to fall short of it So run that ye may obtain is the command and all precepts of Scripture are back'd with threats for ill or not doing as well as promises for doing well and are intended by God as so many arguments and strong motives to hold us to our duty do we our part and God will certainly do his and we cannot lose the reward of Well done good and faithful Servant enter into thy Master's joy The last judicial sentence of Christ of which we read Matt. 25. Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the World is an invitation of so much mercy and loveing kindness that none can give nor can any expect or require more What can the eloquence of Man add to it or what better assurance can be desired than the gratious promise of so powerful so faithful a Lord Or what greater reward can any hope to receive than that which the Author and dispenser of all good assures us by letting us know what ever we do to the poor and needy he will interpret it as done to himself and so reward our labour of love as to Crown it with eternal Rest an inheritance of that Kingdom and all its joys as well as honours which fade not away But we must not understand this award of eternal life this glorious inheritance to be the reward of the righteous for the merit of their good works as everlasting fire is to the wicked for their demerits what ever the Romish Church pretends to from those words of our Saviour in the forenamed 25th of St. Matt. The particle for say they is as truly causal by way of merit and efficiency in the one as in the other the form of Speech in both sentences the same Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire For I was hungry and ye gave me no meat Come ye blessed inherit the Kingdom for I was hungry and ye fed me In answer to this 't is clear enough that though the particle for be granted to signifie causality in both sentences yet need it not signifie the same kind or degree of causality in both and if it need not then it must not unless they resolve to contradict many other plain Scriptures rather than depart from their own vain and proud conceit of meriting Heaven in strict justice For first The word or particle for may signifie only the cause of our or others knowledge that the Kingdom of Heaven is their inheritance by true title of gracious promise or the Covenant of grace and mercy in Christ Jesus which accepts and rewards repentance and faith working by love whereof these works of Charity are the fruits and signs For every Authentick Declaration or Revelation of any truth before unknown is the true cause of our knowledge of it though not of the real truth which is so known Now among such as profess Christ and call him Lord 't is hidden to us who are the true heirs of the Heavenly Kingdom and who not untill at the day of final judgment when all Men shall be judged by their works The first infallible certain knowledge which shall be had of this difference is from the declarative sentence of that infallible righteous Judge who hath declared he will proceed with one and the other according to their several works when all must appear before the Judgment seat of Christ that every one may receive the things done in the Body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad 2 Cor. 5.10 The ones performance of good works declared and testified by the Judge shall be the true cause by which Men and Angels shall know them to be the heirs of that Heavenly Kingdom which here they sought and longed after with faithful desires and endeavours such as prepared and fitted themselves for it The others omission of good works testified by the same Judge shall be the true cause by which we shall know them to be utterly unworthy of Gods everlasting favour and mercy most worthy of death eternal We shall then truly know that the one are Crowned as saith St. Cyprian according to Gods grace which graciously accepts of faithful sincerity in stead of strict legal perfection and that the other are condemned according to justice because they neither fulfilled the law nor embraced the Gospel upon its gracious terms and conditions That the ones omission of good works and commission of evil ones is the true meritorious cause of their condemnation And that the others performance of good works at least in faithful resolution and that hearty inward faith hope and love which would have produced them if time and space had been granted is the testimony or declaration that they are the Sons of God heirs of everlasting life though not the meritorious cause of their Salvation and life eternal We commonly come to know the cause by the effect and therefore this word for may and doth often point out not the cause of the thing it self but the effect and our knowledge of the cause by it That 's the Major 't is commonly said for the Mace is borne before him Let no Man think that the bearing of the Mace before him is the cause of his being Major his lawful Election was the cause of his Majoralty and his Majoralty the cause of the Mace being carried or borne before him but the bearing the Mace before him is the true cause of many Mens knowing him to be the Major And this answer to the question may serve with greater probability than ought our adversaries bring for themselves But with more clearness and evidence of reason agreeing with the Analogy of Faith and the current of Scripture I answer That the particle for implys a causality in both the sentences but in one that of the wicked the strict meritorious sole cause of their condemnation whereas in the Godly and Charitable Persons the heirs of Heaven the for implys such a causal influence as that which they call conditio or causa sine quâ non good works or that faith working by love of God and Man whence they spring and the necessary conditions without which no Man shall inherit the Kingdom yea the necessary qualifications without which he hath not only no worthiness but no capacity no fitness to prepare himself for that Kingdom whose happiness is to see God with mutual complacency And no Man can so see the holy merciful gracious God the God of Love and Father of Mercies the faithful righteous unchangeable fountain of all that is pure loving or lovely unless he be like him and bear the Image of those his perfections though imperfectly as to degrees yet impartially and sincerely as the transcript and resemblance of that Wisdom which comes from above first pure then peaceable Unless his religion be that undefiled one before God which visits the Fatherless and the Widow in affliction and keeps himself vnspotted from the World These and the like graces
THE WEARY TRAVELLER HIS Eternal Rest BEING A DISCOURSE of that Blessed Rest here which leads to endless Rest hereafter By H. H. D. D. Rector of Snaylwell and Canon of Ely Matt. 11.29 Take my Yoak upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find Rest unto your Souls There remains therefore a Rest to the People of God Heb. 4.9 LONDON Printed by A. G. and J. P. for R. Clavell at the Peacock in St. Paul's Church-yard 1681. TO THE Right Reverend Father in God And my ever honoured Lord PETER Lord Bishop of Ely MY LORD MANY have laboured and wearied themselves in a restless enquiry after a perpetual Motion whose thoughts might have been employed to better purpose in finding out perpetual Rest There is no Man living but would have Rest all our labours all endeavours tend that way Your Lordships unwearied Active Motion in the high place and calling in which Divine Providence hath set Your Lordship leads undoubtedly in a direct line to this desired Rest and as all natural Motions make more hast as they come nearer their Center so Your Lordships more vigorous and cheerful moving in this holy Function makes us jealous lest Your Lordship should make more hast to an Eternal Rest in the Church Triumphant than stands with the interest of the present Church Militant in which Your Lordships Care and Government have been so eminent and are still so necessary To no other therefore could I more advisedly address these Meditations of Rest than to the blessed hand of a Patron whose indefatigable labours have so fairly entituled him to all the promises of this most glorious and blessed Rest Nor comes this under Your Lordships Protection without design for having once taken Sanctuary there and past the dread it hath of Your Lordships view I shall not need for ever after be sollicitous what Eye it may be exposed unto for its censure But if it be asked why I after so many pious devout excelling discourses of this nature should cast my Mite at last into this Sacred Treasury the poor Widow in the Gospel shall answer for me who at the same time when she beheld the richer Offerings of the wealthy thrown frankly in before her Eyes yet held she not her self thereby excused And that this though the meanest of all oblations that have gone before it may yet contribute something towards the safe conducting some drooping Travellers that are weary and heavy laden to their long home their last and happy Eternal Rest hath been sincerely in the desires and shall for ever be in the Prayers of MY LORD Your Lordships most devoted obedient Son and most obliged humble Servant HEN. HARRISON ERRATA PAge 25. Line 26. for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 45. l. 22. f. satisfied r. falsified p. 77. l. 11. Comma at sees and l. 13. the sense to go on without any new Paragraph p. 87. l. 15. f. watchful r. wrathful p. 114. l. 20. f. modesty r. in modesty p. 143. l. 7. f. up r. it up p. 144. l. 5. f. dwell r. duel p. 152. l. 24. f. descend r. descended p. 153. l. 20. f. cease r. to cease p. 180. l. 13. f. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p 184. l. 25. f. easily r. easy p. 213. l. 17. f. natural r. mutual p. 218. l. 17. f. Wifes r. Wives ADVERTISEMENT THE general Catalogue of Books Printed in England since the Year 1666. And a Catalogue of School-books As also a Catalogue of Latin Books Printed in Foreign Parts and in England since the Year 1670. Brutum Fulmen or the Bull of Pope Pius V. concerning the Damnation Excommunication and Deposition of Q. Elizabeth as also the Absolution of her Subjects from their Oath of Allegiance with a Peremptory Injunction upon pain of an Anathema never to obey any of her Laws or Commands c. Both Printed for R. Clavel at the Peacock in St. Paul's Church-yard THE WEARY TRAVELLER HIS ETERNAL REST. MAN goeth forth to his Work and to his Labour until the Evening saith the Royal Prophet Psal 104.23 The day of his Life is spent in a painful and weary Travel 'till the Evening come 'till his declining Sun be fully set and he fitted to lie down in Peace and enjoy the happy Rest of a long ensuing night But that Man in this his day might not disquiet himself in vain that he might not bear the heat and burthen of the day and yet miss of this Rest at night the holy Apostle St. Paul writing to the Hebrews and in them to all Christians begins his fourth Chapter with an Exhortation to Fear lest a Promise being left them of entering into God's Rest any of them should seem to come short of it Wherein he layes down the Ground and Motive of Hope plainly implied in the same words A promise being left them of entring into his Rest concluding the whole Chapter with a most cogent endearing invitation to come boldly to the Throne of Grace to obtain Mercy and to find Grace to help in time of need That so he that went on his way weeping and bearing forth good seed might doubtless come again with joy and bring his sheaves with him That he that went sighing and groaning under the weight and burthen of his heavy load might have no cause to faint or despond in the way nor start aside through the sad affrightments of hopeless fear Hope and Fear well temper'd together are the two preservatives of our Safety or Spiritual Life they are that which keep our Faith and Love from despair on the one side and from presumption on the other from slothful security on this hand and tormenting distrustful anxiety on the other Fear as the Rudder of the Ship diverts our Souls in their sailings to Heaven the Haven of their eternal Rest from the Quick-sands and Rocks that are in the way while Hope as the Sails filled with the breathings of God's Spirit his faithful promises carries us forward against the tide or stream of the World our earthly desires and carnal inclinations Wherefore the wise Apostle here as every where else throughout this and his other Epistles seeks to temper and mix these two in the Souls of Christians And having exemplified the possibility both of attaining and also of losing God's Rest in the ancient Israelites ch 3. v. 7. to the end now repeats and presseth the motives of Fear and Hope upon the Hebrews and in them on all Christians Let us therefore fear lest a promise being left us of entering into his Rest any of you should seem to come short of it Were the promise of Rest unconditional and absolute unto some and not at all propounded to others with any feazibleness of attaining it by a true possibility of performing its conditions the former should have no reason to fear nor the latter to hope But the promise being conditional and general excluding none
with their fruits if time be granted to bring them forth are not only described and required clearly and frequently in holy Scripture as the necessary conditions without which no Man shall but as the necessary qualifications without which no Man can see the Lord with holy eternal love and joy And therefore no doubt the for hath a rational inference in it as to the acceptance and reward of the godly and righteous person Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdom prepared for you for I was hungry and ye fed me c. For ye have perform'd the conditions which I in my Gospel or gracious covenant required of you with promise to accept and reward them for ye are qualified with those graces and holy dispositions which are my own Image and likeness the impress of my holy Spirit which renders you capable of enjoying me and my Father with endless delight which makes you though not in strict justice worthy of my Heavenly Kingdom yet in my gracious mercy and bounty and through my merits not utterly unworthy that is not wholly unmeet to inherit it for these all have confest and forsaken their evil ways fled with penitent believing hearts to that propitiation which God had set forth in his only Son through faith in his blood By doing so they have received that holy Spirit by whose direction and assistance they have mortified the flesh with its lusts and affections conquered the World with its temptatations resisted the Devil and quenched the fiery darts of the wicked fought the good fight of faith till they finished their course and though the remainders of sin and the flesh abide lusting and strugling against the Spirit yet no sin hath reigned over them and the very remainders of sin they have bewailed watcht over and resisted betaking themselves to Christs intercession for their pardon therefore they are heirs of the Kingdom through the merits of Christ imparted to them whereby they are entituled to it as the meritorious cause on his part whereby they have an actual plea title and interest in Christs merit as the condition and qualification on their part And thus the Kingdom and eternal Rest is theirs though not by right of justice or merit but by right of gracious promise And may not all this be thought sufficient to justifie the truth of the for or causal particle unless it be granted that it signifie meritoriously in strict justice on their part as strictly and fully as in the other Depart ye cursed for ye did no good works but many ill ones without repentance and reformation without faith and love to me The goodness and justice of Gods Majesty will not suffer him to sentence any Man to any punishment much less to eternal intolerable sorrow and pain unless it hath been strictly and fully deserved or demerited But the goodness and bounty and mercy of God may without wrong to any perfection or attribute of his accept and reward any Man that is not utterly incapable of it but in some sincere degree qualified for it with such an abundant measure of happiness as he thinks fit although no ways merited by him The Lord Jesus hath satisfied his Fathers justice and honour in his Government and holy Laws and made it a righteous thing with him to save the penitent sinner upon condition of reformation and holy obedience They that are saved have performed these conditions and therefore they are admitted with a for Come ye blessed c. For I was hungry If a gracious Prince of his own free goodness proclaim a general merciful pardon to all Rebels Traytors and Theeves provided they will by such a day acknowledge their fault and profess and resolve to do so no more and make their peace with their Neighbours whom they have wronged Suppose all accept the pardon in outward shew but some of them secretly practice the same wickedness against their Sovereign and their Neighbours when as the others perform faithfully the conditions of their pardon If at the General Assizes the Judge upon notice of their demeanours should say to the one I restore you to your former condition state and dignity for or because since your pardon proclaimed ye have so demeaned your selves as penitent loyal faithful Subjects And to the other You I condemn to death and torments for or because ye have abused your Sovereigns clemency No Man of sober reason or common sence I think can deny that either the condemnation of the one were entirely to be ascribed to their own willful choise and vile misdemeanours as due in justice to their demerits or that the restoring or saving the other were to be attributed not to the merit of their demeanour but to the Kings gracious mercy and bountiful favour Their good demeanour could be at most but the necessary condition or qualification of their pardon or restoration without which it could not consist with the wisdom or honour of the Prince his Laws or Government so to use them with which it might well consist with his wisdom and honour so to do and that with advantage to the glory of his mercy without disparagement to his Justice especially in case his Justice and honour had been satisfied for their former misdemeanours by the merits and intercession of the Prince his Royal Son Now just so it is in this case of which we now speak They whom our Lord calls here to eternal life and that with a for For ye have fed clothed lodged me are so far from this proud conceit of Romish merit by their works that they are ready to disclaim them as nothing worthy of such acceptance ready to blame their sluggish backwardness Lord say they when saw we thee hungry thirsty naked or a stranger or prisoner and relieved thee Nor is it amiss what is observed and acknowledg'd by Jansenius though a Romanist and too far engaged in this error what Saint Chrisostom had long since observed before him that our Saviour saith to those on his right hand Come ye blessed of my Father but to those on his left hand he saith only depart ye cursed but adds not Of my Father implying that God the Father is the Author and gracious donor of life everlasting but every Man that doth wickedly and dies in his wickedness without repentance is the only Author and cause of his own accursed estate The one are blessed freely and mercifully by God the Father for his Son Christs sake in whom alone he is well pleased with all that come by him with such a faith as works by love But the other are accursed most justly because they sought not or refused when it was offer'd them that grace and mercy which would have blessed them first with grace to do good works then with glory a superabundant weight of glory for doing them And this is consonant to that of St. Paul Rom. 6. v. the last For the wages of sin is death but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or gift
their disordered appetites Ask if they find not themselves uneasy when they consider how short and low their pleasure is compared with the irksom diseased shamefulness of their sin See how heavily the Ambitious proud person walks between his eager desires and doubtful expectations under his false hopes and true fears and then judge whether his wearisom days and restless nights can bring him any true content Should I instance in the idle Gallant whose time like a burthen lies upon his hands or in the contentious wrangler or unpeaceable brawler the secret whisperer or the open detractor I should tire your patience sooner than want a proof that sin is a wearisom uneasy heavy restless burthen and that it is necessary by the way of virtue to come unto Christ for ease and Rest The Angel in Tobit bids Tobias take out the gall of the fish to cure his blindness if we rip the bowels of worldly sinful lusts and pleasures and take out the gall of them that is to say seriously look upon the bitterness they bring with them and the gall and wormwood they leave behind them it may prove a remedy of our Spiritual blindness yet such is our short-sightedness that we think we are at ease under our load and at Rest in our sore Travel Sin turns all things up side down it sets Earth above and Heaven below Reason at the footstool and brutish appetite on the Throne and having thus lookt downward for our Rest and happiness we are ashamed to look Heaven in the face and having lost Heaven for Earth by sin we look downward still as fearing that Hell which we have so well deserved and this is it which makes Men suffer all sorts of diseases the Gout the Stone Tooth-aches and all kind of Tortures rather than die because ill led lives leave Men under anxious fears and sad doubtings what shall be their future state When Tamberlin commanded all Leprous persons to be put to death lest they should lead a miserable life the poor Lepers thought his mercy cruel and would have endured more willingly two Leprosies than one death not because of any great comfort they took in their lives but because they knew not what might follow after death To lose this life without assurance or hopeful probability of a better is doleful and bitter but to lose it with assurance from Gods own Mouth of a far worse of incurring an eternal death anguish and pain without mitigation this makes death deadly indeed when the sinner must die again for the sin he dies in when the first death leads to a second and when all the terrors and sorrows and pains of the first death are but the evidences of more or worse to follow when the fire that 's now begun to be kindled will burn down to the lowest hell Deut. 32.22 If we believe this in good earnest why do we not hate sin worse than death Because sin is the cause of all this the cause of death and all that is deadly It makes us liable to a dreadful account at the day of Judgment and makes our whole life restless and uneasy This being so how dare we trifle away one day or hour more of that term or time of Trial upon which though so short and so uncertain depends such a life and such a death such joys and such sorrows such rest and such disquiet to all eternity Methinks if Heaven cannot allure us with all the joys and blessed eternal Rest there to be had Hell might affright us with its dreadful sufferings into our duty and compel us to make God at least our last refuge if not our first choice No loss so great as the loss of God and the Kingdom of Heaven and that Rest we are there invited to No Prison so loathsom as the bottomless pit of horror and darkness No sight so ghastly as that of frightful fiends No shriekings so terrible as those of damned Ghosts No stench so noisom as that of the lake of fire and brimston No fire so hot as of the wrath of God which puts the sinner into chains never to be loosed into darkness never to be enlightened and gives him gnashing of teeth never to be remedied gnawing vipers never to be pulled off and this makes up such a mass of woes such a deadly death as exceeds all humane eloquence to express much more all patience to endure Now to avoid all this St. Paul tells us Heb. 12.1 what we must do we must lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us and run with patience the race that is set before us running the way of Gods Commandements which St. Paul calls here a race is the way to this everlasting Rest therefore let us so run that we may obtain it and then our recompence is a Crown of life if we slothfully neglect it our punishment is Tribulation and anguish endless and intolerable the worm of conscience that never dies the fire of hell that never goes out Were we left to the glimmering suspicious light of natural reason as most Nations were of old and many are still to guess at the way that leads to this everlasting Rest or to find it out by a painful enquiry through many difficulties and impediments of a contrary erroneous Education we were by far the more excusable but when by the mercy of God we have the Gospel sounding in our Ears and the way to this Rest chalkt out before our Eyes in holy Scripture and lively Oracles with all the powerful perswasive motives of hope and love inviting us to it on the one hand and all the cogent constraining motives of threats and fear to drive us to it hearten'd on with promises assistances and instructions on the other hand what pretence of excuse can we have that we should fall short of this Rest But some are often enquiring what is the lowest degree of holiness faith and obedience that is consistent with the escaping of hell or hope of Heaven They would know what is the lowest rate that Heaven and eternal Rest will come at The greatest part of those that would be resolved in this enquiry are of a most disingenuous unworthy disposition for when God hath obliged us by so many mercies assistances encouragements and rewards thus to beat down as low as they can the price of all his kindness and bounty 't is a dangerous sign that he that seeks heaven and happiness so faintly will not seek it long for we Sail against Tide in our Voyage to Heaven and earnest diligence is required in the passage thither but if we begin to lay aside our Sails and Oares we shall by the very stream of our nature the world and the flesh be carried backward to perdition The way to Heaven is upward but the ground is falling that we tread on and the heaviness of our nature doth perpetually expose us to relapses 'T is very probable that he that is so jealous and wary