be filled up by his body the Church and happy are they that put in the greatest symbol for in the same measure you are partakers of the sufferings of Christ in the same shall ye be also of the consolation And therefore concerning S. Paul as it was also concerning Christ there is nothing or but very little in Scripture relating to his person and chances of his private life but his labours and persecutions as if the holy Ghost did think nothing fit to stand upon record for Christ but sufferings And now began to work the greatest glory of the divine Providence here was the case of Christianity at stake The world was rich and prosperous learned and full of wise men the Gospel was preached with poverty and persecution in simplicity of discourse and in demonstration of the Spirit God was on one side and the Devil on the other they each of them dressed up their city Babylon upon Earth Jerusalem from above the Devils city was full of pleasure triumphs victories and cruelty good news and great wealth conquest over Kings and making nations tributary They bound Kings in chains and the Nobles with links of iron and the inheritance of the Earth was theirs the Romans were Lords over the greatest parts of the world and God permitted to the Devil the Firmament and increase the wars and the successe of that people giving to him an intire power of disposing the great changes of the world so as might best increase their greatnesse and power and he therefore did it because all the power of the Romane greatnesse was a professed enemy to Christianity and on the other side God was to build up Jerusalem and the kingdom of the Gospel and he chose to build it of hewen stone cut and broken the Apostles he chose for Preachers and they had no learning women and mean people were the first Disciples and they had no power the Devil was to lose his kingdom and he wanted no malice and therefore he stirred up and as well as he could he made active all the power of Rome and all the learning of the Greeks and all the malice of Barbarous people and all the prejudice and the obstinacy of the Jews against this doctrine and institution which preached and promised and brought persecution along with it On the one side there was scandalum crucis on the other patientia sanctorum and what was the event They that had overcome the world could not strangle Christianity But so have I seen the Sun with a little ray of distant light challenge all the power of darknesse and without violence and noise climbing up the hill hath made night so to retire that its memory was lost in the joyes and spritefulnesse of the morning and Christianity without violence or armies without resistance and self-preservation without strength or humane eloquence without challenging of priviledges or fighting against Tyranny without alteration of government and scandall of Princes with its humility and meeknesse with tolerations and patience with obedience and charity with praying and dying did insensibly turn the world into Christian and persecution into victory For Christ who began and lived and died in sorrows perceived his own sufferings to succeed so well and that for suffering death he was crowned with immortality resolved to take all his Disciples and servants to the fellowship of the same suffering that they might have a participation of his glory knowing God had opened no gate of heaven but the narrow gate to which the Crosse was the key and since Christ now being our High Priest in heaven intercedes for us by representing his passion and the dolours of the Crosse that even in glory he might still preserve the mercies of his past sufferings for which the Father did so delight in him he also designes to present us to God dressed in the same robe and treated in the same manner and honoured with the marks of the Lord Jesus He hath predestinated us to be conformable to the image of his Son And if under a head crowned with thorns we bring to God members circled with roses and softnesse and delicacy triumphant members in the militant Church God will reject us he will not know us who are so unlike our elder brother For we are members of the Lamb not of the Lion and of Christs suffering part not of the triumphant part and for three hundred yeers together the Church lived upon blood and was nourished with blood the blood of her own children Thirty three Bishops of Rome in immediate succession were put to violent and unnaturall deaths and so were all the Churches of the East and West built the cause of Christ and of Religion was advanced by the sword but it was the sword of the persecutours not of resisters or warriours They were all baptized into the death of Christ their very profession and institution is to live like him and when he requires it to die for him that is the very formality the life and essence of Christianity This I say lasted for three hundred yeers that the prayers and the backs and the necks of Christians fought against the rods and axes of the persecutours and prevailed till the Countrey and the Cities and the Court it self was filled with Christians And by this time the army of Martyrs was vast and numerous and the number of sufferers blunted the hangmans sword For Christ first triumphed over the princes and powers of the world before he would admit them to serve him he first felt their malice before he would make use of their defence to shew that it was not his necessity that required it but his grace that admitted Kings and Queens to be nurses of the Church And now the Church was at ease and she that sucked the blood of the Martyrs so long began now to suck the milk of Queens Indeed it was a great mercy in appearance and was so intended but it proved not so But then the Holy Ghost in pursuance of the designe of Christ who meant by sufferings to perfect his Church as himself was by the same instrument was pleased now that persecution did cease to inspire the Church with the spirit of mortification and austerity and then they made Colleges of sufferers persons who to secure their inheritance in the world to come did cut off all their portion in this excepting so much of it as was necessary to their present being and by instruments of humility by patience under and a voluntary undertaking of the Crosse the burden of the Lord by self deniall by fastings and sackcloth and pernoctations in prayer they chose then to exercise the active part of the religion mingling it as much as they could with the suffering And indeed it is so glorious a thing to be like Christ to be dressed like the prince of the Catholick church who was so a man of sufferings and to whom a prosperous and unafflicted person is very unlike that in all ages
world Christians should not be such fighting people and Clergy men should not command Armies and Kings should not be drunk and subjects should not strike Princes for justice and an old man should not be youthfull in talk or in his habit and women should not swear and great men should not lie and a poor man should not oppresse for besides the sin of some of them there is an undecency in all of them and by being contrary to the end of an office or the reputation of a state or the sobrieties of a graver or sublimed person they asperse the religion as insufficient to keepe the persons within the bounds of fame and common reputation But above all things those sects of Christians whose professed doctrine brings destruction and diminution to government give the most intolerable scandal and dishonour to the institution and it had been impossible that Christianity should have prevailed over the wisdom and power of the Greeks and Romans if it had not been humble to superiours patient of injuries charitable to the needy a great exactour of obedience to Kings even to heathens that they might be won and convinced and to persecutours that they might be sweetned in their anger or upbraided for their cruel injustice for so doth the humble vine creep at the foot of an oak and leans upon its lowest base and begs shade and protection and leave to grow under its branches and to give and take mutuall refreshment and pay a friendly influence for a mighty patronage and they grow and dwell together and are the most remarkable of friends and married pairs of all the leavie nation Religion of it self is soft easie and defenselesse and God hath made it grow up with empire and to leane upon the arms of Kings and it cannot well grow alone and if it shall like the Ivy suck the heart of the oak upon whose body it grew and was supported it will be pulled down from its usurped eminency and fire and shame shall be its portion We cannot complain if Princes arm against those Christians who if they are suffered to preach will disarm the Princes and it will be hard to perswade that Kings are bound to protect and nourish those that will prove ministers of their own exauctoration And no Prince can have justci reason to forbid nor any man have greater reason to deny communion to a family then if they go about to destroy the power of the one or corrupt the duty of the other The particulars of this rule are very many I shall onely instance in one more because it is of great concernment to the publike interest of Christendome There are some persons whose religion is hugely disgraced because they change their propositions according as their temporall necessities or advantages do return They that in their weaknesse and beginning cry out against all violence as against persecution and from being suffered swell up till they be prosperous and from thence to power and at last to Tyranny and then suffer none but themselves and trip up those feet which they humbly kissed that themselves should not be trampled upon these men tell all the world that at first they were pusillanimous or at last outragious that their doctrine at first served their fear and at last served their rage and that they did not at all intend to serve God and then who shall believe them in any thing else Thus some men declaim against the faults of Governours that themselves may governe and when the power was in their hands what was a fault in others is in them necessity as if a sin could be hallowed for comming into their hands Some Greeks at Florence subscribed the Article of Purgatory and condemned it in their own Diocesses And the Kings supremacy in causes Ecclesiastical was earnestly defended against the pretences of the Bishop of Rome and yet when he was thrust out some men were and are violent to submit the King to their Consistories as if he were Supreme in defiance of the Pope and yet not Supreme over his own Clergy These Articles are mannaged too suspitiously Omnia si perdas famam servare memento You lose all the advantages to your cause if you lose your reputation 5 It is a duty also of Christian prudence that the teachers of others by authority or reprovers of their vices by charity should also make their persons apt to do it without objection Lori pedem rectus derideat Aethiopemalbus No man can endure the Gracchi preaching against sedition nor Uerres prating against theevery or Milo against homicide and if Herod had made an oration of humility or Antiochus of mercy men would have thought it had been a designe to evil purposes He that means to gain a soul must not make his Sermon an ostentation of his Eloquence but the law of his own life If a Gramarian should speak solaecismes or a Musician sing like a bittern he becomes ridiculous for offending in the faculty he professes So it is in them who minister to the conversion of souls If they fail in their own life when they professe to instruct another they are defective in their proper part and are unskilfull to all their purposes and the Cardinal of Crema did with ill successe tempt the English priests to quit their chaste marriages when himself was deprehended in unchaste embraces For good counsel seems to be unhallowed when it is reached forth by an impure hand and he can ill be beleeved by another whose life so confutes his rules that it is plain he does not beleeve himself Those Churches that are zealous for souls must send into their ministeries men so innocent that evil persons may have no excuse to be any longer vitious When Gorgias went about to perswade the Greeks to be at peace he had eloquence enough to do advantage to his cause and reason enough to presse it But Melanthius was glad to put him off by telling him that he was not fit to perswade peace who could not agree at home with his wife nor make his wife agree with her maid and he that could not make peace between three single persons was unapt to prevail for the reuniting fourteen or fifteen Common-wealths And this thing Saint Paul remarks by enjoyning that a Bishop should be chosen such a one as knew well to rule his own house or else he is not fit to rule the Church of God And when thou perswadest thy brother to be chaste let not him deride thee for thy intemperance and it will ill become thee to be severe against an idle servant if thou thy self beest uselesse to the publike and every notorious vice is infinitely against the spirit of government and depresses the man to an evennesse with common persons Facinus quos inquinat aequat to reprove belongs to a Superiour and as innocence gives a man advantage over his brother giving him an artificiall and adventitious authority so the follies and scandals of a publike and Governing
the duties of justice may withhold our hands from giving almes 1. 183 Of the Angel Guardian 1. 263. C Athanasius being overtaken by his persecutors in his flight from them how he concealed himself 2. 260 Atheism the folly of it 1. 262. B B. Bishop whether the calling of a King or a Bishop is to be preferred 1. 174 C. Celibate a comparison between it and marriage 1. 223 Certainty of salvation how to confute such vain confidences 1. 87 Comfort we must in our discourse comfort our brethren where there is cause 1. 327 Complying of complying with superiors in their sins by imitation of them 2. 206. B Conscience the torments of an unquiet conscience described and considered 1. 20 Confession of revealing secrets delivered under the seal of Confession 1. 306. D Covetousnesse in Scripture hath other names besides its own 1. 302. A Cursing 1. 317 Custome its ill effects upon man 1. 267 D. Dreams the vanity of them 1. 121 Deceit various sorts of men that do the work of the Lord deceitfully 1. 155. seq Despise who despise the mercies of God 2. 167. D. their condition dangerous 168 Detraction 1. 312. E Doctrines how we are to try them 2. 285 275 E. Eccles. 12. 5. explicated 1. 115 Ephes. 1. 4 5. explicated 2. 301 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what St. Paul meant by it 1. 301. D Evill nature how one may cure it in himself 1. 147 F. Faith divers sorts of insufficient faith 1. 169 Fasting 1. 188 Fear its severall acceptions 1. 86. the properties of a religious fear 1. 88. seq of fear in times of persecution 1. 102 Flattery 1. 318 severall wayes of it 1. 320 Flesh the weaknesse of flesh and its naturall powers 1. 128 Fortune disadvantages of a great fortune 1. 179 G. God a scheme of what he hath done for us in order to our salvation 1. 24. the manner of jealousie in God 2. 29. B. that it is not injust in God to punish one for the sin of another 2. 35. D. his ends in doing it 2. 36. B. in what instances he punishes one person for the sin of another 2. 37. D. how God can be glorified by us 2. 53. the goodnesse of God towards us 2. 146 148 149. how great impiety to despise such goodnesse 2. 150. E. his long suffering towards us 2. 153 159. his not punishing sinners sometimes no mercy 2. 163. Gospel the mysterious articles thereof 2. 2. that they could be revealed by none but the Spirit Ib. nor can be received but by the help of the Spirit 2. 3. why the Gospel is called Spirit 2. 4. the Gospel a covenant of sufferings 2. 107. C. 108 seq Grace what is the state of grace 2. 155. he is not in the state of grace who retains affections to any one sin 2. 155. degrees of increasing grace 2. 178. how to discern our growth in grace 2. 180. seq the manner of its growth 2. 192. E. a caution to be taken with the rules of discerning our growth in grace 2. 194. signes of growth in grace given by some 2. 195 H. Heart reasons why God chooseth to be served by it principally 1. 155. weaknesse of the heart in relation to good actions 2. 83. its strength in lusts and sinfull passions 2. 84. its deceitfulnesse 2. 102. vol. 2. ser. 7. per tot it is deceitfull in its purposes and resolutions 2. 87. in its designes 2. 89. our hearts are blinde 2. 92. by what means the heart of man procures its owne ignorance 2. 94. the hardnesse of the heart 2. 98. the heart is proud lb. it is deeply in love with wickednesse 2. 99. how we are to treat our hearts 2. 102. D Hell the opinion of some of the primitive Fathers concerning the eternity of the pains of hell 1. 39. Husband the rules of his love to his Wife 1. 234. seq I. Idle words how farre forbidden or lawfull 1. 292 Iesting 1. 301. seq against profane jesting 1. 305 Iealousie the circumstances of it in God 2. 29. B Impunity not alwaies an argument of mercy 2. 163 Ignorance an effect of sin 1. 26 Instruction that we ought to teach and instruct others 1. 325 Intemperance in eating and drinking an enemy to health 1. 198 destructive of wisdome 1. 107. the measures of temperance in eating and drinking 1. 109 Intercession in prayer vol. 1. ser. 6. per tot Ioy what the joy of the ungodly is 1. 145 1 Ioh. 3. 9. explained 2. 9 Iudgment the necessity of a day of universall Judgement 1. 2. signes of the day of Judgement which the Jews give 1. 11 to be unmoved at the judgements of God on others how dangerous a folly 2. 168. E K. King whether the calling of a King or Bishop is to be preferred in our choyce 1. 174 L. Life the necessity of holy life 2. 72 Luke 11. 47. explicated 2. 43. A Lukewarmnesse in what sense God hates it 1. 165. the reasons why 1. 166 M. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. 159 Man God hath provided better for the naturall appetites of man then other earthly creatures 1. 193. the vanity of mans life and strength 2. 81. Mat. 12. 36. explicated 1. 291 Marriage a comparison between it and celibate 1. 223. rules for deportment of married persons 1. 225 seq Minister of the efficacy of prayer made by an evill Minister 1. 79 Miracles of the probation of Religion by them 1. 46 Mirth 1. 304 P. Pardon of sin the signes of it 1. 99. not obtained without difficulty 1. 97 Pleasures of the world no proper instruments of felicity 1. 193. pleasures of sin considered 1. 247. found to be troublesome in their acquisition 1. 250. the Spirit of God is given as a preservative against it Perseverance 1. 176 Persecution the benefit and usefulnesse of persecution and suffering 1. 120 121. rules for the practise of them that are under persecution 2. 133. seq Poverty its benefits 2. 129. E Popes of Rome a character of them given by one 2. 173. D Prayer of frequency in it 179. a caution concerning frequency of prayer 1. 181. E why the prayers of good men often prevail not 1. 59 Prosperity no argument of a just cause 2. 125. E. we must not expect it in this life 2. 116. prosperity of the wicked what it is how vain 2. 127 R. Recidivation 1. 109. seq Railing and reviling 1. 313 Religion how far it is to be preferred before secular businesse 1. 173. how far delight in works of Religion is required 1. 177. against compulsive courses in the propagating of Religion 1. 185 Repentance broken into fragments is to be suspected 1. 92. how it glorifies God 2. 54. A. what it is in its essence and necessary properties 2. 55. seq 66. sorrow alone is not repentance 2. 57. there must be a dereliction of sinne 2. 58. B. a death-bed repentance insufficient 2. 63 64. ser. 5. per tot