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A61711
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Sermons and discourses upon several occasions by G. Stradling ... ; together with an account of the author.
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Stradling, George, 1621-1688.; Harrington, James, 1664-1693.
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1692
(1692)
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Wing S5783; ESTC R39104
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236,831
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593
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9 10. Nor could all their other Purifications doe much neither towards the cleansing of the Mind which might be still in the Mire while the Body was in the Laver and remain as bestial as those Creatures to which it was beholding for its cleansing Besides that the Jewish Promises being so remote and obscure so low and mean and relating so much to this life that 't is question'd by some whether they pointed at all to any other they could have but little influence on the more spiritual part of Man which can never rest satisfied with what is so unproportioned to and so much less than its self All which defects are abundantly supply'd by Christ who has not only given us better Precepts but as the Apostle says established them on better and clearer Promises such as in their nature are most apt to engage us to cleanse our selves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit and to perfect holiness in the fear of God To all which we may add the powerfull assistances of God's grace and the force and efficacy of Christ's example whereby He has not only pointed out the way to us but trac'd it Himself being both the way and the truth All such pressing Motives to Purity of life that 't is Morally impossible for any to name the name of Christ and not to depart from all Iniquity And therefore Athenagoras in his Apology for Christianity plainly tells us and 't is a great truth That no Christian can be a bad man unless he be a Hypocrite or pretend to so holy a Master and be so unlike Him To behold the Lamb of God without spot or blemish and be himself a Leopard And surely He that shall consider how that the whole Discipline of the Jewish Religion was but Purity in Type and all the Ceremonies of their Worship but so many Figures or rather Doctrines of Cleanness must needs grant that Purity which the Christian Religion advanc'd and which the Mosaical one did but adumbrate to have been of a far higher strain and cannot but in reason confess there lyes now upon him a much stronger obligation to Purity he being not only washt in Christ's own bloud that bloud which alone can purge his conscience from dead works to serve the ever-living God but baptized with the Holy Ghost and with Fire And now tell me whether any can well pretend to be redeemed by that bloud wherein he finds no power to sanctifie him Without doubt whatsoever Christ worketh for us He worketh in us too If he clear us from the guilt of sin he does likewise cleanse us from the pollution of it If he free us from the obligation and the punishment he does withall from the power and dominion of it and while he quenches Hell-fire without does at the same time quench that of Lust within us These things are not to be separated and when we find them so or find our selves the same men Christ found us still in our sins though he has used all possible means to draw us out of them we certainly frustrate all the ends of his Incarnation He is not born for us but against us This Child is not set for our rise but for our fall His taking our Flesh will doe us no good if we doe not walk by his Spirit and that we shall not doe if we be not Holy as well as Innocent and not only perform those excellent things He requires from us but love and become zealous of them that so we may be indeed his Peculiar People A Title which some in our days are pleased to appropriate to themselves who yet shew little of that which must secure it renouncing good works in their own practice and decrying them in others as the mark of Antichrist's rather than of Christ's People These are they who talk so much of Faith and set it up in opposition to good Works an error worse than theirs who make them joint Causes with Christ's Merits in our Justification such there were in our Apostle's time who because He did so much magnifie Faith to beat down the Jews conceit of being justified by the Works of the Law did so far Idolize it as to think all good works useless when once they had taken upon them the profession of Christianity And there are and too many among us who bury all thoughts of good works in a pleasing but deceitfull Contemplation of Faith as exclusive of those good works whereof 't is so naturally productive and which can no more be separated from it than heat from light 'T is Faith indeed which alone purifies the heart that is the very foundation and root of all other Graces without which our Profession is but an empty Name and our most glorious performances but so many glittering Sins But then 't is such a Faith as supposes good works or else 't is but a dead an invisible Faith good works being the only evidences of its reality whereby we approve our selves unto Men as well as glorifie God stop the mouths of the Enemies of the Gospel make our calling and election sure to our selves and our profession good in the sight of others by adorning the Doctrine of God our Saviour in all things and by the practice thereof resembling Him who went about doing good And upon these and the like accounts we find our Apostle highly magnifying and earnestly calling upon Titus to press the necessity of them chap. 3. 8. This is a faithfull saying and these things I will that thou affirm constantly that they which have believed in God might be carefull to maintain good works these things are good and profitable unto men so profitable that without them the Text expresly affirms they cannot be God's peculiar People And here we may see how strict an Exactor of them our Lord is who is not content with our performance of without our affection to them nay requires the very heat and fervor of that affection will have us doe and withall be zealous of them which is more than barely to doe them and cannot possibly consist with any coldness or indifferency to them Such a temper He requires whose Zeal did even eat him up that we should follow after righteousness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the word is eagerly pursue and even persecute it be active and violent in quest thereof never leaving off our pursuit till we have obtain'd it He who like Gallio cares for none of these things but is indifferent to them shall be as little car'd for by God and such as are neither hot nor cold in his service he will spew out of his mouth Nescit tarda molimina Spiritûs sancti gratia God's Spirit fires that Soul it does inspire making it active and industrious to improve his Graces to add one link or other still to the Chain of them To faith vertue and to vertue knowledge and so on To strive not only to be
make nothing for it As first that they have often appeared to Men in visible forms and shapes and perform'd such actions as are proper to us as eating drinking and the like All which was by divine Dispensation for a time the better to accomplish their enjoyn'd Duties Yet were those Bodies whereby they perform'd such actions no other than assum'd ones they were no part of their Natures but only as Garments are to us and were laid aside when there was no farther use of them which being made of Air quickly resolv'd into it and vanisht away as their Meat also did One passage there is in the 6th of Genesis which being mistaken has occasion'd gross conceits in some of the Nature of Angels 't is on the second Verse of that Chapter where 't is said That the Sons of God saw the Daughters of Men that they were fair and took them Wives of all which they chose The not understanding of which place has betrayed many and among those some Ancient Fathers of the Church as Justin Martyr Tertullian Lactantius Ambrose and Sulpitius Severus into so foul an error as to conceit That those Sons of God were no other than Angels who being enamoured with the Beauty of Women and defiling themselves with Lust of Angels became Devils and which is yet as ridiculous a Paradox That those Gyants there mention'd were their Off-spring As if those blessed Angels who continually behold the Face of God could be taken with the Beauty of a little varnisht Dust and Ashes As if Spirits could beget Men or Holy Spirits wicked Men. Nay Tertullian who as he had greater Parts than most of the Fathers so had greater Errors too to establish one Error by another adds withall That for this reason the Apostle bids Women be Veil'd in the Church lest some of the Angels should once more be Captivated by them Thus does one gross mistake usually draw on another as gross and the first great one proceeds only from hence That in many Copies of the Seventy Interpreters heretofore the word Angel crept in as St. Augustine has observ'd But that those Sons of God were not Angels but Men and of the Posterity of Seth besides the express words of Moses both St. Cyril and St. Augustine have at large demonstrated And what some erroneously have fancy'd of the good others as ridiculously have done of bad Angels which Aquinas and Fr. Valesius maintain as a probable opinion and accordingly Bellarmine himself is not asham'd to affirm That Antichrist shall be born of the Devil and a Woman Surely none so fit to be his Father as the Devil the Father of Lies nor to be his Mother as the great Whore in the Revelations And therefore one of his Tribe in a book to the like purpose fraught with no less malice than absurdity endeavours to prove that Luther was so But 't is no marvel that they who hold that Accidents can subsist without their Subjects should also with equal contradiction to Philosophy affirm That Devils can be the Fathers of Men or they who can paint God the Father in a piece of Arras should make Angels corporeal All this I say proceeds from a false apprehension of the Nature of Spirits and Philastrius ranks such Opinions among his other Heresies which Wierus at large shows to be as void of Sense as they are full of evil Consequences For we find that Heathens who held the Corporeity of their Deities did withall render them obnoxious to all those vile Lusts and Impieties which the most profligate Wretches on Earth were capable of committing and found opportunity of doing so upon the strength of that prevailing fancy To which purpose I might produce several instances and among them one famous one recorded by Josephus of one Paulina the Wife of Saturninus in the Reign of Tiberius a noble beautifull and vertuous Lady whom one Dacius Mundus by the assistance of the Priests of Isis much abus'd upon such an account These are the wicked Consequents of drawing Spirits into a participation of our Natures and then of our Vices I shall not dwell any longer on this subject nor trouble my self to satisfie their curiosity who cannot understand how such incorporeal Beings can be capable of that punishment by Fire which the Scripture says shall be their as well as their associates portion Surely no Man ought to question how they can be lyable to such a punishment that finds a Soul within him troubled with Passion even while no offence or distemperature ariseth from that corporeal part nor how such spiritual Beings can be wrought on by material Fire till he can understand what nature Hell-fire is of That they shall suffer by it the Scripture assures us but how it tells us not nor can our best Reason tell us no more than St. Augustine's could tell him who plainly here confesses his ignorance Our care should be not to examine what Hell-fire is but to avoid it and though we cannot resolve all those difficulties which arise from the Nature of Angels yet since the Text here tells us they are Spirits we must have so much Faith as to believe it and consequently that they are Immortal it being impossible that Spirits as such should be Mortal since there can be no internal Cause of their corruption nor any external physical one but God who as he made them of nothing can indeed reduce them to nothing In which respect no Creature is Immortal none but the great Creator of all things who alone as the Apostle tells us hath immortality 1 Tim. 6. 16. as eternally subsisting by himself and by no other But not to speak of the absolute Power of God 't is certain that as to their Nature Angels are immortal and therefore by God's Decree too 't is said of them that have their share in a blessed Resurrection that they cannot dye for this reason because they shall then be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Angels in Heaven Luk. 20. 36. And this is a quality as proper to bad as good Angels who though Devils are still Spirits and shall remain objects of God's everlasting Justice as the elect Angels of his Love and Mercy For though they lost their Purity they can never lose their Nature All of them then are Spirits and so by Nature immortal and those good ones which kept their station glorious heavenly and elect ones and yet such noble Creatures as these has God design'd for the Ministry of his Saints The second Particular to be considered Ministring Spirits To God himself in the first and chiefest place They are his Creatures and consequently his Servants The Psalmist expresly calls them so Psal. 103. 21. O praise the Lord all ye his Hosts ye servants of his that doe his pleasure and Psal. 104. 4. his Ministers Such they are and Estius well observes it out of the Text Non dicit Apostolus says he eos mitti in Ministerium