and obedience other fruits of grace in some good and comfortable measure it is a good sign of grace and sanctification in the heart But if thou hast these things only by fits and starts and sudden moods and art sometimes violently hot upon them and other sometimes again and oftner key cold presume not too much upon shews but suspect thy self still of hypocrisie and insincerity and never cease by repentance and prayer and the constant exercises of other good graces to physick and dyet thy soul till thou hast by Gods goodness put thy self into some reasonable assurance that thou art the true child of God a sincere believer and not an hypocrite as Ahab here notwithstanding all this his solemn humiliation was Here is Ahab an Hypocrite and yet humbled before the Lord. But yet now this humiliation such as it was what should work it in him That we find declared at vers 27. And it came to pass that when Ahab heard these words c. There came to him a message from God by the hand of Eliah and that was it that humbled him Alas what was Eliah to Ahab a silly plain Prophet to a mighty King that he durst thus presume to rush boldly and unsent-for into the presence of such a potent Monarch who had no less power and withal more colour to take away his life than Naboth's and that when he was in the top of his jollity solacing himself in the new-taken possession of his new-gotten Vine-yard and there to his face charge him plainly with and shake him up roundly for and denounce Gods judgments powerfully against his bloody abominable oppressions We would think a Monarch nusled up in Idolatry and accustomed to blood and hardened in Sin and Obstinacy should not have brooked that insolency from such a one as Eliah was but have made his life a ransom for his sawciness And yet behold the words of this underling in comparison how they fall like thunder upon the great guilty Offender and strike palsie into his knees and trembling into his joints and tumble him from the height of his jollity and roll him in sackcloth and ashes and cast him into a strong fit of legal humiliation Seest thou how Ahab is humbled before me And here now cometh in our second Observation even the power of Gods Word over the Consciences of obstinate sinners powerful to Cast down strong holds and every high thought that exalteth it self against God That which in Heb. 4. if I mistake not the true understanding of that place is spoken of the Essential word of God the second person in the ever blessed Trinity is also in an analogy true of the revealed Word of God the Scriptures of the Prophets and Apostles that it is Quick and powerful and more cutting than any two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow Is not my word like as a fire saith the Lord and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces Jer. 23. Like a soft fire to dissolve and melt the hearts of relenting sinners and true Converts but like a strong hammer to batter and break in pieces the rocky and flinty consciences of obstinate and hardened offenders Examples hereof if you require behold in the stories of the Kings Saul whining when Samuel reproveth him in the books of the Prophets Ninevites drooping when Ionas threatneth them in the Acts of the Apostles Felix trembling when Paul discourseth before him in the Martyrologies of the Church Tyrants and bloody Persecutors maskered at the bold consessions of the poor suffering Christians in this Chapter proud Ahab mourning when Eliah telleth him his sin and foretelleth him his punishment Effects which might justly seem strange to us if the Causes were not apparent One cause and the Principal is in the instrument the Word not from any such strength in it self for so it is but a dead letter but because of Gods Ordinance in it For in his hand are the hearts and the tongues and the ears both of Kings and Prophets and he can easily when he seeth it good put the spirit of Zeal and of Power into the heart of the poorest Prophet and as easily the spirit of fear and of terrour into the heart of the greatest King He chooseth weak Instruments as here Eliah and yet furnisheth them with power to effect great matters that so the glory might not rest upon the instrument but redound wholly to him as to the chief agent that imployeth it We have this treasure in earthen Veslels saith St. Paul that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us 2 Cor. 4. We say words are but wind and indeed the words of the best Minister are no better as they are breathed out and uttered by sinful mortal man whose breath is in his nostrils but yet this wind as it is breathed in and inspired by the powerful eternal Spirit of God is strong enough by his effectual working with it not only to shake the top branches but to rend up the very bottom-root of the tallest Cedar in Lebanon Vox Domini confringens Cedros Psal. 29. The voice of the Lord is mighty in operation the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice The voice of the Lord breaketh the Cedars yea the Lord breaketh the Cedars of Lebanon Another Cause is in the Object and that is the force of Natural Conscience which the most presumptuous sinner can never so stifle though he endeavour all he can to do it but that it will be sometimes snubbing and stinging and lashing and vexing him with ugly representations of his past sins and terrible suggestions of future vengeance And then of all other times is the force of it most lively when the voice of God in his Word awakeneth it after a long dead sleep Then it riseth and Sampson-like rouseth up it self and bestirreth it self lustily as a Giant refreshed with Wine and it putteth the disquieted patient to such unsufferable pain that he runneth up and down like a distracted man and doth he knoweth not what and seeketh for ease he knoweth not where Then he would give all Dives his wealth for A drop of Water to cool the heat he feeleth and with Esau part with his birth-right for any thing though it were never so little mean that would give him but the least present refreshing and preserve him from fainting Then sack-cloth and ashes and fasting and weeping and mourning and renting the garments and tearing the hair and knocking the breast and out-cries to heaven and all those other things which he could not abide to hear of in the time of his former security whilest his conscience lay fast asleep and at rest are now in all haste greedily entertained and all too little if by any means they can possibly give any ease or asswagement to the present torment
consciences direct our lives mortifie our corruptions encrease our graces strengthen our comforts save our souls Hoc opus hoc studium there is no study to this none so well worth the labour as this none that can bring so much profit to others nor therefore so much glory to God nor therefore so much comfort to our own hearts as this This is a faithful saying and these things I will that thou affirm constantly saith S. Paul to Titus that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works these things are good and profitable unto men You cannot do more good unto the Church of God you cannot more profit the people of God by your gifts than by pressing effectually these two great points Faith and good Works These are good and profitable unto men I might here add other Inferences from this point as namely since the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every one of us chiefly for this end that we may profit the people with it that therefore fourthly in our preaching we should rather seek to profit our hearers though perhaps with sharp and unwelcome reproofs than to please them by flattering them in evil and that Fifthly we should more desire to bring profit unto them than to gain applause unto our selves and sundry other more besides these But I will neither add any more nor prosecute these any farther at this time but give place to other business God the Father of Lights and of Spirits endow every one of us in our Places and Callings with a competent measure of such Graces as in his wisdom and goodness he shall see needful and expedient for us and so direct our hearts and tongues and endeavours in the exercise and manifestation thereof that by his good blessing upon our labours we may be enabled to advance his Glory propagate his Truth benefit his Church discharge a good Conscience in the mean time and at the last make our account with comfort at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. To whom c. AD CLERUM The Fourth Sermon At a Metropolitical Visitation at Grantham Lincoln August 22 d. 1634. ROM XIV 23. For whatsoever is not of Faith is sin ONE remarkable difference among many other between Good and Evil is this That there must be a concurrence of all requisite conditions to make a thing good whereas to make a thing evil a single defect in any one condition alone will suffice Bonum ex causa integra Malum ex partiali If we propose not to our selves a right end or if we pitch not upon proper and convenient means for the attaining of that end or if we pursue not these means in a due manner or if we observe not exactly every material circumstance in the whole pursuit if we fail but in any one point the action though it should be in every other respect such as it ought to be by that one defect becometh wholly sinful Nay more not only a true and real but even a supposed and imaginary defect the bare opinion of unlawfulness is able to vitiate the most justifiable act and to turn it into sin I know there is nothing unclean of it self but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean to him it is unclean at the 14. verse of this Chapter Nay yet more not only a setled opinion that the thing we do is unlawful but the very suspension of our judgment and the doubtfulness of our minds whether we may lawfully do it or no maketh it sometimes unlawful to be done of us and if we do it sinful He that but doubteth is damned if he eat Because he eateth not of faith in the former part of this verse The ground whereof the Apostle delivereth in a short and full Aphorism and concludeth the whole Chapter with it in the words of the Text For whatsoever is not of Faith is sin Many excellent Instructions there are scattered throughout the whole Chapter most of them concerning the right use of that Liberty we have unto things of indifferent nature well worthy our Christian Consideration if we had time and leisure for them But this last Rule alone will find us work enough and therefore omitting the rest we will by Gods assistance with your patience presently fall in hand with this and intend it wholly in the Explication first and then in the Application of it For by how much it is of more profitable and universal use for the regulating of the common offices of life by so much is the mischief greater if it be and accordingly our care ought to be so much the greater that it be not either misunderstood or misapplyed Quod non ex fide peccatum that is the rule Whatsoever is not of faith is sin In the Explication of which words there would be little difficulty had not the ambiguity of the word Faith occasioned difference of interpretations and so left a way open to some misapprehensions Faith is verbum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as most other words are There be that have reckoned up more than twenty several significations of it in the Scriptures But I find three especially looked at by those who either purposely or occasionally have had to do with this Text each of which we shall examine in their Order First and most usually especially in the Apostolical writings the word Faith is used to signifie that Theological vertue or gracious habit whereby we embrace with our minds and affections the Lord Iesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God and alone Saviour of the World casting our selves wholly upon the mercy of God through his merits for remission and everlasting Salvation It is that which is commonly called a lively or justifying Faith whereunto are ascribed in holy Writ those many gracious effects of purifying the heart adoption justification life joy peace salvation c. Not as to their proper and primary cause but as to the instrument whereby we apprehend and apply Christ whose merits and spirit are the true causes of all those blessed effects And in this notion many of our later Divines seem to understand it in our present Text whilst they alledge it for the confirmation of this Position that All the works even the best works of Unbelievers are sins A position condemned indeed by the Trent Council and that under a curse taking it as I suppose in a wrong construction but not worthy of so heavy a censure if it be rightly understood according to the doctrine of our Church in the thirteenth Article of her Confession and according to the tenour of those Scriptures whereon that doctrine is grounded viz. Matth. 12. 33. Rom. 8. 8. Tit. 1. 15. Heb. 11. 6 c. Howbeit I take it with subjection of judgment that that Conclusion what truth soever it may have in it self hath yet no direct foundation in this Text. The Verb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
other person that should but touch them So not only our Fathers Sins if we touch them by imitation but even their Lands and Goods and Houses and other things that were theirs are sufficient to derive God's Curse upon us if we do but hold them in possession What is gotten by any evil and unjust and unwarrantable means is in God's sight and estimation no better than stollen Now stollen Goods we know though they have passed through never so many hands before that man is answerable in whose Hands they are found and in whose Custody and Possession they are God hateth not Sin only but the very Monuments of Sin too and his Curse fasteneth not only upon the Agent but upon the brute and dead Materials too And where theft or oppression or Perjury or Sacrilege have laid the foundation and reared the house there the Curse of God creepeth in between the walls and ceilings and lurketh close within the stones and the timber and as a fretting moth or canker insensibly gnaweth asunder the pins and the joynts of the building till it have unframed it and resolved it into a ruinous heap for which mischief there is no remedy no preservation from it but one and that is free and speedy restitution For any thing we know what Ahab the Father got without justice Iehoram the Son held without scruple We do not find that ever he made restitution of Naboth's vineyard to the right heir and it is like enough he did not and then between him and his Father there was but this difference the Father was the theif and he the receiver which two the Law severeth not either in guilt or punishment but wrappeth them equally in the same guilt and in the same punishment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And who knoweth whether the very holding of that vineyard might not bring upon him the curse of his father's oppression It is plain that vineyard was the place where the heaviest part of that Curse overtook him But that which is the upshot of all and untieth all the knots both of this and of all other doubts that can be made against God's justice in punishing one for another ariseth from a third consideration which is this That the children are punished for the fathers sins or indefinitely any one man for the sins of any other man it ought to be imputed to those sins of the Fathers or others not as to the causes properly deserving them but only as occasioning those punishments It pleaseth God to take occasion from the sins of the fathers or of some others to bring upon their children or those that otherwise belong unto them in some kind of relation those evils which by their own corruptions and sins they have justly deserved This distinction of the Cause and Occasion if well heeded both fully acquitteth God's justice and abundantly reconcileth the seeming Contradictions of Scripture in this Argument and therefore it will be worth the while a little to open it There is a kind of Cause de numero efficientium which the learned for distinctions sake call the Impulsive Cause and it is such a cause as moveth and induceth the principal Agent to do that which it doth For example a Schoolmaster correcteth a Boy with a rod for neglecting his Book Of this correction here are three dictinct causes all in the rank of Efficients viz. the Master the Rod and the Boys neglect but each hath its proper causality in a different kind and manner from other The Master is the Cause as the principal Agent that doth it the Rod is the Cause as the Instrument wherewith he doth it and the Boy 's neglect the impulsive Cause for which he doth it Semblably in this judgment which befel Iehoram the principal efficient Cause and Agent was God as he is in all other punishments and judgments Shall there be evil in the city and the Lord hath not done it Amos 3. and here he taketh it to himself I will bring the evil upon his house The Instrumental Cause under God was Iehu whom God raised up and endued with zeal and power for the execution of that vengeance which he had determined against Ahab and against his house as appeareth in 4 Kings 9. and 10. But now what the true proper Impulsive Cause should be for which he was so punished and which moved God at that time and in that sort to punish him that is the point wherein consisteth the chiefest difficulty in this matter and into which therefore we are now to enquire viz. Whether that were rather his own sin or his Father Ahab's sin Whether we answer for this or for that we say but the truth in both for both sayings are true God punished him for his own and God punished him for his fathers sin The difference only this His own sins were the impulsive cause that deserved the punishment his fathers sin the impulsive cause that occasioned it and so indeed upon the point and respectively to the justice of God rather his own sins were the cause of it than his fathers both because justice doth especially look at the desert and also because that which deserveth the punishment is more effectually and primarily and properly the impulsive cause of punishing than that which only occasioneth it The terms whereby Artists express these two different kinds of impulsive causes borrowed from Galen and the Physicians of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 would be excellent and full of satisfaction if they were of easie understanding But for that they are not so especially to such as are not acquainted with the terms and learning of the Schools I forbear to use them and rather than to take the shortest cut over hedge and ditch chuse to lead you an easier and plainer way though it 's something about and that by a familiar Example A man hath lived for some good space in reasonable state of health yet by gross feeding and through continuance of time his Body the whilst hath contracted many vicious noisom and malignant humours It happeneth he had occasion to ride abroad in bad weather taketh wet on his feet or neck getteth cold with it cometh home findeth himself not well falleth a shaking first and anon after into a dangerous and lasting Fever Here is a Fever and here are two different causes of it an antecedent cause within the abundance of noisom and crude humours that is Causa 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the evident cause ab extra his riding in the wet and taking cold upon it and that is Galen's causa 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let us go on a little and compare these causes The Physician is sent for the sick man's friends they stand about him and in cometh the Physician among them and enquireth of him and them how he got his Fever They presently give him such Information as they can and the Information
is both true and sufficient so far as it reacheth they tell him the one cause the occasional cause the outward evident cause Alas Sir he rode such a journey such a time got wet on his feet and took cold upon it and that hath brought him to all this That is all they are able to say to it for other cause they know none But by and by after some surview of the state of the body he is able to inform them in the other cause the inward and original cause whereof they were as ignorant before as he was of that other outward one and he telleth them The cause of the Malady is superfluity of crude and noisom humours rankness of blood abundance of melancholy tough flegm or some other like thing within Now if it be demanded Which of these two is rather the cause of his sickness The truth is that inward antecedent cause within is the very cause thereof although perhaps it had not bred a Fever at that time if that other outward occasion had not been For by that inward hidden cause the body was prepared for an Ague only there wanted some outward fit accident to stir and provoke the humours within and to set them on working And the Party's body being so prepared might have fallen into the same sickness by some other accident as well as that as overheating himself with exercise immoderate watching some distemper or surfeit in diet or the like But neither that nor any of these nor any other such accident could have cast him into such a fit if the humours had not been ripe and the body thereby prepared to entertain such a disease So as the bad humours within may rather be said to be the true cause and that cold-taking but the occasion of the Ague the disease it self issuing from the hidden cause within and the outward accident being the cause not so much of the disease it self why the Ague should take him as why it should take him at that time rather than at another and hold him in that part or in that manner rather than in another From this example we may see in some proportion how our own sins and other mens concur as joynt impulsive Causes of those Punishments which God bringeth upon us Our own sins they are the true hidden antecedent causes which deserve the punishments our Fathers sins or our Governours sins or our Neighbours sins or whatsoever other mans sins that are visited upon us are only the outward evident causes or rather occasions why we should be punished at this time and in this thing and in this manner and in this measure and with these circumstances And as in the former Example the Patient's friends considered one cause and the Physician another they the evident and outward he the inward and antecedent cause so respectively to God's Iustice our own sins only are the causes of our punishments but in respect of his Providence and Wisdom our Fathers sins also or other mens For Iustice looketh upon the desert only and so the punishments are ever and only from our own personal sins as we learned from our third Certainty but it is Providence that ordereth the occasions and the seasons and the other circumstances of God's punishments Hence may we learn to reconcile those places of Scripture which seem to cross one another in this Argument In Ezekiel and Ieremiah it is said that every man shall be punished for his own sins and that the children shall not bear the iniquity of the fathers and yet the same Ieremiah complaineth as if it were otherwise Lam. 5. Our fathers have sinned and are not and we have born their iniquities Yea God himself proclaimeth otherwise I am a jealous God visiting the sins of the Fathers upon the Children Nor only doth he visit the sins of the Fathers upon the Children but he visiteth also the sins of Princes upon their Subjects as David's people were wasted for his Sin in numbring them yea and he visiteth sometimes the sins even of ordinary private men upon publick societies Did not Achan the son of Zerah commit a trespass in the accursed thing and wrath fell upon all the Congregation of Israel and that man perished not alone in his iniquity Now how can all this stand together Yes very well even as well as in the act of punishing God's Iustice and his Wisdom can stand together Mark then wheresoever the Scripture ascribeth one mans Punishment to another mans Sin it pointeth us to God's Wisdom and Providence who for good and just ends maketh choice of these occasions rather than other sometimes to inflict those punishments upon men which their own sins have otherwise abundantly deserved On the contrary wheresoever the Scripture giveth all punishments unto the personal Sins of the Sufferer it pointeth us to God's Iustice which looketh still to the desert and doth not upon any occasion whatsoever inflict punishments but where there are personal Sins to deserve them so that every man that is punished in any kind or upon any occasion may joyn with David in that confession of his Psal. 51. Against thee have I sinned and done evil in thy sight that thou mightest be justified in thy sayings and clear when thou judgest Say then an unconscionable great one by cruel oppression wring as Ahab did here his poorer neighbours Vineyard from him or by countenanced sacrilege geld a Bishoprick of a fair Lordship or Manor and when he hath done his prodigal Heir run one end of it away in matches drown another end of it in Taverns and Tap-houses melt away the rest in Lust and beastly sensuality who doth not here see both God's Iustice in turning him out of that which was so foully abused by his own Sins and his Providence withal in fastning the Curse upon that portion which was so unjustly gotten by his fathers sins Every man is ready to say It was never like to prosper it was so ill gotten and so acknowledge the Covetous fathers sin as occasioning it and yet every man can say withal It was never likely to continue long it was so vainly lavished out and so acknowledge the prodigal Son's sin as sufficiently deserving it Thus have we heard the main doubt solved The summ of all is this God punisheth the Son for the Father's sin but with temporal punishments not eternal and with those perhaps so as to redound to the Father's punishment in the Son perhaps because the Son treadeth in his father's steps perhaps because he possesseth that from his father to which God's curse adhereth perhaps for other reasons best known to God himself wherewith he hath not thought meet to acquaint us but whatever the occasion be or the ends evermore for the Sons own personal Sins abundantly deserving them And the same resolution is to be given to the other two doubts proposed in the beginning to that Why God should punish
less of the two viz. to say there were two Gods a good God the Author of all good things and an evil God the Author of all evil things If then we acknowledge that there is but one God and that one God good and we do all so acknowledge unless we will be more absurd than those most absurd Hereticks we must withal acknowledge all the Creatures of that one and good God to be also good He is so the causer of all that is good for Every good gift and every perfect giving descendeth from above from the Father of lights as that he is the causer only of what is good for with him is no variableness neither shadow of turning saith St. Iames. As the Sun who is Pater luminum the fountain and Father of lights whereunto St. Iames in that passage doth apparently allude giveth light to the Moon and Stars and all the lights of Heaven and causeth light wheresoever he shineth but no where causeth darkness so God the Father fountain of all goodness so communicateth goodness to every thing he produceth as that he cannot produce any thing at all but that which is good Every Creature of God then is good Which being so certainly then first to raise some Inferences from the Premisses for our farther instruction and use certainly I say Sin and Death and such things as are evil and not good are not of Gods making they are none of his Creatures for all his Creatures are good Let no man therefore say when he is tempted and overcome of sin I am tempted of God neither let any man say when he hath done evil It was God's doing God indeed preserveth the Man actuateth the Power and ordereth the Action to the glory of his Mercy or Iustice but he hath no hand at all in the sinful defect and obliquity of a wicked action There is a natural or rather transcendental Goodness Bonit as Entis as they call it in every Action even in that whereto the greatest sin adhereth and that Goodness is from God as that Action is his Creature But the Evil that cleaveth unto it is wholly from the default of the Person that committeth it and not at all from God And as for the Evils of Pain also neither are they of Gods making Deus mortem non fecit saith the Author of the Book of Wisdom God made not death neither doth he take pleasure in the destruction of the living but wicked men by their words and works have brought it upon themselves Perditio tua ex te Israel Hosea 13. O Israel thy destruction is from thy self that is both thy sin whereby thou destroyest thy self and thy Misery whereby thou art destroyed is only and wholly from thy self Certainly God is not the cause of any Evil either of Sin or Punishment Conceive it thus not the Cause of it formally and so far forth as it is Evil. For otherwise we must know that materially considered all Evils of Punishment are from God for Shall there be evil in the City and the Lord hath not done it Amos 3. 6. In Evils of sin there is no other but only that Natural or Transcendental goodness whereof we spake in the Action which goodness though it be from God yet because the Action is morally bad God is not said to do it But in Evils of Punishment there is over and besides that Natural Goodness whereby they exist a kind of Moral Goodness as we may call it after a sort improperly and by way of reduction as they are Instruments of the Iustice of God and whatsoever may be referred to Iustice may so far forth be called good and for that very goodness God may be said in some sort to be the Author of these evils of Punishment though not also of those other evils of Sin In both we must distinguish the Good from the Evil and ascribe all the Good wheresoever it be Transcendental Natural Moral or if there be any other to God alone but by no means any of the Evil. We are unthankful if we impute any good but to him and we are unjust if we impute to him any thing but good Secondly from the goodness of the least Creature guess we at the excellent goodness of the great Creator Ex pede Herculem God hath imprinted as before I said some steps and footings of his goodness in the Creatures from which we must take the best scantling we are capable of of those admirable and inexpressible and unconceivable perfections that are in him There is no beholding of the body of this Sun who dwelleth in such a a Glorious light as none can attain unto that glory would dazle with blindness the sharpest and most Eagly eye that should dare to fix it self upon it with any stedfastness enough it is for us from those rays and glimmering beams which he hath scattered upon the Creatures to gather how infinitely he exceedeth them in brightness and glory De ipso vides sed non ipsum We see his but not Him His Creatures they are our best indeed our only instructers For though his revealed Word teach us that we should never have learned from the Creatures without it yet fitted to our capacity it teacheth no otherwise than by resemblances taken from the Creatures 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as St. Paul calleth it Rom. 1. the whole Latitude of that which may be known of God is manifest in the Creatures and the invisible things of God not to be understood but by things that are made St. Basil therefore calleth the world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the very School where the knowledge of God is to be learned And there is a double way of teaching a twofold method of training us up into that knowledge in that school that is to say Per viam Negationis and per viam Eminentiae First Viâ Negationis look whatsoever thou findest in the Creature which savoureth of defect or imperfection and know God is not such Are they limited subject to change composition decay c Remove these from God and learn that he is infinite simple unchangeable eternal Then Viâ Eminentiae look whatsoever perfection there is in the Creature in any degree and know that the same but infinitely and incomparably more eminently is in God Is there Wisdom or Knowledge or Power or Beauty or Greatness or Goodness in any kind or in any measure in any of the Creatures Affirm the same but without measure of Godâ—â— and learn that he is infinitely wiser and skilfuller and stronger and fairer and greater and better In every good thing so differently excellent above and beyond the Creatures as that though yet they be good yet compared with him they deserve not the name of good There is none good but one that is God Mar. 10. None good as he simply and absolutely and essentially and of himself such The creatures
final impenitency but by keeping out of the reach of these Presumptuous sins 25. From all these intimations in the Text we may conclude there is something more in Presumptuous sins than in sins of Ignorance and Infirmity the Obliquity greater and the Danger greater Which we are now a little farther to discover that so our care to avoid them may be the greater Their Obliquity is best seen in the Cause their Danger in the Effects It hath been cleared already that Presumptuous sins spring from the perversness of the will as the most proper and Immediate cause and it is the will that hath the chief stroke in all moral actions torender them good or bad better or worse It is a Maxime amongst the Cafuists Involuntarium minuit de ratione peccati and Voluntas distinguit maleficia say the Lawyers So that albeit there be many circumstances as of Time Place Persons c. and sundry other respects especially those of the Matter and of the End very considerable for the aggravating extenuating and comparing of sins one with another yet the consent of the Will is of so much greater importance than all the rest that all other considerations laid aside every sin is absolutely by so much greater or lesser by how much it is more or less voluntary Sithence therefore in sins of Ignorance and Infirmity there is less Wilfulness the Will being misled in the one by an Error in the Judgment and in the other transported by the violence of some Passion and in sins of Presumption there is a greater wilfulness wherein the Will wanting either information or leisure to resolve better doth yet knowingly and advisedly resolve to do ill it will necessarily follow that Presumptuous sins are therefore far greater sins than either of the other are The Will being abundantly and beyond measure wilful maketh the sin to be abundantly and beyond measure sinful Doubtless far greater was Davids sin in murthering though but his servant than either Peters in denying his Master or Sauls in blaspheming and persecuting his Saviour 26. Nor only do Presumptuous sins spring from a worse Cause than the other and thence are more Sinful but do also produce worse Effects than they and so are more dangerous whether we look at them before or at the time of Repentance or after Before Repentance they harden the heart wonderfully hey wast the conscience in a fearful manner and bring such a callous crust upon the tnner man that it will be a long and a hard work so to supple soften and iintender the heart again as to make it capable of the impressions of Repentance For alas what hope to do good upon a wilful man The most grave admonitions the most seasonable reproofs the most powerful exhortations the most convincing Reasons that can be used to such a man are but Tabula coeco as a curious Picture to a blind man for who so blind as he that will not see and Fabula surdo a pleasant tale to a deaf man for who so deaf as he that will not hear 27. Thus it is with wicked men and cast-aways whose brawny hearts are by these wilful rebellions fitted for and fatted up unto destruction And verily not much better than thus is it with Gods faithful servants for the time if at any time they hap to fall into any presumptuous sin In what a sad condition may we think poor David was after he had lain with the Wife and slain the Husband What musick could he now trow ye find in his own Anthems With what comfort could he say his Prayers Did not his tongue think ye cleave to the roof of his mouth And had not his right hand well-nigh forgot her cunning To the judgment of man no difference for some months together during his unrepentance betwixt holy David the man after Gods own heart and a profane scorner that had no fear of God before his eyes Such wast and havock had that great sin made and such spoil of the graces and pledges of Gods holy Spirit in his soul. Look how a sober wise man who when he is himself is able to order his words and affairs with excellent discretion when in a sharp burning-â—ever his blood is inflamed and his brains distempered will rave and talk at random and fling stones and dirt at all about him and every other way in his speeches and motions behave himself like a fool or mad-man so is the servant of God lying under the guilt of a Presumptuous sin before Repentance 28. And then when he doth come to repent Lord what a do there is with him before that great stomach of his will come down and his Masterful spirit be soundly subdued And yet down it must subdued it must be or he getteth no pardon What shrinking and drawing back when the wound cometh to be searcht And yet searcht it must be and probed to the bottom or there will be no perfect recovery Presumptuous sins being so grievous hath been shewed let no man think they will be removed with mean and ordinary Humiliations The Remedy must be proportioned both for strength and quantity Ingredients and Dose to the Quality and Malignity of the distemper or it will never do the cure As stains of a deep dye will not out of the cloth with such ordinary washings as will fetch out lighter spots so to cleanse the heart defiled with these deeper pollutions these crimson and scarlet sins and to restore it pure white as snow or wooll a more solemn and lasting course is requisite than for lesser transgressions It will ask more sighs more tears more Indignation more revenge a stronger infusion of all those soveraign ingredients prescribed by St. Paul 2 Cor. 7. before there can be any comfortable hope that it is pardoned The will of man is a sowre and stubborn piece of clay that will not frame to any serviceable use without much working A soft and tender heart indeed is soon rent in pieces like a silken garment if it do but catch upon any little nail But a heart hardned with long custom of sinning especially if it be with one of these presumptuous sins is like the knotty root-end of an old Oak that hath lain long a drying in the Sun It must be a hard wedge that will enter and it must be handled with some skill too to make it do that and when the wedge is entred it will endure many a hard knock before it will yield to the Cleaver and fall in sunder And indeed it is a blessed thing and to be acknowledged a gracious evidence of Gods unspeakable mercy to those that have wilfully suffered such an unclean spirit to enter in and to take possession of their souls if they shall ever be enabled to out him again though with never so much fasting and Prayer Potentes Potenter they that have mightily offended shall be sure to be mightily tormented if they repent not and therefore it is
of spirits divers kinds of tongues interpretation of tongues All which and all other of like nature and use because they are wrought by that one and self-same Spirit which divideth to every one severally as he will are therefore called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Spiritual gifts and here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the manifestation of the Spirit The word Spirit though in Scripture it have many other significations yet in this place I conceive it to be understood directly of the Holy Ghost the third Person in the ever-blessed Trinity For First in ver 3. that which is called the Spirit of God in the former part is in the latter part called the Holy Ghost f I give you to understand that no man speaking by the spirit of God calleth Iesus accursed and that no man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost Again that variety of gifts which in ver 4. is said to proceed from the same Spirit is said likewise in ver 5. to proceed from the same Lord and in ver 6. to proceed from the same God and therefore such a Spirit is meant as is also Lord and God and that is only the Holy Ghost And again in those words in ver 11. All these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit dividing to every man severally as he will The Apostle ascribeth to this Spirit the collation and distribution of such gifts according to the free power of his own will and pleasure which free power belongeth to none but God alone Who hath set the members every one in the body as it hath pleased him Which yet ought not to be so understood of the Person of the Spirit as if the Father and the Son had no part or fellowship in this business For all the Actions and operations of the Divine Persons those only excepted which are of intrinsecal and mutual relation are the joynt and undivided works of the whole three Persons according to the common known Maxim constantly and uniformly received in the Catholick Church Opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa And as to this particular concerning gifts the Scriptures are clear Wherein as they are ascribed to God the Holy Ghost in this Chapter so they are elsewhere ascribed unto God the Father Every good gift and every perfect giving is from above from the Father of Lights Jam. 1. and elsewhere to God the Son Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ Eph. 4. Yea and it may be that for this very reason in the three verses next before my Text these three words are used Spirit in ver 4. Lord in ver 5. and God in ver 6. to give us intimation that these spiritual gifts proceed equally and undividedly from the whole three persons from God the Father and from his Son Iesus Christ our Lord and from the eternal Spirit of them both the Holy Ghost as from one intire indivisible and coessential Agent But for that we are gross of understanding and unable to conceive the distinct Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Godhead otherwise than by apprehending some distinction of their operations and offices to us ward it hath pleased the Wisdom of God in the holy Scriptures which being written for our sakes were to be fitted to our capacities so far to condescend to our weakness and dulness as to attribute some of those great and common works to one person and some to another after a more special manner than unto the rest although indeed and in truth none of the three persons had more or less to do than other in any of those great and common works This manner of speaking Divines use to call Appropriation By which appropriation as power is ascribed to the Father and Wisdom to the Son so is Goodness to the Holy Ghost And therefore as the work of Creation wherein is specially seen the mighty power of God is appropiated to the Father and the work of Redemption wherein is specially seen the wisdom of God to the Son and so the works of sanctification and the infusion of habitual graces whereby the good things of God are communicated unto us is appropriated unto the Holy Ghost And for this cause the gifts thus communicated unto us from God are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spiritual gifts and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the manifestation of the Spirit We see now why spirit but then why manifestation The word as most other verbals of that form may be understood either in the active or passive signification And it is not material whether of the two ways we take it in this place both being true and neither improper For these spiritual gifts are the manifestation of the spirit actively because by these the Spirit manifesteth the will of God unto the Church these being the Instruments and means of conveying the knowledge of salvation unto the people of God And they are the manifestation of the spirit Passively too because where any of these gifts especially in any eminent sort appeared in any person it was a manifest evidence that the Spirit of God wrought in him As we read it Acts 10. that they of the Circumcision were astonished when they saw that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gifts of the Holy Ghost If it be demanded But how did that appear it followeth in the next verse For they heard them speak with tongues c. The spiritual Gift then is a manifestation of the Spirit as every other sensible effect is a manifestation of its proper cause We are now yet further to know that the Gifts and graces wrought in us by the holy Holy Spirit of God are of two sorts The Scriptures sometimes distinguish them by the different terms of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 although those words are sometimes again used indifferently and promiscuously either for other They are commonly known in the Schools and differenced by the names of Gratiae gratum facientes Gratiae gratis datae Which terms though they be not very proper for the one of them may be affirmed of the other whereas the members of every good distinction ought to be opposite yet because they have been long received and change of terms though haply for the better hath by experience been found for the most part unhappy in the event in multiplying unnecessary book-quarrels we may retain them profitably and without prejudice Those former which they call Gratum facientes are the Graces of Sanctification whereby the person that hath them is enabled to do acceptable service to God in the duties of his General Calling these latter which they call Gratis datas are the Graces of Edification whereby the person that hath them is enabled to do profitable service to the Church of God in the duties of his particular Calling Those are
the Bench yet the Text saith he cared for none of those things as if they had their names given them by an Antiphrasis like Diogenes his man manes à manendo because he would be now and then running away so these Iustices à justitia because they neither do nor care to do Iustice. Peradventure here and there one or two in a whole side of a Country to be found that make a Conscience of their duty more than the rest and are forward to do the best good they can Gods blessing rest upon their heads for it But what cometh of it The rest glad of their forwardness make only this use of it to themselves even to slip their own necks out of the yoke and leave all the burthen upon them and so at length even tire out them too by making common pack horses of them A little it may be is done by the rest for fashion but to little purpose sometimes more to shew their Iusticeship than to do Iustice and a little more may be is wrung from them by importunity as the poor widow in the parable by her clamorousness wrung a piece of Iustice with much ado from the Iudge that neither feared God nor regarded man Alas Beloved if all were right within if there were generally that zeal that should be in Magistrates good Laws would not thus languish as they do for want of execution there would not be that insolency of Popish rescuants that licence of Rogues and Wanderers that prouling of Officers that inhancing of sees that delay of suits that countenancing of abuses those carcases of depopulated Towns infinite other mischiefs which are the sins shall I say or the Plagues it is hard to say whether more they are indeed both the sins and the Plagues of this Land And as for Compassion to the distressed is there not now just cause if ever to complain If in these hard times wherein nothing aboundeth but poverty and sin when the greater ones of the earth should most of all enlarge their bowels and reach out the hand to relieve the extreme necessity of thousands that are ready to starve if I say in these times great men yea and men of Iustice are as throng as ever in pulling down houses and setting up hedges in unpeopleing Towns and creating beggars in racking the backs and grinding the faces of the poor how dwelleth the love of God how dwelleth the spirit of compassion in these men Are these eyes to the blind feet to the lame and fathers to the poor as Iob was I know your hearts cannot but rise in detestation of these things at the very mentioning of them But what would you say if as it was said to Ezekiel so I should bid you turn again and behold yet greater and yet greater abominations of the lamentable oppressions of the poor by them and their instruments who stand bound in all conscience and in regard of their places to protect them from the injuries and oppressions of others But I forbear to do that and choose rather out of one passage in the Prophet Amos to give you some short intimation both of the faults and of the reason of my forbearance It is in Amos 5. v. 12 13. I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins they afflict the just they take a bribe and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time for it is an evil time And as for searching out the truth in mens causes which is the third Duty First those Sycophants deserve a rebuke who by false accusations and cunningly devised tales 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of purpose involve the truth of things to set a fair colour upon a bad matter or to take away the righteousness of the innocent from him And yet how many are there such as these in most of our Courts of justice informing and promoting and pettifogging make-bates Now it were a lamentable thing if these men should be known and yet suffered but what if countenanced and encouraged and under hand maintained by the Magistrates of those Courts of purpose to bring Moulter to their own Mills Secondly since Magistrates must be content for they are but men and cannot be every where at once in many things to see with other mens eyes and to hear with other mens ears and to proceed upon information those men deserve a rebuke who being by their office to ripen causes for judgment and to facilitate the Magistrates care and pains for inquisition do yet either for fear or favour or negligence or a fee keep back true and necessary informations or else for spight or gain clog the Courts with false or trifling ones But most of all the Magistrates themselves deserve a rebuke if either they be hasty to acquit a man upon his own bare denial or protestation for si inficiari sufficiet ecquis erit nocens as the Orator pleaded before Iulian the Emperour if a denial may serve the turn none shall be guilty or if hasty to condemn a man upon anothers bare accusation for si accusasse sufficiet ecquis erit innocens as the Emperour excellently replied upon that Orator if an accusation may serve the turn none shall be innocent or if they suffer themselves to be possessed with prejudice and not keep one ear open as they write of Alexander the great for the contrary party that they may stand indifferent till the truth be throughly canvassed or if to keep causes long in their hands they either delay to search the truth out that they may know it or to decide the cause according to the truth when they have found it And as for Courage to execute Iustice which is the last Duty what need we trouble our selves to seek out the causes when we see the effects so daily and plainly before our eyes whether it be through his own cowardice or inconstancy that he keepeth off or that a fair word whistleth him off or that a greater mans letter staveth him off or that his own guilty conscience doggeth him off or that his hands are manacled with a bribe that he cannot fasten or whatsoever other matter there is in it sure we are the Magistrate too often letteth the wicked carry away the spoil without breaking a jaw of him or so much as offering to pick his teeth It was not well in David's time and yet David a Godly King when complaining he asked the Question Who will stand up with me against the evil doers It was not well in Solomon's time and yet Solomon a peaceable King when considering the Oppressions that were done under the Sun he saw that on the side of the oppressors there was power but as for the oppressed they had no comforter We live under the happy government of a godly and peaceable King Gods holy name be blessed for it and yet God knoweth and we all know
but a defamed person no Acquittal from the Iudg no satisfaction from the Accuser no following Endeavours in himself can so restore in integrum but that when the Wound is healed he shall yet carry the marks and the scars of it to his dying day Great also are the mischiefs that hence redound to the Commonwealth When no innocency can protect an honest quiet man but every busie base fellow that oweth him a spite shall be able to fetch him into the Courts draw him from the necessary charge of his family and duties of his calling to an unnecessary expence of money and time torture him with endless delays and expose him to the pillage of every hungry Officer It is one of the grievances God had against Ierusalem and as he calleth them Abominations for which he threatneth to judge her Viri detractores in te In thee are men that carry tales to shed blood Beware then all you whose business or lot it is at this Assizes or hereafter may be to be Plaintiffs Accusers Informers or any way Parties in any Court of Justice this or other Civil or Ecclesiastical that you suffer not the guilt of this Prohibition to cleave unto your Consciences If you shall hereafter be raisers of false Reports the words you have heard this day shall make you inexcusable another You are by what hath been presently spoken disabled everlastingly from pleading any Ignorance either Facti or Iuris as having been instructed both what it is and how great a Fault it is to raise a false Report Resolve therefore if you be free never to enter into any Action or Suit wherein you cannot proceed with Comfort nor come off without Injustice or if already engaged to make as good and speedy an end as you can of a bad matter and to desist from farther prosecution Let that Golden Rule commended by the wisest Heathens as a fundamental Principle of Moral and Civil Iustice yea and proposed by our blessed Saviour himself as a full abridgment of the Law and Prophets be ever in your eye and ever before your thoughts to measure out all your Actions and Accusations and Proceedings thereby even to do so to other men and no otherwise than as you could be content or in right reason should be content they should do to you and yours if their case were yours Could any of you take it well at your Neighbours hand should he seek your life or livelihood by suggesting against you things which you never had so much as the thought to do or bring you into a peck of Troubles by wresting your Words and Actions wherein you meant nothing but well to a dangerous construction or follow the Law upon you as if he would not leave you worth a groat for every petty Trespass scarce worth half the money or fetch you over the hip upon a branch of some blind uncouth and pretermitted Statute He that should deal thus with you and yours I know not what would be said and thought Griper Knave Villain Devil incarnate all this and much more would be too little for him Well I say no more but this Quod tibi fieri non vis c. Do as you would be done to There is your general rule But for more particular direction if any man desire it since in every evil one good step to soundness is to have discovered the right Cause thereof â— know not what better course to prescribe for the preventing of this sin of Sycophancy and false accusation than for every man carefully to avoid the inducing Causes thereof and the Occasions of those Causes There are God knoweth in this present wicked World to every kind of evil inducements but too too many To this of false Accusation therefore it is not unlikely but there may be more yet we may observe that there are four things which are the most ordinary and frequent Causes thereof viz. Malice Obsequiousness Coverture and Covetousness The first is Malice Which in some men if I may be allowed to call them men being indeed rather Monsters is universal They love no body glad when they can do any man any mischief in any matter never at so good quiet as when they are most unquiet It seemed David met with some such men that were Enemies to peace when he spake to them of peace they made themselves ready to battel Take one of these men it is meat and drink to him which to a well-minded Christian is as Gall and Wormwood to be in continual sutes Et si non aliqua nocuisset mortuus esset he could not have kept himself in breath but by keeping Terms nor have lived to this hour if he had not been in Law Such cankered dispositions as these without the more than ordinary mercy of God there is little hope to reclaim unless very want when they have spent and undone themselves with wrangling for that is commonly their end and the reward of all their toyl make them hold off and give over But there are besides these others also in whom although this malice reigneth not so universally yet are they so far carried with private spleen and hatred against some particular men for some personal respect or other as to seek their undoing by all means they can Out of which hatred and envy they raise false reports of them that being in their judgments as it is indeed the most speedy and the most speeding way to do mischief with safety This made the Presidents and Princes of Persia to seek an Accusation against Daniel whom they envied because the King had preferred him above them And in all Ages of the World wicked and prophane men have been busie to suggest the worst they could against those that have been faithful in their Callings especially in the callings of the Magistracy or Ministry that very faithfulness of theirs being to the other a sufficient ground of malice To remedy this take the Apostles rule Heb. 12. Look diligently lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and thereby many be defiled Submit your selves to the Word and Will of God in the Ministry submit your selves to the Power and Ordinance of God in the Magistracy submit your selves to the good pleasure and Providence of God in disposing of yours and other mens Estates and you shall have no cause by the grace of God out of Malice or Envy to any of your brethren to raise false Reports of them The second Inducement is Obsequiousness When either out of a base fear of displeasing some that have power to do us a displeasure or out of a baser Ambition to scrue our selves into the service or favour of those that may advance us we are content though we owe them no private grudge otherwise yet to become officious Accusers of those they hate but would not be seen so to do so making our selves as it were bawds unto their lust and open
rest as I have done in this my Meditations would swell to the proportion rather of a Treatise than a Sermon and what patience were able to sit them out therefore I must not do it And indeed if what I have spoken to this first point were duly considered and conscionably practised I should the less need to do it For it is the Accuser that layeth the first stone the rest do but build upon his Foundation And if there were no false reports raised or received there would be the less use of and the less work for false and suborned Witnesses ignorant or pack'd Iuries crafty and sly Pleaders cogging and extorting Officers but unto these I have no more to say at this time but only to desire each of them to lay that portion of my Text to their hearts which in the first division was allotted them as their proper share and withal to make application mutatis mutandis unto themselves of whatsoever hath been presently spoken to the Accuser and to the Magistrate from this first Rulē Whereof for the better furtherance of their Application and relief of our memories the summ in brief is thus First concerning the Accuser and that is every party in a Cause or Trial he must take heed he do not raise a false report which is done first by forging a meer untruth and secondly by perverting or aggravating a truth and thirdly by taking advantage of strict Law against Equity any of which whoever doth he first committeth a heinous sin himself and secondly grievously wrongeth his neighbour and thirdly bringeth a great deal of mischief to the Commonwealth All which evils are best avoided first by considering how we would others should deal with us and resolving so to deal with them and secondly by avoiding as all other inducements and occasions so especially those four things which ordinarily engage men in unjust quarrels Malice Obsequiousness Coverture and Greediness Next concerning the Iudge or Magistrate he must take heed he do not receive a false report which he shall hardly avoid unless he beware first of taking private informations secondly of passing over Causes slightly without mature disquisition and thirdly of countenancing accusers more than is meet For whose discountenancing and deterring he may consider whether or no these five may not be good helps so far as it lyeth in his power and the Laws will permit first to reject informations tendered without Oath secondly to give such Interpretations as may stand with Equity as well as Law thirdly to chastise Informers that use partiality or collusion fourthly to allow the wronged party a liberal Satisfaction from his Adversary fifthly to carry a sharp Eye and a strait Hand over his own Servants Followers and Officers Now what remaineth but that the several Premises be earnestly recommended to the godly consideration and conscionable practice of every one of you whom they may concern and all your persons and affairs both in the present weighty businesses and ever hereafter to the good guidance and providence of Almighty God we should humbly beseech him of his gracious goodness to give a Blessing to that which hath been spoken agreeably to his Word that it may bring forth in us the fruits of Godliness Charity and Iustice to the Glory of his Grace the Good of our Brethren and the Comfort of our own Souls even for his blessed Son's sake our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ To whom with c. AD MAGISTRATUM The Third Sermon At the Assises at Lincoln August 4th 1625. at the Request of the High-Sheriff aforesaid William Lister Esquire Psal. CVI. 30. Then stood up Phinees and executed Iudgment and the Plague was stayed THE Abridgment is short which some have made of the whole Book of Psalms but into two words Hosannah and Hallelujah most of the Psalms spending themselves as in their proper Arguments either in Supplication praying unto God for his Blessings and that is Hosannah or in Thanksgiving blessing God for his goodness and that is Hallelujah This Psalm is of the latter sort The word Hallelujah both prefixed in the Title and repeated in the close of it sufficiently giveth it to be a Psalm of Thanksgiving as are also the three next before it and the next after it All which five Psalms together as they agree in the same general Argument the magnifying of God's holy Name so they differ one from another in choice of those special and topical Arguments whereby the Praises of God are set forth therein In the rest the Psalmist draweth his Argument from other Considerations in this from the Consideration of God's merciful removal of those Iudgments he had in his just wrath brought upon his own People Israel for their Sins upon their Repentance For this purpose there are sundry instances given in the Psalm taken out of the Histories of former times out of which there is framed as it were a Catalogue though not of all yet of sundry the most famous rebellions of that people against their God and of Gods both Iustice and Mercy abundantly manifested in his proceedings with them thereupon In all which we may observe the passages betwixt God and them in the ordinary course of things ever to have stood in this order First he preventeth them with undeserved favours they unmindful of his benefits provoke him by their rebellions he in his just wrath chastiseth them with heavy Plagues they humbled under the rod seek to him for ease he upon their submission withdraweth his judgments from them The Psalmist hath wrapped all these five together in Vers. 43 44. Many times did he deliver them but they provoked him with their Counsels and were brought low for their iniquity the three first Nevertheless he regarded their affliction when he heard their cry the other two The particular rebellions of the people in this Psalm instanced in are many some before and some after the verse of my Text. For brevity sake those that are in the following verses I wholly omit and but name the rest which are their wretched Infidelity and Cowardice upon the first approach of danger at the Red Sea vers 7. Their tempting of God in the desert when loathing Manna they lusted for flesh vers 13. Their seditious conspiracy under Corah and his confederates against Moses vers 16. Their gross Idolatry at Horeb in making and worshipping the golden Calf ver 19. Their distrustful murmuring at their portion in thinking scorn of the promised pleasant land ver 24. Their fornicating both bodily with the daughters and spiritually with the Idols of Moab and of Midian ver 28. To the prosecution of which last mentioned story the words of my Text do appertain The original story it self whereto this part of the Psalm referreth is written at full by Moses in Numb 25. and here by David but briefly touched as the present purpose and occasion led him yet so as that the most
of and for which God here promiseth that he will not bring the evil in his days Lay all this together the man and his ill conditions and his present carriage with the occasion and success of it and it offereth three notable things to our consideration See first how far an Hypocrite a Cast-away may go in the outward performance of holy duties and particularly in the Practice of Repentance here is Ahab humbled such a man and yet so penitent See again secondly how deep God's Word though in the mouth but of weak Instruments when he is pleased to give strength unto it pierceth into the Consciences of obstinate sinners and bringeth the proudest of them upon their knees in despite of their hearts here is Ahab quelled by Elijah such a great one by such a weak one See yet again thirdly how prone God is to mercy and how ready to apprehend any advantage as it were and occasion to shew compassion here is Ahab humbled and his Judgment adjourned such a real substantial favour and yet upon such an empty shadow of Repentance Of these three at this time in their order and of the first first An Hypocrite may go very far in the outward performances of holy duties For the right conceiving of which assertion Note first that I speak not now of the common Graces of Illumination and Edification and good dexterity for the practising of some particular Calling which Gifts with sundry other like are oftentimes found even in such apparently wicked and profane men as have not so much as the form much less the power of Godliness but I speak even of those Graces which de tota specie if they be true and sincere are the undoubted blessed fruits of God's holy renewing Spirit of Sanctification such as are Repentance Faith Hope Ioy Humility Patience Temperance Meekness Zeal Reformation c. in such as these Hypocrites may go very far as to the outward semblance and performance Note secondly that I speak not of the inward power and reality of these Graces for Cast-aways and Hypocrites not having union with God by a lively Faith in his Son nor communion with him by the effectual working of his Spirit have no part nor fellowship in these things which are proper to the chosen and called of God and peculiar to those that are his peculiar people but I speak only of the outward performances and exercises of such actions as may seem to flow from such spiritual Graces habitually rooted in the heart when as yet they may spring also and when they are found in unregenerate men do so spring from Nature perhaps moralized or otherwise restrained but yet unrenewed by saving and sanctifying Grace Note thirdly that when I say an Hypocrite may go very far in such outward performances by the Hypocrite is meant not only the gross or formal Hypocrite but every natural and unregenerate man including also the Elect of God before their effectual calling and conversion as also Reprobates and Cast-aways for the whole time of their lives all of which may have such fair semblances of the fore-named Graces and of other like them as not only others who are to judge the best by the Law of Charity but themselves also through the wretched deceitfulness of their own wicked and corrupt hearts may mistake for those very Graces they resemble The Parable of the seed sown in the stony ground may serve for a full both declaration and proof hereof which seed is said to have sprouted forth immediately springing up forthwith after it was sown but yet never came to good but speedily withered away because for want of deepness of earth it had not moisture enough to feed it to any perfection of growth and ripeness And that branch of the Parable our blessed Saviour himself in his Exposition applieth to such hearers as when they hear the Word immediately receive it with gladness and who so forward as they to repent and believe and reform their lives but yet all that forwardness cometh to nothing they endure but for a short time because they have no root in themselves but want the sap and moisture of Grace to give life and lasting to those beginnings and imperfect offers and essays of goodness they made shew of Here are good affections to see to unto the good word of God they receive it with joy it worketh not only upon their judgments but it seemeth also to rejoice yea after a sort to ravish their hearts so as they feel a kind of tickling Pleasure and Delight in it which the Apostle calleth tasting of the heavenly gift and the good Word of God and the powers of the World to come Heb. 6. And as they receive the seed joyfully so it appeareth quickly it springeâ—h up anon in the likeness of Repentance and Faith and Obedience and newness of life They may be touched with a deep feeling of their sins and with heavy hearts and many tears confess and bewail them and not only promise but also purpose amendment They may be superficially affected with and find some overly comfort and refreshing from the contemplation of those gracious promises of mercy and reconciliation and salvation which are contained in the glorious Gospel of our Lord Iesus Christ and have some degrees of perswasion that those promises are true and some flashes of confidence withal of their own personal interest therein They may reform themselves in the general course of their lives in sundry particulars refraining from some gross disorders and avoiding the occasions of them wherein they have formerly lived and delighted aud practising many outward Duties of Piety and Charity conformable to the letter of the Laws of both Tables and misliking and opposing against the common errors or corruptions of the times and places wherein they live and all this to their own and others thinking with as great zeal unto godliness and as thorough indignation against sin as any others All this they may do and yet all the while be rotten at the Heart wholly carnal and unrenewed quite empty of sound Faith and Repentance and Obédience and every good Grace full of damnable Pride and Hypocrisie and in the present state of Damnation and in the purpose of God Reprobates and Cast-aways Examples hereof we have in Saul's care for the destroying of Witches in Iehu's zeal in killing Baal's Priests in Herod's hearing of Iohn Baptist gladly and doing many things thereafter and to omit others in this wicked King Ahab's present fit of Repentance and Humiliation At all which and sundry other like effects we shall the less need to marvel if we shall seriously consider the Causes and Reasons thereof I will name but a few of many and but name them neither First Great is the force of Natural Conscience even in the most wicked men especially when it is awakened by the hand of God
everlasting punishments are they wherein Gods Iustice shall be manifested to every eye in due time at that last day which is therefore called by Saint Paul Rom. 2. The day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God Implying that howsoever God is just in all his Judgments and acts of providence even upon earth yet the Counsels and Purposes of God in these things are often secret and past finding out but at the last great day when He shall render to every man according to his works his everlasting recompence then his vengeance shall manifest his wrath and the righteousness of his judgment shall be revealed to every eye in the condign punishment of unreconciled sinners This is the Second Certainty Temporal evils are not always nor simply nor properly the punishments for sin If any man shall be yet unsatisfied and desire to have Gods justice somewhat farther cleared even in the disposing of these temporal things although it be neither safe nor possible for us to search far into particulars yet some general satisfaction we may have from a third Certainty and that is this Every evil of pain whatsoever it be or howsoever considered which is brought upon any man is brought upon him evermore for sin yea and that also for his own personal sin Every branch of this assertion would be well marked I say first Every evil of pain whatsoever it be whether natural defects and infirmities in soul or body or outward afflictions in goods friends or good name whether inward distresses of an afflicted or terrors of an affrighted Conscience whether temporal or eternal Death whether evils of this life or after it or whatsoever other evil it be that is any way grievous to any man every such evil is for sin I say secondly every evil of pain howsoever considered whether formally and sub ratione poenae as the proper effect of Gods vengeance and wrath against sin or as a fatherly correction chastisement to nurture us from some past sin or as a medicinal preservative to strengthen us against some future sin or as a clogging chain to keep under disable us from some outward work of sin or as a fit matter and object whereon to exercise our Christian graces of faith charity patience humility and the rest or as an occasion given and taken by Almighty God for the greater manifestation of the glory of his Wisdom and Power and Goodness in the removal of it or as an act of Exemplary Iustice for the Admonition and Terror of others or for whatsoever other end purpose or respect it be inflicted I say thirdly Every such evil of pain is brought upon us for sin There may be other Ends there may be other Occasions there may be other Vses of such Evils but still the Original Cause of them all is sin When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin It was not for any extraordinary notorious sins either of the blind man himself or of his Parents above other men that he was born blind Our Savious Christ acquitteth them of that Iohn 9. in answer to his Disciples who were but too forward as God knoweth most men are to judge the worst Our Saviour's Answer there never intended other but that still the true Cause deserving that blindness was his and his parents sin but his purpose was to instruct his Disciples that that infirmity was not laid upon him rather than upon another man meerly for that reason because he or his Parents had deserved it more than other men but for some farther Ends which God had in it in his secret and everlasting purpose and namely this among the rest That the works of God might be manifest in him and the Godhead of the Son made glorious in his miraculous Cure As in Nature the intention of the End doth not overthrow but rather suppose the Necessity of the Matter so is it in the works of God and the dispensations of his wonderful Providence It is from Gods Mercy ordering them to those Ends he hath purposed that his punishments are good but it is withal from our sins deserving them as the Cause that they are just Even as the Rain that falleth upon the Earth whether it moisten it kindly and make it fruitful or whether it choak and slocken and drown it yet still had its beginning from the Vapours which the Earth it self sent up All those Evils which fall so daily and thick upon us from Heaven whether to warn us or to plague us are but Arrows which our selves first shot up against Heaven and now drop down again with doubled force upon our heads Omnis poena propter culpam all evils of pain are for the evils of sin I say fourthly All such evils are for our own sins The Scriptures are plain God judgeth every man according to his own works Every man shall bear his own burden c. God hath enjoyned it as a Law for Magistrates wherein they have also his Example to lead them that not the fathers for the children nor the children for the fathers but every man should be put to death for his own sin Deut. 24. If Israel take up a Proverb of their own heads The fathers have eaten sowre grapes and the childrens teeth are set on edge they do it without cause and they are checked for it The soul that sinneth it shall die and if any man eat sowre grapes his own teeth and not anothers for him shall be set on èdge thereby For indeed how can it be otherwise or who can reasonably think that our most gracious God who is so ready to take from us the guilt of our own should yet lay upon us the guilt of other mens sins The only exception to be made in this kind is that alone satisfactory Punishment of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ not at all for his own sins far be the impiety from us so to imagine for He did no sin neither was there any guilt found in his mouth but for ours He payed that which he never took it was for our transgressions that he was wounded and the chastisement of our Peace was laid upon him Yet even those meritorious sufferings of his may be said in a qualified sence to have been for his own sins although in my judgment it be far better to abstain from such like speeches as are of ill and suspicious sound though they may be in some sort defended But how for his own sins his own by Commission by no means God forbid any man should teach any man should conceive so the least thought of this were Blasphemy but his own by Imputation Not that he had sinned and so deserved punishment but that he had taken upon him our sins which deserved that punishment As he that undertaketh for another mans debt maketh it his own and standeth Chargeable
hearts not only with that joy and gladness which ariseth from the experience of the Effect viz. the refreshing of our natural strength but also joy and gladness more spiritual and sublime than that arising from the contemplation of the prime cause viz. the favour of God towards us in the face of his Son that which David calleth the light of his countenunce For as it is the kind welcome at a friends Table that maketh the chear good rather than the quaintness or variety of the dishes Super omnia vultus accessere boni so that a dinner of green herbs with love and kindness is better entertainment than a stalled Ox with bad looks so the light of Gods favourable countenance shining upon us through these things is it which putteth more true gladness into our hearts than doth the Corn and the Wine and the Oil themselves or any other outward thing that we do or can partake Now this sanctified and holy and comfortable use of the Creatures ariseth also from the Word of Gods decree even as the former degree did but not from the same decree That former issued from the decree of common Providence and so belonged unto all as that Providence is common to all But this latter degree proceedeth from that special Word of Gods decree whereby for the merits of Christ Jesus the second Adam he removeth from the Creature that curse wherein it was wrapped through the sin of the first Adam And in this the wicked have no portion as being out of Christ so as they cannot partake of Gods Creatures with any solid or sound comfort and so the Creatures remain in this degree unsanctified unto them For this reason the Scriptures stile the Faithful Primogenitos the first-born as to whom belongeth a double portion and Haeredes Mundi heirs of the World as if none but they had any good right thereunto And S. Paul deriveth our Title to the Creatures from God but by Christ All things are yours and you are Christs and Christ is Gods As if these things were none of theirs who are none of Christs And in the Verse before my Text he saith of meats that God hath created them to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth as if those that wanted Faith and Saving Knowledge did but usurp the Bread they eat And indeed it is certain the wicked have not right to the Creatures of God in such ample sort as the Godly have A kind of Right they have and we may not deny it them given them by Gods unchangeable ordinance at the creation which being a branch of that part of Gods Image in man which was of natural and not of supernatural grace might be and was foully defaced by sin but was not neither could be wholly lost as hath been already in part declared A Right then they have but such a right as reaching barely to the use cannot afford unto the user true comfort or sound peace of Conscience in such use of the Creatures For though nothing be in and of it self unclean for Every Creature of God is good yet to them that are unclean ex accidenti every Creature is unclean and polluted because it is not thus sanctified unto them by the Word of God And the very true cause of all this is the impurity of their hearts by reason of unbelief The Holy Ghost expresly assigneth this cause To the pure all things are pure but to them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure but even their mind and conscience is defiled As a nasty vessel sowreth all that is put into it so a Conscience not purified by Faith casteth pollution upon the best of Gods Creatures But what is all this to the Text may some say or what to the Point What is all this to the Duty of Thanksgiving Much every manner of way or else blame S. Paul of impertinency whose discourse should be incoherent and unjoynted if what I have now last said were beside the Text. For since the Sanctification of the Creature to our use dependeth upon the powerful and good Word of God blessing it unto us that Duty must needs be necessary to a sanctified use of the Creature without which we can have no fair assurance unto our Consciences that that Word of Blessing is proceeded out of the mouth of God And such is this Duty of Thanksgiving appointed by God as the ordinary means and proper instrument to procure that Word of Blessing from him When we have performed this sincerely and faithfully our hearts may then with a most chearful but yet humble confidence say Amen so be it in full assurance that God will joyn his Fiat to ours Crown our Amen with his and to our So be it of Faith and Hope add his of Power and Command blessing his Creatures unto us when we bless him for them and sanctifying their use to our comfort when we magnifie his goodness for the receipt You see therefore how as unseparable and undivided companions the Apostle joyneth these two together the one as the Cause the other as the Means of the Creatures sanctification it is sanctified by the Word of God and Prayer By the Word of Gods powerful decree as the sole efficient and sufficient Cause and by the Prayer of Thanksgiving for such Prayer he meaneth as either hath Thanksgiving joyned with it or else is a part of Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving a part of it by Prayer I say and Thanksgiving as the proper Means to obtain it This is the blessed effect of Thanksgiving as it is an Act of Religion And thus you have heard two grand Reasons concluding the necessity of Thanksgiving unto God in the receiving and using of his good Creatures The one considering it as an Act of Iustice because it is in the only acceptable discharge of that obligation of debt wherein we stand bound unto God for the free use of so many good Creatures The other considering it is an Act of Religion because it is the most proper and convenient Means to procure from the mouth of God a word of Blessing to sanctifie the Creatures to the uses of our lives and to the comfort of our Consciences This Thanksgiving being an Act both of Justice and Religion whensoever we either receive or use any good Creature of God without this we are unjust in the Receipt and in the Use Prophane It is now high time we should from the Premises infer something for our farther use and edification And the first Inference may be shall I say for Trial or may I not rather say for Conviction Since we shall learn thereby not so much to examine our Thankfulness how true it is as to discover our Unthankfulness how foul it is And how should that discovery cast us down to a deep condemnation of our selves for so much both Unjustice and Prophaneness when we shall find
saith Chrysostome there When our turn is served and we have what we would have by and by all our devotion is at an end we never think of thanks All the ten Lepers begged hard of Christ for a cleansing the Text saith They lift up their voices they were all loud enough whilst they were Suitors Sed ubi novem There returned not to give God thanks for their cleansing of the whole ten any more than barely one single man It is our case just When we want any of the good Creatures of God for our necessities we open our mouths wide till he open his hand and fill them with plenteousness but after as if the filling of our Mouths were the stopping of our Throats so are we speechless and heartless Shame we to be so clamorous when we crave from him and so dumb when we should give him thanks Consider lastly how freely God hath given thee what he hath given thee Dupliciter gratis saith Bernard sine merito sine labore Freely both ways freely without thy desert and freely without so much as thy pains Freely first without thy desert Iacob a man as well deserving as thou yet confessed himself Not worthy of the least of all God's Mercies And St. Paul cutteth off all challenge of desert by that Interrogatory Who hath first given him and it shall be recompensed him As who should say No man can challenge God as if he owed him ought If he have made himself a Debtor to us by his Promise and indeed he hath so made himself a debtor to us yet that is still gratis and for nothing because the Promise it self was free without either Debt in him or Desert in us Nay more God hath been good to us not only when we had not deserved it but which still more magnifieth his bounty and bindeth us the stronger to be thankful when we had deserved the quite contrary And how is it possible we should forget such his unspeakable kindness in giving us much good when we had done none nay in giving us much good when we had done much ill And as he gave it sine merito so sine labore too the Creature being freely bestowed on us as on the one side not by way of reward for any desert of ours so neither on the other side by way of wages for any labour of ours To shew that God giveth not his Blessings for our labour meerly he sometimes giveth them not where they are laboured for and again he giveth them sometimes where they are not laboured for If in the ordinary dispensation of his Providence he bestowed them upon them that labour as Solomon saith The diligent hand maketh rich and seldom otherwise for He that will not labour it is fit he should not eat yet that labour is to be accounted but as the means not as a sufficient cause thereof And if we dig to the root we shall still find it was gratis for even that power to labour was the gift of God It is God that giveth thee power to get wealth Yea in this sence nature it self is grace because given gratis and freely without any labour preparation disposition desert or any thing at all in us All these considerations the excellency of the Duty the continuance of God's Blessings our future necessity our Misery in wanting our Importunity in craving his free Liberality in bestowing should quicken us to a more conscionable performance of this so necessary so just so religious a Duty And thus having seen our Unthankfulness discovered in six points and heard many Considerations to provoke us to thankfulness it may be we have seen enough in that to make us hate the fault and we would fain amend it and it may be we have heard enough in this to make us affect the Duty and we would fain practise it may some say but we are yet to learn how The Duty being hard and our backwardness great what good course might be taken effectually to reform this our so great backwardness and to perform that so hard a Duty And so you see my second Inference for Exhortation breedeth a third and that is for direction which for satisfaction of those men that pretend willingness but plead ignorance I should also prosecute if I had so much time to spare wherein should be discovered what be the principal causes of our so great Unthankfulness which taken away the effect will instantly and of it self cease Now those Causes are especially as I conceive these five viz. 1. Pride and Self-love 2. Envy and Discontentment 3. Riotousness and Epicurism 4. Worldly Carefulness and immoderate Desires 5. Carnal Security and foreslowing the time Now then besides the application of that which hath already been spoken in the former Discoveries and Motives for every Discovery of a fault doth virtually contain some means for the correcting of it and every true Motive to a duty doth virtually contain some helps unto the practice of it besides these I say I know not how to prescribe any better remedies against unthankfulness or helps unto thankfulness than faithfully to strive for the casting out of those sins and the subduing of those Corruptions in us which cause the one and hinder the other But because the time and my strength are near spent I am content to ease both my self and you by cutting off so much of my provision as concerneth this Inference for Direction and desire you that it may suffice for the present but thus to have pointed at these Impediments and once more to name them They are Pride Envy Epicurism Carefulness Security I place Pride where it would be the foremost because it is of all other the Impediment of Thankfulness Certainly there is no one thing in the World so much as Pride that maketh men unthankful He that would be truly thankful must have his eyes upon both the one eye upon the Gift and the other upon the Giver and this the proud man never hath Either through self-love he is stark blind and seeth neither or else through Partiality he winketh on one eye and will not look at both Sometimes he seeth the Gift but too much and boasteth of it but then he forgetteth the Giver he boasteth as if he had not received it Sometimes again he over-looketh the Gift as not good enough for him and so repineth at the Giver as if he had not given him according to his worth Either he undervalueth the Gift or else he overvalueth himself as if he were himself the Giver or at least the Deserver and is in both unthankful To remove this impediment whoever desireth to be thankful let him humble himself nay empty himself nay deny himself and all his desert confess himself with Iacob less than the least of God's mercies and condemn his own heart of much sinful sacrilege if it dare but think the least thought tending to rob God of the
in or to keep back Retinui or Cohibui or as the Latine hath it Custodivi te implying Abimelech's forwardness to that sin certainly he had been gone if God had not kept him in and held him back The Greek word rendreth it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I spared thee and so the Latin Parcere is sometimes used for impedire or prohibere to hinder or not to suffer as in that of Virgil Parcite oves nimium procedere Or taking parcere in the most usual signification for sparing it may very well stand with the purpose of the place for indeed God spareth us no less indeed he spareth us much more when he maketh us forbear sin than when having sinned he forbeareth to punish and as much cause have we to acknowledge his mercy and rejoyce in it when he holdeth our hands that we sin not as when he holdeth his own hands that he strike not For I also with-held thee from sinning against me How Did not Abimelech sin in taking Sarah or was not that as every other sin is a sin against God Certainly had not Abimelech sinned in so doing and that against God God would not have so plagued him as he did for that deed The meaning then is not that God with held him wholly from sinning at all therein but that God with held him from sinning against him in that foul kind and in that high degree as to defile himself by actual filthiness with Sarah which but for Gods restnaint he had done therefore suffered I thee not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Non demisi te that is I did not let thee go I did not leave thee to thy self or most agreeable to the letter of the Text in the Hebrew non dedi or non tradidi I did not deliver or give That may be non dedi potestatem I did not give thee leave or power and so giving is sometimes used for suffering as Psal. 16. Non dabis sanctum tuum Thou wilt not suffer c. and elsewhere Or non dedi te tibi I gave thee not to thy self A man cannot be put more desperately into the hands of any enemy than to be left in manu consilii sui delivered into his own hands and given over to the lust of his own heart Or as it is here translated I suffered thee not We should not draw in God as a party when we commit any sin as if he joyned with us in it or lent us his helping hand for it we do it so alone without his help that we never do it but when he letteth us alone and leaveth us destitute of his help For the kind and manner and measure and circumstances and events and other the appurtenances of sin God ordereth them by his Almighty power and providence so as to become serviceable to his most wise most just most holy purposes but as for the very formality it self of the sin God is to make the most of it but a sufferer Therefore suffered I thee not To Touch her Signifying that God had so far restrained Abimelech from the accomplishment of his wicked and unclean purposes that Sarah was preserved free by his good providence not only from actual adultery but from all unchaste and wanton dalliance also with Abimelech It was Gods great mercy to all the three Parties that he did not suffer this evil to be done for by this means he graciously preserved Abimelech from the sin Abraham from the wrong and Sarah from both And it is to be acknowledged the great mercy of God when at any time he doth and he doth ever and anon more or less by his gracious and powerful restraint with-hold any man from running into those extremities of sin and mischief whereinto his own corruption would carry him headlong especially when it is agog by the cunning perswasions of Satan and the manifold temptations that are in the world through lust The points then that arise from this part of my Text are these 1. Men do not always commit those evils their own desires or outward temptations prompt them unto 2. That they do it not it is from Gods restraint 3. That God restraineth them it is of his own gracious goodness and mercy The common subject matter of the whole three points being one viz. Gods restraint of mans sin we will therefore wrap them up all three together and so handle them in this one entire Observation as the total of all three God in his mercy oftentimes restraineth men from committing those evils which if that restraint were not they would otherwise have committed This Restraint whether we consider the Measure or the Means which God useth therein is of great variety For the Measure God sometimes restraineth men à toto from the whole sin whereunto they are tempted as he withheld Ioseph from consenting to the perswasions of his Mistress sometimes only à tanto and that more or less as in his infinite wisdom he seeth expedient suffering them perhaps but only to desire the evil perhaps to resolve upon it perhaps to prepare for it perhaps to begin to Act it perhaps to proceed far in it and yet keeping them back from falling into the extremity of the sin or accomplishing their whole desire in the full and final consummation thereof as here he dealt with Abimelech Abimelech sinned against the eighth Commandment in taking Sarah injuriously from Abraham say he had been but her brother and he sinned against the seventh Commandment in a foul degree in harbouring such wanton and unchaste thoughts concerning Sarah and making such way as he did by taking her into his house for the satisfying of his lust therein but yet God with-held him from plunging himself into the extremity of those sins not suffering him to fall into the act of uncleanness And as for the Means whereby God with-holdeth men from sinning they are also of wonderful variety Sometimes he taketh them off by diverting the course of the corruption and turning the affections another way Sometimes he awaketh natural Conscience which is a very tender and tickle thing when it is once stirred and will boggle now and then at a very small matter in comparison over it will do at some other times Sometimes he affrighteth them with apprehensions of outward Evils as shame infamy charge envy loss of a friend danger of humane Laws and sundry other such like discouragements Sometimes he cooleth their resolutions by presenting unto their thoughts the terrors of the Law the strictness of the last Account and the endless unsufferable torments of Hell-fire Sometimes when all things are ripe for execution he denieth them opportunity or casteth in some unexpected impediment in the way that quasheth all Sometimes he disableth them and weakneth the arm of flesh wherein they trusted so as they want power to their will as here he dealth with Abimelech And sundry other ways he hath more than
seeth expedient and useful for the forwarding of other his secret and just and holy appointments and so order the sinful fierceness of man by his wonderful providence as to make it serviceable to his ends and to turn it to his glory but look whatsoever wrath and fierceness there is in the heart of a man over and above so much as will serve for those his eternal purposes all that surplusage that overplus and remainder whatsoever it be he will gird he will so bind and hamper and restrain him that he shall not be able to go an inch beyond his tedder though he would fret his heart out The fierceness of man shall turn to thy praise so much of it as he doth execute and the remainder of their fierceness thou shalt restrain that they execute it not Be he never so great a Prince or have he never so great a spirit all is one he must come under No difference with God in this betwixt him that sitteth on the Throne and her that grindeth at the Mill He shall refrain the spirit of Princes and is wonderful among the Kings of the earth in the last verse of that Psalm Now of the truth of all that hath been hitherto spoken in both these branches of the Observation viz. that first there is a restraint of evil and then secondly that this restraint is from God I know not any thing can give us better assurance taking them both together than to consider the generality and strength of our Natural corruption General it is first in regard of the persons overspreading the whole lump of our nature there is not a child of Adam free from the common infection They are all corrupt they are altogether abominable there is none that doth good no not one General secondly in regard of the subject over-running the whole man soul and body with all the parts and powers of either so as from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is no whole part Whatsoever is born of the flesh is flesh and To them that are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure but even their mind and Conscience is defiled and All the imaginations of the thoughts of their hearts are only evil continually General thirdly in regard of the object averse from all kind of good In me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing and prone to all kind of evil He hath set himself in no good way neither doth he abhor any thing that is evil Add to this generality the strength also of our corruption how vigorous and stirring and active it is and how it carrieth us headlongly with full speed into all manner of evil As the horse rusheth into the battel so as we have no hold of our selves neither power to stay our selves till we have run as far as we can and without the mercy of God plunged our selves into the bottom of the bottomless pit Lay all this together and there can be no other sufficient reason given than this restraint whereof we now speak why any one man should at any one time refrain from any one sin being tempted thereunto whereinto any other man at any other time hath fallen being alike tempted Every man would kill his brother as Cain did Abel and every man defile his sister as Amnon did Thamar and every man oppress his inferiour as Ahab did Naboth and every man supplant his betters as Zibah did Mephibosheth and ever man betray his Master as Iudas did Christ every man being as deep in the loyns of Adam as either Cain or Iudas or any of the rest Their nature was not more corrupt than ours neither ours less corrupt than theirs and therefore every one of us should have done those things as well as any one of them if there had not been something without and above nature to withhold us and keep us back therefrom when we were tempted which was not in that measure afforded them when they were tempted And from whom can we think that restraiut to come but from that God who is the Author and the Lord of nature and hath the power and command and rule of Nature by whose grace and goodness we are whatsoever we are and to whose powerful assistance we owe it if we do any good for it is he that setteth us on and to his powerful restraint if we eschew any evil for it is he that keepeth us off Therefore I also with-held thee from sinning against me And as to the third point in the Observation it is not much less evident than the two former namely that this Restraint as it is from God so it is from the Mercy of God Hence it is that Divines usually bestow upon it the name of Grace distinguishing between a twofold Grace a special renewing Grace and a Common restraining Grace The special and renewing Grace is indeed and so incomparably more excellent that in comparison thereof the other is not worthy to be called by the name of Grace if we would speak properly and exactly but yet the word Grace may not unfitly be so extended as to reach to every act of Gods providence whereby at any time he restraineth men from doing those evils which otherwise they would do and that in a threefold respect of God of themselves of others First in respect of God every restraint from sin may be called Grace inasmuch as it proceedeth ex mero motu from the meer good will and pleasure of God without any cause motive or inducement in the man that is so restrained For take a man in the state of corrupt nature and leave him to himself and think how it is possible for him to forbear any sin whereunto he is tempted There is no power in nature to work a restraint nay there is not so much as any proneness in nature to desire a restraint much less then is there any worth in Nature to deserve a restraint Issuing therefore not at all from the powers of Nature but from the free pleasure of God as a beam of his merciful providence this Restraint may well be called Grace And so it may be secondly in respect of the Persons themselves because though it be not available to them for their everlasting salvation yet it is some favour to them more than they have deserved that by this means their sins what in number what in weight are so much lesser than otherwise they would have been whereby also their account shall be so much the easier and their stripes so many the fewer St. Chrysostom often observeth it as an effect of the mercy of God upon them when he cutteth off great offenders betimes with some speedy destruction and he doth it out of this very consideration that they are thereby prevented from committing many sins which if God should have lent them a longer time they would have committed If
because he hath not so full and absolute command of some of his subjects as before he had or seemed to have Fifthly much of the hurt that might come by evil example is hereby prevented Sixthly the people of God are preserved from many injuries and contumelies which they would receive from evil men if their barbarous manners were not thus civilized as a fierce Mastiff doth least hurt when he is chained and muzled Seventhly and lastly and which should be the strongest motive of all the rest to make us industrious to repress vicious affections in others it may please God these sorry beginnings may be the fore-runners of more blessed and more solid graces My meaning is not that these Moral restraints of our wild corruption can either actually or but vertually prepare dispose or qualifie any man for the grace of Conversion and Renovation or have in them Virtutem seminalem any natural power which by ordinary help may be cherished and improved so far as an Egg may be hatched into a Bird and a kernel sprout and grow into a tree far be it from us to harbour any such Pelagian conceits but this I say that God being a God of Order doth not ordinarily work but in order and by degrees bringing men from the one extreme to the other by middle courses and therefore seldom bringeth a man from the wretchedness of forlorn nature to the blessed estate of saving grace but where first by his restraining grace in some good measure he doth correct nature and moralize it Do you then that are Magistrates do we that are Ministers let all Fathers Masters and others whatsoever by wholsom severity if fairer courses will not reclaim them deter audacious persons from offending break those that are under our charge of their wills and wilfulness restrain them from lewd and licentious practices and company not suffer sin upon them for want of reproving them in due and seasonable sort snatch them out of the fire and bring them as far as we can out of the snare of the Devil to God-ward and leave the rest to him Possibly when we have faithfully done our part to the utmost of our power he will set in graciously and begin to do his part in their perfect conversion If by our good care they may be made to forbear swearing and â—ursing and blaspheming they may in time by his good grace be brought to fear an Oath If we restrain them from gross prophanations upon his holy-day in the mean time they may come at length to think his Sabbath a delight If we keep them from swilling and gaming and revelling and rioting and roaring the while God may frame them ere long to a sober and sanctified use of the Creatures and so it may be said of other sins and duties I could willingly inlarge all these points of Inferences but that there are yet behind sundry other good Uses to be made of this restraining Grace of God considered as it may lye upon our selves and therefore I now pass on to them First There is a root of Pride in us all whereby we are apt to think better of our selves than there is cause and every infirmity in our Brother which should rather be an item to us of our frailty serveth as fuel to nourish this vanity and to swell us up with a Pharisaical conceit that forsooth we are not like other men Now if at any time when we see any of our brethren fall into some sin from which by the good hand of God upon us we have been hitherto preserved we then feel this swelling begin to rise in us as sometimes it will do the point already delivered may stand us in good stead to prick the bladder of our pride and to let out some of that windy vanity by considering that this our forbearance of evil wherein we seem to excel our brother it not from nature but from grace not from our selves but from God And here a little let me close with thee whosoever thou art that pleasest thy self with odious comparisons and standest so much upon terms of betterness Thou art neither extortioner nor adulterer drunkard nor swearer thief slanderer nor murtherer as such and such are It may be thou art none of these but I can tell thee what thou art and that is as odious in the sight of God as any of these Thou art a proud Pharisee which perhaps they are not To let thee see thou art a Pharisee do but give me a direct answer without shifting or mincing to that Question of St. Paul Quis te discrevit Who hath made thee to differ from another Was it God or thy self or both together If thou sayest It was God thou art a dissembler and thy boasting hath already confuted thee for what hast thou to do to glory in that which is not thine If thou hadst received it why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it If thou sayest it was from thy self what Pharisee could have assumed more All the shift thou hast is to say it was God indeed that made the difference but he saw something in thee for which he made thee to differ thou acknowledgest his restraint in part but thine own good nature did something If this be all thou art a very Pharisee still without all escape That Pharisee never denied God a part no nor the chiefest part neither he began his vaunting prayer with an acknowledgment of Gods work I thank thee O God that I am not like other men It was not the denial of all unto God but the assuming of any thing unto himself that made him a right Pharisee Go thy way then and if thou wilt do God and thy self right deny thy self altogether and give God the whole Glory of it if thou hast been preserved from any evil And from thy brothers fall besides compassioning forlorn Nature in him make a quite contrary use unto thy self even to humble thee thereby with such like thoughts as these Considering thy self lest thou also be tempted Am I any better than he Of better mold than he Or better tempered than he Am not I a Child of the same Adam a vessel of the same clay a chip of the same block with him Why then should I be high-minded when I see him fallen before me Why should I not rather fear lest my foot slip as well as his hath done I have much cause with all thankfulness to bless God for his good Providence over me in not suffering me to fall into this sin hitherto and with all humility to implore the continuance of his gracious assistance for the future without which I am not able to avoid this or any other evil Secondly since all restraints from sin by what second means soever they are conveyed unto us or forwarded are from the merciful providence of God whensoever we observe that God hath vouchsafed
and without forsaking his old Principles to justifie the Church of England from all imputations of Heresie or Schism and the Religion thereof as it stood by Law established from the like imputation of Novelty and to apply proper and pertinent answers to all the Objections of those whether Papists or others that are contrary minded to the full satisfaction of all such as have not by some partial affection or other rendred themselves uncapable to receive them 12. I confess I had no purpose as may appear by the beginning of my Preface when I set pen to paper to have said much if any thing at all of these matters But I had so very much more to say for the pressing of each of these three considerations and the business withal seemed to me of so much importance that after I had once begun I had much ado to repress my self from drawing this Preface into a yet far greater length But since I had thus adventured to unbowel my self and to lay open the yery inmost thoughts of my heart in this sad business before God and the world I shall hope to find so much charity from all my Christan Brethren as to shew me my Error if in any thing I have now said I be mistaken that I may retract it and to pardon those excesses in modo loquendi if they can observe any such which might possibly whilst I was passionately intent upon the matter unawares drop from my Pen. Civilities which we mutually owe one to another damus hanc veniam petimúsque vicissim Considering how hard a thing it is amidst so many passions and infirmities as our corrupt nature is subject to to do or say all that is needful in a weighty business and not in some thing or other to over-say or over-do Yet this I can say in sincerity of my heart and with Comfort that my desire was the nature of the business considered both to speak as plain and to offend as little as might be If I can approve my carriage herein to the judgment and consciences of sober and charitable men it will be some rejoycing to me but I am not hereby justified I must finally stand or fall to my own Master who is the only infallible Iudge of all mens hearts and ways Humbly I beseech him to look well if there be any way of wickedness or hypocrisie in me timely to cover it himself and discover it to me that it may be by his grace repented of and pardoned by his mercy by the same mercy and grace to guide my feet into the ways of Peace and Truth and to lead me in the way everlasting Decemb. 31. 1655. O be favourable and gracious unto Sion build thou the Walls of Ierusalem Repair the breaches thereof and make no long tarrying O Lord our Helper and our Redeemer ETIAM VENI DOMINE JESU The Reader is desired to take notice That the Eighteenth Sermon one of those mentioned by the Author in his Preface to have been formerly omitted is in this Impression added THE CONTENTS or SUMMARY Of the several ensuing SERMONS Sermon I. Ad Aulam on ECCLES vii 1. Sect. 1 FCclesiastes the Preachers Sermon 2 or Solomons Paradoxes 3-6 The use of Rhetorical Exornations in Sermons 7-10 THE WORDS OF THE TEXT severally explained 11-12 A good Name to be preferred before the most precious Oyntments As 13-14 -1. being a more peculiar blessing 15-16 -2. yielding more solid content 17-18 -3. enabling to worthier performances 19-22 -4. being of larger extention both for Place and Time 23-25 Yet not to be preferred before a good Conscience 26-27 THE INFERENCES 1. The sin of those that rob others of their good Names 28-29 -2. The folly of those that value any outward things above a good Name 30-31 -3. That it is not enough for a man that he can satisfie his own Conscience in what he doth But 32 -4. There ought to be a great care had also of preserving a good Name And that upon these 33 CONSIDERATIONS I. That it is our bounden Duty 34-5 -2. That by our care much may be done in it 36 -3. That a good name lost is of hard recovery 37 c. Some RULES OF DIRECTION tending as helps thereunto Sermon II. Ad Aulam on PROV xvi 7. Sect. 1. THe Sum and Division of THE TEXT 2 6 The Words in the former part of the Text explained 7 POINT I. The necessity of seeking to PLEASE God 8 9. both in point of Duty and Relations 10 11 and in point of Wisdom and Benefit 12 14 POINT II. God is pleased with our ways wherein he findeth 1. Conformity to his ways 15 16 2. and Obedience to his Will 17 notwithstanding their imperfection 18 1. as being his own work in us and 19 2. beholding them as in the face of Christ. 20 The Inference for comfort 21 The Words in the latter part of the Text explained 22 24 POINT III. God procureth the peace of those that please him 25 Their own endeavour subordinately concurring 26 8 A grand Objection removed 29 FOUR INFERENCES briefly touched 30 A FIFTH INFERENCE farther considered for the preventing of a double fallacy to wit 31 2 1. that of imputing our sufferings wholly to the injustice of others 32 4 2. that of thinking the better of our selves and our own ways because we have Enemies 35 The Conclusion Sermon III. Ad Aulam on 1 PET. ii 17. Sect 1 3. THe Scope and Division of THE TEXT 4 8 The Duty of HONOURING ALL MEN explained 9 10 and enforced by Reasons taken 1. from Justice 11 2. from Equity 12 14 3. from Religion 15 A REPROOF 1. of those that honour none but themselves 16 17 2. of those that honour none but their Superiors 18 c. 3. of those that limit the duty with a condition Si meruerint 24 26 Who are meant by THE BROTHERHOOD 37 c. and what by loving the brotherhood 30 Two grounds of this duty viz. 1. Their Goodness in themselves 31 c. their Nearness to us in sundry relations 36 c. We may in loving the Brethren prefer some 39 c. But not exclude any Sermon IV. Ad Aulam on PSALM xix 13. Sect. 1 3. A General view of the xix PSALM 4 6 The Scope and Division of the Text. 7 The reading considered and cleared 8 Of Presumption in General 9 11 Of the Sin of Presumption materially taken 12 14 From the distinction of Sins of Ignorance Infirmity and Presumption 15 18 Severally Exemplified 19 The nature of Presumptuous Sins declared 20 24 The heinousness of Presumptuous Sins declared by sundry Intimations in the Text 25 and by Reasons drawn partly from their Cause 26 27 partly from their evil Effects 1. before Repentance 28 2. at the time of Repentance 29 32 3. after Repentance 33 For the avoiding of Presumptuous Sins 34 with our Prayers to God 35 we are to joyn our own Endeavours Four Particular Rules for direction herein viz. 36 1. Do
it is said of our blessed Saviour Luke 2. that he encreased in favour with God and men My son let not mercy and truth forsake thee c. so shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man saith our Solomon Prov. 3. And S. Paul Rom. 14. He that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men In all which places favour and acceptation with God goeth before favour and approbation with men followeth after 23. You may see the proof of it in the whole course of the Sacred Story wherein the Lords dealing with his own people in this kind is remarkable When they started aside to walk after their own counsels and displeased him how he stirred them up enemies round about them how he sold them into the hands of those that spoiled them how he hardened the hearts of all those that contended with them that they should not pity them Again on the other side when they believed his Word walked in his Ways and pleased him how he raised them up friends how he made their Enemies to bow under them how he enclined the hearts of Strangers and of Pagans to pity them Instances are obvious and therefore I omit them 24. Of which Effect the first and principal cause is none other than the over-ruling hand of God who not only disposeth of all outward things according to the good pleasure of his will but hath also in his hands the hearts of all men even of the greatest Kings as the rivers of water to turn them which way soever he will as our Solomon speaketh at the 21. Chapter of this Book The Original there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Palge majim as you would say the divisions of waters Which is not to be understood of the great Rivers though the greatest of them all even the wide and great Sea also is in the hands of God to turn which way soever he will as he turned the waters of the Red Sea backwards to let his people go through and then turned them forward again to overwhelm their enemies But the Allusion there is clearly to the little trenches whereby in those drier Eastern Countries husbandmen used to derive water from some Fountain or Cistern to the several parts of their Gardens for the better nourishing of their Herbs and Fruit-trees Now you know when a Gardiner hath cut many such trenches all over his Garden with what ease he can turn the water out of any one into any other of those Channels suffering it to run so long in one as he thinketh good and then stopping it thence and deriving it into another even as it pleaseth him and as he seeth it most conducible for the necessities of his Garden With much more ease can the Lord stop the current of any mans favour and affections in the course wherein it presently runneth and turn it quite into another Channel drying it up against one man and deriving it upon another even as it seemeth good in his sight and as will best serve other his holy and just purposes whether he intend to chastize his Children or to comfort them or to exercise any other part or passage of his blessed providence upon them Thus he gave his people favour in the sight of the Aegyptians so as they lent them all their precious things at their departure who but a little before had consulted the rooting out the whole generation of them And thus after that in his just displeasure against them for their sins he had given them over into captivity into their enemies hands when he was pleased again with their Humiliations he not only pitied them himself according to the multitude of his mercies but he turned the hatred of their Enemies also into compassion and made all those that had led them away captives to pity them as it is in Psalm 160. 25. The Lord is a God of Power and therefore can work such effects as he pleaseth for our peace without any apparent means on our parts But being withal a God of order for the most part therefore and in the ordinary course of his providence he worketh his own purposes by second Causes and subordinate means At least he hath so tied us to the use of probable means for the bringing about of what he hath promised that although we ought to be perswaded he can yet we may not presume he will work our good without our Endeavours Now the subordinate means to be used on our part without which we cannot reasonably expect that God should make our Enemies to be at peace with us is our fair and amicable conversation with others For who will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good saith St. Peter As if he had said so long as you carry your selves graciously and wisely if the hearts of your Enemies will not be so far wrought upon as to love and affect you yet their mouths will be muzled and their hands â—anacled from breaking out into any outragious either terms or actions of open hostility so as you shall enjoy your peace with them in some measure Though they mean you no good yet they shall do you no harm 26. But it may be objected both from Scripture and Experience that sundry times when a mans Ways are right and therefore pleasing unto God his Enemies are nothing less if not perhaps much more enraged against him than formerly they were Our Saviour often foretold his Disciples that they should be hated of all men for his sake And David complaineth in Psal. 38. of some that were against him eo nomine and for that very reason because he was a follower of that which was good What a seeming distance is there between the Prophets and the Apostles speeches Or else how may they be reconciled Who is he that will harm you if you be followers of that which is good saith the one Yea saith the other there are some against me even therefore because I follow that which is good As if by seeking to please God he had rather lost his friends than gained his Enemies 27. There are sundry Considerations that may be of good use to us in the present difficulty As First if God have not yet made our Enemies to be at peace with us yet it may be he will do it hereafter being no way bound to us we may give him leave to take his own time Non est vestrum nôsse if it be not for us to know much less is it for us to prescribe the seasons which the Father hath kept in his own power It is his Prerogative to appoint the times it is our Duty to wait his leisure It may be secondly neither is it unlikely that we do not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 walk with an even foot and by a straight line But tread awry in something or other which displeaseth God and for
confident that friend will not fail to assist him therein to his utmost power Now if a man be bold to do but what he may and should do and that withal he have some good ground for his confidence from the consideration of his friends ability the experience of his love some former promises on his friends or merit on his own part or other like so as every man would be ready to say he had reason to presume so far of his friend this is a good reasonable and warrantable presumption But if he fail in either respect as if he presume either to do unlawful unworthy or unbefitting things or to do even lawful things when there appeareth no great cause why any man should think his friend obliged by the laws of friendship to assist him therein then is such his presumption a faulty and an evil presumption And whatsoever may bear the name of a Presumptuous sin in any respect is some way or other tainted with such an evil irrational presumption 9. But we are further to note that presumption in the worser sence and as applied to sin may be taken either Materially or Formally If these terms seem obscure with a little opening I hope the difference between these two will be easily understood Taken materially the sin of presumption is a special kind of sin distinguished from other species of sins by its proper Object or Matter when the very matter wherein we sin and whereby we offend God is Presumption and so it is a branch of Pride When a man presuming either upon his own strength or upon Gods assisting him undertaketh to do something of himself not having in himself by the ordinary course of nature and the common aid which God affordeth to the actions of his creatures in the ordinary ways of his providence sufficient strength to go through therewithal or expecteth to receive some extraordinary assistance from the Mercy Power c. of God not having any sufficient ground either from the general Promises contained in the Scriptures or by particular immediate revelation that God will certainly so assist him therein 10. All those men that over-value themselves or out of an overweening conceit of their own abilities attempt things beyond their power That lean to their own understandings as Solomon That mind high things and are wise in their own conceits as St. Paul That exercise themselves in great matters and such as are too high for them as David expresseth it All those that perswade themselves they can persist in an holy course without a continual supply of Grace or that think they can continue in their sins so long as they think good and then repent of them and forsake them at their leisure whensoever they list or that doubt not but to be able by their own strength to stand out against any temptation All these I say and all other like by presuming too much upon themselves are guilty of the sin of Presumption ' 'To omit the Poets who have set forth the folly of this kind of Presumption in the Fables of Phaethon and Icarus A notable example we have of it in the Apostle Peter and therein a fair warning for others not to be high-minded but to fear who in the great confidence of his own strength could not believe his Master though he knew him to be the God of truth when he foretold him he would yield but still protested that if all the world should forsake him yet he would never do it 11. Nor only may a man offend in this kind by presuming upon himself too much but also by presuming even upon God himself without warrant He that repenteth truly of his sins presuming of Gods mercy in the forgiveness thereof or that walketh uprightly and conscionably in the ways of his Calling presuming of Gods Power for his protection therein sinneth not in so presuming Such a presumption is a fruit of Faith and a good presumption because it hath a sure ground a double sure ground for failing first in the Nature and then in the Promise of God As a man may with good reason presume upon his Friend that he will not be wanting to him in any good Office that by the just Laws of true friendship one friend ought to do for another But as he presumeth too much upon his friend that careth not into what desperate exigents and dangers he casteth himself in hope his friend will perpetually redeem him and relieve him at every turn So whosoever trusteth to the Mercy or to the Power of God without the warrant of a Promise presumeth farther than he hath cause And though he may flatter himself and call it by some better name as Faith or Hope or Affiance in God yet is it in truth no better than a groundless and a wicked Presumption Such was the Presumption of those Sons of Sceva who took upon them but to their shame and sorrow to call over them that had evil spirits the name of the Lord Iesus in a form of adjuration Acts 19. when they had no calling or warrant from God so to do And all those men that going on in a wretched course of life do yet hope they shall find mercy at the hour of death All those that cast themselves into unnecessary either dangers or temptations with expectance that God should manifest his extraordinary Power in their preservation All those that promise to themselves the End without applying themselves to the means that God hath appointed thereunto as to have Learning without Study Wealth without Industry Comfort from Children without careful Education c. forasmuch as they presume upon Gods help without sufficient Warrant are guilty of the sin of Presumption taken in the former notion and Materially 12. But I conceive the Presumptuous sins here in the Text to belong clearly to the other notion of the word Presumption taken formally and as it importeth not a distinct kind of sin in it self as that Groundless Presumption whereof we have hitherto spoken doth but a common accidental difference that may adhere to sins of any kind even as Ignorance and Infirmity whereunto it is opposed also may Theft and Murther which are sins of special kinds distinguished either from other by their special and proper Objects are yet both of them capable of these common differences inasmuch as either of them may be committed as sometimes through Ignorance and sometimes through Infirmity so also sometimes through Wilfulness or Presumption 13. The distribution of Sins into sins of Ignorance of Infirmity and of Presumption is very usual and very useful and compleat enough without the addition which some make of a fourth sort to wit Sins of Negligence or Inadvertency all such sins being easily reducible to some of the former three The ground of the distinction is laid in the Soul of man wherein there are three distinct prime faculties from which all our actions flow the Understanding the Will and the sensual
into which he fell a fresh remembrance withal of the matter of Uriah not without some grief and shame thereat As the distress Iosephs brethren met with in Aegypt Gen. 42. brought to their remembrance their treacherous dealings with him which was by probable computation at the least twenty years after the thing was done Yea and after their Fathers death which by the like probable computation was dear upon twenty year s more the remorse of the same sin wrought upon their Consciences afresh perplexing their hearts with new fears and jealousies True it is the sinner once throughly purged of the sin by repentance hath no more conscience of that sin in that fearful degree ordinarily as to be a perpetual rack to his soul and to torment him with restless doubtings of his reconcilement even to despair yet can it not chuse but put some affrightment into him to remember into what a desperate estate he had before plunged himself by his own wilful disobedience if God had not been infinitely gracious to him therein Great presumptions will not suffer him that hath repented them for ever quite to forget them and he shall never be able to remember them without shame and horrour 33. Great cause then had David to pray so earnestly as we see here he doth against them and as great cause have the best of us to use our best care and endeavour to avoid them being they spring from such a cursed root and are both so grievous to the holy Spirit of God and of such bitter consequence to the guilty offender Our next business will be the sin and danger being so great to learn what is best to be done on our part for the avoiding and preventing both of sin and danger Now the means of prevention our third discovery are First to seek help from the hand of God by praying with David here that the Lord would keep us back and then to put to our own helping hand by seconding our prayers with our best endeavours to keep our selves back from these presumptuous sins 34. A Iove Principium We have no stay nor command of our selves so masterful are our Wills and head-strong but that if God should leave us wholly to the wildness of our unruly nature and to take our own course we should soon run our selves upon our own ruin Like unto the horse and mule that have no understanding to guide themselves in a right and safe way but they must be holden in with bit and bridle put into their mouths else they will either do or find mischief If we be not kept back with strong hand and no other hand but the hand of God is strong enough to keep us back we shall soon run into all extremities of evil with the greatest impetuousness that can be as the horse rusheth into the battle running into every excess of riot as fast as any temptation is set before us and committing all manner of wickedness with all kind of greediness David knew it full well and therefore durst not trust his own heart too far but being jealous over himself with a Godly jealousie evermore he made God his refuge If at any time he had been kept back from sinning when some opportunity did seem to tempt or provoke him thereunto he blessed God for it for he saw it was Gods doing more than his own Blessed be the Lord that hath kept his servant from evil in the case of Nabal 1 Sam. 25. If at any time he desired to be kept back from sinning when Satan had laid a bait for him without suitable to some lust stirring within he sought to God for it for he knew that he must do it himself could not keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins here in the Text. Without his help and blessing all endeavours are in vain his help and blessing therefore must be sought for in the first place by prayer 35. But we may not think when we have so done that we have done all that lieth upon us to do and so an end of the business It is Gods blessing I confess that doth the deed not our endeavours but we are vain if we expect Gods blessing without doing our endeavours Can we be so sensless as to imagine it should serve our turn to say Lord keep us back and yet our selves in the mean time thrust forward as fast as we can No if we will have our prayers effectual and in their efficacy is our chiefest hope and comfort we must second our faithful prayers with our faithful endeavours Oculus ad Coelum manus ad clavum Then may we with confidence expect that God should do his part in keeping us back when we are duly careful to do our part also towards the keeping our selves back from presumptuous sins Against which sins the best and most sovereign preservatives I am yet able to prescribe are these fouâ— following It is every mans concernment and therefore I hope it shall be without offence if after the example of God himself in delivering the Law I speak to every mans soul as it were in particular 36. For the avoiding then of Presumptuous sins First be sure never to do any thing against the clear light of thine own Conscience Every known sin hath a spice of wilfulness and presumption in it The very composure of Davids Prayer in the present passage implieth as much in passing immediately after the mention of his secret and unknown sins to the mentioning of these presumptuous Sins as if there were scarce any medium at all between them And every sin against Conscience is a known sin A man hath not a heavier Foe than his own Conscience after he hath sinned nor before he sin a faster Friend Oh take heed of losing such a Friend or of making it of a Friend an Accuser If I should see one that I loved well fall into the company of a â—heater or other crafty Companion that would be sure to inveigle him in some ill bargain or draw him into some hurtful inconvenience if he should close with him of whom yet he had no suspicion I should do but the part of a Friend to take him aside tell him who had him in hand and bid him look well to himself and beware a cheat But if he should after such warning given grow into farther familiarity with him and I should still give him signs one after another to break off speech and to quit the company of such a dangerous fellow and all to no purpose Who could either pity him or blame me if I should leave him at last to be gulled and fooled that set so little by the wholsom and timely admonitions of his friend Much greater than his is thy folly if thou neglectest the warnings and despisest the murmurings of thine own conscience Thou sufferest it but deservedly if thy Conscience having so often warned thee in vain at length grow weary of that office and leave thee
a fair trial upon it Yet cometh that Challenge far short of this Protestation Samuel speaketh only of not taking St. Paul also of not coveting according to the express letter of the prohibition in the Decalogue 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thou shalt not covet saith the Law his Conscience answereth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I have not coveied So good a Proficient was he so perfect a Scholar in this holy learning that he con'd it Verbatim 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 might he well say and truly for he had indeed learned to be content with his own 20. And might not we learn it too think ye as well as he Sure we might for what should hinder Only if we would but tie our selves strictly to those Rules those I mean of Iustice and Charity which are the first Elements of this learning For Iustice first the Rule is Suum cuique That every man have what of right to him appertaineth Now every mans right unto any of the things of this World ariseth from Gods disposal thereof by such ways and means ordinarily as by the general Law and common consent of all civil Nations or by the positive Laws of particular Kingdoms and Common-wealths not repugnant thereunto are allowed for that end as Descent Gift Purchase Industry c. Whose distributions however unequal they may seem to us are yet evermore just in themselves and as they come from him So that every man is by us to be accounted the just owner and proprietary of that whereof he is the legal possessor yea though it do appear to us to have been very unjustly gotten either by himself or by any of those from whom he had it His very possession I say although without a justifiable Title is yet sufficient to make it his as to the intendment of the Law in that behalf that is to say so far forth as to render our desiring of it from him unlawful in foro interno unless in that one Case only when the right is in us though he be in possession In all other Cases possession is a good plea the Title of Possession being in all reason to be esteemed good against him that is not able to shew a better 21. If then we be at any time carried with a restless and immoderate desire after that which the hand of Providence hath been pleased to dispose otherwhere and our selves have no Antecedent right whereby to entitle it Ours do we not take upon us after a sort to controll the holy and wise Appointments of our good God For if it were indeed fitter for us than him and not in opinion only could not the Lord by his Almighty power and would he not in the dispensation of his good providence have by some honest means or other disposed it upon us rather than upon him By this extreme partiality to our selves we become unjust Iudges of evil thoughts in setling that upon our selves in our own thoughts as fittest for us which God hath thought fit to settle rather upon another The Story in Xenophon how young Cyrus was corrected by his Tutor for bestowing the Two Coats upon Two of his School-fellows according to the fitness thereof to their Two Bodies in his own discretion without enquiring first as he should have done who was the right owner of either is so well known and withall pertinent to our present purpose that I shall not need either to relate it or apply it When Almighty God then by disposing of these outward things hath manifested his pleasure to give our neighbour a property in them it is an unjust desire in us to covet them from him and to wish them transferred upon our selves 22. The other Rule I told you of is that of Charity Which binding us to love our neighbour as our selves must needs bind us consequently to rejoyce in his good as in our own and not wish any thing to his prejudice no more than to our own and consequently to these to be content that he should enjoy that which God hath allotted him with our good wills as we desire to hold that which is in like manner allotted us with his good will There is no such Enemy to Brotherly love as is Self-love For look how much we bestow upon our selves more than we should we must needs leave to our brother so much less than we should And it is nothing but this overmuch love of our selves that maketh us so much covet to have to our selves that which belongeth not to us If ye fulfil the Royal Law according to the Scripture Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self ye do well saith St. Iames Very well this But if ye have respect to Persons especially if ye become partial once to your own persons that is not well then you commit sin saith he and are convinced of the Law as transgressors 23. But this is Durus sermo may some say It were hard so to confine mens minds to that which is their own as not to allow any desire at all of that which is anothers If we should conceive the Law thus strict it would destroy not only all Humane Ordinances that concern Trading and Commerce as buying selling exchanging c. without which publick Societies cannot subsist but even the Divine Ordinance also of earning our livings by labour and industry Then might no man endeavour by honourable and vertuous atchievements to raise himself a fortune or make way for his future advancement or do any thing whatsoever whereby to acquire or derive upon himself a property in any thing that were not his own already Since none of all this can be done without a desire in some degree or other of that which is anothers 24. This Objection need not much trouble us Nor justice nor Charity nor the holy Law of God which giveth rules to both condemn all desire of that which is anothers but an inordinate desire only that which is orderly and rightly qualified they all allow All the difficulty in this matter will be and that will make us some business how to discern between an orderly and an inordinate desire that so we may be able to judge rightly concerning our own desires at all times whether they be such as are allowed and may consist with contentment or such as are forbiden and cannot consist therewith Which is to be done by duly considering of those three especial Qualifications which are all requisite the concurrence I mean of the whole three to the making up of an orderly desire in any of which if there be a failure the desire becometh inordinate and sinful These three are in respect First of the Object Secondly of the Act Thirdly of the Effect of the desire 25. For the Object first If I desire but that from my neighbour say it be his House Land Beast or other Commodity which I find him willing or may reasonably presume he will not be unwilling for that I see no cause why he should be
only to the manners of men but almost to common sense also they gave occasion to the Wits of those times under a colour of making themselves merry with the Paradoxes of the Stoicks to laugh even true vertue it self out of countenance 22. Lastly for why should I trouble you with any more These are enow by condemning sundry indifferent things and namely Church Ceremonies as unlawful we give great scandal to those of the Separation to their farther confirming in that their unjust Schism For why should these men will they say and for ought I know they speak but reason why should they who agree so well with us in our Principles hold off from our Conclusions Why do they yet hold communion with or remain in the bosom of that Church that imposeth such unlawful things upon them How are they not guilty themselves of that luke-warm Laodicean temper wherewith they so often and so deeply charge others Why do they halt so shamefully between two opinions if Baal be God and the Ceremonies lawful why do not they yield obedience chearful obedience to their Governours so long as they command but lawful things But if Baal be an Idol and the Ceremonies unlawful as they and we consent Why do they not either set them packing or if they cannot get that done pack themselves away from them as fast as they can either to Amsterdam or to some other place The Objection is so strong that I must confess for my own part If I could see cause to admit of those principles whereon most of our Non-Conformers and such as favour them ground their dislike of our Church-Orders and Ceremonies I should hold my self in all conscience bound for any thing I yet ever read or heard to the contrary to forsake the Church of England and to fly out of Babylon before I were many weeks older 23. Truly Brethren if these unhappy fruits were but accidental events only occasioned rather than caused by such our opinions I should have thought the time mis-spent in but naming them since the very best things that are may by accident produce evil effects But being they do in very truth naturally and unavoidably issue therefrom as from their true and proper cause I cannot but earnestly beseech all such as are otherwise minded in the bowels and in the name of the Lord Iesus Christ and by all the love they bear to Gods holy truth which they seem so much to stand for to take these things into their due consideration and to lay them close to their consciences Aud as for those my brethren of the Clergy that have most authority in the hearts of such as byass too much that way for they only may have some hope to prevail with them the rest are shut out by prejudice if I were in place where I should require and charge them as they will answer the contrary to God the Church and their own Consciences that they would approve their faithfulness in their Ministry by giving their best diligence to inform the judgments of Gods people aright as concerning the nature and use of indifferent things and as in love to their souls they are bound that they would not humour them in these their pernicious errors nor suffer them to continue therein for want of their rebuke either in their publick teaching or otherwise as they shall have opportunity thereunto in private discourses 24. But you will say if these things were so how should it then come to pass that so many men pretending to Godliness and thousands of them doubtless such as they pretend for it were an uncharitable thing to charge them all with hypocrisie should so often and so grievously offend this way To omit those two more universal causes Almighty God's Permission first whose good pleasure it is for sundry wise and gracious ends to exercise his Church during her warfare here with Heresies and Schisms and Scandals And then the wiliness of Satan who cunningly observeth whether way our hearts incline most to looseness or to strictness and then frameth his Temptations thereafter So he can but put us cut of the way it is no great matter to him on whether hand it be he hath his end howsoever Nor to insist upon sundry more particular causes as namely a natural proneness in all men to superstition in many an affectation of singularity to go beyond the ordinary sort of people in something or other the difficulty of shunning one without running into the contrary extreme the great force of Education and Custom besides manifold abuses offences and provocations arising from the carriage of others and the rest I shall note but these two only as the two great fountains of Error to which also most of the other may be reduced Ignorance and Partiality from neither of which God 's dearest Servants and Children are in this life wholly exempted 25. Ignorance first is a fruitful mother of Errors Ye err not knowing the Scriptures Mat. 22. Yet not so much Gross Ignorance neither I mean not that For your mere Ignaro's what they err they err for company they judge not at all neither according to the appearance nor yet righteous judgment They only run on with the herd and follow as they are led be it right or wrong and never trouble themselves farther But by Ignorance I mean weakness of judgment which consisteth in a disproportion between the affections and the understanding when a man is very earnest but withall very shallow readeth much and heareth much and thinketh that he knoweth much but hath not the judgment to sever truth from falshood nor to discern between a sound Argument and a captious Fallacy And so for want of ability to examine the soundness and strength of those principles from whence he fetcheth his Conclusions he is easily carried away 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as our Apostle elsewhere speaketh with vain words and empty arguments As St. Augustine said of Donatus Rationes irripuit he catcheth hold of some reasons as wranglers will catch at a small thing rather than yield from their opinions quas consider antes verisimiles esse potius quam veras invenimus which saith he we found to have more shew of probability at the first appearance than substance of truth after they were well considered of 26. And I dare say whosoever shall peruse with a judicious and unpartial eye most of those Pamphlets that in this daring age have been thrust into the World against the Ceremonies of the Church against Episcopal Government to pass by things of lesser regard and usefulness and more open to exception and abuse yet so far as I can understand unjustly condemned as things utterly unlawful such as are lusorious lots dancing Stage-plays and some other things of like nature When he shall have drained out the bitter invectives unmannerly jeers petulant girding at those that are in authority impertinent digressions but above all those most bold and perverse
so much wisdom as they have neither if we do not and even hereby justifie our Saviours doom in the comparison and yield The children of this world wiser in their generations than we are Which is the next Point 17. The justice of the sentence cannot be questioned where the Iudge that giveth it is beyond exception Here he is so so wise that he cannot be deceived so good that he will not deceive Mistaken he cannot be through ignorance or mis-information in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge If Solomon were able in a very intricate case to judge between the two mothers shall not a greater than Soloman be able in a case of less difficulty to give a clear judgment between these two sorts of Children Nor was there any such correspondence between our blessed Saviour the Iudge that pronounceth sentence in the Text and the world that we should suspect him at all inclinable to favour that side The world hated him and a great part of the business he came about was to condemn the world If it could have stood with the integrity of so righteous a Iudge to have favoured either side he that pronounced of himself Ego sum lux I am the light would sure have leaned rather towards his own side than towards the contrary party and so have pronounced sentence for the children of light and not against them And that he should be awed with fear as Iudges too often are to transgress in judgment there is of all other the least fear of that since he hath not only vanquished the world in his own person Ego vici mundum Joh. 16. but hath also enabled the meanest person that belongeth to him and believeth in him to do so too This is the victory that overcometh the world even your faith 1 Joh. 5. 18. It was not then either ignorance or favour or fear or any thing else imaginable other than the truth and evidence of the thing it self that could induce him to give sentence on that side Of the truth whereof every days experience ministreth proof enough For do we not see daily how worldly men in temporal matters shew their wisdom infinitely beyond what Christians usually do in spiritual things Very many ways handling their affairs such as they are for the compassing of their own ends such as they are to omit other particulars with greater sagacity greater industry greater cunning greater unity ordinarily than these do Which particulars when we shall have a little considered for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to shew the truth of the observation and that so it is we shall for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 enquire into the reasons thereof and how it cometh to be so 19. First they are very sagacious and provident to forethink what they have to do and to forecast how it may be done very wary and circumspect in their projects and contrivances to weigh all probable as far as is possible all possible inconveniences or whatsoever might impede or obstruct their designs and to provide remedies there-against All Histories afford us strange examples in their several kinds of voluptuous beasts who for the satisfying of their raging lusts of ambitious spirits who for the grasping of a vast and unjust power of malicious and cruel men who to glut themselves with blood and revenge have adventured upon very desperate and almost impossible attempts and yet by the strength of their wits have so laid the Scene before-hand and so carried on the design all along that they have very many times either wholly accomplished what they intended or brought their conceptions so near to the birth that nothing but a visible hand of an over-ruling providence from above could render them abortive But omitting these because I have yet much to go through I chose rather to instance in the worldling of the lowest sphere indeed but best known by the name of a worldling I mean the covetous wretch It were almost a wonder to consider but that by common experience we find it so that a man otherwise of very mean parts and breeding is of so thick a nostril that he can hardly be brought by any discourse to be sensible of any thing that savoureth of Religion Reason or Ingenuity should yet be so quick scented where there is a likelihood of gain towards to smell it as speedily and at as great a distance as a Vultur doth a piece of Carrion Strange to see what strange fetches and devices he can have the eagerness of his desires after the world sharpning his wits and quickning his invention to hook in a good bargain to enveigle and entangle his necessitous neighbour by some seeming kindness towards him in supplying his present needs till he have got a hank over his estate to watch the opportunities for the taking up and putting off commodities to the most advantage to trench so near upon the Laws by engrossing enhaunsings extortions depopulations and I know not how many other frauds and oppressions and yet to keep himself so out of reach that the Law cannot take hold of him 20. Secondly the children of this world as they are very provident and subtile in forecasting so are they very industrious and diligent in pursuing what they have designed Wicked men are therefore in the Scriptures usually called Operarii iniquitatis Workers of iniquity because they do hoc agere make it their work and their business and follow it as their trade Ut jugulent homines surgunt de nocte Whilst honest men lay them down in peace and take their rest suspecting no harm because they mean none thieves and robbers are up and abroad spreading their nets for the prey and watching to do mischievously They that were against Christ were stirring in the dead time of the night and marched with Swords and staves to apprehend him when they that were about him though bidden and chidden too could not hold from sleeping two or three hours before Martyres Diaboli How slack we are to do God any service how backward to suffer any thing for him and how they on the other side can bestir them to serve the Devil and be content to suffer a kind of martyrdom in his service The way sure is broad enough â—nd easie enough that leadeth to destruction yet so much pains is there taken to find it that I verily believe half the pains many a man taketh to go to Hell if it had been well bestowed would have brought him to Heaven 21. Thirdly the children of this world are marvellous cunning and close to carry things fair in outward shew so far as to hold up their credit with the abused multitude and to give a colour to the cause they manage be it never so bad Partly by aspersing those that are otherwise minded than themselves are and dare not partake with them in their sins in what reproachful manner they please wresting their most innocent speeches and
and consent and by reason of union though not immediately and directly work even upon the soul also As we see the fancy quick and roving when the blood iâ— inâ—lamed with choler the memory and apprehension dull in a Lethargy and other notable changes and effects in the faculties of the soul very easily disceâ—nâ—ble upon any sudden change or distemper in the body David often conâ—esseth that the troubles he met withal went sometimes to the very heart and soul of him The sorrows of my heart are enlarged In the multitude of the troubles or sorrows that I have in my heart My heart is disquieted within me Why art thou so vexed O my soul and why art thou so disquieted within me c Take but that one in Psal 143 The enemy hath persecuted my soul c. Therefore is my spirit vexed within me and my heart within me is dâ—solate 15. For the Soul then or Mind to be affected with such things as happen to the body is natural and such affections if not vitiated with excess or other inordinaâ—y blameless and without sin But experience sheweth us farther too oftâ—n God knoweth that persecutions â—fflictions and such other sad casualties as befal the body nay the very shadowâ— thereof the bare fears of such things and apâ—rehensions of their approach yea even many times when it is causeless may produce worse effects in the souls and be the causes of such vicious weariness and faintness of miâ—d as the Apostle here forewarneth the Hebrews to beware of Noâ— to speak of the Lapsâ— and Traditores and others that we read of in former times and of whom there is such mention in the ancient Councils and in the writings of the Fathers of the first Ages and the Histories of the Church How many have we seen even in our times who having â—eemed to stand fast in the profession of Truth and in the performance of the offices of Vertue and duties of Piâ—ty Allegiaâ—ce and Iustice before trial have yet when they have been hard put to it yea and sometimes not very hard neither fallen away starting aside like a broken â—oâ— and by flinching at the last discovered themselves to have been but very weak Christiens at the best if not rather very deep Hypocrites 16. It will sufficiently answer the doubt to tell you That persecutions and all occurrences from without are not the chief causes nor indeed in true propriety of speech any causes at all but the occasions only of the souls fainting under them Temptations they are I grant yet are they but temptation and it is not the temptation but the consenting to the temptation that induceth guilt If at any time any temptation either on the one hand or the other prevail against us St. Iames teacheth us where to lay the fault Not upon God by any means for God tempteth no man No nor upon the Devil neither let me add that too it were a sin to belie the Devil in this for though he be a tempter and that a busie one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Tempter yet that is the worse he can do he can but tempt us he cannot compel us When he hath plied us with all his utmost strength and tried us with all the engines and artifices he can devise the will hath its natural liberty still and it is at our choice whether we will yield or no. But every man when he is tempted saith he tempted cum affectu that is his meaning so tempted as to be overcome by the temptation is tempted of his own lâ—st 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 draâ—n away and enticed Drawn away by injuries and affrightments from doing good or enticed by delights and allurements to do evil It is with temptations on the left hand for such are those of which we now speak even as it is with those on the right yield not and good enough My Son saith Solomon if sinners intice thee consent not Prov. 1. It may be said also proportionably and by the same reason My Son if sinners affright thee comply not The Common saying if in any other holdeth most true in the case of Temptations No man taketh harm but from himself 17. And verily in the particular we are now upon of fainting under the Cross it is nothing but our own fears and the falseness of a misgiving heart that betrayeth us to the Tempter and undoeth us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. as he said It is not any reality in the things themselves so much that troubleth the mind as our over-deep apprehensions of them All passions of the mind if immoderate are perturbations and may bring a snare but none more or sooner than fear The fear of man bringeth a snare saith Solomon And our Saviour Let not your hearts be troubled neither fear as if fear were the greatest troubler of the heart And truly so it is No passion not Love no nor yet Anger if self though great obstructers of Reason both being so irrational as Fear is It maketh us many times do things quite otherwise than our own reason telleth us we should do It is an excellent description that a wise man hath given of it Wisdom 17. Fear saith he is nothing else but the betraying of the succours which reason offereth He that letteth go his courage forfeiteth his reason withal and what good can you reasonably expect from an unreasonable man 18. Seest thou then a man faint-hearted Suspect him I had almost said Conclude him false-hearted too It is certainly a very hard thing if at all possible for a Coward to be an honest man or a true friend either to God or man He is at the best but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a double-minded man but God requireth simplicity and singleness of heart He hath a good mind perhaps to be honest and to serve God and the King and to love his neighbour and his friend and if he would hold him there and be of that mind always all would be well But his double mind will not suffer him so to do He hath a mind withal to sleep in a whole skin and to save his estate if he can howsoever And so he becometh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fickle and unstable in his ways turneth as the tide turneth There is no relying upon him no trusting of him Iethro well considered this when he advised Moses to make choice of such for Magistrates as he knew to be men of courage they that were otherwise he knew could not discharge their duty as they ought nor continue upright And when our Saviour said to his Disciples Luke 12. Isay unto you my friends Fear not them which kill the body He doth more than intimate that such base worldly fear cannot well consist with the Laws of true friendship 19. I insist somewhat the more upon this point because men are generally so apt to pretend to their own failings in this kind the outward force
conscience bound to use our best endeavours towards the effecting thereof We do indeed but mock God and prevaricate in our Prayers if we be not in some measure careful to second them with our Endeavours 38. Christ biddeth us deny our selves and take up the Cross. True deny our selves rather than deny him and take up the Cross when he layeth it before us so as we cannot step beside it without sin But he doth not bid us undo our selves when his service requireth it not nor make our selves Crosses when we need not 39. Afflictions are useful things and many ways beneficial to Gods children True blessed be God but no thanks to them that they are so That much good sometimes cometh from them it is but meerly by accident as to them the true cause of those blessed effects is that over-ruling power wisdom and goodness of God whereby he is able to bring light out of darkness and can turn any evil even sin it self to the good of his Children But take afflictions precisely as they are in themselves and in their pure naturals as we say and there is no such loveliness in them that any man should court them Nor are they productive of any the least good by any proper inherent virtue of their own Nor are therefore such desirable things as that any man can reasonably promise to himself any good effect from them or any sound comfort under them that shall wilfully draw them upon himself when he might without sin avoid them 40. We must not count life liberty or livelyhood dear to us but despise them all yea even hate them for Christs sake and the Gospels True where any of those stand in opposition against or but in competition with Christ or his Gospel or any duty therein contained In case of competition despise them in case of opposition hate them Do so and spare not But otherwise and out of those cases these are the good blessings of God wherewith he hath entrusted us and for the expence whereof we are to be responsible and ought not therefore to be so vile in our eyes as that we should think we may trifle them away as we list no necessity so requiring 41. It is the most proper act of Fortitude to endure hardship True To endure it but not to provoke it We shall be like to find in the world hardship enough whereon to exercise our manhood without seeking It is a fool-hardy madness better beseeming such a Knight-Errant as is described in the Romances than a true Souldier of Christ such as the Gospel setteth forth to roam abroad to seek adventures Afflictions are Temptations as was said and it is a presumption both rash and absurd having prayed to God not to lead us into temptations to go and cast our selves into them when we have done Fortitude is an excellent vertue doubtless but so is Prudence too as well as it and Iustice no less than either And therefore the offices of different Virtues are so to be exercised as not to hinder or destroy one another for between vertuous acts there must be there can be no clashing a man may without disparagement to his Fortitude decline dangers according to the dictates of Prudence provided withal that nothing be done but what is according to the rules of Iustice. 42. St. Paul saith of some that he had to deal with that they were unreasonable men Possibly it may be our case to have to do with such men Reason will not satisfie them and it is not lawful for us to do or to consent to the doing of any thing but what is agreeable to reason True but this very thing is agreeable to reason that to live at quiet among unreasonable men we should sometimes yield to their unreasonable demands But usque ad aras still that must evermore be understood In the pursuance of peace with our neighbours where it is not to be had upon better terms we may and ought by all seasonable Compliances and condescensions to become omnia omnibus all things to all men even as Christ to make peace for us condescended to be made like unto us in all things And as his condescension for us had yet one and but one exception made like unto us in all things yet without sin so should our condescension to them be likewise sin and sin only excepted though upon conditions otherwise hard and unequal enough 43. The sum is For the obtaining of peace the preventing of mischiefs the ridding of our selves and others from troubles we may with a good conscience and without sin yield to the doing of any thing that may stand with a good conscience and be done without sin Nor is it to be interpreted either as an effect of faint-heartedness or as a defect of Christian patience and courage so to do but is rather to be esteemed an act of Christian Wisdom and duty But so to faint under the Cross as to deny the Faith to forsake our Religion to violate the dictates of natural Conscience to do any thing contrary to any of the rules of Iustice or Charity or which we either know or suspect to be a sin though it be for the shunning of any danger or under the pretension of any necessity whatsoever cannot consist with that nobleness of spirit and magnanimity which becometh a worthy Disciple of Christ. 44. I should have proceeded according to my first intendment when I pitched upon this Scripture had their been room for it to have discoursed somewhat also from the other part of the Text concerning that which is therein prescribed as an especial Remedy of or rather Preservative against this faint-heartedness we have been all this while in hand with to wit the Meditation of Christ and his sufferings But all I shall have time now to do will be to give you the heads of those most useful and observable points which I conceive to arise without much enforcement from the words 45. First the act in the Verb here used discovereth an excellent piece of Art a rare secret in this Mystery a short and compendious but withal a very effectual way how to lighten such afflictions as lie sad upon us to our apprehensions thereby to make them the more portable for afflictions are lighter or heavier according to our apprehensions of them leve fit quod bene fertur onus The original word is of more pregnant signification to this purpose than Translators can render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It importeth not the bare consideration of a thing by it self alone but the considering of it by weighing and comparing it with some other things of like kind or nature and observing the analogies and proportions between it and them Certainly it would be of marvellous use to us for the rectifying our judgments concerning those pressures which at any time are upon us to render them less ponderous in our estimation of them if we would duly compare them either first
it and to dress it and besides the charge given us in that behalf it behoveth us much for our own good to keep them with all diligence If we husband them well the benefit will be ours he looketh for no more but his rent and that an easie rent the Glory and the Thanks the fruits wholly accure to us as Usufructuaries But if we be such ill husbands so careless and improvident as to let them sylvescere overgrow with wild and superfluous branches to hinder the thriving of the grafts whereby they become ill-liking and unfruitful we shall neither answer the trust committed to us nor be able to pay our rent we shall bring him in no glory nor do our selves any good but run behind hand continually and come to nought at last 18. It will behove us therefore if we will have our fruit in holiness and the end everlasting life to look to it betimes lest some root of bitterness springing up put us to more trouble than we are aware of for the present or can be well able to deal withal afterwards The Flesh will find us work enough to be sure it is ever and anon putting forth spurns of Avarice Ambition Envy Revenge Pride Luxury some noisom lust or other like a rotten dunghil that 's rank of weeds If we neglect them but a little out of a thought that they can do no great harm yet or that we shall have time enough to snub them hereafter we do it to our own certain disadvantage if not utter undoing we shall either never be able to overcome them or not without very much more labour and difficulty than we might have done at the first 19. In the mean time whilst these superfluous excrescencies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I know not how to call them are suffered they draw away the sap to their own nourishment and so pine and starve the grafts that they never come to good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith St. Iames we translate it wherefore laying aside perhaps it may import a little more The whole verse is well worth the further considering if we had time to insist upon it it seemeth to allude throughout to the lopping off of those suckers or superfluous branches that hinder the prospering of grafts As if he had said If you desire that the holy Word of God which is to be grafted in your hearts should bring forth fruit to the saving of your souls suffer not these filthy and naughty superfluities of fleshly lusts to hinder the growth thereof but off with them away with them and the sooner the better That is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 20. I should from this Point before I had left it but that I have other things to speak to and may not insist have pressed two things more First the necessity of our Prayers It is true our endeavours are necessary God that doth our work for us will not do it without us But without the assistance of his Spirit all our endeavours are bootless and we have no reason to persume of his assistance if we think our selves too good to ask it We may not think we have done all our part toward fruit-bearing when we have planted and watered until we have earnestly solicited him to do his part too in giving the encrease and crowning our endeavours with success 21. Secondly a duty of Thankfulness If by his good blessing upon our prayers and endeavours we have been enabled to bring forth any fruit such as he will graciously accept take we heed we do not withdraw the least part of the glory of it from him to derive it upon our selves or our own endeavours Non nobis Domine non Nobis Not unto us O Lord by no means to us but to thy Name be the glory Enough it is for us that we have the comfort onward and shall have an unmeasurable reward at the last for the good we have done either of both which is infinitly more than we deserve but far be it from us to claim any share in the glory let all that be to him alone Whatsoever fruit therefore we bear or how much soever let us not be high-minded thereupon or take too much upon us For we bear not the root but the root beareth us and when we have done our utmost endeavors the fruit we bear is still the fruit of the Spirit not the fruit of our endeavours 22. I have dwelt long upon this first difference not so much because it was the first though that somtimes falleth out to be the best excuse we are able to make for such prolixities as because it is the most maâ—erial as arising from the different nature of the things spoken of whereas the three that follow are rather verbal arising but from the different manner of the Apostles expressions in respect of the words The first whereof the second of the whole four is that the evil effects proceeding from the flesh are called by the name of Works and the good effects proceeding from the Spirit are called by the name of Fruits The Quaery is Why those and these being both effects alike they are not either both alike called Works or both alike called Fruits but the one Works the othere Fruit The works of the Flesh there here the fruit of the Spirit 23. For answer whereunto I shall propose to your choice two Conjectures The one more Theological or rather Metaphysical which is almost as new to me as perhaps it will seem to you for it came not into my thoughts till I was upon it the other more moral and popular For the former take it thus Where the immediate Agent produceth a work or effect virtue propriâ by his own power and not in the virtue of a superiour Agent both the work it self produced and the efficacy of the operation whereby it is produced are to be ascribed to him alone so as it may be said properly and precisely to be his work But where the immediate Agent operateth virtute aliâ—nâ in the strength and virtue of some higher Agent without which he were not able to produce the effect tho the work done may even there also be attributed in some soâ—â— to the inferior and subordinate Agent as the immediate cause yet the efficacy whereby it was wrought cannot be so properly imputed to him but ought rather to be ascribed to that higher Agent in whose virtue he did operate 24. The Application will make it somewhat plainer In all humane actions whether good or bad the will of Man is the immediate Agent so that whether we commit a sin or do a good work inasmuch as it proceedeth from our free Wills the work is still our work howsoever But herein is the difference between good and evil actions The Will which is naturally in this depraved estate conrupt and fleshly operateth by its own power alone for the producing of a sinful action without any co-operation at all as was said already
of any great weight for altering the meaning of the words Nor is it my purpose to insist upon such inferior observations as might be raised from some expressions or circumstances in the Text otherwise than as they shall occasionally fall in our way in the prosecution of those main points which to the apprehension of evâ—râ— understanding hearer do at the very first view appear to have been chiefly intended therein 2. And they but two First The supposal of a duty tho for the most part and by most Men very slackly regarded and that is the delivering of the oppressed In the two former verses If thou faint in the day of adversity If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death and those that are ready to be slain Secondly The removal of the common pretensions which Men usually plead by way of excuse or extenuation at least when they have failed in the former duty In the last verse If thou sayest Behold we knew it not doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it c. So that if we will speak any thing to the purpose of the Text we must of necessity speak to those two points that do therefrom so readily offer themselves to our consideration to wit the necessity of the Duty first and then the vanity of the Excuses 3. The Duty is contained and the necessity of it gathered in and from the tenth and eleventh verses in these words If thou faint in the day of adversity thy strength is small If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death and those that are ready to be slain Wherein the particulars considerable are First The persons to whom the duty is to be performed as the proper object of our justice and charity Them that are drawn unto death and those that are ready to be slain They especially but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 also all others that are in their condition in any kind or degree those that are injured or oppressed or in danger to be injured or oppressed by any manner way or means 2ly An act of Charity and Justice to be performed towards those that are in such a condition by such as by reason of the power and opportunities and other advantages that God hath put into their hands are in a capacity to do it which is the very duty it self viz. to look upon them in the day of their adversity and to deliver them out of the hand of their oppressors 3ly A possibility of the neglect or non-performance of this so just and charitable a duty by those that might and therefore ought to do it expressed here by the name of forbearance If thou forbear to deliver 4ly The true immediate cause of that neglect wheresoever it is found viz. the want of spirit and courage in the heart faint-heartedness from whatsoever former or remoter cause thht faintness may proceed whether a pusillanimous fear of the displeasure or a desire to wind himself into the favour of some great person or the expectation of a reward or a lothness to interpose in other Mens affairs or meer sloth and a kind of unwillingness of putting himself to so much trouble or whatever other reason or inducement can be supposed If thou faint in the day of adversity Lastly The censure of that neglect it is an evident demonstration à posteriori and as all other visible effects are of their more inward and secret causes a certain Token and Argument of a sinful weakness of mind If thou faintest c. thy strength is small 4. The result of these particulars amount in the whole to this Every Man according to his place and power but especially those that being in place of Magistracy and Iudicature are armed with publick authority for it are both in Charity and Iustice obliged to use the utmost of their power and to lay hold on all fit opportunities by all lawful means to help those to right that suffer wrong to stand by their poorer Brethren and Neighbours in the day of calamity and distress and to set in for them throughly and stoutly in their righteous causes to protect them from injuries and to deliver them out of the hands of such as are too mighty or too crafty for them and as seek either by violence or cunning to deprive them either of their lives or livelihoods Briefly thus and according to the language of the Text It is our duty every one of us to use our best strength to deliver the oppressed but our sin if we faint and forbear so to do And the making good and the pressing of this duty is like to be all our business at this time 5. A point of such clear and certain truth that the very Heathen Philosophers and Law givers have owned it as a beam of the light of Nature insomuch as even in their account he that abstaineth from doing injuries hath done but the one half of that which is required to compleat Iustice if he do not withal defend others from injuries when it is in his power so to do But of all other Men our Solomon could least be ignorant of this truth not only for that reason because God had filled his heart with a large measure of wisdom beyond other Men but even for this reason also that being born of wise and godly Parents and born to a Kingdom too in which high calling he should be sure to meet with occasions enough whereon to exercise all the strength he had he had this truth considering the great usefulness of it to him in the whole time of his future Government early distilled into him by both his Parents and was seasoned thereinto from his childhood in his education His father David in Psal. 72. which he penned of purpose as a prophetical benediction and instruction for his Son as appeareth by the Inscription it beareth in the Title of it a Psalm for Solomon beginneth the Psalm with a Prayer to God both for himself and him Give the King thy judgments O God and thy righteousness unto the King's Son And then after sheweth for what end he made that Prayer and what should be the effect in order to the Publick if God should be pleased to grant it Then shall he judg the people according unto right and defend the poor vers 2. He shall keep the simple folk by their right defend the children of the poor and punish the wrong doer or as it is in the last Translation break in pieces the oppressor vers 4. and after at the 12 13 and 14 verses altho perhaps the passages there might principally look at Christ the true Solomon and Prince of Peace a greater than Solomon and of whom Solomon was but a Figure yet I believe they were also literally intended for Solomon himself He shall deliver the poor when he crieth the needy also and him that hath no helper He shall be favourable to the simple and needy and shall preserve the souls of the
day of their adversity protect the innocent from such as are too mighty or too crafty for him hew in pieces the snares and break the jaws of the cunning and cruel oppressor and deliver those that are drawn either to death or undoing 24. The course is preposterous and vain which some Men ambitious of honour and reputation take to get themselves put into the place of Magistracy and Authority having neither head nor heart for it I mean when they have neither knowledge and experience in any measure of competency to understand what belongeth to such places nor yet any care or purpose at all to do God their King and Country good service therein The wise Son of Sirac checketh such ambitious spirits for their unseasonable forwardness that way Sirac 7. Seek not of the Lord preeminence neither of the King the seat of honour Think not he hath any meaning to dissuade or dishearten Men of quality and parts for medling with such employments for then the service should be neglected No Men that are gifted for it although the service cannot be attended without some both trouble and charge yet should not for the avoiding either of charge or trouble indeed they cannot without sin seek either to keep themselves out of the Commission or to get themselves off again being on His meaning clearly is only to repress the ambition of those that look after the Title because they think it would be some glory to them but are not able for want either of skill or spirit or through sloth nor willing to perform the duties And so he declareth himself a little after there Seek not to be a Iudge being not able to take away iniquity lest at any time thou fear the person of the mighty and lay a stumbling-block in the way of thy uprightness 25. Did honour indeed consist which is the ambitious Man's error either only or chiefly in the empty Title we might well wish him good luck with his honour But since true Honour hath a dependence upon vertue being the wages as some or as others have rather chosen to call it the shadow of it it is a very vanity to expect the one without some care had of the other Would any Man not forsaken of his senses look for a shadow where there is no solid body to cast it Or not of his reason demand wages where he hath done no service Yet such is the perversness of our corrupt nature through sloth and self-love that what God would have go together the Honour and the Burden we would willingly put asunder Every Man almost would draw to himself as much of the honour as he can if it be a matter of credit or gain then Why should not I be respected in my place as well as another But yet withal would every Man almost put off from himself as much of the burden as he can If it be a matter of business and trouble then Why may not another Man do it as well as I Like lazy servants so are we that love to be before-hand with their wages and behind-hand with their work 26. The truth is there is an Outward and there is an Inward Honour The Outward honour belongeth immediately to the Place and the place casteth it up on the Person so that whatsoever person holdeth the place it is meet he should have the honour due to the place whether he deserve it or not But the Inward honour pitcheth immediately upon the Person and but reflecteth upon the Place and that Honour will never be had without desert What the Apostle said of the Ministry is in some sense also true of the Migistracy they that labour faithfully in either are worthy of double Honour Labour or labour not there is a single honour due to them and yet not so much to them as to their Places and Callings but yet to them too for the places sake and we are unjust if we with-hold it from them though they should be most unworthy of it But the double Honour that inward Honour of the heart to accompany the outward will not be had where there is not worth and industry in some tolerable measure to deserve it The knee-worship and the cap-worship and the lip-worship they may have that are in worshipful places and callings though they do little good in them but the Heart-worship they shall never have unless they be ready to do Iustice and to shew Mercy and be diligent and faithful in their Callings 27. Another fruit and effect of this duty where it is honestly performed are the hearty prayers and blessings of the poor as on the contrary their bitter curses and imprecations where it is slighted or neglected We need not look so far to find the truth hereof asserted in both the branches we have a Text for it in this very Chapter Prov. 24. He that saith unto the wicked Thou art righteous him shall the people curse nations shall abhor him But to them that rebuke him shall be delight and a good blessing shall come upon them Every Man shall kiss his lips that giveth a right answer As he that with-holdeth corn in the time of dearth having his Garners full pulleth upon himself deservedly the curses of the poor but they will pour out blessings abundantly upon the head of him that in compassion to them will let them have it for their mony Prov. 11. So he that by his place having power and means to succour those that are distressed and to free them from wrongs and oppressions will seasonably put forth himself and his power to do them right shall have many a blessing from their mouths and many a good wish from their hearts but many more bitter curses both from the mouth and heart by how much men are more sensible of discourtesies than of benefits and readier to curse than to bless if they find themselves neglected And the blessings and cursings of the poor are things not to be wholly disregarded Indeed the curse causless shall not come neither is the Magistrate to regard the curses of bad people so far as either to be deterred thereby from punishing them according to their desert or to think he shall fare ever the worse doing but his duty for such curses For such words are but wind and as Solomon saith elsewhere He that observeth the wind shall not sow so he that regardeth the speeches of vain persons shall never do his duty as he ought to do In such cases that of David must be their meditation and comfort Though they curse yet bless thou And as there is little terrour in the causless curses so there is as little comfort in the causless blessings of vain evil Men. But yet where there is cause given although he cannot be excused from sin that curseth for we ought to bless and to pray for not to curse even those that wrong us and persecute us yet vae homini withal woe to the
Man from whom the provocation cometh Such curses as they proceed from the bitterness of the soul of the grieved person in the mean time so they will be in the end bitterness to the soul of him that gave cause of grievance And if there were not on the other side some comfort in the deserved blessings of the poor it had been no wisdom for Iob to comfort himself with it as we see he did in the day of his great distress The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me and I caused the widows heart to sing for joy Job 29. 28. But say these poor ones should be so charitable as very seldom they be as not to curse us when we have despised them or so unthankful as seldom they are otherwise as not to bless us when we have relieved them yet the Lord who hath given every Man a charge concerning his brother and committed the distresses of the poor to our care and trust will take district knowledge how we deal with them and impartially recompense us thereafter Doth not he consider And shall not he render to every Man according to his works The last words of the Text. If therefore you have done your duty faithfully let it never discourage you that unrighteous and unthankful Men forget it They do but their kind the comfort is that yet God will both remember it and requite it God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love saith the Apostle Heb. 5. He will remember it you see And then saith David Psal. 41. Blessed is he that considereth the poor and needy the Lord shall deliver him in the time of trouble He will requite it too He that for God's sake helpeth his poor brother to right that suffereth wrong he doth therein at once first an act of mercy because it is done in the behalf of a distressed Man and an act secondly of Iustice because it is done in a righteous cause and thirdly being done for the Lord's sake an act of Religion also Pure Religion and undefiled before God even the father is this to visit the fatherless and widow in their afflictions Jam. 1. And is it possible that God who delighteth in the exercise of every one of them singly should suffer an act to pass unrewarded wherein there is a happy concurrence of three such excellent vertues together as are Iustice Mercy and Religion The Prophet Ieremy to reprove Iehoiachin's tyranny and oppression upbraideth him with his good father Iosiah's care and conscience to do justice and to shew mercy after this manner Did not thy father eat and drink and do judgment and justice and then it was well with him He judged the cause of the poor and needy then it was well with him was not this to know me saith the Lord But now on the contrary He shall have judment without mercy that sheweth no mercy He that stoppeth his ears against the cry of the poor he shall also cry himself but shall not he heard c. Many other like passages there are in the Scriptures to the same effect 29. Nay moreover the general neglect of this duty pulleth down the wrath of God not only upon those particular persons that neglect it but also upon the whole nation where it is in such general sort neglected O house of David thus saith the Lord execute judgment in the morning and deliver him that is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor lest my fury go out like fire and burn that none can quench it because of the evil of your doings Jer. 21. Brethren we of this nation have cause to look to it in time against whom the Lord hath of late manifested his just wrath though tempered as we must all confess with much clemency yea and his hand is streched out against us still in the heavy plagues both of dearth and death Though the Land be full of all manner of sins and lewdness and so the Lord might have a controversie with us for any of them yet I am verily persuaded there are no other kinds of sins that have overspread the face of the whole Land with such an universal contagion as it were of a Leprosy as the sins of Riot and Oppression have done Which two sins are not only the provoking causes as any kind of sins may be in regard of the justice of God but also the sensible instrumental causes in the eye of reason and experience of much penury and mortality among us 30. Surely then as to quench the fire we use to withdraw the fewel so to turn away the heavy wrath of God from us we should all put to our helping-hands each in his place and calling but especially the Minister and the Magistrate the one to cry down the other to beat down as all sins in general so especially these of Riot and Oppression Never think it will be well with us or that it will be much better with us than now it is or that it will not be rather every day much worse with us than it is never look that disorders in the Church distempers in the State distractions in our judgments diseases in our bodies should be remedied or removed and not rather more and more encreased if we hold on as we do in pampering every Man his own Flesh and despising every Man his poor brother So long as we think no pleasures too much for our selves no pressures too heavy for our brethren stretch our selves along and at ease upon our Couches eat of the fat and drink of the sweet without any touch of compassion in our bowels for the afflictions of others we can expect no other but that the rod of God should abide upon us either in dearths of pestilences or if they be removed for God loveth sometimes to shift his rods in greater and heavier judgments in some other kind 31. But as to the particular of Oppression for that of Riot and Intemperance being beside the Text I shall no farther press my humble request to those that are in place of authority and all others that have any office or attendance about the Courts is this For the love of God and of your selves and your Country be not so indulgent to your own appetites and affections either of Ease as to reject the complaints or of Partiality as to despise the persons or of filthy Lucre as to betray the cause of the fatherless and friendless Suffer not when his cause is good a simple Man to be circumvented by the wiliness or a mean Man to be over powred by the greatness of a crafty or mighty Adversary Favour not a known Sycophant nor open your lips to speak in a cause to pervert judgment or to procure favour for a mischievous person Turn not judgment into wormwood by making him that meant no hurt an offender for a word Wrangle not in the behalf of a contentious person to the prejudice
farther direction from the Lord Samuel condescendeth to them and dismisseth them with a promise that it should be done to them as they desired and a King they should have ere it were long 3. And within a while he made good his promise The Lord had designed Saul to be their King and had secretly revealed the same to Samuel Who did also by God's appointment first anoint him very privately no Man being by but they two alone and after in a full Assembly of the people at Mispeth evidenced him to be the Man whom God had chosen by the determination of a Lot Whereupon the most part of the people accepted Saul for their King elect testifying their acceptance by their joyful acclamations and by sending him Presents Yet did not Saul then immediatly enter upon his full Regalities whether by reason of some contradiction made to his Election or for whatsoever other cause but that Samuel still continued in the Government till upon occasion of the Ammonites invading the Land and laying siege against Iabesh Gilead Saul made such proof of his valour by relieving the Town and destroying the enemy that no Man had the forehead to oppose against him any more Samuel therefore took the hint of that Victory to establish Saul compleatly in the Kingdom by calling the people to Gilgal where the Tabernacle then was where he once more anointed Saul before the Lord and in a full Congregation investing him into the Kingdom with great solemnity Sacrifices of Peace-offerings and all manner of rejoycings 4. Now had the people according to their desire a King and now was Samuel who had long governed in chief again become a private Man Yet was he still the Lord's Prophet and by virtue of that Calling took himself bound to make the people sensible of the greatness of their sin in being so forward to ask a King before they had first asked to know the Lord's pleasure therein And this is in a manner the business of the whole Chapter Yet before he begin to fall upon them he doth wisely first to clear himself and for the purpose he challengeth all and every of them if they could accuse him of any injustice or corruption in the whole time of his Government then and there to speak it out and they should receive satisfaction or else for ever after to hold their tongues in the three first verses of this Chapter but especially in this third verse Behold here I am witness against me before the Lord c. 5. In which words are observable both the Matter and Form of Samuel's Challenge The Matter of it to wit the thing whereof he would clear himself is set down first in general terms that he had not wrongfully taken to himself that which was anothers Whose Oxe have I taken or whose Ass have I taken And then more particularly by a perfect enumeration of the several species or kinds thereof which being but three in all are all expressed in this Challenge All wrongful taking of any thing from another Man is done either with or without the parties consent If without the parties consent then either by cunning or violence fraud or oppression over-reaching another by wit or over-bearing him by might If with the parties consent then it is by contracting with him for some Fee Reward or Gratification Samuel here disclaimeth them all Whom have I defrauded whom have I oppressed or of whose hand have I received a bribe to blind mine eyes therewith That is the matter of the Challenge 6. In the form we may observe concerning Samuel three other things First his great forwardness in the business in putting himself upon the trial by his own voluntary offer before he was called thereunto by others Behold here I am Secondly his great Confidence upon the conscience of his own integrity in that he durst put himself upon his trial before God and the World Witness against me before the Lord and before his Anointed Thirdly his great Equity in offering to make real satisfaction to the full in case any thing should be justly proved against him in any of the premisses Whose Oxe or whose Ass c. and I will restore it you 7. The particulars are many and I may not take time to give them all their due enlargements We will therefore pass through them lightly insisting perhaps somewhat more upon those things that shall seem more material or useful for this Assembly than upon some of the rest yet not much upon any Neither do I mean in the handling thereof to tie my self precisely to the method of my former division but following the course of the Text to take the words in the same order as I find them here laid to my hand Behold here I am witness against me c. 8. Behold here I am More haste than needeth may some say It savoureth not well that Samuel is so forward to justify himself before any Man accuse him Voluntary purgations commonly carry with them strong suspicions of guilt We presume there is a fault when a Man sweareth to put off a crime before it be laid to his charge True and well we may presume it where there appeareth not some reasonable cause otherwise for so doing But there occur sundry reasons some apparent and the rest at least probable why Samuel should here do as he did 9. First He was presently to convince the people of their great sin in asking a King and to chastise them for it with a severe reprehension It might therefore seem to him expedient before he did charge them with innovating the Government to discharge himself first from having abused it He that is either to rebuke or to punish others for their faults had need stand clear both in his own conscience and in the eye of the World of those faults he should censure and of all other crimes as foul as they lest he be choaked with that bitter Proverb retorted upon him to his great reproach Physician heal thy self Vitia ultima fictos contemnunt Scauros castigata remordent How unequal a thing is it and incongruous that he who wanteth no ill conditions himself should bind his neighbour to the good behaviour That a sacrilegious Church-robber should make a Mittimus for a poor Sheep-stealer Or as he complained of old that great Thieves should hang up little ones How canst thou say to thy brother Brother let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye when behold there is a beam in thine own eye That is with what conscience nay with what face canst thou offer it Turpe est doctori every School-boy can tell you See to it all you who by the condition of your Callings are bound to take notice of the actions aud demeanors of others and to censure them that you walk orderly and unreproveably your selves It is only the sincerity and unblameableness of your conversations that will best add weight to your words win