his sword the heavynesse of his hand and the swiftnesse of his arrows as much as ever you can provided the effect passe on no further but to make us reverent and obedient but that fear is unreasonable servile and unchristian that ends in bondage and servile affections scruple and trouble vanity and incredulity superstition and desperation It s proper bounds are humble and devout prayers and a strict and a holy piety according to his laws and glorifications of God or speaking good things of his holy Name and then it cannot be amisse wee must be full of confidence towards God we must with cheerfulnesse relye upon Gods goodnesse for the issue of our souls and our finall interest but this expectation of the Divine mercy must be in the ways of piety Commit your selves to God in well-doing as unto a faithfull Creator Alcibiades was too timorous who being called from banishment refused to return and being asked if he durst not trust his country answered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In every thing else but in the question of his life he would not trust his Mother lest ignorantly she should mistake the black bean for the white and intending a favour should doe him a mischief We must we may most safely trust God with our souls the stake is great but the venture is none at all For he is our Creator and he is faithfull he is our Redeemer and he bought them at a dear rate he is our Lord and they are his own he prays for them to his heavenly Father and therefore he is an interested person So that he is a Party and an Advocate and a Judge too and therefore there can be no greater security in the world on Gods part and this is our hope and our confidence but because we are but earthen vessels under a law and assaulted by enemies and endangered by temptations therefore it concerns us to fear lest we make God our enemy and a party against us And this brings me to the next part of the consideration Who and what states of men ought to feare and for what reasons for as the former cautions did limit so this will encourage those did direct but this will exercise our godly Feare 1. I shall not here insist upon the generall reasons of feare which concern every man though it be most certain that every one hath cause to fear even the most confident and holy because his way is dangerous and narrow troublesome and uneven full of ambushes and pitfalls and I remember what Polynices said in the Tragedy when he was unjustly throwne from his Fathers Kingdome and refused to treat of peace but with a sword in his hand 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 every step is a danger for a valiant man when he walkes in his enemies countrey and so it is with us we are espyed by God and observed by Angels we are betrayed within and assaulted without the Devill is our enemy and we are fond of his mischiefs he is crafty and we love to be abused hee is malicious and wee are credulous hee is powerfull and wee are weak hee is too ready of himself and yet wee desire to be tempted the world is alluring and wee consider not its vanity sin puts on all pleasures and yet wee take it though it puts us to pain In short wee are vain and credulous and sensuall and trifling wee are tempted and tempt our selves and we sin frequently and contract evill habits and they become second natures and bring in a second death miserable and eternall Every man hath need to feare because every man hath weaknesses and enemies and temptations and dangers and causes of his own But I shall onely instance in some peculiar sorts of men who it may be least think of it and therefore have most cause to fear 1t. Are those of whom the Apostle speaks Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said the Greek proverb In ordinary fish we shall never meet with thornes and spiny prickles and in persons of an ordinary even course of life we finde it too often that they have no checks of conscience or sharp reflexions upon their conditions they fall into no horrid crimes and they think all is peace round about them But you must know that as Grace is the improvement and bettering of Nature and Christian graces are the perfections of Morall habits and are but new circumstances formalities and degrees so it grows in naturall measures by supernaturall aides and it hath its degrees its strengths and weaknesses its promotions and arrests its stations and declensions its direct sicknesses and indispositions and there is a state of grace that is next to sin it inclines to evill and dwels with a temptation its acts are imperfect and the man is within the Kingdome but he lives in its borders and is dubiae jurisdictionis These men have cause to fear These men seem to stand but they reel indeed and decline toward danger and death Let these men saith the Apostle take heed lest they fall for they shake already such are persons whom the Scriptures call weak in faith I doe not mean new beginners in Religion but such who have dwelt long in its confines and yet never enter into the heart of the countrey such whose faith is tempted whose piety does not grow such who yeeld a little people that doe all that they can lawfully doe and study how much is lawfull that they may lose nothing of a temporall interest people that will not be Martyrs in any degree and yet have good affections and love the cause of Religion and yet will suffer nothing for it these are such which the Apostle speaks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They think they stand and so they doe upon one leg that is so long as they are untempted but when the Tempter comes then they fall and bemoan themselves that by losing peace they lost their inheritance There are a great many sorts of such persons some when they are full are content and rejoyce in Gods providence but murmur and are amazed when they fall into poverty They are chaste so long as they are within the protection of marriage but when they return to liberty they fall into bondage and complain they cannot help it They are temperate and sober if you let them alone at home but call them abroad and they will lose their sober thoughts as Dinah did her honour by going into new company These men in these estates think they stand but God knows they are soon weary and stand stiffe as a Cane which the heat of the Sirian star or the flames of the Sun cannot bend but one sigh of a Northern wind shakes them into the tremblings of a palsey In this the best advice is that such persons should watch their own infirmities and see on which side they are most open and by what enemies they use to fall and to fly from such parties
and all the security they can have depends upon Gods mercy pardoning their sins they cannot choose but fear infinitely if they have not reason to hope that their sins are pardoned * Now concerning this men indeed have generally taken a course to put this affair to a very speedy issue God is mercifull and God forgive mee and all is done or it may be a few sighs like the deep sobbings of a man that is almost dead with laughter that is a trifling sorrow returning upon a man after he is full of sin and hath pleased himselfe with violence and revolving onely by a naturall change from sin to sorrow from laughter to a groan from sunshine to a cloudy day or it may be the good man hath left some one sin quite or some degrees of all sin and then the conclusion is firm he is rectus in Curâ—â his sins are pardoned he was indeed in an evill condition but now he is purged he is sanctified and clean These things are very bad but it is much worse that men should continue in their sin and grow old in it and arrive at consirmation and the strength of habituall wickednesse and grow fond of it and yet think if they die their account stands as fair in the eyes of Gods mercy as St. Peter's after his tears and sorrow Our sins are not pardoned easily and quickly and the longer and the greater hath been the iniquity the harder and more difficult and uncertain is the pardon it is a great progresse to return from all the degrees of death to life to motion to quicknesse to purity to acceptation to grace to contention and growth in grace to perseverance and so to pardon For pardon stands no where but at the gates of heaven It is a great mercy that signifies a finall and universall acquittance God sends it out in little scroles and excuses you from falling by the sword of the enemy or the secret stroke of an Angell in the days of the plague but these are but little entertainments and inticings of our hopes to work on towards the great pardon which is registred in the leaves of the Book of Life And it is a mighty folly to think that every little line of mercy signifies glory and absolution from the eternall wrath of God and therefore it is not to be wondred at that wicked men are unwilling to dye it is a greater wonder that many of them dye with so little resentment of their danger and their evill There is reason for them to tremble when the Judge summons them to appear When his messenger is clothed with horror and speaks in thunder when their conscience is their accuser and their accusation is great and their bills uncancell'd and they have no title to the crosse of Christ no advocate no excuse when God is their enemy and Christ is the injur'd person and the Spirit is grieved and sicknesse and death come to plead Gods cause against the man then there is reason that the naturall fears of death should be high and pungent and those naturall fears encreased by the reasonable and certain expectations of that anger which God hath laid up in heaven for ever to consume and destroy his enemies And indeed if we consider upon how trifling and inconsiderable grounds most men hope for pardon if at least that may be call'd hope which is nothing but a carelesse boldnesse and an unreasonable wilfull confidence we shall see much cause to pity very many who are going merrily to a sad and intolerable death Pardon of sins is a mercy which Christ purchased with his dearest blood which he ministers to us upon conditions of an infinite kindnesse but yet of great holinesse and obedience and an active living faith it is a grace that the most holy persons beg of God with mighty passion and labour for with a great diligence and expect with trembling fears and concerning it many times suffer sadnesses with uncertain soules and receive it by degrees and it enters upon them by little portions and it is broken as their sighs and sleeps But so have I seen the returning sea enter upon the strand and the waters rolling towards the shore throw up little portions of the tide and retire as if nature meant to play and not to change the abode of waters but still the floud crept by little steppings and invaded more by his progressions then he lost by his retreat and having told the number of its steps it possesses its new portion till the Angell calls it back that it may leave its unfaithfull dwelling of the sand so is the pardon of our sins it comes by slow motions and first quits a present death and turnes it may be into a sharp sicknesse and if that sicknesse prove not health to the soul it washes off and it may be will dash against the rock again and proceed to take off the severall instances of anger and the periods of wrath but all this while it is uncertain concerning our finall interest whether it be ebbe or floud and every hearty prayer and every bountifull almes still enlarges the pardon or addes a degree of probability and hope and then a drunken meeting or a covetous desire or an act of lust or looser swearing idle talk or neglect of Religion makes the pardon retire and while it is disputed between Christ and Christs enemy who shall be Lord the pardon fluctuates like the wave striving to climbe the rock and is wash'd off like its own retinue and it gets possession by time and uncertainty by difficulty and the degrees of a hard progression When David had sinned but in one instance interrupting the course of a holy life by one sad calamity it pleased God to pardon him but see upon what hard terms He prayed long and violently he wept sorely he was humbled in sackcloth and ashes he eat the bread of affliction and drank of his bottle of tears he lost his Princely spirit and had an amazing conscience he suffer'd the wrath of God and the sword never did depart from his house his Son rebell'd and his Kingdome revolted he fled on foot and maintained Spies against his childe hee was forc'd to send an army against him that was dearer then his owne eyes and to fight against him whom he would not hurt for all the riches of Syria and Egypt his concubines were desir'd by an incestuous mixture in the face of the sun before all Israel and his childe that was the fruit of his sin after a 7 days feaver dyed and left him nothing of his sin to show but sorrow and the scourges of the Divine vengeance and after all this God pardoned him finally because he was for ever sorrowfull and never did the sin againe He that hath sinned a thousand times for David's once is too confident if he thinks that all his shall be pardoned at a lesse rate then was used to expiate that one mischief of the religious King The son
were evill spirits who had seduced them and tempted them to such ungodly rites and yet they who were of the Pythagorean sect pretended a more holy worship and did their devotion to Angels But whosoever shall worship Angels do the same thing they worship them because they are good and powerfull as the Gentiles did the Devils whom they thought so and the error which the Apostle reproves was not in matter of Judgement in mistaking bad angels for good but in matter of manners and choice they mistook the creature for the Creator and therefore it is more fully expressed by St. Paul in a generall signification they worshipped the creature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 besides the Creator so it should be read if we worship any creature besides God worshipping so as the worship of him becomes a part of Religion it is also a direct superstition but concerning this part of superstition I shall not trouble this discourse because I know no Christians blamable in this particular but the Church of Rome and they that communicate with her in the worshipping of Images of Angels and Saints burning lights and perfumes to them making offerings confidences advocations and vowes to them and direct and solemn divine worshipping the Symbols of bread and wine when they are consecrated in the holy Sacrament These are direct superstition as the word is used by all Authors profane and sacred and are of such evill report that where ever the word Superstition does signifie any thing criminall these instances must come under the definition of it They are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a cultus superstitum a cultus Daemonum and therefore besides that they have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a proper reproof in Christian Religion are condemned by all wise men which call superstition criminall But as it is superstition to worship any thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 besides the Creator so it is superstition to worship God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 otherwise then is decent proportionable or described Every inordination of Religion that is not in defect is properly called superstition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Maximus Tyrius The true worshipper is a lover of God the superstitious man loves him not but flatters To which if we adde that fear unreasonable fear is also superstition and an ingredient in its definition we are taught by this word to signifie all irregularity and inordination in actions of Religion The summe is this the Atheist cal'd all worship of God superstition the Epicurean cal'd all fear of God superstition but did not condemn his worship the other part of wise men cal'd all unreasonable fear and inordinate worship superstition but did not condemn all fear But the Christian besides this cals every error in worship in the manner or excesse by this name and condemns it Now because the three great actions of Religion are to worship God to fear God and to trust in him by the inordination of these three actions we may reckon three sorts of this crime the excesse of fear and the obliquity in trust and the errors in worship are the three sorts of superstition the first of which is only pertinent to our present consideration 1. Fear is the duty we owe to God as being the God of power and Justice the great Judge of heaven and earth the avenger of the cause of Widows the Patron of the poor and the Advocate of the oppressed a mighty God and terrible and so essentiall an enemy to sin that he spared not his own Son but gave him over to death and to become a sacrifice when he took upon him our Nature and became a person obliged for our guilt Fear is the great bridle of intemperance the modesty of the spirit and the restraint of gaieties and dissolutions it is the girdle to the soul and the handmaid to repentance the arrest of sin and the cure or antidote to the spirit of reprobation it preserves our apprehensions of the divine Majesty and hinders our single actions from combining to sinfull habits it is the mother of consideration and the nurse of sober counsels and it puts the soul to fermentation and activity making it to passe from trembling to caution from caution to carefulnesse from carefulnesse to watchfulnesse from thence to prudence and by the gates and progresses of repentance it leads the soul on to love and to felicity and to joyes in God that shall never cease again Fear is the guard of a man in the dayes of prosperity and it stands upon the watch-towers and spies the approaching danger and gives warning to them that laugh loud and feast in the chambers of rejoycing where a man cannot consider by reason of the noises of wine and jest and musick and if prudence takes it by the hand and leads it on to duty it is a state of grace and an universall instrument to infant Religion and the only security of the lesse perfect persons and in all senses is that homage we owe to God who sends often to demand it even then when he speaks in thunder or smites by a plague or awakens us by threatning or discomposes our easinesse by sad thoughts and tender eyes and fearfull hearts and trembling considerations But this so excellent grace is soon abused in the best and most tender spirits in those who are softned by Nature and by Religion by infelicities or cares by sudden accidents or a sad soul and the Devill observing that fear like spare diet starves the feavers of lust and quenches the flames of hell endevours to highten this abstinence so much as to starve the man and break the spirit into timorousnesse and scruple sadnesse and unreasonable tremblings credulity and trifling observation suspicion and false accusations of God and then vice being turned out at the gate returns in at the postern and does the work of hell and death by running too inconsiderately in the paths which seem to lead to heaven But so have I seen a harmlesse dove made dark with an artificiall night and her eyes ceel'd and lock'd up with a little quill soaring upward and flying with amazement fear and an undiscerning wing she made toward heaven but knew not that she was made a train and an instrument to teach her enemy to prevail upon her and all her defencelesse kindred so is a superstitious man zealous and blinde forward and mistaken he runs towards heaven as he thinks but he chooses foolish paths and out of fear takes any thing that he is told or fancios and guesses concerning God by measures taken from his own diseases and imperfections But fear when it is inordinate is never a good counsellor nor makes a good friend and he that fears God as his enemy is the most compleatly miserable person in the world For if he with reason beleeves God to be his enemy then the man needs no other argument to prove that he is undone then this that the fountain of blessing in this state in which the
I shall onely adde one word to this That our sorrow for sin is not to be estimated by our tears and our sensible expressions but by our active hatred and dereliction of sin and is many times unperceived in outward demonstration It is reported of the Mother of Peter Lombard Gratian and Comestor that she having had three sons begotten in unhallowed embraces upon her death-bed did omit the recitation of those crimes to her confessour adding this for Apology that her three sons proved persons so eminent in the Church that their excellency was abundant recompence for her demerit and therefore she could not grieve because God had glorified himself so much by three instruments so excellent and that although her sin had abounded yet Gods grace did superabound Her Confessor replied at dole Saltent quod dolere non possis grieve that thou canst not grieve and so must we alwayes fear that our trouble for sin is nor great enough that our sorrow is too remisse that our affections are indifferent but we can onely be sure that our sorrow is a godly sorrow when it worketh repentance that is when it makes us hate and leave all our sin and take up the crosse of patience or penance that is confesse our sin accuse our selves condemn the action by hearty sentence and then if it hath no other emanation but fasting and prayer for its pardon and hearty industry towards its abolition our sorrow is not reproveable For sorrow alone will not do it there must follow a total dereliction of our sin and this is the first part of repentance Concerning which I consider that it is a sad mistake amongst many that do some things towards repentance that they mistake the first addresses and instruments of this part of repentance for the whole duty it self Confession of sins is in order to the dereliction of them but then confession must not be like the unlading of a ship to take in new stowage or the vomits of intemperance which ease the stomack that they may continue the merry meeting but such a confession is too frequent in which men either comply with custome or seek to ease a present load or gripe of conscience or are willing to dresse up their souls against afestiyal or hope for pardon upon so easie terms these are but retirings baok to leap the further into mischief or but approaches to God with the lips no confession can be of any use but as it is an instrument of shame to the person of humiliation of the man and dereliction of the sin and receives its recompence but as it ads to these purposes all other is like the bleating of the calves and the lowing of the Oxen which Saul reserved after the spoil of Agag they proclaim the sin but do nothing towards its cure they serve Gods end to make us justly to be condemned out of our own mouthes but nothing at all towards our absolution * Nay if we proceed further to the greatest expressions of humiliation parts of which I reckon fasting praying for pardon judging and condemning of our selves by instances of a present indignation against a crime yet unlesse this proceed so far as to a total deletion of the sin to the extirpation of every vitious habit God is not glorified by our repentance nor we secured in our eternal interest Our sin must be brought to judgement and like Antinous in Homer layed in the mids as the sacrifice and the cause of all the mischief 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is the murderer this is the Achan this is he that troubles Israel let the sin be confessed and carried with the pomps and solennities of sorrow to its funeral and so let the murderer be slain But if after all the forms of confession and sorrow fasting and humiliation and pretence of doing the will of God we spare Agag and the fattest of the cattel our delicious sins and still leave an unlawful King and a tyrant sin to reigne in our mortal bodies we may pretend what we will towards repentance but we are no better penitents then Ahab no neerer to the obtaining of our hopes then Esau was to his birthright for whose repentance there was no place left though he sought it carefully with tears Well let us suppose our penitent advanced thus far as that he decrees against all sin and in his hearty purposes resolves to decline it as in a severe sentence he hath condemned it as his betrayer and his murderer yet we must be curious for now onely the repentance properly begins that it be not onely like the springings of the thorny of the high way ground soon up and soon down For some men when a sadnesse or an unhandsome accident surprizes them then they resolve against their sin but like the goats in Aristotle they give their milk no longer then they are stung as soon as the thorns are removed these men return to their first hardnesse and resolve then to act their first temptation Others there are who never resolve against a sin but either when they have no temptation to it or when their appetites are newly satisfied with it like those who immediately after a full dinner resolve to fast at supper and they keep it till their appetite returnes and then their resolution unties like the cords of vanity or the gossamere against the violence of the Northen winde Thus a lustfull person fills all the capacity of his lust and when he is wearied and the sin goes off with unquietnesse and regret and the appetite falls down like a horseleech when it is ready to burst with putrifaction and an unwholsome plethory then he resolves to be a good man and could almost vow to be a Hermit and hates his lust as Amnon hated his sister Thamar just when he had newly acted his unworthy rape but the next spring tide that comes every wave of the temptation makes an inrode upon the resolution and gets ground and prevailes against it more then his resolution prevailed against his sin How many drunken persons how many Swearers resolve daily and hourely against their sin and yet act them not once the lesse for all their infinite heape of shamefully ret eating purposes * That resolution that begins upon just grounds of sorrow and severe judgement upon fear and love that is made in the midst of a temptation that is inquisitive into all the means and instruments of the cure that prayes perpetually against a sin that watches continually against a surprize and never sinks into it by deliberation that fights earnestly and carries on the war prudently and prevailes by a never ceasing diligence against the temptation that onely is a pious and well begun repentance They that have their fits of a quartan well and ill for ever and think themselves in perfect health when the ague is retired till its period returnes are dangerously mistaken Those intervals of imperfect and fallacious resolution are nothing but states of death and if
be expected from them For who are fit to be hangmen and executioners of publike wrath but evil and ungodly persons And can it be a wonder that they whose cause wants reason should betake themselves to the sword that what he cannot perswade he may wrest onely we must not judge of the things of God by the measures of men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the things of men have this world for their stage and their reward but the things of God relate to the world to come and for our own particulars we are to be guided by rule and by the end of all not by events intermedial which are varied by a thousand irregular causes For if all the evil men in the world were unprosperous as most certainly they are and if all good persons were temporally blessed as most certainly they are not yet this would not move us to become vertuous If an angel should come from heaven or one arise from the dead and preach repentance or justice and temperance all this would be ineffectuall to those to whom the plain doctrines of God delivered in the Law and the Prophets will not suffice For why should God work a signe to make us to beleeve that we ought to do justice if we already beleeve he hath commanded it no man can need a miracle for the confirmation of that which he already beleeves to be the command of God And when God hath expressely bidden us to obey every ordinance of man for the Lords sake the King as supreme and his deputies as sent by him It is a strange infidelity to think that a rebellion against the ordinance of God can be sanctified by successe and prevalency of them that destroy the authority and the person and the law and the religion The sin cannot grow to its height if it be crushed at the beginning unlesse it prosper in its progresse a man cannot easily fill up the measure of his iniquity but then that the sin swels to its fulnesse by prosperity and grows too big to be suppressed without a miracle it is so far from excusing or lessening the sin that nothing doth so nurse the sin as it It is not vertue because it is prosperous but if it had not been prosperous the sin could never be so great Facere omnia saevè Non impunè licet nisi dum facis A little crime is sure to smart but when the sinner is grown rich and prosperous and powerfull he gets impunity Jusque datum sceleri But that 's not innocence and if prosperity were the voice of God to approve an action then no man were vitious but he that is punished and nothing were rebellion but that which cannot be easily suppressed and no man were a Pirate but he that robs with a little vessell and no man could be a Tyrant but he that is no prince and no man an unjust invader of his neighbours rights but he that is beaten and overthrown Then the crime grows big and loud then it calls to Heaven for vengeance when it hath been long a growing when it hath thrived under the Devils managing when God hath long suffered it and with patience in vain expecting the repentance of a sinner he that treasures up wrath against the day of wrath that man hath been a prosperous that is an unpunished and a thriving sinner but then it is the sin that thrives not the man and that is the mistake upon this whole question for the sin cannot thrive unlesse the man goes on without apparent punishment and restraint And all that the man gets by it is that by a continual course of sin he is prepared for an intollerable ruine The Spirit of God bids us look upon the end of these men not the way they walk or the instrument of that pompous death When Epaminondas was asked which of the three was happiest himself Chalrias or Iphicrates bid the man stay till they were all dead for till then that question could not be answered He that had seen the Vandals besiege the city of Hippo and have known the barbarousnesse of that unchristned people and had observed that S. Augustine withall his prayers and vows could not obtain peace in his own dayes not so much as a reprieve for the persecution and then had observed S. Augustine die with grief that very night would have perceived his calamity more visible then the reward of his piety and holy religion When Lewis sirnamed Pius went his voyage to Palestine upon a holy end and for the glory of God to fight against the Saracens and Turks and Mamalukes the world did promise to themselves that a good cause should thrive in the hands of so holy a man but the event was far otherwise his brother Robert was killed and his army destroyed and himself taken prisoner and the money which by his Mother was sent for his redemption was cast away in a storm and he was exchanged for the last town the Christians had in Egypt and brought home the crosse of Christ upon his shoulder in a real pressure and participation of his Masters sufferings When Charles the fifth went to Algier to suppresse pirates and unchristned villains the cause was more confident then the event was prosperous and when he was almost ruined in a prodigious storme he told the minutes of the clock expecting that at midnight when religious persons rose to Mattins he should be eased by the benefit of their prayers but the providence of God trod upon those waters and left no footstoops for discovery his navie was beat in pieces and his designe ended in dishonour and his life almost lost by the bargain Was ever cause more baffled then the Christian cause by the Turks in all Asia and Africa and some parts of Europe if to be persecuted and afflicted be reckoned a calamity What prince was ever more unfortunate then Henry the sixt of England and yet that age saw none more pious and devout and the title of the house of Lancaster was advanced against the right of York for three descents but then what was the end of these things the persecuted men were made Saints and their memories are preserved in honour and their souls shall reigne for ever and some good men were ingaged in a wrong cause and the good cause was sometimes managed by evil men till that the suppressed cause was lifted up by God in the hands of a young and prosperous prince and at last both interests were satisfied in the conjunction of two roses which was brought to issue by a wonderful chain of causes managed by the divine providence and there is no age no history no state no great change in the world but hath ministred an example of an afflicted truth and a prevailing sin For I will never more call that sinner prosperous who after he hath been permitted to finish his businesse shall die and perish miserably for at the same rate we may envie the happinesse of a poor fisherman who
pleasure illiberalis ingratae voluptatis causa as Plutarch calls it for illiberal and ungratefull pleasure in which when a man hath entred he loses the rights and priviledges and honours of a good man and gets nothing that is profitable and useful to holy purposes or necessary to any but is already in a state so hateful and miserable that he needs neither God nor man to be a revenger having already under his splendid robe miseries enough to punish and betray this hypocrisy of his condition being troubled with the memory of what is past distrustful of the present suspicious of the future vitious in their lives and full of pageantry and out-sides but in their death miserable with calamities real eternal and insupportable and if it could be other wise vertue it self would be reproached with the calamity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I end with the advice of Saint Paul In nothing be terrified of your adversaries which to them is an evident token of perdition but to you of salvation and that of God Sermon XI The Faith and Patience of the SAINTS OR The righteous cause oppressed Part III. BUt now that the persecuted may at least be pitied and assisted in that of which they are capable I shall propound some rules by which they may learn to gather grapes from their thorns and figs from their thistles crowns from the crosse glory from dishonour As long as they belong to God it is necessary that they suffer persecution or sorrow no rules can teach them to avoid that but the evil of the suffering and the danger must be declined and we must use such spirituall arts as are apt to turn them into health and medicine For it were a hard thing first to be scourged and then to be crucified to suffer here and to perish hereafter through the fiery triall and purging fire of afflictions to passe into hell that is intollerable and to be prevented with the following cautions least a man suffers like a fool and a malefactour or inherits damnation for the reward of his imprudent suffering 1. They that suffer any thing for Christ and are ready to die for him let them do nothing against him For certainly they think too highly of martyrdom who beleeve it able to excuse all the evils of a wicked life A man may give his body to be burned and yet have no charity and he that dies without charity dies without God for God is love And when those who fought in the dayes of the Maccabees for the defence of true Religion and were killed in those holy warres yet being dead were found having about their necks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or pendants consecrated to idols of the Jamnenses it much allayed the hope which by their dying in so good a cause was entertained concerning their beatificall resurrection He that overcomes his fear of death does well but if he hath not also overcome his lust or his anger his baptisme of blood will not wash him clean Many things may make a man willing to die in a good cause Publike reputation hope of reward gallantry of spirit a confident resolution and a masculine courage or a man may be vexed into a stubborn and unrelenting suffering But nothing can make a man live well but the grace and the love of God But those persons are infinitely condemned by their last act who professe their religion to be worth dying for and yet are so unworthy as not to live according to its institution It were a rare felicity if every good cause could be mannaged by good men onely but we have found that evil men have spoiled a good cause but never that a good cause made those evil men good and holy If the Governour of Samaria had crucified Simon Magus for receiving Christian Baptisme he had no more died a martyr then he lived a saint For dying is not enough and dying in a good cause is not enough but then onely we receive the crown of martyrdom when our death is the seal of our life and our life is a continuall testimony of our duty and both give testimony to the excellencies of the religion and glorifie the grace of God If a man be gold the fire purges him but it burns him if he be like stubble cheap light and uselesse For martyrdom is the consummation of love But then it must be supposed that this grace must have had its beginning and its severall stages and periods and must have passed thorow labour to zeal thorow all the regions of duty to the perfections of sufferings and therefore it is a sad thing to observe how some empty souls will please themselves with being of such a religion or such a cause and though they dishonour their religion or weigh down the cause with the prejudice of sin beleeve all is swallowed up by one honourable name or the appellative of one vertue If God had forbid nothing but heresie and treason then to have been a loyall man or of a good beleef had been enough but he that forbad rebellion forbids also swearing and covetousnesse rapine and oppression lying and cruelty And it is a sad thing to see a man not onely to spend his time and his wealth and his money and his friends upon his lust but to spend his sufferings too to let the canker-worm of a deadly sin devour his Martyrdom He therefore that suffers in a good cause let him be sure to walk worthy of that honour to which God hath called him Let him first deny his sins and then deny himself and then he may take up his crosse and follow Christ ever remembring that no man pleases God in his death who hath walked perversely in his life 2. He that suffers in a cause of God must be indifferent what the instance be so that he may serve God I say he must be indifferent in the cause so it be a cause of God and indifferent in the suffering so it be of Gods appointment For some men have a naturall aversation to some vices or vertues and a naturall affection to others One man will die for his friend and another will die for his money Some men hate to be a rebell and will die for their Prince but tempt them to suffer for the cause of the Church in which they were baptized and in whose communion they look for heaven and then they are tempted and fall away Or if God hath chosen the cause for them and they have accepted it yet themselves will choose the suffering Right or wrong some men will not endure a prison and some that can yet choose the heaviest part of the burden the pollution and stain of a sin rather then lose their money and some had rather die twice then lose their estates once In this our rule is easie Let
ΕÎΙΑΥΤΟΣ A COVRSE OF SERMONS FOR All the Sundaies Of the Year Fitted to the great Necessities and for the supplying the Wants of Preaching in many parts of this NATION Together with A Discourse of the Divine Institution Necessity Sacredness and Separation of the Office Ministeriall By JER TAYLOR D. D. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pindar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Commune periclum Omnibus Una salus LONDON Printed for Richard Royston at the Angel in Ivie-lane 1653. XXV SERMONS PREACHED AT GOLDEN-GROVE Being for the VVinter half-year BEGINNING ON ADVENT-SUNDAY UNTILL WHIT-SUNDAY By JEREMY TAYLOR D. D. Vae mihi si non Evangelizavero LONDON Printed by E. Cotes for Richard Royston at the Angel in Ivie-Lane M. D C. LIII To the right Honourable and truely Noble RICHARD Lord VAUHAN Earle of Carbery c. MY LORD I Have now by the assistance of God and the advantages of your many favours finished a Year of Sermons which if like the first year of our Saviours preaching it may be annus acceptabilis an acceptable year to God and his afflicted hand-maid the Church of England a reliefe to some of her new necessities and an institution or assistance to any soule I shall esteem it among those honors and blessings with which God uses to reward those good intentions which himselfe first puts into our hearts and then recompenses upon our heads My Lord They were first presented to God in the ministeries of your family For this is a blessing for which your Lordship is to blesse God that your Family is like Gideons Fleece irriguous with a dew from heaven when much of the voicinage is dry for we have cause to remember that Isaac complain'd of the Philistims who fill'd up his wells with stones and rubbish and left no beauvrage for the Flocks and therefore they could give no milke to them that waited upon the Flocks and the flocks could not be gathered nor fed nor defended It was a designe of ruine and had in it the greatest hostility and so it hath been lately undique totis Vsque adeo turbatur agris En ipse capellas Protenus aeger ago hanc etiam vix Tityre duco But My Lord this is not all I would faine also complaine that men feele not their greatest evill and are not sensible of their danger nor covetous of what they want nor strive for that which is forbidden them but that this complaint would suppose an unnaturall evill to rule in the hearts of men For who would have in him so little of a Man as not to be greedy of the Word of God and of holy Ordinances even therefore because they are so hard to have and this evill although it can have no excuse yet it hath a great and a certain cause for the Word of God still creates new appetites as it satisfies the old and enlarges the capacity as it fils the first propensities of the Spirit For all Spirituall blessings are seeds of Immortality and of infinite felicities they swell up to the comprehensions of Eternity and the desires of the soule can never be wearied but when they are decayed as the stomach will be craving every day unlesse it be sick and abused But every mans experience tels him now that because men have not Preaching they lesse desire it their long fasting makes them not to love their meat and so wee have cause to feare the people will fall to an Atrophy then to a loathing of holy food and then Gods anger will follow the method of our sinne and send a famine of the Word and Sacraments This we have the greatest reason to feare and this feare can be relieved by nothing but by notices and experience of the greatnesse of the Divine mercies and goodnesse Against this danger in future and evill in present as you and all good men interpose their prayers so have I added this little instance of my care and services being willing to minister in all offices and varieties of imployment that so I may by all meanes save some and confirme others or at least that my selfe may be accepted of God in my desiring it And I thinke I have some reasons to expect a speciall mercy in this because I finde by the constitution of the Divine providence and Ecclesiasticall affaires that all the great necessities of the Church have been served by the zeale of preaching in publick and other holy ministeries in publick or private as they could be had By this the Apostles planted the Church and the primitive Bishops supported the faith of Martyrs and the hardinesse of Confessors and the austerity of the Retired By this they confounded Hereticks and evill livers and taught them the wayes of the Spirit and left them without pertinacy or without excuse It was Preaching that restored the splendour of the Church when Barbarisme and Warres and Ignorance either sate in or broke the Doctors Chaire in pieces For then it was that divers Orders of religious and especially of Preachers were erected God inspiring into whole companies of men a zeal of Preaching And by the same instrument God restored the beauty of the Church when it was necessary shee should be reformed it was the assiduous and learned preaching of those whom God chose for his Ministers in that work that wrought the Advantages and persuaded those Truths which are the enamel and beautie of our Churches And because by the same meanes all things are preserved by which they are produc'd it cannot but be certaine that the present state of the Church requires a greater care and prudence in this Ministerie then ever especially since by Preaching some endevour to supplant Preaching and by intercepting the fruits of the flocks to dishearten the Shepheards from their attendances My Lord your great noblenesse and religious charitie hath taken from mee some portions of that glory which I designed to my selfe in imitation of St. Paul towards the Corinthian Church who esteemed it his honour to preach to them without a revenue and though also like him I have a trade by which as I can be more usefull to others and lesse burthensome to you yet to you also under God I owe the quiet and the opportunities and circumstances of that as if God had so interweaved the support of my affaires with your charitie that he would have no advantages passe upon mee but by your interest and that I should expect no reward of the issues of my Calling unlesse your Lordship have a share in the blessing My Lord I give God thanks that my lot is fallen so fairely and that I can serve your Lordship in that ministerie by which I am bound to serve God and that my gratitude and my duty are bound up in the same bundle but now that which was yours by a right of propriety I have made publick that it may still be more yours and you derive to your selfe a comfort if you shall see the necessitie of others serv'd
by that which you heard so diligently and accepted with so much pietie and I am persuaded have entertain'd with that religion and obedience which is the dutie of all those who know that Sermons are arguments against us unlesse they make us better and that no Sermon is received as it ought unlesse it makes us quit a vice or bee in love with vertue unlesse we suffer it in some instance or degree to doe the work of God upon our soules My Lord in these Sermons I have medled with no mans interest that onely excepted which is Eternall but if any mans vice was to be reproved I have done it with as much severitie as I ought some cases of Conscience I have here determined but the speciall designe of the whole is to describe the greater lines of Dutie by speciall arguments and if any witty Censurer shall say that I tell him nothing but what he knew before I shall be contented with it and rejoyce that he was so well instructed and wish also that he needed not a Remembrancer but if either in the first or in the second in the institution of some or the reminding of others I can doe God any service no man ought to be offended that Sermons are not like curious inquiries after New-nothings but pursuances of Old truths However I have already many faire earnests that your Lordship will bee pleased with this tender of my service and expression of my great and dearest obligations which you daily renew or continue upon My noblest Lord Your Lordships most affectionate and most obliged Servant JEREMY TAYLOR Titles of the Sermons their Order Number and Texts SErmon 1. 2. 3. Dooms-day Book or Christs Advent to Judgement Folio 1. 15. 30. 2 Cor. 5. 10. For we must all appear before the Judgement seat of Christ that every one may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad Sermon 4. 5. 6. The Return of Prayers or The conditions of a Prevailing Prayer fol. 44. 57. 69. Joh. 9. 31. Now we know that God heareth not sinners but if any man be a worshipper of God and doth his will him he heareth Sermon 7. 8. 9. Of Godly Fear c. fol. 83. 95. 114. Heb. 12. part of the 28th 29th vers Let us have grace whereby we may serve God with reverence and godly fear For our God is a consuming Fire Sermon 10. 11. The Flesh and the Spirit fol. 125. 139. Matt. 26. 41. latter part The Spirit indeed is willing but the Flesh is weak Sermon 12. 13. 14. Of Lukewarmnesse and Zeal or Spiritual Terrour fol. 152. 164. 179. Jer. 48. 10. first part Cursed be he that doth the work of the Lord deceitfully Sermon 15. 16. The House of Feasting or The Epicures Measures fol. 191. 204. 1 Cor. 15. 32. last part Let us eat and drink for to morrow we die Sermon 17. 18. The Marriage Ring or The Mysteriousnesse and Duties of Marriage fol. 219. 232. Ephes. 5. 32 33. This is a great mysterie But I speak concerning Christ and the Church Neverthelesse let every one of you in particular so love his Wife even as himselfe and the Wife see that she reverence her Husband Sermon 19. 20. 21. Apples of Sodome or The Fruits of Sin fol. 245. 260. 273. Rom. 6. 21. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed For the end of those things is death Sermon 22. 23. 24. 25. The good and evill Tongue Of Slander and Flattery The Duties of the Tongue fol. 286. 298. 311. 323. Ephes. 4. 29. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth but that which is good to the use of edifying that it may minister grace unto the hearers Sermon I. ADVENT SUNDAY DOOMS-DAY BOOK OR CHRIST'S Advent to Judgement 2 Cor. 5. 10. For we must all appear before the Judgment seat of CHRIST that every one may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad VErtue and Vice are so essentially distinguished and the distinction is so necessary to be observed in order to the well being of men in private and in societies that to divide them in themselves and to separate them by sufficient notices and to distinguish them by rewards hath been designed by all Laws by the sayings of wise men by the order of things by their proportions to good or evill and the expectations of men have been fram'd accordingly that Vertue may have a proper seat in the will and in the affections and may become amiable by its own excellency and its appendant blessing and that Vice may be as naturall an enemy to a man as a Wolf to the Lamb and as darknesse to light destructive of its being and a contradiction of its nature But it is not enough that all the world hath armed it self against Vice and by all that is wise and sober amongst men hath taken the part of Vertue adorning it with glorious appellatives encouraging it by rewards entertaining it with sweetnesses and commanding it by edicts fortifying it with defensatives and twining with it in all artificiall compliances all this is short of mans necessity for this will in all modest men secure their actions in Theatres and High-wayes in Markets and Churches before the eye of Judges and in the society of Witnesses But the actions of closets and chambers the designs and thoughts of men their discourses in dark places and the actions of retirements and of the night are left indifferent to Vertue or to Vice and of these as man can take no cognisance so he can make no coercitive and therefore above one half of humane actions is by the Laws of man left unregarded and unprovided for and besides this there are some men who are bigger then Lawes and some are bigger then Judges and some Judges have lessened themselves by fear and cowardize by bribery and flattery by iniquity and complyance and where they have not yet they have notices but of few causes and there are some sins so popular and universall that to punish them is either impossible or intolerable and to question such would betray the weaknesse of the publick rods and axes and represent the sinner to be stronger then the power that is appointed to be his bridle and after all this we finde sinners so prosperous that they escape so potent that they fear not and sin is made safe when it growes great Facere omnia saevè Non impunè licet nisi dum facis and innocence is oppressed and the poor cry and he hath no helper and he is oppressed and he wants a Patron and for these and many other concurrent causes if you reckon all the causes that come before all the Judicatories of the world though the litigious are too many and the matters of instance are intricate and numerous yet the personall and criminall are so few that of 20000 sins that cry aloud to
God for vengeance scarce two are noted by the publick eye and chastis'd by the hand of Justice it must follow from hence that it is but reasonable for the interest of vertue and the necessities of the world that the private should be judg'd and vertue should be tyed upon the spirit and the poor should be relieved and the oppressed should appeal and the noise of Widows should be heard and the Saints should stand upright and the Cause that was ill judged should be judged over again and Tyrants should be call'd to account and our thoughts should be examined and our secret actions view'd on all sides and the infinite number of sins which escape here should not escape finally and therefore God hath so ordained it that there shall be a day of doom wherein all that are let alone by men shall be question'd by God and every word and every action shall receive its just recompence of reward For we must all appear before the Judgement seat of Christ that every one may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so it is in the best copies not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The things done in the body so we commonly read it the things proper or due to the body so the expression is more apt and proper for not only what is done 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the body but even the acts of abstracted understanding and volition the acts of reflexion and choice acts of self-love and admiration and what ever else can be supposed the proper and peculiar act of the soul or of the spirit is to be accounted for at the day of Judgement and even these may be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because these are the acts of the man in the state of conjunction with the body The words have in them no other difficulty or variety but contain a great truth of the biggest interest and one of the most materiall constitutive Articles of the whole Religion and the greatest endearment of our duty in the whole world Things are so ordered by the great Lord of all the creatures that whatsoever we do or suffer shall be call'd to account and this account shall be exact and the sentence shall be just and the reward shall be great all the evils of the world shall be amended and the injustices shall be repaid and the divine Providence shall be vindicated and Vertue and Vice shall for ever be remark'd by their separate dwellings and rewards This is that which the Apostle in the next verse cals the terror of the Lord it is his terror because himself shall appear in his dresse of Majesty and robes of Justice and it is his terror because it is of all the things in the World the most formidable in it self and it is most fearfull to us where shall be acted the interest and finall sentence of eternity and because it is so intended I shall all the way represent it as the Lords terror that we may be afraid of sin for the destruction of which this terror is intended 1. Therefore we will consider the persons that are to be judged with the circumstances of our advantages or our sorrowes We must all appear 2. The Judge and his Judgement seat before the Judgment seat of Christ. 3. The sentence that they are to receive the things due to the body good or bad according as we now please but then cannot alter Every one of these are dressed with circumstances of affliction and afrightment to those to whom such terrors shall appertain as a portion of their inheritance 1. The persons who are to be judged even you and I and all the world Kings and Priests Nobles and Learned the Crafty and the Easie the Wise and the Foolish the Rich and the Poor the prevailing Tyrant and the oppressed Party shall all appear to receive ther Symbol and this is so farre from abating any thing of its terror and our dear concernment that it much increases it for although concerning Precepts and Discourses we are apt to neglect in particular what is recommended in generall and in incidencies of Mortality and sad events the singularity of the chance heightens the apprehension of the evill yet it is so by accident and only in regard of our imperfection it being an effect of self-love or some little creeping envie which adheres too often to the infortunate and miserable or else because the sorrow is apt to increase by being apprehended to be a rare case and a singular unworthinesse in him who is afflicted otherwise then is common to the sons of men companions of his sin and brethren of his nature and partners of his usuall accidents yet in finall and extreme events the multitude of sufferers does not lessen but increase the sufferings and when the first day of Judgement happen'd that I mean of the universall deluge of waters upon the old World the calamity swell'd like the floud and every man saw his friend perish and the neighbours of his dwelling and the relatives of his house and the sharers of his joyes and yesterdaies bride and the new born heir the Priest of the Family and the honour of the Kindred all dying or dead drench'd in water and the divine vengeance and then they had no place to flee unto no man cared for their souls they had none to goe unto for counsell no sanctuary high enough to keep them from the vengeance that rain'd down from heaven and so it shall be at the day of Judgement when that world and this and all that shall be born hereafter shall passe through the same Red sea and be all baptized with the same fire and be involv'd in the same cloud in which shall be thundrings and terrors infinite every Mans fear shall be increased by his neighbours shriekes and the amazement that all the world shall be in shall unite as the sparks of a raging furnace into a globe of fire and roul upon its own principle and increase by direct appearances and intolerable reflexions He that stands in a Church-yard in the time of a great plague and hears the Passing-bell perpetually telling the sad stories of death and sees crowds of infected bodies pressing to their Graves and others sick and tremulous and Death dress'd up in all the images of sorrow round about him is not supported in his spirit by the variety of his sorrow and at Dooms-day when the terrors are universall besides that it is in it self so much greater because it can affright the whole world it is also made greater by communication and a sorrowfull influence Grief being then strongly infectious when there is no variety of state but an intire Kingdome of fear and amazement is the King of all our passions and all the world its subjects and that shricke must needs be terrible when millions of Men and Women at the same instant shall fearfully cry
to hope to have amends made to their condition by the sentence of the day of Judgement Evill and sad is their condition who cannot be contented here nor blessed hereafter whose life is their misery and their conscience is their enemy whose grave is their prison and death their undoing and the sentence of Dooms-day the beginning of an intolerable condition 3. The third sort of accusers are the Devils and they will do it with malicious and evill purposes The Prince of the Devils hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for one of his chiefest appellatives The accuser of the Brethren he is by his professed malice and imployment and therefore God who delights that his mercy should triumph and his goodnesse prevail over all the malice of men and Devils hath appointed one whose office is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to reprove the accuser and to resist the enemy and to be a defender of their cause who belong to God The holy Spirit is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a defender the evill spirit is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the accuser and they that in this life belong to one or the other shall in the same proportion be treated at the day of Judgement The Devill shall accuse the Brethren that is the Saints and servants of God and shall tell concerning their follies and infirmities the sins of their youth and the weaknesse of their age the imperfect grace and the long schedule of omissions of duty their scruples and their fears their diffidences and pusillanimity and all those things which themselves by strict examination finde themselves guilty of and have confessed all their shame and the matter of their sorrowes their evill intentions and their little plots their carnall confidences and too fond adherences to the things of this world their indulgence and easinesse of government their wilder joyes and freer meals their losse of time and their too forward and apt compliances their trifling arrests and little peevishnesses the mixtures of the world with the things of the Spirit and all the incidences of humanity he will bring forth and aggravate them by the circumstance of ingratitude and the breach of promise and the evacuating all their holy purposes and breaking their resolutions and rifling their vowes and all these things being drawn into an intire representment and the bils clog'd by numbers will make the best man in the world seem foul and unhandsome and stained with the characters of death and evill dishonour But for these there is appointed a defender The holy Spirit that maketh intercession for us shall then also interpose and against all these things shall oppose the passion of our blessed Lord and upon all their defects shall cast the robe of his righteousnesse and the sins of their youth shall not prevail so much as the repentance of their age and their omissions be excused by probable intervening causes and their little escapes shall appear single and in disunion because they were alwaies kept asunder by penitentiall prayers and sighings and their seldome returns of sin by their daily watchfulnesse and their often infirmities by the sincerity of their souls and their scruples by their zeal and their passions by their love and all by the mercies of God and the sacrifice which their Judge offer'd and the holy Spirit made effective by daily graces and assistances These therefore infallibly go to the portion of the right hand because the Lord our God shall answer for them But as for the wicked it is not so with them for although the plain story of their life be to them a sad condemnation yet what will be answered when it shall be told concerning them that they despised Gods mercies and feared not his angry judgements that they regarded not his word and loved not his excellencies that they were not perswaded by the promises nor afrighted by his threatnings that they neither would accept his government nor his blessings that all the sad stories that ever hapned in both the worlds in all which himself did escape till the day of his death and was not concerned in them save only that he was called upon by every one of them which he ever heard or saw or was told of to repentance that all these were sent to him in vain But cannot the Accuser truly say to the Judge concerning such persons They were thine by creation but mine by their own choice Thou didst redeem them indeed but they sold themselves to me for a trifle or for an unsatisfying interest Thou diedst for them but they obeyed my commandements I gave them nothing I promised them nothing but the filthy pleasures of a night or the joyes of madnesse or the delights of a disease I never hanged upon the Crosse three long hours for them nor endured the labours of a poor life 33 years together for their interest only when they were thine by the merit of thy death they quickly became mine by the demerit of their ingratitude and when thou hadst cloathed their soul with thy robe and adorned them by thy graces we strip'd them naked as their shame and only put on a robe of darknesse and they thought themselves secure and went dancing to their grave like a drunkard to a fight or a flie unto a candle and therefore they that did partake with us in our faults must divide with us in our portion and fearfull interest This is a sad story because it ends in death and there is nothing to abate or lessen the calamity It concerns us therefore to consider in time that he that tempts us will accuse us and what he cals pleasant now he shall then say was nothing and all the gains that now invite earthly souls and mean persons to vanity was nothing but the seeds of folly and the harvest is pain and sorrow and shame eternall * But then since this horror proceeds upon the account of so many accusers God hath put it into our power by a timely accusation of our selves in the tribunall of the court Christian to prevent all the arts of aggravation which at Dooms-day shall load foolish and undiscerning souls He that accuses himself of his crimes here means to forsake them and looks upon them on all sides and spies out his deformity and is taught to hate them he is instructed and prayed for he prevents the anger of God and defeats the Devils malice and by making shame the instrument of repentance he takes away the sting and makes that to be his medicine which otherwise would be his death and concerning this exercise I shall only adde what the Patriarch of Alexandria told an old religious person in his hermitage having asked him what he found in that desert he was answered only this Indesinenter culpare judicare meipsum to judge and condemn my self perpetually that is the imployment of my solitude The Patriarch answered Non est alia via There is no other way By accusing our selves we shall make the Devils malice uselesse
the Augures gave an alarum to the City but if lightning struck the spire of the Capitoll they thought the summe of affairs and the Commonwealth it self was indanger'd And this Heathen folly hath stuck so close to the Christian that all the Sermons of the Church for 1600 years have not cured them all But the practises of weaker people and the artifice of ruling Priests have superinduced many new ones When Pope Eugenius sang Masse at Rhemes and some few drops from the Chalice were spilt upon the pavement it was thought to foretell mischief warres and bloud to all Christendome though it was nothing but carelesnesse and mischance of the Priest and because Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury sang the Masse of Requiem upon the day he was reconcil'd to his Prince it was thought to foretell his own death by that religious office and if men can listen to such whispers and have not reason and observation enough to confute such trifles they shall still be afrighted with the noise of birds and every night-raven shall foretell evill as Micaiah to the King of Israel and every old woman shall be a Prophetesse and the events of humane affairs which should be managed by the conduct of counsell of reason and religion shall succeed by chance by the flight of birds and the meeting with an evill eye by the falling of the salt or the decay of reason of wisdome and the just religion of a man To this may be reduc'd the observation of dreams and fears commenced from the fancies of the night For the superstitious man does not rest even when he sleeps neither is he safe because dreams usually are false but he is afflicted for fear they should tell true Living and waking men have one world in common they use the same air and fire and discourse by the same principles of Logick and reason but men that are asleep have every one a world to himself and strange perceptions and the superstitious hath none at all his reason sleeps and his fears are waking and all his rest and his very securities to the fearfull man turn into afrights and insecure expectation of evils that never shall happen they make their rest uneasie and chargeable and they still vex their weary soul not considering there is no other sleep for sleep to rest in and therefore if the sleep be troublesome the mans cares be without remedy till they be quite destroyed Dreams follow the temper of the body and commonly proceed from trouble or disease businesse or care an active head and a restlesse minde from fear or hope from wine or passion from fulnesse or emptinesse from phantastick remembrances or from som Daemon good or bad they are without rule and without reason they are as contingent as if a man should study to make a Prophesie and by saying 10000 things may hit upon one true which was therefore not foreknown though it was forespoken and they have no certainty because they have no naturall causality nor proportion to those effects which many times they are said to foresignifie The dream of the yolk of an egge importeth gold saith Artemidorus and they that use to remember such phantastick idols are afraid to lose a friend when they dream their teeth shake when naturally it will rather signifie a scurvy for a naturall indisposition and an imperfect sense of the beginning of a disease may vex the fancy into a symbolicall representation for so the man that dreamt he swam against a stream of bloud had a Plurisie beginning in his side and he that dreamt he dipt his foot in water and that it was turn'd to a Marble was intic'd into the fancie by a beginning dropsie and if the events do answer in one instance we become credulous in twenty for want of reason we discourse our selves into folly and weak observation and give the Devill power over us in those circumstances in which we can least resist him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A theef is confident in the twilight if you suffer impressions to be made upon you by dreams the Devill hath the reins in his own hands and can tempt you by that which will abuse you when you can make no resistance Dominica the wife of Valens the Emperor dreamt that God threatned to take away her only son for her despitefull usage of St. Basil the fear proceeding from this instance was safe and fortunate but if she had dreamt in the behalf of a Heretick she might have been cousened into a false proposition upon a ground weaker then the discourse of a waking childe Let the grounds of our actions be noble beginning upon reason proceeding with prudence measured by the common lines of men and confident upon the expectation of an usuall providence Let us proceed from causes to effects from naturall means to ordinary events and believe felicity not to be a chance but a choice and evill to be the daughter of sin and the Divine anger not of fortune and fancy let us fear God when we have made him angry and not be afraid of him when we heartily and laboriously do our duty our fears are to be measured by open revelation and certain experience by the threatnings of God and the sayings of wise men and their limit is reverence and godlinesse is their end and then fear shall be a duty and a rare instrument of many in all other cases it is superstition or folly it is sin or punishment the Ivy of Religion and the misery of an honest and a weak heart and is to be cured only by reason and good company a wise guide and a plain rule a cheerfull spirit and a contented minde by joy in God according to the commandements that is a rejoycing evermore 2. But besides this superstitious fear there is another fear directly criminall and it is cald worldly fear of which the Spirit of God hath said But the fearfull and incredulous shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death that is such fears which make men to fall in the time of persecution those that dare not own their faith in the face of a Tyrant or in despite of an accursed Law For though it be lawfull to be afraid in a storm yet it is not lawfull to leap into the sea though we may be more carefull for our fears yet we must be faithfull too and we may flie from the persecution till it overtakes us but when it does we must not change our Religion for our safety or leave the robe of Baptisme in the hand of the tempter and run away by all means St. Athanasius for 46 years did run and fight he disputed with the Arrians and fled from their Officers and that flies may be a man worth preserving if he bears his faith along with him and leaves nothing of his duty behinde but when duty and life cannot stand together he that then flies a persecution by delivering
and though I cannot think that Nature was so sacramentall as to point out the holy and mysterious Trinity by the triangle of the heart yet it is certain that the heart of man is Gods speciall portion and every angle ought to point out towards him directly that is the soul of man ought to be presented to God and given to him as an oblation to the interest of his service 1. For to worship God with our souls consesses one of his glorious ateributes it declares him to be the searcher of hearts and that he reads the secret purposes and beholds the smallest arrests of fancy and bends in all the flexures and intriques of crafty people and searches out every plot and trifling conspiracy against him and against our selves and against our brethren 2. It advances the powers and concernments of his providence and confesses all the affairs of men all their cabinets and their nightly counsels their snares and two-edged mischiefs to be over-rul'd by him for what he sees he judges and what he judges he rules and what he rules must turn to his glory and of this glory he reflects rayes and influences upon his servants and it shall also turn to their good 3. This service distinguishes our duty towards God from all our conversation with man and separates the divine commandements from the imperfect decrees of Princes and Republiques for these are satisfied by the outward work and cannot take any other cognisance of the heart and the will of man but as himself is pleased to signifie He that wishes the fiscus empty and that all the revenues of the Crown were in his counting-house cannot be punished by the Lawes unlesse himself become his own traytor and accuser and therefore what man cannot discern he must not judge and must not require but God sees it and judges it and requires it and therefore reserves this as his own portion and the chiefest feudall right of his Crown 4. He that secures the heart secures all the rest because this is the principle of all the moral actions of the whole man the hand obeys this and the feet walk by its prescriptions we eat and drink by measures which the soul desires and limits and though the naturall actions of man are not subject to choice rule yet the animal actions are under discipline and although it cannot be helped but we shall desire yet our desires can receive measures and the lawes of circumstances and be reduced to order and nature be changed into grace and the actions animall such as are eating drinking laughing weeping c. shall become actions of Religion and those that are simply naturall such as being hungry and thirsty shall be adopted into the retinue of religion and become religious by being order'd or chastis'd or suffered or directed and therefore God requires the heart because he requires all and all cannot be secured without the principle be inclosed But he that seals up a fountain may drink up all the waters alone and may best appoint the channels where it shall run and what grounds it shall refresh 5. That I may summe up many reasons in one God by requiring the heart secures the perpetuity and perseverance of our duty and its sincerity and its integrity and its perfection for so also God takes account of little things it being all one in the heart of man whether maliciously it omits a duty in a small instance or in a great for although the expression hath variety and degrees in it in relation to those purposes of usefulnesse and charity whither God designs it yet the obedience and disobedience is all one and shall be equally accounted for and therefore the Jew Tryphon disputed against Justin that the precepts of the Gospell were impossible to be kept because it also requiring the heart of man did stop every egression of disorders for making the root holy and healthfull as the Balsame of Judaea or the drops of Manna in the evening of the sabbath it also causes that nothing spring thence but gummes sit for incense and oblations for the Altar of proposition and a cloud of perfume fit to make atonement for our sins and being united to the great sacrifice of the world to reconcile God and man together Upon these reasons you see it is highly fit that God should require it and that we should pay the sacrifice of our hearts and not at all think that God is satisfied with the work of the hands when the affections of the heart are absent He that prayes because he would be quiet and would fain be quit of it and communicates for fear of the lawes and comes to Church to avoid shame and gives almes to be eased of an importunate begger or relieves his old parents because they will not dye in their time and provides for his children lest he be compeld by Lawes and shame but yet complains of the charge of Gods blessings this man is a servant of the eyes of men and offers parchment or a white skin in sacrifice but the flesh and the inwards he leaves to be consumed by a stranger fire And therefore this is a deceit that robs God of the best and leaves that for religion which men pare off It is sacriledge and brings a double curse 2. He that serves God with the soule without the body when both can be conjoyned doth the work of the Lord deceitfully Paphnutius whose knees were cut for the testimony of Jesus was not obliged to worship with the humble flexures of the bending penitents and blinde Bartimeus could not read the holy lines of the Law and therefore that part of the work was not his duty and God shall not call Lazarus to account for not giving almes nor St. Peter and St. John for not giving silver and gold to the lame man nor Epaphroditus for not keeping his fasting dayes when he had his sicknesse But when God hath made the body an apt minister to the soul and hath given money for almes and power to protect the oppressed and knees to serve in prayer and hands to serve our needs then the soul alone is not to work but as Rachel gave her maid to Jacob and she bore children to her Lord upon her Mistresse knees and the children were reckoned to them both because the one had fruitfull desires and the other a fruitfull wombe so must the body serve the needs of the spirit that what the one desires the other may effect and the conceptions of the soul may be the productions of the body and the body must bow when the soul worships and the hand must help when the soul pities and both together do the work of a holy Religion the body alone can never serve God without the conjunction and preceding act of the soul and sometimes the soul without the body is imperfect and vain for in some actions there is a body and a spirit a materiall and a spirituall part and when the action
hath the same constitution that a man hath without the act of both it is as imperfect as a dead man the soul cannot produce the body of some actions any more then the body can put life into it and therefore an ineffective pity and a lazie counsell an empty blessing and gay words are but deceitfull charity Quod peto da Caï non peto consiliam He that gave his friend counsell to study the Law when he desired to borrow 20 l. was not so friendly in his counsell as he was uselesse in his charity spirituall acts can cure a spirituall malady but if my body needs relief because you cannot feed me with Diagrams or cloath me with Euclids elements you must minister a reall supply by a corporall charity to my corporall necessity This proposition is not only usefull in the doctrine of charity and the vertue of religion but in the professions of faith and requires that it be publick open and ingenuous In matters of necessary duty it is not sufficient to have it to our selves but we must also have it to God and all the world and as in the heart we beleeve so by the mouth we confesse unto salvation he is an ill man that is only a Christian in his heart and is not so in his professions and publications and as your heart must not be wanting in any good profession and pretences so neither must publick profession be wanting in every good and necessary perswasion The faith and the cause of God must be owned publiquely for if it be the cause of God it will never bring us to shame I do not say what ever we think we must tell it to all the world much lesse at all times and in all circumstances but we must never deny that which we beleeve to be the cause of God in such circumstances in which we can and ought to glorifie him But this extends also to other instances He that swears a false oath with his lips and unswears it with his heart hath deceived one more then he thinks for himself is the most abused person and when my action is contrary to men they will reprove me but when it is against my own perswasion I cannot but reprove my self and am witnesse and accuser and party and guilty and then God is the Judge and his anger will be a fierce executioner because we do the Lords work deceitfully 3. They are deceitfull in the Lords work that reserve one faculty for sin or one sin for themselves or one action to please their appetite and many for Religion Rabbt Kimchi taught his Scholars Cogitationem pravam Deus non habet vice facti nisi concepta fuerit in Dei sidem Religionem that God is never angry with an evill thought unlesse it be a thought of Apostasie from the Jewes religion and therefore provided that men be severe and close in their sect and party they might roll in lustfull thoughts and the torches they light up in the Temple might smoke with anger at one end and lust at the other so they did not flame out in egressions of violence and injustice in adulteries and fouler complications nay they would give leave to some degrees of evill actions for R. Moses and Selomoh taught that if the most part of a mans actions were holy and just though in one he sinned often yet the greater ingredient should prevail and the number of good works should outweigh the lesser account of evill things and this Pharisaicall righteousnesse is too frequent even amongst Christians For who almost is there that does not count fairly concerning himself if he reckons many vertues upon the stock of his Religion and but one vice upon the stock of his infirmity half a dozen to God and one for his company or his friend his education or his appetite and if he hath parted from his folly yet he will remember the fleshpots and please himself with a phantastick sin and call it home through the gates of his memory and place it at the door of fancy that there he may behold it and consider concerning what he hath parted withall out of the fears and terrors of religion and a necessary unavoidable conscience Do not many men go from sin to sin even in their repentance they go backward from sin to sin and change their crime as a man changes his uneasie load and shakes it off from one shoulder to support it with the other How many severe persons virgins and widows are so pleased with their chastity and their abstinence even from lawfull mixtures that by this means they fall into a worse pride insomuch that I remember St. Austin said Audco dicere superbis continentibus expedit cadere they that are chaste and proud it is sometimes a remedy for them to fall into sin and by the shame of lust to cure the devill of pride and by the sin of the body to cure the worser evils of the spirit and therefore he addes that he did beleeve God in a severe mercy did permit the barbarous nations breaking in upon the Roman Empire to violate many virgins professed in Cloisters and religious Families to be as a mortification of their pride lest the accidentall advantages of a continent life should bring them into the certain miseries of a spirituall death by taking away their humility which was more necessary then their virgin state It is not a cure that men may use but God permits it sometimes with greater safety through his wise conduct and over-ruling providence St. Peter was safer by his fall as it fell out in the event of things then by his former confidence Man must never cure a sin by a sin but he that brings good out of our evill he can when he please But I speak it to represent how deceitfully many times we do the work of the Lord. We reprove a sinning Brother but do it with a pompous spirit we separate from scandall and do it with glory and a gaudy heart we are charitable to the poor but will not forgive our unkinde enemies or we powre relief into their bags but we please our selves and drink drunk and hope to commute with God giving the fruit of our labours or effluxes of money for the sin of our souls And upon this account it is that two of the noblest graces of a Christian are to very many persons made a savour of death though they were intended for the beginning and the promotion of an eternal life and those are faith and charity some men think if they have faith it is enough to answer all the accusations of sin which our consciences or the Devils make against us If I be a wanton person yet my faith shall hide it and faith shall cover the follies of drunkennesse and I may all my life relye upon faith at last to quit my scores For he that is most carefull is not innocent but must be saved by faith and he that is least carefull may
sua amare ubi turpia non solùm delectant sed etiam placent It is the worst of evils when men are so in love with sin that they are not only delighted with them but pleased also not only feel the relish with too quick a sense but also feel none of the objections nothing of the pungency the sting or the lessening circumstances However to these men I say this only that if by experience they feel sin pleasant it is as certain also by experience that most sins are in their own nature sharpnesses and diseases * and that very few do pretend to pleasure * That a man cannot feel any deliciousnesse in them but when he is helped by folly and inconsideration that is a wise man cannot though a boy or a fool can be pleased with them * That they are but reliques and images of pleasure left upon Natures stock and therefore much lesse then the pleasures of naturall vertues * That a man must run through much trouble before he brings them to act and enjoyment * That he must take them in despite of himself against reason and his conscience the tenderest parts of man and the most sensible of affliction * They are at the best so little that they are limited as one sense not spread upon all the faculties like the pleasures of vertue which make the bones fat by an intellectuall rectitude and the eyes spritely by a wise proposition and pain it self to become easie by hope and a present rest within * It is certain I say by a great experience that the pleasures of sin enter by cursings and a contradictory interest and become pleasant not by their own relish but by the viciousnesse of the palat by spite and peevishnesse by being forbidden and unlawfull * And that which is its sting is at some times the cause of all its sweetnesse it can have * They are gone sooner then a dream * They are crossed by one another and their Parent is their Tormentor * and when sinnes are tyed in a chain with that chain they dash one anothers brains out or make their lodging restlesse * It is never lik'd long * and promises much and performes little * it is great at distance and little at hand against the nature of all substantiall things * And after all this how little pleasure is left themselves have reason with scorn and indignation to resent So that if experience can be pretended against experience there is nothing to be said to it but the words which Phryne desired to be writ on the gates of Thebes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Phryne the harlot built it up but Alexander digg'd it down the pleasure is supported by little things by the experience of fools and them that observed nothing and the relishes tasted by artificiall appetites by art and cost by violence and preternaturall desires by the advantage of deception and evill habits by expectation and delayes by dreams and inconsiderations these are the harlots hands that build the fairy eastle but the hands of reason and religion sober counsels and the voice of God experience of wise men and the sighings and intolerable accents of perishing or returning sinners dig it down and sow salt in the foundations that they may never spring up in the accounts of men that delight not in the portion of fools and forgetfulnesse Neque enim Deus ita viventibus quicquam promisit boni neque ipsa per se mens humana talium sibi conscia quicquam boni sperare audet To men that live in sinne God hath promised no good and the conscience it self dares not expect it SERMON XX. Part II. WE have already opened this dunghill cover'd with snow which was indeed on the outside white as the spots of leprosie but it was no better and if the very colours and instruments of deception if the fucus and ceruse be so spotted and sullyed what can we suppose to be under the wrinkled skin what in the corrupted liver and in the sinks of the body of sin That we are next to consider But if we open the body and see what a confusion of all its parts what a rebellion and tumult of the humors what a disorder of the members what a monstrosity or deformity is all over we shall be infinitely convinced that no man can choose a sin but upon the same ground on which he may choose a feaver or long for madnesse or the gout Sin in its naturall efficiency hath in it so many evils as must needs afright a man and scare the confidence of every one that can consider * When our blessed Saviour shall conduct his Church to the mountains of glory he shall present it to God without spot or wrinkle that is pure and vigorous intirely freed from the power and the infection of sin Upon occasion of which expression it hath been spoken that sin leaves in the soul a stain or spot permanent upon the spirit discomposing the order of its beauty and making it appear to God in sordibus in such filthinesse that he who is of pure eyes cannot behold But roncerning the nature or proper effects of this spot or stain they have not been agreed Some call it an obligation or a guilt of punishment so Scotus Some fancy it to be an elongation from God by a dissimilitude of conditions so Peter Lombard Alexander of Ales sayes it is a privation of the proper beauty and splendor of the soul with which God adorn'd it in the creation and superaddition of grace and upon this expression they most agree but seem not to understand what they mean by it and it signifies no more but as you describing sicknesse call it a want of health and folly a want of wisdome which is indeed to say what a thing is not but not to tell what it is But that I may not be hindred by this consideration we may observe that the spots and stains of sin are metaphoricall significations of the disorder and evill consequents of sin which it leaves partly upon the soul partly upon the state and condition of a man as meeknesse is called an ornament and faith a shield and salvation a helmet and sin it self a wrinkle corruption rottennesse a burden a wound death filthinesse so it is a◠defiling of a man that is as the body contracts nastinesse and dishonour by impure contacts and adherencies so does the soul receive such a change as must be taken away before it can enter in to the eternall regions and house of purity But it is not a distinct thing not an inherent quality which can be separated from other evill effects of sin which I shall now reckon by their more proper names and St. Paul comprises under the scornfull appellative of shame 1. The first naturall fruit of sin is ignorance Man was first tempted by the promise of knowledge he fell into darknesse by beleeving the Devill holding forth to him a new light It was
burning basons do with intolerable circles of reflected fire Such are the principles of a sinners Philosophy And no wiser are his hopes all his hopes that he hath is that he shall have time to repent of that which he chooses greedily that he whom he every day provokes will save him whether he will or no that he can in an instant or in a day make amends for all the evils of 40 years or else that he shall be saved whether he does or no that heaven is to be had for a sigh or a short prayer and yet hell shall not be consequent to the affections and labours and hellish services of a whole life he goes on and cares not he hopes without a promise and refuses to beleeve all the threatnings of God but beleeves he shall have a mercy for which he never had a revelation If this be knowledge or wisdome then there is no such thing as folly no such disease as madnesse But then consider that there are some sins whose very formality is a lye Superstition could not be in the world if men did beleeve God to be good and wise free and mercifull not a tyrant not an unreasonable exactor no man would dare do in private what he fears to do in publick if he did know that God sees him there and will bring that work of darknesse into light But he is so foolish as to think that if he sees nothing nothing sees him for if men did perceive God to be present and yet do wickedly it is worse with them then I have yet spoke of and they beleeve another lie that to be seen by man will bring more shame then to be discerned by God or that the shame of a few mens talk is more intolerable then to be confounded before Christ and his army of Angels and Saints and all the world * He that excuses a fault by telling a lie beleeves it better to be guilty of two faults then to be thought guilty of one and every hypocrite thinks it not good to be holy but to be accounted so is a fine thing that is that opinion is better then reality and that there is in vertue nothing good but the fame of it * And the man that takes revenge relies upon this foolish proposition that his evill that he hath already suffer'd growes lesse if another suffers the like that his wound cannot smart if by my hand he dies that gave it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sad accents and dolefull tunes are increased by the number of mourners but the sorrow is not at all lessened I shall not need to thrust into this account the other evils of mankinde that are the events of ignorance but introduc'd by sin such as are our being moved by what we see strongly and weakly by what we understand that men are moved rather by a fable then by a syllogisme by parables then by demonstrations by examples then by precepts by seeming things then by reall by shadowes then by substances that men judge of things by their first events and measure the events by their own short lives or shorter observations that they are credulous to beleeve what they wish and incredulous of what makes against them measuring truth or falshood by measures that cannot fit them as foolishly as if they should judge of a colour by the dimensions of a body or feel musick with the hand they make generall conclusions from particular instances and take account of Gods actions by the measures of a man Men call that justice that is on their side and all their own causes are right and they are so alwayes they are so when they affirm them in their youth and they are so when they deny them in their old age and they are confident in all their changes and their first error which they now see does not make them modest in the proposition which they now maintain for they do not understand that what was may be so again So foolish and ignorant was I said David and as it were a beast before thee Ambition is folly and temerity is ignorance and confidence never goes without it and impudence is worse and zeal or contention is madnesse and prating is want of wisdome and lust destroyes it and makes a man of a weak spirit and a cheap reasoning and there are in the Catalogue of of sins very many which are directly kinds and parts and appendages of ignorance such as are blindnesse of minde affected ignorance and wilfull neglect of hearing the word of God resolved incredulity forgetfulnesse of holy things lying and beleeving a lye this is the fruit of sin this is the knowledge that the Devill promised to our first parents as the rewards of disobedience and although they sinn'd as weakly and fondly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon as slight grounds and trifling a temptation and as easie a deception as many of us since yet the causes of our ignorance are increased by the multiplication of our sins and if it was so bad in the green tree it is much worse in the dry and no man is so very a fool as the sinner and none are wise but the servants of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The wise Chaldees and the wiser Hebrewes which worship God chastly and purely they only have a right to be called wise all that do not so are fools and ignorants neither knowing what it is to be happy nor how to purchase it ignorant of the noblest end and of the competent means towards it they neither know God nor themselves and no ignorance is greater then this or more pernicious What man is there in the world that thinks himself covetous or proud and yet millions are who like Harpaste think that the house is dark but not themselves Vertue makes our desires temperate and regular it observes our actions condemns our faults mortifies our lusts watches all our dangers and temptations but sin makes our desires infinite and we would have we cannot tell what we strive that we may forget our faults we labour that we may neither remember nor consider we justifie our errors and call them innocent and that which is our shame we miscall honour and our whole life hath in it so many weak discourses and trifling propositions that the whole world of sinners is like the Hospitall of the insensati madnesse and folly possesses the greater part of mankinde What greater madnesse is there then to spend the price of a whole farm in contention for three sheaves of corn and yet tantum pectora caecae noctis habent this is the wisdome of such as are contentious and love their own will more then their happinesse their humour more then their peace Furor est post omnia perdere naulum Men lose their reason and their religion and themselves at last for want of understanding and all the wit and discourses by which sin creeps in are but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 frauds of the tongue and consultations of
or endure one blushing for all his hopes and interests of heaven It is no shame to be reproved but to deserve it but he that deserves it and will doe so still shall increase his shame into confusion and bring upon himselfe a sorrow bigger then the calamities of war and plagues and hospitals and poverty He onely is truely wise and will be certainly happy that so understands himself and hates his sin that he will not nurse it but get to himselfe a Reprover on purpose whose warrant shall be liberty whose thanks shall be amendment whose entertainment shall be obedience for a flattering word is like a bright sun-shine to a sore Eye it increases the trouble and lessens the sight Haec demum sapiet dictio quae feriet The severe word of the reproving man is wise and healthfull But because all times and all circumstances and all persons are not fit for this imployment et plurima sunt quae Non audent homines pertusâ dicere laenâ Some will not endure that a pore man or an obliged person should reprove them and themselves are often so unprofitable servants that they will rather venture their friends damnation then hazard their owne interest therefore in the performance of this duty of the usefull communication the following measures are fit to be observed 1. Let not your reproofe be publick and personall if it be publick it must be in generall if it be personall it must be in private and this is expressely commanded by our blessed Saviour If thy Brother offends tell it him between him and thee for when it comes afterwards in case of contumacy to be declared in publick it passes from fraternall correption to Ecclesiasticall discipline When Socrates reproved Plato at a feast Plato told him it had been better he had told him his fault in private for to speak it publickly is indecency Socrates replyed and so it is for you publickly to condemne that indecency For it is the nature of man to be spitefull when he is shamed and to esteem that the worst of evils and therefore to take impudence and perseverance for its cover when his shame is naked And for this indiscretion Aristomenes the Tutor of Ptolemy who before the Corinthian Embassadors reproved the King for sleeping at the solemne audience profited nothing but enraged the Prince and was himself forc'd to drink poyson But this warinesse is not alwayes necessary For 1. a publick and an authoriz'd person may doe it publickly and may name the person as himself shall judge expedient secuit Lucilius urbem Te Lupe te Muti genuinum fregit in illis Omne vafer vitium Lucilius was a censor of manners and by his office he had warrant and authority 2. There are also some cases in which a publick reproofe is prudent and that is when the crime is great but not understood to be any at all for then it is Instruction and Catechism and layes aside the affront and trouble of reproofe Thus Ignatius the Martyr did reprove Trajan sacrificing at the Altar in the sight of all the Officers of the Army and the Iews were commanded to reprove the Babylonians for Idolatry in the land of their Captivity and if we see a Prince in the confidence of his pride and carelesnesse of spirit and heat of war spoyle a Church or rob God it is then fit to tell him the danger of Sacriledge if otherwise he cannot well be taught his danger and his duty 3. There are some circumstances of person in which by interpretation duty or custome a leave is indulged or presum'd that liberty may be prudently used publickly to reprove the publick vices so it was in the old days of the Romans vice had then so little footing and authority so few friends and advocates that the Prophets and Poets used a bolder liberty to disgrace whatsoever was amisse unde illa priorum Scribendi quodcunque animo flagrante liberet Simplicitas and much of the same liberty is still reserved to Pulpits and to the Bishops office save onely that although they may reprove publickly yet they may not often doe it personally 2. Use not to reprove thy brother for every thing but for great things onely for this is the office of a Tutor not of a Friend and few men will suffer themselves to abide alwayes under Pupillage When the friend of Philotimus the Physician came to him to be cured of a sore finger he told him Heus tu non tibi cum reduvia est negoâ—ium he let his finger alone and told him that his liver was impostumate and he that tells his friend that his countenance is not grave enough in the Church when it may be the man is an Atheist offers him a cure that will doe him no good and to chastise a trifle is not a worthy price of that noblest liberty and ingenuity which becomes him that is to heale his brothers soule But when a vice stains his soule when he is a foole in his manners when he is proud and impatient of contradiction when he disgraces himselfe by talking weakly and yet beleeves himselfe wise and above the confidence of a sober person then it concerns a friend to rescue him from folly So Solon reproved Croesus and Socrates Alcibiades and Cyrus chid Cyaxares and Plato told to Dion that of all things in the world he should beware of that folly by which men please themselves and despise a better judgement quia ei vitio adsidet solitudo Because that folly hath in it singularity and is directly contrary to all capacities of a friendship or the entertainments of necessary reproofe 3. Vse not liberty of reproofe in the dayes of sorrow and affliction for the calamity it self is enough to chastise the gayeties of sinning persons and to bring him to repentance it may be sometimes fit to insinuate the mention of the cause of that sorrow in order to repentance and a cure But severe and biting language is then out of season and it is like putting vineger to an enflamed and smarting eye it increases the anguish and tempts unto impatience In the accidents of a sad person we must doe as nurses to their falling children snatch them up and still their cryings and entertain their passion with some delightfull avocation but chide not then when the sorrowfull man needs to be refreshed When Crater the Cynic met Demetrius Phalereus in his banishment and trouble he went to him and spoke to him friendly and used his Philosophy in the ministeries of comfort and taught him to bear his trouble nobly and so wrought upon the criminal and wilde Demetrius and he moved him to repentance who if he had been chidden as he expected would have scorn'd the manners of the Cynic and hated his presence and institution and Perseus kil'd Euchus and Eulaeus for reproving his rashnesse when he was newly defeated by the Romanes 4. Avoid all the evill appendages of this liberty for since to reprove a
is his gain and this man understands the things of God and is ready to die for Christ and fears nothing but to sin against God and his will is filled with love and it springs out in obedience to God and in charity to his brother and of such a man we cannot make judgement by his fortune or by his acquaintance by his circumstances or by his adherencies for they are the appendages of a naturall man but the spirituall is judged of no man that is the rare excellencies that make him happy do not yet make him illustrious unlesse we will reckon Vertue to be a great fortune and holinesse to be great Wisedom and God to be the best Friend and Christ the best Relative and the Spirit the hugest advantage and Heaven the greatest Reward He that knows how to value these things may sit down and reckon the felicities of him that hath the Spirit of God The purpose of this Discourse is this That since the Spirit of God is a new nature and a new life put into us we are thereby taught and enabled to serve God by a constant course of holy living without the frequent returns and intervening of such actions which men are pleased to call sins of infirmity Whosoever hath the Spirit of God lives the life of grace The Spirit of God rules in him and is strong according to its age and abode and allows not of those often sins which we think unavoidable because we call them naturall infirmities But if Christ he in you the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousnesse The state of sin is a state of death the state of a man under the law was a state of bondage and infirmity as S. Paul largely describes him in the seventh Chapter to the Romanes but he that hath the Spirit is made alive and free and strong and a conquerour over all the powers and violencies of sin such a man resists temptations falls not under the assault of sin returns not to the sin which he last repented of acts no more that errour which brought him to shame and sorrow but he that falls under a crime to which he still hath a strong and vigorous inclination he that acts his sin and then curses it and then is tempted and then sins again and then weeps again and calls himself miserable but still the inchantment hath confined him to that circle this man hath not the Spirit for where the Spirit of God is there is liberty there is no such bondage and a returning folly to the commands of sin But because men deceive themselves with calling this bondage a pitiable and excusable infirmity it will not be uselesse to consider the state of this question more particularly lest men from the state of a pretended infirmity fall into a reall death 1. No great sin is a sin of infirmity or excusable upon that stock But that I may be understood we must know that every sin is in some sense or other a sin of infirmity When a man is in the state of spirituall sicknesse or death he is in a state of infirmity for he is a wounded man a prisoner a slave a sick man weak in his judgement and weak in his reasoning impotent in his passions of childish resolutions great inconstancy and his purposes untwist as easily as the rude conjuncture of uncombining cables in the violence of a Northern tempest and he that is thus in infirmity cannot be excused for it is the aggravation of the state of his sin he is so infirm that he is in a state unable to do his duty Such a man is a servant of sin a slave of the Devil an heir of corruption absolutely under command and every man is so who resolves for ever to avoid such a sin and yet for ever falls under it for what can he be but a servant of sin who fain would avoid it but cannot that is he hath not the Spirit of God within him Christ dwels not in his soul for where the Son is there is liberty and all that are in the Spirit are sons of God and servants of righteousnesse and therefore freed from sin But then there are also sins of infirmity which are single actions intervening seldom in litle instances unavoidable or through a faultlesse ignorance Such as these are alwayes the allays of the life of the best men and for these Christ hath payd and they are never to be accounted to good men save onely to make them more wary and more humble Now concerning these it is that I say No great sin is a sin of excusable or unavoidable infirmity Because whosoever hath received the Spirit of God hath sufficient knowledge of his duty and sufficient strengths of grace and sufficient advertency of minde to avoid such things as do great and apparent violence to piety and religion No man can justly say that it is a sin of infirmity that he was drunk For there are but three causes of every sin a fourth is not imaginable 1. If ignorance cause it the sin is as full of excuse as the ignorance was innocent But no Christian can pretend this to drunkennesse to murder to rebellion to uncleannesse For what Christian is so uninstructed but that he knows Adultery is a sin 2. Want of observation is the cause of many indiscreet and foolish actions Now at this gap many irregularities do enter and escape because in the whole it is impossible for a man to be of so present a spirit as to consider and reflect upon every word and every thought but it is in this case in Gods laws otherwise then in mans the great flies cannot passe thorow without observation little ones do and a man cannot be drunk and never take notice of it or tempt his neighbours wife before he be aware therefore the lesse the instance be the more likely it is to be a sin of infirmity and yet if it be never so little if it be observed then it ceases to be a sin of infirmity 3. But because great crimes cannot pretend to passe undiscernably it follows that they must come in at the door of malice that is of want of Grace in the absence of the Spirit they destroy where ever they come and the man dies if they passe upon him It is true there is flesh and blood in every regenerate man but they do not both rule the flesh is left to tempt but not to prevail And it were a strange condition if both the godly and the ungodly were captives to sin and infallibly should fall into temptation and death without all difference saue onely that the godly sins unwillingly and the ungodly sins willingly But if the same things be done by both and God in both be dishonoured and their duty prevaricated the pretended unwillingnesse is the signe of a greater and a baser slavery and of a condition lesse to be endured For the servitude which is
to choose and a promise to exchange for our temperance and faith and charity and justice for these I say happinesse exceeding great happinesse that we shall be Kings that we shall reigne with God with Christ with all the holy Angels for ever in felicities so great that we have not now capacities to understand it our heart is not big enough to think it there cannot in the world be a greater inducement to engage us a greater argument to oblige us to do our duty God hath not in heaven a bigger argument it is not possible any thing in the world should be bigger which because the Spirit of God hath revealed to us if by this strength of his we walk in his wayes and be ingrafted into his stock and bring forth his fruits the fruits of the Spirit then we are in Christ and Christ in us then we walk in the spirit and the Spirit dwels in us and our portion shall be there where Christ by the Spirit maketh intercession for us that is at the right hand of his Father for ever and ever Amen Sermon III. THE DESCENDING AND ENTAILED CVRSE Cut off Exodus 20. part of the 5. verse I the Lord thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me 6. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my Commandements IT is not necessary that a Common-wealth should give pensions to Oratours to disswade men from running into houses infected with the plague or to intreat them to be out of love with violent torments or to create in men evil opinions concerning famine or painfull deaths Every man hath a sufficient stock of self love upon the strength of which he hath entertained principles strong enough to secure himself against voluntary mischiefs and from running into states of death and violence A man would think that this I have now said were in all cases certainly true and I would to God it were For that which is the greatest evil that which makes all evils that which turns good into evil and every naturall evil into a greater sorrow and makes that sorrow lasting and perpetual that which sharpens the edge of swords and makes agues to be fever and 〈◊〉 to turn into plagues that which puts stings into every fly and uneasinesse to every trifling accident and strings every whâ—â— with scorpions you know I must needs mean sin that evil men suffer patiently and choose willingly and run after it greedily and will not suffer themselves to be divorced from it and therefore God hath hired servants to fight a-against this evil he hath set Angels with fiery swords to drive us from it he hath imployed Advocates to plead against it he hath made Laws and Decrees against it he hath dispatched Prophets to warn us of it and hath established an Order of men men of his own family and who are fed at his own charges I mean the whole Order of the Clergy whose office is like watchmen to give an alarum at every approach of sin with as much affrightment as if an enemy were neer or the sea broke in upon the flat Countrey and all this onely to perswade men not to be extremely miserable for nothing for vanity for a trouble for a disease for some sins naturally are diseases and all others are naturall nothings meer privations or imperfections contrary to goodnesse to felicity to God himself And yet God hath hedged sin round about with thorns and sin of it self too brings thorns and it abuses a man in all his capacities and it places poison in all those seats and receptions where he could possibly entertain happinesse For if sin pretend to please the sense it doth first abuse it shamefully and then humours it it can onely feed an impostume no naturall reasonable and perfective appetite and besides its own essentiall appendages and proprieties things are so ordered that a fire is kindled round about us and every thing within us above below us and on every side of us is an argument against and an enemy to sin and for its single pretence that it comes to please one of the senses one of those faculties which are in us the same they are in a Cow it hath an evil so communicative that it doth not onely work like poison to the dislolution of soul and body but it is a sicknesse like the plague it infects all our houses and corrupts the air and the very breath of heaven for it moves God first to jealousie and that takes off his friendship and kindnesse towards us and then to anger and that makes him a resolved enemy and it brings evil not onely upon our selves but upon all our relatives upon our selves and our children even the children of our Nephews Ad natos natorum qui nascentur ab illis to the third and fourth generation and therefore if a man should despise the eye or sword of man if he sins he is to contest with the jealousie of a provoked God If he doth not regard himself let him pity his pretty children If he be angry and hates all that he sees and is not solioitous for his children yet let him pitty the generations which are yet unborn let him not bring a curse upon his whole family and suffer his name to rot in curses and dishonours let not his memory remain polluted with an eternal stain if all this will not deter a man from sin there is no instrument left for thats mans vertue no hopes of his felicity no recovery of his sorrows and sicknesses but he must sink under the stroaks of a jealous God into the dishonour of eternal ages and the groanings of a never ceasing sorrow God is a jealous God that is the first great stroke he strikes against sin he speakes after the manner of men and in so speaking we know he that is jealous is suspicious he is inquisitive he is implacable 1. God is pleased to represent himself a person very suspioious both in respect of persons and things For our persons we give him cause enough for we are sinners from our Mothers woâ—â—b we make solemn vows and break them instantly we cry for pardon and still renew the sin we desire God to try us once more and we provoke him ten times further we use the means of grace to cure us and we turn them into vices and opportunites of sin we curse our sins and yet long for them extremely we renounce them publickly and yet send for them in private and shew them kindnesse we leave little offiences but our faith and our charity is not strong enough to Master great ones and sometimes we are sham'd out of great ones but yet entertain little ones or if we disdain both yet we love to remember them and delight in their past actions and bring them home to us at least by fiction of imagination and we love to be
if the fathers eat sowre grapes the childrens teeth shall not be set on edge and therefore the sin of Adam which was derived to all the world did not bring the world to any other death but temporall by the intermediall stages of sickness and temporal infelicities And it is not said that sin passed upon all men but death that also no otherwise but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in as much as al men have sinned as they have followed the steps of their father so they are partakers of this death And therefore it is very remarkable that death brought in by sin was nothing superinduced to man man onely was reduced to his own naturall condition from which before Adams fall he stood exempted by supernaturall favour and therefore although the taking away that extraordinary grace or priviledge was a punishment yet the suffering the naturall death was directly none but a condition of his creation naturall and therefore not primarily evil but if not good yet at least indifferent And the truth and purpose of this observation will extend it self if we observe that before any man died Christ was promised by whom death was to lose its sting by whom death did cease to be an evil and was or might be if we do belong to Christ a state of advantage So that we by occasion of Adams sin being returned to our naturall certainty of dying do still even in this very particular stand between the blessing and the cursing If we follow Christ death is our friend If we imitate the praevarication of Adam then death becomes an evil the condition of our nature becomes the punishment of our own sin not of Adams for although his sin brought death in yet it is onely our sin that makes death to be evil And I desire this to be observed because it is of great use in vindicating the Divine justice in the matter of this question The materiall part of the evil came from our father upon us but the formality of it the sting and the curse is onely by our selves 2. For the fault of others many may become miserable even all or any of those whose relation is such to the sinner that he in any sense may by such inflictions be punished execrable or oppressed Indeed it were strange if when a plague were in Ethiopia the Athenians should be infected or if the house of Pericles were visited and Thucydides should die for it For although there are some evils which as Plutarch saith are ansis propagationibus praedita incredibili celeritate in longinquum penetrantia such which can dart evil influences as Porcupines do their quils yet as at so great distances the knowledge of any confederate events must needs be uncertain so it is also uselesse because we neither can joyne their causes nor their circumstances nor their accidents into any neighbourhood of conjunction Relations are seldome noted at such distances and if they were it is certain so many accidents will intervene that will out-weigh the efficacy of such relations that by any so far distant events we cannot be instructed in any duty nor understand our selves reproved for any fault But when the relation is neerer and is joyned under such a head and common cause that the influence is perceived and the parts of it do usually communicate in benefit notices or infelicity especially if they relate to each other as superiour and inferiour then it is certain the sin is infectious I mean not onely in example but also in punishment And of this I shall shew 1. In what instances usually it is so 2. For what reasons it is so and justly so 3. In what degree and in what cases it is so 4. What remedies there are for this evil 1. It is so in kingdoms in Churches in families in politicall artificiall and even in accidentall societies When David numbred the people God was angry with him but he punished the people for the crime seventy thousand men died of the plague and when God gave to David the choice of three plagues he chose that of the pestilence in which the meanest of the people and such which have the least society with the acts and crimes of Kings are most commonly devoured whilest the powerfull and sinning persons by arts of physick and flight by provisions of nature and accidents are more commonly secured * But the story of the Kings of Israel hath furnished us with an example sitted with all the stranger circumstances in this question Joshuah had sworn to the Gibeonites who had craftily secured their lives by exchanging it for their liberties Almost 500. yeers after Saul in zeal to the men of Israel and Judah slew many of them After this Saul dies and no question was made of it But in the dayes of David there was a famine in the land three yeers together and God being inquired of said it was because of Saul his killing the Gibeonites What had the people to do with their Kings fault or at least the people of David with the fault of Saul That we shall see anon But see the way that was appointed to expiate the crime and the calamity David took seven of Sauls sons and hanged them up against the Sun and after that God was intreated for the land The story observes one circumstance more that for the kindnesse of Jonathan David spared Mephibosheth Now this story doth not onely instance in Kingdoms but in families too The fathers fault is punished upon the sons of the family and the Kings fault upon the people of his land even after the death of the King after the death of the father Thus God visited the sin of Ahab partly upon himself partly upon his sons I will not bring the evil in his dayes but in his sons dayes will I bring the evil upon his house Thus did God slay the childe of Bathsheba for the sin of his father David and the whole family of Eâ—i all his kinred of the neerer lines were thrust from the priesthood and a curse made to descend upon his children for many ages that all the males should die young and in the flower of their youth The boldnesse and impiety of Cham made his posterity to be accursed and brought slavery into the world Because Ataalek fought with the sons of Israel at Rephidim God took up a quarrell against the nation for ever And above all examples is that of the Jews who put to death the Lord of life and made their nation to be an anathema for ever untill the day of restitution His blood be upon us and upon our children If we shed innocent blood If we provoke God to wrath If we oppresse the poor If we crucifie the Lord of life again and put him to an open shame the wrath of God will be upon us and upon our children to make us a cursed family and who are the sinners to be the stock and original of the curse the pedigree of the misery
as Dion said of Caracalla 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The man was troublesome to all good men when they were alive but did them honour when they were dead And when Herod had killed Aristobulus yet he made him a most magnificent funeral because the Pharisees were of the same humor therefore our blessed Saviour bids them to filup the measure of their Fathers iniquity for they still continued the malice onely they painted it over with a pretence of piety and of disavowing their Fathers sin which if they had done really they being children of persecutors and much lesse could the adorning of the Prophets sepulchres have been just cause of a wo from christ this being an act of piety and the other of nature inevitable and not chosen by them and therefore not chargable upon them He therefore that will to reall purposes disavow his Fathers crimes must do it heartily and humbly and charitably and throw off all affections to the like actions For he that findes fault with his Father for killing Isaiah or Jeremy and himself shall kill Aristohulus and John the Baptist he that is angry because the old Prophets were murdered and shall imprison and begger and destroy the new ones He that disavows the persecution in the primitive times and honours the memory of the dead Martyrs and yet every day makes new ones He that blames the oppression of the Country by any of his predecessors and yet shall continue to oppresse his Tenants and all that are within his gripe that man cannot hope to be eased from the curse of his Fathers sins He goes on to imitate them and therefore to fill up their measure and to reap a full treasure of wrath 3. But concerning the third there is yet more difficulty Those sons that inherit their Fathers sins by possessing the price of their Fathers souls that is by enjoying the goods gotten by their Fathers rapine may certainly quit the inheritance of the curse if they quit the purchase of the sin that is if they pay their Fathers debts his debts of contract and his debts of justice his debts of entercourse and his debts of oppression I do not say that every man is bound to restore all the land which his Ancestors have unjustly snatched for when by law the possession is established though the Grandfather entred like a thief yet the Grand-child is bonae fidei possessor and may enjoy it justly and the reasons of this are great and necessary for the avoiding eternal suites and perpetual diseases of rest and conscience because there is no estate in the world that could be enjoyed by any man honestly if posterity were bound to make restitution of all the wrongs done by their progenitors But although the children of the far removed lines are not obliged to restitution yet others are and some for the same some for other reasons 1. Sons are tied to restore what their Fathers did usurpe or to make agreement and an acceptable recompence for it if the case be visible evident and notorious and the oppressed party demands it because in this case the law hath not setled the possession in the new tenant or if a judge hath it is by injury and there is yet no collateral accidental title transferred by long possession as it is in other cases and therefore if the son continues to oppresse the same person whom his Father first injured he may well expect to be the heire of his Fathers curse as well as of his cursed purchase 2. Whether by law and justice or not the person be obliged nay although by all the solemnities of law the unjust purchase be established and that in conscience the Grand-children be not obliged to restitution in their own particulars but may continue to enjoy it without a new sin yet if we see a curse descending upon the family for the old oppression done in the dayes of our Grandfathers or if we probpably suspect that to be the cause then if we make restitution we also most certainly remove the curse because we take away the matter upon which the curse is grounded I do not say we sin if we do not restore but that if we do not we may still be punished The reason of this is clear and visible For as without our faults in many cases we may enjoy those lands which our forefathers got unjustly so without our faults we may be punished for them For as they have transmitted the benefit to us it is but reasonable we should suffer the appendant calamity If we receive good we must also venture the evil that comes along withit res transit cum suo onere All lands and possessions passe with their proper burdens And if any of my Ancestors was a Tenant and a servant and held his lands as a Villane to his Lord his posterity also must do so though accidentally they become noble The case is the same If my Ancestors entred unjustly there is a curse and a plague that is due to that oppression and injustice and that is the burden of the land and it descends all along with it And although I by the consent of laws am a just possessor yet I am obliged to the burden that comes with the land I am indeed anotherkinde of person then my Grand-father he was an usurper but I am a just possessor but because in respect of the land this was but an accidentall change therefore I still am liable to the burden and the curse that descends with it but the way to take off the curse is to quit the title and yet a man may choose It may be to loose the land would be the bigger curses but if it be not the way is certain how you may be rid of it * There was a custome among the Greeks that the children of them that dyed of consumptions or dropsies all the while their Fathers bodies were burning in their funeral piles did sit with their feet in cold water hoping that such a lustration and ceremony would take off the lineal and descending contagion from the children I know not what cure they found by their superstition but we may be sure that if we wash not our feet but our hands of all the unjust purchases which our Fathers have transmitted to us their hydropick thirst of wealth shall not transmit to us a consumption of estate or any other curse But this remedy is onely in the matter of injury or oppression not in the case of other sins because other sins were transient and as the guilt did not passe upon the children so neither did the exteriour and permanent effect and therefore in other sins in case they do derive a curse it cannot be removed as in the matter of unjust possession it may be whose effect we may so order it shall no more stick to us then the guilt of our fathers personal actions The summe is this As Kingdoms use to expiate the faults of others by acts of justice and
God will forgive him and that repentance as it is now stated cannot be done At what time soever not upon a mans deathbed yet there are no such words in the whole Bible nor any neerer to the sense of them then the words I have now read to you out of the Prophet Ezekiel Let that therefore no more deceive you or be made a colour to countenance a persevering sinner or a deathbed penitent Neither is the duty of Repentance to be bought at an easier rate in the New Testament You may see it described in the 2 Cor. 7. 11. Godly sorrow worketh repentance Well but what is that repentance which is so wrought This it is Behold the self same thing that ye sorrowed after a godly sort what carefulnesse it wrought in you yea what clearing of your selves yea what indignation yea what fear ye what vehement desire yea what zeal yea what revenge These are the fruits of that sorrow that is effectual these are the parts of repentance clearing our selves of all that is past and great carefulnesse for the future anger at our selves for our old sins and fear lest we commit the like again vehement desires of pleasing God and zeal of holy actions and a revenge upon our selves for our sins called by Saint Paul in another place a judging our selves lest we be judged of the Lord. And in pursuance of this truth the primitive Church did not admit a sinning person to the publike communions with the faithfull till besides their sorrow they had spent some years in an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in doing good works and holy living and especially in such actions which did contradict that wicked inclination which led them into those sins whereof they were now admitted to repent And therefore we find that they stood in the station of penitents seven years 13 years and somtimes till their death before they could be reconciled to the peace of God and his Holy Church Scelerum si bene poenitet eradenda cupidinis pravi sunt elementa tenerae nimis mentes asperioribus Formandae studijs Horat. Repentance is the institution of a philosophical and severe life an utter extirpation of all unreasonablenesse and impiety and an addresse to and a finall passing through all the parts of holy living Now Consider whether this be imaginable or possible to be done upon our deathbed when a man is frighted into an involuntary a sudden and unchosen piety 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Hierocles He that never repents till a violent fear be upon him till he apprehend himself to be in the jawes of death ready to give up his unready and unprepared accounts till he sees the Judge sitting in all the addresses of dreadfulnesse and Majesty just now as he beleeves ready to pronounce that fearfull and intolerable sentence of Go ye cursed into everlasting fire this man does nothing for the love of God nothing for the love of vertue It is just as a condemned man repents that he was a Traytor but repented not till he was arrested and sure to die Such a repentance as this may still consist with as great an affection to sin as ever he had and it is no thanks to him if when the knife is at his throat then he gives good words and flatters But suppose this man in his health and the middest of all his lust it is evident that there are some circumstances of action in which the man would have refused to commit his most pleasing sin Would not the son of Tarquin have refused to ravish Lucrece if Junius Brutus had been by him Would the impurest person in the world act his lust in the market place or drink off an intemperate goblet if a dagger were placed at his throat In these circumstances their fear would make them declare against the present acting their impurities But does this cure the intemperance of their affections Let the impure person retire to his closet and Junius Brutus be ingaged in a far distant war and the dagger be taken from the drunkards throat and the fear of shame or death or judgement be taken from them all and they shall no more resist their temptation then they could before remove their fear and you may as well judge the other persons holy and haters of their sin as the man upon his death-bed to be penitent and rather they then he by how much this mans fear the fear of death and of the infinite pains of hell the fear of a provoked God and an angry eternall Judge are far greater then the apprehensions of publike shame or an abused husband or the poniard of an angry person These men then sin not because they dare not they are frighted from the act but not from the affection which is not to be cured but by discourse and reasonable acts and humane considerations of which that man is not naturally capable who is possessed with the greatest fear the fear of death and damnation If there had been time to cure his sin and to live the life of grace I deny not but God might have begun his conversion with so great a fear that he should never have wiped off its impression but if the man dies then dies when he onely declaims against and curses his sin as being the authour of his present fear and apprehended calamity It is very far from reconciling him to God or hopes of pardon because it proceeds from a violent unnaturall and intolerable cause no act of choice or vertue but of sorrow a deserved sorrow and a miserable unchosen unavoidable fear moriensque recepit Quas nollet victurus aquas He curses sin upon his deathbed and makes a Panegyrick of vertue which in his life time he accounted folly and trouble and a needlesse vexation Quae mens est hodie cur eadem non puero fuit vel cur his animis incolumes non redeunt genae I shall end this first Consideration with a plain exhortation that since repentance is a duty of so great and giant-like bulk let no man croud it up into so narrow room as that it be strangled in its birth for want of time and aire to breath in Let it not be put off to that time when a man hath scarce time enough to reckon all those particular duties which make up the integrity of its constitution Will any man hunt the wild boare in his garden or bait a bull in his closet will a woman wrap her childe in her handkerchiefe or a Father send his son to school when he is 50 yeers old These are undecencies of providence and the instrument contradicts the end And this is our case There is no roome for the repentance no time to act all its essentiall parts and a childe who hath a great way to go before he be wise may defer his studies and hope to become very learned in his old age and upon his deathbed as well as a vitious person may think to
before Reason and their understandings were abused in the choice of a temporall before an intellectuall and eternall good But they alwayes concluded that the Will of man must of necessity follow the last dictate of the understanding declaring an object to be good in one sence or other Happy men they were that were so Innocent that knew no pure and perfect malice and lived in an Age in which it was not easie to confute them But besides that now the wells of a deeper iniquity are discovered we see by too sad experience that there are some sins proceeding from the heart of man which have nothing but simple and unmingled malice Actions of meer spite doing evil because it is evil sinning without sensuall pleasures sinning with sensuall pain with hazard of our lives with actuall torment and sudden deaths and certain and present damnation sins against the Holy Ghost open hostilities and professed enmities against God and all vertue I can go no further because there is not in the world or in the nature of things a greater Evil. And that is the Nature and Folly of the Devil he tempts men to ruine and hates God and onely hurts himself and those he tempts and does himself no pleasure and some say he increases his own accidentall torment Although I can say nothing greater yet I had many more things to say if the time would have permitted me to represent the Falsenesse and Basenesse of the Heart 1. We are false our selves and dare not trust God 2. We love to be deceived and are angry if we be told so 3. We love to seem vertuous and yet hate to be so 4. We are melancholy and impatient and we know not why 5. We are troubled at little things and are carelesse of greater 6. We are overjoyed at a petty accident and despise great and eternall pleasures 7. We beleeve things not for their Reasons and proper Arguments but as they serve our turns be they true or false 8. We long extreamly for things that are forbidden us And what we despise when it is permitted us we snatch at greedily when it is taken from us 9. We love our selves more then we love God and yet we eat poysons daily and feed upon Toads and Vipers and nourish our deadly enemies in our bosome and will not be brought to quit them but brag of our shame and are ashamed of nothing but Vertue which is most honourable 10. We fear to die and yet use all means we can to make Death terrible and dangerous 11. We are busie in the faults of others and negligent of our own 12. We live the life of spies striving to know others and to be unknown our selves 13. We worship and flatter some men and some things because we fear them not because we love them 14. We are ambitious of Greatnesse and covetous of wealth and all that we get by it is that we are more beautifully tempted and a troop of Clients run to us as to a Pool whom first they trouble and then draw dry 15. We make our selves unsafe by committing wickednesse and then we adde more wickednesse to make us safe and beyond punishment 16. We are more servile for one curtesie that we hope for then for twenty that we have received 17. We entertain slanderers and without choice spread their calumnies and we hugg flatterers and know they abuse us And if I should gather the abuses and impieties and deceptions of the Heart as Chrysippus did the oracular Lies of Apollo into a Table I fear they would seem Remedilesse and beyond the cure of watchfulnesse and Religion Indeed they are Great and Many But the Grace of God is Greater and if Iniquity abounds then doth Grace superabound and that 's our Comfort and our Medicine which we must thus use 1. Let us watch our hearts at every turn 2. Deny it all its Desires that do not directly or by consequence end in godlinesse At no hand be indulgent to its fondnesses and peevish appetites 3. Let us suspect it as an Enemy 4. Trust not to it in any thing 5. But beg the grace of God with perpetuall and importunate prayer that he would be pleased to bring good out of these evils and that he would throw the salutary wood of the Crosse the merits of Christs death and passion into these salt waters and make them healthful and pleasant And in order to the mannaging these advises and acting the purposes of this prayer let us strictly follow a rule and choose a Prudent and faithful guide who may attend our motions and watch our counsels and direct our steps and prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths streight apt and imitable For without great watchfulnesse and earnest devotion and a prudent Guide we shall finde that true in a spiritual sense which Plutarch affirmed of a mans body in the natural that of dead Buls arise Bees from the carcases of horses hornets are produced But the body of man brings forth serpents Our hearts wallowing in their own natural and acquired corruptions will produce nothing but issues of Hell and images of the old serpent the divel for whom is provided the everlasting burning Sermon IX THE FAITH and PATIENCE OF THE SAINTS OR The righteous cause oppressed 1 Peter 4. 17. For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God and if it first begin at us what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God 18. And if the righteous scarcely be saved where shal the ungodly and the sinner appear SO long as the world lived by sense and discourses of natural reason as they were abated with humane infirmities and not at all heightned by the spirit divine revelations So long men took their accounts of good and bad by their being prosperous or unfortunate and amongst the basest and most ignorant of men that onely was accounted honest which was profitable and he onely wise that was rich and that man beloved of God who received from him all that might satisfie their lust their ambition or their revenge Fatis accede deisque colâ— felices miseros fuge sidera terra ut distant flamma maeri sic utile recto But because God sent wise men into the world and they were treated rudely by the world and exercised with evil accidents and this seemed so great a discouragement to vertue that even these wise men were more troubled to reconcile vertue and misery then to reconcile their affections to the suffering God was pleased to enlighten their reason with a little beame of faith or else heightned their reason by wiser principles then those of vulgar understandings and taught them in the clear glasse of faith or the dim perspective of Philosophy to look beyond the cloud and there to spie that there stood glories behinde their curtain to which they could not come but by passing through the cloud and being wet with the dew of heaven and the
vt que illis multo corrupta dolore voluptas Atque haec rara cadat dura inter saepe pericla And let but a sober answer tel me if any thing in the world be more distant either from goodnesse or happinesse then to scatter the plague of an accursed soul as upon our dearest children to make an universal curse to be the fountain of a mischief to be such a person whom our children and nephews shall hate and despise and curse when they groan under the burden of that plague which their fathers sins brought upon the familie If there were no other account to be given it were highly enough to verifie the intent of my text If the righteous scarcely be saved or escape Gods angry stroke the wicked must needs be infinitely more miserable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Neither I nor my son said the oldest of the Greek poets would be vertuous if to be a just person were all one as to be miserable No not onely in the end of affaires and at sun set but all the day long the Godly man is happy and the ungodly and the sinner is very miserable Pellitur a populo victus Cato tristior ille est Qui vicit facesque pudet rapuisse Catoni Nimque hoc dedecus est populi morumque ruina Non homo pulsus erat sed in uno victa potestas Râ—manumque decus And there needs no other argument to be added but this one great testimony that though the Godly are afflicted and persecuted yet even they are blessed and the persecutors are the most unsafe They are essentially happy whom affliction cannot make miserable Quis cur am neget esse te Deorunt propter quem fuit innocens ruina But turns into their advantages and that 's the state of the Godly and they are most intolerably accursed who have no portions in the blessings of eternity and yet cannot have comfort in the present purchases of their sin to whom even their sunshine brings a drought and their fairest is their foulest weather and that 's the portion of the sinner and the ungodly The godly are not made unhappy by their sorrows and the wicked are such whom prosperity it self cannot make fortunate 4 And yet after al this it is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he scapes but hardly here it will be well enough with him hereafter Isaac digged three wells the first was called contention for he drank the waters of strife and digged the well with his sword the second well was not altogether so hard a purchase he got it with some trouble but that being over he had some room and his fortune swelled and he called his well enlargement but his third he called abundance and then he dipt his foot in oyl and drank freely as out of a river every good man first sowes in tears he first drinks of the bottle of his own tears sorrow and trouble labour and disquiet strivings and temptations But if they passe through a torrent and that vertue becomes easie and habitual they finde their hearts enlarged and made spritely by the visitations of God and refreshment of his spirit and then their hearts are enlarged they know how to gather the down and softnesses from the sharpest thistles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 At first we cannot serve God but by passions and doing violence to all our wilder inclinations and suffering the violence of tyrants and unjust persons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The second dayes of vertue are pleasant and easie in the midst of all the appendant labours but when the Christians last pit is diged when he is descended to his grave and finished his state of sorrowes and suffering then God opens the river of abundance the rivers of life and never ceasing felicities And this is that which God promised to his people I hid my face from thee for a moment but with everlasting kindnesse will I have mercy on thee saith the Lord thy redeemer so much as moments are exceeded by eternity and the sighing of a man by the joyes of an angel and a salutary frown by the light of Gods countenance a few groans by the infinite and eternal Halalujahs so much are the sorrows of the godly to be undervalued in respect of what is deposited for them in the treasures of eternity Their sorrows can die but so cannot their joyes and if the blessed Martyrs and confessors were asked concerning their past sufferings their present rest and the joyes of their certain expectation you should hear them glory in nothing but in the mercies of God and in the crosse of the Lord Jesus Every chaine is a raie of light and every prison is a palace and every losse is the purchase of a kingdom and every affront in the cause of God is an eternal honour and every day of sorrow is a thousand years of comfort multiplied with a never ceasing numeration dayes without night joyes without sorrow sanctity without sin charity without stain possession without fear society without envying communication of joyes without lessening and they shall dwell in a blessed countrey where an enemy never entred and from whence a friend never went away Well might David say sunes ceciderunt mihi in praeclaris the cords of my tent my ropes and the sorrow of my pilgrimage fell to me in a good ground and I have a goodly heritage and when persecution hewes a man down from a high fortune to an even one or from thence to the face of the earth or from thence to the grave a good man is but preparing for a crown and the Tyrant does but first knock off the fetters of the soul the manacles of passion and desire sensual loves and lower appetites and if God suffers him to finish the persecution then he can but dismantle the souls prison and let the soul forth to flie to the mountains of rest and all the intermedial evils are but like the Persian punishments the executioner tore off their haires and rent their silken mantles and discomposed their curious dressings and lightly touched the skin yet the offender cried out with most bitter exclamations while his fault was expiated with a ceremony and without blood so does God to his servants he rends their upper garments and strips them of their unnecessary wealth and tyes them to Physick and salutary dicipline and they cry out under usages which have nothing but the outward sense and opinion of evil not the reall substance But if we would take the measures of images we must not take the height of the base but the proportion of the members nor yet measure the estates of men by their big looking supporter or the circumstance of an exteriour advantage but by its proper commensuration in its self as it stands in its order to eternity And then the godly
infliction he strikes more gently and whereas God had designed it may be the death of thy self or thy neerest relative he is content to take the life of a childe and so he did to David when he forbore him the Lord hath taken away thy sin thou shalt not die neverthelesse the childe that is born unto thee that shall die sometimes he puts the evil off to a further day as he did in the case of Ahab and Hezekiah to the first he brought the evil upon his house and to the second he brought the evil upon his kingdom in his sons dayes God forgiving onely so as to respite the evil that they should have peace in their own dayes And thus when we have committed a sin against God which hath highly provoked him to anger even upon our repentance we are not sure to be forgiven so as we understand forgivenes that is to hear no more of it never to be called to an account but we are happy if God so forgives us as not to throw us into the insufferable flames of hell though he smite us still we groan for our misery till we chatter like a swallow as Davide expression is and though David was an excellent penitent yet after he had lost the childe begotten of Bathsheba and God had told him he had forgiven him yet he raised up his darling son against him and forced him to an inglorious flight and his son lay with his Fathers concubins in the face of all Israel so that when we are forgiven yet it is ten to one but GOD will make us to smart and roar for our sinnes for the very disquietnesse of our souls For if we sin and ask God forgivenesse and then are quiet we feele so little inconvenience in the trade that we may more easily be tempted to make a trade of it indeed I wish to God that for every sin we have committed we should heartily cry God mercy and leave it and judge our selves for it to prevent Gods anger but when we have done all that we commonly call repentance and when possibly God hath forgiven us to some purposes yet it may be he punishes our sin when we least think of it that sin which we have long since forgotten It may be for the lust of thy youth thou had a healthlesse old age an old religious person long agoe complained it was his case Quos nimis effraenes habui nunc vapulo renes Sic luitur juvellis culpa dolore senis It may be thy sore eyes are the punishment of thy intemperance seven years ago or God cuts thy dayes shorter and thou shalt die in a florid age or he raises up afflictions to thee in thine own house in thine own bowels or hath sent a gangren into thy estate or with any arrow out of his quiver he can wound thee and the arrow shall stick fast in thy flesh although God hath forgiven thy sin to many purposes Our blessed Saviour was heard in all that he prayed for said the Apostle and he prayed for the Jews that crucified him Father forgive them for they know not what they do and God did forgive that great sin but how far whereas it was just in God to deprive them of all possibility of receiving benefit from the death of Christ yet God admitted them to it he gave them time and possibilities and helps and great advantages to bring them to repentance he did not presently shut them up in his final and eternal anger and yet he had finally resolved to destroy their city and nation and did so but forbore them forty years gave them al the helps of miracles and sermons apostolical to shame them and force them into sorrow for their fault And before any man can repent God hath forgiven the man in one degree of forgivenesse for he hath given him grace of repentance and taken from him that final anger of the spirit of reprobation and when a man hath repented no man can say that God hath forgiven him to all purposes but he hath reserves of anger to punish the sin to make the man affraid to sin any more and to represent that when any man hath sinned what ever he does afterwards he shall be miserable as long as he lives vexed with its adherencies and its neighbour-hood and evil consequence For as no man that hath sinned can during his life ever returne to an integral and perfect innocence so neither shall he be restored to a perfect peace but must alwayes watch and strive against his sinne and alwayes mourn and pray for its pardon and alwayes finde cause to hate it by knowing himself to be for ever in danger of enduring some grievous calamity even for those sinnes for which he hath truely repented him for which God hath in many gracious degrees passed his pardon this is the manner of the dispensation of the divine mercy in respect of particular persons and nations too But sometimes we finde a severer judgement happening upon a people and yet in that sad story Gods mercy sings the triumph which although it be much to Gods glory yet it is a sad story to sinning people 600000. fighting men besides women and children and decrepit persons came out of Egypt and God destroyed them all in the wildernesse except Caleb and Joshuah and there it was that Gods mercy prevailed over his justice that he did not destroy the nation but still preserved a succession to Jacob to possesse the promise God drowned all the world except eight persons his mercy there also prevailed over his justice that he preserved a remnant to mankinde his justice devoured all the world and his mercy which preserved but eight had the honour of the prevailing attribute God destroyed Sodom and the five cities of the plain and rescued but four from the flames of that sad burning and of the four lost one in the flight and yet his mercy prevailed over his justice because he did not destroy all And in these senses we are to understand the excellency of the divine mercy even when he smites when he rebukes us for sin when he makes our beauty to fail and our flesh to consume away like a moth fretting a garment yet then his mercy is the prevailing ingredient If his judgements be but fines set upon our heads accord-to the mercy of our old lawes Salvo contenemento so as to preserve our estates to continue our hopes and possibilities of heaven and all the other judgements can be nothing but mercies excellent instruments of grace arts to make us sober and wise to take off from our vanity to restrain our wildnesses which if they were left unbridled would set all the world on fire Gods judgements ars like the censures of the Church in which a sinner is delivered over to Satan to be buffetted that the spirit may be saved the result of all this is that Gods mercies are not ought not cannot be instruments of confidence to sin because the
most mens interest to do it these men are in a pitiable condition and are to be helped by the following rules 1. Let every man consider that he hath two relations to serve and he stands between God and his Master or his neerest relative and in such cases it comes to be disputed whether interest be preferred which of the persons is to be displeased God or my Master God or my Prince God or my Friend If we be servants of the man remember also that I am a servant of God adde to this that if my present service to the man be a slavery in me and a tyranny in him yet Gods service is a noble freedom And Apollonius said well It was for slaves to lie and for free men to speak the truth If you be freed by the blood of the Son of God then you are free indeed and then consider how dishonourable it is to lie to the displeasure of God and onely to please your fellow-servant The difference here is so great that it might be sufficient onely to consider the antithesis Did the man make you what you are Did he pay his blood for you to save you from death Does he keep you from sicknesse True You eat at his table but they are of Gods provisions that he and you feed of Can your master free you from a fever when you have drunk your self into it and restore your innocence when you have forsworn your self for his interest Is the change reasonable He gives you meat and drink for which you do him service But is not he a Tyrant and an usurper an oppressor and an extortioner if he will force thee to give thy soul for him to sell thy soul for old-shoes and broken bread But when thou art to make thy accounts of eternity will it be taken for an answer My Patron or my Governour my Prince or my Master forced me to it or if it will not Will he undertake a portion of thy flames or if that may not be will it be in the midst of all thy torments any ease to thy sorrows to remember all the rewards and clothes all the money and civilities all the cheerfull looks and familiarity and fellowship of vices which in your life time made your spirit so gay and easie It will in the eternall loads of sorrow adde a duplicate of groans and indignation when it shall be remembred for how base and trifling interest and upon what weak principles we fell sick and died eternally 2. The next advise to persons thus tempted is that they would learn to separate duty from mistaken interest and let them be both served in their just proportions when we have learned to make a difference A wife is bound to her husband in all his just designes and in all noble usages and Christian comportments But a wife is no more bound to pursue her husbands vitious hatreds then to serve and promote his unlawfull and wandring loves It is not alwayes a part of duty to think the same propositions or to curse the same persons or to wish him successe in unjust designes And yet the sadnesse of it is that a good woman is easily tempted to beleeve the cause to be just and when her affection hath forced her judgement her judgement for ever after shall carry the affection to all its erring and abused determinations A friend is turned a flatterer if he does not know that the limits of friendship extend no further then the pale and inclosures of reason and religion No Master puts it into his covenant that his servant shall be drunk with him or give in evidence in his Masters cause according to his Masters scrolls and therefore it is besides and against the duty of a servant to sin by that authority it is as if he should set Mules to keep his sheep or make his Dogs to carry burdens it is besides their nature and designe and if any person falls under so tyrannicall relation let him consider how hard a Master he serves where the Devil gives the imployment and shame is his entertainment and sin is his work and hell is his wages Take therefore the counsel of the son of Syrac Accept no person against thy soul and let not the reverence of any man cause thee to fall 3. When passion mingles with duty and is a necessary instrument of serving God let not that passion run its own course and passe on to liberty and thence to licence and dissolution but let no more of it be entertained then will just do the work For no zeal of duty will warrant a violent passion to prevaricate a duty I have seen some officers of Warre in passion and zeal of their duty have made no scruple to command a souldier with the dialect of cursing and accents of swearing and pretended they could not else speak words effective enough and of sufficient authority and a man may easily be overtaken in the issues of his government while his authority serves it still with passion if he be not curious in his measures his passion will also serve it self upon the authority and over rule the Ruler 4. Let every such tempted person remember that all evil comes from our selves and not from others and therefore all pretences and prejudices all commands and temptations all opinions and necessities are but instances of our weaknesse and arguments of our folly For unlesse we listed no man can make us drink beyond our measures And if I tell a lie for my Masters or my friends advantage it is because I prefer a little end of money or flattery before my honour and my innocence They are huge follies which go up and down in the mouthes and heads of men He that knows not how to dissemble knows not how to reigne He that will not do as his company does must go out of the world and quit all society of men We create necessities of our own and then think we have reason to serve their importunity Non ego sum ambitiosus sed nemo aliter Romae potest vivere non ego sumptuosus sed urbs ipsa magnas impensas exigit Non est meum vitium quod iracundus sum quod nondum constitui certum vitae genus adolescentia haec facit The place we live in makes us expensive the state of life I have chosen renders me ambitious my age makes me angry or lustfull proud or peevish These are nothing else but resolutions never to mend as long as we can have excuse for our follies and untill we can cozen our selves no more There is no such thing as a necessity for a Prince to dissemble or for a servant to lie or for a friend to flatter for a civil person and a sociable to be drunk we cozen our selves with thinking the fault is so much derivative from others till the smart and the shame falls upon our selves and covers our heads with sorrow And unlesse this gap be stopped and that we
walked upon the pavements of heaven whose feet were clothed with stars whose eyes were brighter then the Sun whose voice is louder then thunder whose understanding is larger then that infinite space which we imagine in the uncircumscribed distance beyond the first orbe of heaven a person to whom felicity was as essential as life to God this was the onely person that was designed in the eternal decrees of the divine predestination to pay the price of a soul to ransom us from death lesse then this person could not do it for although a soul in its essence is finite yet there were many infinites which were incident and annexed to the condition of lost souls For all which because provision was to be made nothing lesse then an infinite excellence could satisfie for a soul who was lost to infinite and eternal ages who was to be afflicted with insupportable and indetermined that is next to infinite paines who was to bear the load of an infinite anger from the provocation of an eternal God and yet if it be possible that infinite can receive degrees this is but one half of the abysse and I think the lesser for that this person who was God eternal should be lessened in all his appearances to a span to the little dimensions of a man and that he should really become very contemptibly little although at the same time he was infinitely and unalterably great that is essential natural and necessary felicity should turn into an intolerable violent and immense calamity to his person that this great God should not be admitted to pay the price of our redemption unlesse he would suffer that horrid misery which that lost soul should suffer as it represents the glories of his goodnesse who used such rare and admirable instruments in actuating the designes of his mercy so it shewes our condition to have been very desperate and our losse invaluable A soul in Gods account is valued at the price of the blood and shame and tortures of the Son of God and yet we throw it a way for the exchange of sins that a man naturally is ashamed to own we lose it for the pleasure the sottish beastly pleasure of a night I need not say we lose our soul to save our lives for though that was our blessed Saviours instance of the great unreasonablenesse of men who by saving their lives lose them that is in the great account of Dooms-day though this I say be extreamly unreasonable yet there is something to be pretended in the bargain nothing to excuse him with God but something in the accounts of timerous men but to lose our souls with swearing that unprofitable dishonourable and unpleasant vice to lose our souls with disobedience or rebellion a vice that brings a curse and danger all the way in this life To lose our souls with drunkennesse a vice which is painfull and sickly in the very acting it which hastens our damnation by shortning our lives are instances fit to be put in the stories of fools and mad-men and all vice is a degree of the same unreasonablenesse the most splendid temptation being nothing but a prety well weaved fallacy a meer trick a sophisme and a cheating and abusing the understanding but that which I consider here is that it is an affront and contradiction to the wisdom of God that we should so slight and undervalue a soul in which our interest is so concerned a soul which he who made it and who delighted not to see it lost did account a fit purchase to be made by the exchange of his Son the eternal Son of God To which also I adde this additionall account that a soul is so greatly valued by God that we are not to venture the losse of it to save all the world For therefore whosoever should commit a sin to save kingdoms from perishing or if the case could be put that all the good men and good causes and good things in this world were to be destroyed by Tyranny and it were in our power by perjury to save all these that doing this sin would be so farre from hallowing the crime that it were to offer to God a sacrifice of what he most hates and to serve him with swines blood and the rescuing all these from a Tyrant or a hangman could not be pleasing to God upon those termes because a soul is lost by it which is in it self a greater losse and misery then all the evils in the world put together can out-ballance and a losse of that thing for which Christ gave his blood a price Persecutions and temporal death in holy men and in a just cause are but seeming evils and therefore not to be bought off with the losse of a soul which is a real but an intolerable calamity And if God for his own sake would not have all the world saved by sin that is by the hazarding of a soul we should do well for our own sakes not to lose a soul for trifles for things that make us here to be miserable and even here also to be ashamed 3. But it may be some natures or some understandings care not for all this therefore I proceed to the third and most material consideration as to us and I consider what it is to lose a soul which Hierocles thus explicates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An immortall substance can die not by ceasing to be but by losing all being well by becomming miserable And it is remarkable when our blessed Saviour gave us caution that we should not fear them that can kill the body onely but fear him he sayes not that can kill the soul But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 him that is able to destroy the body and soul in hell which word signifieth not death but tortures For some have chosen death for sanctuary and fled to it to avoid intolerable shame to give a period to the sence of a sharp grief or to cure the earthquakes of fear and the damned perishing souls shall wish for death with a desire impatient as their calamity But this shall be denied them because death were a deliverance a mercy and a pleasure of which these miserable persons must despair of for ever I shall not need to represent to your considerations those expressions of Scripture which the Holy Ghost hath set down to represent to our capacities the greatnesse of this perishing choosing such circumstances of character as were then usuall in the world and which are dreadful to our understanding as any thing Hell fire is the common expression for the Eastern nations accounted burnings the greatest of their miserable punishments and burning malefactours was frequent brimstone and fire to Saint John Revel 14. 10. calls the state of punishment prepared for the Devil and all his servants he adding the circumstance of brimstone for by this time the Devil had taught the world more ingenious pains and himself was new escaped out of boiling oil and brimstone and such
had the gift of prophecy and by this character the Holy Ghost in all ages hath given us caution to avoid such assemblies where the speaking and ruling man shall be the canker of government and a preacher of sedition who shall either ungirt the Princes sword or unloose the button of their mantle 9. But the Apostles in all these prophecies have remarked lust to be the inseparable companion of these rebel prophets they are filthy dreamers they defile the flesh so Saint Jude they walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleannesse so Saint Peter they are lovers of pleasure more then lovers of God incontinent and sensual So Saint Paul and by this part of the character as the Apostles remarked the Nicolatians and Gnosticks the Carpocratians and all their impure branches which began in their dayes and multiplied after their deaths so they prophetically did foresignifie al such sects to be avoided who to catch silly women laden with sins preach doctrines of ease and licenciounesse apt to countenance and encourage vile things and not apt to restrain a passion or mortifie a sin Such as those that God sees no sin in his children that no sin will take us from Gods favour that all of such a party are elect people that God requires of us nothing but faith and that faith which justifies is nothing but a meere believing that we are Gods chosen that we are not tied to the law of commandments that the law of grace is a law of liberty and that liberty is to do what we list that divorces are to be granted upon many and slight causes that simple fornication is no sin these are such doctrines that upon the belief of them men may doe any thing and will do that which shall satisfie their own desires and promote their interests and seduce their shee disciples and indeed it was not without great reason that these three Apostles joyned lust and treason together because the former is so shameful a crime and renders a mans spirit naturally averse to government that if it falls upon the person of a Ruler it takes from him the spirit of government and renders him diffident pusillanimous private and ashamed if it happen in the person of a subject it makes him hate the man that shall shame him and punish him it hates the light and the Sun because that opens him and therefore is much more against government because that publishes and punishes too One thing I desire to be observed that though the primitive heresies now named and all those others their successors practised and taught horrid impurities yet they did not invade government at all and therefore those sects that these Apostles did signifie by prophecy and in whom both these are concentred were to appear in some latter times and the dayes of the prophecy were not then to be fulfill'd what they are since every age must judge by its own experience for its own interest But Christian religion is so pure and holy that chastity is sometimes used for the whole religion and to do an action chastly signifies purity of intention abstraction from the world and separation from low and secular ends the virginity of the soul and its union with God and all deviations and estrangements from God and adhesion to forbidden objects is called fornication and adultery Those sects therefore that teach incourage or practise impious or unhallowed mixtures and shameful lusts are issues of the impure spirit and most contrary to God who can behold no unclean thing 10. Those prophets and Pastors that pretend severity and live loosely or are severe in small things and give liberty in greater or forbid some sins with extreme rigour and yet practise or teach those that serve their interest or constitute their sect are to be suspected and avoided accordingly Nihil est hominum ineptâ persuasione falsius nec fictâ severitate ineptius All ages of the Church were extremely curious to observe when any new teachers did arise what kinde of lives they lived and if they pretended severely and to a strict life then they knew their danger doubled for it is certain all that teach doctrines contrary to the established religion delivered by the Apostles all they are evil men God will not suffer a good man to be seduced damnably much lesse can he be a seducer of others and therefore you shall still observe the false Apostles to be furious and vehement in their reproofs and severe in their animadversions of others but then if you watch their private or stay till their numbers are full or observe their spiritual habits you shall finde them indulgent to themselves or to return from their disguises or so spiritually wicked that their pride or their revenge their envie or their detraction their scorn or their complacency in themselves their desire of preheminence and their impatience of arrival shall place them far enough in distance from a poor carnal sinner whom they shall load with censures and an upbraiding scorn but themselves are like Devils the spirits of darknesse the spiritual wickednesses in high places Some sects of men are very angry against servants for recreating and easing their labours with a lesse prudent and an unsevere refreshment but the patron of their sect shall oppresse a wicked man and an unbelieving person they shall chastise a drunkard and entertain murmurrers they shall not abide an oath and yet shal force men to break three or four This sect is to be avoided because although it is good to be severe against carnal or bodily sins yet it is not good to mingle with them who chastise a bodily sin to make way for a spiritual or reprove a servant that his Lord may sin alone or punish a stranger and a begger that will not approve their sins but will have sins of his own Concering such persons Saint Paul hath told us that they shall not proeecd far but their folly shall bemanifest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Lysias Cito ad naturam sicta reciderunt sua They that dissemble their sin and their manners or make severity to serve loosnesse and an imaginary vertue to minister to a real vice they that abhor Idols and would commit sacrilege chastise a drunkard and promote sedition declaime against the vanity of great persons and then spoil them of their goods reform manners and engrosse estates talk godly and do impiously these are teachers which the Holy spirit of God hath by three Apostles bid us to beware of and decline as we would run from the hollownesse of a grave or the despaires and sorrows of the damned 11. The substance of al is this that we must not chose our doctrine by our guide but our guide by the doctrine if we doubt concerning the doctrine we may judge of that by the lives and designes of the Teachers By their fruits you shall know them and by the plain words of the scripture by the Apostles Creed and by
the world not by works for we all failed of them that is not by an exact obedience but by faith working by love by sincere hearty endeavours believing God and relying upon his infinite mercy revealed in part and now fully manifest by the great instrument and means of that mercy Jesus Christ. So that here is pardon before we asked it pardon before Christs coming pardon before redemption and pardon before we sinned what greater readinesse to forgive us can be imagined yes there is one degree more yet and that will prevent a mistake in this 5. For God so pardoned us once that we should need no more pardon he pardons us by turning every one of us away from our iniquities that 's the purpose of Christ that he might safely pardon us before we sinned and we might not sin upon the confidence of pardon he pardoned us not onely upon condition we would sin no more but he took away our sin cured our cursed inclinations instructed our understanding rectified our will fortified us against temptations and now every man whom he pardons he also sanctifies and he is born of God and he must not will not cannot sin so long as the seed of God remains within him so long as his pardon continues This is the consummation of pardon For if God had so pardoned us as onely to take away our evils which are past we should have needed a second Saviour and a redeemer for every month and new pardons perpetually But our blessed Redeemer hath taken away our sin not onely the guilt of our old but our inclinations to new sins he makes us like himself and commands us to live so that we shall not need a second pardon that is a second state of pardon for we are but once baptized into Christs death and that death was one and our redemption but one and our covenant the same and as long as we continue within the covenant we are still within the power and comprehensions of the first pardon 6. And yet there is a necessity of having one degree of pardon more beyond all this For although we do not abjure our covenant and renounce Christ and extinguish the spirit yet we resist him and we grieve him and we go off from the holinesse of the covenant and return again and very often step aside and need this great pardon to be perpetually applyed and renewed and to this purpose that we may not have a possible need without a certain remedy the Holy Jesus the Author and finisher of our faith and pardon sits in heaven in a perpetual advocation for us that this pardon once wrought may be for ever applyed to every emergent need and every tumor of pride and every broken heart and every disturbed conscience and upon every true and sincere return of a hearty repentance And now upon this title no more degrees can be added it is already greater and was before all our needs and was greater then the old covenant and beyond the revelations and did in Adams youth antidate the Gospel turning the publike miseries by secret grace into eternall glories But now upon other circumstances it is remarkable and excellent and swels like an hydropick cloud when it is fed with the breath of the morning tide till it fills the bosome of heaven and descends in dews and gentle showers to water and refresh the earth 7. God is so ready to forgive that himself works our dispositions towards it and either must in some degree pardon us before we are capable of pardon by his grace making way for his mercy or else we can never hope for pardon For unlesse God by his preventing grace should first work the first part of our pardon even without any dispositions of our own to receive it we could not desire a pardon nor hope for it nor work towards it nor ask it nor receive it This giving of preventing grace is a mercy of forgivenesse contrary to that severity by which some desperate persons are given over to a reprobate sense that is a leaving of men to themselves so that they cannot pray effectually nor desire holily nor repent truly nor receive any of those mercies which God designed so plenteously and the Son of God purchased so dearly for us When God sends a plague of warre upon a land in all the accounts of religion and expectations of reason the way to obtain our peace is to leave our sins for which the warre was sent upon us as the messenger of wrath and without this we are like to perish in the judgement But then consider what a sad condition we are in warre mends but few but spoils multitudes it legitimates rapine and authorizes murder and these crimes must be ministred to by their lesser relatives by covetousnesse and anger and pride and revenge and heats of blood and wilder liberty and all the evil that can be supposed to come from or run to such cursed causes of mischief But then if the punishment increases the sin by what instrument can the punishment be removed How shall we be pardoned and eased when our remedies are converted into causes of the sicknesse and our antidotes are poison Here there is a plain necessity of Gods preventing grace and if there be but a necessity of it that is enough to ascertain us we shall have it But unlesse God should begin to pardon us first for nothing and against our own dispositions we see there is no help in us nor for us If we be not smitten we are undone if we are smitten we perish and as young Damarchus said of his Love when he was made master of his wish Salvus sum quia pereo si non peream plane inteream we may say of some of Gods judgements We perish when we are safe because our sins are not smitten and if they be then we are worse undone because we grow worse for being miserable but we can be relieved onely by a free mercy for pardon is the way to pardon and when God gives us our peny then we can work for another and a gift is the way to a grace and all that we can do towards it is but to take it in Gods method and this must needs be a great forwardnesse of forgivenesse when Gods mercy gives the pardon and the way to finde it and the hand to receive it and the eye to search it and the heart to desire it being busie and effective as Elijah's fire which intending to convert the sacrifice into its own more spirituall nature of flames and purified substances stood in the neighbourhood of the fuell and called forth all its enemies and licked up the hindering moisture and the water of the trenches and made the Altar send forth a phantastick smoke before the sacrifice was enkindled So is the preventing grace of God it does all the work of our souls and makes its own way and invites it self and prepares its own lodging and makes its
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
speaks one thing and our heart means another and we are hardly brought to say our prayers or to undertake a fasting day or to celebrate a Communion and if we remember that all these are holy actions and that we have many opportunities of doing them all and yet doe them very seldome and then very coldly it will be found at the foot of the account that our flesh and our naturall weaknesse prevailes oftner then our spirituall strengths 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they that are bound long in chains feel such a lamenesse in the first restitutions of their liberty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by reason of the long accustomed chain and pressure that they must stay till Nature hath set them free and the disease be taken off as well as the chain and when the soul is got free from her actuall pressure of sins still the wound remaines and a long habitude and longing after it a looking back and upon the presenting the old object the same company or the remembrance of the delight the fancy strikes and the heart fails and the temptations returne and stand dressed in form and circumstances and ten to one but the man dies again 4. Some men are wise and know their weaknesses and to prevent their startings back will make fierce and strong resolutions and bind up their gaps with thornes and make a new hedge about their spirits and what then this shews indeed that the spirit is willing but the storm arises and windes blow and rain descends and presently the earth trembles and the whole fabrick falls into ruine and disorder A resolution such as we usually make is nothing but a little trench which every childe can step over and there is no civill man that commits a willing sin but he does it against his resolution and what Christian lives that will not say and think that he hath repented in some degree and yet still they commit sin that is they break all their holy purposes as readily as they lose a dream and so great is our weaknesse that to most men the strength of a resolution is just such a restraint as he suffers who is imprisoned in a curtain and secured with dores and bars of the finest linnen for though the spirit be strong to resolve the flesh is weak to keep it 5. But when they have felt their follies and see the linnen vail â—ent some that are desirous to please God back their resolutions with vows and then the spirit is fortified and the flesh may tempt and call but the soul cannot come forth and therefore it triumphs and acts its interest easily and certainly and then the flesh is mortified It may be so But doe not many of us inquire after a vow And we consider it may be it was rash or it was an impossible matter or without just consideration and weighing of circumstances or the case is alter'd and there is a new emergent necessity or a vow is no more then a resolution made in matter of duty both are made for God and in his eye and witnesse or if nothing will doe it men grow sad and weary and despaire and are impatient and bite the knot in pieces with their teeth which they cannot by disputing and the arts of the tongue A vow will not secure our duty because it is not stronger then our appetite and the spirit of man is weaker then the habits and superinduced nature of the flesh but by little and little it falls off like the finest thread twisted upon the traces of a chariot it cannot hold long 6. Beyond all this some choose excellent guides and stand within the restraints of modesty and a severe Monitor and the Spirit of God hath put a veile upon our spirits and by modesty in women and young persons by reputation in the more aged and by honour in the more noble and by conscience in all have fortified the spirit of Man that men dare not prevaricate their duty though they be tempted strongly and invited perpetually and this is a partition wall that separates the spirit from the flesh and keeps it in its proper strengths and retirements But here the spirit of man for all that it is assisted strongly breaks from the inclosure and runnes into societies of flesh and sometimes despises reputation and sometimes supplies it with little arts of flattery and self-love and is modest as long as it can be secret and when it is discovered it growes impudent and a man shelters himselfe in crouds and heaps of sinners and beleeves that it is no worse with him then with other mighty criminals and publick persons who bring sin into credit amongst fooles and vicious persons or else men take false measures of fame or publick honesty and the world being broken into so many parts of disunion and agreeing in nothing but in confederate vices and grown so remisse in governments and severe accounts every thing is left so loose that honour and publick fame modesty and shame are now so slender guards to the spirit that the flesh breaks in and makes most men more bold against God then against men and against the laws of Religion then of the Common-wealth 7. When the spirit is made willing by the grace of God the flesh interposes in deceptions and false principles If you tempt some man to a notorious sin as to rebellion to deceive his trust or to be drunk he will answer he had rather die then doe it But put the sin civilly to him and let it be disguised with little excuses such things which indeed are trifles but yet they are colours fair enough to make a weak pretence and the spirit yeelds instantly Most men choose the sin if it be once disputable whether it be a sin or no If they can but make an excuse or a colour so that it shall not rudely dash against the conscience with an open professed name of Sin they suffer the temptation to doe its worst If you tempt a man you must tell him 't is no sin or it is excusable this is not rebellion but necessity and selfe-defence it is not against my allegiance but is a performing of my trust I doe it for my friend not against my Superiour I doe it for a good end and for his advantage this is not drunkennesse but free mirth and fair society it is refreshment and entertainment of some supernumerary hours but it is not a throwing away my time or neglecting a day of salvation and if there be any thing more to say for it though it be no more then Adams fig-leaves or the excuses of children and truants it shall be enough to make the flesh prevail and the spirit not to be troubled for so great is our folly that the flesh always carries the cause if the spirit can be cousen'd 8. The flesh is so mingled with the spirit that we are forced to make distinctions in our appetite to reconcile our affections to God and Religion lest it
be impossible to doe our duty we weep for our sins but we weep more for the death of our dearest friends or other temporall sadnesses we say we had rather die then lose our saith and yet we doe not live according to it we lose our estates and are impatient we lose our vertue and bear it well enough and what vertue is so great as more to be troubled for having sin'd then for being asham'd and begger'd and condemn'd to die Here we are forced to a distinction there is a valuation of price and a valuation of sense or the spirit hath one rate of things and the flesh hath another and what we beleeve the greatest evill does not alwayes cause to us the greatest trouble which shews plainly that we are imperfect carnall persons and the flesh will in some measure prevaile over the spirit because we will suffer it in too many instances and cannot help it in all 9. The spirit is abated and interrupted by the flesh because the flesh pretends it is not able to doe those ministeries which are appointed in order to Religion we are not able to fast or if we watch it breeds gouts and catarrhes or charity is a grace too expensive our necessities are too big to do it or we cannot suffer pain and sorrow breeds death and therefore our repentances must be more gentle and we must support our selves in all our calamities for we cannot beare our crosses without a freer refreshment and this freedome passes on to licence and many melancholy persons drowne their sorrows in sin and forgetfulnesse as if sin were more tolerable then sorrow and the anger of God an easier load then a temporall care here the flesh betrayes its weaknesse and its follies For the flesh complains too soon and the spirit of some men like Adam being too fond of his Eve attends to all its murmurs and temptations and yet the flesh is able to bear farre more then is required of it in usuall duties Custome of suffering will make us endure much and feare will make us suffer more and necessity makes us suffer any thing and lust and desire makes us to endure more then God is willing we should and yet we are nice and tender and indulgent to our weaknesses till our weaknesses grow too strong for us And what shall we doe to secure our duty and to be delivered of our selves that the body of death which we bear about us may not destroy the life of the spirit I have all this while complain'd and you see not without cause I shall afterwards tell you the remedies for all this evill In the mean time let us have but mean opinions of our selves let us watch every thing of our selves as of suspected persons and magnifie the grace of God and be humbled for our stock and spring of follies and let us look up to him who is the fountaine of grace and spirituall strengths 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And pray that God would give us what we ask and what we ask not for we want more helps then we understand and we are neerer to evill then we perceive and we bear sin and death about us and are in love with it and nothing comes from us but false principles and silly propositions and weak discourses and startings from our holy purposes and care of our bodies and of our palates and the lust of the lower belly these are the imployment of our lives but if wee design to live happily and in a better place it must be otherwise with us we must become new creatures and have another definition and have new strengths which we can onely derive from God whose grace is sufficient for us and strong enough to prevail over all our follies and infirmities SERMON XI Part II. IF it be possible to cure an evill nature we must inquire after remedies for all this mischief In order to which I shall consider 1. That since it is our flesh and bloud that is the principle of mischief we must not think to have it cured by washings and light medicaments the Physitian that went to cure the Hectick with quick-silver and fasting spittle did his Patient no good but himself became a proverb and he that by easie prayers and a seldome fast by the scattering of a little almes and the issues of some more naturall vertue thinks to cure his evill nature does fortifie his indisposition as a stick is hardened by a little fire which by a great one is devoured Quanto satius est mentem potius eluere quae malis cupiditatibus sordidatur uno virtutis ac fidei lavacro universa vitia depellere Better it is by an intire body of vertue by a living and active faith to cleanse the minde from every vice and to take off all superinduced habits of sin Quod qui fecerit quamlibet inquinatum ac sordidum corpus gerat satis purus est If we take this course although our body is foul and our affections unquiet and our rest discomposed yet we shall be masters of our resolution and clean from habituall sins and so cure our evill nature For our nature was not made evill but by our selves but yet we are naturally evill that is by a superinduced nature just as drunkards and intemperate persons have made it necessary to drink extremely and their nature requires it and it is health to them they dye without it because they have made to themselves a new constitution and another nature but much worse then that which God made their sin made this new nature and this new nature makes sin necessary and unavoidable so it is in all other instances Our nature is evill because we have spoil'd it and therefore the removing the sin which we have brought in is the way to cure our nature for this evill nature is not a thing which we cannot avoid we made it and therefore we must help it but as in the superinducing this evill nature we were thrust forward by the world and the Devill by all objects from without and weaknesse from within so in the curing it we are to be helped by God and his most holy Spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We must have a new nature put into us which must be the principle of new counsels and better purposes of holy actions and great devotion and this nature is deriv'd from God and is a grace and a favour of heaven The same Spirit that caused the holy Jesus to be born after a new and strange manner must also descend upon us and cause us to be born again and to begin a new life upon the stock of a new nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Origen From him it first began that a divine and humane nature were weaved together that the humane nature by communication with the celestiall may also become divine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Not only in Jesus but in all that first