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 bituminous matter and the Spirit of God knew right well the worst expression was not bad enough 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so our blessed Saviour calls it the outer darknesse that is not onely an abjection from the beatifick regions where God and his Angels and his Saints dwell for ever but then there is a positive state of misery expressed by darknesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as two Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Jude call it The blacknesse of darknesse for ever In which although it is certain that God whose Justice there rules will inflict but just so much as our sins deserve and not superadde degrees of undeserved misery as he does to the Saints of glory for God gives to blessed souls in heaven more infinitely more then all their good works could possibly deserve and therefore their glory is infinitely bigger glory then the pains of hell are great pains yet because Gods Justice in hell rules alone without the allayes and sweeter abatements of mercy they shall have pure and unmingled misery no pleasant thought to refresh their wearinesse no comfort in an other accident to alleviate their pressures no waters to cool their flames but because when there is a great calamity upon a man every such man thinks himself the most miserable and though there are great degrees of pain in hell yet there are none perceived by him that thinks he suffers the greatest It follows that every man that loses his soul in this darknesse is miserable beyond all those expressions which the tortures of this world could furnish to the Writers of holy Scripture But I shall choose to represent this consideration in that expression of our blessed Saviour Mark the 9. the 44. verse which himself took out of the Prophet Esay the 66. verse the 24. Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched this is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spoken of by Daniel the Prophet for although this expression was a prediction of that horrid calamity and abscision of the Jewish Nation when God poured out a full vial of his wrath upon the crucifiers of his Son and that this which was
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 covenaut 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 own entertainment it gives us precepts and makes us able to keep them it enables our faculties and excites our desires it provokes us to pray and sanctifies our heart in prayer and makes our prayer go forth to act and the act does make the desire valid and the desire does make the act certain and persevering and both of them are the works of God for more is received into the soul from without the soul then does proceed from within the soul It is more for the soul to be moved and disposed then to work when that is done as the passage from death to life is greater then from life to action especially since the action is owing to that cause that put in the first principle of life These are the great degrees of Gods forwardnesse and readinesse to forgive for the expression of which no language is sufficient but Gods own words describing mercy in all those dimensions which can signifie to us its greatnesse and infinity His mercy is great his mercies are many his mercy reacheth unto the heavens it fils heaven and earth it is above all his works it endureth for ever God pitieth as a Father doth his children nay he is our Father and the same also is the Father of mercy and the God of all comfort So that mercy and we have the same relation and well it may be so for we live and die together for as to man onely God shews the mercy of forgivenesse so if God takes away his mercy man shall be no more no more capable of felicity or of any thing that is perfective of his condition or his person But as God preserves man by his mercy so his mercy hath all its operations upon man and returns to its own centre and incircumscription and infinity unlesse it issues forth upon us And therefore besides the former great lines of the mercy of forgivenesse there is another chain which but to produce and tell its links is to open a cabinet of Jewels where every stone is as bright as a star and every star is great as the Sun and shines for ever unlesse we shut our eyes or draw the vail of obstinate and finall sins 1. God is long-suffering that is long before he be angry and yet God is provoked every day by
impotent person apt to be abused and so loving to have it so that if no body else will abuse him he will be sure to abuse himself by ignorance and evil principles being open to an enemy and by wilfulnesse and Sensuality doing to himself the most unpardonable injuries in the whole world So that the condition of Man in the rudenesses and first lines of its visage seemes very miserable deformed and accursed For a man is helplesse and vain of a condition so exposed to calamity that a raisin is able to kill him any trooper out of the Egyptian army a flie can do it when it goes on Gods errand the most contemptible accident can destroy him the smallest chance affright him every future contingency when but consideâ—ed as possible can amaze him and he is incompass'd with potent and malicious enemies subtle and implacable what shall this poor helplesse thing do trust in God Him he hath offended and he fear him as an enemy and God knows if we look onely on our selves and our own demerits we have to much reason so to doe Shall he rely upon Princes God help poor Kings they rely upon ther Subjects they fight with their swords levy forces with theâ—â— money consult with their Counsels hear with their ears and are strong onely in their union and many times they use all these things against them but however they can do nothing without them while they live and yet if ever they can die they are not to be trusted to Now Kings and Princes die so sadly and notoriously that it was used for a proverbe in holy scripture ye shall die like men and fall like one of the Princes Who then shall we trust in in our Friend Poor man he may help thee in one thing and need thee in ten he may pull thee out of the ditch and his foot may slip and fal into it himself he gives thee counsel to choose a wife and himself is to seek how prudently to choose his religion he counsels thee to abstain from a duel and yet slayes his own soul with drinking like a person void of all understanding he is willing enough to preserve thy interest and is very carelesse of his own for he does highly despise to betray or to be false to thee and in the mean time is not his own friend and is false to God and then his friendship may be useful to thee in some circumstances of fortune but no security to thy condition But what then shall we relie upon our patron like the Roman Clients who waited hourly upon their persons and daily upon their baskets and nightly upon their lusts and married their friendships and contracted also their hatred and quarrels This is a confidence will deceive us For they may lay us by justly or unjustly they may grow weary of doing benefits or their fortunes may change or they may be charitable in their gifts and burthensom in their offices able to feed you but unable to counsel you or your need may be longer then their kindnesses or such in which they can give you no assistance and indeed generally it is so in all the instances of men we have a friend that is wise but I â—eed not his counsel but his meat or my patron is bountiful in his largesses but I am troubled with a sad spirit and money and presents do me no more ease then perfumes do to a broken arme we seek life of a Physician that dies and go to him for health who cannot cure his own breath or gowt and so become vain in our imaginations abused in our hopes restlesse in our passions impatient in our calamity unsupported in our need exposed to enemies wandring and wilde without counsel and without remedy At last after the infatuating and deceiving all our confidences without we have nothing left us but to return home and dwell within our selves for we have a sufficient stock of self-love that we may be confident of our own affections we may trust our selves surely for what we want in skill we shall make up in diligence and our industry shall supply the want of other circumstances and no man vnderstands my own case so well as I do my self and no man will judge so faithfully as I shall do for my self for I am most concern'd not to abuse my self and if I do I shall be the loser and therefore may best rely upon my self Alas and God help us we shall finde it to be no such matter For we neither love our selves well nor understand our own case we are partial in our own questions deceived in our sentences carelesse of our interests and the most false persidious creatures to our selves in the whole world even the Heart of a man a mans own heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it And who can choose but know it And there is no greater argument of the deceitfulnesse of our Hearts then this that no man can know it all it cosens us in the very number of its cosenage But yet we can reduce it all to two heads We say concerning a false man trust him not for he will deceive you and we say concerning a weak and broken staffe lean not upon it for that will also deceive you The man deceives because he is false and the staffe because it is weak and the heart because it is both So that it is deceitful above all things that is failing and disabled to support us in many things but in other things where it can it is false and desperately wicked The first sort of deceitfulnesse is its calamitie and the second is its iniquity and that is the worst Calamitie of the two 1. The heart is deceitfull in its strength and when we have the groweth of a Man we have the weaknesses of a childe nay more yet and it is a sad consideration the more we are in age the weaker in our courage It appears in the heats and forwardnesses of new converts which are like to the great emissions of Lightning or like huge fires which flame and burn without measure even all that they can till from flames they descend to still fires from thence to smoak from smoak to embers from thence to ashes cold and pale like ghosts or the phantastick images of Death And the primitive Church were zealous in their Religion up to the degree of Cherubins and would run as greedily to the sword of the hangman to die for the cause of God as we do now to the greatest joy and entertainment of a Christian spirit even to the receiving of the holy Sacrament A man would think it reasonable that the first infancy of Christianity should according to the nature of first beginnings have been remisse gentle and unactive and that according as the object or evidence of faith grew which in every Age hath a great degree of Argument superadded to its confirmation so should the habit also and the grace the
to build it of hewen stone cut and broken the Apostles he chose for Preachers and they had no learning women and mean people were the first Disciples and they had no power the Devil was to lose his kingdom and he wanted no malice and therefore he stirred up and as well as he could he made active all the power of Rome and all the learning of the Greeks and all the malice of Barbarous people and all the prejudice and the obstinacy of the Jews against this doctrine and institution which preached and promised and brought persecution along with it On the one side there was scandalum crucis on the other patientia sanctorum and what was the event They that had overcome the world could not strangle Christianity But so have I seen the Sun with a little ray of distant light challenge all the power of darknesse and without violence and noise climbing up the hill hath made night so to retire that its memory was lost in the joyes and spritefulnesse of the morning and Christianity without violence or armies without resistance and self-preservation without strength or humane eloquence without challenging of priviledges or fighting against Tyranny without alteration of government and scandall of Princes with its humility and meeknesse with tolerations and patience with obedience and charity with praying and dying did insensibly turn the world into Christian and persecution into victory For Christ who began and lived and died in sorrows perceived his own sufferings to succeed so well and that for suffering death he was crowned with immortality resolved to take all his Disciples and servants to the fellowship of the same suffering that they might have a participation of his glory knowing God had opened no gate of heaven but the narrow gate to which the Crosse was the key and since Christ now being our High Priest in heaven intercedes for us by representing his passion and the dolours of the Crosse that even in glory he might still preserve the mercies of his past sufferings for which the Father did so delight in him he also designes to present us to God dressed in the same robe and treated in the same manner and honoured with the marks of the Lord Jesus He hath predestinated us to be conformable to the image of his Son And if under a head crowned with thorns we bring to God members circled with roses and softnesse and delicacy triumphant members in the militant Church God will reject us he will not know us who are so unlike our elder brother For we are members of the Lamb not of the Lion and of Christs suffering part not of the triumphant part and for three hundred yeers together the Church lived upon blood and was nourished with blood the blood of her own children Thirty three Bishops of Rome in immediate succession were put to violent and unnaturall deaths and so were all the Churches of the East and West built the cause of Christ and of Religion was advanced by the sword but it was the sword of the persecutours not of resisters or warriours They were all baptized into the death of Christ their very profession and institution is to live like him and when he requires it to die for him that is the very formality the life and essence of Christianity This I say lasted for three hundred yeers that the prayers and the backs and the necks of Christians fought against the rods and axes of the persecutoâ—rs and prevailed till the Countrey and the Cities and the Coâ—â—t it self was filled with Christians And by this time the arm of Martyrs was vast and numerous and the number of sufferers blunted the hangmans sword For Christ first triumphed over the princes and powers of the world before he would admit them to serve him he first felt their malice before he would make use of their defence to shew that it was not his necessity that required it but his grace that admitted Kings and Queens to be nurses of the Church And now the Church was at ease and she that sucked the blood of the Martyrs so long began now to suck the milk of Queens Indeed it was a great mercy in appearance and was so intended but it proved not so But then the Holy Ghost in pursuance of the designe of Christ who meant by sufferings to perfect his Church as himself was by the same instrument was pleased now that persecution did cease to inspire the Church with the spirit of mortification and austerity and then they made Colleges of sufferers persons who to secure their inheritance in the world to come did cut off all their portion in this excepting so much of it as was necessary to their present being and by instruments of humility by patience under and a voluntary undertaking of the Croâ—â—e the burden of the Lord by self deniall by fastings and sackeloth and pernoctations in prayer they chose then to exercise the active part of the religion mingling it as much as they could with the suffering And indeed it is so glorious a thing to be like Christ to be dressed like the prince of the Catholick church who was so a man of sufferings and to whom a prosperous and unafflicted person is very unlike that in all ages the servants of God have put on the armour of righteousnesse on the right hand and on the left that is in the sufferings of persecution or the labours of mortification in patience under the rod of God or by election of our own by toleration or self denial by actual martyrdom or by aptnesse or disposition towards it by dying for Christ or suffering for him by being willing to part with all when he calls for it and by parting with what we can for the relief of his poor members For know this there is no state in the Church so serene no days so prosperous in which God does not give to his servants the powers and opportunities of suffering for him not onely they that die for Christ but they that live according to his laws shall finde some lives to part with and many wayes to suffer for Christ. To kill and crucifie the old man and all his lusts to mortifie a beloved sin to fight against temptations to do violence to our bodies to live chastly to suffer affronts patiently to forgive injuries and debts to renounce all prejudice and interest in religion and to choose our side for truthes sake not because it is prosperous but because it pleases God to be charitable beyond our power to reprove our betters with modesty and opennesse to displease men rather then God to be at enmity with the world that you may preserve friendship with God to denie the importunity and troublesome kindnesse of a drinking friend to own truth in despite of danger or scorn to despise shame to refuse worldly pleasure when they tempt your soul beyond duty or safety to take pains in the cause of religion the labour of love and the crossing of
your anger peevishnesse and morosity these are the daily sufferings of a Christian and if we performe them well wil have the same reward and an equal smart and greater labour then the plain suffering the hangmans sword This I have discoursed to represent unto you that you cannot be exempted from the similitude of Christs sufferings that God will shut no age nor no man from his portion of the crosse that we cannot fail of the result of this predestination nor without our own fault be excluded from the covenant of sufferings judgement must begin at Gods house and enters first upon the sons and heirs of the kingdom and if it be not by the direct persecution of Tyrants it will be by the persecution of the devil or infirmities of our own flesh But because this was but the secondary meaning of the text I return to make use of all the former discourse 1. Let no Christian man make any judgement concerning his condition or his cause by the external event of things for although in the law of Moses God made with his people a covenant of temporal prosperity and his Saints did binde the kings of the Amâ—rites and the Philistines in chains and their nobles with links of iron and then that was the honour which all his Saints had yet in Christ Jesus he made a covenant of sufferings most of the graces of Christianity are suffering graces and God hath predestinated us to sufferings and we are baptised into suffering and our very communions are symbols of our duty by being the sacrament of Christs death and passion and Christ foretold to us tribulation and promised onely that he would be with us in tribulation that he would give us his spirit to assist us at tribunals and his grace to despise the world and to contemn riches and boldnesse to confesse every article of the Christian faith in the face of armies and armed tyrants and he also promised that all things should work together for the best to his servants that is he would out of the eater bring meat and out of the strong issue sweetnesse and crowns and scepters should spring from crosses and that the crosse it self should stand upon the globes and scepters of Princes but he nevâ—r promised to his servants that they should pursue Kings and destroy armies that they should reign over the nations and promote the cause of Jesus Christ by breaking his commandments The shield of faith and the sword of the spirit the armour of righteousnesse and the weapons of spiritual warfare these are they by which christianity swelled from a small company and a lesse reputation to possesse the chaires of Doctors and the thrones of princes and the hearts of all men But men in all ages will be tampering with shadows and toyes The Apostles at no hand could endure to hear that Christs kingdom was not of this world and that their Master should die a sad and shameful death though that way he was to receive his crown and enter into glory and after Christs time when his Disciples had taken up the crosse and were marching the Kings high way of sorrows there were a very great many even the generality of Christians for two or three ages together who fell on dreaming that Christ should come and reign upon earth again for a thousand years and then the Saints should reigne in all abundance of temporal power and fortunes but these men were content to stay for it till after the resurrection in the mean time took up their crosse and followed after their Lord the King of sufferings But now a dayes we finde a generation of men who have changed the covenant of sufferings into victories and triumphs riches and prosperous chances and reckon their Christianity by their good fortunes as if Christ had promised to his servants no heaven hereafter no spirit in the mean time to refresh their sorrows as if he had enjoyned them no passive graces but as if to be a Christian and to be a Turk were the same thing Mahomet entered and possessed by the sword Christ came by the crosse entered by humility and his saints possesse their souls by patience God was fain to multiply miracles to make Christ capable of being a man of sorrows and shall we think he will work miracles to make us delicate He promised us a glorious portion hereafter to which if all the sufferings of the world were put together they are not worthy to be compared and shall we with Dives choose our portion of good things in this life If Christ suffered so many things onely that he might give us glory shall it be strange that we shall suffer who are to receive this glory It is in vain to think we shall obtain glories at an easier rate then to drink of the brook in the way in which Christ was drenched When the Devil appeared to Saint Martin in a bright splendid shape and said he was Christ he answered Christus non nisi in cruce apparet suis in hac vita And when Saint Ignatius was newly tied in a chain to be led to his martyrdom he cryed out nunc incipio esse Christianus And it was observed by Minutius Felix and was indeed a great and excellent truth omnes viri fortes quos Gentiles praedicabant in exemplum aerumnis suis inclytistoruerunt The Gentiles in their whole religion never propounded any man imitable unlesse the man were poor or persecuted Brutus stood for his countries liberty but lost his army and his life Socrates was put to death for speaking a religious truth Cato chose to be on the right side but happened to fall upon the oppressed and the injured he died together with his party Victrix causa Deis placuit sed victa Catoni And if God thus dealt with the best of Heathens to whom he had made no cleare revelation of immortal recompences how little is the faith and how much lesse is the patience of Christians if they shall think much to suffer sorrows since they so clearly see with the eye of faith the great things which are laid up for them that are faithful unto the death Faith is uselesse if now in the midst of so great pretended lights we shall not dare to trust God unlesse we have all in hand that we desire and suffer nothing for all we can hope for They that live by sense have no use of faith yet our Lord Jesus concerning whose passions the gospel speaks much but little of his glorifications whose shame was publick whose pains were notorious but his joyes and transfigurations were secret and kept private he who would not suffer his holy mother whom in great degrees he exempted from sin to be exempted from many and great sorrows certainly intends to admit none to his resurrection but by the doors of his grave none to glory but by the way of the crosse If we be planted into the likenesse of his death we shall be also of his
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 â—harity 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 enogh 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 us choose God and let God choose all the rest for us it being indifferent to us whether by poverty or shame by lingring or a sudden death by the hands of a Tyrant Prince or the despised hands of a base usurper or a rebell we receive the crown and do honour to God and to Religion 3. Whoever suffer in a cause of God from the hands of cruell and unreasonable men let them not be too forward to prognosticate evil and death to their enemies but let them solace themselves in the assurance of the divine justice by generall consideration and in particular pray for them that are our persecutours Nebuchadnezzar was the rod in the hand of God against the Tyrians and because he destroyed that city God rewarded him with the spoil of Egypt and it is not alwayes certain that God will be angry with every man by whose hand affliction comes upon us And sometimes two armies have met and fought and the wisest man amongst them could not say that either of the Princes had prevaricated either the lawes of God â—or of Nations and yet it may be some superstitious easie and half witted people of either side wonder that their enemies live so long And there are very many cases of warre concerning which God hath declared nothing and although in such cases he that yeelds and quits his title rather then his charity and the care of so many lives is the wisest and the best man yet if neither of them will do so let us not decree judgements from heaven in cases where we have no word from heaven and thunder from our Tribunals where no voice of God hath declared the sentence But in such cases where there is an evident tyranny or injustice let us do like the good Samaritan who dressed the wounded man but never pursued the thief let us do charity to the afflicted and bear the crosse with noblenesse and look up to Jesus who endured the crosse and despised the shame but let us not take upon us the office of God who will judge the Nations righteously
disarm the Princes and it will be hard to perswade that Kings are bound to protect and nourish those that will prove ministers of their own exauctoration And no Prince can have juster reason to forbid nor any man have greater reason to deny communion to a family then if they go about to destroy the power of the one or corrupt the duty of the other The particulars of this rule are very many I shall onely instance in one more because it is of great concernment to the publike interest of Christendome There are some persons whose religion is hugely disgraced because they change their propositions according as their temporall necessities or advantages do return They that in their weaknesse and beginning cry out against all violence as against persecution and from being suffered swell up till they be prosperous and from thence to power and at last to Tyranny and then suffer none but themselves and trip up those feet which they humbly kissed that themselves should not be trampled upon these men tell all the world that at first they were pusillanimous or at last outragious that their doctrine at first served their fear and at last served their rage and that they did not at all intend to serve God and then who shall believe them in any thing else Thus some men declaim against the faults of Governours that themselves may governe and when the power was in their hands what was a fault in others is in them necessity as if a sin could be hallowed for comming into their hands Some Greeks at Florence subscribed the Article of Purgatory and condemned it in their own Diocesses And the Kings supremacy in causes Ecclesiastical was earnestly defended against the pretences of the Bishop of Rome and yet when he was thrust out some men were and are vâ—olent to submit the King to their Consistories as if he were Supreme in defiance of the Pope and yet not Supreme over his own Clergy These Articles are mannaged too suspitiously Omnia si perdas famam servare memento You lose all the advantages to your cause if you lose your reputation 5 It is a duty also of Christian prudence that the teachers of others by authority or reprovers of their vices by charity should also make their persons apt to do it without objection Lori pedem rectus derideat Aethiopem albus No man can endure the Gracchi preaching against sedition nor Verres prating against theevery or Milo against homicide and if Herod had made an oration of humility or Antiochus of mercy men would have thought it had been a designe to evil purposes He that means to gain a soul must not make his Sermon an ostentation of his Eloquence but the law of his own life If a Gramarian should speak solaecismes or a Musician sing like a bittern he becomes ridiculous for offending in the faculty he professes So it is in them who minister to the conversion of souls If they fail in their own life when they professe to instruct another they are defective in their proper part and are unskilfull to all their purposes and the Cardinal of Crema did with ill successe tempt the English priests to quit their chaste marriages when himself was deprehended in unchaste embraces For good counsel seems to be unhallowed when it is reached forth by an impure hand and he can ill be beleeved by another whose life so confutes his rules that it is plain he does not beleeve himself Those Churches that are zealous for souls must send into their ministeries men so innocent that evil persons may have no excuse to be any longer vitious When Gorgias went about to perswade the Greeks to be at peace he had eloquence enough to do advantage to his cause and reason enough to presse it But Melanthius was glad to put him off by telling him that he was not fit to perswade peace who could not agree at home with his wife nor make his wife agree with her maid and he that could not make peace between three single persons was unapt to prevail for the reuniting fourteen or fifteen Common-wealths And this thing Saint Paul remarks by enjoyning that a Bishop should be chosen such a one as knew well to rule his own house or else he is not fit to rule the Church of God And when thou perswadest thy brother to be chaste let not him deride thee for thy intemperance and it will ill become thee to be severe against an idle servant if thou thy self beest uselesse to the publike and every notorious vice is infinitely against the spirit of government and depresses the man to an evennesse with common persons Facinus quos inquinat aequat to reprove belongs to a Superiour and as innocence gives a man advantage over his brother giving him an artificiall and adventitious authority so the follies and scandals of a publike and Governing man destroyes the efficacy of that authority that is just and naturall Now this is directly an office of Christian prudence that good offices and great authority become not ineffective by ill conduct Hither also it appertains that in publike or private reproofs we observe circumstances of time of place of person of disposition The vices of a King are not to be opened publikely and Princes must not be reprehended as a man reproves his servant but by Categoricall propositions by abstracted declamations by reprehensions of a crime in its single nature in private with humility and arts of insinuation And it is against Christian prudence not onely to use a Prince or great Personage with common language but it is as great an imprudence to pretend for such a rudenesse the examples of the Prophets in the old Testament For their case was extraordinary their calling peculiar their commission special their spirit miraculous their authority great as to that single mission they were like thunder or the trump of God sent to do that office plainly for the doing of which in that manner God had given no commission to any ordinary minister And therefore we never finde that the Priests did use that freedom which the Prophets were commanded to use whose very words being put into their mouthes it was not to be esteemed an humane act or a lawfull manner of doing an ordinary office neither could it become a precedent to them whose authority is precarious and without coërcion whose spirit is allayed with Christian graces and duties of humility whose words are not prescribed but left to the conduct of prudence as it is to be advised by publike necessities and private circumstances in ages where all things are so ordered that what was fit and pious amongst the old Jews would be incivil and intolerable to the latter Christians He also that reproves a vice should also treat the persons with honour and civilities and by fair opinions and sweet addresses place the man in the regions of modesty and the confines of grace and the fringes of repentance For some men are more
and forms some faces of religion or sweetnesse of language confident affirmatives or bold oaths protracted treaties or multitude of words affected silence or grave deportment a good name or a good cause a fair relation or a worthy calling great power or a pleasant wit any thing that can be fair or that can be usefull any thing that can do good or be thought good we use it to abuse our brother or promote our interests Leporina resolved to die being troubled for her husbands danger and he resolved to die with her that had so great a kindnesse for him as not to out-live the best of her husbands fortune It was agreed and she temperd the poyson and drank the face of the unwholesome goblet but the weighty poyson sunke to the bottome and the easie man drank it all off and died and the woman carried him forth to funeral and after a little illnesse which she soon recovered she enterd upon the inheritance and a second marriage Tuta frequensque via est This is an usual and a safe way to cozen upon colour of friendship or religion but that is hugely criminal to tell a lie to abuse a mans belief and by it to enter upon any thing of his possession or his injury is a perfect destruction of all humane society the most ignoble of all humane follies perfectly contrary to God who is Truth it self the greatest argument of a timorous and a base a cowardly and a private minde not at all honest or confident to see the Sun a vice fit for slaves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Dio Chrysostomus calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the most timorous and the basest of beasts use craft and lie in wait and take their prey and save their lives by deceit and it is the greatest injury to the abused person in the world for besides that it abuses his interest it also makes him for ever insecure and uneasie in his confidence which is the period of cares the rest of a mans spirit it makes it necessary for a man to be jealous and suspicious that is to be troublesome to himself and every man else and above all lying or craftinesse and unfaithful usages robs a man of the honour of his soul making his understanding uselesse and in the condition of a fool spoiled and dishonoured and despised 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Said Plato Every soul loses truth very unwillingly Every man is so great a lover of truth that if he hath it not he loves to beleeve he hath and would fain have all the world to beleeve as he does either presuming that he hath truth or else hating to be deceived or to be esteemed a cheated and an abused person Non licet suffurari mentem hominis etiam Samaritani said R. Moses sed veritatem loquere atque age ingenuè If a man be a Samaritan that is a hated person a person from whom you differ in matter of religion yet steal not his minde away but speak truth to him honestly and ingenuously A mans soul loves to dwell in truth it is his resting place and if you take him from thence you take him into strange regions a place of banishment and dishonour Qui ignotos laedit latro appellatur qui amicos paulò minus quam parricida He that hurts strangers is a thief but he that hurts his friends is little better then a parricide That 's the brand and stigma of hypocrisie and lying it hurts our friends mendacium in damnum potens and makes the man that owns it guilty of a crime that is to be punished by the sorrows usually suffered in the most execrable places of the cities But I must reduce the duty to particulars and discover the contrary vice by the several parts of its proportion 1. The first office of Christian simplicity consists in our religion and manners that they be open and honest publike and justifiable the same at home and abroad for besides the ingenuity and honesty of this there is an indispensable and infinite necessity it should be so because whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks God presenting to him the outside and reserving the inward for his enemy which is either a denying God to be the searcher of our hearts or else an open defiance of his omniscience and of his justice To provoke God that we may deceive men to defie his Almightinesse that we may abuse our brother is to destroy all that is Sacred all that is prudent it is an open hostility to all things humane and divine a breaking from all the bands of all relations and uses God so cheaply as if he were to be treated or could be cozened like a weak man and an undiscerning and easie merchant But so is the life of many men Vita fallax abditos sensus gerens Nimisque pulchram turpibus faciem induens It is a crafty life that men live carrying designes and living upon secret purposes Pudor impudentem celat audacem quies pietas nefandum vera fallaces probant simulantque molles dura Men pretend modesty and under that red vail are bold against Superiours saucy to their betters upon pretences of religion invaders of others rights by false propositions in Theology pretending humility they challenge superiority above all orders of men and for being thought more holy think that they have title to govern the world they bear upon their face great religion and are impious in their relations false to their trust unfaithful to their friend unkinde to their dependants 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 turning up the white of their eye and seeking for reputation in the streets so did some of the old hypocrites the Gentile Pharisees Asperum cultum intonsum caput negligentiorem barbam nitidum argento odium cubile humi positum quicquid aliud ambitionem viâ perversâ sequitur being the softest persons under an austere habit the loosest livers under a contracted brow under a pale face having the reddest and most spritely livers these kinde of men have abused all ages of the world and all religions it being so easie in nature so prepared and ready for mischiefs that men should creep into opportunities of devouring the flock upon pretence of defending them and to raise their estates upon colour of saving their souls Introrsum turpes speciosi pelle decorâ Men that are like painted sepulchres entertainment for the eye but images of death chambers of rottennesse and repositories of dead mens bones It may sometimes concern a man to seem religious Gods glory may be shewed by fair appearances or the edification of our brother or the reputation of a cause but this is but sometimes but it alwayes concerns us that we be religious and we may reasonably think that if the colours of religion so well do advantage to us the substance and reality would do it much more For no man can have a good by seeming religious and another by not being so
natural and therefore health and life was to descend upon him from Heaven and he was to suâ—k life from a tree on earth himself being but ingraffed into a tree of life and adâ—pted into the condition of an immortal nature But he that in the best of his dayes was but a Cien of this tree of life by his sin was cut off from thence quickly and planted upon thorns and his portion was for ever after among the flowers which to day spring and look like health and beauty and in the evening they are sick and at night are dead and the oven is their grave And as before even from our first spring from the dust of the earth we might have died if we had not been preserved by the continual flux of a rare providence so now that we are reduced to the laws of our own nature we must needs die It is natural and therefore necessary It is become a punishment to us and therefore it is unavoidable and God hath bound the evill upon us by bands of naturall and inseparable propriety and by a supervening unalterable decree of Heaven and we are fallen from our privilege and are returned to the condition of beast and buildings and common things And we see Temples defiled unto the ground and they die by Sacrilege and great Empires die by their own plenty and ease full humors and factious Subjects and huge buildings fall by their own weight and the violence of many winters eating and consuming the cement which is the marrow of their bones and Princes die like the meanest of their Servants and every thing findes a grave and a tomb and the very tomb it self dies by the bignesse of its pompousnesse and luxury Phario nutantia pondera saxo Quae cineri vanus dat ruitura labor and becomes as friable and uncombined dust as the ashes of the Sinner or the Saint that lay under it and is now forgotten in his bed of darknesse And to this Catalogue of mortality Man is inrolled with a Statutum est It is appointed for all men once to die and after death comes judgement and if a man can be stronger then nature or can wrestle with a degree of Heaven or can escape from a Divine punishment by his own arts so that neither the power nor the providence of God nor the laws of nature nor the bands of eternal predestination can hold him then he may live beyond the fate and period of flesh and last longer then a flower But if all these can hold us and tie us to conditions then we must lay our heads down upon a turfe and entertain creeping things in the cells and little chambers of our eyes and dwell with worms till time and death shall be no more We must needs die That 's our sentence But that 's not all We are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again Stay 1. We are as water weak and of no consistence alwaies descending abiding in no certain place unlesse where we are detained with violence and every little breath of winde makes us rough and tempestuous and troubles our faces every trifling accident discomposes us and as the face of the waters wafting in a storm so wrinkles it self that it makes upon its fore-head furrows deep and hollow like a grave so do our great and little cares and trifles first make the wrinkles of old age and then they dig a grave for us And there is in nature nothing so contemptible but it may meet with us in such circumstances that it may be too hard for us in our weaknesses and the sting of a Bee is a weapon sharp enough to pierce the finger of a childe or the lip of a man and those creatures which nature hath left without weapons yet they are armed sufficiently to vex those parts of men which are left defenselesse and obnoxious to a sun beam to the roughnesse of a sower grape to the unevennesse of a gravel-stone to the dust of a wheel or the unwholesome breath of a star looking awry upon a sinner 2. But besides the weaknesses and natural decayings of our bodies if chances and contingencies be innumerable then no man can reckon our dangers and the praeternatural causes of our deaths So that he is a vain person whose hopes of life are too confidently increased by reason of his health and he is too unreasonably timorous who thinks his hopes at an end when he dwels in sickness For men die without rule and with and without occasions and no man suspecting or foreseeing any of deaths addresses and no man in his whole condition is weaker then another A man in a long Consumption is fallen under one of the solemnities and preparations to death but at the same instant the most healthful person is as neer death upon a more fatal and a more sudden but a lesse discerned cause There are but few persons upon whose foreheads every man can read the sentence of death written in the lines of a lingring sicknesse but they sometimes hear the passing bell ring for stronger men even long before their own knell calls at the house of their mother to open her womb and make a bed for them No man is surer of to morrow then the weakest of his brethren and when Lepidus and Ausidius stumbled at the threshold of the Senate and fell down and died the blow came from heaven in a cloud but it struck more suddenly then upon the poor slave that made sport upon the Theatre with a praemeditated and foredescribed death Quod quisque vitet nunquam homini satis cautum est in horas There are sicknesses that walk in darknesse and there are exterminating Angels that fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature whom we cannot see but we feel their force and sink under their sword and from heaven the vail descends that wraps our heads in the fatal sentence There is no age of man but it hath proper to it self some posterns and outlets for death besides those infinite and open ports out of which myriads of men and women every day passe into the dark and the land of forgetfulnesse Infancie hath life but in effigie or like a spark dwelling in a pile of wood the candle is so newly lighted that every little shaking of the taper and every ruder breath of air puts it out and it dies Childhood is so tender and yet so unwary so soft to all the impressions of chance and yet so forward to run into them that God knew there could be no security without the care and vigilance of an Angel-keeper and the eyes of Parents and the arms of Nurses the provisions of art and all the effects of Humane love and Providence are not sufficient to keep one childe from horrid mischiefs from strange and early calamities and deaths unlesse a messenger be sent from heaven to stand sentinel and watch the very playings and the sleepings the eatings and