shame and sorrow to be brought before tribunals to be accused maliciously betrayed treacherously condemned unjustly and scourged most 〈◊〉 suffering the most severe and most unhandsome inflictions which could be procured by potent subtle and extremest malice and didst 〈◊〉 this out of love greater than the love of Mothers more affectionate than the tears of joy and pity dropt from the eyes of most passionate women by these fontinels of bloud issuing forth life and health and pardon upon all thine enemies teach me to apprehend the baseness of Sin in proportion to the greatest of those calamities which my sin made it necessary for thee to susfer that I may hate the cause of thy 〈◊〉 and adore thy mercy and imitate thy charity and copy 〈◊〉 thy patience à nd humility and love thy person to the uttermost extent and degrees of my affections Lord what am I that the eternal Son of God should 〈◊〉 one stripe for me But thy Love is infinite and how great a misery is it to provoke by sin so great a mercy and despise so miraculous a goodness and to do fresh despite to the Son of God But our sins are innumerable and our infirmities are mighty Dearest Jesu pity me for I am accused by my own Conscience and am found guilty I am stripped naked of my Innocence and bound fast by Lust and tormented with stripes and wounds of enraged Appetites But let thy Innocence excuse me the robes of thy Righteousness cloath me thy Bondage set me free and thy Stripes heal me that thou being my Advocate my Physician my Patron and my Lord I may be adopted into the union of thy Merits and partake of the efficacy of thy Sufferings and be crowned as thou art having my sins changed to vertues and my thorns to rays of glory under thee our Head in the participations of Eternity O Holy and immaculate Lamb of God Amen DISCOURSE XX. Of Death and the due manner of Preparation to it 1. THE Holy Spirit of God hath in Scripture revealed to us but one way of preparing to Death and that is by a holy life and there is nothing in all the Book of Life concerning this exercise of address to Death but such advices which suppose the dying person in a state of Grace S. James indeed counsels that in sickness we should send for the Ministers Ecclesiastical and that they pray over us and that we confess our sins and they shall be forgiven that is those prayers are of great efficacy for the removing the sickness and taking off that punishment of sin and healing them in a certain degree according to the efficacy of the ministery and the dispositions or capacities of the sick person But
and who after his decease succeeded in his room the younger Brethren when leaving their Father's house and themselves becoming heads of Families and their seats removed too far distant to make use of the ordinary Priesthood did themselves take the office upon them and exercise it over all those that were under them and sprung from them though the main honour and dignity was reserved for the Priesthood of the first-born Thus Abraham though but a second Son yet when become the head of a great Family and removed into another Country became a Priest and that not only during the life of his Father but of Sem himself the grand surviving Patriarch of that time I observe no more concerning this than that this right of the first-born was a prime honour and priviledge and therefore the reason 〈◊〉 the Jews why Jacob was so greatly desirous of the birth right was because in those days the Priesthood was entail'd upon it And for this chiefly no doubt it was that Esau is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a prophane person for selling his birth-right for a mess of Pottage because thereby he made so light of the sacred honour of the Priesthood the Venerable office of ministring before God 11. HAVING thus seen what were the Laws what the Worship of those times it remains briefly to consider what was the face of the Church and the state of Religion under the several Patriarchs of this Oeconomy Not to meddle with the story either of the Creation or Apostasie of Adam no sooner was he fallen from that innocent and happy state wherein God had placed him but Conscience began to stir and he was sensible that God was angry and saw it necessary to propitiate the offended Deity by Prayer and Invocation by Sorrow and Repentance and probably by offering Sacrifice a conjecture that hath at least some countenance from those Coats of Skins wherewith God clothed our first Parents which seem likely to have been the Skins of Beasts slain for Sacrifice for that they were not killed for food is evident because flesh was not the ordinary diet if it was at all of those first Ages of the World And God might purposely make choice of this sort of covering to put our first Parents in mind of their great degeneracy how deep they were sunk into the animal life and by gratifying brutish and sensual appetites at so dear a rate how like they were become to the Beasts that perish And 〈◊〉 this were so it possibly might give birth to that Law of Moses that every Priest that offered any man's burnt-offering should have to himself the skin of the burnt-offering which he had offered But however this was t is certain that Adam was careful to instruct his Children in the knowledge of Divine things and to maintain Religion and the worship of God in his Family For we find Cain and Abel bringing their oblations and that at a certain time though they had a different success I omit the Traditions of the East that the cause of the difference between Cain and Abel was about a Wife and that they sought to decide the case by Sacrifice and that when Abel's sacrifice was accepted Cain out of envy and indignation fell upon his brother struck his head with a stone and slew him The present they brought was according to their different ways and institutions of life Cain as an Husbandman brought of the fruit of the ground Abel as a Shepherd brought of the firstlings of his Flock and of the fat thereof But the one was accepted and the other rejected The cause whereof certainly was not that the one was little and inconsiderable the other large and noble the one only a dry oblation the other a burnt-offering or that Cain had entertained a conceived prejudice against his Brother the true cause lay in the different temper and disposition of their minds Abel had great and honourable thoughts of God and therefore brought of the best that he had Cain mean and unworthy apprehensions and accordingly took what came first to hand Abel came with a grateful sense of the goodness of Heaven with a mind piously and heartily devoted to the Divine Majesty and an humble reliance upon the Divine acceptance Cain brought his oblation indeed but looked no further was not careful to offer up himself a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God as being the most reasonable service too confidently bearing up himself as we may suppose upon the prerogative of his primogeniture By which means Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain by which he obtained witness that he was righteous God testifying of his gifts For he had respect unto Abel and to his offering But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect And if in that fire by which God testified his respect by consuming one oblation and not the other there was as the Jews say seen the face of a Lion it doubtless prefigured the late promised Messiah The Lion of the Tribe of Judah our great expiatory sacrifice of whom all other sacrifices were but types and shadows and in whom all our oblations are rendred grateful unto God The odour of a sweet smell a sacrifice acceptable and well-pleasing unto God 12. A. B. E. L being taken away by his envious and enraged Brother God was pleased to repair the loss by giving his Parents another Son whom they called Seth and he accordingly proved a very Vertuous and Religious man He was if we may believe the Ancients a great Scholar the first inventor of Letters and Writing an accurate Astronomer and taught his Children the knowledge of the Stars who having heard from their Grandfather Adam that the World was to be twice destroyed once by Fire and again by Water if the story be true which Josephus without any great warrant reports wrote their Experiments and the principles of their Art upon two Pillars one of Brick the other of Stone that if the one perished the other might remain and convey their notions to posterity one of which Pillars Josephus adds was said to be standing in Syria in his time But that which rendred Seth most renowned was his piety and devotion a good man he was one who asserted and propagated Religion and the true worship of God as he had received it from his Father Adam notwithstanding the 〈◊〉 and degeneracy and possibly oppositions of his Brother Cain and his party The Eastern Writers both Jews and Arabians confidently assure us that Seth and his retinue withdrew from Cain who dwelt in the Valley where he had killed his brother Abel into a very high mountain on the top whereof their Father Adam was buried so high if we could believe them that they could hear the Angels singing Anthems and did daily joyn in with that Heavenly Quire Here they wholly devoted themselves to the daily worship of God and obtained a mighty name and
tempers who made their Will their Law and Might the standard and rule of Equity Attempting to return back to the holy Mount Heaven had shut up their way the stones of the Mountain burning like fire when they came upon them which whether the Reader will have faith enough to believe I know not Jared being near his death advised his Children to be wise by the folly of their Brethren and to have nothing to do with that prophane generation His son Enoch followed in his steps a man of admirable strictness and piety and peculiarly exemplary for his innocent and holy conversation it being particularly noted of him that he walked with God He set the Divine Majesty before him as the guide and pattern the spectator and rewarder of his actions in all his ways endeavoured to approve himself to his All-seeing eye by doing nothing but what was grateful and acceptable to him he was the great instance of vertue and goodness in an evil Age and by the even tenor and constancy of a holy and a religious life shewed his firm belief and expectation of a future state and his hearty dependence upon the Divine goodness for the rewards of a better life And God who is never behind-hand with his servants crowned his extraordinary obedience with an uncommon reward By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death and was not found because God had translated him For before his translation he had this testimony that he pleased God And what that faith was is plain by what follows after a belief of God's Being and his Bounty Without faith it is impossible to please him For he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that 〈◊〉 is a 〈◊〉 of them that diligently seek him What this translation was and whether it was made whither into that Terrestrial Paradise out of which Adam was expelled and banished and whereunto Enoch had desired of God he might be translated as some fancy or whether placed among the Stars as others or carried into the highest Heavens as others will have it were nice and useless speculations 'T is certain he was taken out of these mutable Regions and set beyond the reach of those miseries and misfortunes to which a present state of sin and mortality does betray us translated probably both Soul and Body that he might be a type and specimen of a future Resurrection and a sensible demonstration to the World that there is a reward for the righteous and another state after this wherein good Men shall be happy sor ever I pass by the fancy of the Jewes as vain and frivolous that though Enoch was a good Man yet was he very mutable and inconstant and apt to be led aside and that this was the reason why God translated him so soon lest he should have been debauched by the charms and allurements of a wicked World He was an eminent Prophet and a fragment of his Prophecy is yet extant in S. Jude's Epistle by which it appears that wickedness was then grown rampant and the manners of men very corrupt and vicious and that he as plainly told them of their faults and that Divine vengeance that would certainly overtake them Of Methuselah his Son nothing considerable is upon Record but his great Age living full DCCCCLXIX Years the longest proportion which any of the Patriarchs arrived to and died in that very Year wherein the Flood came upon the World 15. FROM his Son Lamech concerning whom we find nothing memorable we proceed to his Grand child Noah by the very imposition of whose Name his Parents presaged that he would be a refreshment and comfort to the World and highly instrumental to remove that curse which God by an Universal Deluge was bringing upon the Earth he 〈◊〉 his Name Noah saying This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed he was one in whom his Parents did acquiesce and rest satisfied that he would be eminently 〈◊〉 and serviceable to the World Indeed he proved a person of incomparable sanctity and integrity a Preacher of righteousness to others and who as carefully practised it himself He was a just man and perfect in his generation and he walked with God He did not warp and decline with the humour of the Age he lived in but maintained his station and kept his Line He was upright in his Generation 'T is no thanks to be religious when it is the humour and fashion of the Times the great trial is when we live in the midst of a corrupt generation It is the crown of vertue to be good when there are all manner of temptations to the contrary when the greatest part of Men goe the other way when vertue and honesty are laughed and drolled on and censured as an over-wise and affected singularity when lust and debauchery are accounted the modes of Gallantry and pride and oppression suffered to ride in prosperous triumphs without controll Thus it was with Noah he contended with the Vices of the Age and dared to own God and Religion when almost all Mankind besides himself had rejected and thrown them off For in his time wickedness openly appeared with a brazen Forehead and violence had covered the face of the Earth the promiscuous mixtures of the Children of Seth and Cain had produced Giants and mighty Men men strong to do evil and who had as much will as power 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Josephus describes them a race of men insolent and ungovernable scornful and injurious and who bearing up themselves in the confidence of their own strength despised all justice and equity and made every thing truckle under their 〈◊〉 lusts and appetites The very same character does Lucian give of the Men of this Age speaking of the times of Deucalion their Noah and the Flood 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Men exceedingly scornful and contumelious and guilty of the most unrighteous and enormous actions violating all Oaths and Covenants throwing off kindness and hospitality and rejecting all addresses and supplications made to them For which cause great miseries overtook them for Heaven and Earth Seas and Rivers conspired together to pour out mighty Floods upon the World which swept all away but Deucalion only who for his prudence and piety was left to repair Mankind And so he goes on with the relation consonant to the account of the Sacred story This infection had spread it self over all parts and was become so general and Epidemical that all Flesh had corrupted their ways and scarce any besides Noah left to keep up the face of a Church and the profession of Religion Things being come to this pass quickly alarm'd the Divine Justice and made the World ripe for vengeance the patience of God was now tired out and he resolved to make Mankind feel the just effects of his incensed severity But
Their Oral and unwritten Law It s original and succession according to the mind of the Jews Their unreasonable and blasphemous preferring it above the written Law Their religious observing the Traditions of the Elders The Vow of Corban what The superseding Moral Duties by it The Sects in the Jewish Church The Pharisees their denomination rise temper and principles Sadducees their impious Principles and evil lives The Essenes their original opinions and way of life The Herodians who The Samaritans Karraeans The Sect of the Zealots The Roman Tyranny over the Jewes 1. THE Church which had hitherto lyen dispersed in private Families and had often been reduced to an inconsiderable number being now multiplied into a great and a populous Nation God was pleased to enter into Covenant not any longer with particular Persons but with the Body of the People and to govern the Church by more certain and regular ways and methods than it had hitherto been This Dispensation began with the delivery of the Law and continued till the final period of the Jewish state consisting only of meats and drinks and divers washings and carnal Ordinances imposed on them until the time of reformation In the survey whereof we shall chiefly consider what Laws were given for the Government of the Church by what Methods of revelation God communicated his mind and will to them and what was the state of the Church especially towards the conclusion of this Oeconomy 2. THE great Minister of this Dispensation was Moses the Son of Amram of the House of Levi a Person whose signal preservation when but an Infant presaged him to be born for great and generous undertakings Pharaoh King of Egypt desirous to suppress the growing numbers of the Jewish Nation had afflicted and kept them under with all the rigorous severities of tyranny and oppression But this not taking its effect he made a Law that all Hebrew Male-children should be drowned as soon as born knowing well enough how to kill the root if he could keep any more Branches from springing up But the wisdom of Heaven defeated his crafty and barbarous 〈◊〉 Among others that were born at that time was Moses a goodly Child and whom his Mother was infinitely desirous to preserve but having concealed him till the saving of his might endanger the losing her own life her affection suggested to her this little stratagem she prepared an Ark made of Paper-reeds and pitched within and so putting him a-board this little Vessel threw him into the River Nilus committing him to the mercy of the waves and the conduct of the Divine Providence God who wisely orders all events had so disposed things that Pharaohs daughter whose name say the Jews was Bithia Thermuth says Josephus say the Arabians Sihhoun being troubled with a distemper that would not endure the hot Bathes was come down at this time to wash in the Nile where the cries of the tender Babe soon reached her ears She commanded the Ark to be brought a-shore which was no sooner opened but the silent oratory of the weeping Infant sensibly struck her with compassionate resentments And the Jews add that she no sooner touched the Babe but she was immediately healed and cried out that he was a holy Child and that she would save his life for which say they she obtained the favour to be brought under the wings of the Divine Majesty and to be called the daughter of God His Sister Miriam who had all this while beheld the scene afar off officiously proffered her service to the Princess to call an Hebrew Nurse and accordingly went and brought his Mother To her care he was committed with a charge to look tenderly to him and the promise of a reward But the hopes of that could add but little where nature was so much concerned Home goes the Mother joyful and proud of her own pledge and the royal charge carefully providing for his tender years His infant state being pass'd he was restored to the Princess who adopted him for her own son bred him up at Court where he was polished with all the arts of a noble and ingenuous education instructed in the modes of civility and behaviour in the methods of policy and government Learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians whose renown for wisdom is not only once and again taken notice of in holy Writ but their admirable skill in all liberal Sciences Natural Moral and Divine beyond the rate and proportion of other Nations is sufficiently celebrated by foreign Writers To these accomplishments God was pleased to add a Divine temper of mind a great zeal for God not able to endure any thing that seemed to clash with the interests of the Divine honour and glory a mighty courage and resolution in God's service whose edge was not to be taken off either by threats or charms He was not afraid of the Kings commandment nor feared the wrath of the King for he endured as seeing him that is invisible His contempt of the World was great and admirable sleighting the honours of Pharoah's Court and the fair probabilities of the Crown the treasures and pleasures of that rich soft and luxurious Country out of a firm belief of the invisible rewards of another World He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter chusing rather to suffer 〈◊〉 with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt for he had respect unto the recompence of reward Josephus relates that when but a child he was presented by the Princess to her Father as one whom she had adopted for her son and designed for his successor in the Kingdom the King taking him up into his arms put his Crown upon his head which the child immediately pull'd off again and throwing it upon the ground trampled it under his feet An action which however looked upon by some Courtiers then present 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 portending a fatal Omen to the Kingdom did however evidently presage his generous contempt of the grandeur and honours of the Court and those plausible advantages of Soveraignty that were offered to him His patience was insuperable not tired out with the abuses and disappointments of the King of Egypt with the hardships and troubles of the Wilderness and which was beyond all with the cross and vexatious humors of a stubborn and unquiet generation He was of a most calm and treatable disposition his spirit not easily ruffled with passion he who in the cause of God and Religion could be bold and fierce as a Lion was in his own patient as a Lamb God himself having given this character of him That he was the meekest man upon the Earth 3. THIS great personage thus excellently qualified God made choice of him to be the Commander and conducter of the Jewish Nation and his Embassador to the King of Egypt to demand the enfranchisement of
drunken man like a man whom wine hath overcome because of the Lord and because of the words of his holiness so as a little to ruffle their imagination yet never so as to discompose their reason or hinder them from a clear perception of the notices conveyed upon their minds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Epiphanius the Prophet had his Oracles dictated by the Holy Spirit which he delivered strenuously and with the most firm and unshaken consistency of his rational powers and afterwards 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the Prophets were often in a bodily ecstasie but never in an ecstasie of mind their understandings never being rendred useless and unserviceable to them Indeed it was absolutely necessary that the Prophet should have a full satisfaction of mind concerning the truth and Divinity of his message for how else should they perswade others that the thing was from God if they were not first sufficiently assured themselves and therefore even in those methods that were most liable to doubts and questions such as communications by dreams we cannot think but that the same Spirit that moved and impressed the thing upon them did also by some secret and inward operations settle their minds in the firmest belief and perswasion of what was revealed and suggested to them All these ways of immediate revelation ceased some hundreds of years before the final period of the Jewish Church A thing confessed not only by Christians but by Jews themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There was no Prophet in the second Temple indeed they universally acknowledge that there were five things wanting in the second Temple built after their return from the Babylonish Captivity which had been in that of Solomon viz. the Ark of the Covenant the fire from Heaven that lay upon the Altar the Schekinah or presence of the Divine Majesty the 〈◊〉 and Thummim and the spirit of Prophecy which ceased as they tell us about the second year of Darius to be sure at the death of Malachy the last of that order after whom there arose no Prophet in Israel whom therefore the Jews call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the seal of the Prophets Indeed it is no wonder that Prophecy should cease at that time if we consider that one of the prime ends of it did then cease which was to be a seal and an assurance of the Divine inspiration of the holy Volumes now the Canon of the Old Testament being consigned and completed by Ezra with the assistance of Malachy and some of the last Prophets God did not think good any longer to continue this Divine and Miraculous gift among them But especially if we consider the great degeneracy into which that Church was falling their horrid and crying sins having made God resolve to reject them the departure of the Prophetick spirit shewed that God had written them a bill of divorce and would utterly cast them off that by this means they might be awakened to a more lively expectation of that new state of things which the Messiah was coming to establish in the World wherein the Prophetick spirit should revive and be again restored to the Church which accordingly came to pass as we shall elsewhere observe 16. THE third thing propounded was to consider the state of Religion and the Church under the successive periods of this 〈◊〉 And here we shall only make some general remarks a particular survey of those matters not consisting with the design of this discourse Ecclesiastical Constitutions being made in the Wilderness and the place for publick worship fram'd and erected no sooner did they come into the promised Land but the Tabernacle was set down at Gilgal where if the Jewish Chronology say true it continued fourteen years till they had subdued and divided the Land Then fixed at Shiloh and the Priests and Levites had Cities and Territories assigned to them where it is not to be doubted but there were Synagogues or places equivalent for prayer and the ordinary solemnities of Religion and Courts for the decision of Ecclesiastical causes Prosperity and a plentiful Country had greatly contributed to the depravation of mens manners and the corruption of Religion till the times of Samuel the great Reformer of that Church who erected Colledges and instituted Schools of the Prophets reduced the Societies of the Levites to their Primitive order and purity forced the Priests to do their duty diligently to minister in the affairs of God's worship and carefully to teach and instruct the people A piece of reformation no more than necessay For the word of the Lord was precious in those days there was no open vision CCCLXIX years say the Jews the Tabernacle abode at Shiloh from whence it was translated to Nob a City in the Tribe of Benjamin probably about the time that the Ark was taken thence after thirteen years to Gibeon where it remained fifty years and lastly by Solomon to Jerusalem The Ark being taken out to carry along with them for their more prosperous success in their War against the Philistines was ever after exposed to an ambulatory and unsetled course For being taken captive by the Philistines it was by them kept prisoner seven months thence removed to 〈◊〉 and thence to Kirtath-jearim where it remained in the house of Abinadab twenty years thence solemnly 〈◊〉 by David and after three months rest by the way in the house of Obed-Edom brought triumphantly to Jerusalem and placed under the covert of a Tent which he had purposely erected for it David being setled in the Throne like a pious Prince took especial care of the affairs of Religion he fixed the High Priest and his second augmented the courses of the Priests from eight to four and twenty appointed the Levites and Singers and their several turns and times of waiting assigned them their proper duties and ministeries setled the Nethinim or Porters the posterity of the 〈◊〉 made Treasurers of the revenues belonging to holy uses and of the vast summs contributed towards the building of a Temple as a more solemn and stately place for Divine worship which he was fully resolved to have erected but that God commanded it to be reserved for the peaceable and prosperous Reign of Solomon who succeeding in his Father's Throne accomplished it building so stately and magnificent a Temple that it became one of the greatest wonders of the World Under his son Rehoboam hapned the fatal division of the Kingdom when ten parts of twelve were rent off at once and brought under the Empire of Jeroboam who knew no better way to secure his new-gotten Soveraignty than to take off the people from hankering after the Temple and the worship at Jerusalem and therefore out of a cursed policy erected two Golden Calves at Dan and Bethel perswading the people there to pay their publick adorations appointing Chaplains like himself Priests of the lowest of the people and from this time Religion began visibly to ebb and decline in that Kingdom and
the heightning his own Felicity but out of mere and perfect charity and the bowels of compassion sent into the world his only Son for remedy to humane miseries to ennoble our Nature by an union with Divinity to sanctifie it with his Justice to inrich it with his Grace to instruct it with his Doctrine to fortifie it with his Example to rescue it from servitude to assert it into the liberty of the sons of God and at last to make it partaker of a beatifical Resurrection 2. God who in the infinite treasures of his wisdom and providence could have found out many other ways for our Redemption than the Incarnation of his eternal Son was pleased to chuse this not only that the Remedy by Man might have proportion to the causes of our Ruine whose introduction and intromission was by the prevarication of Man but also that we might with freer dispensation receive the influences of a Saviour with whom we communicate in Nature although Abana and Pharpar Rivers of Damascus were of greater name and current yet they were not so salutary as the waters of Jordan to cure Naaman's Leprosie And if God had made the remedy of humane nature to have come all the way clothed in prodigy and every instant of its execution had been as terrible affrighting and as full of Majesty as the apparitions upon Mount Sinai yet it had not been so useful and complying to humane necessities as was the descent of God to the susception of Humane Nature whereby as in all Medicaments the cure is best wrought by those instruments which have the fewest dissonancies to our temper and are the nearest to our constitution For thus the Saviour of the world became humane alluring full of invitation and the sweetnesses of love exemplary humble and medicinal 3. And if we consider the reasonableness of the thing what can be given more excellent for the Redemption of Man than the Bloud of the Son of God And what can more ennoble our Nature than that by the means of his holy Humanity it was taken up into the Cabinet of the mysterious Trinity What better Advocate could we have for us than he that is appointed to be our Judge And what greater hopes of Reconciliation can be imagined than that God in whose power it is to give an absolute Pardon hath taken a new Nature entertained an Office and undergone a life of Poverty with a purpose to procure our Pardon For now though as the righteous Judge he will judge the Nations righteously yet by the susception of our Nature and its appendant crimes he is become a party and having obliged himself as Man as he is God he will satisfie by putting the value of an infinite Merit to the actions and sufferings of his Humanity And if he had not been God he could not have given us remedy if he had not been Man we should have wanted the excellency of Example 4. And till now Humane nature was less than that of Angels but by the Incarnation of the Word was to be exalted above the Cherubims yet the Archangel Gabriel being dispatched in embassie to represent the joy and exaltation of his inferiour instantly trims his wings with love and obedience and hastens with this Narrative to the Holy Virgin And if we should reduce our prayers to action and do God's Will on earth as the Angels in Heaven do it we should promptly 〈◊〉 every part of the Divine Will though it were to be instrumental to the exaltation of a Brother above our selves knowing no end but conformity to the Divine Will and making simplicity of intention to be the 〈◊〉 and exterior borders of our garments 5. When the eternal God meant to stoop so low as to be fixt to our centre he chose for his Mother a Holy person and a Maid but yet 〈◊〉 to a Just man that he might not only be secure in the Innocency but also provided sor in the Reputation of his holy Mother teaching us That we must not only satisfie our selves in the purity of our purposes and hearty Innocence but that we must provide also things honest in the 〈◊〉 of all men being free from the suspicion and semblances of evil so making provision for private Innocence and publick Honesty it being necessary in order to Charity and edification of our Brethren that we hold forth no impure flames or smoaking firebrands but pure and trimmed lamps in the eyes of all the world 6. And yet her Marriage was more mysterious for as besides the Miracle it was an eternal honour and advancement to the glory of Virginity that he chose a Virgin for his Mother so it was in that manner 〈◊〉 that the Virgin was betrothed lest honourable Marriage might be disreputed and seem inglorious by a positive rejection from any participation of the honour Divers of the old Doctors from the authority of 〈◊〉 add another reason saying That the Blessed Jesus was therefore born of a woman betrothed and under the pretence of Marriage that the Devil who knew the 〈◊〉 was to be born of a Virgin might not expect him there but so be ignorant of the person till God had serv'd many ends of Providence upon him 7. The Angel in his address needed not to go in inquisition after a wandring fire but knew she was a Star fixt in her own Orb he found her at home and 〈◊〉 that also might be too large a Circuit she was yet confined to a more intimate retirement she was in her Oratory private and devout There are some Curiosities so bold and determinate as to tell the very matter of her Prayer and that she was praying for the Salvation of all the World and the Revelation of the 〈◊〉 desiring she might be so happy as to kiss the feet of her who should have the glory to be his Mother We have no security of the particular but there is no piety so diffident as to require a sign to create a belief that her imployment at the instant was holy and religious but in that disposition she received a grace which the greatest Queens would have purchased with the quitting of their Diadems and hath consigned an excellent Document to all women that they accustom themselves often to those Retirements where none but God and his Angels can have admittance For the Holy Jesus can come to them too and dwell with them hallowing their Souls and consigning their bodies to a participation of all his glories But recollecting of all our scattered thoughts and exteriour extravagances and a receding from the inconveniences of a too free conversation is the best circumstance to dispose us to a heavenly visitation 8. The holy Virgin when she saw an Angel and heard a testimony from Heaven of her Grace and Piety was troubled within her self at the Salutation and the manner of it For she had learn'd that the affluence of Divine comforts and prosperous successes should not exempt us from fear
his leisure either we disrepute the infinity of his Wisdom or give clear demonstration of our own vanity 2. When God descended to earth he chose to be born in the Suburbs and retirement of a small Town but he was pleased to die at Jerusalem the Metropolis of Judaea Which chides our shame and pride who are willing to publish our gayeties in Piazza's and the corners of the streets of most populous places but our defects and the instruments of our humiliation we carry into desarts and cover with the night and hide them under ground thinking no secrecy dark enough to hide our shame nor any theatre large enough to behold our pompous vanities for so we make provisions for Pride and take great care to exclude Humility 3. When the Holy Virgin now perceived that the expectation of the Nations was arrived at the very doors of revelation and entrance into the World she brought forth the Holy Jesus who like Light through transparent glass past through or a ripe Pomegranate from a fruitful tree fell to the earth without doing violence to its Nurse and Parent She had no ministers to attend but Angels and neither her Poverty nor her Piety would permit her to provide other Nurses but her self did the offices of a tender and pious Parent She kissed him and worshipped him and thanked him that he would be born of her and she suckled him and bound him in her arms and swadling-bands and when she had 〈◊〉 to God her first scene of joy and Eucharist she softly laid him in the manger till her desires and his own necessities called her to take him and to rock him softly in her arms and from this deportment she read a lecture of Piety and maternal care which Mothers should perform toward their children when they are born not to neglect any of that duty which nature and maternal piety requires 4. Jesus was pleased to be born of a poor Mother in a poor place in a cold winter's night far from home amongst strangers with all the circumstances of humility and poverty And no man will have cause to complain of his course Robe if he remembers the swadling-clothes of this Holy Child nor to be disquieted at his hard Bed when he considers Jesus laid in a manger nor to be discontented at his thin Table when he calls to mind the King of Heaven and Earth was fed with a little breast-milk But since the eternal wisdom of the Father who knew to chuse the good and refuse the evil did chuse a life of Poverty it gives us demonstration that Riches and Honors those idols of the World's esteem are so far from creating true felicities that they are not of themselves eligible in the number of good things however no man is to be ashamed of innocent Poverty of which many wise men make Vows and of which the Holy Jesus made election and his Apostles after him made publick profession And if any man will chuse and delight in the affluence of temporal good things suffering himself to be transported with caitive affections in the pleasures of every day he may well make a question whether he shall speed as well hereafter since God's usual method is that they only who follow Christ here shall be with him for ever 5. The Condition of the person 〈◊〉 was born is here of greatest consideration For he that cried in the Manger that suck'd the paps of a Woman that hath exposed himself to Poverty and a world of inconveniences is the Son of the living God of the same substance with his Father begotten before all Ages before the Morning-stars he is GOD eternal He is also by reason of the personal Union of the Divinity with his Humane nature the Son of God not by Adoption as good Men and beatified Angels are but by an extraordinary and miraculous Generation He is the Heir of his Father's glories and possessions not by succession for his Father cannot die but by an equality of communication He is the express image of his Father's person according to both Natures the miracle and excess of his Godhead being as upon wax imprinted upon all the capacities of his Humanity And after all this he is our Saviour that to our duties of wonder and adoration we may add the affections of love and union as himself besides his being admirable in himself is become profitable to us Verè Verbum hoc est abbreviatum saith the Prophet The eternal Word of the Father is shortned to the dimensions of an infant 6. Here then are concentred the prodigles of Greatness and Goodness of Wisdom and Charity of Meekness and Humility and march all the way in mysterie and incomprehensible mixtures if we consider him in the bosome of his Father where he is seated by the postures of Love and essential Felicity and in the Manger where Love also placed him and an infinite desire to communicate his Felicities to us As he is God his Throne is in the Heaven and he fills all things by his immensity as he is Man he is circumscribed by an uneasie Cradle and cries in a Stable As he is God he is seated upon a super-exalted Throne as Man exposed to the lowest estate of uneasiness and need As God clothed in a robe of Glory at the same instant when you may behold and wonder at his Humanity wrapped in cheap and unworthy Cradle-bands As God he is incircled with millions of Angels as Man in the company of Beasts As God he is the eternal Word of the Father Eternal sustained by himself all-sufficient and without need and yet he submitted himself to a condition imperfect inglorious indigent and necessitous And this consideration is apt and natural to produce great affections of love duty and obedience desires of union and conformity to his sacred Person Life Actions and Laws that we resolve all our thoughts and finally determine all our reason and our passions and capacities upon that saying of St. Paul He that loves not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be accursed 7. Upon the consideration of these Glories if a pious soul shall upon the supports of Faith and Love enter into the Stable where this great King was born and with affections behold every member of the Holy Body and thence pass into the Soul of Jesus we may see a scheme of holy Meditations enough to entertain all the degrees of our love and of our understanding and make the mysterie of the Nativity as fruitful of holy thoughts as it was of Blessings to us And it may serve instead of a description of the Person of Jesus conveyed to us in imperfect and Apocryphal schemes If we could behold his sacred Feet with those affections which the Holy Virgin did we have transmitted to us those Mysteries in story which she had first in part by spiritual and divine infused light and afterwards by observation Those holy Feet tender and unable to support his sacred Body should bear him over
till it hath made perfect day so it happened now in this Apparition of the Angel of light he appeared and told his message and did shine but the light arose higher and higher till midnight was as bright as mid-day for suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly 〈◊〉 and after the Angel had told his Message in plain-song the whole Chorus joyned in descant and sang an Hymn to the tune and sence of Heaven where glory is paid to God in eternal and never-ceasing offices and whence good will descends upon men in perpetual and never-stopping torrents Their Song was Glory be to God on high on earth peace good will towards men by this Song not only referring to the strange Peace which at that time put all the World in 〈◊〉 but to the great Peace which this new-born Prince should make between his Father and all Mankind 6. As soon as these blessed Choristers had sung their Christmas Carol and taught the Church a Hymn to put into her Offices for ever in the anniversary of this Festivity the Angels returned into Heaven and the Shepherds went to Bethlehem to see this thing which the Lord had made known unto them And they came with haste and sound Mary and Joseph and the Babe lying in a manger Just as the Angel had prepared their expectation they found the narrative verified and saw the glory and the mystery of it by that representment which was made by the heavenly Ministers seeing GOD through the veil of a Child's flesh the Heir of Heaven wrapt in Swadling-clothes and a person to whom the Angels did minister laid in a Manger and they beheld and wondred and worshipped 7. But as precious Liquor warmed and heightned by a flame first crowns the vessel and then dances over its brim into the fire increasing the cause of its own motion and extravagancy so it happened to the Shepherds whose hearts being filled with the oil of gladness up unto the brim the Joy ran over as being too big to be consined in their own breasts and did communicate it self growing greater by such dissemination for when they had seen it they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this Child And as well they might all that heard it wondred But Mary having first changed her joy into wonder turned her wonder into entertainments of the mystery and the mystery into a fruition and cohabitation with it For Mary kept all these sayings and pondered them in her heart And the Shepherds having seen what the Angels did upon the publication of the news which less concerned them than us had learnt their duty to sing an honour to God for the Nativity of Christ For the Shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen as it was told unto them 8. But the Angels had told the Shepherds that the Nativity was glad tidings of great joy unto all people and that the Heavens might declare the glory of God and the firmament shew his handy-work this also was told abroad even to the Gentiles by a sign from Heaven by the message of a Star For there was a Prophecy of Balaam famous in all the Eastern Countrey and recorded by Moses There shall come a Star out of Jacob and a Scepter shall arise out of Israel Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion Which although in its first sence it signified David who was the conqueror of the Moabites yet in its more mysterious and chiefly-intended sence it related to the Son of David And in expectation of the event of this Prophecy the Arabians the sons of Abraham by Keturah whose portion given by their Patriarch was Gold Frankincense and Myrrh who were great lovers of Astronomy did with diligence expect the revelation of a mighty Prince in Judaea at such time when a miraculous and extraordinary Star should appear And therefore when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of 〈◊〉 in the days of Herod the King there came wise men inspired by God taught by Art and perswaded by Prophecy from the East to Jerusalem saying Where is he that is born King of the Jews for we have seen his Star in the East and are come to worship him The Greeks suppose this which was called a Star to have been indeed an Angel in a pillar of fire and the semblance of a Star and it is made the more likely by coming and standing directly over the humble roof of his Nativity which is not discernible in the station of a Star though it be supposed to be lower than the Orb of the Moon To which if we add that they only saw it so far as we know and that it appeared as it were by voluntary periods it will not be very improbable but that it might be like the Angel that went before the sons of Israel in a pillar of fire by night or rather like the little shining Stars sitting upon the Bodies of 〈◊〉 Tharacus and Andronicus Martyrs when their bodies were searched for in the days of Diocletian and pointed at by those bright Angels 9. This Star did not trouble Herod till the Levantine Princes expounded the mysteriousness of it and said it declared a King to be born in Jewry and that the Star was his not applicable to any signification but of a King's birth And therefore although it was no Prodigy nor Comet foretelling Diseases Plagues War and Death but only the happy Birth of a most excellent Prince yet it brought affrightment to Herod and all Jerusalem For when Herod the King had heard these things he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him And thinking that the question of the Kingdom was now in dispute and an Heir sent from Heaven to lay challenge to it who brought a Star and the Learning of the East with him for evidence and probation of his Title Herod thought there was no security to his usurped possession unless he could rescind the decrees of Heaven and reverse the results and eternal counsels of Predestination And he was resolved to venture it first by craft and then by violence 10. And first he calls the chief Priests and Scribes of the people together and demanded of them where CHRIST should be born and found by their joynt determination that Bethlehem of Judaea was the place designed by ancient Prophecy and God's Decree Next he enquired of the Wise men concerning the Star but privily what time it appeared For the Star had not motion certain and regular by the laws of Nature but it so guided the Wise men in their journey that it stood when they stood moved not when they rested and went forward when they were able making no more haste than they did who carried much of the business and imployment of the Star along with them But when Herod was satisfied in his questions he sent them to Bethlehem with instructions to search diligently for the young child
acceptance to all Graces But I shall reduce this to particular and more minute considerations 5. First We shall best know that our Will is in the obedience by our prompt undertaking by our chearful managing by our swift execution for all degrees of delay are degrees of immorigerousness and unwillingness And since time is extrinsecal to the act and alike to every part of it nothing determines an action but the Opportunity without and the desires and Willingress within And therefore he who deliberates beyond his first opportunity and exteriour determination and appointment of the act brings fire and wood but wants a Lamb for the sacrifice and unless he offer up his Isaac his beloved Will he hath no ministery prepared for God's acceptance He that does not repent to day puts it to the Question whether he will repent at all or no. He that defers Restitution when all the Circumstances are fitted is not yet resolved upon the duty And when he does it if he does it against his will he does but do honorary Penance with a Paper upon his hat a Taper in his hand it may satisfie the Law but not satisfie his Conscience it neither pleases himself and less pleases God A Sacrifice without a Heart was a sad and ominous presage in the superstition of the Roman Augurs and so it is in the service of God for what the exhibition of the work is to man that the presentation of the Will is to God It is but a cold Charity to a naked begger to say God help thee and do nothing give him clothes and he feels your Charity But God who is the searcher of the heart his apprehension of actions relative to him is of the inward motions and addresses of the Will and without this our exteriour services are like the paying of a piece of mony in which we have defaced the image it is not currant 6. Secondly But besides the Willingness to do the acts of express command the readiness to do the Intimations and tacite significations of God's pleasure is the best testimony in the world that our Will is in the obedience Thus did the Holy Jesus undertake a Nature of infirmity and suffer a Death of shame and sorrow and became obedient from the Circumcision even unto the death of the Cross not staying for a Command but because it was his Father's pleasure Mankind should be redeemed For before the susception of it he was not a person subjicible to a Command It was enough that he understood the inclinations and designs of his Father's Mercies And therefore God hath furnished us with instances of uncommanded Piety to be a touchstone of our Obedience He that does but his endeavour about the express commands hath a bridle in his mouth and is restrained by violence but a willing spirit is like a greedy eye devours all it sees and hopes to make some proportionable returns and compensations of duty for his infirmity by taking in the intimations of God's pleasure When God commands Chastity he that undertakes a holy Coelibate hath great obedience to the command of Chastity God bids us give Alms of our increase he obeys this with great facility that sells all his goods and gives them to the poor And provided our hastiness to snatch at too much does not make us let go our duty like the indiscreet loads of too forward persons too big or too inconvenient and uncombin'd there is not in the world a greater probation of our prompt Obedience than when we look farther than the precise Duty swallowing that and more with our ready and hopeful purposes nothing being so able to do miracles as Love and yet nothing being so certainly accepted as Love though it could do nothing in productions and exteriour ministeries 7. Thirdly but God requires that our Obedience should have another excellency to make it a becoming present to the Divine acceptance our Understanding must be sacrificed too and become an ingredient of our Obedience We must also believe that whatsoever God commands is most fitting to be commanded is most excellent in it self and the best for us to do The first gives our Affections and desires to God and this also gives our Reason and is a perfection of Obedience not communicable to the duties we owe to Man For God only is Lord of this faculty and being the fountain of all wisdom therefore commands our Understanding because he alone can satisfie it We are bound to obey humane Laws but not bound to think the Laws we live under are the most prudent Constitutions in the World But God's Commandments are not only a lantern to our feet and a light unto our paths but a rule to our Reason and satisfaction to our Understandings as being the instruments of our address to God and conveyances of his Grace and manuductions to Eternity And therefore St. John Climacus defines Obedience to be An unexamined and unquestioned motion a voluntary death and sepulture of the Will a life without curiosity a laying aside our own discretion in the midst of the riches of the most excellent understandings 8. And certainly there is not in the world a greater strength against temptations than is deposited in an obedient Understanding because that only can regulary produce the same affections it admits of fewer degrees and an infrequent alteration But the actions proceeding from the Appetite as it is determined by any other principle than a satisfied Understanding have their heightnings and their declensions and their changes and mutations according to a thousand accidents Reason is more lasting than Desire and with fewer means to be tempted but Affections and motions of appetite as they are procured by any thing so may they expire by as great variety of causes And therefore to serve God by way of Understanding is surer and in it self unless it be by the accidental increase of degrees greater than to serve him upon the motion and principle of passions and desires though this be fuller of comfort and pleasure than the other When Lot lived amongst the impure 〈◊〉 where his righteous Soul was in a continual agony he had few exteriour incentives to a pious life nothing to enkindle the sensible flame of burning desires toward Piety but in the midst of all the discouragements of the world nothing was left him but the way and precedency of a truly-informed Reason and Conscience Just so is the way of those wise souls who live in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation where Piety is out of countenance where Austerity is ridiculous 〈◊〉 under persecution no Examples to lead us on there the Understanding is left to be the guide and it does the work the surest for this makes the duty of many to be certain regular and chosen constant integral and perpetual but this way is like the life of an unmarried or a retired person less of grief in it and less of joy But the way of serving God with the
die but if ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live This first Mortification is the way of life if it continues but its continuance is not fecured till we are advanced towards life by one degree more of this Death For this condition is a state of a daily and dangerous warfare and many inrodes are made by sin and many times hurt is done and booty carried off for he that is but thus far mortified although his dwelling be within the Kingdom of Grace yet it is in the borders of it and hath a dangerous neighbourhood If we mean to be safe we must remove into the heart of the Land or carry the war farther off 6. Secondly We must not only be strangers here but we must be dead too dead unto the World that is we must not only deny our Vices but our Passions not only contradict the direct immediate Perswasion to a sin but also cross the Inclination to it So long as our Appetites are high and full we shall never have peace or safety but the dangers and insecurities of a full War and a potent Enemy we are always disputing the Question ever strugling for life but when our Passions are killed when our desires are little and low then Grace reigns then our life is hid with Christ in God then we have fewer interruptions in the way of Righteousness then we are not so apt to be surprised by sudden eruptions and transportation of Passions and our Piety it self is more prudent and reasonable chosen with a freer election discerned with clearer understanding hath more in it of Judgment than of Fancy and is more spiritual and Angelical He that is apt to be angry though he be habitually careful and full of observation that he sin not may at some time or other be surprised when his guards are undiligent and without actual expectation of an enemy but if his Anger be dead in him and the inclination lessened to the indisferency and gentleness of a Child the man dwells safe because of the impotency of his Enemy or that he is reduced to Obedience or hath taken conditions of peace He that hath refused to consent to actions of Uncleanness to which he was strongly tempted hath won a victory by sine force God hath blessed him well but an opportunity may betray him instantly and the sin may be in upon him unawares unless also his desires be killed he is betrayed by a party within David was a holy person but he was surprised by the sight of Bathsheba for his freer use of permitted beds had kept the fire alive which was apt to be put into a flame when so fair a beauty reflected through his eyes But Joseph was a Virgin and kept under all his inclinations to looser thoughts opportunity and command and violence and beauty did make no breach upon his spirit 7. He that is in the first state of Pilgrimage does not mutiny against his Superiors nor publish their faults nor envy their dignities but he that is dead to the world sees no fault that they have and when he hears an objection he buries it in an excuse and rejoyces in the dignity of their persons Every degree of Mortification endures reproof without murmur but he that is quite dead to the world and to his own will feels no regret against it and hath no secret thoughts of trouble and unwillingness to the suffering save only that he is sorry he deserv'd it For so a dead body resists not your violence changes not its posture you plac'd it in strikes not his striker is not moved by your words nor provoked by your scorn nor is troubled when you shrink with horror at the sight of it only it will hold the head downward in all its situations unless it be hindred by violence And a mortified spirit is such without indignation against scorn without revenge against injuries without murmuring at low offices not impatient in troubles indifferent in all accidents neither transported with joy nor deprest with sorrow and is humble in all his thoughts And thus he that is dead saith the Apostle is justified from sins And this is properly a state of life in which by the grace of Jesus we are restored to a condition of order and interiour beauty in our Faculties our actions are made moderate and humane our spirits are even and our understandings undisturbed 8. For Passions of the sensitive Soul are like an Exnalation hot and dry born up from the earth upon the wings of a cloud and detained by violence out of its place causing thunders and making eruptions into lightning and sudden fires There is a Tempest in the Soul of a passionate man and though every wind does not shake the earth nor rend trees up by the roots yet we call it violent and ill weather if it only makes a 〈◊〉 and is harmless And it is an inordination in the spirit of a man when his Passions are tumultuous and mighty though they do not determine directly upon a sin they discompose his peace and disturb his spirit and make it like troubled waters in which no man can see his own figure and just 〈◊〉 portions and therefore by being less a man cannot be so much a Christian in the midst 〈◊〉 so great indispositions For although the Cause may hallow the Passion and if a man be very angry for God's cause it is Zeal not Fury yet the Cause cannot secure the Person from violence transportation and inconvenience When Elisha was consulted by three Kings concerning the success of their present Expedition he grew so angry against idolatrous soram and was carried on to so great degrees of disturbance that when for Jehosaphat's sake he was content to enquire of the Lord he called for a minstrel who by his harmony might re-compose his disunited and troubled spirit that so he might be apter sor divination And sometimes this zeal goes besides the intention of the man and beyond the degrees of prudent or lawful and ingages in a sin though at first it was Zeal for Religion For so it happened in Moses at the waters of Massah and Meribah he spake foolishly and yet it was when he was zealous for God and extremely careful of the people's interest For his Passion he was hindred from entring into the Land of Promise And we also if we be not moderate and well-tempered even in our 〈◊〉 for God may like Moses break the Tables of the Law and throw them out of our hands with zeal to have them preserved for Passion violently snatches at the Conclusion but is inconsiderate and incurious concerning the Premises The summ and purpose of this Discourse is that saying of our Blessed Saviour He that will be my Disciple must deny himself that is not only desires that are sinful but desires that are his own pursuances of his own affections and violent motions though to things not evil or in themselves
with an issue of bloud twelve years without hope of remedy from art or nature and therefore she runs to Jesus thinking without precedent upon the confident perswasions of a holy Faith that if she did but touch the hem of his garment she should be whole She came trembling and full of hope and reverence and touched his garment and immediately the 〈◊〉 of her unnatural emanation was stopped and reverted to its natural course and offices S. Ambrose says that this woman was Martha But it is not likely that she was a Jewess but a Gentile because of that return which she made in memory of her cure and honour of Jesus according to the Gentile rites For Eusebius reports that himself saw at Caesarea Philippi a Statue of 〈◊〉 representing a woman kneeling at the feet of a goodly personage who held his hand out to her in a posture of granting her request and doing favour to her and the inhabitants said it was erected by the care and cost of this woman adding whether out of truth or easiness is not certain that at the pedestal of this Statue an usual plant did grow which when it was come up to that maturity and height as to arrive at the fringes of the brass monument it was medicinal in many dangerous diseases So far Eusebius Concerning which story I shall make no censure but this that since S. Mark and S. Luke affirm that this woman before her cure had spent all her substance upon Physicians it is not easily imaginable how she should become able to dispend so great a summ of money as would purchase two so great Statues of brass and if she could yet it is still more unlikely that the Gentile Princes and Proconsuls who searched all places publick and private and were curiously diligent to destroy all honorary monuments of Christianity should let this alone and that this should escape not only the diligence of the Persecutors but the fury of such Wars and changes as happened in Palestine and that for three hundred years together it should stand up in defiance of all violences and changeable fate of all things However it be it is certain that the Book against Images published by the command of Charles the Great 850 years ago gave no credit to the story and if it had been true it it more than probable that Justin Martyr who was born and bred in Palestine and Origen who lived many years in Tyre in the neighbourhood of the place where the Statue is said to stand and were highly diligent to heap together all things of advantage and reputation to the Christian cause would not have omitted so notable an instance It is therefore likely that the Statues which Eusebius saw and concerning which he heard such stories were first placed there upon the stock of a heathen story or Ceremony and in process of time for the likeness of the figures and its capacity to be translated to the Christian story was by the Christians in after-Ages attributed by a fiction of fancy and afterwards by credulity confidently applied to the present Narrative 21. When Jesus was come to the Ruler's house he found the minstrels making their funeral noises for the death of Jairus's daughter and his servants had met him and acquainted him of the death of the child yet Jesus turned out the minstrels and entred with the parents of the child into her chamber and taking her by the hand called her and awakened her from her sleep of death and commanded them to give her to eat and enjoyned them not to publish the Miracle But as 〈◊〉 suppressed by violent detentions break out and rage with a more impetuous and rapid motion so it happened to Jesus who endeavouring to make the noises and reports of him less popular made them to be 〈◊〉 for not only we do that most greedily from which we are most restrained but a great merit enamell'd with humility and restrained with modesty grows more beautious and florid up to the heights of wonder and glories 22. As he came from Jairus's house he cured two blind men upon their petition and confession that they did believe in him and cast out a dumb Devil so much to the wonder and amazement of the people that the Pharisees could hold no longer being ready to burst with envy but said he cast out Devils by help of the Devils Their malice being as usually it is contradictory to its own design by its being unreasonable nothing being more sottish than for the Devil to divide his kingdom upon a plot to ruine his certainties upon hopes future and contingent But this was but the first eruption of their malice all the year last past which was the first year of Jesus's Preaching all was quiet neither the Jews nor the Samaritans nor the Galileans did malign his Doctrine or Person but he preached with much peace on all hands for this was the year which the Prophet Isaiah called in his prediction the acceptable year of the Lord. Ad SECT XII Considerations upon the Entercourse happening between the Holy Jesus and the Woman of Samaria The Woman of Samaria Iohn 4 7. There cemeth a woman of Samaria to draw water Iesus saith unto her giue me to drink 9. Then saith the Woman of Samaria unto him How is it that thou being a Iew askest drink of me which am a woman of Samaria The great draught of Fishes Luk. 5. 4. 5. etc. He said unto Simon Let down your nets for a draught And they enclosed a great multitude of fishes and when Simon Peter saw it he fell down att Jesus knees for he was astonished all that were with him at the draught of the fishes And Jesus said to Simon Fear not from henceforth thou shalt catch men 1. WHen the Holy Jesus perceiving it unsafe to be at Jerusálem returned to Galilee where the largest scene of his Prophetical Office was to be represented he journeyed on foot through Samaria and being weary and faint hungry and thirsty he sate down by a Well and begged water of a Samaritan woman that was a Sinner who at first refused him with some incivility of language But he in stead of returning anger and passion to her rudeness which was commenced upon the interest of a mistaken Religion preached the coming of the Messias to her unlock'd the secrets of her heart and let in his Grace and made a fountain of living water to spring up in her Soul to extinguish the impure flames of Lust which had set her on fire burning like Hell ever since the death of her fifth Husband she then becoming a Concubine to the sixth Thus Jesus transplanted Nature into Grace his hunger and thirst into religious appetites the darkness of the Samaritan into a clear revelation her Sin into Repentance and Charity and so quenched his own thirst by relieving her needs and as it was meat to him to do his Father's will so it was drink to
fall into hypocrisie or deceit or if a Christian Asseveration were not of value equal with an Oath And therefore Christ forbidding promissory Oaths and commanding so great simplicity of spirit and honesty did consonantly to the design and perfection of his Institution intending to make us so just and sincere that our Religion being infinite obligation to us our own Promises should pass for bond enough to others the Religion receive great honour by being esteemed a sufficient security and instrument of publick entercourse And this was intimated by our Lord himself in that reason he is pleased to give of the prohibition of swearing Let your communication be Yea yea Nay nay for whatsoever is more cometh of evil that is As good Laws come from ill manners the modesty of cloathing from the shame of sin Antidotes and Physick by occasion of poisons and diseases so is Swearing an effect of distrust and want of faith or honesty on one or both sides Men dare not trust the word of a Christian or a Christian is not just and punctual to his Promises and this calls for confirmation by an Oath So that Oaths suppose a fault though they are not faults always themselves whatsoever is more than Yea or Nay is not always evil but it always cometh of evil And therefore the Essenes esteemed every man that was put to his Oath no better than an infamous person a perjurer or at least suspected not esteemed a just man and the Heathens would not suffer the Priest of Jupiter to swear because all men had great opinion of his sanctity and authority and the Scythians derided Alexander's caution and timorous provision when he required an Oath of them Nos religionem in ipsa side novimus Our faith is our bond and they who are willing to deceive men will not stick to deceive God when they have called God to witness But I have a caution to insert for each which I propound as an humble advice to persons eminent and publickly interested 22. First That Princes and such as have power of decreeing the injunction of promissory Oaths be very curious and reserved not lightly enjoyning such Promises neither in respect of the matter trivial nor yet frequently nor without great reason enforcing The matter of such Promises must be only what is already matter of Duty or Religion for else the matter is not grave enough sor the calling of God to testimony but when it is a matter of Duty then the Oath is no other than a Vow or Promise made to God in the presence of men And because Christians are otherwise very much obliged to do all which is their duty in matters both civil and religious of Obedience and Piety therefore it must be an instant necessity and a great cause to superinduce such a confirmation as derives from the so sacredly invocating the Name of God it must be when there is great necessity that the duty be actually performed and when the Supreme power either hath not power sufficient to punish the delinquent or may miss to have notice of the delict For in these cases it is reasonable to bind the faith of the obliged persons by the fear of God after a more special manner but else there is no reason sufficient to demand of the subject any farther security than their own faith and contract The reason of this advice relies upon the strictness of the words of this Precept against promissory Oaths and the reverence we owe to the name of God Oaths of Allegiance are fit to be imposed in a troubled State or to a mutinous People But it is not so fit to tie the People by Oath to abstain from transportations of Metal or Grain or Leather from which by Penalties they are with as much security and less suspicion of iniquity restrained 23. Secondly Concerning assertory Oaths and Depositions in Judgment although a greater liberty may be taken in the subject matter of the Oath and we may being required to it swear in Judgment though the cause be a question of money or our interest or the rights of a Society and S. Athanasius purged himself by Oath before the Emperour Constantius yet it were a great pursuance and security of this part of Christian Religion if in no case contrary Oaths might be admitted in which it is certain one part is perjured to the ruine of their Souls to the intricating of the Judgment to the dishonour of Religion but that such rules of prudence and reasonable presumption be established that upon the Oath of that party which the Law shall chuse and upon probable grounds shall presume for the sentence may be established For by a small probability there may a surer Judgment be given than upon the confidence of contradictory Oaths and after the sin the Judge is left to the uncertainty of conjectures as much as if but one part had sworn and to much more because such an Oath is by the consent of all men accepted as a rule to determine in Judgment By these discourses we understand the intention of our Blessed Master in this Precept and I wish by this or any thing else men would be restrained 〈◊〉 that low cheap unreasonable and unexcusable vice of customary Swearing to which we have nothing to invite us that may lessen the iniquity for which we cannot pretend temptation nor alledge infirmity but it begins by wretchlesness and a malicious carelesness and is continued by the strength of habit and the greatest immensity of folly And I consider that Christian Religion being so holy an Institution to which we are invited by so great promises in which we are instructed by so clear revelations and to the performance of our duties compelled by the threatnings of a sad and insupportable eternity should more than sufficiently endear the performance of this Duty to us The name of a Christian is a high and potent antidote against all sin if we consider aright the honour of the name the undertaking of our Covenant and the reward of our duty The Jews eat no Swines flesh because they are of Moses and the Turks drink no Wine because they are Mahumetans and yet we swear for all we are Christians than which there is not in the world a greater conviction of our baseness and irreligion Is the authority of the Holy Jesus so despicable are his Laws so unreasonable his rewards so little his threatnings so small that we must needs in contempt of all this profane the great Name of God and trample under foot the Laws of Jesus and cast away the hopes of Heaven and enter into security to be possessed by Hell-torments for Swearing that is for speaking like a fool without reason without pleasure without reputation much to our disesteem much to the trouble of civil and wise persons with whom we joyn in society and entercourse Certainly Hell will be heat seven times hotter for a customary Swearer and every degree of
was necessary for Religion therefore to abstain from Suits of Law and servile works but such works as are of necessity and charity which to observe are of themselves a very good Religion is a necessary duty of the day and to do acts of publick Religion is the other part of it So much is made matter of duty by the intervention of Authority and though the Church hath made no more prescriptions in this God hath made none at all yet he who keeps the Day most strictly most religiously he keeps it best and most consonant to the design of the Church and the ends of Religion and the opportunity of the present leisure and the interests of his Soul The acts of Religion proper for the Day are Prayers and publick Liturgies Preaching Catechizing acts of Charity Visiting sick persons acts of Eucharist to God of Hospitality to our poor neighbours of friendliness and civility to all reconciling differences and after the publick Assemblies are dissolved any act of direct Religion to God or of ease and remission to Servants or whatsoever else is good in Manners or in Piety or in Mercy What is said of this great Feast of the Christians is to be understood to have a greater 〈◊〉 and obligation in the Anniversary of the Resurrection of the Ascension of the Nativity of our Blessed Saviour and of the descent of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost And all days festival to the honour of God in remembrance of the holy Apostles and Martyrs and departed Saints as they are with prudence to be chosen and retained by the Church so as not to be unnecessary or burthensome or useless so they are to be observed by us as instances of our love of the communion of Saints and our thankfulness for the blessing and the example 26. Honour thy Father and thy Mother This Commandment Christ made also to be Christian by his frequent repetition and mention of it in his Sermons and Laws and so ordered it that it should be the band of civil Government and Society In the Decalogue God sets this Precept immediately after the duties that concern himself our duty to Parents being in the consines with our duty to God the Parents being in order of nature next to God the cause of our being and production and the great Almoners of Eternity conveying to us the essences of reasonable Creatures and the charities of Heaven And when our Blessed Saviour in a Sermon to the 〈◊〉 spake of duty to Parents he rescued it from the impediments of a vain tradition and secured this Duty though against a pretence of Religion towards God telling us that God would not himself accept a gift which we took from our Parents needs This duty to Parents is the very 〈◊〉 and band of Commonwealths He that honours his Parents will also love his Brethren derived from the same loins he will dearly account of all his relatives and persons of the same cognation and so Families are united and 〈◊〉 them Cities and Societies are framed And because Parents and Patriarchs of 〈◊〉 and of Nations had regal power they who by any change 〈◊〉 in the care and government of Cities and Kingdomes succeeded in the power and authority of Fathers and became so in estimate of Law and true Divinity to all their people So that the Duty here commanded is due to all our Fathers in the sense of Scripture and Laws not onely to our natural but to our civil Fathers that is to Kings and Governours And the Scripture adds Mothers for they also being instruments of the blessing are the objects of the Duty The duty is Honour that is Reverence and Support if they shall need it And that which our Blessed Saviour calls not 〈◊〉 our Parents in S. Matthew is called in S. Mark doing nothing for them and Honour is expounded by S. Paul to be maintenance as well as reverence Then we honour our Parents if with great readiness we minister to their necessities and communicate our estate and attend them in sicknesses and supply their wants and as much as lies in us give them support who gave us being 27. Thou shalt do no Murther so it was said to them of old time He that kills shall be guilty of Judgment that is he is to die by the sentence of the Judge To this Christ makes an appendix But I say unto you he that is angry with his Brother without a cause shall be in danger of the Judgment This addition of our Blessed Saviour as all the other which are severer explications of the Law than the Jews admitted was directed against the vain and imperfect opinion of the Lawyers who thought to be justified by their external works supposing if they were innocent in matter of fact God would require no more of them than Man did and what by custome or silence of the Laws was not punishable by the Judge was harmless before God and this made them to trust in the letter to neglect the duties of Repentance to omit asking pardon for their secret irregularities and the obliquities and aversations of their spirits and this S. Paul also complains of that neglecting the righteousness of God they sought to establish their own that is according to Man's judgment But our Blessed Saviour tells them that such an innocence is not enough God requires more than conformity and observation of the fact and exteriour 〈◊〉 placing Justice not in legal innocency or not being condemned in judgment of the Law and humane judicature but in the righteousness of the spirit also for the first acquits us before man but by this we shall be held upright in judgment before the Judge of all the world And therefore besides abstinence from murther or actual wounds Christ forbids all anger without cause against our Brother that is against any man 28. By which not the first motions are forbidden the twinklings of the eye as the Philosophers call them the pro-passions and sudden and irresistible alterations for it is impossible to prevent them unless we could give our selves a new nature any more than we can refuse to wink with our eye when a sudden blow is offered at it or refuse to yawn when we see a yawning sleepy person but by frequent and habitual mortification and by continual watchfulness and standing in readiness against all inadvertencies we shall lessen the inclination and account fewer sudden irreptions A wise and meek person should not kindle at all but after violent and great collision and then if like a flint he sends a spark out it must as soon be extinguished as it shews and cool as soon as sparkle But however the sin is not in the natural disposition But when we entertain it though it be as 〈◊〉 expresses it cum voluntate non 〈◊〉 without a determination of revenge then it begins to be a sin Every indignation
Humility of trust in God's providence it is therefore Pride and Murther and Injustice and infinite Unreasonableness and nothing of a Christian nothing of excuse nothing of honour in it if God and wise men be admitted Judges of the Lists And it would be considered that every one that fights a Duell must reckon himself as dead or dying for however any man flatters himself by saying he will not kill if he could avoid it yet rather than be killed he will and to the danger of being killed his own act exposes him now is it a good posture for a man to die with a sword in his hand thrust at his Brother's breast with a purpose either explicit or implicit to have killed him Can a man die twice that in case he miscarries and is damned for the first ill dying he may mend his fault and die better the next time Can his vain imaginary and phantastick shadow of Reputation make him recompence for the disgrace and confusion of face and pains and horrors of Eternity Is there no such thing as forgiving injuries nothing of the discipline of Jesus in our spirits are we called by the name of Christ and have nothing in us but the spirit of Cain and Nimrod and Joab If neither Reason nor Religion can rule us neither interest nor safety can determine us neither life nor Eternity can move us neither God nor wise men be sufficient Judges of Honour to us then our damnation is just but it is heavy our fall is certain but it is cheap base and inglorious And let not the vanities or the Gallants of the world slight this friendly monition rejecting it with a scorn because it is talking like a Divine it were no disparagement if they would do so too and believe accordingly and they would find a better return of honour in the crowns of Eternity by talking like a Divine than by dying like a fool by living in imitation and obedience to the laws of the Holy Jesus than by perishing or committing Murther or by attempting it or by venturing it like a weak impotent passionate and brutish person Upon this Chapter it is sometime asked whether a Virgin may not kill a Ravisher to defend her Chastity Concerning which as we have no special and distinct warrant so there is in reason and analogy of the Gospel much for the negative For since his act alone cannot make her criminal and is no more than a wound in my body or a civil or a natural inconvenience it is unequal to take a life in exchange for a lesser injury and it is worse that I take it my self Some great examples we find in story and their names are remembred in honour but we can make no judgement of them but that their zeal was reproveable for its intemperance though it had excellency in the matter of the Passion 8. But if we may not secure our Honour or be revenged for injuries by the sword may we not crave the justice of the Law and implore the vengeance of the Judge who is appointed for vengeance against evil doers and the Judge being the King's Officer and the King God's Vicegerent it is no more than imploring God's hand and that is giving place to wrath which S. Paul speaks of that is permitting all to the Divine Justice To this I answer That it is not lawful to go to Law for every occasion or slighter injury because it is very distant from the mercies forgiveness and gentleness of a Christian to contest for Trifles and it is certain that the injuries or evil or charges of trouble and expence will be more vexatious and afflictive to the person contested than a small instance of wrong is to the person injured And it is a great intemperance of anger and impotence of spirit a covetousness and impatience to appeal to the Judge for determination concerning a lock of Camel's hair or a Goat's beard I mean any thing that is less than the gravity of Laws or the solemnity of a Court and that does not out-weigh the inconveniencies of a Suit But this we are to consider in the expression of our Blessed Saviour If a man will sue thee at the Law and take thy Cloak let him have thy Coat also Which words are a particular instance in pursuit of the general Precept Resist not or avenge not evil The primitive Christians as it happens in the first fervours of a Discipline were sometimes severe in observation of the letter not subtlely distinguishing Counsels from Precepts but swallowing all the words of Christ without chewing or discrimination They abstained from Tribunals unless they were forced thither by persecutors but went not thither to repeat their goods And if we consider Suits of Law as they are wrapp'd in circumstances of action and practice with how many subtleties and arts they are managed how pleadings are made mercenary and that it will be hard to find right counsel that shall advise you to desist if your cause be wrong and therefore there is great reason to distrust every Question since if it be never so wrong we shall meet Advocates to encourage us and plead for it what danger of miscarriages of uncharitableness anger and animosities what desires to prevail what care and fearfulness of the event what 〈◊〉 temptations do intervene how many sins are secretly 〈◊〉 in our 〈◊〉 and actions if a Suit were of it self never so lawful it would concern the duty of a Christian to avoid it as he prays against temptations and cuts off the opportunities of a sin It is not lawful for a Christian to sue his brother at the Law unless he can be patient if he loses and charitable if he be wronged and can 〈◊〉 his end without any mixture of Covetousness or desires to prevail without Envy or can believe himself wrong when his Judge says he is or can submit to peace when his just cause is oppressed and rejected and condemned and without pain or regret can sit down by the loss of his right and of his pains and his money And if he can do all this what need he go to Law He may with less trouble and less danger take the loss singly and expect God's providence for reparation than disentitle himself to that by his own srowardness and take the loss when it comes loaden with many circumstances of trouble 9. But however by accident it may become unlawful to go to Law in a just cause or in any yet by this Precept we are not 〈◊〉 To go to Law for revenge we are simply 〈◊〉 that is to return evil for evil and therefore all those Suits which are for vindictive sentences not for reparative are directly criminal To follow a Thief to death for spoiling my goods is extremely unreasonable and uncharitable for as there is no proportion between my goods and his life and therefore I demand it to his evil and injury so the putting him to death
insert in pursuance of that caution given to the Church of Thessalonica by S. Paul If any one will not work neither let him eat for we must be careful that our Charity which is intended to minister to poor mens needs do not minister to idleness and the love of beggery and a wandring useless unprofitable life But abating this there is no other consideration that can exempt any needy person from participation of your Charity not though he be your Enemy for that is it which our Blessed Saviour means in the appendix of this Precept Love your Enemies that is according to the exposition of the Apostle If thine enemy hunger 〈◊〉 him if he thirst give him drink not though he be an Unbeliever not though he be a vicious person provided only that the vice be such to which your relief ministers no fuel and adds no flame and if the mere necessities of his nature be supplied it will be a fair security against the danger but if the vice be in the scene of the body all freer comforts are to be denied him because they are but incentives of sin and Angels of darkness This I the rather insert that the pride and supercilious austerities of some persons become not to them an instrument of excuse from ministring to needy persons upon pretence their own sins brought them into that condition For though the causes of our calamities are many times great secrets of Providence yet suppose the poverty of the man was the effect of his Prodigality or other baseness it matters not as to our duty how he came into it but where he is lest we also be denied a visit in our sicknesses and a comfort in our sorrow or a counsel in our doubts or aid in any distress upon pretence that such sadness was procured by our sins and ten to one but it was so Do good to all faith the Apostle but especially to the family of faith for to them our Charity is most proper and proportioned to all viz. who are in need and cannot relieve themselves in which number persons that can work are not to be accounted So that if it be necessary to observe an order in our Charity that is when we cannot supply and suffice for all our opportunities of mercy then let not the Brethren of our Lord go away ashamed and in other things observe the order and propriety of your own relations and where there is otherwise no difference the degree of the necessity is first to be considered This also if the necessity be 〈◊〉 and extreme what-ever the man be he is first to be relieved before the lesser necessities of the best persons or most holy poor But the proper objects of our Charity are old persons sick or impotent laborious and poor Housekeepers Widows and Orphans people oppressed or persecuted for the cause of Righteousness distressed Strangers Captives and abused Slaves prisoners of Debt To these we must be liberal whether they be holy or unholy remembring that we are sons of that Father who makes the dew of Heaven to drop upon the dwellings of the righteous and the fields of sinners 4. Thirdly The Manner of giving Alms is an office of Christian prudence for in what instances we are to exemplifie our Charity we must be determined by our own powers and others needs The Scripture reckons entertaining strangers visiting the sick going to prisons feeding and cloathing the hungry and naked to which by the exigence of the poor and the analogy of Charity many other are to be added The Holy Jesus in the very Precept instanced in lending money to them that need to borrow and he adds looking for nothing again that is if they be unable to pay it Forgiving Debts is a great instance of mercy and a particular of excellent relief but to imprison men for Debt when it is certain they are not able to pay it and by that prison will be far more disabled is an uncharitableness next to the cruelties of salvages and at infinite distance from the mercies of the Holy Jesus Of not Judging PART III. ANother instance of Charity our great Master inserted in this Sermon not to judge our Brother and this is a Charity so cheap and so reasonable that it requires nothing of us but silence in our spirits We may perform this duty at the charge of a negative if we meddle not with other mens affairs we shall do them no wrong and purchase to our selves a peace and be secured the rather from the 〈◊〉 sentence of a severer Judge But this interdict forbids only such judging as is ungentle and uncharitable in criminal causes let us find all the ways to alleviate the burthen of the man by just excuses by extenuating or lessening accidents by abatement of incident circumstances by gentle sentences and whatsoever can do relief to the person that his spirit be not exasperated that the crime be not the parent of impudence that he be not insulted on that he be invited to repentance and by such sweetnesses he be led to his restitution This also in questions of doubts obliges us to determine to the more favourable sence and we also do need the same mercies and therefore should do well by our own rigour not to disintitle our selves to such possibilities and reserves of Charity But it is foul and base by detraction and iniquity to blast the reputation of an honourable action and the fair name of vertue with a calumny But this duty is also a part of the grace of Justice and of Humility and by its relation and kindred to so many vertues is furnished with so many arguments of amability and endearment The PRAYER HOly and merciful Jesus who art the great principle and the instrument of conveying to us the charity and mercies of Eternity who didst love us when we were enemies forgive us when we were debtors recover us when we were dead ransom us when we were slaves relieve us when we were poor and naked and wandring and full of sadness and necessities give us the grace of Charity that we may be pitiful and compassionate of the needs of our necessitous Brethren that we may be apt to relieve them and that according to our duty and possibilities we may rescue them from their calamities Give us courteous affable and liberal souls let us by thy example forgive our debtors and love our enemies and do to them offices of civility and tenderness and relief always propounding thee for our pattern and thy mercies for our precedent and thy Precepts for our rule and thy Spirit for our guide that we shewing mercy here may receive the mercies of Eternity by thy merits and by thy charities and dispensation O Holy and merciful Jesus Amen DISCOURSE XII Of the Second additional Precept of Christ viz. Of PRAYER Non magna loquimur sed vivimus Cum clamore valido et lachrymas prâ—ces offerens exauditus â—â—â—
hungry and therefore having so great need they might lawfully do it meaning that such particles and circumstances of Religion are not to be neglected unless where greater cause of charity or necessity does supervene 2. But when Fasting is in order to greater and more concerning purposes it puts on more Religion and becomes a duty according as it is necessary or highly conducing to such ends to the promoting of which we are bound to contribute all our skill and faculties Fasting is principally operative to mortification of carnal appetites to which Feasting and full tables do minister aptness and power and inclinations When I fed them to the full then they committed adultery and assembled by troups in the Harlots houses And if we observe all our own vanities we shall find that upon every sudden joy or a prosperous accident or an opulent fortune or a pampered body and highly spirited and inflamed we are apt to rashness levities inconsiderate expressions scorn and pride idleness wantonness curiosity niceness and impatience But Fasting is one of those afflictions which reduces our body to want our spirits to soberness our condition to sufferance our desires to abstinence and customes of denial and so by taking off the inundations of sensuality leaves the enemies within in a condition of being easier subdued Fasting directly advances towards Chastity and by consequence and indirect powers to Patience and Humility and Indifferency But then it is not the Fast of a day that can do this it is not an act but a state of Fasting that operates to Mortification A perpetual Temperance and frequent abstinence may abate such proportions of strength and nutriment as to procure a body mortified and 〈◊〉 in desires And thus S. Paul kept his body under using severities to it for the taming its rebellions and distemperatures And S. Jerom reports of S. Hilarion that when he had fasted much and used course diet and found his Lust too strong for such austerities he resolv'd to encrease it to the degree of Mastery lessening his diet and encreasing his hardship till he should rather think of food than wantonness And many times the Fastings of some men are ineffectual because they promise themselves cure too soon or make too gentle applications or put less proportions into their antidotes I have read of a Maiden that seeing a young man much transported with her love and that he ceased not to importune her with all the violent pursuits that passion could suggest told him she had made a Vow to fast forty days with bread and water of which she must discharge her self before she could think of corresponding to any other desire and desired of him as a testimony of his love that he also would be a party in the same Vow The young man undertook it that he might give probation of his love but because he had been used to a delicate and nice kind of life in twenty days he was so weakned that he thought more of death than love and so got a cure for his intemperance and was wittily cousened into remedy But S. Hierom's counsel in this Question is most reasonable not allowing violent and long fasts and then returns to an ordinary course for these are too great changes of diet to consist with health and too sudden and transient to obtain a permanent and natural effect but a belly always hungry a table never full a meal little and necessary no extravagancies no freer repast this is a state of Fasting which will be found to be of best avail to suppress pungent Lusts and rebellious desires And it were well to help this exercise with the assistences of such austerities which teach Patience and ingenerate a passive fortitude and accustome us to a despight of pleasures and which are consistent with our health For if Fasting be left to do the work alone it may chance either to spoil the body or not to spoil the Lust. Hard lodging 〈◊〉 garments laborious postures of prayer journies on foot sufferance of cold paring away the use of ordinary solaces denying every pleasant appetite rejecting the most pleasant morsels these are in the rank of bodily exercises which though as S. Paul says of themselves they profit little yet they accustome us to acts of self-denial in exteriour instances and are not useless to the designs of mortifying carnal and sensual lusts They have a proportion of wisdome with these cautions viz. in will-worship that is in voluntary susception when they are not imposed as necessary Religion in humility that is without contempt of others that use them not in neglecting of the body that is when they are done for discipline and mortification that the flesh by such handlings and rough usages become less satisfied and more despised 3. As Fasting hath respect to the future so also to the present and so it operates in giving assistence to Prayer There is a kind of Devil that is not to be ejected but by prayer and fasting that is Prayer elevated and made intense by a defecate and pure spirit not loaden with the burthen of meat and vapours S. Basil affirms that there are certain Angels deputed by God to minister and to describe all such in every Church who mortifie themselves by Fasting as if paleness and a meagre visage were that mark in the forehead which the Angel observed when he signed the Saints in Jerusalem to escape the Judgment Prayer is the wings of the Soul and Fasting is the wings of Prayer Tertullian calls it the nourishment of Prayer But this is a Discourse of Christian Philosophy and he that chuses to do any act of spirit or understanding or attention after a full meal will then perceive that Abstinence had been the better disposition to any intellectual and spiritual action And therefore the Church of God ever joyned Fasting to their more solemn offices of Prayer The Apostles fasted and prayed when they laid hands and invocated the Holy Ghost upon Saul and Barnabas And these also when they had prayed with fasting ordained Elders in the Churches of Lystra and Iconium And the Vigils of every Holy-day tell us that the Devotion of the Festival is promoted by the Fast of the Vigils 4. But when Fasting relates to what is past it becomes an instrument of Repentance it is a punitive and an 〈◊〉 action an effect of godly sorrow a testimony of contrition a judging of our selves and chastening our bodies that we be not judged of the Lord. The Fast of the Ninevites and the Fast the Prophet Joel calls for and the Discipline of the Jews in the rites of Expiation proclaim this usefulness of Fasting in order to Repentance And indeed it were a strange Repentance that had no sorrow in it and a stranger sorrow that had no affliction but it were the strangest scene of affliction in the world when the sad and afflicted person shall eat
material and circumstantiate actions of Piety For these have great powers and influences even in Nature to restore health and preserve our lives Witness the sweet sleeps of temperate persons and their constant appetite which Timotheus the son of Conon observed when he dieted in Plato's Academy with severe and moderated diet They that sup with Plato are well the next day Witness the symmetry of passions in meek men their freedome from the violence of inraged and passionate indispositions the admirable harmony and sweetness of content which dwells in the retirements of a holy Conscience to which if we add those joys which they only understand truly who feel them inwardly the joys of the Holy Ghost the content and joys which are attending upon the lives of holy persons are most likely to make them long and healthful For now we live saith S. Paul if ye stand fast in the Lord. It would prolong S. Paul's life to see his ghostly children persevere in holiness and if we understood the joys of it it would do much greater advantage to our selves But if we consider a spiritual life abstractedly and in it self Piety produces our life not by a natural efficiency but by Divine benediction God gives a healthy and a long life as a reward and blessing to crown our Piety even before the sons of men For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the Earth but they that be cursed of him shall be cut off So that this whole matter is principally to be referred to the act of God either by ways of nature or by instruments of special providence rewarding Piety with a long life And we shall more fully apprehend this if upon the grounds of Scripture Reason and Experience we weigh the contrary Wickedness is the way to shorten our days 19. Sin brought Death in first and yet Man lived almost a thousand years But he sinned more and then Death came nearer to him for when all the World was first drowned in wickedness and then in water God cut him shorter by one half and five hundred years was his ordinary period And Man sinned still and had strange imaginations and built towers in the air and then about Peleg's time God cut him shorter by one half yet two hundred and odd years was his determination And yet the generations of the World returned not unanimously to God and God cut him off another half yet and reduced him to one hundred and twenty years And by Moses's time one half of the final remanent portion was pared away reducing him to threescore years and ten so that unless it be by special dispensation men live not beyond that term or thereabout But if God had gone on still in the same method and shortned our days as we multiplied our sins we should have been but as an Ephemeron Man should have lived the life of a Fly or a Gourd the morning should have seen his birth his life have been the term of a day and the evening must have provided him of a shroud But God seeing Man's thoughts were onely evil continually he was resolved no longer so to strive with him nor destroy the kinde but punish individuals onely and single persons and if they sinned or if they did obey regularly their life should be proportionable This God set down for his rule Evil shall 〈◊〉 the wicked person and He that keepeth the Commandments keepeth his own Soul but he that despiseth his own ways shall die 20. But that we may speak more exactly in this Probleme we must observe that in Scripture three general causes of natural death are assigned Nature Providence and Chance By these three I onely mean the several manners of Divine influence and operation For God only predetermines and what is changed in the following events by Divine permission to this God and Man in their several manners do cooperate The saying of David concerning Saul with admirable Philosophy describes the three ways of ending Man's life David said furthermore As the LORD liveth the LORD shall smite him or his day shall come to die or he shall descend into battel and perish The first is special Providence The second means the term of Nature The third is that which in our want of words we call Chance or Accident but is in effect nothing else but another manner of the Divine Providence That in all these Sin does interrupt and retrench our lives is the undertaking of the following periods 21. First In Nature Sin is a cause of dyscrasies and distempers making our bodies healthless and our days few For although God hath prefixed a period to Nature by an universal and antecedent determination and that naturally every man that lives temperately and by no supervening accident is interrupted shall arrive thither yet because the greatest part of our lives is governed by will and understanding and there are temptations to Intemperance and to violations of our health the period of Nature is so distinct a thing from the period of our person that few men attain to that which God had fixed by his first law and 〈◊〉 purpose but end their days with folly and in a period which God appointed 〈◊〉 with anger and a determination secondary consequent and accidental And therefore says David Health is far from the 〈◊〉 for they regard not thy statutes And to this purpose is that saying of Abenezra He that is united to God the Fountain of Life his Soul being improved by Grace communicates to the Body an establishment of its radical moisture and natural heat to make it more healthful that so it may be more instrumental to the spiritual operations and productions of the Soul and it self be preserved in perfect constitution Now how this blessing is contradicted by the impious life of a wicked person is easie to be understood if we consider that from drunken Surfeits come Dissolution of members Head-achs Apoplexies dangerous Falls Fracture of bones Drenchings and dilution of the brain Inslammation of the liver Crudities of the stomach and thousands more which Solomen sums up in general terms Who hath woe who hath sorrow who hath redness of eyes they that tarry long at the 〈◊〉 I shall not need to instance in the sad and uncleanly consequents of Lusts the wounds and accidental deaths which are occasioned by Jealousies by Vanity by Peevishness vain Reputation and Animosities by Melancholy and the despair of evil Consciences and yet these are abundant argument that when God so permits a man to run his course of Nature that himself does not intervene by an extraordinary 〈◊〉 or any special acts of providence but only gives his ordinary assistence to natural causes a very great part of men make their natural period shorter and by sin make their days miserable and few 22. Secondly Oftentimes Providence intervenes and makes the way shorter God for the iniquity of man not suffering Nature to take her course but stopping
hand or foot or extinguish the offending eye rather than upon the support of a troublesome soot and by the light of an offending eye walk into ruine and a sad eternity where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched And so Jesus ended this chain of excellent Discourses 18. About this time was the Jews Feast of Tabernacles whither Jesus went up as it were in secret and passing through Samaria he found the inhabitants of a little village so inhospitable as to refuse to give him entertainment which so provoked the intemperate zeal of James and John that they would fain have called for fire to consume them even as Elias did But Jesus rebuked the furies of their anger teaching them to distinguish the spirit of Christianity from the ungentleness of the decretory zeal of Elias For since the Son of man came with a purpose to seek and save what was lost it was but an indiscreet temerity suddenly upon the lightest umbrages of displeasure to destroy a man whose redemption cost the effusion of the dearest bloud from the heart of Jesus But contrariwise Jesus does a Miracle upon the ten Leprous persons which came to him from the neighbourhood crying out with sad exclamations for help But Jesus sent them to the Priest to offer for their cleansing Thither they went and but one only returned to give thanks and he a stranger who with a loud voice glorified God and with humble adoration worshipped and gave thanks to Jesus 19. When Jesus had finished his journey and was now come to Jerusalem for the first days he was undiscerned in publick conventions but heard of the various opinions of men concerning him some saying he was a good man others that he 〈◊〉 the people and the Pharisees sought for him to do him a mischief But when they despaired of finding him in the midst of the Feast and the people he made Sermons openly in the midst of the Temple whom when he had convinced by the variety and divinity of his Miracles and Discourses they gave the greatest testimony in the world of humane weakness and how prevalent a prejudice is above the confidence and conviction of a demonstration For a proverb a mistake an error in matter of circumstance did in their understandings outweigh multitudes of Miracles and arguments and because Christ was of Galilee because they knew whence he was because of the Proverb that 〈◊〉 of Galilee comes no Prophet because the Rulers did not believe in him these outweighed the demonstrations of his mercy and his power and Divinity But yet very many believed on him and no man durst lay hands to take him for as yet his time was not come in which he meant to give himself up to the power of the Jews and therefore when the Pharisees sent Officers to seise him they also became his Disciples being themselves surprised by the excellency of his Doctrine 20. After this Jesus went to the mount of Olivet on the East of Jerusalem and the next day returned again into the Temple where the Scribes and Pharisees brought him a woman taken in the act of Adultery tempting him to give sentence that they might accuse him of severity or intermedling if he condemned her or of remisness and popularity if he did acquit her But Jesus found out an expedient for their difficulty and changed the Scene by bidding the innocent person among them cast the first stone at the Adulteress and then stooping down to give them fair occasion to withdraw he wrote upon the ground with his finger whilest they left the woman and her crime to a more private censure Jesus was left alone and the woman in the midst whom Jesus dismissed charging her to sin no more And a while after Jesus begins again to discourse to them of his Mission from the Father of his Crucifixion and exaltation from the earth of the reward of Believers of the excellency of Truth of spiritual Liberty and Relations who are the sons of Abraham and who the children of the Devil of his own eternal generation of the desire of Abraham to see his day In which Sermon he continued adding still new excellencies and confuting their malicious and vainer calumnies till they that they also might 〈◊〉 him took up stones to cast at him but he went out of the Temple going through the midst of them and so passed by 21. But in his passage he met a man who had been born blind and after he had discoursed cursorily of the cause of that Blindness it being a misery not sent as a punishment to his own or his parents sin but as an occasion to make publick the glory of God he to manifest that himself was the light of the World in all sences said it now and proved it by a Miracle for sitting down he made clay of spittle and anointing the eyes of the blind man bid him go wash in Siloam which was a Pool of limpid water which God sent at the Prayer of Isaiah the Prophet a little before his death to satisfie the necessities of his people oppressed with thirst and a strict siege and it stood at the foot of the mount Sion and gave its water at first by returns and periods always to the Jews but not to the enemies And those intermitted springings were still continued but only a Pool was made from the frequent effluxes The blind man went and washed and returned seeing and was incessantly vexed by the Pharisees to tell them the manner and circumstances of the cure and when the man had averred the truth and named his Physician giving him a pious and charitable testimony the Pharisees because they could not force him to disavow his good opinion of Jesus cast him out of the 〈◊〉 But Jesus meeting him received him into the Church told him he was CHRIST and the man became again enlightned and he believed and worshipped But the Pharisees blasphemed for such was the dispensation of the Divine mysteries that the blind should see and they which think they see clearly should become blind because they had not the excuse of ignorance to lessen or take off the sin but in the midst of light they shut their eyes and doted upon darkness and therefore did their sin remain 22. But Jesus continued his Sermon among the Pharisees insinuating reprehensions in his dogmatical discourses which like light shined and discovered error For by discoursing the properties of a good Shepherd and the lawful way of intromission he proved them to be thieves and robbers because they refused to enter in by Jesus who is the door of the sheep and upon the same ground reproved all those false Christs which before him usurped the title of Messias and proved his own vocation and office by an argument which no other shepherd would use because he laid down his life for his sheep others would take the fleece and eat the flesh but none but himself would die for his sheep but he would first
a great calamity within a little while after the Spirit of God had sent them two Epistles by the ministery of S. Paul their Cities were buried in an Earthquake and yet we have reason to think they were Churches beloved of God and Congregations of holy People The PRAYER OEternal and powerful God thou just and righteous Governour of the world who callest all orders of men by Precepts Promises and Threatnings by Mercies and by Judgments teach us to admire and adore all the Wisdome the effects and infinite varieties of thy Providence and make us to dispose our selves so by Obedience by Repentance by all the manners of Holy living that we may never provoke thee to jealousie much less to wrath and indignation against us Keep far from us the Sword of the destroying Angel and let us never perish in the publick expresses of thy wrath in diseases Epidemical with the furies of War with calamitous sudden and horrid Accidents with unusual Diseases unless that our so strange fall be more for thy glory and our eternal benefit and then thy will be done We beg thy grace that we may chearfully conform to thy holy will and pleasure Lord open our understandings that we may know the meaning of thy voice and the signification of thy language when thou speakest 〈◊〉 Heaven in signs and Judgments and let a holy fear so soften our spirits and an intense love so 〈◊〉 and sanctifie our desires that we may apprehend every intimation of thy pleasure at its first and remotest and most obscure representment that so we may with Repentance go out to meet thee and prevent the expresses of thine anger Let thy restraining grace and the observation of the issues of thy Justice so allay our spirits that we be not severe and forward in condemning others nor backward in passing sentence upon our selves Make us to obey thy voice described in holy Scripture to tremble at thy voice expressed in wonders and great effects of Providence to condemn none but our selves nor to enter into the recesses of thy Sanctuary and search the forbidden records of Predestination but that we may read our duty in the pages of Revelation not in the labels of accidental effects that thy Judgments may confirm thy Word and thy Word teach us our Duty and we by such excellent instruments may enter in and grow up in the ways of Godliness through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen SECT XV. Of the Accidents happening from the Death of Lazarus untill the Death and Burial of JESVS Bartimeus healed of blindnesse Mark 10. 46. And as he went out of Iericho with his Disciples and a great number of people blind Bartimeus sate by the high way begging 47. And when he heard that it was Iesus of Nazareth he began to cry out and say Iesus thou son of David have mercy on me Lazarus raysed from death Ioh. 11. 44. And he that was dead came forth bound hand and foot with gravecloths and his face was bound about with a napkin Iesus saith unto them Loose him and let him go 45. Then Many of the Iewes which came to Mary and had seen the things which Iesus did believed on him 1. VVHile Jesus was in Galilee messengers came to him from Martha and her Sister Mary that he would hasten into Judaea to Bethany to relieve the sickness and imminent dangers of their Brother Lazarus But he deferred his going till Lazarus was dead purposing to give a great probation of his Divinity Power and Mission by a glorious Miracle and to give God glory and to receive reflexions of the glory upon himself For after he had stayed two days he called his Disciples to go with him into Judaea telling them that Lazarus was dead but he would raise him out of that sleep of death But by that time Jesus was arrived at Bethany he found that Lazarus had been dead four days and now near to putrefaction But when Martha and Mary met him weeping their pious tears for their dead Brother Jesus suffered the passions of piety and humanity and wept distilling that precious liquor into the grave of Lazarus watering the dead plant that it might spring into a new life and raise his head above the ground 2. When Jesus had by his words of comfort and institution strengthened the Faith of the two mourning Sisters and commanded the stone to be removed from the grave he made an address of Adoration and Eucharist to his Father confessing his perpetual propensity to hear him and then cried out Lazarus come forth And he that was dead came forth from his bed of darkness with his night-cloaths on him whom when the Apostles had unloosed at the command of Jesus he went to Bethany and many that were present believed on him but others wondring and malicious went and told the Pharisees the story of the Miracle who upon that advice called their great Council whose great and solemn cognisance was of the greater causes of Prophets of Kings and of the holy Law At this great Assembly it was that Caiaphas the High Priest prophesied that it was expedient one should die for the people And thence they determined the death of Jesus But he knowing they had passed a decretory sentence against him retired to the City 〈◊〉 in the Tribe of Judah near the desart where he stayed a few days till the approximation of the Feast of Easter 3. Against which Feast when Jesus with his Disciples was going to Jerusalem he told them the event of the journey would be that the Jews should deliver him to the Gentiles that they should scourge him and mock him and crucifie him and the third day he should rise again After which discourse the Mother of 〈◊〉 's Children begg'd of Jesus for her two Sons that one of them might sit at his right hand the other at the left in his Kingdom For no discourses of his Passion or intimations of the mysteriousness of his Kingdom could yet put them into right understandings of their condition But Jesus whose heart and thoughts were full of phancy and apprehensions of the neighbour Passion gave them answer in proportion to his present conceptions and their future condition For if they desired the honours of his Kingdom such as they were they should have them unless themselves did decline them they should drink of his Cup and dip in his Lavatory and be washed with his baptism and sit in his Kingdom if the heavenly Father had prepared it for them but the donation of that immediately was an issue of Divine election and predestination and was only competent to them who by holy living and patient suffering put themselves into a disposition of becoming vessels of Election 4. But as Jesus in this journey came near Jericho he cures a blind man who sate begging by the way-side and espying Zaccheus the chief of the Publicans upon a tree that he being low of stature might upon that advantage of station see Jesus passing by he invited
satisfied with her own meditations that now that great Mystery determined by Divine Predestination before the beginning of all Ages was fulfilled in her Son and the Passion that must needs be was accomplished she therefore first bathes his cold body with her warm tears and makes clean the surface of the wounds and delivering a winding napkin to Joseph of Arimathaea gave to him in charge to enwrap the Body and embalm it to compose it to the grave and do it all the rites of Funeral having first exhorted him to a publick confession of what he was privately till now and he obeyed the counsel of so excellent a person and ventured upon the displeasure of the Jewish Rulers and went confidently to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus And Pilate gave him the power of it 39. Joseph therefore takes the body binds his face with a napkin washes the body anoints it with ointment enwraps it in a composition of myrrh and aloes and puts it into a new tomb which he for himself had hewen out of a rock it not being lawful among the Jews to interr a condemned person in the common coemeteries for all these circumstances were in the Jews manner of burying But when the Sun was set the chief Priests and Pharisees went to Pilate telling him that Jesus whilest he was living foretold 〈◊〉 own resurrection upon the third day and lest his Disciples should come and steal the body and say he was risen from the dead desired that the sepulchre might be secured against the danger of any such imposture Pilate gave them leave to do their pleasure even to the satisfaction of their smallest scruples They therefore sealed the grave rolled a great stone at the mouth of it and as an ancient Tradition says bound it about with labels of iron and set a watch of souldiers as if they had intended to have made it surer than the decrees of Fate or the never-failing laws of Nature Ad SECT XV. Considerations of some preparatory Accidents before the entrance of JESVS into his Passion Christ riding in triumph Matth. 21. 7. And they brought y e Ass. put on their clothes set him thereon and a very great multitude spread their garments others cut down branches from y e trees strawed them in y e way And the multitude y t went before and y t followed after cried Hosannah etc. Mary pouring ointment on Christ's head Mark 14. 3. As he sat at meat in the house of Simon y e leper there came a woman having an Alabaster-box of ointment very pretious poured it on his head And Jesus said let hir alone she is come aforehand to anoint my body to y e burying 1. HE that hath observed the Story of the Life of Jesus cannot but see it all the way to be strewed with thorns and sharp-pointed stones and although by the kisses of his feet they became precious and salutary yet they procured to him sorrow and disease it was meat and drink to him to do his Father's will but it was bread of affliction and rivers of tears to drink and for these he thirsted like the earth after the cool stream For so great was his Perfection so exact the conformity of his Will so absolute the subordination of his inferiour Faculties to the infinite love of God which sate Regent in the Court of his Will and Understanding that in this election of accidents he never considered the taste but the goodness never distinguished sweet from bitter but Duty and Piety always prepared his table And therefore now knowing that his time determined by the Father was nigh he hastened up to Jerusalem he went before his Disciples saith S. Mark and they followed him trembling and amazed and yet before that even then when his brethren observed he had a design of publication of himself he suffered them to go before him and went up as it were in secret For so we are invited to Martyrdom and suffering in a Christian cause by so great an example the Holy Jesus is gone before us and it were a holy contention to strive whose zeal were forwardest in the designs of Humiliation and Self-denial but it were also well if in doing our selves secular advantage and promoting our worldly interest we should follow him who was ever more distant from receiving honours than from receiving a painful death Those affections which dwell in sadness and are married to grief and lie at the foot of the Cross and trace the sad steps of Jesus have the wisdom of recollection the tempers of sobriety and are the best imitations of Jesus and securities against the levity of a dispersed and a vain spirit This was intimated by many of the Disciples of Jesus in the days of the Spirit and when they had tasted of the good word of God and the powers of the world to come for then we find many ambitious of Martyrdom and that have laid stratagems and designs by unusual deaths to get a Crown The Soul of S. Laurence was so scorched with ardent desires of dying for his Lord that he accounted the coals of his Gridiron but as a Julip or the aspersion of cold water to refresh his Soul they were chill as the Alpine snows in respect of the heats of his diviner flames And if these lesser Stars shine so brightly and burn so warmly what heat of love may we suppose to have been in the Sun of Righteousness If they went fast toward the Crown of Martyrdom yet we know that the Holy Jesus went before them all no wonder that he cometh forth as a Eridegroom from his chamber and rejoyceth as a giant to run his course 2. When the Disciples had overtaken Jesus he begins to them a sad Homily upon the old Text of Suffering which he had well nigh for a year together preached upon but because it was an unpleasing Lesson so contradictory to those interests upon the hopes of which they had entertained themselves and spent all their desires they could by no means understand it for an understanding prepossessed with a fancy or an unhandsome principle construes all other notions to the sence of the first and whatsoever contradicts it we think it an objection and that we are bound to answer it But now that it concerned Christ to speak so plainly that his Disciples by what was to happen within five or six days might not be scandalized or believe it happened to Jesus without his knowledge and voluntary entertainment he tells them of his Sufferings to be accomplished in this journey to Jerusalem And here the Disciples shewed themselves to be but men full of passion and indiscreet affection and the bold Galilean S. Peter took the boldness to dehort his Master from so great an infelicity and met with a reprehension so great that neither the Scribes nor the Pharisees nor Herod himself ever met with its parallel Jesus called him Satan meaning that no greater contradiction can be offered to the
designs of God and his Holy Son than to disswade us from Suffering And if we understood how great are the advantages of a suffering condition we should think all our Daggers gilt and our pavements strewed with Roses and our Halters silken and the Rack an instrument of pleasure and be most impatient of those temptations which seduce us into ease and divorce us from the Cross as being opposite to our greatest hopes and most perfect desires But still this humour of S. Peter's imperfection abides amongst us He that breaks off the yoak of Obedience and unties the bands of Discipline and preaches a cheap Religion and presents Heaven in the midst of flowers and strews Carpets softer than the Asian luxury in the way and sets the songs of Sion to the tunes of Persian and lighter airs and offers great liberty of living and bondage under affection and sins and reconciles Eternity with the present enjoyment he shall have his Schools filled with Disciples but he that preaches the Cross and the severities of Christianity and the strictnesses of a holy life shall have the lot of his Blessed Lord he shall be thought ill of and deserted 3. Our Blessed Lord five days before his Passion sent his Disciples to a village to borrow an Asse that he might ride in triumph to Jerusalem he had none of his own but yet he who was so dear to God could not want what was to supply his needs It may be God hath laid up our portion in the repositories of other men and means to furnish us from their tables to feed us from their granaries and that their wardrobe shall cloath us for it is all one to him to make a Fish bring us money or a Crow to bring us meat or the stable of our neighbour to furnish our needs of Beasts if he brings it to thy need as thou wantest it thou hast all the good in the use of the Creature which the owners can receive and the horse which is lent me in charity does me as much ease and the bread which is given me in alms feeds me as well as the other part of it which the good man that gave me a portion reserved for his own eating could do to him And if we would give God leave to make provisions for us in the ways of his own chusing and not estimate our wants by our manner of receiving being contented that God by any of his own ways will minister it to us we should find our cares eased and our content encreased and our thankfulness engaged and all our moderate desires contented by the satisfaction of our needs For if God is pleased to feed me by my neighbour's charity there is no other difference but that God makes me an occasion of his ghostly good as he is made the occasion of my temporal and if we think it disparagement we may remember that God conveys more good to him by me than to me by him and it is a proud impatience to refuse or to be angry with God's provisions because he hath not observed my circumstances and ceremonies of election 4. And now begins that great Triumph in which the Holy Jesus was pleased to exalt his Office and to abase his Person He rode like a poor man upon an Asse a beast of burthen and the lowest value and yet it was not his own and in that equipage he received the acclamations due to a mighty Prince to the Son of the eternal King telling us that the smallness of fortune and the rudeness of exteriour habiliments and a rough wall are sometimes the outsides of a great glory and that when God means to glorifie or do honour to a person he needs no help from secular advantages He hides great Riches in Renunciation of the World and makes great Honour break forth from the clouds of Humility and Victory to arise from Yielding and the modesty of departing from our interest and Peace to be the reward of him that suffers all the Hostilities of men and Devils For Jesus in this great Humility of his gives a great probation that he was the Messias and the King of Sion because no other King entred into those gates riding upon an Asse and received the honour of Hosannah in that unlikelihood and contradiction of unequal circumstances 5. The Blessed Jesus had never but two days of triumph in his life the one was on his 〈◊〉 upon mount Tabor the other this his riding into the Holy City But that it may appear how little were his joys and present exteriour complacencies in the day of his Transfiguration Moses Elias appeared to him telling him what great things he was to suffer and in this day of his riding to Jerusalem he wet the Palms with a dew sweeter than the moistures upon mount Hermon or the drops of Manna for to allay the little warmth of a springing joy he let down a shower of tears weeping over undone Jerusalem in the day of his triumph leaving it disputable whether he felt more joy or sorrow in the acts of love for he triumphed to consider that the Redemption of the world was so near and wept bitterly that men would not be redeemed his joy was great to consider that himself was to suffer so great sadness for our good and his sorrow was very great to consider that we would not entertain that Good that he brought and laid before us by his Passion He was in figure as his servant S. 〈◊〉 was afterwards in letter and true story crucified upon Palms which indeed was the emblem of a Victory but yet such as had leaves sharp poinant and vexatious However he entred into Jerusalem dressed in gayeties which yet he placed under his feet but with such pomps and solemnities each Family according to its proportion was accustomed to bring the Paschal Lamb to be slain for the Passeover and it was not an undecent ceremony that the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world should be brought to his slaughter with the acknowledgments of a religious solemnity because now that real good was to be exhibited to the world which those little Paschal Lambs did but signifie and represent in shadow and that was the true cause of all the little joy he had 6. And if we consider what followed it might seem also to be a design to heighten the dolorousness of his Passion for to descend from the greatest of worldly honours from the adoration of a GOD and the acclamations to a King to the death of a Slave and the torments of a Cross and the dishonours of a condemned Criminal were so great stoopings and vast changes that they gave height and sense and excellency to each other This then seemed an excellent glory but indeed was but an art and instrument of grief for such is the nature of all our Felicities they end in sadness and increase the sting of sorrows and add moment to them and cause impatience and uncomfortable remembrances but
he bearing them upon his tender body with an even and excellent and dispassionate spirit offered up these beginnings of sufferings to his Father to obtain pardon even for them that injured him and for all the World 6. Judas now seeing that this matter went farther than he intended it repented of his fact For although evil persons are in the progress of their iniquity invited on by new arguments and supported by confidence and a careless spirit yet when iniquity is come to the height or so great a proportion that it is apt to produce Despair or an intolerable condition then the Devil suffers the Conscience to thaw and grow tender but it is the tenderness of a Bile it is soreness rather and a new disease and either it comes when the time of Repentance is past or leads to some act which shall make the pardon to be impossible and so it happened here For Judas either impatient of the shame or of the sting was thrust on to despair of pardon with a violence as hasty and as great as were his needs And Despair is very often used like the bolts and bars of Hell-gates it 〈◊〉 upon them that had entred into the suburbs of eternal death by an habitual sin and it secures them against all retreat And the Devil is forward enough to bring a man to Repentance provided it be too late and Esau wept bitterly and repented him and the five foolish Virgins lift up their voice aloud when the gates were shut and in Hell men shall repent to all eternity But I consider the very great folly and infelicity of Judas it was at midnight he received his money in the house of Annas betimes in that morning he repented his bargain he threw the money back again but his sin stuck close and it is thought to a 〈◊〉 eternity Such is the purchace of Treason and the reward of Covetousness it is cheap in its offers momentany in its possession unsatisfying in the fruition uncertain in the stay sudden in its 〈◊〉 horrid in the remembrance and a ruine a certain and miserable ruine is in the event When Judas came in that sad condition and told his miserable story to them that set him on work they 〈◊〉 him go away unpitied he had served their ends in betraying his Lord and those that hire such servants use to leave them in the disaster to shame and to sorrow and so did the Priests but took the money and 〈◊〉 to put it into the treasury because it was the price of bloud but they made no scruple to take it from the treasury to buy that bloud Any thing seems lawful that serves the ends of ambitious and bloudy persons and then they are scrupulous in their cases of Conscience when nothing of Interest does intervene for evil men make Religion the servant of Interest and sometimes weak men think that it is the 〈◊〉 of 〈◊〉 Religion and suspect that all of it is a design because many great Politicks make it so The end of the Tragedy was that Judas died with an ignoble death marked with the circumstances of a horrid Judgment and perished by the most infamous hands in the world that is by his own Which if it be confronted against the excellent spirit of S. Peter who did an act as contradictory to his honour and the grace of God as could be easily imagined yet taking sanctuary in the arms of his Lord he lodged in his heart for ever and became an example to all the world of the excellency of the Divine Mercy and the efficacy of a holy Hope and a hearty timely and an operative Repentance 7. 〈◊〉 now all things were ready for the purpose the High Priest and all his Council go along with the Holy Jesus to the house of Pilate hoping he would verifie their Sentence and bring it to execution that they might 〈◊〉 be rid of their fears and enjoy their sin and their reputation quietly S. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the High Priest caused the Holy Jesus to be led with a cord about his neck and in memory of that the Priests for many Ages 〈◊〉 a stole about theirs But the Jews did it according to the custom of the Nation to signifie he was condemned to death they desired Pilate that he would crucifie him they having 〈◊〉 him worthy And when Pilate enquired into the particulars they gave him a general and an indefinite answer If he were not guilty we would not have brought him 〈◊〉 thee they intended not to make Pilate Judge of the cause but 〈◊〉 of their cruelty But Pilate had not learned to be guided by an implicite faith of such persons which he knew to be malicious and violent and therefore still called for instances and arguments of their Accusation And that all the world might see with how great unworthiness they prosecuted the 〈◊〉 they chiefly there accused him of such crimes upon which themselves condemned him not and which they knew to be false but yet likely to move Pilate if he had been passionate or inconsiderate in his sentences He offered to make himself a King This 〈◊〉 happened at the entry of the Praetorium for the 〈◊〉 who made no conscience of killing the King of Heaven made a conscience of the external customs and ceremonies of their Law which had in them no interiour sanctity which were apt to separate them 〈◊〉 the Nations and remark them with characters of Religion and abstraction it would defile them to go to a Roman Forum 〈◊〉 a capital action was to be judged and yet the effusion of the best bloud in the world was not esteemed against their 〈◊〉 so violent and blind is the spirit of malice which turns humanity into 〈◊〉 wisdom into craft diligence into subornation and Religion into Superstition 8. Two other articles they alledged against him but the first concerned not Pilate and the second was involved in the third and therefore he chose to examine him upon this only of his being a King To which the Holy Jesus answered that it is true he was 〈◊〉 King indeed but not of this world his Throne is Heaven the Angels are his Courtiers and the 〈◊〉 Creation are his Subjects His Regiment is spiritual his 〈◊〉 are the Courts of Conscience and Church-tribunals and at Dooms-day the Clouds The Tribute which he demands are conformity to his Laws Faith 〈◊〉 and Charity no other Gabels but the duties of a holy Spirit and the expresses of a religious Worship and obedient Will and a consenting Understanding And in all this Pilate thought the interest of 〈◊〉 was not invaded For certain it is the Discipline of Jesus confirmed it much and supported it by the strongest pillars And here Pilate saw how impertinent and malicious their Accusation was And we who declaim against the unjust proceedings of the Jews against our dearest Lord should do well to take care that we in accusing any of our Brethren either with malicious purpose or with
we must know that oftentimes universal effects are attributed to partial causes because by the analogy of Scripture we are taught that all the body of holy actions and ministeries are to unite in production of the event and that without that adunation one thing alone cannot operate but because no one alone does the work but by an united power therefore indefinitely the effect is ascribed sometimes to one sometimes to another meaning that one as much as the other that is all together are to work the Pardon and the Grace But the doctrine of Preparation to Death we are clearest taught in the Parable of the ten Virgins Those who were wise stood waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom their Lamps burning only when the Lord was at hand at the notice of his coming published they trimmed their Lamps and they so disposed went forth and met him and entred with him into his interiour and eternal joys They whose Lamps did not stand ready before-hand expecting the uncertain hour were shut forth and bound in darkness Watch therefore so our Lord applies and expounds the Parable for ye know not the day nor the hour of the coming of the Son of man Whenever the arrest of Death seises us unless before that notice we had Oil in our Vessels that is Grace in our hearts habitual Grace for nothing else can reside or dwell there an act cannot inhabit or be in a Vessel it is too late to make preparation But they who have it may and must prepare that is they must stir the fire trim the vessel make it more actual in its exercise and productions full of ornament advantages and degrees And that is all we know from Scripture concerning Preparation 2. And indeed since all our life we are dying and this minute in which I now write death divides with me and hath got the surer part and more certain possession it is but reasonable that we should always be doing the Offices of Preparation If to day we were not dying and passing on to our grave then we might with more safety defer our work till the morrow But as fewel in a furnace in every degree of its heat and reception of the flame is converting into fire and ashes and the disposing it to the last mutation is the same work with the last instance of its change so is the age of every day a beginning of death and the night composing us to sleep bids us go to our lesser rest because that night which is the end of the preceding day is but a lesser death and whereas now we have died so many days the last day of our life is but the dying so many more and when that last day of dying will come we know not There is nothing then added but the circumstance of Sickness which also happens many times before only men are pleased to call that Death which is the end of dying when we cease to die any more and therefore to put off our Preparation till that which we call Death is to put off the work of all our life till the time comes in which it is to cease and determine 3. But to accelerate our early endeavour besides what hath been formerly considered upon the proper grounds of Repentance I here re-inforce the consideration of Death in such circumstances which are apt to engage us upon an early industry 1. I consider that no man is sure that he shall not die suddenly and therefore if Heaven be worth securing it were fit that we should reckon every day the Vespers of death and therefore that according to the usual rites of Religion it be begun and spent with religious offices And let us consider that those many persons who are remarked in history to have died suddenly either were happy by an early Piety or miserable by a sudden death And if uncertainty of condition be an abatement of felicity and spoils the good we possess no man can be happy but he that hath lived well that is who hath secured his condition by an habitual and living Piety For since God hath not told us we shall not die suddenly is it not certain he intended we should prepare for sudden death as well as against death cloathed in any other circumstances Fabius surnamed Pictor was choaked with a Hair in a mess of Milk Anacreon with a Raisin Cardinal Colonna with Figs crusted with Ice Adrian the fourth with a Flie Drusius Pompeius with a Pear Domitius Afer Quintilian's Tutor with a full Cup Casimire the Second King of Polonia with a Little draught of Wine Amurath with a Full goblet Tarquinius Priscus with a Fish-bone For as soon as a man is born that which in nature only remains to him is to die and if we differ in the way or time of our abode or the manner of our Exit yet we are even at last and since it is not determined by a natural cause which way we shall go or at what age a wise Man will suppose himself always upon his Death-bed and such supposition is like making of his Will he is not the nearer Death for doing it but he is the readier for it when it comes 4. Saint Jerome said well He deserves not the name of a Christian who will live in that state of life in which he will not die And indeed it is a great venture to be in an evil state of life because every minute of it hath a danger and therefore a succession of actions in every one of which he may as well perish as escape is a boldness that hath no mixture of wisdome or probable venture How many persons have died in the midst of an act of sport or at a merry meeting Grimoaldus a Lombard King died with shooting of a Pidgeon Thales the Milesian in the Theatre Lucia the sister of Aurelius the Emperor playing with her little son was wounded in her breast with a Needle and died Benno Bishop of Adelburg with great ceremony and joy consecrating S. Michael's Church was crouded to death by the People so was the Duke of Saxony at the Inauguration of Albert I. The great Lawyer Baldus playing with a little Dog was bitten upon the lip instantly grew mad and perished Charles the Eighth of France seeing certain Gentlemen playing at Tenniscourt swooned and recovered not Henry II. was killed running at Tilt Ludovicus Borgia with riding the great Horse and the old Syracusan Archimedes was slain by a rude Souldier as he was making Diagrams in the sand which was his greatest pleasure How many Men have died laughing or in the ecstasies of a great joy Philippides the Comedian and Dionysius the Tyrant of Sicily died with joy at the news of a victory Diagoras of Rhodes and Chilo the Philosopher expired in the embraces of their sons crowned with an Olympick Lawrel Polycrita Naxia being saluted the Saviouress of her Countrey Marcus Juventius when the Senate decreed
Saul's seven sons were hanged for breaking the League of Gibeon and Ahab's sin was punished in his posterity he escaping and the evil was brought upon his house in his son's days In all these cases the evil descended upon persons in near relation to the sinner and was a punishment to him and a misery to these and were either chastisements also of their own sins or if they were not they served other ends of Providence and led the afflicted innocent to a condition of recompence accidentally procured by that infliction But if for such relation's sake and oeconomical and political conjunction as between Prince and People the evil may be transmitted from one to another much rather is it just when by contract a competent and conjunct person undertakes to quit his relative Thus when the Hand steals the Back is whipt and an evil Eye is punished with a hungry Belly Treason causes the whole Family to be miserable and a Sacrilegious Grandfather hath sent a Locust to devour the increase of the Nephews 8. But in our case it is a voluntary contract and therefore no Injustice all parties are voluntary God is the supreme Lord and his actions are the measure of Justice we who had deserved the punishment had great reason to desire a Redeemer and yet Christ who was to pay the ransome was more desirous of it than we were for we asked it not before it was promised and undertaken But thus we see that Sureties pay the obligation of the principal Debtor and the Pledges of Contracts have been by the best and wisest Nations slain when the Articles have been broken The Thessalians slew 250 Pledges the Romans 300 of the Volsci and threw the Tarentines from the Tarpeian rock And that it may appear Christ was a person in all sences competent to do this for us himself testifies that he had power over his own life to take it up or lay it down And therefore as there can be nothing against the most exact justice and reason of Laws and punishments so it magnifies the Divine Mercy who removes the punishment from us who of necessity must have sunk under it and yet makes us to adore his Severity who would not forgive us without punishing his Son for us to consign unto us his perfect hatred against Sin to conserve the sacredness of his Laws and to imprint upon us great characters of fear and love The famous Locrian Zaleucus made a Law that all Adulterers should lose both their eyes his son was first unhappily surprised in the crime and his Father to keep a temper between the piety and soft spirit of a Parent and the justice and severity of a Judge put out one of his own eyes and one of his Sons So God did with us he made some abatement that is as to the person with whom he was angry but inflicted his anger upon our Redeemer whom he essentially loved to secure the dignity of his Sanctions and the sacredness of Obedience so marrying Justice and Mercy by the intervening of a commutation Thus David escaped by the death of his Son God chusing that penalty for the expiation and Cimon offered himself to prison to purchase the liberty of his Father Miltiades It was a filial duty in Cimon and yet the Law was satisfied And both these concurred in our great Redeemer For God who was the sole Arbitrator so disposed it and the eternal Son of God submitted to this way of expiating our crimes and became an argument of faith and belief of the great Article of Remission of sins and other its appendent causes and effects and adjuncts it being wrought by a visible and notorious Passion It was made an encouragement of Hope for he that spared not his own Son to reconcile us will with him give all things else to us so reconciled and a great endearment of our Duty and Love as it was a demonstration of his And in all the changes and traverses of our life he is made to us a great example of all excellent actions and all patient sufferings 9. In the midst of two Thieves three long hours the holy Jesus hung clothed with pain agony and dishonour all of them so eminent and vast that he who could not but hope whose Soul was enchased with Divinity and dwelt in the bosom of God and in the Cabinet of the mysterious Trinity yet had a cloud of misery so thick and black drawn before him that he complained as if God had forsaken him but this was the pillar of cloud which conducted Israel into Canaan And as God behind the Cloud supported the Holy Jesus and stood ready to receive him into the union of his Glories so his Soul in that great desertion had internal comforts proceeding from consideration of all those excellent persons which should be adopted into the fellowship of his Sufferings which should imitate his Graces which should communicate his Glories And we follow this Cloud to our Country having Christ for our Guide and though he trode the way leaning upon the Cross which like the staffe of Egypt pierced his hands yet it is to us a comfort and support pleasant to our spirits as the sweetest Canes strong as the pillars of the earth and made apt for our use by having been born and made smooth by the hands of our Elder Brother 10. In the midst of all his torments Jesus only made one Prayer of sorrow to represent his sad condition to his Father but no accent of murmur no syllable of anger against his enemies In stead of that he sent up a holy charitable and effective Prayer for their forgiveness and by that Prayer obtained of God that within 55 days 8000 of his enemies were converted So potent is the prayer of Charity that it prevails above the malice of men turning the arts of Satan into the designs of God and when malice occasions the Prayer the Prayer becomes an antidote to malice And by this instance our Blessed Lord consigned that Duty to us which in his Sermons he had preached That we should forgive our enemies and pray for them and by so doing our selves are freed from the stings of anger and the storms of a revengeful spirit and we oftentimes procure servants to God friends to our selves and heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven 11. Of the two Thieves that were crucified together with our Lord the one blasphemed the other had at that time the greatest Piety in the world except that of the Blessed Virgin and particularly had such a Faith that all the Ages of the Church could never shew the like For when he saw Christ in the same condemnation with himself crucisied by the Romans accused and scorned by the Jews forsaken by his own Apostles a dying distressed Man doing at that time no Miracles to attest his Divinity or Innocence yet then he confesses him to be a Lord and a King and his Saviour He confessed his own
our Lord's Apostles being betrayed by his own covetous and insatiable mind had lately fallen from the honour of his place and ministery that this was no more than what the Prophet had long since foretold should come to pass and that the rule and oversight in the Church which had been committed unto him should be devolved upon another that therefore it was highly necessary that one should be substituted in his room and especially such a one as had been familiarly conversant with our Saviour from first to last that so he might be a competent witness both of his doctrine and miracles his life and death but especially of his Resurrection from the dead For seeing no evidence is so valid and satisfactory as the testimony of an eye-witness the Apostles all along mainly insisted upon this that they delivered no other things concerning our Saviour to the World than what they themselves had seen and heard And seeing his rising from the dead was a principle likely to meet with a great deal of opposition and which would hardliest gain belief and entertainment with the minds of men therefore they principally urg'd this at every turn that they were eye-witnesses of his Resurrection that they had seen felt eaten and familiarly conversed with him after his return from the Grave That therefore such an Apostle might be chosen two Candidates were proposed Joseph called Barsabas and Matthias And having prayed that the Divine Providence would immediately guide and direct the choice they cast lots and the lot fell upon Matthias who was accordingly admitted into the number of the twelve Apostles 2. FIFTY days since the last Passeover being now run out made way for the Feast of Pentecost At what time the great promise of the Holy Ghost was fully made good unto them The Christian Assembly being met together for the publick services of their Worship on a sudden a sound like that of a mighty wind rush'd in upon them representing the powerful efficacy of that Divine Spirit that was now to be communicated to them After which there appeared little flames of fire which in the fashion of Cloven Tongues not only descended but sate upon each of them probably to note their perpetual enjoyment of this gift upon all occasions that when necessary they should never be without it not like the Prophetick gifts of old which were conferred but sparingly and only at some particular times and seasons As the seventy Elders prophesied and ceased not but it was only at such times as the Spirit came down and rested upon them Hereupon they were all immediately filled with the Holy Ghost which enabled them in an instant to speak several Languages which they had never learn't and probably never heard of together with other miraculous gifts and powers Thus as the confounding of Languages became a curse to the old World separating men from all mutual offices of kindness and commerce rendring one part of mankind Barbarians to another so here the multiplying several Languages became a blessing being intended as the means to bring men of all Nations into the unity of the saith and of the knowledge of the Son of God into the fellowship of that Religion that would banish discords cement differences and unite mens hearts in the bond of peace The report of so sudden and strange an action presently spread it self into all corners of the City and there being at that time at Jerusalem multitudes of Jewish Proselytes Devout men out of every Nation under Heaven Parthians Medes Elamites or Persians the dwellers in Mesopotamia and Judaea Gappadocia Pontus and Asia minor from Phrygia and Pamphylia from Egypt and the parts of Libya and Cyrene from Rome from Crete from Arabia Jews and Proselytes probably drawn thither by the general report and expectation which had spread it self over all the Eastern parts and in a manner over all places of the Roman Empire of the Jewish Messiah that about this time should be born at Jerusalem they no sooner heard of it but universally flocked to this Christian Assembly where they were amazed to hear these Galileans speaking to them in their own native Languages so various so vastly different from one another And it could not but exceedingly encrease the wonder to reflect upon the meanness and inconsiderableness of the persons neither assisted by natural parts nor polished by education nor improved by use and custom which three things Philosophers require to render a man accurate and extraordinary in any art or discipline 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Plutarch Natural disposition without institution is blind instruction without a genius and disposition is defective and exercise without both is lame and imperfect Whereas these Disciples had not one of these to set them off their parts were mean below the rate of the common people the Galileans being generally accounted the rudest and most stupid of the whole Jewish Nation their education had been no higher than to catch Fish and to mend Nets nor had they been used to plead causes or to deliver themselves before great Assemblies but spoke on a sudden not premeditated discourses not idle stories or wild roving fancies but the great and admirable works of God and the mysteries of the Gospel beyond humane apprehensions to find out and this delivered in almost all the Languages of the then known World Men were severally affected with it according to their different tempers and apprehensions Some admiring and not knowing what to think on 't others deriding it said that it was nothing else but the wild raving effect of drunkenness and 〈◊〉 At so wild a rate are men of prophane minds wont to talk when they take upon them to pass their censure in the things of God 3. HEREUPON the Apostles rose up and Peter in the name of the rest took this occasion of discoursing to them He told them that this scandalous slander proceeded from the spirit of 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 that their censure was as uncharitable as it was unreasonable that they that are drunken are drunk in the night that it was against nature and custom for men to be in drink so soon too early for such a suspicion to take place it being now but about nine of the clock the hour for Morning Prayer till when men even of ordinary sobriety and devotion on Festival days were wont to fast That these extraordinary and miraculous passages were but the accomplishment of an ancient prophecy the fulfilling of what God had expresly foretold should come to pass in the times of the Messiah that Jesus of Nazareth had evidently approv'd himself to be the Messiah sent from God by many unquestionable miracles of which they themselves had been eye-witnesses And though by God's permission who had determined by this means to bring about the Salvation of mankind they had wickedly crucified and slain him yet that God had raised him from the dead That it was not possible he should be holden always under
them Indeed herein justly commendable that they could not brook the least dishonourable reflexion upon any Deity and therefore Apollonius Tyanaeus tells Timasion that the safest way was to speak well of all the Gods and especially at Athens where Altars were dedicated even to Unknown Gods And so S. Paul here found it for among the several Shrines and places of Worship and Devotion he took more particular notice of one Altar inscribd To the Unknown God The intire Inscription whereof the Apostle quotes only part of the last words is thought to have been this TO the Gods of Asia Europe and Africa to the strange and UNKNOWN GOD. Saint Hierom represents it in the same manner onely makes it Gods in the plural number which because says he S. Paul needed not he only cited it in the singular Which surely he affirms without any just ground and warrant though it cannot be denied but that Heathen Writers make frequent mention of the Altars of unknown Gods that were at Athens as there want not others who speak of some erected there to an unknown God This Notion the Athenians might probably borrow from the Hebrews who had the Name of God in great secrecy and veneration This being one of the Titles given him by the Prophet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a hidden God or a God that hides himself Sure I am that Justin Martyr tells us that one of the principal names given to God by some of the Heathens was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one altogether hidden Hence the Egyptians probably derived their great God Ammon or more truly Amun which signifies occult or hidden Accordingly in this passage of S. Paul the Syriac Interpreter renders it the Altar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the hidden God The Jews were infinitely superstitious in concealing the Name of God not thinking it lawful ordinarily to pronounce it This made the Gentiles strangers at best both to the Language and Religion of the Jews at a great loss by what Name to call him only stiling him in general an uncertain unspeakable invisible Deity whence Caligula in his ranting Oration to the Jewes told them that wretches as they were though they refused to own him whom all others had confessed to be a Deity yet they could worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their own nameless God And hence the Gentiles derived their custom of keeping secret the name of their Gods Thus Plutarch tells us of the Tutelar Deity of Rome that it was not lawful to name it or so much as to enquire what Sex it was of whether God or Goddess and that for once revealing it Valerius Soranus though Tribune of the People came to an untimely end and was crucified the vilest and most dishonourable kind of death Whereof among other reasons he assigns this that by concealing the Author of their publick safety 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not he only but all the other Gods might have due honour and worship paid to them Hence in their publick adorations after the Invocation of particular Deities they were wont to add some more general and comprehensive form as when Cicero had been making his address to most of their particular Gods he concludes with a Caeteros item Deos Deasque omnes imploro atque obtestor Usually the form was DII DEAEQUE OMNES. The reason whereof was this that not being assured many times what that peculiar Deity was that was proper to their purpose or what numbers of Gods there were in the World they would not 〈◊〉 or offend any by seeming to neglect and pass them by And this Chrysostome thinks to have been particularly designed in the erection of this Athenian Altar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they were afraid lest there might be some other Deity besides those whom they particularly worshipped as yet unknown to them though honoured and adored elsewhere and therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the more security they dedicated an Altar to the unknown God As for the particular occasion of erecting theso Altars at Athens omitting that of Pans appearing to Philippides mentioned by Occumenius the most probable seems to be this When a great Plague raged at Athens and several means had been attempted for the removal of it they were advised by 〈◊〉 the Philosopher to build an Altar and dedicate it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the proper and peculiar Deity to whom it did appertain be he what he would A course which proving successful no doubt gave occasion to them by way of gratitude to erect more shrines to this unknown God And accordingly Laertius who lived long after S. Paul's time tells us that there were such nameless Altars he means such as were not inscribed to any particular Deity in and about Athens in his days as Monuments of that eminent deliverance 7. BUT whatever the particular cause might be hence it was that S. Paul took occasion to discourse of the true but to them unknown God For the Philosophers had before treated him with a great deal of scorn and derision asking what that idle and prating fellow had to say to them Others looking upon him as a propagater of new and strange Gods because he preached to them Jesus and Anastasis or the Resurrection which they looked upon as two upstart Deities lately come into the World Hereupon they brought him to the place where stood the famous Senate-house of the Areopagites and according to the Athenian humour which altogether delighted in curious novelties running up and down the 〈◊〉 and places of publick concourse to see any strange accident or hear any new report a vice which their own great Orator long since taxed them with they asked him what that new and strange Doctrine was which he preached to them Whereupon in a neat and elegant discourse he began to tell them he had observed how much they were over-run with superstition that their zeal for Religion was indeed generous and commendable but which miserably over-shot its due measures and proportions that he had taken notice of an Altar among them Inscribed To the unknown God and therefore in compassion to their blind and misguided zeal he would declare unto them the Deity which they ignorantly worshipped and that this was no other than the great God the Creator of all things the Supreme Governor and Ruler of the World who was incapable of being confined within any Temple or humane Fabrick That no Image could be made as a proper Instrument to represent him that he needed no Gifts or Sacrifices being himself the Fountain from whence Life Breath and all other blessings were derived to particular Beings That from one common original he had made the whole Race of Mankind and had wisely fixed and determined the times and bounds of their habitation And all to this end that Men might be the stronglier obliged to seek after him and sincerely to serve and worship him A duty which they might easily
Four Thousand debauched and profligate wretches The Apostle replied that he was a Jew of Tarsus a Free-man of a rich and honourable City and therefore begg'd of him that he might have leave to speak to the People Which the Captain readily granted and standing near the Door of the Castle and making signs that they would hold their peace he began to address himself to them in the Hebrew Language which when they heard they became a little more calm and quiet while he discoursed to them to this effect 7. HE gave them an account of himself from his Birth of his education in his youth of the mighty zeal which he had for the Rites and Customes of their Religion and with what a passionate earnestness he persecuted and put to death all the Christians that he met with whereof the High Priest and the Sanhedrim could be sufficient witnesses He next gave them an intire and punctual relation of the way and manner of his conversion and how that he had received an immediate command from God himself to depart Jerusalem and preach unto the Gentiles At this word the patience of the Jews could hold no longer but they unanimously cried out to have him put to death it not being fit that such a Villain should live upon the Earth And the more to express their fury they threw off their Clothes and cast dust into the Air as if they immediately designed to stone him To avoid which the Captain of the Guard commanded him to be brought within the Castle and that he should be examined by whipping till he confessed the reason of so much rage against him While the Lictor was binding him in order to it he asked the Centurion that stood by whether they could justifie the scourging a Citizen of Rome and that before any sentence legally passed upon him This the Centurion presently intimated to the Governor of the Castle bidding him have a care what he did for the Prisoner was a Roman Whereat the Governor himself came and asked him whether he was a free Denizon of Rome and being told that he was he replied that it was a great priviledge a priviledge which he himself had purchased at a considerable rate To whom S. Paul answered that it was his Birth right and the priviledge of the place where he was born and bred Hereupon they gave over their design of whipping him the Commander himself being a little startled that he had bound and chained a Denizon of Rome 8. THE next Day the Governor commanded his Chains to be knock'd off and that he might throughly satisfie himself in the matter commanded the Sanhedrim to meet and brought down Paul before them where being set before the Council he told them that in all passages of his life he had been careful to act according to the severest rules and conscience of his duty Men and Brethren I have lived in all good conscience before God untill this day Behold here the great security of a good man and what invisible supports innocency affords under the greatest danger With how generous a confidence does vertue and honesty guard the breast of a good man as indeed nothing else can lay a firm basis and foundation for satisfaction and tranquillity when any misery or calamity does overtake us Religion and a good conscience beget peace and a Heaven in the Man's bosome beyond the power of the little accidents of this World to ruffle and discompose Whence Seneca compares the mind of a wise and a good man to the state of the upper Region which is always serene and calm The High-Priest Ananias being offended at the holy and ingenuous freedom of our Apostle as if by asserting his own innocency he had reproached the justice of their Tribunal commanded those that stood next him to strike him in the Face whereto the Apostle tartly replied That GOD would smite him Hypocrite as he was who under a pretence of doing Justice had illegally commanded him to be punished before the Law condemned him for a Malefactor Whereupon they that stood by asked him how he durst thus affront so sacred and venerable a Person as Gods High Priest He calmly returned That he did not know or own Ananias to be an High Priest of God's appointment However being a Person in Authority it was not lawful to revile him God himself having commanded that no man should speak evil of the Ruler of the People The Apostle who as he never laid aside the innocency of the Dove so knew how when occasion was to make use of the wisdom of the Serpent perceiving the Council to consist partly of Sadduces and partly of Pharisees openly told them that he was a Pharisee and the Son of a Pharisee and that the main thing he was questioned for was his belief of a future Resurrection This quickly divided the Council the Pharisees being zealous Patrons of that Article and the Sadducees as stifly denying that there is either Angel that is of a spiritual and immortal nature really subsisting of it self for otherwise they cannot be supposed to have utterly denied all sorts of Angels seeing they own'd the Pentateuch wherein there is frequent mention of them or Spirit or that humane Souls do exist in a separate state and consequently that there is no Resurrection Presently the Doctors of the Law who were Pharisees stood up to acquit him affirming he had done nothing amiss that it was possible he had received some intimation from Heaven by an Angel or the revelation of the H. Spirit and if so then in opposing his Doctrine they might fight against God himself 9. GREAT were the dissentions in the Council about this matter in so much that the Governor fearing S. Paul would be torn in pieces commanded the Souldiers to take him from the Bar and return him back into the Castle That night to comfort him after all his frights and fears God was pleased to appear to him in a vision incouraging him to constancy and resolution assuring him that as he had born witness to his cause at Jerusalem so in despite of all his enemies he should live to bear his testimony even at Rome it self The next Morning the Jews who could as well cease to be as to be mischievous and malicious finding that these dilatory proceedings were not like to do the work resolved upon a quicker dispatch To which end above Forty of them entred into a wicked confederacy which they ratified by Oath and Execration never to eat or drink till they had killed him and having acquainted the Sanhedrim with their design they intreated them to importune the Governor that he might again the next day be brought down before them under pretence of a more strict trial of his case and that they themselves would lye in ambush by the way and not fail to dispatch him But that Divine providence that peculiarly superintends the safety of good men disappoints the devices of the crafty
Macedonia where he spared no pains declined no dangers that he might faithfully discharge the trust committed to him The Ancients are not very well agreed either about the time or manner of his death some affirming him to die in Egypt others in Greece the Roman Martyrologie in Bithynia 〈◊〉 at Ephesus some make him die a natural others a violent death Indeed neither Eusebius nor S. Hierom take any notice of it But Nazianzen Paulinus Bishop of Nola and several other expresly assert his Martyrdom whereof Nicephorus gives this particular account that coming into Greece he successfully preached and baptized many Converts into the Christian Faith till a party of Infidels making head against him drew him to execution and in want of a Cross whereon to dispatch him presently hanged him upon an Olive-Tree in the eightieth the eighty fourth says S. Hierom year of his age Kirstenius from an ancient Arabick writer makes him to have suffered Martyrdom at Rome which he thinks might probably be after S. Paul's first imprisonment there and departure thence when S. Luke being left behind as his deputy to supply his place was shortly after put to death the reason says he why he no longer continued his History of the Apostles Acts which surely he would have done had he lived any considerable time after S. Paul's departure His Body afterwards by the command of Constantine or his Son Constantius was solemnly removed to Constantinople and buried in the great Church built to the memory of the Apostles 4. TWO Books he wrote for the use of the Church his Gospel and the History of the Apostles Acts both dedicated to Theophilus which many of the Ancients suppose to be but a feigned name denoting no more than a lover of God a title common to every Christian. While others with better reason conclude it the proper name of a particular person especially since the stile of most excellent is attributed to him the usual title and form of address in those times to Princes and great men Theophylact stiles him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a man of Consular dignity and probably a Prince the Author of the Recognitions makes him a Nobleman of Antioch converted by Peter and who upon his conversion gave his house to the Church for the place of their publick and solemn meetings We may probably suppose him to have been some Magistrate whom S. Luke had converted and baptised to whom he now dedicated these Books not only as a testimony of honourable respect but as a means of giving him further certainty and assurance of those things wherein he had been instructed by him For his Gospel S. Hierom supposes it to have been written in Achaia during his travels with S. Paul in those parts whose help he is generally said to have made use of in the composing of it and that this the Apostle primarily intends when he so often speaks of his Gospel But whatever assistance S. Paul might contribute towards it we are sure the Evangelist himself tells us that he derived his intelligence in these matters from those who from the beginning had been eye-witnesses and Ministers of the Word Nor does it in the least detract from the authority of his relations that he himself was not present at the doing of them for if we consider who they were from whom he derived his accounts of things Habuit utique authenticam paraturam as Tertullian speaks he had a stock both of credit and intelligence sufficiently authentick to proceed upon delivering nothing in his whole History but what he had immediately received from persons present at and concerned in the things which he has lest upon record The occasion of his writing it is thought to have been partly to prevent those false and fabulous relations which even then began to be obtruded upon the World partly to supply what seemed wanting in those two Evangelists that wrote before him and the additions or larger explications of things are particularly enumerated by Irenaeus He mainly insists upon what relates to Christ's Priestly Office and though recording other parts of the Evangelical story yet it ever is with a peculiar respect to his Priesthood Upon which account the Ancients in accommodating the four Symbolical representments in the Prophets Vision to the four Evangelists assigned the Oxe or 〈◊〉 to S. Luke 5. His History of the Apostolick Acts was written no doubt at Rome at the end of S. Paul's two years imprisonment there with which he concludes his story it contains the Actions and sometimes the sufferings of some principal Apostles especially S. Paul for besides that his activity in the cause of Christ made him bear a greater part both in doing and suffering S. Luke was his constant attendant an eye-witness of the whole carriage of his life and privy to his most intimate transactions and therefore capable of giving a more full and satisfactory account and relation of them seeing no evidence or testimony in matters of fact can be more rational and convictive than his who reports nothing but what he has heard and seen Among other things he gives us a particular account of those great miracles which the Apostles did for the confirmation of their doctrine And this as Chrysostom informs us was the reason why in the Primitive times the Book of the Acts though containing those Actions of the Apostles that were done 〈◊〉 Pentecost were yet usually read in the Church before it in the space between that and Easter when as at all other times those parts of the Gospel were read which were proper to the season it was says he because the Apostles miracles being the grand confirmation of the truth of Christ's Resurrection and those Miracles recorded in that Book it was therefore thought most proper to be read next to the feast of the Resurrection In both these Books his way and manner of writing is exact and accurate his stile polite and elegant sublime and lofty and yet clear and perspicuous flowing with an easie and natural grace and sweetness admirably accommodate to an historical design all along expressing himself in a vein of purer Greek than is to be found in the other writers of the holy Story Indeed being born and bred at Antioch than which no place more famous for Oratory and Eloquence he could not but carry away a great share of the native genius of that place though his stile is sometimes allayed with a tang of the Syriack and Hebrew dialect It was observed of old as S. Hierom tells us that his skill was greater in Greek than Hebrew that therefore he always makes use of the Septuagint Translation and refuses sometimes to render words when the propriety of the Greek tongue will not bear it In short as an Historian he was faithful in his relations elegant in his writings as a Minister careful and diligent for the good of Souls as a Christian devout