Psal li. 10. A wound cured up by repentance and differs only from the former purity as a scar from a skin never cut wanting somewhat of the beauty and outward clearness but nothing of either the strength or health of it Optandum esset ut in simplici Virginitate servaretur navis c. It were to be wished that the Ship our Souls could be kept in its simple Virginity never be in danger of either leak or shipwrack But this perpetual integrity being a desperate impossible wish there is one only remedy which though it cannot prevent a leak can stop it And this is repentance after sin committed Post naufragium tabula a means to secure one after a shipwrack to deliver him even in the deep Waters And this we call a restored Virginity of the Soul which Christ also vouchsafes to be conceived and born in The first degree of Innocence being not to have sinned the second to have repented In the second place The Mother of Christ in the flesh was a Virgin not only till the time of Christ's conception but also till the time of his birth Matth. i. 25. He knew her not till she had brought forth c. And farther as we may probably believe remained a Virgin all the days of her life after For to her is applied by the Learned that which is typically spoken of the East-gate of the Sanctuary Ezek. xliv 2. This gate shall be shut it shall not be opened no man shall enter in by it because the Lord the God of Israel hath entred in by it therefore it shall be shut A place if appliable very apposite for the expression Hence is she called by the Fathers Councils 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Perpetual Virgin against the Heresie of Helvidius The probability of this might be farther proved if it were needful And ought not upon all principles of nature and of justice the Virgin Soul after Christ once conceived in it remain pure stanch till Christ be born in it nay be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Perpetual Virgin never indulge to sensual pleasures or cast away that purity which Christ either found orwrought in it If it were a respective purity then ought it not perpetually retain and encrease it and never fall off to those disorders that other men supinely live in If it were a recovered purity hold it fast and never turn again As a Dog to his vomit or d Sow to her wallowing in the mire For this conception and birth of Christ in the Soul would not only wash a way the filth that the Swine was formerly mired in but also take away the Swinish nature that she shall never have any strong propension to return again to her former inordinate delights Now this continuance of the Soul in this its recovered Virginity is not from the firm constant stable nature of the Soul but as Eusebius saith in another case 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 From a more strong able Band the Union of Christ to the Soul his Spiritual Incarnation in it Because the Lord the God of Israel hath entred in by it therefore it shall be shut Ezek. xliv 2. i. e. It shall not be opened either in consent or practise to the lusts and pollutions of the World or Flesh because Christ by being born in it hath cleansed it because he the Word of God said the Word therefore the leprosie is cured in whom he enters he dwells and on whom he makes his real impression he seals them up to the day of redemption unless we unbuild our selves and change our shape we must be his In the third place if we look on the agent in this conception we shall find it both in Mary and in the Soul of Man to be the Holy Ghost that which is conceived in either of them is of the Holy Ghost Mat. i. 20. Nothing in this business of Christs birth with us to be imputed to natural power or causes the whole contrivance and final production of it the preparations to and laboring of it is all the workmanship of the Spirit So that as Mary was called by an Ancient so may the Soul without an Hyperbole by us be styled The Shop of Miracles and The Work-house of the Holy Ghost in which every operation is a miracle to nature and no tools are used but what the Spirit forged and moves Mary conceived Christ but it was above her own reach to apprehend the manner how for so she questions the Angel Luk. i. 34. How shall this be c So doth the Soul of Man conceive and grow big and bring forth Christ yet not it self fully perceives how this work is wrought Christ being for the most part insensibly begotten in us and to be discerned only spiritually not at his entrance but in his fruits In the fourth place That Mary was chosen and appointed among all the Families of the Earth to be the Mother of the Christ was no manner of desert of hers but Gods special favor and dignation whence the words run truly interpreted Luk. i. 28. Hail thou that art highly favored not as the Vulgar read Gratiâ plena full of Grace And again Vers 30. Thou hast found favor with God So is it in the case of Mans Soul there is no power of nature no preparation of Morality no art that all the Philosophy or Learning in the World can teach a man which can deserve this grace at Christs hands that can any way woo or allure God to be born spiritually in us which can perswade or entice the Holy Ghost to conceive and beget Christ in us but only the meer favor good pleasure of God which may be obtained by our prayers but can never be challenged by our merits may be comfortably expected and hoped for as a largess given to our necessities and wants but can never be required as a reward of our deserts For it was no high pitch of perfection which Mary observed in her self as the motive to this favour but only the meer mercy of God which regarded the lowliness of his hand-maid Luke i. 48. Whence in the fifth place This Soul in which Christ will vouchsafe to be born must be a lowly humble soul or else it will not perfectly answer Maries temper nor fully bear a part in her Magnificat where in the midst of her glory she humbly specifies the lowliness of his hand-maid But this by the way In the sixth place If we consider here with John the Baptist his forerunner coming to prepare his way and his Preaching repentance as a necessary requisite to Christs being born received in the World Then we shall drive the matter to a further issue and find repentance a necessary preparation for the birth of Christ in our hearts For so the Baptist's Message set down Isa xl 3. Prepare the ways c. is here interpreted by the event Mat. iii. 2. Repent
It makes him apply himself c. we mean not that the encrease of sin produces faith formally but only inciteth to believe by way of instruction by shewing us what distress we are in and consequently in what a necessity of a deliverer The meditation of our sinful courses may disclose our misery not redress it may explore not mend a sinner like a touchstone to try not any way to alter him It is the controuling Spirit which must effectually renew our spirits and lead us to the Christ which our sins told us we had need of The sense of sin may rouze the soul but it is the Spirit of God that layes the toils the feeling of our guilt may beat the waters but it is the great fisher of our souls which spreads the nets which entraps us as we are in our way to Hell and leads us captive to salvation The mere gripings of our Conscience being not produced by any Pharmacon of the spirit but by some distemper arising from sin what anxiety doth it cause within us What pangs and twinges to the soul O Lord do thou regenerate us and then thy Holy Spirit shall sanctifie even our sins unto our good and if thy grace may lead us our sins shall pursue and drive us unto Christ Secondly by way of character how to distinguish a true convert from a false A man which from an inveterate desperate malady shall meet with a miraculous unexpected cure will naturally have some art of expression above an ordinary joy you shall see him in an extasie of thanksgiving and exultancy whilst another which was never in that distress quietly enjoys the same health and gives thanks softly by himself to his preserver So is it in the distresses of the soul which if they have been excessive and almost beyond hope of recovery as the miracle must so will the expression of this deliverance be somewhat extraordinary The soul which from a good moral or less sinful natural estate is magis immutata quam genita rather chang'd then regenerate into a spiritual goes through this business without any great noise the Spirit entring into it in a still small voice or at a breathing but when a robustous obdurate sinner shall be rather apprehended then called when the Sea shall be commanded to give up his ship-wrack't and the Sepulchre to restore her dead the soul surely which thus escapeth shall not be content with a mean expression but will practice all the Hallelujahs and Magnificats which the triumphant Liturgies of the Saints can afford it Wherefore I say if any one out of a full violent course of sinning conceive himself converted and regenerated let him examine what a degree of spiritual exultancy he hath attained to and if he find it but mean and slight and perfunctory let him somewhat suspect that he may the more confirm the evidence of his calling Now this spiritual exultancy of the regenerate consists both in a solemn humiliation of himself and a spiritual rejoycing in God his Saviour both exprest in Maries Magnificat where she specifies in the midst of her joy the lowliness of his handmaid and in St. Pauls victory-song over death So that if the conversion of an inordinate sinner be not accompanied with unwonted joy and sorrow with a godly sense of his past distress and a godly triumph for his delivery if it be not followed with a violent eagerness to fasten on Christ finally if there be not somewhat above ordinary in the expression then I counsel not to distrust but fear that is with a sollicitous not suspicious trembling to labour to make thy calling and election sure to pray to that Holy Spirit to strike our hearts with a measure of holy joy and holy sorrow some way proportionable to the size of those sins which in our unregeneracy reigned in us and for those of us whom our sins have separated far from him but his grace hath called home to him that he will not suffer us to be content with a distance but draw us close unto himself make us press toward the mark and fasten our selves on that Saviour which hath redeemed us from the body and guilt of this so great death The third Use is of comfort and confirmation to some tender souls who are incorporated into Christ yet finding not in themselves that excessive measure of humiliation which they observe in others suspect their own state and infinitely grieve that they can grieve no more Whereas this doctrine being observed will be an allay to their sorrow and wipe some unnecessary tears from their eyes For if the greatness of sin past or the plentiful relicks of sin remaining do require so great a measure of sorrow to expiate the one and subdue the other if it be a deliverance from an habituate servitude to all manner of sin which provokes this extraordinary pains of expression then certainly they who have been brought up with the spirit which were from their baptism never wholly deprived of it need not to be bound over to this trade of sorrow need not to be set apart to that perpetual humiliation which a more stubborn sin or Devil is wont to be cast out by I doubt not but a soul educated in familiarity with the spirit may at once enjoy her self and it and so that if it have an humble conceit of it self and a filial of God may in earth possess God with some clearness of look some serenity of affections some alacrity of heart and tranquility of spirit God delights not in the torment of his children though some are so to be humbled yea he delights not in such burnt offerings as they bestow upon him who destroy and consume and sacrifice themselves but the Lords delight is in them that fear him filially and put their trust i. e. assurance confidence in his mercy in them that rejoyce that make their service a pleasure not an affliction and thereby possess Heaven before they come to it 'T is observed in husbandry that soil laid on hard barren starved ground doth improve it and at once deface and enrich it which yet in ground naturally fruitful and kept in heart and good case is esteemed unnecessary and burthensome You need not the application Again the husbandman can mend a dry stubborn wayward fruitless earth by overflowing of it and on such indeed is his ordinary requisite discipline to punish it for its amendment But there is a ground otherwise well tempered which they call a weeping ground whence continually water soaks out and this proves seldom fruitful if our learned husbandmen observe aright whereof there is sometime need of draining as well as watering The application is that your soul which either hath been naturally dry and barren or else over-wrought in the business of the world needs a flood of tears to soften and purge it But the well temper'd soul which hath never been out of heart but hath alwayes had some inward life some fatness of
the quality of their spirit And what may that signifie to us Why fire you know is the embleme of a Civil War which is called a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a combustion or being farther broken out into flames a conflagration and I conceive should be so rendred in that place of S. Peter where we read the Fiery Tryal Now fire you know belongs most naturally to Hell and therefore when the fire and brimstone came down upon Sodom the phansie of the Fathers calls it Gehennam de Coelo And so generally the Civil Fire the Combustion in a State its original is from thence too part of that wisdom that is not from above These Tares so apt for burning are sowed by Satan the Enemy-man From whence come Wars and strivings among you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Wars of all sizes are they not from your lusts that war in your flesh saith S. James The lusts from the Flesh but the War from Hell the Devil the Spiritus sufflans that sets them a warring Believe it they would not be able to do it in this manner prove such fiery boutefeus if they were not inflamed from beneath if they were not set on fire by Hell And therefore to call fire from Heaven to entitle God or Heaven to that fire is to do both of them great injury nay though it be on Samaritans that are not so friendly to Christ as might be expected And so to call fire from Heaven upon Samaritans is by accommodation at least to pretend God or Heaven or Religion for the cause of War which of all things hath least to do it if the gospel-Gospel-spirit may have leave to be considered Indeed very few kinds of War there are that will be justified by Gospel-principles It was truly said though by a rough Soldier That if the Lord of Hosts were permitted to sit in the Council of War there would soon be a cessation of Arms and disbanding of Armies Though that all War is not unlawful will appear by John Baptists address to the Soldiers who gave rules to regulate their Militia but did not disband them and the example of the Convert Centurion a Centurion still after his Conversion Where yet this still remains as an infallible resolution that Wars are to be used like the Regia Medicamenta never but when the Physician sees there is no other means available never upon the wantonness of the Patient but command of the Physician and never but when peace appears to be impossible for if it be possible the precept is of force Follow peace with all men And then to shed the blood of Christians when blood may be spared what an hideous thing it is you may guess by that Emperor that having beheaded a Christian was by the sight of a fishes head that came to his Table so astonished phancying that it was the head of that slaughtered Christian gaping on him that he scarce recovered to his wits or of that poor penitent David in his pathetick expression Deliver me from blood-guiltiness O Lord A wonderful deliverance it seems to get clear from that And what an Ocean of fishes heads may appear one day gaping on some Men I have no joy to tell Deliver us from blood-guiltiness O God I have done with my third particular also and have now no more to importune you with but my requests to you and to Heaven for you that the time past of all our lives be sufficient to have spent in the will of the Gentiles after the dictates of that Heathen spirit the natural or Jewish principles That you be content at length to go up to the Mount with Christ and be auditors of his Sermon to that other Mount with the same Christ and be transfigured after him to that spirit of humility spirit of meekness spirit of all kind of mercifulness that peaceable patient spirit which will give you a comfortable passage through this valley of Achor here yea though it prove a Red Sea of Blood and will fit you for a Crown that true Olympick Olive Crown the peaceable fruits of righteousness an eternal weight of glory hereafter Which God of his infinite mercy grant through the merit and promise of his Son To whom with the Father c. The VI. Sermon EZEK xviii 31. For why will ye die SInce the Devil was turned out of Heaven all his care and counsels have been employed to keep us from coming thither and finding Gods love very forward and encreasing towards us he hath set us upon all ways of enmity and opposition against him The first warlike exploit he put us upon was the building of Babel when man having fortified himself and the arm of flesh grown stout began to reproach and challenge and even assault the God of Heaven But the success of that boldness cost so dear that we have ever since been discouraged from such open proud attempts Our malice and despight hath kept in somewhat more close and secretly hath retired and setled in the Soul the inward man hath ever since erected its Babel proud and high imaginations out-bidding Heaven and God These were a long while forged in the Brain when instead of the acknowledgment of one true God all Monsters of Atheism filled the understanding sometimes with a multitude and shole of gods sometimes deprived it quite and left it utterly void of any But now at last the Devil and all the Atheism in the World being at last exorcised and banished out of the Brain by the evidence and power of truth hath like the Legion Luk. viii which being cast out of the man had leave to enter the Swine fixt violently and taken possession and intrenched it self in the brutish bestial part the Affections All the swellings and tumors and ulcers that ever shewed themselves in any portion of the circumference are now retired into the center All the Atheism or Heresie that ever soared or floated in the Brain or surface of the Soul is now sunk into the heart and there the Devil is seated at ease there to set up and fortifie and contemn God for ever So that in brief the issue of all is this There is an infinite opposition and thwarting a profest combate and bandying of forces betwixt the will of Man and the Will of God God doing in a kind his best on one side Man on the other God wonderfully willing and desirous that we should live man most perversly wilful to his own destruction This is a truth of a most dismal importance that concerns you to be instructed in and will not be more powerfully enforced on you from any place of Scripture than the Text which I have read to you Why will ye die It is God speaks it and with an infinite emphasis and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to note his passion and affectionateness in desiring our good and willing that we should live And then secondly Why will ye die Mans resoluteness and stubborn wretchlesness towards his own ruine rushing or
immortalitatis and in time encrease and grow up to immortality There is no such encumbrance to trash us in our Christian Progress as a fancy that some men get possessed with that if they are elected they shall be called and saved in spight of their teeth every man expecting an extraordinary call because Saul met with one and perhaps running the more fiercely because Saul was then called when he was most violent in his full speed of malice against Christians In this behalf all that I desire of you is First to consider that though our regeneration be a miracle yet there are degrees of miracles and thou hast no reason to expect that the greatest and strongest miracle in the world shall in the highest degree be shewed in thy Salvation Who art thou that God should take such extraordinary pains with thee Secondly To resolve that many precious rays and beams of the Spirit though when they enter they come with power yet through our neglect may prove transitory pass by that heart which is not open for them And then thirdly You will easily be convinced that no duty concerns us all so strictly as to observe as near as we can when thus the Spirit appears to us to collect and muster up the most lively quick-sighted sprightfullest of our faculties and with all the perspectives that spiritual Opticks can furnish us with to lay wait for every glance and glimpse of its fire or light We have ways in nature to apprehend the beams of the Sun be they never so weak and languishing and by uniting them into a burning Glass to turn them into afire Oh that we were as witty and sagacious in our spiritual estate then it were easie for those sparks which we so often either contemn or stifle to thrive within us and at least break forth into a flame In brief Incogitancy and inobservance of Gods seasons supine numbness and negligence in spiritual affairs may on good grounds be resolved on as the main or sole cause of our final impenitence and condemnation it being just with God to take those away in a sleep who thus walked in a dream and at last to refuse them whom he hath so long sollicited He that hath scorned or wasted his inheritance cannot complain if he dies a bankrupt nor he that hath spent his candle at play count it hard usage that he is fain to go to bed darkling It were easie to multiply arguments on this theme from every minute of our lives to discern some pawn and evidence of Gods fatherly will and desire that we should live Let it suffice that we have been large if not abundant in these three chief ones First The giving of his Son to the World Secondly Dispatching the Gospel to the Gentiles And lastly The sending of his Spirit We come now to a view of the opposite trenches which lie pitched at the Gates of Hell obstinate and peremptory to besiege and take it Mans resolvedness and wilfulness to die my second part Why will you die There is no one conceit that engages us so deep to continue in sin that keeps us from repentance and hinders any seasonable Reformation of our wicked lives as a perswasion that God's will is a cause of all events Though we are not so blasphemous as to venture to define God the Author of sin yet we are generally inclined for a fancy that because all things depend on God's decree whatsoever we have done could not be otherwise all our care could not have cut off one sin from the Catalogue And so being resolved that when we thus sinned we could not chuse we can scarce tell how to repent for such necessary fatal misdemeanors the same excuses which we have for having sinned formerly we have for continuing still and so are generally better prepared for Apologies than Reformation Beloved it will certainly much conduce to our edification instead of this speculation whose grounds or truth I will not now examine to fix this practical theorem in our hearts that the will of man is the principal cause of all our evil that death either as it is the punishment of sin eternal death or as it is the sin it self a privation of the life of grace spiritual death is wholly to be imputed to our wilful will It is a Probleme in Aristotle why some Creatures are longer in conceiving and bringing forth than others and the sensiblest reason he gives for it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the hardness of the Womb which is like dry earth that will not presently give any nourishment to either seed or plant and so is it in the spiritual conception and production of Christ that is of life in us The hardness and toughness of the heart the womb where he is to be born that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that dry Earth in the Philosophers or that way-side or at best stony ground in Christs phrase is the only stop and delay in begetting of life within us the only cause of either barrenness or hard travail in the Spirit Be the brain never so soft and pliable never so waxy and capable of impressions yet if the heart be but carnal if it have any thing much of that lust of the flesh 1 John ii 15. in its composition it will be hard for the spiritual life to be conceived in that man For Faith the only means by which Christ lives and dwells in us Ephes iii. 17. is to be seated in the heart i. e. the will and affections according to the express words That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith So that be your brains never so swelled and puft up with perswasions of Christ our Saviour be they so big that they are ready to ly-in and travail of Christ as Jove's did of Minerva in the Poem yet if the heart have not joyned in the conception if the seed sown have not taken root and drawn nourishment from the will it is but an aerial or phantastical birth or indeed rather a disease or tympany nay though it come to some proof and afterward extend and increase in limbs and proportions never so speciously yet if it be only in the brain neither is this to be accounted solid nourishment augmentation but such as a Camaelion may be thought to have that feeds on air and it self is little better and in sum not growth but swellings So then if the will either by nature or custom of sinning by familiarity and acquaintance making them dote on sensual objects otherwise unamiable by business and worldly ambitious thoughts great enemies to faith or by pride and contentment both very incident to noble Personages and great Wits to Courtiers and Scholars In brief if this Will the stronger and more active part of the Soul remain carnal either in indulgence to many or which is the snare of judicious men in chief of some one prime sin then cannot all the faith in the world bring that man to Heaven it may
it and come to application but that I am stayed and thwarted by a contrary proposition maintained by a sort of our popular preachers with more violence than discretion which I conceive to be of dangerous consequence and therefore worth opening to you In setting down the pitch that an unregenerate man may attain to and yet be damned some of our preaching writers are wont duly to conclude with this peremptory doctrine that of a mere moral man though never so severe a censor of his own ways never so rigid an exactor of all the precepts of nature and morality in himself yet of this man there is less hope either that he shall be converted or saved than the most debauched ruffian under Heaven The charity and purity of this Doctrine you shall judge of if you will accompany me a while and first observe that they go so far with the meer moral man and drive him so high that at his depression again many a regenerate man falls with him under that title and in issue I fear all will prove meer moralists in their doom which do fall short of that degree of zeal which their either faction or violent heats pretend to and so as Tertullian objects to the Heathen expostulating with them why they did not deifie Themistocles and Cato as well as Jove and Hercules Quot potiores viros apud inferos reliquistis They leave many an honester man in Hell than some of those whom their favour or faction hath besainted Secondly observe to what end or use this doctrine may serve but as an allay to civil honesty in a Commonwealth and fair just dealing which forsooth of late is grown so luxuriant the world is like to languish and sink 't is so overburthened with it and on the other side an encouragement to the sinner in his course an engagement in the pursuit of vice to the height and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the pitch and cue which God expects and waits for as they conclude on these grounds because he lookt upon Peter not till the third denial and then called Paul when he was most mad against the Christians as if the nearest way to Heaven were by Hell-gates and Devils most likely to become saints as if there were merit in abominations and none in the right way to Christianity but whom Atheism would be ashamed of as if because the natural man understands not c. all reliques of natural purity were solemnly and pro formâ to be abandoned to make us capable of spiritual 'T is confessed that some have been and are thus converted and by an ecstasie of the spirit snatched and caught like firebrands out of the fire and though some must needs find their spiritual joys infinitely encreased 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by that gall of bitterness from which they were delivered and are therefore more abundantly engaged to God as being not the objects only but the miracle of his mercy But yet for all this shall one or two variations from the ordinary course from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be turned into a ruled case Shall the rarer examples of Mary Magdalen or a Saul prescribe and set up Shall we sin to the purpose as if we meant to threaten God that 't were his best and safest course to call us Shall we abound in rebellions that grace may superabound God pardon and forbid Thirdly consider the reason of their proposition and you shall judge of the truth of it and besides their own fancies and resolution to maintain them they have none but this The meer moral man trusts in his own rigteousness and this confidence in the arm of flesh is the greatest enemy to sanctifying grace which works by spiritual humility To which we answer distinctly that the foresaid pride trust or confidence is neither effect nor necessary adjunct of morality but an absolute defection from the rules thereof and therefore whatsoever proceeds either as an effect or consequent from pride or confidence cannot yet be imputed to morality at all or to the moral men per se no more than the thundring or lightning is to be imputed to my walking because it thunders whilst I walk or preaching to my standing still because whilst I stand still I preach 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Aristotle in the first Post c. 4. It doth not lighten because I walk but that is an accident proceeding from some other cause To strive against the motions of the spirit and so to render conversion more difficult is an effect perhaps of pride or trust but yet is not to be imputed to morality though the moral man be proud or self-trusting because this pride or self-trusting is not an effect but an accident of morality and therefore their judgment should be able to distinguish and direct their zeal against the accidental vice not the essential innocent vertue against pride not morality Besides this pride is also as incident to him who is morally evil nay either supposes or makes its subject so being formally a breach of morality For that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 belonging to the understanding which is not to think more highly on ones own worth than he ought 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. xii 3. Do we not find it commended and dilated on by Aristotle 4. Eth. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. not to overprize his own worth or to expect an higher reward than it in proportion deserves So that he that trusts in his morality for Heaven doth eo nomine offend against morality according to that of Salvian Hoc ipsum genus maximae injustitiae est si quis se justum praesumat and indeed Aristotle and Seneca could say as much and so then the accusation is unjust and contumelious for to a moral man if he be truly so this pride or confidence is incompatible for do we not find that treble humility 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the heart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the tongue 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the actions Ephes iv 2. handled also and prescribed by the Philosophers In sum that which in all moral precepts comes nearest pride or highmindedness is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eth. 4. 3. part of which is setting value on ones self But if you observe this goes no farther than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 honour or worldly pomp as for the immortal blessedness of the soul 't was a thing infinitely above the pitch of their hope or confidence the most perfect among them never pretended any jus meriti to it and if they did they had by so much the less hopes to attain to it Now if it be supposed as I fear is too true that our moral men fall far short of the ancient Philosophers if they be now adays confident and trust in their works for salvation then they do not make good their name they are only so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 abusively and notionally And yet even these equivocal